In her late forties, the woman lived alone in a small house along Creek Drive. She welcomed Caroline warmly, made her tea and brought out her most recent picture of Jennifer. She printed it out on her color printer and brought it to Caroline, her hands shaking slightly.
Caroline stared at the photograph of the teenager with strawberry blond hair. She looked a little like Augusta, not just her coloration or features, but that defiant look in her eyes.
The photo was taken at the ruins, there was no doubt.
Caroline felt a little pinprick in her chest when she recognized the spot where she and her sisters had played so often as children. The image was faded, the colors all blending together, making it hard to distinguish boundaries. But no matter what the quality of the photo, she would have recognized the location regardless. Behind Jennifer, one of the crumbling chimneys soared into the trees, the top covered by limbs that were dripping with Spanish moss.
Was Patterson there covering his tracks?
Caroline waved the photograph. “Do you know who took this photo?”
Ms. Williams shook her head, uncertainty peeking through her dark brown eyes.
Was Jennifer there checking out the ruins . . . or was there something more sinister at work? Who took the photo?
“How did you get this photo?” Caroline asked.
“Ian Patterson e-mailed it to me.”
The little hairs on Caroline’s nape prickled. She stood at once. Suddenly, she felt the need to get back to Charleston. She had to call Jack. Had to talk to Frank. Ian Patterson had questions to answer, but Caroline realized that anything she said now would only distress Ms. Williams all the more. “Thank you,” she said, standing. She waved the photograph again. “May I keep this?”
“Of course.”
Caroline said her good-byes and left, folding and tucking the photo into her purse. Once she was in the car, she called Jack three times. He didn’t answer. Then she called Frank and left a message, telling him what she’d discovered. Afterward, she tried both her sisters. Neither answered, so she just drove.
Augusta met with Daniel. She’d spoken to him only briefly to get the OK for the reward money and the reward notice was supposed to have been published in this morning’s edition. But he’d been difficult to pin down lately, so when he offered to see her to help her iron out details for the auction, she took him up on it, literally running out the door.
She was glad to see that he seemed completely recovered, bruises healed, and had a skip to his step that she attributed to something other than work, but she didn’t pry. She really didn’t want to know—especially if the explanation included Sadie.
When they were finished with their meeting, he apologized for the need to lock up and rush off, but he didn’t want to leave the office open and he had a court case that had reached its final continuance and couldn’t be missed. Ushering Augusta out the front door, he locked up and exited through the back of his building, where his car was parked, leaving Augusta standing on the street, annoyed that he hadn’t offered her a ride to her car. She hadn’t been able to scoop a parking spot anywhere near his office, nor on King Street and now she had to walk down a pretty iffy street.
Since when are you afraid to walk down a stupid street?
She lived in New York, for God’s sake. She had been down a million iffy streets.
The difference being, in a city with more than eight million people, it was difficult to find one with no one on it.
But it was still light out, she told herself, even if the street was strangely empty and the lamps were off despite a new set of dark clouds rolling in overhead. They needed the summer rain to take the edge off the heat, she thought, but it would sure suck to get stuck in it.
The ambient light was fading, shadows falling like a gray curtain over the city. In the historic district, there was always the added glow of gas lamps burning day and night. But here, the city was only beginning to correct the shortage of lights and a few were broken—not because they were being neglected, but probably because they hadn’t been reported. If you preferred to do your business in the dark, why would you want lamps?
About thirty paces down the road, Augusta regretted the decision to park so far away and she regretted wearing heels—even short ones.
What time was it? It felt late.
Cool air blew in, and steam rose from the blacktop. She passed a pothole that had recently been filled and her heel sank down into the hot asphalt. Suddenly, she felt rather than heard a presence behind her.
The footfalls were quick and lithe, rushing past her. The kid had her purse even before she could turn around to see who was coming. He was no older than twelve, his sneakered feet too big for his skinny body. He made away with the only designer purse Augusta had ever bought in her entire life. Instinctively she bolted after him, incensed.
If she caught him, she was going to turn him over her knee like a baby and paddle the daylights out of him in front of everyone watching—if anyone was watching—and then she was going to march him to his house and make him tell his mama what he’d done.
But he was too fast and turned into an alley before she could catch up. By the time Augusta reached the alley, she was winded, and even angrier, realizing he had her car keys.
At this point, she could give a damn about the purse. She just wanted her keys. In fact, if he would only come back, she would happily donate the Town Car to him for the price of a ride home. He probably needed it way more than she did anyway.
The sky was darkening fast. Shadows crept up the buildings along the alley. A Piggly Wiggly bag dragged itself over the brick pavement, the wind teasing it with a promised sail.
He was just a kid.
Should she go in the alley after him?
Suddenly, Savannah’s words echoed in her head.
Do what Augusta Aldridge would never do.
Augusta hesitated—something she rarely did.
She stood at the entrance of the alleyway considering what to do as the wind kicked up leaves and trash. Daylight was fading fast. Her eyes skimmed the second-story windows. Some of them were boarded up. Others were simply empty black holes in decrepit wooden facades. Inside one of them, she thought she saw a face peering out from the shadows.
Sometimes Savannah knew things.
Although it usually took a lot more than a darkening alley, a few shadows and a windy afternoon to daunt her, Augusta turned away from the alley and hurried back toward King Street.
To hell with it! She could get a new purse and phone and change the locks. As for the Town Car, if it was still there in the morning, she’d have a locksmith come out and let her in. In the meantime, she wasn’t about to stick around and wait for one.
Hurrying toward King Street, she wondered if she even remembered either of her sisters’ phone numbers—something she was going to have to remedy going forward.
They gave up the choppers by late afternoon.
Kelly’s car was not in the Lockwood parking lot, nor was there any sign of it abandoned along the Ashley River.
While he waited to hear from Garrison, Jack pored through the contents of Baker’s laptop. Officially, she wasn’t a murder victim so the cases weren’t linked, which only meant that, for the moment, the laptop was flying under the radar of the county solicitor’s office. The cases had nothing in common—not even the note, which had been found in the same parking lot where Caroline’s note had appeared and could have been placed there on her windshield by virtually anyone. But Caroline wasn’t a victim, and until Kelly’s car was found and they knew for sure whether it had a similar note attached to it, there was no way to connect Caroline’s and Pam’s notes to Kelly’s murder. It was purely conjecture. In fact, if someone were to look at these cases from a high level, there was nothing to connect them, except coincidence . . . yet . . . Jack somehow knew they were connected.
He had two dead girls . . . another missing . . . what was the connection?
He tried to clear his mind to
think clearly.
One of the missing girls had a direct connection to Caroline. The other to Jack. In his gut, Jack sensed that the game had turned personal. Were the notes a message, not for the police, but for Jack?
He thought about the message itself... Death and life are in the power of the tongue; those who love it will eat its fruit.
What did it mean? Had the victims been targeted because of something they’d said? Something that was said about them? Something they didn’t say? Was the psycho eating their tongues because he believed they held some sort of power?
In Greek mythology Tereus raped his wife’s sister and cut out her tongue to keep her from telling anyone about the crime. For Andrei Chikatilo, a Ukrainian serial killer, biting off the tongue was an extension of his lovemaking. Natives in the southernmost part of New Guinea supposedly ate the tongues of slain enemies to take their bravery. Serial killer and cannibal Joachim Kroll killed and ate his victims to save on his grocery bill. And Dennis Rader considered his victims projects and likened killing them to putting down animals. He strangled them multiple times, reviving them, getting off on their struggles, until he finally killed them and ejaculated into one of their personal items.
Questions raced through Jack’s mind, but none of the answers were cohesive, none gelled and he was still poring through the laptop when Garrison walked into his office around four P.M.
“You know that tail we put on Patterson . . . you’ll never guess where he went today.”
Jack was skimming through Baker’s e-mails. “Where?”
“Apparently, his girlfriend has a part-time job at the Wash ’N’ Shine, a car wash owned by her stepbrother out in Mt. Pleasant.”
“Girlfriend?”
“The chick who gave him his alibi.”
Jack’s head shot up. “Anyone been out yet to ask questions and take a look at their invoices?”
He and Garrison locked gazes. He knew Garrison had already discarded the messages as evidence, or at least put them at the bottom of his priority list, and he was unconvinced Pam’s disappearance was connected to the case. As far as everyone was concerned, the reference to the tongue was nothing but a coincidence. The white copy, like the pink copy, had been whistle clean, but both were found in the same parking garage on cars belonging to employees of the Tribune.
“I’m going now,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know.”
Jack stood, grabbing his keys, ready to ride with him. If Garrison wasn’t going to ask the right questions, someone had to.
Garrison shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t,” he said. “Condon wants you to sit this out. Just wanted you to know,” he said again, sounding apologetic, if just a little superior. This was his chance to outshine Jack and become the star detective—Condon’s pet. At least that’s how Jack thought Garrison perceived it. He sat back down, feeling impotent and angry.
“What about the computer?” Garrison asked, probably as a consolation. “Find anything yet?”
“Nothing.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Caroline was nearly home when her phone rang. In the few minutes since she’d turned down Fort Lamar Road, the sky had grown black. She answered without checking the number, hoping it was Jack.
“Calling . . . reward.”
It was a male voice, although barely a whisper and Caroline could only make out the single word: reward. Her heart skipped a beat and she turned down the radio. “Can you repeat that, please?” she requested. “My battery is dying. You’re breaking up.”
“Calling . . . claim . . . reward,” the man whispered, so low she almost couldn’t hear him again. Caroline pulled the phone away from her ear to check the caller ID and gasped at the sight of Pam’s number. Her foot slammed the break in reaction, jerking the car and nearly spinning her back end off the road. She put the phone back to her ear, but words caught in her throat.
It seemed an interminable moment before he spoke again. “I know where she is,” the voice whispered.
He hung up suddenly and Caroline pulled the car over to the side of the road, unnerved, her hands shaking too hard to drive even the mile or so left before home.
Call Jack.
She picked up the phone and started to dial when a text came through.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled.
The text was coming from Augusta’s number. Caroline clicked on it and waited with bated breath, heart hammering against her ribs, for a picture message to download. The battery was red and blinking. The saliva dried in her mouth as she waited for the image to fully materialize, fear clutching at her heart. She blinked as a close-up of charred bricks crystallized in the photo and she barely made out the initials next to a dark stain that looked like . . . blood. Her chest constricted.
Blood.
The initials were hers and Jack’s.
The photo text had come from Augusta’s number.
I know where she is.
The battery finally died. Her screen went black.
Caroline didn’t think, only reacted. Spinning the car out onto the pavement, she gunned it toward the road’s end, toward the ruins.
Jack hit more dead ends.
Was it possible he was manufacturing a connection where there was none? Could it be these were two completely separate cases, with simple coincidences seeming to connect them?
He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated. Pam’s e-mails were clean. Every file on her desktop seemed work-related. There was not one single personal e-mail in her trash bin. He checked her history, and one by one visited the sites she had browsed and bookmarked.
There were a few Internet articles about Ian Patterson, a few articles from the Tribune, one from the Post. She also visited quite a few sites on serial killer pathology and theory—one that outlined applications of geographical offender profiling for rapists in particular. Through geographic profiling for rapists, they had learned that perpetrators seldom committed crimes outside a circle that was determinable by the rapist’s two furthermost offenses. Was she researching an article on the site of Amy Jones’s murder? Could that be his missing link?
On a whim, he pulled up another browser. The default was set to her Google account and she was still logged in. Feeling hopeful, he clicked through her e-mail. Evidently, she didn’t use the service—nothing in it but spam. Gritting his teeth, he clicked on the link that took him to her photos, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and prickled as one by one Pam Baker’s pictures materialized.
Apparently, her smartphone automatically pushed her photos online. The last update was Saturday, July first. At a glance, the photos all looked like mistakes, misshots, and then he realized they were close-ups and he clicked through them one by one, swallowing hard when he realized what he was looking at. A bad feeling twisted in his stomach as he continued examining the photos. More than a dozen, all taken at different angles. All photos of bricks—and particularly a dark stain. He noted the initials carved in the stone and that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach turned into a black hole.
His cell phone rang.
“Bingo, Jack!” Garrison shouted on the other end of the line. “The invoice matches the pad they use at the car wash. The window crayon, too. We’ll get the lab to confirm it, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same. Get this . . . the biggest news is that we found Kelly’s Jeep, sitting all nice ’n shiny up in one of the parking spaces with a big ole number two written on the driver’s-side window—and you’ll never guess . . .”
More prickles jetted down Jack’s spine. “There was a note on her windshield?”
“Bingo again! You were right!” Garrison said. “Yellow—says exactly the same thing as the other two.”
Jack had never wanted to be wrong more in his life. “Where is Patterson?” he asked, his chest squeezing the breath from his lungs.
Now there was dead silence.
“We sent the guys home at four,” Garrison said, his tone a mix of self-defense and regret. “Nothin
g was happening, Jack. Those guys have been working round the clock. Keith’s wife was threatening to divorce him if he didn’t get home in time to watch his kid’s ball game.”
Ice cold fear swept down Jack’s spine. “Where was Patterson when you last saw him?”
“Home, but . . .”
Jack tensed. “Garrison?”
“Well, we got an anonymous tip he is on Fort Lamar Road, headed toward Oyster Point. But don’t worry, Jack, we’ve got men on the way out there right now.”
He was counting down.
Jack blinked as comprehension dawned. The first copy—the white copy—was on Caroline’s windshield.
He must have left his head between Caroline’s thighs because he saw with crystal clarity the one thing he’d been denying to himself. The mystery in the message wasn’t why or what he was doing with the tongues. Straight up, he was telling Jack who his third victim would be.
Caroline.
He hung up and dialed Caroline’s cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. He seized his car keys.
Caroline plowed her car into the brush and bolted out of the driver’s seat, leaving the door open. The sky was darkening to black, but her car’s headlights lit her path as she ran toward the ruins, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.
“Augie!” she shouted. “Augie!”
Winded and confused, she reached the remains of the old Georgian house, with its jagged vine-covered walls, but there was no one there.
No one . . . except . . . she recognized that smell . . . not the pungent odor of the marsh, but fumes . . . like gasoline.
It was all around her. She was standing in it. Instinctively, she peered down at her feet, searching for the stain in the picture. There it was, a dark sprawling black shadow next to the initials she and Jack had carved into the bricks the summer before she’d gone off to college. He’d carved those initials the day he’d asked her to marry him and he’d promised he would always be there for her....
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