Absolute Pleasure
Page 21
Duncan turned up the volume.
“Je t’ai sous la peau.”
A chill chased down Sunny’s spine at the sound of the UNSUB’s voice. There was a smoothness to it, an almost disembodied quality that gave her a case of the creeps.
“Sounds pretty, doesn’t it? Do you know what it means?” Hope asked them.
Without tearing his eyes from the screen, Duncan said, “I’ve got you under my skin.”
Sunny stared at him. An eerie chill slide down her spine. He’d used the same tonal quality as the UNSUB and it spooked her.
“I’ll need to take this with us,” Sunny said.
“Keep it as long as you need it,” Hope said. “You sure I can’t get some macaroons to take with you. I baked them fresh just this mornin’.”
Sunny’s cell phone rang. “No, thanks,” she said, reaching into her briefcase for her cell. The Caller ID indicated the call was from Georgia. “Would you excuse me?” she said and moved toward the back of the room. “Mac, here.”
“Ned’s gloating,” Georgia said, but she didn’t sound miffed, just excited. “You better get over to the Drake before I shove him down an empty elevator shaft.”
“He found something.”
“What do you think?” Georgia laughed suddenly. “Mac, we got him. Forty-eight hours tops, and this piece of scum will be in our hands. We’re almost certain he’s in New Orleans, provided we’re not too late.”
“I’m on my way. Oh, hey,” she said before Georgia could hang up. “I got visual aids.”
She slipped the phone back into her briefcase just as Hope and Duncan were walking toward her. “Hope,” Sunny said, “I want to thank you again. I’ll be in touch soon.”
Five minutes later they were heading down the long, winding drive in the rental car. Duncan hadn’t said a word since he’d translated that phrase for Hope.
“I like her,” Sunny said. “She’s still been victimized, but she’s not like the others, is she? It might be a little late, but at least she can see him for what he really is.”
“Where to?” he asked once they reached the street as if he hadn’t heard a word she said.
“The Drake Hotel.” She watched him closely, trying to read him, but he was completely stoic, shutting her out and she wanted to know why. “Georgia called. They found something.”
Without a single comment, he accelerated and drove silently to the hotel. Thirty minutes later he pulled up to the entrance of The Drake.
“I need to get back,” he said in an abrupt tone.
“That’s fine. I’ll catch up with you later.” She unbuckled her seat belt. Something was up and she wanted answers. His reaction to the Seducer nagged her, and she could only wonder at his noncommunicative behavior.
He turned to look at her, but she had the impression it wasn’t her he saw. “I need to get back to the coast,” he said. “Right away.”
An odd combination of disappointment and wariness filled her. “I have a feeling I’ll be flying down to New Orleans tonight or tomorrow, anyway. I could be gone a few days.”
He nodded, but said nothing. Wherever he was, it wasn’t in the car with her.
“Duncan?” She laid her hand on his arm. “Did you even hear what I just said?”
He looked at her as if he had just woken from some dream and didn’t quite know where he was, or if he was seeing her for the first time since viewing the videotape. “I’m sorry, babe,” he said, sounding a little more like the Duncan she knew. “I was thinking about something I need to take care of.”
“Are you all right?”
He leaned toward her and gave her a quick kiss. “Don’t worry about me. You have a bad guy to bring down.”
If Georgia and Ned hadn’t been waiting for her, she would’ve questioned him further. With her briefcase in hand, she slid from the car, looking over her shoulder as he drove off.
“Watch your back,” she whispered, then entered the hotel.
18
GEORGIA’S FORTY-EIGHT-HOUR prediction had been off by a couple of days, but Sunny was no less relieved now that Glen Specht—and his laundry list of assumed names—was finally in their custody. It would take months before they realized the full extent of Specht’s damage. In addition to the nine victims they knew about, she’d gotten another fifteen names from Specht during her last interrogation session, and those were just the ones he could recall off the top of his head. It’d only taken her a day and half to wear him down, and another two to obtain the details of his confession.
Georgia and Ned had been in Specht’s hotel room at the Drake with the crime scene investigation team when Ned had been standing in the right place at the right moment. He’d caught a glimpse of silver that had fallen behind the bedroom dresser, and from there, everything began to click into place, like the tumblers of a combination lock.
The notebook Ned had found provided them with a detailing of another of Specht’s aliases, Farley Madison, as well as the intended mark, an Elizabeth Southern, the recently widowed wife of Richard Southern, a New Orleans neurosurgeon. Specht extensively studied the backgrounds of each of his marks, ran asset checks and full background checks all with the use of a computer, using libraries and Internet cafés across the country. He had an eye for detail that even Sunny could appreciate.
There had also been a notation of two additional aliases and potential marks, as well as intended locations. They’d recognized the Jefferson Wright alias immediately from the bank information Ned had uncovered, but the Parker Atascadero alias had been news.
They’d had no idea if Elizabeth Southern was indeed Specht’s next mark or one he’d planned for a future scam, but they’d operated as if she were his next victim, rather than taking the long shot at the San Diego or Phoenix locations noted for Wright and Atascadero, respectively. The three of them had been on a flight to New Orleans later that night.
On the off chance Specht showed up in San Diego or Phoenix, she’d put agents on surveillance of the possible, intended victims. Then with the assistance of local federal agents, the New Orleans Police Department and Elizabeth Southern, they’d set the wheels in motion. Not wanting to tip off Specht and have him disappear if he was in the area, they waited for him to approach Southern.
After three days of surveillance and no sign of Specht in New Orleans, San Diego or Phoenix, Sunny’s patience had worn thin. The final break in the case came early Monday afternoon when she received a call from a detective in the N.O.P.D. not associated with the investigation. He’d received an anonymous tip on Specht’s whereabouts.
They’d moved out and surrounded a run-down shack in the Bayou roughly fifty miles outside of New Orleans. The arrest of Glen Specht had been anticlimactic when their suspect had surrendered peacefully.
She hadn’t had much hope of uncovering DNA in the suite in Chicago after so much time had passed, and Ned’s stumbling across Specht’s notes nearly two weeks after the fact had been a miraculous gift, as had the anonymous tip, but Sunny didn’t much care. Specht might be a nonviolent offender and nowhere near the type of monster she’d be dealing with in the coming months now that Klabo had informed her she’d be coming to work for him once she wrapped up SEDSCAM, but in her opinion, Specht was a monster nonetheless.
One monster down. In the end, that’s all that mattered.
She and Georgia stood outside the New Orleans P.D. interrogation room watching Ned through the one-way glass as he questioned Specht. Her end of the interrogation was complete, but Ned needed to clarify as much as possible so the information could aid the FBI in preventing electronic crime.
They were scheduled for a flight back to D.C. in four hours. After eight long days in Louisiana, Sunny was more than ready to go home. She wanted to see Duncan so badly she ached.
Georgia took a sip of coffee from her cup, winced and set it on a nearby table. “Hard to believe he’s only twenty-six years old,” she said with an inclination of her head in Specht’s direction. “Looking at him now, I still d
on’t see how he passed for someone in his forties.”
“We see what we want to see,” Sunny said. “He’s a chameleon, Georgia, with an ability to become what will appeal the most to his victims. It’s the same principle any good deep-cover agent would use.”
Georgia gave her a sympathetic glance. “And he learned this skill from one of our own. Doesn’t the irony blow your mind?”
More than her mind had been blown. Her cage had been rattled when she’d been interviewing Specht and piecing his background together. She wasn’t proud that she’d faltered during the interrogation, but she’d promptly called a halt to the questioning. No way was she letting a piece of scum like Specht into her head.
She’d realized early on while speaking with Specht that he was indeed unbalanced as Duncan had suggested the night they’d been discussing his last undercover assignment. She hadn’t realized how close his prediction of unhinged had been until she’d worn Specht down and he started confessing. Whenever he spoke of his victims, his personality underwent a dramatic change. In discussing Celine Garfield, he became Ian Banyon. When Sunny had questioned him about Margo Wilder, she’d literally been introduced to Justin Abbott, and Marcus Wood, the animal rights activist, had appeared when she’d steered the interrogation to the Tansey Middleton incident.
If that hadn’t been enough to keep her on her toes, Sunny had been blindsided when gathering background information from Specht. As he talked about the grandmother he’d visited as a boy, he became that young boy again. But it was the subject of his father that had caused her to call a halt to the interview. Before her eyes, Glen Specht had assumed the personality of the man he viewed in his unbalanced, weak mind as the one responsible for the deaths of the two men he’d admired most—his father and the man he’d assumed had been a gifted confidence man.
Duncan.
She had never realized how close she’d been to profiling Specht the night she and Duncan had discussed his final assignment for the Bureau. More irony, she thought. Not once had Duncan mentioned Specht’s name, but for a guy who continued to beat himself up over a poor judgment call, he wasn’t quite the rebel rule-breaker he believed. In keeping the identity of the people he’d been investigating at the time to himself, he’d done exactly what he’d been trained to do.
Unable to look at Specht, she turned away from the window and rested her backside against the dull, greenish-gray wall. She might never fully understand the depths of Specht’s many psychoses, but he certainly made for an interesting case study. Although a physical examination would eventually confirm her suspicions, she’d been mildly surprised to learn Specht claimed he wasn’t impotent as she’d initially believed following her interview with Hope Templeton. According to him, he never engaged in intercourse or became aroused by his victims because he didn’t see them as sexual objects. He used sex against them because he claimed a woman’s need to feel admired sexually made her weak. To him, he was simply capitalizing on a weakness to gain what he wanted from them.
“What did Duncan say when you told him?” Georgia asked her suddenly.
Sunny tucked her hands inside the front pockets of her black slacks. “I haven’t talked to him.”
She hadn’t known what to say to him, or if she should even tell him about the details she’d uncovered surrounding Specht’s personality. For that matter, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel. A part of her wasn’t too happy with him for not identifying Specht once they’d seen the video at Hope’s. The other part of her, the one that loved him, continued to take precedence. She worried about him, plain and simple.
Having his past slam into him so unexpectedly had to have had an effect on him. Specht had been the kid he’d trained, the one who had shot him, and was ultimately responsible for the end of his career with the FBI. But what had her even more concerned was the guilt he must be feeling because Specht had been one of the few who’d gotten away. Far from obtuse, surely Duncan realized he may have been the catalyst for Specht’s lucrative career as the Seducer. She knew how difficult the what-ifs were to live with and overcome, and Duncan was hardly a shining example to the contrary.
Georgia made an exasperated sound. “Are you trying to torture the guy? He has to know by now that we’ve got Specht in custody. The press has been crawling around this place all week.”
“He has my cell number,” Sunny said, wondering why he hadn’t called her. But then, she hadn’t called him, either.
“He’s probably giving you time to cool off because he didn’t ID Specht when he had the chance.”
A smile touched Sunny’s lips. “Trust me, Georgia, Duncan is not the cooling-off type.” Not in the way her friend was thinking, she was sure. “He owes me an explanation about the ID, but I’m just as guilty. How am I supposed to tell him about all this?”
“You know, I would’ve thought you’d be ready to tear him a new one. You’re getting soft, Mac.”
She shrugged because it was easier than admitting Georgia was right. “He has a few things to answer to, but…” She checked the hallway to be sure they were alone and kept her voice low. “I’m not a fool, Georgia. I have a lot to be thankful for, too.”
“He doesn’t deserve all the credit,” Georgia reminded her.
“I know, but he’s the reason we’re here now instead of weeks or maybe months from now. If he hadn’t given us the tip on Templeton, who knows how much time would’ve passed before she showed up on our radar, if at all. Yes, Ned does deserve a lot of credit for leading us to Chicago. And his finding Specht’s notes brought us to New Orleans, but without Templeton’s video, we wouldn’t have known who we were looking for and that gave us a huge advantage.”
“Okay, fine. I hear what you’re saying,” Georgia admitted. “If this twisted ticket had spotted us during our stake-out, he would’ve known we were on to him and disappeared.”
“You can bet he wouldn’t have gone on to San Diego or Phoenix then, either,” Sunny added. “We would have been back to square one.”
“Which was turning into a big fat zero.” Georgia took another drink of the cold coffee in her mug and cringed. “God, that’s nasty. What are these guys weaned on down here? Kerosene?”
“Swamp water,” Sunny told her, then let out a weighty sigh. “The three of us worked hard for this. We did a good job, Georgia, we got him. Isn’t that what’s important?”
Georgia shrugged. “Look, Mac. I know Duncan is the real deal as far as you’re concerned, and that’s fine, but maybe your judgment isn’t as clear as it should be. We would’ve eventually made the connection to Templeton once we tracked the info to the Chicago P.D. report.” A half smile tilted her lips. “And as much as it pains me to admit this, a lot of the credit belongs to Ned.”
‘I know it does. To both of you,” Sunny said, and straightened. “Klabo called me last night at the hotel. The job is mine as soon as we wrap up SEDSCAM.”
Happiness filled Georgia’s eyes. “Ah, Mac, that’s great news. I’m going to miss having you around all time, though.”
“You won’t have to,” she said, unable to contain the smile threatening to erupt. “I told Klabo I wanted you and Ned to come with me. Ned’s already agreed.”
“The little weasel never said a word,” Georgia said, looking through the glass at Ned.
“What about you?” Sunny pressed. She’d had a long discussion with Klabo last night and while she wasn’t about to turn down the chance to finally get her hands on her own brass ring, she’d hedged her bets and let him think Georgia and Ned were part of the deal. She wasn’t sure she’d fooled him, but he’d promised to put the paperwork through just the same.
“I analyze data, Mac, not psychos.”
Sunny cleared her throat. “You do know the A in NCAVC stands for analysis, right?”
“With my runaway theories, I’d be bounced down to file clerk the first week.”
“You’d have to go through ISU training, but we do make a good team. At least consider it, okay?”
Twenty minutes later, Ned finally emerged from the interrogation room. “There goes one scary guy,” Ned said shaking his head as the three of them watched a subdued Specht being led away by a uniformed cop.
Sunny couldn’t agree more, and said a silent prayer of thanks that the Seducer had finally been captured.
LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Duncan leaned against the file cabinet behind Lucy’s cubicle where she could see him actually reading her weekly status memo. He reviewed the open and closed file count with a sense of pride. For the second week in a row, Colin had kicked his tail in recoveries.
He noted Marissa had brought in two new insurance clients this week, and landed one of D.C.’s largest law firms, which would result in more straight investigative work. A quick glance at the balance sheet showed the agency was in better shape financially than it’d been almost a month ago, but after the decision he’d made, he knew it’d be a while before they were steadily operating in the black.
He glanced around the wall of the cubicle at the sound of Jeri’s voice. His new administrative assistant pleasantly greeted a visitor in the lobby then let out a sharp, “Hey!”
He stood and his heart slammed sharply into his ribs as Sunny stalked past Jeri and headed straight for his office. For the past eight days, he’d been teetering between dread and longing, he couldn’t begin to guess which emotion currently held the top position. She didn’t look angry, just determined and anxious—no doubt to serve his nuts on a platter because he hadn’t identified Specht. He’d been on the verge of telling her, too, until she’d announced she was flying to New Orleans. If he’d told her about his hunch, he didn’t doubt for a second she would’ve taken off after him; and worrying that he was going to try to capture Specht on his own.