by Marti Green
By 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Tommy was on a flight to Atlanta. He rented a car at the airport, and shortly before noon arrived at Jessup’s home. A car was in the driveway—a good sign. He strode up to the front door, rang the bell, and a few minutes later, Jessup opened it. A scowl briefly passed over his face before turning into a smile.
“Tommy, isn’t it? What are you doing here? I thought everything was finished with Jack Osgood.”
“There are still a few loose ends. Mind if I come in?”
Jessup held the door open for him, and he stepped inside.
“Come on into the living room.”
Tommy followed him in, then both sat down. The house was quiet. “Family here?”
“They’re at the mall, shopping. So, how can I help you?”
“I guess it’s no surprise to you that we’re focusing on Greg Johnson.”
Jessup shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there. I’ve told you that before.”
“Sometimes we don’t really know our friends. They can be good at hiding things.”
“I know Greg. He wouldn’t kill anyone, least of all Kelly.”
“Maybe so. But tell me, when you were growing up, did you ever see him do anything cruel, maybe to animals?”
“Of course not.”
Tommy was prepared to continue peppering him with questions about Johnson, wearing him down until finally he’d ask to use the bathroom, but a phone call cut short the interrogation. When the phone rang, Jessup picked up the receiver, noted the number, then said to Tommy, “I’ve got to take this. It’s work.”
As Jessup pressed “Answer,” Tommy asked, “Mind if I use the john?”‘
Jessup nodded, then pointed down a hallway. With the phone in hand, Jessup left the living room and walked through the kitchen to his study. Tommy made for the hallway, but once Jessup was out of sight, slipped back to the foyer and quietly made his way up the carpeted stairs. He found the master bedroom. As expected, it had its own bathroom, with two sinks set in a vanity. He opened the top drawer on the right side and found a hairbrush. A smaller hairbrush was in the top drawer on the left side. He figured the larger one was Jessup’s and, using a comb from the drawer, scraped off some of the strands of hair caught in the bristles, then slipped them into a plastic bag. Just to be cautious, he did the same with the smaller brush, then pocketed both bags. Hopefully, at least one strand had a root attached.
Quietly, he returned to the living room and was already seated, looking bored, when Jessup returned. He remained another twenty minutes, then left, his cache safely tucked away.
CHAPTER
46
Jessup didn’t discover something was amiss until he readied himself for bed that night. As he brushed his teeth, his eye caught on his hairbrush, visible in his half-open drawer. That’s where he kept it, but always snugged up tight against one wall of the drawer, not cockeyed like it was now. He slid the drawer all the way open. Why did it seem so clean? There were always hairs stuck in it, enough that he worried about ending up bald. Could Rose have cleaned it? No, she would’ve done a better job. And Rose never went in this drawer. Why would she? It was his, just like hers was hers.
He shook his head. I’m being paranoid. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. That investigator. He thought back to his visit, then remembered the phone call that had pulled him away. He remembered Tommy leaving the living room. And suddenly it hit him—Tommy hadn’t come to talk about Greg. He’d wanted a DNA sample.
He felt his chest tighten, and sweat formed on his brow. It’s time. I’ve got to leave. An overwhelming sadness descended on him. His own childhood had been darkened by his mother’s disappearance. Now, he would do the same to his children. It wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t wanted to leave them, that he loved them beyond comprehension. To them, it would only matter that he was gone. And Rose? He loved her, of course. She was the type he’d always been drawn to—slim, blonde, pretty. Yet, it hadn’t kept him from seeking out the others, the ones who looked as he’d needed them to look—who looked like Kelly. His love for Rose hadn’t kept him from killing the others.
It wasn’t his fault, he told himself. It was something inside him, something beyond his control that forced him to succumb to that need. That need for control, for power. That need for Kelly, again and again.
Can I wait until the morning? He decided he could. DNA testing would take days, if not weeks. He would leave tomorrow, tell Rose that a meeting had come up at the last minute, someplace he needed to fly to. An early Monday-morning meeting that required him to leave on Sunday. But he wouldn’t fly anywhere. He’d get in a car and drive. Drive to his new life as Patrick Barnes.
He’d prepared for this. First, the new identity. Then, he’d gone to his bank and withdrawn $200,000 from his savings. This would give him the cushion he’d need to start over. Rose wouldn’t know until after he’d disappeared. He paid the bills; she never looked at the bank statements. He would drive to the airport, leave his car, then rent another. He’d drive the rental to some big city, then, as Patrick Barnes, purchase a new car for cash. Something nondescript.
Once he’d done that, he needed to do one more thing before he headed west, before he began living Patrick Barnes’s life. Tom Noorland was responsible for wrenching him away from his children. He would make him pay for that.
CHAPTER
47
As soon as Dani arrived in the office Monday morning, Tommy told her what he’d done.
Dani leaned forward on her desk and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, Tommy, you shouldn’t have. I’m not even sure it would be admissible.”
“Why not? I’m not working with the police, and I was invited into his house.”
“True. But even so, at this point, there isn’t even anything to compare it to.”
“There’s the DNA from the bite mark on Grant. When that comes back belonging to someone other than Osgood, we’ll have the hairs to test against it.”
Dani sighed. “We don’t even know if that will happen—the ADA wasn’t even sure the sample was enough to test.”
Tommy balled his fists. “I know it’s Jessup. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
“One of the police departments down South will get him. Let them do their jobs.”
“Sure. I’ll let them be the leads. But I’m still on this. We always say it’s not enough to get our client off. There’s still a stench over him if we don’t find the real perp. I know it’s Jessup. And this DNA will prove it.”
Later that afternoon, Dani was deep into writing a brief when ADA Franklin called. “You were right,” he said. “The DNA didn’t match Osgood.”
Relief flooded through Dani. Believing he was innocent was not the same as DNA confirmation. Now, she had that. “So, you’ll drop the charge against him?”
“Yes, for now.”
“Did you get a match for the DNA?”
“No. It wasn’t from someone in the system.”
Russ Jessup wouldn’t be in the system, Dani thought.
“I think I know whose it is.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Russell Jessup. He knew the first victim and lives in Atlanta.”
“What makes you think it’s him?”
Dani didn’t want to get into all that Tommy had found—the gas credit-card receipts and the dates he traveled for business, both of which matched up with the dates the victims were murdered. Although she didn’t know how Tommy had gotten his information, she was fairly certain it wasn’t completely legit. “I have a sample of Jessup’s DNA. Can you run it against what you found on Grant?”
“Now, how did you manage that?”
“My investigator obtained it while he was in his house, conducting an interview.”
There was silence on the other end at first. Finally, Franklin said, “DNA testing is expensive. We don’t usually do it without more.”
Dani filled him in on everything she’d learned fro
m Milgram about serial killers, and about Jessup’s concussions, and his fractured family.
“All right. FedEx me the hairs, and I’ll have them tested. In the meantime, I’ll send someone to his home to question him.”
She hung up, then buzzed Tommy to let him know. “Our job is finished. Osgood is cleared of Braden’s murder, and now the charges are being dropped in Grant’s murder.”
“I’ll consider the job over when Jessup is behind bars.”
There were still a few things left for Dani to do. First, she called Osgood at the prison and let him know the good news. Next, she called Amy Shore. Although Osgood’s placement there had been temporary, she was happy to welcome him back. “He’s a sweetheart,” she said. “And Doris is so fond of him.” Amy agreed to pick Osgood up from the jail when the paperwork was completed.
That out of the way, Dani began to prepare a motion. Typically, after she’d proven clients’ innocence and obtained their release, she’d seek compensation for their wrongful convictions. The nightmare of spending years incarcerated—in some cases on death row, for crimes they hadn’t committed, deprived of their family and friends—didn’t end when they were finally free. They’d lost the years they would have spent working, building careers, starting their own families. They’d enter society without money, without health insurance, many times without skills, and often with no home to return to. Recognizing that, thirty states provided compensation to help former inmates begin the healing process. Georgia was not one of the thirty. Instead, her motion was against Osgood’s father, to recover the money that rightfully belonged to Jack after his mother had died. That money would pay for his stay at the group home and provide a cushion for him as he began to rebuild his life.
Dani had promised Harry Osgood that he could keep the money—all he needed to do was make his son part of his life. But that sorry excuse for a man didn’t do that. He deserved to suffer, even if only financially. And Dani was going to make sure that happened.
Detectives Kyle Simpson and Alicia Herzog pulled up to Jessup’s home just before 7:00 p.m. When Rose Jessup opened the door to them, Simpson first reacted to the redness around her eyes and the paleness of her cheeks.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Rose said.
Simpson glanced at his partner. “We’re looking for Russell Jessup, ma’am,” he said.
“Isn’t that why you’re here? I called the police to report him missing this morning.” She began crying, something Simpson suspected she’d been doing for a while.
“We’re not from your local precinct. We came here to speak to your husband.”
“But that’s just it. He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. He told me he was leaving on a business trip, but he never returned. I spoke to his boss this morning, and he said there wasn’t any trip.” Now, her sobs became louder.
“When was this, ma’am?”
“Sunday. Sunday afternoon. But he always calls me when he gets where he’s going. And I keep calling his cell phone, and it goes straight to voice mail. I’m afraid something’s happened to him.”
Simpson had suspected they’d be wasting their time speaking to Jessup. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Two days was a long enough lead time to disappear. “I can assure you, we’re going to do everything we can to find your husband. Can we come in and talk?”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
He and Herzog spent the next half hour gathering facts about Jessup—the car he drove, his cell-phone number, what he was wearing when he left, the company he worked for, how he liked to spend his spare time, names of his close friends. Some of it they could have gotten on their own, but it saved time coming from Jessup’s wife. When they finished, they asked her to contact them immediately if she heard from him.
As they walked back to their car, Simpson said, “I think we may have found our serial killer.”
CHAPTER
48
Jessup dropped the rental car at the Washington Dulles airport, then taxied to a Chevy dealership in Arlington. Patrick Barnes plunked down $23,350 for a black Malibu and drove it off the lot the same day. He’d driven straight through to DC and was beat. He looked for a cheap motel, then settled into his room for the night. Tomorrow, he’d head for New York, for Riverdale, where Tom Noorland lived with his family.
It had been easy getting Noorland’s home address. One could find almost anything on the Internet. His search not only told him where the investigator lived, but the names of his wife and children. Social media gave him their ages. He’d picked out his target. Sixteen-year-old Tricia Noorland. It didn’t matter that her hair wasn’t blonde. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t as pretty as Kelly. He would abduct her and kill her so that her father understood the depth of loss that came with losing a child. His own children were still alive, but he could never see them again, and he felt the loss already, as though they’d been killed.
When he’d killed those other girls, he’d never thought about their parents, their siblings. He never considered the pain they would feel. Now, he knew. He hoped that knowledge would keep him from killing again. He didn’t want to be a monster. They had meetings for alcoholics, for gamblers, even for sex addicts. But there weren’t meetings for people addicted to the rush from killing. And it was an addiction. He knew it was. That exquisite feeling that filled his whole body when he watched the struggle, and then nothing. No more breath, no more life.
He didn’t expect that satisfaction when he killed Tricia Noorland. This time, it was just a job, just something he needed to do to set the balance right.
He drove past their house, to become familiar with their street, at 2:00 a.m. A six-story apartment building with a doorman planted out front was across the street from their attached home. No chance of taking her from her bedroom. Instead, he would arrive at daybreak the next morning, follow her to school, follow her home. He’d do that for a few days. No one would expect him to be in New York. When he saw his chance, he’d grab her. And then he would strangle her, just like the others.
CHAPTER
49
Tommy stepped into Dani’s office and plopped down in the chair opposite her desk, a scowl on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I just got off the phone with a Detective Simpson from Fulton County. They went to Jessup’s home, but he’d disappeared two days earlier. The day after I was there.”
Dani’s brows drew together. “We were afraid this could happen.”
“It’s my fault. I spooked him. Dammit. I should have waited for the force to get a sample.” He slumped down in the chair and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Tommy,” Dani said softly, “I’ll always trust your instincts. You couldn’t have predicted this.”
“Sure, I could have. Hammond warned me against it.”
“So, what now?”
“They found his car at the airport. They checked the car-rental counter there, but none had a record of him renting a car. Now, they’re checking with the taxis that service the airport. They’ll keep looking for him. In the meantime, they’re waiting to get back the DNA results.”
Dani rested her arms on the desk and leaned forward. “Go back to work. Jessup isn’t our problem. He’s not your problem. The police will pick him up eventually. Now . . .” She handed him a piece of paper. “I’m taking on this new client. He had an alibi, but the jurors didn’t believe him. I’d like you to try and track down the alibi, question him yourself.”
Tommy nodded, then stood up to leave. At the doorway, he turned back and pinned Dani with his eyes. He held the paper up in his hand. “I’ll find this guy for you. But I’m not going to stop looking for Jessup.”
Dani tucked a lock of her dark-brown hair behind her ear, then gave Tommy a half smile. “I didn’t expect otherwise.”
One day later, Dani got the call from Franklin she’d been expecting.
“It’s a match,” he said. “It’s Russell Jessup’s DNA in
the bite mark on Alison Grant’s arm. There’s no question he’s our man.”
“Any luck finding him?”
“Not yet. But now we have the DNA results, we’re putting out an APB on him. Every law-enforcement agency in the country will have his picture. We’ll get him.”
Dani thanked him, and as soon as she hung up, she walked over to Tommy’s desk and told him the news.
“Of course, it came back him,” Tommy said. “We make a crack team.”
Dani looked around. Tommy’s desk was one of several in an open area. No one was nearby. She leaned into him and spoke softly. “Remember I told you about Doug’s job offer at Stanford?”
Tommy screwed up his face. “Don’t tell me he’s taking it?”
“He’s already accepted.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. Doug said he could come back weekends for the first year while he decides if it’s the right fit for him. But the kids would really miss him, and I know I’d be lonely without him.”
“So, you’re going to leave, too?”
“I’m thinking about it. I’ve been solicited for two job offers. One is at the law school, starting an innocence clinic for the students. The other is the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office, heading up a conviction-integrity unit.”
Tommy turned up his nose. “With the DA, you won’t be able to avoid the internal politics when it comes to choosing your clients.”
“That’s what I was thinking, but—I was wondering—”
Tommy waited silently.
“Would you ever consider moving your family out to California, too? Work with me at the law-school clinic? We do make a great team. I hate the thought of breaking us up.”
Tommy looked away, then back. “I wish I could say yes. I’d love to get out of New York. These damn winters are killing me. But I couldn’t pull the kids away from their friends. Not at their ages. And I don’t think Patty would want to leave.”