by Jim O'Shea
It was exactly what he’d expected, a page from a Bible—a King James Bible according to the header. But instead of Deuteronomy like the page found on Meghan Becker’s body, this one was torn from the Book of Numbers according to the bold print on top. Hunter was contemplating its significance when the door swung open, and a familiar, middle-aged woman strode in with her nose in a file.
The District Attorney. Tall and attractive, Sheridan Logar looked much younger than her forty-nine years, especially considering many of them had been spent in the bowels of law enforcement. Despite the fact that she always wore black, horn-rimmed glasses and sported blonde hair cut shorter than many of her male colleagues, Logar’s persona was more suggestive of a model than the top prosecutor in the state. She took a chair between the two men without looking up from the file.
Both Fitter and Utah State Police Commander, Thomas Gleeson, were Type A’s, driven personalities who liked to get things done. But the D.A. was the type that could make normal A’s cringe. Logar had no right to be leading an investigation, but there was little doubt as to who was driving the search for the serial killer.
Hunter understood. The Ginger Killer murders had become as much of a political case as a law enforcement one over the past week, with every red-headed woman in the state of Utah on edge. Not to mention their thousands of friends and families, all registered voters.
“Let’s all get on the same page.” Logar spoke without lifting her head and the room remained silent. She looked up and scanned everyone in the room. “Forensics has analyzed all the X-rays, and they are certain there are objects lodged in each of the previous victims’ throats. We’re seeking a court order to exhume the bodies, but for now assume we’ll find jigsaw puzzle pieces.” She looked around a silent room at nodding heads.
Hunter’s was one of them.
“We also finally have some solid physicals from the Potts attack, and I’ve put a rush on them. I expect something back on the fingerprint within the hour and from the lab in the morning on the DNA. If we identify the perp and he’s in the system, we should have a positive ID soon.”
“I can get an APB out immediately,” Gleeson said. “I’ll have every trooper in the state looking for this guy.”
Guy? Hunter squirmed.
Logar’s gaze settled on Hunter for a few uncomfortable seconds before she turned her attention to Fitter, Gleeson, and Huneke. Each offered full cooperation from their teams.
“If we get the hit I’m hoping for,” Logar said, “all four local TV affiliates have agreed to have his photo live on all their newscasts tomorrow first thing. We’ll need to have a noose around Tooele before that happens.”
“Consider it done,” Gleeson said.
“Now, in addition to the police protection the City of Tooele is providing Ms…” Logar looked down at her notes. “Providing Ms. Meeker in her home, I suggest Commander Gleeson’s team head up surveillance when she leaves the house. To work, the market, gym…wherever.”
A sudden sensation of warmth told Hunter blood was rushing to his face, and he gripped the arms of the chair to keep his hands from shaking. He hadn’t shared Libby’s secrets, and the D.A. seemed to be making a giant leap.
“Does Ms. Meeker look like a murderer to you, Ms. Logar?” Hunter regretted the words the second they left his mouth.
Logar stared at him as if he had two heads. “The pieces found in the victims’ throats are an exact match to the puzzle found in Ms. Meeker’s home, Detective,” she said in a slow, deliberate tone. “She looks like a very likely victim to me.”
Logar’s gaze felt like a stone pestle, grinding what was left of Hunter’s calm facade into dust.
“Which brings me to a couple of things I am not happy about.”
Hunter looked across the table at his captain and then to Sheriff Huneke. Neither met his gaze.
“I’m hearing from several sources your relationship with Ms. Meeker could be a little more than professional.”
“It’s not,” Hunter said.
Libby had been the constant topic of his discussions with dozens of law enforcement personnel over the past few weeks, and Hunter cringed at the thought he’d been that transparent about his feelings.
When he tried to object further, Logar raised the palm of her hand and cut him off. “We also know you recently spent the night in her home, Detective. I want to believe it was strictly professional and for her protection. I don’t want to believe your integrity has been compromised, but I guarantee you a judge would.” Logar extracted a large photo from her file and slid it across the table to Hunter.
It was a photograph of a crowd of people, all facing the same direction.
“I’m also not happy about this.”
Hunter stared at a single face circled in red. Libby’s. “Where was this taken?” Hunter asked.
“Outside the Becker home,” Logar said. “Outside your crime scene. Ms. Meeker is a likely target for this psycho, so I don’t need her hanging around and making our job that much more difficult. I understand her curiosity, but this cannot happen again.”
Hunter was an expert at keeping a straight face, but found it very difficult with his heart hammering. Libby had apparently not shared all her secrets.
Logar broke the awkward silence, using a much softer tone. “Not to mention the fact that there aren’t many thirty-ish, red-headed females left in Tooele, Detective.”
Hunter’s throat tightened. “Sheriff Huneke has an officer stationed inside the home, but as of right now, Ms. Meeker is free to come and go.”
“Keep it that way,” Logar said. “I don’t want to see her at any more murder scenes, but she doesn’t need to know she’s being watched for now.” She turned toward Gleeson. “I want you to provide Sheriff Huneke with a team capable of tactical response as well if something happens.”
After Gleeson nodded, Logar stood, pushed the chair out and walked to the end of the table. On the wall behind her was a map of northern Utah, accented with five red dots. Logar picked up a marker from the table and added a sixth dot next to the other three in Tooele.
“I received a call just prior to this meeting. Officer Potts died this morning.”
Hunter’s hands formed into fists.
“Do whatever’s necessary to apprehend this freak.” Logar pointed her finger around the table. “But off-the-record, it won’t break my heart if things don’t work out exactly that way. Putting this thing on trial would cost the state of Utah millions and make the Nuremberg trials look like traffic court.” Logar returned the marker to the table and slumped over with her hands on the table. When she looked up, her face was red. “As everyone in this room is aware, we’ve been assuming the perp is a forty-something, white male with a high IQ, no friends, and a troubled childhood. It’s not that I don’t put a lot of weight in FBI Agent Rapp’s analysis, but we must maintain an open mind. Hopefully we’ll know more tomorrow morning, but in the meantime, we can’t rule anyone out.”
Hunter accidentally broke the lead off his mechanical pencil by pushing down too hard on the page in his notebook. No one appeared to notice, so he clicked the base of the pencil to refresh it.
“FBI profilers are usually very accurate,” Gleeson said.
“Agreed.” Logar pulled in a deep breath. “I have no doubt the perp is living in the fantasy world Agent Rapp described.”
“I have a hard time with her choice of words, Ms. Logar,” Barnett said. “Six dead bodies hardly seem like a fantasy.”
“To the perp, the victims are nothing but chess pieces on a board of his own creation. We must be smarter than him. We must anticipate his next move.” Mumbled conversations ended abruptly when Logar pulled a piece of paper from her portfolio. She looked up at Hunter. “I understand you looked into the Tarman case, Detective.”
Hunter nodded at the sound of the familiar name while his brain spun. He had, in fact, conducted a number of searches over the past few days in Utah and surrounding states’ case file databases based on rec
ent developments in the case. The keywords ‘Bible’ and ‘jigsaw puzzle’ had produced a few obscure hits, but nothing that looked relevant to the Ginger Killer case.
“Our friends north of here are telling me you posted an inquiry.”
North. Hunter’s mind quickly filled in the blanks, and he recalled a strange note left in a case file in rural Idaho. “Bryan and Patrice Tarman,” he said, pulling the names from memory. “It was a missing persons case logged about two months ago in a rural part of southern Idaho. There was no evidence a crime had been committed, but the officer who checked it out noted a jigsaw puzzle was left partially finished on the kitchen table. He must have thought it noteworthy that the couple took off with the puzzle half completed, and included it in his case notes. I found it by chance using a keyword search, but it didn’t seem relevant.”
Logar glanced up from her notes. “An intern working in the Idaho D.A.’s office was cleaning up case files yesterday, and must have noticed the same thing you did. He alerted his supervisor who brought it to the attention of my counterpart.”
“The jigsaw puzzle reference was a little coincidental,” Hunter said, “but there was nothing in the case that I could see linking it in any way to the Ginger Killer.”
“It turns out, the State Patrol received several calls from neighbors of the Tarmans a few months ago,” Logar said. “They reported a familiar pick-up truck going back and forth in front of their houses, one apparently belonging to the people at the end of the street. They claimed the driver did not appear to be Mr. or Mrs. Tarman, and wore a black hoodie.”
The information seemed irrelevant, but Hunter nodded as if it mattered.
Logar stared at him. “The intern had been following developments in the Ginger Killer case and took the time to look further into the Tarman case among hundreds of others. I believe this information to be highly relevant, Detective.”
“I’m not following you, Ms. Logar.”
“The Tarmans’ are Native American.” Logar leaned forward. Her eyes were like pinpoints. “Choctaw to be exact.”
Hunter broke off a second piece of lead. It popped up and almost hit him in the eye.
She clasped her hands on the table. “Would you like to guess the color of Mrs. Tarman’s hair?”
29
Libby’s skin began crawling the instant she shouldered open the back door, as if her parents’ house was whispering to itself just before she entered. A chill that had nothing to do with the weather accompanied her inside and lingered in the air well after the door was shut.
She emptied her arms on the kitchen table, unplugged the answering machine, and stood at the window sighing at the sight of The Crossing’s steeple. Its shadow was already cutting the backyard in two, which meant it would not be long before night overcame the day.
Libby reached into the bundle she’d brought in from the garage and, at the ripe old age of thirty, held a gun in her hand for the first time. Although her father had never fired the weapon to her knowledge, he always kept Grandpa Meeker’s revolver hidden inside a stack of old tires. She had no problem locating it—wrapped in brown leather, well-oiled, locked, and loaded. A formidable weapon indeed, but it failed to provide her the comfort she sought. Libby placed the revolver on the kitchen counter with the barrel facing the wall and returned to the window. More snow, and it was finally getting to her—the shear relentlessness of it in recent weeks. It was light this time but she was certain that the accumulation would be heavier than what had been forecast.
A small, gray figure pierced both the white landscape and her thoughts, and Norm paused long enough to look up at the window before continuing his trek toward the house through thick snow.
Hopefully, Aisha wouldn’t be far behind.
Libby sat at the kitchen table and replayed the discussion with Hunter in her mind once more—the stunned look on his face as she’d bared her soul, her combined feelings of pain and indignation at his reaction, followed by a calculating stare on the man’s face as easy to read as any drugstore novel.
At first, his unspoken suspicions were offensive, but the longer Libby pondered the possibilities, the more compelling they became. As frightening as they were incredible, but plausible nonetheless.
She pondered the many cop movies she’d seen and novels read—plots rich with clues eventually pointing to the killer. The problem was that, as the detective seemed to have so cleverly surmised, too many pointed at her. Especially the bizarre episode at the hospital. How could anyone describe Officer Potts’s reaction at the sight of her face as anything other than blind terror?
Libby sat quietly at the kitchen table, listening to the settling noises of the house, all the creaks and cracks and groans, as well as what sounded like tree branches once again brushing up against the old wooden siding. She closed her eyes and kept them closed until she convinced herself the old house was again the culprit. That was all it ever was.
She turned on every light in the living room and pushed her mother’s wingback chair from the living room into the entry foyer before settling in on the sofa. There would be no repeat performances tonight. She grabbed a book from her purse and let her entire body go limp as she slumped back into the soft, overstuffed leather.
The book was a light-hearted romance featuring the familiar and imaginary knight who didn’t exist, and Libby tried to lose herself in its pages. It was dark outside when she finally looked up, but the bookmark had not moved from its original location. She’d read the same page over and over again, not retaining any of it. “That sucks,” she told the room. Libby grabbed her phone off the coffee table and hugged her knees against her chest as she thumb-typed a text message to Aisha.
Where are you?
After a full minute without a response, Libby relaxed her grip on the phone and turned her gaze out the front window. The snow had stopped, exposing a dome of glittering stars and a moon so beautiful it looked as though it had been painted on a canvas. She was gratefully losing herself in the grandeur of the cosmos when a horn bleated suddenly, causing her to drop the book on the floor.
Aisha waved as she pulled in the driveway and skidded to a stop in the fresh snow. She was out of the car in seconds, bounded up the steps like a gazelle, and the hug that followed was exactly what the doctor ordered. “Any news?” Aisha asked, as she stomped the white powder off her shoes and onto the welcome mat.
“Hunter called a little while ago,” Libby said. “They haven’t exhumed the bodies yet, but they think they’ll find puzzle pieces in each of the first three victims.”
Aisha exhaled loudly and was about to reply when she ran into the wingback chair in the middle of the entry foyer. She turned toward Libby, her face asking the obvious question.
“Don’t ask.”
Aisha stared at Libby for a few seconds before slinging her coat over the back of the chair and plopping into it. After prying off her boots, she pulled a small paper bag from her coat pocket, stood, and handed it to Libby. “My kingdom for a cup of hot chocolate,” she said, as she turned toward the kitchen.
“Two Libby Meeker specials,” Libby said, as she unfolded the top of the bag. She peered in and shook her head. Seriously? She caught up with Aisha and pulled on her sleeve.
“We can talk about that later,” Aisha said without looking back. “Just consider it.”
Libby tossed the bag containing a box of black hair dye on top of Aisha’s coat, followed her into the kitchen, and listened to the details of her latest business trip while micro-waving two large mugs of water. She dumped a packet of instant hot chocolate in each and stirred it until a thin layer of foam formed on top. After topping off each with a shot of Irish cream, she set the concoctions next to a dozen store bought cookies laid out on her mother’s best china.
“OK.” Aisha blew on the drink and took a tiny sip. “What’s the latest with Sherlock Holmes?”
“I sneaked out the back door and Mard’s not happy with me.”
“Who’s Mard?”
“Kimberly Mard. She’s the new Tooele officer assigned to my home to protect me.”
Aisha gave her the stink eye.
“Hunter called me on the way here and read me the riot act,” Libby said, while mindlessly rearranged the cookies on the plate.
“I don’t blame him.”
“I think he understood why I needed to get out for a while, but that didn’t make him any happier. He’s headed to Idaho in the morning to check up on a lead in the case and wants to meet with me before he goes. I told him I’d meet him at the museum in Salt Lake first thing in the morning.”
“The one by your office?”
Libby nodded. “He had to go back to his office tonight and I didn’t want him doing the trek all the way down here, then backtrack to Idaho.”
“Have you given more thought to telling him what happened at the bank?”
“I told him, along with a few other things.”
Aisha’s eyes widened. “What did he say?”
“By the look on his face I could tell he’s starting to think I’m a lot more than one card short of a full deck. Maybe worse.”
Aisha put her hand to her chin, as if scratching a thought. “He thinks it was you in the bank both times.”
“He didn’t say it out loud, but it was written all over his face. I can’t say I blame him.” She scrunched her face to keep from crying but a tear slipped out anyway.
Aisha scooted her chair next to Libby’s and wrapped both arms around her shoulders.
“I’ve heard of a mid-life crisis, Azzi,” Libby sobbed. “But a dual-life crisis?”
“You’re Elizabeth Meeker,” Aisha said. “You’ve always been Elizabeth Meeker.”
“I used to be.” Libby’s voice sounded so whiny she wanted to slap herself. “I can’t blame him for what he thinks. The episode at the hospital only added fuel to the fire.”
“What episode?”
Libby shook her head as if to say ‘never mind’, and took a sip of the steaming liquid.