Believe No One (45 page)

‘First sign of trouble, I'm ready,' Simms said. ‘And I'm quick on the draw.'

The little girl thought for a moment, then shuffled forward on her bottom.

Fennimore lifted her out of the closet and held her to him. ‘You're all right,' he murmured softly. ‘You're safe, now.' She tucked her head under his chin and sobbed as only a child can. Simms heard in it relief that her ordeal was over, sadness that she had been so very afraid, and loneliness and longing for her momma. She held her hands out to take the girl, and for a moment, Fennimore seemed reluctant to give her up, but then he passed her over the top of the driver's seat and Simms carried the little girl, blinking, into the sunlight.

Lambert Woods Mobile Home Park,
Williams County, Oklahoma
Wednesday, 8 a.m.

When Riley wakes up, it's daylight. The sick feeling of loneliness is still there, coiled like a snake in his gut, but he feels a little bit stronger. He kicks off the quilt, picks up his jacket, sets his cap on his head and shoulders his backpack. As he turns, he sees a flash of grey. There's a car parked under his window.

He squats fast, rising slowly to take a careful peek. It doesn't look like police, nor one of the Tulks' cars, either. He holds his breath, listening, but all he hears is his heart pumping. The front door is no more than five feet from him, in the lounge; the back door is much further. He edges out of his room. On his right, the bathroom door is open a crack. Was it open when he came in? He can't recall.

His legs wobbling, he takes another step. The bathroom door opens. A man stands looking at him – not Will, somebody else. The man looks shocked, but only for a second, then he turns mad –
mean
mad – and he steps forward. The room feels suddenly small and the man seems to get bigger, like he is taking up every inch of space and Riley can't see a way past him. He can't move. The man takes a swipe at him and instinct takes over. He ducks. Off balance, the man stumbles against the kitchen counter and Riley drops, scrambling between his legs, knocking over a kitchen stool. He grabs the front door handle and turns it, leaning on the door with his shoulder. It holds.
The crime-scene tape!

The man kicks the stool out of his way and lunges forward.

The boy yells, pushing the door again. He hears the tape tear and he's falling. Something stops him before he hits the dirt – the man has a hold of his backpack. He wriggles, trying to get out of the strap, but it is jerked backwards. He kicks out, but the man has him, six inches off the floor, held by the straps of his pack. Riley opens his mouth to scream, but the man pulls him inside the house, slams his head against the door frame. Lights flash behind Riley's eyes, pain shoots through his skull—

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

O
SCAR
W
ILDE

Incident Command Post, Westfield,
Williams County, Oklahoma
Wednesday, mid-morning

The Task Force celebrated over a late breakfast at the hotel. The owners switched the TV to Fox News: Detective Dunlap and Sheriff Launer were giving a brief statement to the assembled press and media, Launer solemn and respectful on the podium, grinning like a shark off it: apparently Faith and Ava's rescue had taken his ratings ten points clear of the opposition. Hicks excused herself from the party early; the doctor who treated her at the hospital had given her painkillers and she intended to use them.

Fennimore drove her, and she was quiet all the way home. At her front door, he looked into her face. ‘It can be a bit of an anticlimax, finishing a case like this,' he said.

‘That's just it,' she said. ‘It isn't – finished, I mean. I know, we have to prioritize. Faith and Ava had just gone missing – they were still in the First 48 – our best chance of a good outcome. But what about Riley Patterson? Nobody even mentioned him.'

‘We'll pick up the search just as soon as people have rested,' Fennimore said. ‘You'll see.'

But driving back to the inn, he admitted to himself that like the rest, he had all but written off their chances of finding Riley Patterson alive. Could he have done more to find the boy? Could there be a clue they'd missed at Sharla Jane's place? He remembered that last cluster of images on the camera they had salvaged from McIntyre's house. Why had McIntyre taken photographs of the trailer's interior? A clock, ornaments, a DVR, a smoke alarm; these weren't family snaps. And following on from these prosaic items, the next two images on the SD card were the shipping container – his kill room – and Faith Eversley.

The party was still going on when he got back, and Fennimore joined a group, chatting over coffee and pancakes. He mentioned the images. Simms was there, CSI Roper and Valance, the young St Louis detective.

‘We decided that Sharla Jane's trailer
wasn't
the murder scene,' he said. ‘So why would he take pictures of it?'

‘Credit-card statements say he only bought the camera six weeks ago,' Valance said. ‘Maybe he was familiarizing himself with it before he found his next victim?'

‘Possibly,' Fennimore said. ‘But if he bought it to take pictures of his victims, wouldn't he practise
inside
the kill room? And why were there no pictures of Sharla Jane on there?'

‘We don't know that there weren't,' Simms said. ‘A lot of the images were unreadable.'

‘But odd, don't you think, that he would choose such banal photographic subjects?'

‘Serial killers often
are
banal,' Simms said. ‘It's what they
do
that sets them apart.' She stood, and pushed her chair under the table.

‘Where are you going?' Fennimore asked.

‘To get some sleep. And so should you – you're obsessing, Fennimore. You've got that manic look in your eye.' They both knew what she meant: when Fennimore was like this, he got reckless. He knew, too, that she had seen his desperation as he held eight-year-old Ava. He could still smell the child's cinnamon scent – a scent that reminded him of his own daughter. Which was why he'd found it so hard to give the child up into Simms's capable hands; letting go of that little girl was like letting go of Suzie.

Simms held his gaze, inviting him to leave, but he frowned and looked away, and, after a second or two, she shook her head and walked off.

The others at the table followed a few minutes after, to sleep or rest, but Fennimore couldn't get those images of Sharla Jane's tidy trailer home out of his head.

He went back to his room and lay on his bed, but couldn't sleep. He turned on his netbook and stared at those few images that had survived the fire: a clock, ornaments, a digital video recorder, a smoke alarm. There was nothing special about them. Could they be trophies from other victims? The clock, maybe, he thought, and the ornaments, but the smoke alarm? No. There had to be some other significance to them. Hard to see significance in these bland, utilitarian items: things you might see in any home – things you don't even notice.

Suddenly he thought he knew.

He called Roper's mobile.

‘Did you collect the DVR?' he asked.

‘What?' The CSI sounded full of sleep.

‘The video recorder from Sharla Jane's place – did you bring it in?'

‘Well, of course.'

‘And there was nothing out of the ordinary about it?'

‘Professor, I had two hours' sleep in the last thirty. I'm
real
tired.'

‘I understand that,' Fennimore said. ‘But those photographs—'

Roper groaned. ‘I'm hanging up.'

The line went dead.

The room they were using as a laboratory was locked. Hoping to find someone in the restaurant, he went back inside, but the only people there were a waitress and one of the hotel owners, clearing up after the team's late breakfast. He tried to raise Hicks, but it seemed she had followed doctor's orders and taken those painkillers: three times he rang her mobile, and three times it switched to voicemail.

The deputy on duty at the sheriff's office told him to get some sleep; the Sheriff said the Task Force was due to meet again at 4 p.m.

It was the very blandness of the items, so carefully photographed by the killer-that provided the clue. McIntyre quickly grew disgusted with the women and their ‘demands' as he saw them, yet he held off killing them. Why? Because his mentor exerted such a powerful influence that even thousands of miles away, he could control McIntyre's impulsive nature. He had persuaded or bullied or cajoled McIntyre into postponing the murders for many months. Again, why?

There was only one plausible answer Fennimore could think of: the other man liked to watch.

Fennimore suspected that these ordinary, unmemorable household items were covert surveillance devices – spy equipment. He knew that such devices could be set up for Wi-Fi access or to record on an SD memory card. The trailer park was way out in the sticks, so Wi-Fi was unlikely. He guessed that McIntyre would send his accomplice recorded footage of his victims living their normal domestic lives.

For McIntyre's partner, it was all about control. And if the two men spoke to each other at Sharla Jane's house – by phone, or Skype – the spy gadgets would have captured it.

Fennimore picked up his keys from the dresser in his room and crossed the car park, just as the first cicadas began to stir. He had his own transport, and he knew the way to Lambert Woods Park.

Lambert Woods Mobile Home Park,
Williams County, Oklahoma
Wednesday, 11.30 a.m.

Fergus moved his rental car to the front of the house. It might be a quiet spot, but there was no sense taking chances. He opened the boot of the car and returned a few seconds later with the boy; he was wrapped in a quilt and fitted easily next to the salvaged electronics. He knew where to look, because he had told Will exactly where to place them, and he'd insisted on a full photographic inventory. He got all but one piece: an edge of dust marked where the digital video recorder should be. He always said that Will's impulsivity would get him killed, and it was no consolation to have been proved right – by association, it put him in jeopardy, too. He'd Skyped Will to instruct him on where he wanted Sharla Jane's body dumped. They hadn't used video, but he hadn't used the voice changer, either, so his true voice would be recorded on the SD card in the video recorder's embedded surveillance equipment. He consoled himself that since the police had Will, and the woman and child were safe, they might never examine the equipment more closely.

He flipped a corner of the quilt over the child and took out a makeshift scene kit – gloves and booties, bleach and cloths. He needed to ensure there was no trace of him in the trailer; the struggle with the boy had complicated the clean-up, but Fergus knew how to be thorough. He slammed the boot lid and headed back inside.

Fennimore rolled to a stop on the track to Sharla Jane's trailer. A car was parked outside, the crime-scene seal was broken and the tape had been ripped from around the door frame. The front door stood open. Fennimore listened. The whistling call of a bird came from deep in the woods, and the first of the cicadas had just started their steam-kettle shriek, but there was no sound from inside the trailer. He eased the door open with his fingertips and took a swift peek around the door jamb. There was blood on the frame. He took out his phone and speed-dialled Simms's number. It rang a few times before her voicemail clicked in.

‘Kate,' he said softly. ‘I'm at Sharla Jane's trailer. There's a grey Toyota Matrix parked outside.' He gave the licence-plate number. ‘The seals are broken and there's blood on the door frame. I'm going to take a look.'

He took a breath, swung the door wide and glanced right and left. He had seen the floor plan: master bedroom to the left, bathroom and smaller bedroom – Riley's room – to the right, on the other side of the kitchen counter. All three doors stood open. He could smell bleach, and saw latex gloves and a cleaning cloth on the counter. He was about to back out and wait for police reinforcements when he heard a whimper. The hairs on his neck stood up. At the same instant, he saw a boy's baseball cap under one of the stools at the kitchen counter; it was bloodstained.

His heart stopped. Riley? A low, keening sound from the boy's bedroom made up his mind. Heart pumping hard, he tiptoed across the living room and took a knife from the block on the kitchen counter. He checked the bathroom as he went past: empty. Into the bedroom. He slammed the door open so hard it bounced back off the wall.

A movement to his right. As he turned, a man powered into him, taking him down, knocking the wind out of him, and the knife thudded to the floor and skittered under the bed. Fighting for breath, Fennimore struggled, but the man had him in a bear hug. He snapped his head backwards, catching his attacker full in the mouth. The man grunted in pain and Fennimore twisted free. On his feet in a second, he saw that it was the man who had come to his Chicago reading, the Scot with an interest in midge killing. Fennimore reached down to take hold of the man, but his attacker flicked out with his foot, caught Fennimore on the shin. In a flash of hot pain, Fennimore crashed to his knees. The man lashed out again, connecting with Fennimore's right temple. Fennimore tumbled backwards, cracking his head against the wall. His head boomed with the impact and he felt sick. He tried to get up, but his legs gave under him. Darkness crept in from the edges of his vision …

Greg Dunlap tore through the gates of the trailer park, dashboard lights flashing and siren blaring. A sheriff's office SUV followed close behind.

‘The plate number the Professor gave you is registered to a car-rental company at St Louis airport,' Dunlap said. ‘We should have a name momentarily.'