Doom with a View (32 page)

“So you feel he may know them?”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“Anything else you can offer me for a description?”

I closed my eyes and focused as hard as I could. “I feel like he’s got one of those faces that blends easily into a crowd. I feel like nobody notices him, and that’s the point. He doesn’t want to be noticed. It’s almost like he wants to disappear.”

“Do you think he’s going to target anyone else?”

I sighed. “Yes, sir. I believe he will. I believe he’ll target one more person before this is through.”

“Will he go after a male or a female?”

“Male. He’s saved the best for last, actually. His greatest revenge is yet to come.”

I heard a derisive snort from across the room and I opened my eyes to see Harrison looking skeptically at me. “Agent Harrison?” Gaston said. “You have some comment to add?”

“Sir,” Harrison said, “this is ridiculous! You can’t be serious about considering her description over an FBI profiler with thirty years’ experience!”

Gaston regarded Harrison coolly. “Meyers has been wrong before,” he reminded him. “And Ms. Cooper has shown an amazing talent for pulling the unexpected out of thin air and being right about so much that I don’t feel obliged to doubt her now.”

“Did she tell you about the haunted house where the kids are being held?” Harrison spat. “Did she tell you about the vampires and werewolves and zombies hiding in the forest too?”

“There’s no need to get insulting!” Candice snapped.

“Maybe if you spent a little more time doing as you were told instead of interfering in a federal investigation, you might realize how damaging and time-consuming these ridiculous distractions can be!” Harrison spat back.

“And maybe if
you
spent a little more time with your head out of your ass,
you
might be a better investigator, Agent
Hamperson
! While you were in there farting around with Senator Derby,
I
was cracking this case wide open!”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I looked at Dutch to see about his reaction, but he appeared only to be truly shocked at the way his own boss was acting.

Harrison threw up his hands and looked at Gaston as if to say, “See what I have to put up with?”

Gaston, however, remained calm and in control. “Ms. Fusco,” he said cordially. “You seem to have information for the rest of us?”

“I do,” she said with a pointed look at Harrison that clearly said, “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!”

“Please tell us, then,” Gaston said, waving at her to continue.

“Well,” she began, and I knew she’d insert a few fibs to make her point, “it all started yesterday when Abby and I were interviewing Michael Derby right before he was abducted. I had to excuse myself to the powder room and he told me to use the one upstairs. The only one I could find was the one in the senator’s bedroom suite.”

Gaston’s face suggested that he doubted that was the
only
one she could find, but he said, “I see,” and let her continue.

“So, after using the powder room, I came out and noticed a pair of stilettos on the floor next to the senator’s closet. They were gorgeous and I couldn’t help taking a closer look at them, and what shocked me initially was that they were a ladies’ size fourteen.”

“Size fourteen, did you say?” Agent Gaston said, mildly surprised.

“Yes, sir. And then after looking at them, I realized the senator’s closet was wide open, so I just sort of peeked in there and I noticed that half of his closet was filled with women’s clothing. We’re talking an entire wardrobe of skirts, blouses, dresses, boots, heels, and accessories.”

I remembered what Candice had told me about a girlfriend living with the senator and then also remembered how he had denied it to us during his interview, but I still didn’t know where she was going with this. She got to her point after Gaston asked her why this was worth noting. “All of the women’s shoes in the closet were size fourteen, sir. All of the men’s shoes were a size ten. The sizes convert to the exact same sized foot. And all of the clothing was size sixteen—which would proportionally fit the senator as well.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Harrison shouted. “Don’t tell me you think that a respected United States senator is a
cross-dresser
!”

Candice’s eyes narrowed with deadly intent. “I will and he is!” she shouted back. “He’s a regular down at the Cock Tail, in fact, and if you or any member of your original team had done
any
kind of investigating, you would have known that, you jackass!”

“Hack!” he snapped back.

“Sycophant!” she retorted.

“Jeez, you two!” I yelled, standing up to get their attention. “Get a room already!”

To my surprise both Candice and Harrison flushed a blistering shade of crimson and looked anywhere but at each other. The effect was so startling that I almost laughed, but Gaston called our attention back to the subject at hand.

“Agent Rivers,” he said. “Has any of your background check into the senator suggested that he has . . . maybe a very tall girlfriend?”

“He’s single, sir. Both by his own admission and by everything we can determine.”

“That explains why he didn’t want a security detail in his house guarding his son,” said Gaston. “If I had as big a secret to hide as that, I wouldn’t want a stranger in my house either.”

“And it also explains why he threw us out after Candice started questioning him about his personal life,” Dutch said. “He also wanted an attorney present just to search his son’s room.”

Gaston laced his fingers together and rested his two index fingers on his lip thoughtfully. “I still don’t understand what this might have to do with his son being abducted,” he said.

It was my turn to chime in as most of the puzzle pieces came together in my head. “Bianca knew,” I said, almost in a whisper.

“Excuse me?” Gaston asked, and I realized I’d spoken too softly.

“Bianca Lovelace, sir,” I said. “She knew about the senator’s secret. I came across a notebook that Michael had left out in the open while Candice was upstairs using the restroom. It had Bianca’s handwriting in it, which I recognized from all the work I did reading her journals.

“In the notebook she had made a notation alluding to the fact that she had recognized someone she knew going into a drag bar called the Cock Tail. When Candice and I went to the bar to check it out, we came across one of the regulars who seemed to know the senator. We also talked to one of Bianca’s professors, who claimed that she was working on a huge story she was considering writing for the school newspaper. It was so secretive that she couldn’t say much about it to her professor, and she actually even mentioned to him that she thought it was big enough to end someone’s career. We know she must have been torn between her own ambitions and the ethics of exposing something so potentially destructive.”

“What we further believe,” Candice said, taking over from me, “is that at least one of the other four teens that hung out at the conference knew it too. Abby thinks that the other handwriting she saw in the notebook was Leslie’s. In fact, it might be a fair assumption to suggest that perhaps all of the teens knew—including Michael. Which is likely how it must have gotten back to the senator, and we believe
he
might be behind all of this. Maybe he took out Bianca, but he wasn’t sure which of the other three teens knew, so he methodically removed them too. But he left his own son out of it until it became apparent that we were putting the clues together and it was leading us to the senator.”

Gaston’s eyes widened. “You think he would cause harm to his own son?” he said.

“He seemed pretty indifferent to Michael’s disappearance,” I pointed out. “He didn’t offer any information that might help us, and has he done anything on his own to find his son?”

“He was remarkably removed for a father whose son might have been abducted by a serial killer, sir,” Dutch said.

At the end of the table Harrison sat and stewed. He appeared to be deep in thought, but if he was even listening to our theories, I wasn’t sure.

“And I’m assuming the senator has a good alibi for his whereabouts during each and every one of the abductions.”

“I haven’t had a chance to check that, sir, but I’m sure he wouldn’t personally get his hands dirty. I think, if he is involved, he’s probably hired someone to do it.”

Gaston looked at me. “But the senator is over thirty, Ms. Cooper.”

He had me there. “Maybe the guy he hired isn’t, sir,” I suggested.

Gaston looked conflicted. I knew how our theory sounded, and there was a part of me that couldn’t criticize Harrison for being so skeptical—cross-dressing senators who abducted and murdered teenagers in order to keep their secret life hidden sounded pretty absurd to me too, but there was also that intuitive side of me that sensed we really
were
on to something.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Agent Rivers, I would like you to follow this theory, but do it quietly. If we’re off, I don’t, in any way, want the senator’s reputation or good name ruined.”

“Sir!” Harrison protested, but Gaston shut him down by holding up his hand.

“I will take over the investigation into the alternative theory that our killer is someone along the lines of Meyers’s profile and this man who caused a scene at the conference, to make sure that all bases are covered.”

Gaston then eyed Candice and me. “You two have done a great job of helping us,” he said, “but I believe it would be wise if you now headed back home to Michigan and got on with your lives. We’ll take over the investigation from here.” His meaning was clear. Candice and I officially needed to butt out. And this time, he wasn’t bluffing.

“What would you like me to do, sir?” Harrison asked, and I could see the small bit of triumph in his eyes that we were being dismissed by Gaston.

“You will accompany Ms. Fusco and Ms. Cooper home,” Gaston said.

“Excuse me?”
Harrison and Candice both gasped in unison.

Gaston appeared unruffled by their outburst. “Agent Harrison, you have been ordered by your physician to take it easy. I am also aware that the hand specialist you saw in Pentwater has recommended surgery for that wrist fracture, and as I do not want to jeopardize the future of such a good marksman, I am ordering you home for two weeks’ paid leave. Please schedule the surgery as soon as possible and let me know if you will require more time than the two weeks to fully recover.”

“We brought a car to Chicago,” Candice said, as an excuse to get away from Harrison.

“Excellent,” Gaston said happily. “And as Agent Harrison should clearly not be driving with an injury like his, you would be doing me the greatest favor by driving him home.”

“I can take a commercial flight back, sir,” Harrison protested.

Gaston stood up and said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Agent Harrison. These two are going in your direction and there’s no need to waste the bureau’s money on an expensive flight home for you. Besides, this time I would like to ensure that everyone I order home actually makes it there. I have no doubt that, should one in your party decide to take a detour, one of the others will let me know about it.” And with that, Gaston smiled like the Cheshire cat and gave us his good-byes.

We sat there awkwardly for a minute or two. Dutch was the first to break the silence. “We had your car brought here, Candice. It’s parked downstairs in the garage. Here are the keys,” he said, giving them to her before kissing the top of my head and leaving the room in a hurry.

With a sigh both she and Harrison rose, glaring at each other. I glanced at my watch and said, “It’s going to be a long night, but I’m pretty keyed up, so I can take the first shift at the wheel.”

“Shotgun,” Candice said immediately.

Harrison sneered at her. “I’d prefer to sit in the back anyway.”

Candice’s smile intensified. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about where I’d be riding,” she said easily, and made her hand into the shape of a gun, pretending to line Harrison up in her sights.

Sick of their bickering, I rolled my eyes and left them to continue insulting each other. Something told me this was going to be one
long
drive home.

Chapter Fourteen

We loaded up on caffeine before we started our drive. Candice swore she wasn’t tired and argued with me until I allowed her to take the first turn at the wheel. While she drove, I tried to sleep, but I was pretty keyed up—especially after my double latte—so she and I talked for the first hour, then fell silent for the second.

For his part, Harrison could not have been less noticeable. He sat in the backseat, staring out the window and not uttering a sound. I thought at one point he might have fallen asleep, but when I glanced back, he was awake, alert, and silently smoldering. I turned around again quickly and eased my seat back, telling Candice that I was going to try to get a few winks in, and to wake me if she felt tired.

“Want me to take over?” I asked Candice when I’d woken up from my nap about thirty minutes later.

She looked down at the dashboard. “Might be a good idea,” she said with a yawn. “There’s a gas station two miles ahead. We can refuel there and get some more coffee.”

We pulled into the station and before Candice or I had even unbuckled our seat belts, Harrison was out of the car and already had the gas cap off, fixing to pump the gas. Candice scowled meanly at him behind his back and we went into the station. “Maybe you could cut him a tiny break for the rest of the trip home,” I told her as we walked to the door.

“Or maybe not,” she snipped.

I laughed. “God, Candice! Seriously, he’s really not that mean. Do you remember when he brought me water in the conference room? And for a while there, he really was open-minded about my abilities. I mean, until I mentioned the word ‘ghost,’ he was sort of coming around.”