Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) (26 page)

“You might be interested to hear that the bureau is investigating a new theory. Blankenship thinks that Flint’s accomplice might be a fellow patient at the psychiatric hospital, someone recently released, or perhaps a friend of someone who’s still locked up.”

She gives him a sharp look. “You sound skeptical. What do you think?”

His eyes stay on hers and his expression softens. “I think your father is right. I think you need to put all this behind you. You need to go home, concentrate on your studies, get back to your normal life.”

She looks away without responding. She doesn’t want to even try to explain that she can’t go home and certainly can’t get on with her life while Flint is roaming free. Especially since she’s convinced that he’s poised to strike again.

It has stopped raining by the time they emerge onto the sidewalk. Milo Bender heads back downhill to return to the office, while Reeve heads in the opposite direction. But she has no intention of returning to the library.

R
eeve expects JD Bender to turn her down, but instead he says, “Visiting a crime scene sounds way more interesting than working on this old boat. I’ll pick you up in twenty.”

He arrives right on time and peppers her with questions all the way to Triangle Park. Somehow, relaying information to him helps her feel that she’s getting a grip on things.

He parks his pickup truck in the half-empty parking lot in front of the shabby building, and they climb out. A brisk wind has come up. She zips up her leather jacket and points out the store where the three girls had been shopping, one of only a handful of open stores.

“Why did he choose this place?” JD asks, looking around.

Just then, a van pulls in and stops. A mother and two daughters spill out and bustle into a store.

They exchange a glance, then Reeve jams her fists into her pockets. “You know what? I recognize this place. My mom used to bring us here after ballet class.” She points at a storefront on the corner with a large “For Lease” sign in the window. “That was a candy shop.”

“So, what exactly happened here? Do you know any details that weren’t in the news?”

A visceral memory of the stun gun’s jolt shudders down her spine. She shoves the feeling aside, then tells JD everything she knows about what the evidence team found. Pointing across the parking lot, she adds, “See those trees over there? They found fresh cigarette butts that they think were his”

“Meaning he just hung out, smoking, until he saw his opportunity?”

“Apparently.”

She studies the small stand of trees, then scans the shopping center from end to end. “He could watch the whole place from there.”

As if by mutual agreement, they head toward the trees.

“What I can’t figure out,” he says, “is how he thought he would get away with it. It was sloppy. There were witnesses.”

“And it seems impulsive.”

They reach the stand of trees, where the scent of pine mixes with the fresh, loamy fragrance of damp earth, and turn in unison to view the shopping center and the parking lot.

“God, it really is a triangle, isn’t it?” She kicks at the ground, then abruptly straightens.

“What?”

“Dr. Blume said that Flint has an obsession with threes. I wonder if he chose this place based on its name.”

“Triangle Park? That’s a thought. But there must be hundreds of places with some variation of three in the name. Tri-Valley High. Three Tenors Café. Third Place Books. The list is endless.”

“Crap. It’s like a puzzle I can’t solve.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not your job to solve it.”

“But I can’t stop obsessing about those missing girls, the ones whose abductions coincide with the days he left me alone in the basement.”

Worry lines his face as he scans the park. “Do they have any new leads?”

“Agent Blankenship thinks he’s found a connection with a former patient, but . . .” She scowls. “I don’t think your dad would agree. And I trust his judgment more than anyone’s.”

“Well, as my dad always says, when you’re blocked and can’t move forward—”

“Turn around and look behind you. I know.”

They share a wry smile.

“But the thing is, I went back to the basement already. What else can I do?”

“I keep thinking about Dr. Moody,” JD says. “Flint broke into his psychiatrist’s house, stole various things, and then he killed him. That strikes me as very, very odd. What motivated him?”

“You think like an agent.”

JD grins. “It must’ve rubbed off. But humor me: What do you know about Dr. Moody?”

“Arrogant, self-important. And he was kind of a celebrity. He was on
60 Minutes.”

“And he was divorced. You met his ex-wife, right?”

“Who was distraught, and apparently cleared of any suspicion.”

“Dad said Moody was quite the ladies’ man, so maybe one of his girlfriends played a role.” JD scoffs. “Though it’s hard to imagine any woman wanting to help a sex criminal like Flint. That would be perverse.”

“Perverse, but it happens. Even Ted Bundy had female admirers, remember?” She starts to pace. “If Flint got help from one of Dr. Moody’s ex-girlfriends, what could be her connection with—” She stops in midstride, picturing an attractive blonde who was at Flint’s trial. Reeve’s own hair had thinned from years of deprivation, and she recalls envying the woman’s thick tresses. “Wait. I remember a blonde who worked with Moody. I think she was his assistant.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

Reeve has an image of the blond assistant walking in lockstep with Dr. Moody, tipping her face toward his. “They were awfully friendly.”

“Friendly as in having an affair?”

“Maybe. So she would have had contact with Flint through Dr. Moody. . . .” Reeve’s mind is spinning.

“But why would any sane person ever want to put Daryl Wayne Flint back on the street?”

Reeve suddenly pictures Flint’s mother entering the courtroom with the young blonde, both with eyes shining, wearing smiles as if relishing a shared joke.

“Oh, crap,” she says, grabbing JD’s arm. “I think she and Flint’s mother were friends.”

C
ybil Abbott puts her blond hair in a ponytail, slips on her jacket, grabs her keys, and heads out to her car. This is the first time in months that she has made this drive, and it will surely be the last. It’s time for a purge.

They used to call the secluded cottage in Gig Harbor their love nest, which now strikes her as worse than corny. It’s pathetic.

Now her car is loaded with boxes, garbage bags, and cleaning supplies. She certainly can’t afford to keep the place on her own, and there’s no way she’s going to forfeit the cleaning deposit, so she’ll work nonstop, without indulging in sloppy sentiment, until the rental is spotless. And of course she plans to strip the place of anything of value.

Turning up the radio, she sings all the way there.

It doesn’t take long.

She parks in front, grabs some trash bags, and climbs the steps, pausing to enjoy the view. Then she steels herself and fits the key into the lock. The door swings open, she steps inside and feels . . . nothing.

It’s an empty one-bedroom shack. That’s all it is to her now.

She exhales a note of triumph, turns on the heat, and heads toward the small kitchen. Glancing around, she decides to start with the booze and the stemware, so goes back to the car to fetch boxes and bubble wrap.

After carefully packing the wine, champagne, and martini glasses, she goes through the dishes, wrapping the best pieces and tossing the rest in the trash. Pots and pans, cooking utensils, and canned goods get similar treatment.

One drawer yields an envelope filled with cash. Nice. For six years, Terry had given her cash for rent and incidentals. Well, he’s still paying.
So there!

Once all the drawers and cupboards are empty and the boxes have been loaded into her car, she sets to work scrubbing every surface. The stove, the microwave . . . Then she opens the fridge.

Shit. Why didn’t she start here?

All the condiments and frozen goods get tossed. The vegetable tray, luckily, is empty, except for some crusty brown matter. The bottled waters and sodas she decides to keep. And, hey, what have we here?

Champagne!

Cybil lifts out the bottle of liquid gold. Dom Pérignon. The good stuff.

Terry had brought a box of Godiva chocolates and two bottles of champagne for Valentine’s Day. They’d drunk only one. She’d forgotten all about it.

Surveying her progress in the kitchen, she decides to reward her hard work. Why not?

The cork gives way with a satisfying
pop! A
champagne flute would be nice, but they’re already packed. She takes a deep swig from the bottle.

So good. It makes other champagnes, even pricey ones, taste like cheap stuff. She enjoys another few swallows, but that’s enough. She still has work to do, so she’ll save it for later. The champagne goes back in the fridge.

She heads toward the bedroom, where she’s hit with an unexpected pang of emotion. The king-sized bed is an affront. How many hours has she wasted in this bed?

“Six years,” she says aloud. “Six stupid years of swallowing his lies.”

She attacks the bed, stripping off the sheets and stuffing them into a laundry bag.

The sex, unfortunately, had been fantastic. The best of her life. She’d even let herself believe they were
making love!
The lying weasel had convinced her they had something special, something much more than just a torrid affair. He’d promised they would stay together. He’d promised a ring. He’d even hinted at an extravagant wedding in Tahiti.

Divorce his wife and marry his assistant? What a cliché! She’d been an idiot to fall for such a transparent load of crap.

Feeling overheated, she stomps back to the kitchen, yanks open the refrigerator door, grabs the bottle of champagne, and lifts it to her lips. Two gulps, and she decides to carry the bottle with her back to the bedroom.

The dresser drawers get emptied into a large plastic trash bag. The few items in the closet get stripped from their hangers and added. She takes another drink, looks around, snatches up a few bottles of perfume, and tosses them in for good measure. The bag is heavy, but she wrestles it out to the car, thinking she’ll sort through it later.

She returns to the bedroom and dusts every surface. Satisfied, she carries the bottle of champagne into the bathroom. The medicine cabinet is crammed so full, it’s too much to bother sorting. Instead, she takes the empty trash can from beneath the sink and sweeps the contents from the shelves, sending them clattering.

A spritz of cleanser, a little elbow grease, and in minutes all the surfaces are sparkling. She rewards herself with another swig of champagne. Towels get added to the laundry bag, and then she lugs the trash can and the bag of laundry out to the car.

She’s getting tipsy. So what? After she’s done here, she’ll drive carefully down the hill into town and use Terry’s money to buy herself a nice steak dinner, followed by an espresso or two.

She stomps up the steps to the porch and glances again at the view, now softened by dusk. A bubble of nostalgia rises in her chest as she recalls a romantic picnic down by the creek, but she quickly clamps down on this emotion.

Six years she wasted in this place. No more!

The living room requires little work. She finishes dusting, vacuums the whole place, then walks through the cottage, giving it a final once-over. The vases, a framed picture, and a few throw pillows get added to the load in her car, but all the furniture belongs to the landlord.

Finished, she sprawls on the sofa to catch her breath, keeping the bottle of champagne close at hand.

She turns on the television and is flipping through channels when she glimpses a grainy image of Daryl Wayne Flint. She hears, “. . . the fugitive who escaped from medium-security lockup in the state’s largest mental institution.”

The still image of Flint is replaced by boldfaced numbers, and the newscaster declares, “There’s been a substantial increase in what was already a hefty reward for information leading to his arrest. The number to call is on your screen. The reward has been raised from fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand dollars.”

Cybil sits forward. “Well now, that’s more like it.”

She’s raising the bottle of Dom to her lips, about to take another swig, when she’s hit by a powerful notion.

Is it possible?

She gets to her feet. With a glance at the clock, she pours the rest of the champagne down the sink and grabs her keys. She’ll have to skip the steak dinner. She’ll grab some coffee in town and head to Tacoma. She’ll have plenty of time during the drive to figure out how to get what she wants from Flint’s mother.

T
he lead on the Ford Bronco has brought Case Agent Pete Blankenship to Tacoma, a town thirty-five miles south of Seattle. He feels certain that they’re closing in on their fugitive, thanks to the headlight fragments left at Triangle Park. Because what are the odds that Flint’s buddy—who just happens to be a fellow sex offender—has the same type of vehicle that was used in yesterday’s kidnap attempt?

Sven Larsson and Daryl Wayne Flint were art therapy pals at the psychiatric hospital. And records show that Larsson owns a 1996 Ford Bronco. Larsson is still in medium-security lockup, but he left his vehicle with his girlfriend, a rugged blonde named Arlene Johansson, who also owns a Harley, a van, and a furniture-repair business. Records show that she visits her boyfriend with religious devotion.

It gets better. Her visiting hours coincide with Flint’s mother’s. And she lives not far from a wig shop where, if the owner is correct, Daryl Wayne Flint recently purchased three wigs. The connections are too thick to ignore.

But unfortunately, Arlene Johansson is proving uncooperative. After following her home from work, Blankenship stopped her outside her house. He identified himself and asked to take a look around.