Nameless (29 page)

“I’ll call Pierce,” she told Davis. “McBride and I will meet him and head that way.”

Vivian closed her phone. Jesus. If this scumbag could get to Worth … no one was safe.

2:00 A.M.
1000 Eighteenth Street

McBride drove since Grace preferred not to after having had that single shot of whiskey. Pierce followed. If he knew any more than they did, he had said nothing.

As if the media had sensed trouble in the wind, the crowd outside the field office had multiplied to what it had been prior to Trenton’s rescue.

The rush inside and up the stairs left no opportunity for chitchat. Suited McBride fine. He had nothing to say to Pierce. Neither did Grace it seemed.

“Let’s have an update,” Pierce ordered as soon as they entered the conference room that had served as a command center for the past few days.

“Talley and Aldridge are working with Birmingham PD on the scene at Worth’s home,” Pratt related. “Apparently he drove his Crown Victoria straight home after leaving the office. His wife and son were in bed asleep and didn’t realize he had even arrived or that he hadn’t come inside until Davis called. According to ADT Security Services, Worth didn’t enter the home since the alarm was activated at 10:15 P.M. and that status remained so until Mrs. Worth got up to check on his whereabouts at 12:50 A.M.”

McBride propped a hip on the edge of the conference table and studied the timeline board where new notations were in the works as Pratt spoke. Davis was scribbling away with a Dry Erase marker.

An agent McBride hadn’t met, male, young, skinny guy, hurried into the room. “Agent Pierce,” the new guy said, evidently knowing where the most power lay, “there’s a new communication from Devoted Fan.”

McBride shoved off the table and headed for the computer. Grace waited next to his chair. Pierce, Pratt, and Davis moved up behind him as he clicked the necessary tabs.

McBride,

As I am sure you know by now, Randall Worth is a part of your latest challenge. He has a lesson to learn, atonement to find, as did the others. Once more, survival depends upon you.

It is such a shame that when someone or something grows older, many times it is set aside for a newer model. Flesh and blood, brick and mortar, nothing is respected for its true value.

Unfortunately for Agent Worth, the tearing down of the old could destroy him as well. Amid a cloud of controversy the old sometimes falls, ending many, many stories. Perhaps the fall is inevitable. In the end, it is only the truth that really matters, not the story at all. Not even a century of stories.

This is the final test, Agent McBride. I trust you will not fail … Agent Worth is counting on you … he is hanging by a thread. This time I do have one minor condition: no one but you and Agent Grace are to enter the scene. I will be watching; any failure to adhere to that condition will result in great calamity. You have six hours … starting now.

Sincerely,
Devoted Fan

“Does any of the phrasing reach out to anyone?” Pierce asked.

Six hours.

That phrase reached out and grabbed McBride by the throat.
Fuck.

“I’ll run the phrasing against any historic landmarks in Birmingham,” Pratt volunteered. “Brick and mortar … stories.” He shrugged. “Controversy.”

“So far, historic landmarks appear to be his crime scene of choice,” Grace explained to Pierce. “If Worth is at risk of falling as suggested by the e-mail, then we’re looking for a location with more than one floor or an elevation of some sort.”

Lila Grimes, Worth’s secretary, appeared at the door, her eyes red and swollen. “I thought you might need my help,” she offered. She cleared her throat. “Agent Worth’s cell calls have been forwarded here. I’ll take those calls until he … he returns.” She hesitated, seemed to gather her composure. “There was a call from Agent Schaffer. She’s faxing a number of letters she found in Agent McBride’s files.”

Schaffer. The boot lady. “Thanks,” McBride said to the distraught secretary as he pushed out of his chair. He strode over to the fax machine, which had already whirred to life.

Davis joined McBride. “Sir, I may have found a connection between a name on the fan list and Dr. Trenton.”

McBride shifted his attention to Davis. “What kind of connection?”

“It may not be relevant,” Davis qualified, “but—”

“Agent Davis,” Pierce interrupted, “if you have an update, we’d all like to hear it.”

Davis looked from McBride to Pierce. “Yes, sir.” He pivoted and addressed the room. “Agent Arnold and I have been narrowing down a fan mail list.” He gestured at McBride. “Fan mail for Agent McBride.” Davis adjusted the tie he’d loosened sometime earlier in the night. “Anyway, we found a name, Martin Fincher. Fincher’s wife was a transplant patient a couple of years ago. Dr. Trenton was the surgeon of record.”

McBride felt that old familiar tension ripple through him. “There has to be a connection to the others as well,” he urged. “One isn’t enough. Look harder.”

Davis nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Where’s Agent Arnold?” Pierce wanted to know.

Davis seemed a little less nervous with the second question. “He’s going door to door down the list of names. That was SAC’s order. I was supposed to catch up with him but then the news about Agent Worth came in and …”

Pierce nodded. “I understand. You should locate Arnold now.” Pierce surveyed the room. “I don’t want anyone going anywhere alone. We work in pairs.”

McBride mulled over the idea of Devoted Fan as Martin Fincher with a wife in ill health. If it was about something Trenton did or didn’t do …

“Pratt,” McBride said, “wake up someone on Trenton’s staff. Find out how the surgery on Fincher’s wife turned out.”

“Will do.”

Grace joined McBride at the fax machine. “What did Schaffer find?”

Remembering what he’d come to the fax machine for, McBride grabbed the stack of pages. Six in all. He read the note from Schaffer on the lead page. “Discovered one letter from this same guy in your fan mail file. Found five others, unopened, in the bottom of one of the boxes shipped to you. Whoever packed the boxes just tossed the letters in and then shoved your files on top of them. You just can’t get organized help anymore.”

McBride appreciated her cutting sense of humor. The part of his brain that wasn’t in shock at the idea of having only six hours wondered what color boots Schaffer had on. Purple? Green? Pushing aside the distraction, he shuffled to the first letter, read it, then read the next and the next after that. The adrenaline searing through him turned to ice.

“Son of a bitch.” He passed the letters to Grace, his gaze colliding with hers. “It’s Fincher.” That one letter he’d read from the man years ago was why the e-mails had felt familiar to him. The formal prose, the wide margins and excessive spacing. And damn, the man had even signed the last two “Martin Fincher, your devoted fan.” Two of the letters had been sent after Fincher’s son had been murdered. In both he had lamented that he was certain McBride could have saved his son … but the special agent-in-charge refused Fincher’s request for McBride. Randall Worth had been the special agent-in-charge.

“Fincher probably blames Worth for the loss of his son,” Grace said as she read the final letter McBride passed to her. “Oh, my God … this guy has been obsessed with you for years.” Her gaze collided with McBride’s. “And you were right … he does have a story to tell.”

Davis rushed back into the room. “Got a call from Arnold as I was heading out. He says McBride needs to see what he’s found.”

“At Martin Fincher’s residence.” McBride guessed.

“You got it,” Davis confirmed. “He’s already ordered a forensics unit.”

“Pratt, you keep working on this e-mail and any connections you can come up with,” Pierce said. “Grace, McBride, we’ll follow Davis.”

McBride tossed the letters onto the conference table. If they were damned lucky, there would be some kind of clues at Fincher’s house about where this latest challenge was going down.

Otherwise, Agent Worth was fucked.

And McBride would fail … again.

3:30 A.M.
Seven Oaks Drive, Vestavia Hills
Four hours, thirty minutes remaining …

The forensics van waited at the curb. McBride, Grace, and Pierce arrived, pulling in behind it.

Agent Arnold stood at the door of Martin Fincher’s small cottage. “You gotta see this, man,” he said to McBride. “I didn’t want to let anyone else in until you’d taken a look.”

“Good work, Arnold,” McBride confirmed. Any change in the unsub’s environment could alter an investigator’s or profiler’s overall assessment of what he was dealing with.

Once outfitted with gloves and shoe covers, they followed Arnold inside. The house was clean and neat; the decorating and furnishings older, but in immaculate condition. A picture of Fincher, his wife, and son sat on a table. Fincher wore dark, horn-rimmed glasses just like Horace Jackson said.

“First,” Agent Arnold said, “you need to see his office.”

Arnold led the way through the living room and down the narrow hall to the first door on the left. The office couldn’t have been more than ten by twelve feet, but every inch of wall space, floor to ceiling, was covered in newspaper clippings. Most were about McBride.

“Here’s something on Trenton.” Arnold indicated one of the articles. “Katherine Jones.” He pointed to another, then looked at McBride. “Here’s a full-page spread on Byrne and the article mentions Worth.”

Grace moved closer and started reading.

“Give me the
Reader’s Digest
version,” McBride said to Arnold. “I’m on a tight schedule here.” The tension was expanding with each passing minute, making it harder and harder to stay calm and focused.

“Six years ago,” Arnold began, “Martin Fincher’s twelve-year-old son went missing. Agent Worth was in charge of the case. Four days later, the boy’s body was found, along with another teenage boy who had gone missing in Jefferson County the week prior. The boys were found at a construction site.”

“A
Byrne
construction site,” McBride offered.

Arnold nodded. “That’s right.”

“How does Katherine Jones fit into this?” Grace asked, pausing from her reading.

“She was the clerk on duty in the electronics department at Wal-Mart the evening the Fincher boy went missing.”

Grace’s gaze met McBride’s. “She didn’t notice the abduction … making her guilty in Fincher’s eyes.
Oblivious.”

McBride figured the same. “What about Trenton?” There were several headlines about him plastered on the wall.

“Oh yeah,” Arnold said, “Pratt called while you were en route. Couldn’t get through on your cell,” he said to Grace. “He spoke with Trenton’s office manager who checked the schedule. She didn’t like it, said she had to pull up a whole different program to do it. Anyway, Trenton turned Mrs. Fincher’s surgery over to one of his colleagues because Tipper Winfrey’s name came up on the list for a heart that same day. The office manager reminded Pratt that the surgery had taken place two years ago, and that if there was a problem, the doctor’s office never heard about it.”

“State Senator Tipper Winfrey?” Grace asked for clarification.

Arnold gave her an affirming look. “The one and only.”

“Where’s Fincher’s wife?” McBride knew where this was going.

“Now that,” Arnold said, his big frame looking even larger with the cockiness that went hand in hand with knowing something no one else did, “is the really creepy part. Come this way.”

He led the way to a bedroom farther down the hall and to the right. A woman wearing a flannel nightgown lay in bed. If she had slept through all this, then she was on heavy drugs.

McBride approached the bed slowly.

“Don’t worry,” Arnold called after him, “she’s dead.”

McBride studied the body. Damned good condition if she’d been dead two years. A dozen bottles of prescription medicine sat on the table next to her. Transplant patients required lots of drugs, immune depressors, blood thinners. He didn’t know all the names, but he didn’t have to. The picture was crystal clear.

“Mummified?” Grace asked as she moved to his side.

“Looks like she’s been coated in plastic or some kind of clear varnish.” McBride touched one smooth cheek. “At least now we know why Dr. Trenton’s office didn’t get a call back when things didn’t go well. Fincher wanted to keep her at home.”

Pierce joined the party. “Fincher’s not going to be too happy when he finds out we’ve taken her away.” His gaze locked with McBride’s. “We’ve got to finish this fast. He’s already a couple of steps ahead of us. If he comes back here before we find Agent Worth you know how this will end.”

Like I need anyone to remind me
. McBride turned to Grace. “Search the rest of the house with Arnold. Pierce and I are going back to that office to see if we can find anything that will help locate Worth.” McBride shifted his attention back to Pierce. “Fincher will stay hidden somewhere near the scene where he’s holding Worth until Grace and I come to rescue him. He likes to watch us do it. We can’t do anything until we know where to go.”

That was the hell of it … the clues sucked this time.

The manic ramblings of a
devoted fan.

4:45
A.M.
Three hours, fifteen
minutes remaining …

McBride found the cemetery map, the information regarding the sealing of tombs, the newspaper article related to the controversy with the Wellborne family. There was a schematic for Sloss Furnaces, created for the preservation board. A complete blueprint for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church related to last year’s restoration efforts. But nothing on where Worth might be now.

Grace and Arnold had come up empty-handed in their search of the rest of the house. The third room, at the end of the hall, was a kid’s room. From the look of things, it was just as it had been the last time the Fincher boy had slept there.