Ruthless (26 page)

“I think that’s the only rational assumption. Either he has them or one of his followers does. We’ve got agents tearing their apartments apart piece by piece in hopes of finding some trace of evidence we can use. We’re dissecting their e-mails, Facebook, Twitter. We’re trying to cover every avenue. We’ve added their vehicles to the BOLOs on the two women we’ve identified. If nothing else, maybe we can determine where their vehicles were last seen.”

Dan explained the delivery he’d just received. “I don’t see how one man manages to maintain this kind of proximity to her. There has to be more than one here, we just haven’t gotten a visual on him yet.” As terrifying as the perp in the Infiniti was, as least they had pinpointed him.

“I wouldn’t admit this to just anyone, Burnett, but frankly we just don’t know what we’re dealing with here. If Spears has created some elaborate network, this dark-haired man may be only the tip of the iceberg.”

“That’s what keeps me awake at night, Gant.”

The call hadn’t given Dan any new hope that this situation with Spears was headed in the right direction. Not at all. What he’d gotten was more reason to be concerned about Jess’s safety.

A whole hell of a lot more worried.

He checked the time. The mayor and the citizens of Birmingham were expecting him to pass along comforting words in today’s press conference but he didn’t see how that was possible. They had nothing in the way of evidence and now another child was missing.

He’d scrubbed both hands over his face. Damn it all to hell. He had wanted to keep Jess out of the news as much as possible, but with that little girl’s disappearance he had an obligation to broaden the scope of the press conference. The community needed to see that Jess was involved. She had earned a place in the hearts of the citizens.

But his heart was ice-cold with fear.

He closed his eyes and fought to keep the emotions at bay.

Tara interrupted his plunge into despair to let him know the forensic tech arrived and bagged the FedEx envelope. He thanked her and checked the time. Jess should be calling him soon and he’d head to the coroner’s office.

His cell vibrated. Harold Black calling.

Another spike of tension speared him. “What’d you find out?”

“If you’re not sitting down,” Harold said, “I’d suggest you take a seat, Dan.”

The frustration that had started simmering when Dan received that package reached a boil. “You have an ID on the sender?”

“The clerk here at the FedEx store positively identified the man who shipped that package to you. She was so certain that I made the manager pull the security video so I could see for myself.”

Couldn’t be the dark-haired man. They didn’t even have an artist’s rendering on the guy. Jess hadn’t gotten enough facial details with him wearing those damned sunglasses.

“The man who sent you that package was Eric Spears, Dan. I… saw him on the video. He was right here in this store, only a few blocks from where you are right now.”

Son of a bitch.

Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, 1:50 p.m.

Sierra Campbell.
Eight years old. Silky black hair and sparkly blue eyes. Abducted fifteen years ago. From the looks of her small, delicate bones, she had died not long after that.

How did they stop this evil? Jess and her team were doing everything possible. Dan shifted his gaze to her at the other end of the exam table, where she waited next to Sylvia.

One day, if he was lucky, he and Jess would be married and have children. How could they protect their children from monsters like this? Maybe Jess was the smart one. He got the impression she wasn’t exactly looking forward to motherhood. Maybe she was right. Maybe people who had witnessed the horrors they had shouldn’t have children.

“I don’t know how you do it, Harris.” Sylvia lifted her hands and bowed her head in mock worship. “Somehow you manage to keep everyone who’s anyone talking about you. You make the news more often than our esteemed mayor.”

“That’s me,” Jess tossed right back at her. “Every serial killer’s pin-up girl.”

“As soon as Elise Van Valkenburg from the Second Life store informed you,” Sylvia said, “she called Carrie Bradley and half the other brookies she schmoozes with on a regular basis. You’re going to have your own fan club.” She made a harrumphing sound she would never dream of making in front of the Mountain Brook friends she’d just mentioned. “Frankly, I’m a tad jealous.”

Dan wanted to tell her to cut the crap, this wasn’t the time. She needed to get on with it, but he kept his mouth shut. The state of mind he was in, the less he said the better.

Jess pointed to the blanket that was child sized, about three feet by three feet. “You were saying something about glitter and tinsel.”

“First,” Sylvia reminded her, “let’s not forget about the note.” She glanced at Dan. “This guy has it bad for Harris.”

More of the frustration and worry already chipping
away at his self-control rushed in, swinging a sledgehammer this time. He hadn’t heard there was another note. He’d just as soon not have heard Sylvia’s commentary on it.

Why the hell wasn’t forensics doing this?
Stop. Calm down.
He knew the answer to that one. Sylvia promised to drop everything for this case and get something to Jess immediately. Then the evidence could be turned over to forensics for a final analysis.

“Tell me about the note,” he prompted in a reasonably calm voice.

Sylvia started to speak but Jess cut her off. “Same as before, he circled words in the newspaper articles. He said, ‘I couldn’t help myself. Find me, Jess. I need you.’ ”

Jesus Christ. “If we don’t find this guy…” Dan didn’t want to say the rest out loud.

“We will,” Jess insisted with far more confidence than he could dredge up at the moment. “Then the brookies will really have something to talk about.”

In spite of present circumstances her comment sent a blast of relief through him. Jess wasn’t having any trouble holding her own with anyone. Not even his mother, the quintessential brookie. How his mother’s issues with Jess could cross his mind right now was beyond bizarre. He was losing it. Pure and simple.

“There’s a lot more I need to do,” Sylvia noted, “but I did find significant trace elements, including dog hair, mostly attached to the blanket.”

“Dog hair?” Jess said. “Any ideas on the breed?”

“Too long for a Lab. Don’t hold me to it yet, but something like a golden retriever or a cocker spaniel. Not the reddish color, more golden or beige. He got sloppy this time. There are some blood smears on the blanket.”

Jess’s face paled. “New or old?”

Sylvia winced. “New.”

Dan bit back a scathing curse. If this bastard had already hurt Janey Higginbotham…

“We’re running out of time,” Jess said, her face pale. “A little girl goes missing and we’re almost a month away from the harvest moon. This forking over of the remains he’s obviously kept as souvenirs is telling enough, but this latest move is sloppy and way out of character. He wants us to find him, but something is prompting this new erratic behavior.”

“He wants
you
to find him,” Dan argued.

Jess looked at him, and he wanted to tell her right then and there this bastard wasn’t the only trouble she had just now. Spears was here. God Almighty, how was he ever going to protect her?

“This—” Sylvia tapped one of the slides she’d placed in a tray on the exam table, forcing their attention back to her “—is glitter. It’s not new. Red and green.” She moved to the next slide. “The fragments of silver tinsel-type fiber makes me think the blanket was stuck in a box of Christmas decorations.”

“What about the remains?” Dan’s gut clenched. They were talking about a little girl. A little girl, Sierra Campbell, who had lost her life to this madman.

“Clean like the others,” Sylvia explained. “Nothing I’ve seen so far that indicates manner of death. As I told you before,” she said to Jess, “there’s other testing we can do, but the bones aren’t telling us much from the outside. Since this set was just delivered, there’s a lot I don’t know except that the condition, from a visible and structural standpoint, is solid. No fractures, or anything like that.”

“Why is he going in reverse chronological order?” Jess braced her gloved hands on the exam table. “What the hell is he trying to tell me that I’m missing?”

“I can’t answer that one, but before you run off to inform the parents,” Sylvia said, “I’ll need to compare dental records. I haven’t had time to do that yet.”

As if her assistant had been standing by for his cue, he rushed in and carefully placed the skull next to the rest of the bones. “The images are on your iPad, Dr. Baron.”

Sylvia compared the current X-rays of the skull to the fifteen-year-old X-rays she’d digitized for this case.

Dan watched Jess gingerly touch the bones, as if touching them would give her the answers she sought. Or maybe it was her way of promising the little girl she would find her killer.

“Okay.” Sylvia turned to face them. “This is Sierra Campbell.”

“I’ll let Chief Black know.” Dan stepped aside to make the call. When Black answered Dan cut to the chase. “It’s Sierra Campbell. Sylvia Baron just confirmed.” Harold thanked him and Dan put his phone away. One question kept hammering in his brain.
How many more would fall prey to this monster if they didn’t get this guy soon?

If he had changed his MO and was no longer constrained by the moon’s phases, there was no telling what he would do next.

Dan joined Jess and Sylvia at another exam table, where the sheet was drawn back to reveal Jerry Bullock, the possible homicide victim from this morning’s abduction scene.

“Mr. Bullock was struck with a blunt object. Judging by the impressions I’d say a tire iron. The blow was rendered before he fell into the ravine. I’ll know more when
I’ve had a chance to do the autopsy, but I can tell you without reservation that the fall didn’t kill him, the blow to the head did. As it stands now, I would call manner of death homicide. Estimated time of death is somewhere between nine and midnight last night.”

“Thank you, Dr. Baron.” Jess turned to Dan. “Sergeant Harper’s waiting. I should get back out there and track down Fergus Cagle, Bullock’s supervisor. Based on the estimated time of death, Mr. Cagle needs to explain how he got a call from Bullock this morning as he told his secretary.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Dan offered. “There’s an update we need to discuss. Good work, Sylvia.”

She shot him a look. “Have you ever known me to do anything else?”

“You have a point,” he acquiesced.

Jess waited until they were in the corridor headed for the lobby before she slowed down long enough to give him her attention. “You mentioned an update.”

He wished they could go somewhere and talk about this. She wasn’t going to want to hear his thoughts on what this development meant, and the county coroner’s office wasn’t the place for a battle.

“I got a FedEx delivery from Spears just before you called. A whole stack of photos—all of you.”

She shrugged, seemingly unfazed. “I don’t know why you’re surprised at that. He has that dark-haired man and God knows who else watching me.”

“There’s more.”

Uncertainty and dread, maybe a little fear, flared in her eyes before she could banish the reaction. “Has he taken one of the women?”

This was the part he dreaded telling her the most. She wasn’t concerned for her own safety. “Gant believes he has. They’ve learned the identities of two of the women, but their whereabouts are unaccounted for.” He explained the vacation connection. “Still nothing on the third woman, but Gant suspects Spears has already lured her into his trap in that same manner.”

“We’re too late.” Jess looked away. “He’ll kill one or all of them, Dan. After he tortures them in unspeakable ways.”

This was where the next bit of news could be as good for the missing women as it was bad for Jess. “It’s possible he hasn’t done anything just yet except set and trigger the trap for luring in his targets.”

A frown marred her brow. “How can anyone know that? He doesn’t waste time. If he’s lured them to a certain location, he may have killed them right away. He’s changing his MO just like the Man in the Moon. When that occurs anything could happen.” She moved her head side to side in disgust. “God, this makes me sick.” She rubbed at her temples.

Dan wished like hell he could spare her the rest. “There’s a possibility he’s not in the same location as the women.”

“Dan,” she said, pointing all her anguish and frustration at him, “you are confusing the hell out of me. What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

“I’m trying to tell you it’s more important than ever that you listen to me when I say you are not safe on the streets.” A choked laugh squeezed out of him. “Hell, I don’t know if you’re safe anywhere. But I have to somehow get it across to you that we’ve been warned, Jess. The storm is coming, I need you to take cover.”

She held up her hands. “I have a sociopath delivering the remains of dead children to me. Now, he’s taken another child—a live one. I do not have time to listen to this.”

“He’s here, Jess.”

She dropped her hands to her sides. This time there was no mistaking the fear in her eyes. “How can you be sure when Gant with all his resources can’t even speculate where Spears is?”