The Fourth Victim (11 page)

H
e wasn't prepared to camp out, so Clay set off to cover every inch of ground on either side of the bike path, up to half a mile north and half a mile south of where Willie had lost Kelly Chapman's scent. The ground had already been covered by both volunteers and professionals. In the daylight.

He didn't kid himself that he was going to find something they'd missed. But he looked, anyway. Now that he knew about the cart, the parameters were different. There'd been no reports of utility-cart tire-track sightings, but someone might have seen them and assumed they'd been left by the city worker they'd known was there.

It was also possible the tracks had simply been overlooked. Searchers had been seeking any sign of Kelly Chapman. Any scrap of clothing or shoelace or skate bolt. Any sign of a struggle.

And it was possible that the hard December ground meant there were no tracks to see. No sign of trespass.

Clay told himself all these things and more as he walked a foot and a half out from the bike path, and then, coming back, the same distance on the opposite side. He was thinking more than searching.

There was no logical reason for him to be there. Not
really. He had to wait until morning to follow up on what he'd deduced.

In the meantime, he had to do something. And it had become very clear to him that while Kelly was out there somewhere he wasn't going to be able to go home, lie down in his bed and go to sleep.

He had to be near her. To be present in case there was any little thing at all that he could do.

To be present if she died that night?

Finishing his trek, Clay stepped out from the path another foot and a half and began the process again. Down and then back. And knew that as soon as this case was over he had to take a break.

He'd been working five years straight without a vacation. His choice. His insistence, really. Work gave him satisfaction. Energy. Adrenaline rushes. Work was his life and he wanted it that way.

But only if he did it well.

He couldn't do it well if he got personally involved.

And this woman, this Dr. Kelly Chapman, she was getting to him. More than any other victim he'd ever traced.

He had her picture taped to his dash.

That had been his first mistake.

Clay stopped. He'd heard the sound again. Maybe. It wasn't loud. In fact, it seemed indistinguishable from everything around him. Part of the landscape. Nothing he'd hear if he wasn't alone in the stillness of the night. An animal living its life in the safety of darkness, he told himself.

Still, he'd like to scare the critter up, just to be sure.

Because he had nothing better to do, Clay walked toward the sound. And then it stopped. And he returned to his journey along the side of the bike path.

 

So they needed another day. Didn't bother him. He was in no hurry. Everything was working out just fine.

A spider dangled from a piece of web hanging from the lightbulb.

All it took was a carefully plotted and executed strategy. He'd always been fascinated with bombs and explosions. Had made his first bomb when he was nine. A potato bomb. No one ever knew he was the one who'd blown out that car window. And he'd been careful to experiment safely after that.

Yes, time was a friend, not an enemy. Patience, planning, they were the keys to success. Time allowed the precision and care that guaranteed no mistakes. There were many kinds of bombs, many ways to make them. Over the years he'd learned many of them. And all it took was a little innocuous household shopping.

The spider dropped to the floor and started to crawl toward him. He watched with amusement as it knocked into an empty beer can and made its way around it. Getting closer to his bare foot.

He'd had a goal—to make them pay for his miserable life. To make
her
pay. The means had presented themselves.

And the bounty would be his.

Crushing the spider beneath his toes, he took another swig of beer. Belched. And crossed to the other side of the room to sit on the pot that served as a john.

Oh, yes, one more day and his goal would become reality.

 

“You really think David Abrams did something to Kelly?” Sitting at the kitchen table late Saturday night, Sam glanced at the FBI agent across from her. Kyle was there, too.

The three of them had switched from beer to coffee.

“I'm sure of it,” Sam told the thirtyish woman who looked more svelte television reporter than cop. JoAnne's hair was a dark mahogany and hung in waves past her shoulders, curling softly around a face that was Hollywood pretty. “The man is obsessed with two things. Maggie Winston. And getting his own way.”

“You're the one who's after him,” JoAnne said. “Why not take you?”

“Too obvious.” Leaning back in his chair, Kyle drew his finger around the tractor design on the front of his mug. “And he's not stupid. Sam killed his partner, who was also a cop. Abrams isn't going to mess with her.”

“It's more than that,” Sam said, grinning at the man she would never, ever take for granted. “Maggie is Abrams's key to freedom. There will never be a case without her testimony. There's just no other evidence. The man's a lawyer. A good one. Which means he knew what he had to do to guarantee he was never at risk of prosecution.”

“So why have sex with a fourteen-year-old?”

“Every man has his weakness. His downfall,” Kyle said, with a glance at Sam that wrapped her in a warmth she'd never have dared let herself feel a few months ago.

“The fact is,” she said, “it's not exactly a secret around here that Kelly has helped many witnesses testify successfully at trial. Like the seven-year-old kid in Florida. Plus, Maggie's living with Kelly. Abrams also knows that Kelly is on to him. He knows she's doing everything she can, and will continue to do everything she can, to get Maggie to open up and see the truth. To name Abrams as the man she had sex with in the woods.”

“She believes she doesn't know him.”

“Right.”

“But if Kelly gets Maggie to accept that Mac and Abrams are the same man, then his life is over.”

“Right. The entire life he's built, the career, the family, the position of respect in the community—it all comes crashing down. His survival hinges on Maggie.”

“So how can we be sure she won't try to go to him again?”

“We can't,” Sam said, a sick feeling in her gut when she thought about the deal she'd made with Agent Thatcher. The danger she'd put Maggie in. The girl had been distraught when she'd come home. It had taken Sam an hour to get Maggie to stop blaming herself for everything from her mother's imprisonment to Kelly's abduction.

Sam was the cop. Not the shrink. She'd needed Kelly desperately. But she'd done the best she could.

“Which is why either Kyle or I will be with her at all times from now on. Period.”

“The sting tonight was the right thing to do,” JoAnne said.

She'd agreed to the plan. It hadn't worked. But that was in the past. “I'm glad it's over.”

“We're going to need to try again.”

“No.”

“It's clear that there's something between those two. Abrams might not call her or speak to her in town, but out there, he seems to feel safe.
If,
as you say, he's taken Kelly,
if
he's the man we're after—and his one weakness is Maggie—it's quite possible that using her will be the only way we'll get him.”

“Or we'll get him on Monday when we catch the creep he's hired to make the ransom demand,” Sam said.

They'd already discussed the probability that the ransom demand was a cover—nothing more.

“He managed to keep himself clean before. What makes you think he hasn't done so this time?”

Sam didn't like JoAnne's intent gaze. Mostly because
she didn't like the truth behind the woman's words. For once, the truth made her feel helpless, not inspired.

“Tell me about Agent Thatcher.” She might be changing the subject, but not really. Sam needed to know more about the man in charge of finding her friend. The man she'd trusted with Maggie's life.

“What's to tell? He's a good agent. Married to the job, but in this line of work that's pretty much what it takes.”

“You trust him.”

“Implicitly.”

“I did some checking and heard he's had a run-in or two with the higher-ups.”

“Clay's not a rules guy. He does whatever he has to. That's why he's one of the best at finding missing persons.”

“So he's a rogue?”

“No. He just isn't afraid to risk going outside the rules if that's what's needed to bring someone home.”

“Has he ever been wrong?”

“Aren't we all at some time or other?” JoAnne frowned down into her cup. “Sure, he's been wrong.” She looked straight at Sam. “But no one's ever,
ever
been hurt because of a wrong decision made by Clay. No one's ever died because of what he did.”

“But it must be hard to work for someone you can't count on to follow protocols.”

“For me it would be harder to work for someone who did,” JoAnne said. “Finding missing persons isn't about protocol. It's about getting into the nitty-gritty dirtiest parts of life. Not being afraid to question everything. Beating the bastards at their own game.
They
know
our
protocols. Hell, anyone who watches television knows them. Or a lot of them. And we all understand that knowledge is power. It's like handing them our game plan and then thinking we're going to win, anyway.”

Sam wanted to disagree with what the other woman was saying, but she couldn't. Still, she wasn't feeling any better about having hauled a hysterical girl out of the dark woods less than four hours earlier. Mostly because Maggie was a big part of Kelly's life now, and Kelly would trust her to protect Maggie at all costs.

“What about Thatcher's personal life? Doesn't his wife mind that he's gone so much?”

“Clay? With a wife?” JoAnne chuckled. “Not hardly. Clay could face a gun pointing at him and not break a sweat, but ask him to even
think
about walking down the aisle and he'd be out of there and on the nearest plane to somewhere else.”

“Burned, was he?” Kyle asked.

JoAnne shook her head. “No, though when you watch him tap-dance around any woman who shows the least bit of interest in him, that's exactly what you'd assume.”

“Well, I'm sure he's not gay,” Sam said. She had, after all, met the man who exuded sex appeal down to his toes without seeming to realize it.

“No, Clay likes women.” JoAnne's tone implied that he liked them a lot.

And maybe he had liked JoAnne at one point or other?

Once the thought occurred to Sam, it hung on.

“So what's his deal?”

“I'll tell you what he tells everyone who asks that question. He says he fully believes men and women should marry if they want kids, but that he's just too aware of the control you give up over your life to ever be any good at marriage.”

“He's a control freak.” That she could understand.

“No, I wouldn't say that. Clay does things his own way, but he's pretty easy about letting others do the same.
Especially
when we're talking about working a case. Then
he gives us all the freedom we want as long as we follow through on our assignments.”

“You sound like you're very fond of him.”

Smiling, JoAnne shook her head again. “As a close friend and colleague, yes. But if you're saying what I think you're saying, no way. A long time ago, maybe. But I got over Clay the first time he slept with a woman and couldn't remember her name the next morning.”

“He sleeps with strangers.” One step above sleeping with prostitutes, which was a sore spot with Sam.

She glanced at Kyle. A
very
sore spot. Not that Kyle would ever pay for sex. But there'd been a woman, years ago, who usually sold what she gave to Kyle for free.

“No, she was a visiting agent,” JoAnne said. “Clay just couldn't remember her name.”

Kyle coughed.

“Oh.” Sam stood, moved over to a coffee bar Kyle had set up for her at the end of the kitchen and started measuring grounds for her espresso machine.

“You asked if I'm fond of Clay,” JoAnne said after Sam had filled their cups with her brew.

“Yeah.”

“I'd give up my life for him. Does that answer your question?”

 

Sometime after midnight Clay quit walking the half-mile stretch of ground between the parking lot and Willie's lost scent. He was going to have to sit down at least. Get some rest even if he stayed awake. He'd been going for almost forty hours with only a few hours' sleep in his car.

Grabbing the blanket out of the back of the car and shoving a bottle of water into the pocket of his coat, he made his way back to the last known place Kelly Chapman had been alive. He'd find a tree to lean against. And if he fell
asleep, he'd wake up if anyone came by trying to move his missing person.

Or hurt her.

Clay was a light sleeper.

Came from growing up with a woman who needed constant attention. His mom's illness had been like a regular member of their small family since Clay was too young to remember.

But it wasn't her illness that had dragged them all down. It was the emotional neediness that accompanied her multiple sclerosis. Stress exacerbated the disease, and being alone upset Lynn Thatcher.

He heard the sound again, the one he'd noticed earlier, as he passed the now-familiar place on the trek between his car and his end point. He wasn't sure how to describe it. A kind of swishing sound? While Clay still hadn't identified the animal that was inadvertently keeping him company that night, he'd come to welcome its presence.