The Fourth Victim (9 page)

“Are you guys back in town yet?”

“They let Maggie stay longer with her mother. We're in town now, getting hamburgers. Her choice.”

“Is she right there?”

“She's using the restroom.”

“How is she?”

“Too quiet.”

Sam's heart sank. “I was afraid of that. She knows something.” She and Kyle had discussed the possibility several times during the night that had just passed.

“I'm not convinced of that,” Kyle said. “She's shaken, that's for sure. But Kelly's that girl's lifeline. It would be more disturbing if she
didn't
show signs of distress.”

“Did you get anything on her mother? Why Maggie needed to see her today after just having been there?”

“No. I didn't ask.”

Because he wouldn't. Kyle didn't push. But he listened more carefully than anyone she'd ever known.

“Did she seem better or worse afterward?”

“About the same. Upset. How are you doing?”

“Fine.” He'd know what that meant, based on an understanding that came from being best friends for most of their lives—and lovers for more than half of them.

“You'll find her, Sam. You always get your man. Always.”

“Alive?”

“Maggie and I are buying a burger for you. We'll be there in a few minutes.”

“Watch her like a hawk, okay? Kelly'll kill me if anything happens to her.”

“Of course. Even if Abrams is behind this, there's no way he's getting near that girl. I can promise you that.”

Sam nodded, although he couldn't see her, and tried not to lose hope. David Abrams had been a friend to all of them. Had represented Kyle in his divorce. Played darts out at the farm. Gave generously of his time, money and services all over the county.

Sam's phone beeped an incoming call and she recognized Agent Thatcher's number.

“Gotta go.” She wasn't even sure she got the words out before she clicked off.

S
amantha Jones had collected a shitload of history on Midwest kidnappings. And compiled the information into many different lists based on all kinds of different factors, from age of victim to sex of kidnappers. As Clay beat the speed limit by fifteen miles an hour, he listened to Samantha. Time of day. Number of people. How much time elapsed between kidnapping and ransom call versus how many successful recoveries. Amounts of ransom. She even had statistics for numbers of stranger abductions versus people taken by someone they knew.

She'd already followed up on known kidnappers who'd committed random crimes. Most of them were either dead or in prison. Another had an alibi. And one had disappeared without a trace a couple of years before. And two she had addresses for but had been unable to reach.

“This could be a random abduction,” he said. That had always been a possibility, of course, which was why they'd searched her home, the skating trail, her car and anything else for clues as to what had happened. But until they had some clues from the day before, they had to look for and eliminate suspects.

“It could be,” the detective acknowledged. “But I don't think it is.”

Clay didn't think so, either. “Why?”

“Because the hit was too clean. We know Kelly Chapman was on that trail. The dog followed her scent—and then…nothing. She just disappears into thin air. There's no sign of a struggle. No blood on the trail. No evidence of her having been dragged. Kelly's too smart not to leave a trail if she had any chance to do so. If some unknown person grabbed her and kept her alive long enough to rape her, we'd have found something. The dog, Willie, would have followed the scent. And even if he hadn't, Kelly would've made sure there was
something
for us to find. She's in court regularly. She's heard evidence in a million cases.”

He weaved in and out of a small traffic clog caused by two semis nosing along side by side; as he did, he received confirmation from Samantha of what he'd already determined. “You're confident that all the ground between her home, office and the bike path has been thoroughly searched.” If the trucks didn't move he'd pull out his bubble and turn on the siren.

“Absolutely. I was out again myself this morning. I don't think Kelly ever finished skating.”

“Why not?”

“Because she usually made a call when she got back in the car. Any time she skated alone, she let someone know where she was and always checked in when she was back in the car. Not officially, mind you. She didn't always call the same person. Or tell us she was checking in. But she always called someone. It was like an unspoken ritual with her.”

No calls had been made from the psychologist's cell phone since she'd left her office the previous morning.

“So,” Samantha continued, “I was thinking that maybe she never made it to the path. Maybe the dog caught a scent from the day before.”

“We know for certain that she got there,” Clay said. “A city worker was on the trail and saw her.”

“Who? When?”

Clay filled Samantha Jones in on the details he'd just received from JoAnne.

“So now we know for certain she was taken from there,” Samantha said. “Which means we're looking at a professional hit. They got her off the path and out of there without a trace, with in-line skates on her feet, no less. How do you stop someone on in-line skates without there being any blood?”

“Maybe by knowing that someone? If she saw a person she knew—if that person called out to her and she stopped of her own accord—maybe she went willingly.”

“She would never have taken off without telling someone. Not ever.”

“So she stopped willingly and was then abducted,” Clay amended, agreeing with the detective's assessment at this point. And then he asked, “What do you think about David Abrams? Could he have arranged something like this? If, as you allege, he's a pedophile, he stands to lose everything if Kelly can convince Maggie to turn on him….”

“Maggie's suffering from some kind of deep-seated denial where Abrams is concerned,” Sam said.

“And the longer she lived with Kelly, the more chance that Maggie's loyalties would shift,” Clay muttered.

“Right. Kelly said that as soon as Maggie felt secure with her, she wouldn't need ‘Mac' anymore….”

“Poor kid.”

“Personally, Agent Thatcher, I think the man is capable of anything. He's duped an entire town. Saw his partner in crime buried without even flinching. Had sex with a child. And dares to walk around as though he owns the place. His partner, the deputy I shot, was his brother-in-law, did you know that?”

“No.” Clay's blood turned colder. With the road in front of him free he pushed harder on the gas.

“Chuck Sewell was Abrams's wife's brother. And he continues to lie to her about what happened. To play the loyal, dedicated husband and father.”

Samantha's emotions were getting to him. He couldn't allow that.

“One of my agents followed him to a wooded area outside of Chandler this morning—” Clay said, and was surprised by the abrupt “Where?” that cut off the rest of his sentence. He told Detective Jones what JoAnne had told him.

And listened to the words that flew over the line with empathy—and professional interest. So they were on to something.

“That's where Maggie Winston lost her virginity,” Samantha said. “I've been personally keeping a watch on the place since it happened.”

Maggie Winston. The girl again. Kelly's new foster daughter. The only major change in Kelly Chapman's life in the past ten years.

“Were you there yesterday?” Clay asked.

“No. I was out at the skate path.”

“Abrams picked up a silk rose and then put it back. Any ideas about what that might mean?”

“You think there's a grave.” A statement. Not a question.

What he thought didn't matter. “I've got two agents out there,” Clay said. “Agent Sizemore will be camping in the area, and Rosnick is combing the area. If there's newly disturbed earth—or anything else that suggests a human presence out there—we'll soon know about it.”

“It could be a message for Maggie.” Samantha's tone of voice was deadly.

“I wondered.” He thought about his next suggestion.
Briefly. There wasn't a lot of time for deliberation. They had too many suspects to investigate. Too many possibilities. “Let's give the girl some rope. See if, when she thinks she's alone and unobserved, she goes out there. And then see what happens when she does.”

“You want me to put a fourteen-year-old girl at risk?”

Hell, no. He didn't want that. And he deliberately kept his gaze firmly on the road and nowhere near the photo on his dash.

“My agents will be all over that place. You can set up your own surveillance, as well—as long as your people know not to interfere and understand that my people are in charge.” It wasn't a territorial issue but a practical one. Too many bosses put lives at risk. “I'm not suggesting we let Abrams near her, only that we let her go far enough to show us what's going on.”

“And if he's there? If they've arranged to meet?”

“We arrest him and you've got what you wanted four months ago. Proof of their involvement. Four months ago you didn't have this opportunity. He was staying away from her. The fact that
now
is when he's returned to their meeting place is significant, don't you think?”

“Maggie asked to see her mother today.”

“Does she have regularly scheduled visits?”

“Yes.”

“And this wasn't one of them?”

“No.”

“You think her mother's involved, as well?”

“I'm not sure. Maggie's been through so much and probably feels pretty alone. It could be that Kelly's disappearance upset her so much she just needed her mother.”

“Or it could be that her mother and Abrams are still somehow connected. Or that they've reconnected since the mother's incarceration.”

Samantha's silence prompted him to say, “We have to do something.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Can it be arranged to leave her alone? With a way out to the wooded area?”

“I can have Kyle drive her into town to get some of her things. He could drop her off at Kelly's place and then get called away—maybe to the hospital. Kyle's grandfather is failing pretty fast. Maggie knows that. She's helping us take care of him. We could make up some story about needing to bring him to the Emergency Room. I hate to use Grandpa that way, but I know that if he was lucid he'd insist that we do it. If it could help get rid of the threat of a pedophile in a young girl's life… Kyle could tell Maggie to stay at Kelly's until someone comes for her.”

“So how does she get from Kelly's to the woods?”

“Her bike. It's how she got there before. It's at Kelly's.”

“We'll need to coordinate times. I want agents in place outside Kelly's and in the woods before Kyle leaves that girl alone.”

“I'll have him come straight back here to take over the phone and then I'll head into town, too,” Samantha said. “I need to be there.”

She made the statement as if she expected Clay to argue with her. He wasn't about to do so. Detective Jones had proven herself a more than capable cop. And Maggie Winston would need someone she knew close by, in case things got difficult.

“I have an agent on Abrams already,” Clay added. “I'll keep her there.”

The number of man-hours he was burning didn't faze Clay. How could it? There were lives at stake.

“I'd like to wait until I'm back in Chandler to bring this down, but we can't. It's going to be dark before then, so
you'll have to go ahead without me. JoAnne Laramie will be in charge.”

They discussed details and then Samantha asked, “What if Maggie goes out there, and we catch the two of them, but neither of them owns up to knowing what happened to Kelly?”

“Then we bring them both in, put them in different rooms and hope we can either find some kind of conscience in Abrams when he sees the kid in handcuffs, or we get Maggie to tell us the truth.”

“I don't want her arrested.”

Thinking of the timid fourteen-year-old girl he'd met the night before made it hard for Clay to do his job.

“If she's involved in kidnapping, she's breaking the law,” he said. “And it's still possible that kidnapping is all we're dealing with. We need to get Maggie to tell us the truth before she's also a conspirator to murder.”

The kid was hiding something. Clay had realized that last night. For her sake, they needed to figure out what that was. Regardless of what she knew, or thought she knew, the girl was carrying far too great a burden on her young shoulders.

“My agents are good, Detective,” he said. “They'll take care of Maggie, no matter what she has or hasn't done. She's a kid. No one's going to forget that.”

Clay trusted his team. This wasn't the first juvenile they'd dealt with. Not by a long shot.

“I don't know whether to hope she stays put at Kelly's or that she leads us to Abrams,” Samantha Jones said as they were ending their conversation.

“Let's just focus on keeping her safe,” Clay said, and drove onto the shoulder of the road to pass a car as he put up his bubble and turned on his siren.

Day/Night

I
was awake. My eyes were closed, but I was fully awake. I'd been awake for a few minutes. I'd opened my eyes briefly. The rock enclosure had grown darker. Not black, but gloomy and dank.

My head was still throbbing. I was pretty sure I'd taken a blow to my right temple. I could feel the swelling now and knew I'd been sleeping too much. I should stay awake. I also knew I was going back to sleep.

That was when death came easiest.

I was mostly okay with dying now. Inevitability had a way of convincing you of the rightness of things. Or at least it brought a certain kind of resignation, of peace.

Even if I broke the bindings at my ankles and wrists, and could climb up to the thin slash of light, I'd still have to get through the barrier covering what I believed was the opening to the cave. I'd already been without water for at least a day. Could be three for all I knew.

Still, I was awake. I had to try.

Forcing myself up enough to free my arms, which had gone numb again, I started to rub them against the wall. And my feet instinctively started to move, too, to scrape
one against the other in order to fray the bindings, although they might not be affected by my movements at all.

I opened my eyes. And quickly shut them.

I could keep them closed. I allowed myself that. The starkness out there was far more eerie, more frightening, than the darkness behind my closed lids. I could see anything I wanted to see in here. The flowered couch in my office. The bright fuchsia bougainvillea that bloomed out in my backyard. Maggie's grin when she was lying on the floor playing with Camy.

My little Camy with her pert black nose and big, chocolate-brown eyes. Those long apricot-colored ears as she tilted them at me in question.

Or were the ears red? They weren't brown.

I couldn't really see them. I couldn't really see anything.

I rubbed. And scraped.

Rubbed and scraped.

 

She couldn't believe her luck. Not that having Kyle's grandpa sick was luck. It wasn't lucky at all. But it fit right in with how things happened in Maggie's world. The only way she could get a break was because an old man had to go to the hospital. She told herself it wasn't
her
fault that he'd fail today of all days, just when she needed time alone.

Still, after Kyle drove away, leaving her all alone at Kelly's, Maggie couldn't stay there like he'd asked. She'd go crazy staying there. The place was too big and way too quiet with Camy out at Kyle's farm with Samantha and Zodiac.

Strange how the great big guard dog let a little princess like Camy make herself at home. Maggie had been afraid to put Camy down at first. Kelly would never forgive her
if she let something happen to Camy. The dog was like Kelly's kid or something.

But Zodiac just watched Camy and let her do whatever she wanted. Even when Camy snapped and grabbed a piece of Zodiac's face. Kyle's big dog let little Camy hang on to him.

Maggie had scooped her up then and taken Camy to the room Samantha and Kyle had given her to use. But she hadn't had to. She'd just wanted to.

What she had to do was get out to the woods. She might not have another chance. She had to leave a message for Mac. Had to see him. Things were really bad—worse than they'd ever been—and he'd promised her he'd take care of her. He'd told her that if she was missing him too much, she should leave a flower in the woods. In their special place. She'd done so on Thursday after Kelly took her to visit Mom. He'd told her he'd know from her signal that she needed him and would figure something out. Seeing him would make her feel better; surely he knew that. She had to get out to the woods. To see if he'd been there yet. If he'd found her flower. Maybe he was in the woods right now. Or would come while she was there…

Kelly was the only one who knew about their spot in the woods. Maggie had told her during a session back before everything had gotten so screwed up. Back before that slimeball Sewell had murdered Glenna. And because it was during a session, the information was protected under doctor-client privilege. She didn't have to be a lawyer to know that.

Their spot was safe. It was the only safe place in the world for Maggie right now. At least until she saw Mac. Until she figured out what to do.

Maybe they could run away together. Start a new life where no one knew about Mom, or the drugs, or that Maggie was only fourteen. They could say she was
eighteen. With her hair up and makeup on she could pass for eighteen. Her breasts were big enough.

Mac had liked them. A lot. They were one of the first things he'd noticed about her.

He loved her. He'd love the idea of being with her forever. Besides, running away was the only answer.

Avoiding the hallway that led down to the room Kelly had fixed up for her, avoiding the reminder that for a few weeks she'd actually dared to hope she could be a real part of Kelly's life, live in a home that was pretty and clean and had floors without holes in them, a yard that wasn't filled with trash and an adult in residence who came home every night, Maggie headed for the garage. She stopped only long enough to check the mailbox attached to the front of the house.

There was a bill. A couple of junk-mail things about insurance and a preapproved credit card waiting for Kelly. That was all. No letters for Kelly. Maggie wondered if the man who'd been writing her, who cared about Kelly from afar, was aware of her disappearance.

Five minutes later Maggie was sailing down a country road as fast as her feet could pedal, the wind whipping her hair against her face and anticipation brewing up feelings deep inside her.

Soon everything would be okay. Just as soon as Mac knew she needed him.

 

Clay made it back to town before dark. Forgoing the rest followed by a shower and change of clothes that he really needed, he went straight to the office. He'd called JoAnne. Agents were in place in Chandler watching the Winston girl. She'd flown the coop exactly as he and Samantha had expected.

She'd been sitting alone in that little clearing in the woods for more than two hours. Just sitting there. With
the temperature dropping down to the thirties, she had to be getting pretty damned cold.

“She had a hat and gloves in her pocket,” JoAnne had said. As though Maggie had known she might be spending an extended period of time in the cold.

Or maybe she always carried them. Hard to say.

What Clay knew was that Kelly Chapman wasn't as likely to have a hat and gloves to keep her warm. And with the temperature falling, if he didn't find her soon, she'd die of hypothermia if nothing else.

With everyone either out on assignment or off for the night, Clay had the office virtually to himself—the way he liked it best.

The top of his desk, like his dining room table, was cluttered with piles of papers, file folders—and probably a dirty coffee cup somewhere, too.

He used to keep a picture of his father there. Until the old man's complacent smile and sad eyes began to wear on him too much. They'd been almost constant companions while Clay was growing up. He'd been an only child, his father's son. In between caring for his mother, who'd suffered from severe depression since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis years before, Clay's father had coached his Little League teams, taught him to fish, fix things around the house and to study hard. They'd played video games and watched old war movies together. And they'd chosen Clay's career path together, too, and from that point on, until the day he died, Edward Thatcher had lived his own life vicariously through his son.

It was the only life the old man had ever really lived.

Funny, his chronically ill mother was still alive, but his healthy parent—his father—was gone. Dead from a heart attack.

Clay had retrieved the Kelly Chapman open case investigation notes from his agents' desks. Sometimes a fresh
look, especially reading everything at once, told a different story than the one they thought they were reading.

At the moment, since they thought they had nothing, anything new would be good.

Clay's eyes were tired, his mind buzzing when his cell phone rang. An hour had passed and he hadn't noticed.

“Yeah,” he said, his gaze still on the page in front of him. Testimony from someone who'd seen the city worker on the path. There was something…

“It's JoAnne.”

Clay dropped the sheet. “What's happening?”

“Nothing. It's getting dark and she's still sitting there, Clay. Are we going to let her stay there all night?”

Abrams might be waiting for darkness. “Have you talked to Mercy?”

“Yeah. She says our suspect is at home with his wife and kids, where he's been all night. At last glance, through a window above the front door, he was in pajama pants and a T-shirt with a kid on each hip, going up the stairs.”

“Give the girl another few minutes and then scare her out of there. Make her think there's some kind of wild animal. Ken'll know how to do that.”

“Got it.”

“And make sure someone tails her home. I don't want so much as a scrape on that kid's knee.”

“And if she doesn't go home?”

“Call me back.”

Hanging up, Clay picked up the paper in front of him. And, leafing through the others, pulled out a few more. He placed them carefully, side by side, on top of everything else on his desk, reading them as one page, all together.

They were different reports from different agents. Different pieces of information. But they all had to do with the timeline of Kelly Chapman's disappearance.

Chapman's secretary's testimony. Deb Brown. She'd been loyal to Chapman, so JoAnne had said.

Samantha's testimony.

Witnesses from the skate path.

The city worker.

Kelly Chapman had an appointment cancel, which was what had allowed her to be out skating in the middle of a workday. Did anyone think to check on that? To hunt down whoever canceled and make sure that the reason for cancellation was legitimate?

He thumbed through JoAnne's notes for Deb Brown's testimony. Kelly's Friday-morning client had canceled because she'd gone into labor.

A few more pages and he had the name of the newborn.

So…the psychologist's appointment cancels. And instead of lounging around, going for coffee or gossiping with a friend, or even staying in the office to catch up on paperwork, she decides to go skating. She changes into skating clothes in her office—Clay's kind of woman, one who keeps an extra set of exercise clothes at work just in case—and heads out to the skate path. And then disappears into thin air.

She was seen there at 10:05 by a city worker who was often the only person on the trail that late in the season. The city worker was seen by several witnesses, starting as early as 9:30 that morning. There were sightings of the city worker on the trail at 9:30, at 9:40ish, and then twice at 10:15. Following that, there'd been one at 10:25; the woman who reported that knew the time because she'd just ended a call and the time was flashing on the cell phone's screen. There were further sightings between 10:30 and 10:45, at 11:00 or so, and 11:05; the mother who reported that one was leaving to pick her daughter up from kindergarten. Finally he was seen at around noon.

Not one single account all morning of anyone
but
the same city worker.

They had to look at him again. Either he'd seen something or done something. He was absolutely the only one in the area.

No one had seen Kelly Chapman, but she'd been on just one small leg of the trail, possibly for as little as ten minutes.

But…

Clay pulled out the schematic of the path he'd been studying. All witness sightings had been plotted in red on the chart.

It all made sense except that…

He looked back at his notes.

Two witnesses had seen the city worker at 10:15 on the stretch of path they believed Kelly had skated. The city worker said he'd seen her. And both witnesses had seen the worker there at exactly the same time. Fine. The sightings were within a minute's distance from each other. One had said he was going north on the path at 10:15. The other had said he was crossing a road onto the path not far from where the first account had placed him. Which meant that one witness was off by a minute or two. Clocks right there in the local FBI office were off a minute or two from one another.

The facts all fit.

And yet…

Something was bothering him. He looked again.

One woman who'd described seeing the man at 10:15 had mentioned that he'd had a big branch under a tarp in the back of his cart. She'd recognized it as a branch she'd seen on the path when she'd gone walking the night before. It had been thick and heavy, with two other branches forming a V off the main part.

The other woman who'd seen the worker on the same
stretch of path, at supposedly the same time, had said she was glad to have the branch that had fallen just behind her house gone, but hadn't mentioned seeing anything in the back of the worker's cart.

Clay flipped sheets again, more rapidly now. Had anyone asked the second woman if there'd been a large branch in the cart, poking out under the tarp?

Yes.
And she'd said not that she'd noticed. Fine, she hadn't looked. Or remembered. But wouldn't someone who testified that she was glad to have the branch removed have recognized it in the cart?

To Clay, the answer was obvious. Enough so that he assumed he was correct. If the branch that had been on the trail, bothering the woman, had been in the cart, she
would
have noticed.

She'd realized the branch was gone. Which meant the city worker had already picked it up.

She'd said the branch had been shaped like a V and the largest part of the V had been leaning against her fence. And yet…she hadn't seen it in the worker's cart.