The Killing Hour
Authors: Lisa Gardner
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Suspense
LISA GARDNER
BANTAM BOOKS
Contents
Acknowledgments
A little bit of research went into the making of this novel. In the absolutely, highly recommended, great-way-to-spend-a-weekend department, I was privileged to once again visit the FBI Academy and learn more about life amid an active Marine base. I have done my best to re-create the facilities and culture of the Academy. In regard to some of the anecdotes and traditions, however, buyer beware. The Academy is a living, breathing institution, undergoing constant change depending on the year, the class, and Bureau needs. As fast as one agent told me a story of a hallowed tradition during his Academy days, another agent would confess he’d never heard of such a thing. Being a crafty writer, I sifted through the various anecdotes, selected the ones I liked best and delivered them here as the gospel truth. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
As much as I enjoy interviewing FBI agents, I confess I was totally blown away by the nice men and women I met via the U.S. Geological Survey team of Richmond, Virginia. I needed some experts on the great outdoors and boy, did I hit the mother lode. Not only were the team members very patient when explaining to me the intricacies of properly analyzing water samples, but they came up with a dynamite list of cool places to kill people. They also gave my husband and me a personal tour of their recommended crime scenes, which had us on good behavior for weeks.
Following is the rather extensive list of nice folks who took time away from their very busy lives just to answer my phone calls. These people gave me correct information with the best of intentions. What happened to it after that is entirely my fault.
FIRST, THE EARTH EXPERTS:
Jim Campbell, Subdistrict Chief, U.S. Geological Survey
David Nelms, Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey
George E. Harlow, Jr., P.G., Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey
Randall C. Orndorff, Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
William C. Burton, Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
Wil Orndorff, Karst Protection Coordinator, Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation
Wendy Cass, Park Botanist, Shenandoah National Park
Ron Litwin, Palynologist, U.S. Geological Survey
SECOND, THE DRUG EXPERTS:
Margaret Charpentier
Celia MacDonnell
THIRD, THE PROCEDURE EXPERTS:
Special Agent Nidia Gamba, FBI, New York
Dr. Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Atlanta Christian College
Jimmy Davis, Chief of Police, Snell Police Department, GA
FOURTH, THE SUPPORTING CAST:
Melinda Carr, Diana Chadwick, Barbara Ruddy, and Kathleen Walsh for their invaluable proofreading assistance
My husband, Anthony, who didn’t have to make any chocolate this time, but was required to unpack an entire house while I tended to deadline. Love, let’s never move again.
Also, my deepest thanks to Kathy Sampson, who generously bought her daughter, Alissa Sampson, a “cameo” appearance in this novel as part of a charity auction. I’m never sure if it’s a good thing to be a character in one of my novels, but I appreciate Kathy’s donation and hope Alissa enjoys the book.
And finally, in loving memory of my grandmother, Harriette Baumgartner, who supplied me with my favorite paperbacks, baked the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, and taught us all a dozen different ways to play solitaire. Here’s to you, Grandma.
Happy reading,
Lisa Gardner
PROLOGUE
THE MAN FIRST STARTED NOTICING IT IN 1998.
Two girls went out to a bar, never came home again. Deanna Wilson and Marlene Mason were the first set. Roommates at Georgia State U, nice girls by all accounts, their disappearance didn’t even make the front pages of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. People disappear. Especially in a big city.
Then, of course, the police found Marlene Mason’s body along Interstate 75. That got things going a bit. The fine folks of Atlanta didn’t like one of their daughters being found sprawled along an interstate. Especially a white girl from a good family. Things like that shouldn’t happen around here.
Besides, the Mason case was a head-scratcher. The girl was found fully clothed and with her purse intact. No sign of sexual assault, no sign of robbery. In fact, her corpse looked so damn peaceful, the passing motorist who found her thought she was sleeping. But Mason was DOA. Drug overdose, ruled the ME (though Mason’s parents vehemently denied their daughter would do such a thing). Now where was her roommate?
That was an ugly week in Atlanta. Everyone looking for a missing college coed while the mercury climbed to nearly a hundred degrees. Efforts started strong, then petered out. People got hot, got tired, got busy with other things. Besides, half the state figured Wilson had done it—offed her roommate in some dispute, probably over a boy, and that was that. People watched
Law & Order
. They knew these things.
A couple of hikers found Wilson’s body in the fall. It was all the way up in the Tallulah Gorge, nearly a hundred miles away. The body was still clad in Wilson’s party clothes, right down to her three-inch heels. Not so peaceful in death this time, however. For one thing, the scavengers had gotten to her first. For another, her skull was shattered into little bits. Probably from taking a header down one of the granite cliffs. Let’s just say Mother Nature had no respect for Manolo Blahnik stilettos.
Another head-scratcher. When had Wilson died? Where had she been between that time and first vanishing from a downtown Atlanta bar? And had she offed her roommate first? Wilson’s purse was recovered from the gorge. No sign of any drugs. But strangely enough, neither was there any sign of her vehicle or her car keys.
The Rabun County Sheriff’s Office inherited that corpse, and the case once again faded from the news.
The man clipped a few articles. He didn’t really know why. He just did.
In 1999, it happened again. Heat wave hit, temperatures—and tempers—went soaring, and two young girls went out to a bar one night and never made it back. Kasey Cooper and Josie Anders from Macon, Georgia. Maybe not such nice girls this time. Both were underage and never should’ve been drinking except that Anders’s boyfriend was a bouncer at the bar. He claimed they weren’t “hardly tipsy at all” when he last saw them climbing into Cooper’s white Honda Civic. Their distraught families claimed that both girls were track-and-field stars and wouldn’t have gone anywhere without a fight.
People got a little more nervous this time. Wondered what was going on. Two days later, they didn’t have to wonder anymore. Josie Anders’s body was found along U.S. 441—ten miles from the Tallulah Gorge.
The Rabun County Sheriff’s Office went into hyperdrive. Rescue teams were organized, search dogs hired, the National Guard called in. The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
gave it front-page coverage. The strange double-disappearance so like the one the summer before. And exactly what happened when a person went missing in this kind of heat.
The man noticed something he’d missed before. It was small, really. A minor little note under letters to the editor. It read: “Clock ticking . . . planet dying . . . animals weeping . . . rivers screaming. Can’t you hear it? Heat kills . . .”
Then the man knew why he’d started the scrapbook.
They never did find Kasey Cooper in the gorge. Her body didn’t turn up until the November cotton harvest in Burke County. Then, three men operating a cotton picker got the surprise of their lives—a dead girl right smack in the middle of thousands of acres of cotton fields, still wearing a little black dress.
No broken bones this time. No shattered limbs. The ME ruled that nineteen-year-old Kasey Cooper had died from multiple organ failure, most likely brought on by severe heatstroke. In other words, when she’d been abandoned out in the middle of that field, she’d still been alive.
An empty gallon jug of water was discovered three miles from her mummified corpse. Her purse was another five miles away. Interestingly enough, they never did find her vehicle or her car keys.
People grew more nervous now. Particularly when someone in the ME’s office let it leak that Josie Anders also had died from a drug overdose—a fatal injection of the prescription drug Ativan. Seemed sinister somehow. Two sets of girls in two different years. Each last seen in a bar. In both cases the first girl was found dead along a major road. And in both cases, the second girl seemed to suffer a fate that was far, far worse . . .
The Rabun County Sheriff’s Office called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The press got excited again. More banner headlines in the front pages of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. GBI SEEKS POSSIBLE SERIAL KILLER. Rumors flew, articles multiplied and the man clipped each one diligently.
He had a cold feeling growing in his chest now. And he started to tremble each time the phone rang.
The GBI, however, was not nearly so sensational about the case. Investigation ongoing, a spokesperson for the state police declared. And that’s all the GBI would say. Until the summer of 2000 and the very first heat wave.
It started in May. Two pretty, young Augusta State University students headed to Savannah one weekend and never returned home. Last known sighting—a bar. Vehicle—MIA.
This time, the national media descended. Frightened voters hit the streets. The man pawed furiously through stacks of newspapers while the GBI issued meaningless statements such as “We have no reason to suspect a connection at this time.”
The man knew better. People knew better. And so did the letters to the editor. He found it Tuesday, May 30. Exact same words as before: “Clock ticking . . . planet dying . . . animals weeping . . . rivers screaming. Can’t you hear it? Heat kills . . .”
Celia Smithers’s body was found along U.S. 25 in Waynesboro, just fifteen miles from the cotton-field crime scene where Kasey Cooper had been found six months before. Smithers was fully clothed and clutching her purse. No sign of trauma, no sign of sexual assault. Just one dark bruise on her left thigh, and a smaller, red injection site on her upper left arm. Cause of death—an overdose of the prescription tranquilizer Ativan.
The public went nuts; the police immediately went into high gear. Still missing, Smithers’s best friend, Tamara McDaniels. The police, however, didn’t search the Burke County cotton fields. Instead, they sent volunteers straight to the muddy banks of the Savannah River. Finally, the man thought, they were starting to understand the game.
He should’ve picked up the phone then. Dialed the hastily established hotline. He could’ve been an anonymous tipster. Or maybe the crazy whacko that thinks he knows everything.
He didn’t, though. He just didn’t know what to say.
“We have reason to believe Ms. McDaniels is still alive,” reported GBI Special Agent Michael “Mac” McCormack on the evening news. “We believe our suspect kidnaps the women in pairs, killing the first woman immediately, but abandoning the second in a remote location. In this case, we have reason to believe he has selected a portion of the Savannah River. We are now assembling over five hundred volunteers to search the river. It is our goal to bring Tamara home safe.”
Then Special Agent McCormack made a startling revelation. He had also been reading the letters to the editor. He now made an appeal to speak to the author of the notes. The police were eager to listen. The police were eager to help.
By the eleven o’clock news, search-and-rescue teams had descended upon the Savannah River and the suspect finally had a name. The Eco-Killer, Fox News dubbed him. A crazed lunatic who no doubt thought that killing women really would save the planet. Jack the Ripper, he ain’t.
The man wanted to yell at them. He wanted to scream that they knew nothing. But of course, what could he say? He watched the news. He obsessively clipped articles. He attended a candlelight vigil organized by the frantic parents of poor Tamara McDaniels—last seen in a tight black skirt and platform heels.
No body this time; the Savannah River rarely gives up what she has taken.
But 2000 hadn’t ended yet.
July. Temperatures soared above one hundred degrees in the shade. And two sisters, Mary Lynn and Nora Ray Watts, met up with friends at T.G.I. Friday’s for late-night sundaes to beat the heat. The two girls disappeared somewhere along the dark, winding road leading home.
Mary Lynn was found two days later alongside U.S. 301 near the Savannah River. The temperature that day was 103 degrees. Heat index was 118. Her body contained a faintly striped brown shell crammed down her throat. Bits of grass and mud were streaked across her legs.
The police tried to bury these details, as they’d buried so many others. Once again, an ME’s office insider ratted them out.
For the first time the public learned what the police had known—what the man had suspected—for the past twelve months. Why the first girl was always left, easy to discover, next to a major road. Why her death came so quickly. Why the man needed two girls at all. Because the first girl was merely a prop, a disposable tool necessary for the game. She was the map. Interpret the clues correctly, and maybe you could find the second girl still alive. If you moved quickly enough.
If
you beat the heat.
The task force descended, the press corps descended, and Special Agent McCormack went on the news to announce that given the presence of sea salt, cord grass, and the marsh periwinkle snail found on Mary Lynn’s body, he was authorizing an all-out search of Georgia’s 378,000 acres of salt marshes.
But which part, you idiots?
the man scribbled in his scrapbook.
You should know him better than that by now. Clock is
TICKING!
“We have reason to believe that Nora Ray is still alive,” Special Agent McCormack announced, as he had announced once before. “And we’re going to bring her home to her family.”
Don’t make promises you can’t keep,
the man wrote. But finally, he was wrong.
The last article in an overstuffed scrapbook: July 27, 2000. Nora Ray Watts is pulled half-naked from the sucking depths of a Georgia salt marsh. The Eco-Killer’s eighth victim, she’s survived fifty-six hours in hundred-degree heat, burning sun, and parching salt, by chewing cord grass and coating herself in protective mud. Now, a newspaper photo shows her exuberantly, vibrantly, triumphantly alive as the Coast Guard chopper lifts her up into the blue, blue sky.
The police have finally learned the game. They have finally won.
Last page of the scrapbook now. No news articles, no photos, no evening news transcripts. In the last page of the scrapbook, the man wrote only four neatly printed words:
What if I’m wrong?
Then, he underlined them.
The year 2000 finally ended. Nora Ray Watts lived. And the Eco-Killer never struck again. Summers came, summers went. Heat waves rolled through Georgia and lambasted the good residents with spiking temperatures and prickling fear. And nothing happened.
Three years later, the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ran a retrospective. They interviewed Special Agent McCormack about the seven unsolved homicides, the three summers of crippling fear. He simply said, “Our investigation is ongoing.”
The man didn’t save that article. Instead, he crumpled it up and threw it into the trash. Then he drank long and heavily deep into the night.
It’s over, he thought. It’s over, I’m safe, and it’s as simple as that.
But he already knew in his heart that he was wrong. For some things, it’s never a matter of if, but only a matter of when . . .