The Third Victim (26 page)

“But how to make a .38 fire a .22-caliber bullet? That’s where the sabot comes in. The UNSUB takes a plastic rod and turns it until it’s the diameter of a .38-caliber bullet. He then cuts the rod to the same length as a .38 slug and—this isn’t child’s play—center-drills the piece of plastic with a .22-caliber hole. He cuts the piece of plastic lengthwise in three equal pieces, then glues the pieces back together at the base. Voilà, he has made a sabot. Now he removes a .22 slug from its casing. Then he simply pushes the slug into the center of the sabot from the top, inserts the entire thing into a .38-caliber casing, and loads a .38-caliber-size bullet into his revolver. Upon being fired from the barrel of the gun, the sabot’s three pieces will fall apart, leaving the .22-caliber projectile to continue on and strike the victim. And the UNSUB ejects the shell casing, then walks away with his .38 revolver, leaving no one the wiser.”

“We’re talking serious thought here,” Rainie said.

“And knowledge of guns. Sabots have been around since the earliest firearms, but it’s not like everyone’s using them.”

“Now that we know what it is, can we trace the bullet?”

“Not the slug,” Sanders said, and got a wicked gleam in his eye. “But you can sure as hell trace the plastic. Ballistics has already reassembled the three pieces and they form a perfect model of a .38 projectile, right down to the rifling marks.”

“Don’t be an ass, Sanders. Tell us what we’ve got.”

The state detective’s face fell. “Yeah, well, that brings me to the bad news. So far the sabot doesn’t match with anything we have. Not with the .38 revolver recovered from Danny or with any other revolvers or slugs whose rifling marks we have on file.”

“DRUGFIRE,” Quincy said.

“Noooo,” Sanders groaned. “Not again!”

“Absolutely,” Rainie overruled him. “Face it, Sanders, you can only check statewide. Through the DRUGFIRE databases, Quincy can cover the whole country for a match with another .38 slug used in a crime. The sabot goes to the fed.”

“And what has he done with my computers lately?”

“It’s only been twenty-four hours,” Quincy said mildly.

“I’d have given you updates within twenty-four hours. Hell, I just delivered a sabot to you in fifty-six!”

“Let it go, Sanders,” Rainie told him kindly. “The feds have better toys. It’s a fact of life.”

Luke had a perplexed look on his face. He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees, and peered at Sanders intently. “You’re saying this person went out of his—or, I guess, her—way to make a special bullet to kill Melissa Avalon. A bullet that couldn’t be traced back to . . . the person?”

“A bullet that conceivably couldn’t be traced back to him or her. Yes.”

“Why?” Luke asked bluntly. “Danny’s there. Danny’s brought two guns covered in his fingerprints and registered to Danny’s father. What’s with the third weapon? Isn’t that
more
dangerous? Someone might see this person armed and mention it later. Or maybe something goes wrong and this person ends up dropping the gun, or dropping the sabot, or God knows what. Seems to me that the margin of error is higher with the additional .38.”

They all studied one another. Sanders had brought up the question before. They still didn’t have an answer.

“Symbolism?” Rainie tried after a moment. She glanced at Quincy, the resident expert in criminal behavior. “Maybe there was a personal reason behind the .22 slug as well as a practical one. The person had a reason to kill Melissa Avalon, and the choice of bullet is tied in to that.”

“Christ, it’s not like she was a werewolf and had to be killed with a silver bullet,” Sanders muttered. “A .22 slug is as common as it gets.”

“What about the gun? Maybe the .38 revolver was a special gift from her husband, with the barrel engraved,
To the One I Love,
which had really touched her heart—until she found out he’d given it to her out of guilt over doing the hokeypokey with another woman.”

“Doing the hokeypokey?” Sanders pressed with a raised brow.

“Fine, fucking. He was fucking another woman. Does that work better—”

“I think we’re missing something,” Quincy said quietly.

Rainie and Sanders shut up. They all turned to him. His face was remarkably composed, but there was a light in Quincy’s eyes Rainie had never seen before. He was excited. He had figured out part of the riddle, and he was thrilled to death.

“Let’s look at the elements of this crime,” Quincy began evenly. “First, our UNSUB utilizes manipulation. He or she identifies a troubled youth—Danny O’Grady—and approaches him, probably first via the Internet but then meets him in person to cement the relationship. This person needs someone like Danny. He learns his buttons, and he begins to push.

“The UNSUB also enjoys complexity. I think Luke and Sanders are correct. Why use a sabot when Danny’s .38 would’ve done? Maybe because he or she could. In all probability, the .22 slug would deform, making it impossible to test and leaving us none the wiser. But in case it didn’t, the UNSUB left another little riddle for the police to solve. Another way for law enforcement to be impressed by his or her skills.

“Which also brings us to the computers. It would appear that the UNSUB has been using Melissa Avalon’s e-mail account to contact Danny. So why erase the school computers? Any correspondence, downloads, et cetera, would only show Danny talking to his teacher. Even if the contents of the e-mails were questionable, Melissa Avalon is dead. How is she going to defend herself? But again, one level of diversion is not enough for our UNSUB. He or she also tampers with the school computers. I’m almost positive now that when data-recovery agents delve into the hard drives, they will find everything overridden by zeroes. Our UNSUB seems obsessed with being thorough.”

“But what about Danny?” Rainie objected. “Once you’ve introduced another person into a crime, it’s no longer efficient. He’s scared now, sure, but sooner or later he’s bound to talk. That seems like a huge loose end. If the UNSUB really wanted to be untraceable, he or she should’ve acted alone.”

“No.” Quincy vehemently shook his head. “This UNSUB absolutely
would not
do everything alone. After all, what’s the point of being so ridiculously clever if no one ever learns about it?”

Rainie went still. She saw comprehension slowly washing over Luke’s and Sanders’s faces, and she knew they had arrived at the same conclusion she had when their eyes suddenly widened in horror.

“You mean . . . you mean this person wanted someone to admire his efforts?”

“Yes.”

“And if Danny does crack, does one day tell everything . . .”

“What’s one of the biggest factors we’re already seeing in school shootings? Ego. Boys trying to assert their identity in a crowded world. Confused children who equate being infamous with being famous. Are you kidding? The UNSUB is
hoping
that someday Danny will crack. Not right away. Our shooter needs time to get out of Dodge. But one day he hopes to pick up the paper and read about a thirteen-year-old boy whose sole line of defense in a triple-homicide case is that the bogeyman made him do it. And all the crime experts will say this proves how today’s youths refuse to take responsibility for their actions, and the legal experts will say this proves how today’s defense attorneys go out of their way to confuse juries with conspiracy theories, and our UNSUB will have a good laugh. Our UNSUB will clip every article on Danny O’Grady’s trial and have a ball.”

“We’re no longer talking a crime of passion, are we?” Rainie asked weakly.

“No. Not at all.”

“But why Melissa Avalon then? The special bullet. The single shot to the forehead. Those are all signs she wasn’t a random victim.”

“Oh, she wasn’t random. The selection process was simply different from what we thought. I should’ve seen it earlier, when everyone kept saying how close Danny was to Miss Avalon and how patient she was with him.”

“I don’t get it—”

“Danny loved her, Rainie. That’s why the UNSUB chose her. Because what better way to demonstrate your control over a troubled child than to make him assist in the murder of the one person who’s been good to him. The only other person he trusted.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sanders burst out. “No one’s going to turn on someone they like. You want to lead a kid over to the dark side, you play on something he already hates. You know— ‘You think your daddy’s an asshole? Well, so was mine. Now, let me tell you what I did about it, little boy.’”

Quincy shook his head. “You can do that, Detective, but the bond isn’t as strong—not as strong as our UNSUB needs. In classic indoctrination technique, you get the initiate to turn on the things he loves the most. That’s when you know you have him. In fact, a Canadian serial killer cemented his homicidal partnership with his wife by making her participate in the rape and murder of her own sister. After that, she couldn’t turn against him. That would mean having to face what she’d done. The guilt’s too high.”

“Danny,” Rainie whispered. “Already under suicide watch. Oh my God, the things that must be going on in his mind.”

“He did it? Danny did it?” Luke was rocking back and forth slightly. His face held newly etched lines, and he looked at Quincy almost in agony. “You’re saying Shep’s son killed those girls. And this son of a bitch made him.”

“Yes. I think that’s how it probably happened.”

“
Who is this bastard?
Can’t you tell us that? Can’t you stick data in some fancy feebie database and give us something practical to work with?” Luke jumped to his feet. The tendons in his neck stood out like cords, and he looked at them all almost wildly.

None of them said anything. Rainie thought of Luke, night after night, sitting in his patrol car outside Shep’s house, determined to protect the O’Gradys’ honor. Little Danny, who played in their office after school. Little Danny, playing shoot-’em-up cops and robbers with Bakersville’s finest.
“Bang, bang, bang. Good shooting, Danny. Way to go, kid.”

“One other thought,” Quincy said in the tension-filled attic.

They stared at him, wondering how it could get worse and knowing that it would.

“Murder is like anything else. It has to be learned. The first time is messy, the second time more systematic. These homicides, they’re very sophisticated.”

“Oh shit,” Sanders said.

Rainie closed her eyes.

“This isn’t the first time this person has done it,” Quincy concluded quietly. “I would bet my career on it. And if the UNSUB is using the Internet to identify vulnerable teens . . . It’s a wide, wide world out there, ladies and gentlemen. God knows where he’ll strike next.”

A PHONE RANG.
Sanders flinched in the unsettled silence of the room. Luke recovered first and picked up the receiver. He said yes. He nodded. He said yes again. He took some notes.

He hung up the phone, and there was already something about his face that made Rainie cold.

“That was some bartender in Seaside,” Luke said shortly. “Some guy just walked back into his joint. He’s asking a lot of questions about the shooting. And he’s talking about you, Rainie. He’s talking all about you and how he personally knows you shot your mother fourteen years ago.”

“We got action,” Sanders said crisply. Luke and Quincy nodded, muscles tensing, clearly ready to roll.

Rainie’s reaction was slower in coming.

“Yeah.” She sighed softly. Nodding her head. Thinking of Danny. Thinking of psychopaths. Think-ing of that night, all those years ago. “Yeah,” she said with resignation. “Here we go.”

TWENTY-SIX
                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Friday, May 18, 7:12
P
.
M
.

D
USK BLANKETED BAKERSVILLE.
Homeowners flicked on porch lights, scattering pinpricks of silver illumination against the darkening hillsides. Dairy cows clustered under trees for warmth, forming rocky contours as they hunkered down for sleep.

In some houses, parents held their children close, thinking of the schools they had attended in their days and the seeming battlegrounds their children attended now. You don’t want to raise your kids to be afraid. Everyone goes to school. No sense in making a big deal about it. But to button them up each morning, kiss the soft down at the top of their heads, and send them out to their day—unarmed, defenseless, terrified of the kid in the next seat . . . Oh God, oh God, what has happened to our schools?

In some bars, young men kicked back extra shots, talking about the fucking lawyers who could get anyone off and the dumb-ass juries who cried harder for the murderers than their victims. Ain’t no justice in the world. Ain’t nobody trying to keep our families safe. This kid will probably walk away by the time he’s twenty-one, just like those boys in Arkansas. Doesn’t seem right. Not like those two little girls can magically crawl out of the ground when they come of age. Why should he get better than them just ’cause he’s a kid too? A murderer is a murderer. Don’t do the crime if you can’t serve the time. Yeah, that’s it. The kid’s a killer—let’s make him pay!

In Seaside, Ed Flanders nervously towel-dried beer mug after beer mug and hoped the cops would show up soon.

The man’s own glass was long since emptied. Ed had asked him if he wanted another. The man had declined. Ed suggested buffalo wings. The man said no. Now the man watched TV. Some news-magazine story on how a volunteer group, Cyber Angels, worked to protect unsuspecting Internet users from on-line stalkers. The man wore a strange smile.

Ed rubbed the beer mug harder. Though he wasn’t the type, he was learning to pray.

Seventy miles away, Rainie tore up Route 101 with her lights flashing. Quincy gripped the dash but didn’t say a word. Sometimes he would glance at her. She always looked away. Sanders and Luke were in a car behind them, Luke at the wheel and having no trouble matching Rainie’s pace.

Sometimes they used to make this run up the winding coastal route just for the hell of it. To keep sharp, they told Shep. Practice their skills. Now those days seemed so far away.

The radio crackled. Suspect was on the move, dispatch relayed. Please advise.

Rainie had to think about it a minute. A crowded bar, a suspect they knew nothing about . . .

“Don’t make contact. Just follow him,” she said shortly, then annoyed herself by looking at Quincy for confirmation. The FBI agent nodded. She scowled, replaced the receiver, and drove faster.

An hour later they were in town. Dispatch guided them to a small hotel, and just around the corner, tucked behind a grove of trees, they encountered a ring of police cruisers.

“Looks like we found the party,” she muttered.

Quincy nodded. His face appeared calm, but he still had that light in his eyes. He unfurled from her police cruiser like a boxer about to step into the ring, up on his toes and light on his feet. Rainie watched him a moment too long. The lean line of his body. His graceful, self-assured ease.

She felt a sense of doom she couldn’t shake. The night was closing in on her while the others geared up for the chase. Let’s get the stranger, let’s get the evil man in black.

“He’s talking all about you . . . personally knows you shot your mother fourteen years ago.”

Stranger? She didn’t know anymore. She had bad thoughts about bad things that had happened way too long ago.

Quincy was looking back at her curiously. She forced her attention to unfastening her seat belt.

Sanders had already located the officer in charge. She and Quincy walked up in time to hear: “Suspect appears to be approximately forty years old, graying brown hair, five-ten, five-eleven, approximately one hundred and eighty pounds. He’s wearing a long trench coat, so he could be carrying weapons. The motel owner gives his name as Dave Duncan, supposedly some kind of traveling salesman. Said the man’s quiet and a nonsmoker, if that’s any help.” The officer rolled his eyes.

“Time he returned to his room?” Sanders asked.

“Forty-five minutes ago. We have a pair of officers interviewing the bartender, Ed Flanders, right now. I guess the guy’s been in twice. The first time he seemed to be picking a fight with a few locals over whether Danny O’Grady had done the shooting or not. We’d gotten the bulletin yesterday to be on the lookout for strangers who seemed to be following the shooting, so we’d already reached out to the bartenders. Then tonight this guy shows up around seven and starts back in. Except tonight he seemed to be focused on Officer Conner.” The officer’s gaze slid over at Rainie. “Ahh, begging your pardon, ma’am, but Mr. Duncan was saying that he knew for a fact you’d killed your mo—um, you’d killed Mrs. Conner”—the officer seemed to decide that was a more polite way of saying it—“some years ago. He said he had proof, but when Ed tried to ask more questions, the guy blew him off.

“We haven’t been able to get a good look at him yet—we were following him in the dark—but Ed swears he knows him from somewhere, just can’t think of where.”

“Older man?” Quincy probed. “Heavyset?”

“Yes, sir.”

Quincy looked at Rainie. She shrugged. “Older man” could be several possibilities. Principal Vander-Zanden, Melissa Avalon’s father. Or, what the hell, maybe even Mrs. VanderZanden or Mrs. Avalon in drag. The UNSUB was clever enough to disguise a bullet. God knows what he or she could do with physical appearance.

“Why don’t we just get this over with,” she said stiffly, and everyone nodded. A few of the young men had their batons out. They had a lot of experience breaking up bar fights during the hot summer months, and now they were good to go.

Officer Carr ran them through the drill. The manager of the hotel would call the room and say there was trouble with the bill, would Mr. Duncan please come to the lobby. The minute Duncan stepped clear of his room, the officers would descend. They were all wearing flak vests and were prepared to use necessary force. The goal was to be so fast and quick, Duncan would never have time to react. Once they had him in handcuffs, they could begin questioning.

Rainie nodded her consent and pretended Sanders wasn’t doing the same. She could tell Officer Carr was proud of his role in hunting down a key suspect. Years later this would be one of those stories repeated over and over again in all the good cop bars.

They settled down behind the trees and prepared to watch the show.

The hotel manager nervously picked up the phone and dialed the room. Rainie could see everything through the uncovered lobby windows and was happy Mr. Duncan couldn’t say the same, because the hotel manager was sweating bullets. Poor man looked like he was going to have a heart attack, while beside him a somber young officer had dropped into a crouch and had his gun pointed at the front door. Rainie understood it was just a precaution. She was less sure the hotel manager appreciated that.

The manager set down the phone. He was frowning. He said something to the officer and then Carr’s radio crackled to life.

“No one’s picking up,” Carr muttered. “The manager can’t get Duncan to answer.” He appeared worried. He glanced at Bakersville’s quartet for advice.

“Think he’s figured it out?” Sanders murmured.

Rainie took in the half-dozen cars and sixteen milling men. “Jeez, I don’t know how.”

“What about having the manager approach the room in person, knock on the door?” Sanders asked. “The moment the door cracks open, we’ll push him aside and force our way into the room.”

Quincy looked at the hotel manager, who had sweated through his white shirt and was now swaying on his feet. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll do it,” Rainie said.

They all stared at her. She shrugged. “I swear to God I have no real desire to be shot. But do you see any other maids around?” She gestured to the all-male crowd. “I thought not.”

Five minutes later Rainie was trying to pull a too-small threadbare gray blouse over her bulletproof vest. The skirt came to mid-calf and honestly didn’t do a thing for her legs. Then she thought of her mother, dying in three-inch heels.

Jesus, her head was a mess tonight. Would somebody please get her a beer?

She finally got the blouse buttoned, sucked in her gut, and walked out to the men.

“You all right?” Quincy asked promptly. Those federal agents didn’t miss a thing.

“Fine and dandy.” She performed a pirouette, looking for a place to stick her 9-millimeter.

“Back waistband,” Sanders said.

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause the skirt’s too fucking tight!”

“Okay.” Sanders raised his hands and walked away.

Quincy formed a pile of six clean white towels and tucked her gun in the middle, with the handle sticking out of the back for easy access. He handed it to her, his dark eyes calm.

“He makes a move at all . . .” Quincy said.

“I can’t shoot him.”

“If he goes for a gun, you do what you have to do.”

“I can’t shoot him,” she repeated more forcefully. “Quincy, if I wound up killing him . . .”

She didn’t have to say the rest. It simply hung there between them. The doubts, the suspicions, the rumors that fourteen years later still hadn’t gone away.

“Chances are that he knows we’re out here,” Quincy said softly.

“Then let’s just get it over with. I’m tired of his games.”

She nodded at Sanders, who looked mighty curious about what would happen next, then at eager Officer Carr. Everyone assumed their positions.

Rainie didn’t allow herself to think anymore. She lifted the towels high enough to obscure her face and got on with it.

March one, two, three. At the door now. Pause. Deep breath.
Hey, mister, want some towels?
Or maybe shoot first and ask questions later . . .

She knocked on the door.

No answer.

Did you know what you were saying in that bar? Or were you making this stuff up just for me?

She knocked on the door again.

No answer.

The rest happened very slowly. She set down the towels. She picked up her 9-millimeter. She twisted the door handle, not surprised to find it unlocked, and led with her shoulder into the room.

Behind her, men yelled, Down, down, down. Others cried, Go, go, go.

Rainie tumbled into the room, bringing up her gun, though she didn’t know what she expected to find—or maybe she did. Maybe some part of her knew what body she would find there on that bed. Except . . .

Empty. Empty. Empty.

Officers jostled her aside. Seaside’s finest pumped into the room. “Police! Police! Police!”

Still nothing.

More scattered voices. “What do you mean, nothing? Where the hell could he have gone? I thought you said you were watching this room.”

“I don’t know, sir. I swear to God,
I don’t know
.”

Rainie didn’t look at any of them. She was staring into the bathroom at the mirror over the double-basin counter and the large words scrawled there:
Too Little, Too Late.

A lock of hair was taped beneath the red words. It was long, black, with just a hint of curl. Rainie didn’t need a lab report to guess its owner.

Beautiful Melissa Avalon, lying dead in a pool of hair.

“Too little, too late,” Rainie read aloud, her voice coming out shaky. She finally looked at the men in the room. “Would somebody, anybody, like to explain this to me?”

No one replied.

After another moment Sanders picked up his cell phone. He called the CSU.

“Hey,” he said shortly. “We got another crime scene.”