Until Dark (16 page)

“You haven’t brought a girl home in
eight years
?” She almost choked. “And she was your fiancée?”

“That was the only time I was engaged.” He leaned forward and confided, “I haven’t had a lot of other long-term relationships.”

“No wonder they all think this is serious. But I’d hardly call our relationship a long-term one.”

“I’m working on that.” He cupped her face in his hand. “When you consider what’s been happening these past two weeks, there hasn’t been much time left over for romance. Not if one wants to do it right, that is.”

“Perhaps you’d like to share that thought with some of your relatives,” she said, her voice softening, wondering what Adam’s idea of doing a romance right might be. “They’re all under the impression that a wedding is in the near future.”

“I guess there could have been a bit of embellishment between the time I told my grandmother I was bringing you home and the time it passed from her to one aunt, then to another, to my cousins . . .”

“Are you aware that your aunt Jackie has already planned our wedding—Church of the Savior, by the way—as well as the reception, which we’re having at the Union Club? That would be the old, original Union Club, not the new one on Tenth Street.”

Adam laughed at Kendra’s accurate mimic of his aunt.

“She gave me a list of which florist to use, the name of the best caterer, and which of your cousins I should consider for the bridal party. Your cousin Ellie should be included because she’s twenty-six and quote, without apparent prospects and maybe Adam has a friend in the FBI, end quote.”

“I’m really sorry.” Adam put an arm around Kendra. “It never occurred to me that things would get so out of hand.”

With his index finger, he slid a long curl back behind her ear, where it had earlier been.

“You’ve been a really good sport. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“How?”

“What would it take?”

Before she could respond, his cell phone began to ring. Frowning, he reached for it, answering with a curt, “Stark.”

Adam moved away from her, almost imperceptibly, the humor now gone from his face. In its place was what Kendra had come to think of as his FBI face. The face he wore when something serious needed his attention.

“We’re on our way . . . a few hours. Where do you want us to meet them?” He leaned back against the porch railing. “Tell them we’ll be there.”

He slid the phone back into his jacket and took her by the hand.

“That was Miranda Cahill.”

“There’s been another one,” she said flatly.

Adam shook his head.

“Not another body, but some new information.”

“What information? Information about the killer?”

“She needs for us to get back to the Lancaster area as soon as possible for a meeting.” He deftly avoided her question.

“She wants me to come, too?”

“Yes.”

“But my sketches are done.” She paused in the doorway. “Why would she want me at this meeting?”

“I guess we’ll find out when we get down there.” He held the door for her. “But right now we have apologies to make and miles to go.”

Chapter
Fourteen

Kendra suspected that Adam knew exactly why they’d been called back, why someone felt the meeting couldn’t wait until the morning. Her suspicions were confirmed when, after arriving at the state police barracks, Lieutenant Barker greeted her with, “As Miranda told Adam on the phone, we’re hoping you can shed some light on this situation.”

“Ahhh, Lieutenant, I haven’t discussed the phone conversation with Kendra.”

She turned and looked up at Adam, frowning. “You knew what this meeting was about, and yet we drove all the way down here without you saying a word about it?”

“I thought it would be better if everyone was here to go over everything that’s come up.”

“What has ‘come up’?” Kendra asked pointedly. “And what does it have to do with me?”

“I think I should probably start this thing rolling,” Miranda Cahill said almost apologetically as she came into the room. “And please don’t be angry with Adam. I asked him not to tell you what we’d found. I thought it would be better to show you.”

Miranda opened her brown leather briefcase and nodded to Lieutenant Barker. “If you’d get the door, please? We can’t be sure who might be sneaking around, trying to get information.”

“Why all the secrecy?” Kendra did little to hide her annoyance.

“Kendra, if you’d sit here, next to me.” Miranda gestured to the chair to her left. “There are some things I need to show you.”

With some reluctance, Kendra sat down.

“Adam told me about the crosses that the killer began to put around the necks of his victims after you appeared on television at a news conference wearing a gold cross quite visibly around your neck.” Miranda spread photographs across the conference table. “Here’s a still shot of you, Kendra, from that video. And shots of his next victims. See the gold crosses?”

“Yes, I saw them before, and Adam and I discussed the fact that possibly the killer had started doing that to get my attention, though I can’t imagine why he—”

“Oh, but he was trying to get your attention long before that,” Miranda stopped her.

“What are you talking about?” Kendra’s voice dropped slightly and her eyes narrowed.

From the briefcase, Miranda lifted a second folder.

“Adam asked me to go back over those first murders to see if there was anything we hadn’t noticed previously. Anything at all, but particularly, anything that the women might have had in common, something they’d been wearing or had in their possession that was identical to the others. And what we found,” Miranda said as she removed a series of photographs from the folder, placing them upon the table as if dealing cards, “what we found, was that all of the women had little tiny plastic tortoiseshell hair clips.”

Kendra leaned forward to look at the photos that were being spread before her.

“Now, it wasn’t apparent at first, because the coroner had removed the clips from Amy Tilden’s hair and placed them in the evidence box. Kathleen Garvey and Karen Meyer, however, still had the clips in place. They’re so tiny, so seemingly unimportant, that they really didn’t make much of an impression on anyone. At least, not until we started looking for them.”

Kendra placed a finger on the nearest photograph, a close up of blond hair pulled back and held with a tiny, brown plastic clip in the shape of a butterfly and asked, “This is the clip?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone wears those little clips,” Kendra frowned. “You can buy them at any drugstore, a dollar or so for a bunch of them. They come in clear and lots of different colors besides tortoiseshell. I have some myself. . . .”

“We know.” Miranda placed another picture on the table.

In this photo, an unsmiling Kendra’s head was tilted slightly to one side. Small clips held her hair back from her face. The next picture was a close-up of the small faux shell butterflies.

“Where did you get this?” Kendra stood up suddenly. “That picture is over two years old. It was taken at a press conference in Seattle after the police caught a bank robbery suspect I’d sketched.”

“It ran in one of the Seattle newspapers. I found it on the Internet,” Miranda said. “Right now, we’re checking with the Seattle police and NCIC to see if there are any unsolved murders where the victims had similar hair clips.”

“You think he did this . . . that he . . . the killer . . . put these clips in their hair? You think he’s been watching me for two years?” Kendra whispered, disbelieving. “Why would anyone be watching me?”

Miranda looked up at Adam, who nodded slowly.

“Lieutenant Barker?” Miranda drew him into the conversation.

The state trooper approached the table, a small brown evidence envelope in his hand. He unhooked the clasp designed to keep the contents from spilling out and passed the envelope to Kendra.

Something in the envelope was round and heavy, and she shook it to slide the object onto the table. She stared dumbly at the shiny silver watch with the leather strap that landed on the wooded surface with a faint
clunk
.

“Kendra,” Lieutenant Barker said, “do you recognize that watch?”

Her hand reached for it, then she paused, looking up at Barker.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It was already dusted for prints. There weren’t any.”

Kendra picked up the watch and studied it warily. On the face was the raised impression of a Gothic-style building, around which letters spelled out
PRINCETON ACADEMY
. Her hands began to shake as she turned it over to read the initials engraved on the back.

IJS

“I don’t understand.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I don’t understand.”

“We checked with the school,” Miranda said gently. “The only student who ever attended Princeton Academy who had those initials was—”

“My brother, Ian.” Kendra finished the sentence. “Ian Jefferson Smith. Where did you find this?”

“You recognize this watch as having belonged to your brother?” Barker asked.

“Yes, yes. My mother bought it for him. Ian was so pleased.” She looked across the table at Adam. “As I told you, Ian had been in and out of trouble for about a year. That last summer, he seemed to turn the corner. Stopped sneaking out, never missed a curfew. So my mother gave him the watch and a matching key chain for his birthday.”

“What were the keys for, do you know?”

“There was one for the front door of the house in Princeton,” she fingered the watch, remembering, “and one for the back door there, too.”

“Only those two?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Do you know where the key chain is now?”

“I’m sure it’s in a box someplace. My mother kept that after Ian died. It had represented something to her. It had been an act of faith on her part, giving him his own keys after all he’d done that year.”

“Do you know where it is now?”

“Yes. It’s still in the safe-deposit box where I put it, along with her jewelry after she . . . after she died.” She turned to Adam. “It’s still running. The watch is still running.”

“I noticed. Kendra,” Adam asked, “do you remember where and when you last saw this watch?”

“Yes, I do. It was on his wrist when he boarded the plane for Tucson. It was the last time I ever saw him.” Kendra watched the second hand tick around the face of the watch.

“Are you positive?” Adam asked.

“Absolutely positive. One hundred percent positive.”

“And you’re certain it was this watch, not another one.” Barker leaned on the back of the chair at the head of the table.

“It was the only one he had. Now, is someone going to tell me where it was found?”

“It was under the body of the last victim,” Adam told her.

“What?”

“It was underneath Leslie Miller’s body,” Adam repeated.

“Well, that makes no sense.” Kendra frowned. “How could that possibly be? Ian had taken it with him to Arizona. . . .”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Lieutenant Barker said. “We were hoping you’d have some ideas about that.”

“Not a clue.” She shook her head, not comprehending what she’d heard. “I don’t have a clue, unless it was stolen. But he almost never took it off, and when he did, he would put it in his pocket, or in his backpack.”

“Kendra, we need to talk about what you remember about your brother’s disappearance.” Adam took both of her hands in his own. “We need to walk through the whole thing, start to finish, whatever your personal recollections are.”

“Of course.” She nodded, her head pounding unmercifully. She’d heard every word that had been spoken since coming into the conference room that evening, but somehow she felt as if she couldn’t connect the dots.

“Lieutenant Barker,” Adam turned to the trooper, “if you wouldn’t mind, I think we’ll take Kendra back to the hotel so she can get something to eat before we start this process.”

“Sure,” Barker replied. As if he’d expected anything more from the FBI. After all, since when had they been willing to share?

Adam and a still-dazed Kendra met Miranda in the lobby of the hotel where she’d been staying for the past several days. Anticipating that they’d be needing a place to meet and discuss their strategy in private, Miranda had reserved a suite for Adam that had a well-appointed sitting room. She handed him the key as the three got into the elevator.

“I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled,” Miranda told Kendra. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get you a room to yourself. There’s a quilters’ convention in Lancaster this weekend, so I was lucky to get anything for Adam, and the only reason why he merited a suite was because it was a last-minute cancellation. I hope you don’t mind bunking in with me tonight, Kendra.”

“No, no, of course not. It’s generous of you to offer to share your room.”

“We’ll be joining you in a minute,” Miranda told Adam when the elevator stopped at the sixth floor. “I just want to give Kendra a minute or two to get settled. Your room is one floor up. Why not order dinner from room service for all of us, and give the kitchen a head start. It’s almost eleven o’clock. I can’t speak for either of you, but I’m famished.”

“Will do. What do you want me to order for you?” Adam put his hand out to stop the door from closing.

“Anything is fine,” Kendra said absently.

“Chicken-something for me.” Miranda stepped off the elevator.

The two women walked the short distance to the room, and Miranda swiped the key in the lock to open the door. She held it open to allow Kendra to pass, then let the door close behind her. The room was spacious, with two double beds separated by a small table upon which sat a lamp, a telephone, a menu from the hotel restaurant, and a copy of the current issue of
Lancaster County Today
magazine.

Kendra paused and turned to Miranda.

“Which bed?”

“I’ve been sleeping in this one.” Miranda pointed to the one closest to the door.

Kendra swung her bag onto the bottom of the other bed and unzipped it.

“I think I need to freshen up,” she said as she took a small plastic case out of the travel bag.

“Go ahead,” Miranda smiled gently, “take all the time you need. You must be tired after all the driving you two did today.”

Kendra went into the bathroom and turned on the light and the fan, then sat on the edge of the tub and covered her face with her hands, which had begun to shake the moment she had closed the bathroom door behind her, and tried to make sense of what was happening.

How could Ian’s watch, lost with him almost ten years ago, have turned up here, in Pennsylvania, beneath the body of a dead woman?

The only plausible explanation was that the person who dropped the watch had somehow been in contact with Ian—before or after his death. He would have had it with him when he left the ranch the morning they left for their camping trip, wouldn’t he? He’d taken everything else in his backpack, surely he would have taken the watch he treasured, wouldn’t he?

Which meant that maybe someone knew where the remains of Ian and Zach lay hidden. But how, unless they stumbled across the bodies? Search teams had gone days without finding them. The only living soul that Kendra was certain knew where the bodies had been left was Edward Paul Webster, who was currently serving two life sentences for the murders of Ian Smith and Zachary Smith. Webster, an admitted pedophile, had adamantly denied ever having seen either of the boys, and all throughout the trial, had sworn his innocence, had sworn that someone else was responsible for their disappearance. Could Webster have taken the watch and passed it off to someone else, someone who was now on a killing spree of his own?

Or could Webster have been telling the truth all along?

* * *

“Miranda, here’s your salad.” Adam lifted the cover from the large bowl of greens topped with slices of grilled chicken and offered Miranda a seat at the round table near the windows. “And Kendra, for you, and against my better judgment, I might add . . .”

With a flourish, he lifted a second lid.

“A hamburger, rare. Onion rings. Fries.”

“Lots of fat, lots of fried. Just the way I like it.” She tried to smile but failed. “You’re entirely too good to me.”

“I do my best.”

The trio made small talk while they ate, tension hanging over them like a storm cloud. They all knew it was about to burst, but ignored it for as long as they could.

When they’d finished eating, Adam leaned back in his chair, and asked Kendra, “Have you had any thoughts about who might have had access to your brother’s watch?”

“Ian must have dropped it somewhere, maybe on the trail. And someone found it.”

“That watch is sterling silver. It would have tarnished if it had been laying out in the elements for any length of time. It was in perfect condition. And it’s still running, which means that not only has it been taken care of all these years, but someone’s been changing the batteries.”

“Maybe someone found it shortly after Ian lost it.” Miranda poured a cup of coffee from the large carafe and offered it to Kendra, who accepted gratefully. This night promised to be a long one.

“That camping area was swarming with law enforcement and search parties for a week after the boys disappeared,” Adam reminded her. “I find it hard to believe that someone would find something clearly marked with the initials of one of the missing boys but would fail to turn it over to the police or the FBI.”