Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (20 page)

She gave him what he wanted, simple cause and effect. “Detective Fagan paid me a visit today. He came to the clinic at lunchtime.”

“Aw, for god’s sake. I wish the bastard would go back where he belongs. What did he want? What did he say to you?”

“He wanted to be sure I knew he’s been digging around in my past. My family’s background.” Rachel pushed the stacked plates aside, clasped her hands on the tabletop. The words shuddered out of her. “He knows everything, Tom. He said he’d keep it to himself, but I don’t have any reason to trust him. Right now, I don’t know who scares me more, Fagan or the guy who’s stalking my sister.”

Chapter Eighteen

It was too damned early in the morning to have to deal with this crap. Tom grabbed a couple of notebooks and fresh pens from his desk drawer and slammed the drawer shut. “You stay the hell away from Rachel,” he told Fagan. “You crossed the line, and I won’t let you do it again.”

“Look,” Fagan said, verging on exasperation, “I thought I was doing the right—”

“She doesn’t want you deciding what’s right for her. She feels like you were threatening her.”

“Threatening her?” Fagan laughed. “Look, I’m sorry, but that’s paranoid. I never implied—”

“Don’t call her paranoid.” Tom pointed a finger at Fagan. “Stay away from her. Don’t go to the animal hospital, don’t even speak to her if you pass her on the street, and you’d sure as hell better stay away from our house.”

“Okay, okay, I hear you..” A red flush of anger crept up Fagan’s face. His hands dove into his pants pockets, and he started jingling his keys.

“Do you have to—” Tom broke off, told himself to cool down. “I’m going to Fairfax County today. I plan to talk to everybody I can who knew Shelley Beecher. I’ve notified your chief’s office that out-of-county law enforcement will be working in his jurisdiction.”

“We’ll go together,” Fagan said. “I’ll take you around—”

“I’d rather work on my own. Whether you go back home or not is up to you. Just stay away from Rachel.”

“I’m going to collect my stuff, then I’ll be right behind you. I’ll see you in Fairfax County, Captain.”

***

On the long drive northeast, Tom tried to collect his thoughts, organize the questions he wanted to ask Shelley’s friends and her coworkers at the Virginia Innocence Project, but his mind slid back to Rachel and the situation he was leaving behind in Mason County. He’d found no fingerprints on the frames in Rachel’s office except those of Rachel herself, but that proved nothing. Anybody who was savvy enough to get into a locked building without leaving evidence of a break-in wouldn’t handle objects with his bare hands.

He passed the turnoff to Roanoke and drove through rolling farmland toward
Lexington, feeling more uneasy with every mile he put between himself and home.

Tom understood why the Montgomery County Police hadn’t pursued Michelle’s complaint after they found no hard evidence. But he knew Rachel wouldn’t concoct a story like this. If she believed someone entered the animal hospital while it was closed for the weekend, that was good enough for him. Last night she’d demonstrated, using pictures in their bedroom, the way the frames in her office had been repositioned. It couldn’t have happened accidentally, and the cleaning woman wouldn’t have done it.

The report from Michelle’s phone provider clinched it: the stalker had followed her to Mason County. He’d been in Rachel’s office once and might do it again. He could show up at the house in search of Michelle.
So why the hell am I on my way to Northern Virginia?

When he approached Interstate 81, Tom almost swung off the road to turn around. But he crossed into the merge lane. He had to do his job. Rachel understood that. The longer Shelley’s murder went unsolved, the more damage would be done to all the families affected by her attempt to free Vance Lankford. If Tom could prove her death had no connection to her work for the innocence project, that would be the best outcome for everybody concerned.

The drive to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. took four hours, and Tom was ready for lunch when he exited the interstate and entered Fairfax City. Navigating the narrow, traffic-clogged streets, he passed several restaurants in converted Federal-style townhouses but didn’t see anywhere to park. The small city, at the heart of a huge, sprawling urbanized county along the Potomac River, dated back to the early 1800s, and a lot of the buildings looked as if they’d been around that long.

Deciding to ignore his hunger pangs for a while, Tom consulted a map while he was stopped at a red light, then headed over to the innocence project office, just outside the western edge of the city limits. It occupied a storefront in a strip mall, and he grabbed a parking space reserved for patrons. He pushed the swinging door. Locked. He peered inside and saw no one. A long counter divided the outer room in half, a row of empty plastic chairs lined one wall.

No bell, no knocker. Tom rapped his knuckles on the glass door. After a moment, an inner door behind the counter opened a few inches and a young woman stuck her head out, angling her neck so her blond hair fell in a smooth sheet.

Tom raised a hand in greeting and waited for her to look him over, take in his uniform. He’d talked to her on the phone and told her to expect him.

She walked around the counter to let him in. From the sound of it, the door had a slide bolt and a chain lock as well as the deadbolt.

“Come in, Captain Bridger. I’m Morgan St. James.” She glanced around outside before shutting the door and relocking it. A perfect example of a modern professional woman, she wore a sexless black suit that hid a slender figure but enough makeup to bring out the striking contours of her face, its high cheekbones and wide mouth.

He took the hand she offered. She had a firm handshake.

“Come on back.” She led him around the counter and through the doorway into a large back room dominated by a conference table with a dozen chairs parked around it. File boxes and stacks of bulging file folders sat on the table. “Detective Fagan called about an hour ago and asked if I’d heard from you.”

“Oh?” Tom moved around the room. Cork bulletin board covered the top half of the rear wall, and along its length the stunned eyes of a dozen prisoners stared back from mug shots. Grouped under each prisoner’s photo were blown-up snapshots of men, women, and children Tom assumed to be victims. He spotted Vance Lankford’s mug shot, and Brian Hadley smiling from a photo underneath. “Did Fagan tell you not to answer my questions?”

He glanced at the woman in time to see one corner of her mouth lift in a humorless smile. “Not in so many words, but I got the message. He doesn’t control who I speak to. I want justice for Shelley. I only wish I could help more.” She shook her head, her eyes drifting away from Tom. “It’s dreadful what happened. Horrible. I kept hoping she would turn up alive somewhere.”

Tom stepped over to study Vance Lankford’s picture, which had been taken when he was arrested and booked in Mason County. With his lean, angular face and thick brown hair, he was just as good-looking in his own way as the boyish Brian Hadley, but in his mug shot he looked like he’d been slammed up against a reality he couldn’t quite grasp. Tom saw only bewilderment and fear in his deep-set eyes.

He told himself he was reading too much into a photo that captured one second of the man’s life. Vance had probably been stunned by his own behavior, disgusted that he’d been stupid enough to kill Brian in a rage, careless enough to get caught.

Tom turned away from the pictures to find Morgan St. James watching him with catlike intensity.

“I’m sure that when you look at him you see a guilty man,” she said. “But Shelley believed very strongly that he was innocent. She put in a phenomenal amount of work on his case interviewing everyone involved and going over the evidence presented at the trial.”

“Did she go see Lankford in prison?”

“Of course, several times. That was the first thing she did, when we were evaluating whether to take on the case. That initial meeting with him was what sold her on his innocence.”

“You mean she liked the guy and thought he sounded credible,” Tom said.

Morgan’s patient little smile told him she was used to this kind of skepticism. “Don’t you ever rely on gut instincts in your work, Captain?”

“Sure, but I’m a professional with more than ten years on the job. Shelley was a first-year law student.”

“A lot of our volunteers are young and idealistic. If they believe in something strongly enough, we allow them to pursue it. Passion and a fresh perspective can lead to breakthroughs. Shelley was serious about the work, and she seemed to be making some progress. I was willing to let her work on it as long as she needed to.”

“She was making progress in what way?” Tom asked. “Did she tell you she suspected somebody specific of killing Hadley?”

“No, she didn’t. But she did say that she had talked to a woman who might have information that would help Vance Lankford. She wasn’t even sure what the information might consist of. She was planning to continue talking to the woman until she could persuade her to tell what she knew. Before you ask, no, she didn’t tell me the woman’s name.”

“Is that normal,” Tom asked, “for your volunteers to keep you in the dark the way Shelley did?”

“No, it isn’t.” Morgan sighed. “And you have no idea how I’ve beaten myself up for not insisting that she tell me absolutely everything.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one having an attack of hindsight where Shelley’s concerned.” Tom gestured toward the door. “Would you show me where her car was parked the night she disappeared?”

Morgan led him outside and paused to lock the office door before they moved away from it. As they passed a hair salon, a pawnbroker, and a computer repair shop, Tom checked the positions of security cameras. He spotted one at each end of the strip. “Are those the only cameras?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Morgan said. “The businesses are concerned about robberies. They don’t care what happens in the lot. This is where Shelley was parked.”

They stopped at a parking spot along one edge of the lot. At the moment a blue Honda occupied it. Traffic streamed past on the street.

“Is it busy like this at night, around the time Shelley went missing?”

“No, unfortunately. It’s fairly quiet here at night. When she arrived, the lot was busy, which is probably why she parked over here. By the time she left, all the shops were closed and rush hour was over.” A light breeze blew Morgan’s hair across her face and she pushed it back behind her ear. “We’ve offered a reward to anybody who might have seen something, but the only people we’ve heard from are the usual head cases.”

“Are you going to keep working on the case without Shelley?”

Morgan lifted her chin. “Absolutely, unless we hit a wall and can’t find any reason to pursue it further.”

“Do you believe she was murdered because she was trying to help Lankford?”

“It’s hard not to believe there’s a connection.” Her green eyes glinted with sudden anger. “We’re used to people trying to put roadblocks in our path, but no one’s ever resorted to murder before.”

“Aren’t you afraid the person who killed Shelley might come after you if you continue the investigation?”

“That’s why I keep the door bolted, Captain.”

“Do you have anything of Shelley’s, any of her notes on the case, anything that points toward somebody she was investigating?”

Morgan sighed. “All we have are the public documents, the trial transcript and so on. Shelley held on to her documentation. Every bit of evidence she gathered, every piece of paper, every computer file, vanished when she did.”

Chapter Nineteen

Something else had happened. Michelle waited, wide-eyed and rigid, by the front desk when Rachel walked her client and the woman’s dog out. Rachel smiled through her goodbyes to owner and pet, then grabbed Michelle by the elbow and steered her toward the office. “What’s wrong?”

“Another e-mail.” In Rachel’s office, Michelle stood away from the desk, her arms folded, gaze fixed on the laptop screen. “It’s an instant message. It just popped up.”

All Rachel saw was a screensaver, a constant swirl of bright colored lines. Dreading what might appear, she tapped the navigation pad. The screensaver faded, two lines of type came up.

The cops can’t help you. You can’t get away from me.

Rachel sighed. “Call Dennis Murray and let him know about this.”

“What good will that do? He won’t be able to tell where it came from.”

True enough. Somebody using a free e-mail account from a gigantic international server could remain unidentifiable and untraceable.

“He might be out there watching me right now.” Michelle’s gaze flicked to the window and the street beyond. She shifted a couple of feet sideways, putting the wall between herself and anyone looking in. “I wish we didn’t have to be alone in the house tonight.”

“We won’t be,” Rachel said, trying to sound reassuring although she knew she would feel vulnerable as long as Tom was absent. “Brandon Connolly will stay all night if necessary. Nothing’s going to happen.”

Michelle nodded too many times. “I’m trying to hold it together. It’s not easy.”