Midnight Fear (9 page)

A
fter examining the doll, Reid placed it carefully in an evidence bag. He could see the distress in Caitlyn’s eyes.

“I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have touched it.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll take it to the lab and see if we can get any prints.”

He had arrived at the Cahill home in Georgetown a short time after receiving Caitlyn’s call. Reid remembered the house from the warranted search he’d led during the Capital Killer investigation, although its once elegant interior now appeared stark and barren. Caitlyn had been waiting for him downstairs with a real estate agent who was listing the house. They’d left her in the dining room, finishing up paperwork.

Reid watched as Caitlyn paced the bedroom before taking a seat on the bed’s edge.

“Tell me about this man who’s been following you.”

“I saw him yesterday outside the Habersham Building, before I went into the board meeting. Then again this afternoon outside the house.” Caitlyn ran a hand
through her hair. “When I saw him from the window, I went downstairs. I was going outside after him, but Bliss was at the door. He slipped away.”

Reid rubbed his jaw. “Confronting him wouldn’t be smart, Caitlyn. Even on a busy street.”

“I don’t like being followed. And he didn’t look dangerous—”

“A person’s looks can be deceiving.”

“You mean like Joshua?” She gazed at him.

Reid didn’t look away. He thought of Cahill’s slight build. “Exactly like Joshua.”

He sat next to her. “Did this man try to approach you yesterday? When you were downtown?”

She shook her head. “Once he knew I’d seen him, he disappeared.”

“Why didn’t you mention him last night?”

“Because I wasn’t sure…I thought yesterday he was maybe somebody I knew, or that he had me confused with someone. I didn’t think too much of it until I saw him again today here.”

“Could you describe him to a sketch artist?”

“I think so.”

Caitlyn had already given him a basic physical description—tall and somewhat thin, with a receding blond hairline, approximately mid-to late-thirties.

“Are you okay?” Reid asked.

“The doll freaked me out.”

“That’s understandable.” He looked around the room. “But I’m also talking about being
here.
And about the house being sold.”

She placed her hands in her lap and released a soft sigh. “Selling it makes sense. My mother isn’t going to be able to come back here, and my life is elsewhere now. It’s painful, but I think letting go of this place could help me let go of…other things.”

Reid knew she was thinking of the life she’d once had and the family she could never get back. It felt odd sitting beside her in Joshua Cahill’s childhood bedroom. He reached for her hand in a gesture of support, his fingers briefly clasping hers until footsteps sounded farther down the hallway. Reid could tell by the heavy gait it was Mitch, whom he had called on his way over to alert him to what Caitlyn had found. He’d heard his voice earlier in the downstairs foyer, and Reid stood just before Mitch knocked on the door frame.

“It looks like someone gained entrance through a basement window,” he said, looking at Caitlyn. “The lock’s been jimmied—don’t you have a security system for this palace?”

“I’ve had estate appraisers in and out over the past several weeks,” she explained. “It’s been easier to leave the alarm off.”

“I’ll need the names of anyone who’s had access. We’ll also need to schedule a tech to come in and dust.” Walking farther into the room, Mitch picked up the evidence bag containing the doll. He raised an eyebrow. “Christ. Should we bring Ken in for questioning?”

“Where’s Morehouse?” Reid asked.

“Still at the Roosevelt. You coming?”

“Go ahead. I’ll call you later.”

Once Mitch had left the bedroom, Caitlyn turned to Reid. Her eyes were questioning. “Why would someone break in here, just to leave a doll?”

He’d already considered this. “Breaking into the house probably helped with the unsub’s fantasy of being Joshua—it made him feel closer. As far as the doll goes, he left it for shock effect. He knew the chances were good a family member would find it.”

“By
family member,
you mean me,” she clarified softly. “I’m really the only one left. I guess I should feel lucky it was a doll instead of a person.”

Reid didn’t respond, although he’d been thinking the same thing. Her hand pressed against her stomach, Caitlyn stood and went to stare blankly out the window. He didn’t like seeing her scared but maybe the doll had opened her eyes to reality. She had to start taking precautions. If Reid were on active duty right now, he’d be pushing for a watch on her. But at the same time, he also realized the chances of getting it at this point would be small. The FBI had been hit with its own share of budget cuts, and VCU resources were scarce. Until a more direct threat was made, getting any protection assigned to her would be next to impossible.

Reid had something else to tell her. Something she needed to hear from him. “They got an ID on the second victim, Caitlyn. The woman at Hains Point.”

She looked at him. “Who was she?”

“A tourist. Her name was Hannah Reece. She was in town with her fiancé. He was at a business meeting, so she went sightseeing alone. She never came back to
the Roosevelt Hotel where they were staying. Agents Tierney and Morehouse spent most of the day talking to the fiancé, as well as the hotel staff—”

“But they don’t have any leads.”

Reid shook his head. Like the first victim, the body was clean, no physical DNA evidence left behind to run through the database in hopes of finding a match. He walked to the window to stand beside Caitlyn. Below, he could see Mitch climbing into his government-issue Crown Victoria. It pulled from the curb and disappeared down the street.

“We should probably go, too,” Caitlyn said. As she picked up her purse from the bed, the cell phone inside it rang. Locating it, she flipped open its cover.

As soon as she answered, Reid saw the color drain from her face. She gripped the phone tightly.

“Joshua.” Her voice trembled. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you, Caity. You
are
still my sister, right?”

Caitlyn’s stomach twisted at her brother’s voice. In all this time, she hadn’t heard from him. Not once had he attempted to contact her. Her words were choked. “You haven’t wanted to since your arrest. What’s changed?”

“I miss you.” He sounded sincere. “I understand now you did what you had to…to help me.”

Caitlyn closed her eyes. She felt Reid’s presence beside her.

“I’m doing a lot better. The doctors and the meds are helping this time. I want you to come see me.”

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

“I know I can’t make up for what I did to those women. But God, I’m so sorry. I think about it every day. And I think about you.”

Her legs felt wobbly. Joshua was still talking, trying to convince her, when she relinquished the phone to Reid. His expression was stern.

“This is Agent Novak. If you try to make contact with Caitlyn again, I’ll see to it your phone privileges are revoked.” He closed the phone with a hard snap.

“He wants me to come see him,” she said, upset. “After all this time.”

“I don’t think you should.”

“He’s still my brother. He says he’s sorry for what he did—”

His hands gently grasping her upper arms, Reid forced her to look up into his face. His eyes were a steely gray. “Listen to me. No matter what he tells you, Joshua
hasn’t
changed. He has no remorse. I’ve talked to him. I don’t know what he wants with you, but it can’t be good. I don’t want you going to see him.”

Caitlyn nodded, but she couldn’t let go of the earnestness in Joshua’s voice.
He called me. My serial killer brother contacted me from prison, asking to make amends.

She wondered if there would ever be a day she would feel normal again.

D
espite Reid’s attempts to convince her otherwise, Caitlyn had returned to the Rambling Rose. He’d made it clear he didn’t like her being so isolated, but the absence of Manny Ruiz meant there were additional responsibilities she had to attend to at the stables and farm. Not to mention, she had to find someone to fill the now-vacant manager position.

She had been back a full day—a long one spent in session with a therapist who was helping plan a new element of the equine program, and then later leading a group of inner-city children along the winding horse trail. Beyond that, Rob Treadwell had stopped by the stables without Sophie. Asking for Caitlyn’s help in choosing a birthday present for his wife, he’d hung out in her office until she had run out of suggestions and been forced to mention how much work she had to do. By the time she had finished ordering supplies from the feed store, the late afternoon sun was fading. As Caitlyn reached the top of the long driveway to her house,
she slowed the car. Manny waited for her on the front porch. He appeared hesitant, his big hands nervously twisting the John Deere baseball cap he normally wore.

Reid had instructed her to call him if Manny returned, and yet Caitlyn’s gut told her to hear him out. Regardless of the prison record he’d kept hidden, Manny had been a model employee and an excellent manager. Didn’t she at least owe him an opportunity to say whatever was on his mind?

“Please don’t call the police, Caitlyn,” he urged, coming closer as she opened the BMW’s door. “I just want a chance to explain.”

“About why you lied on your job application?”

His sun-worn features creased as he twisted the cap again. “I’m sorry about that. I know I should’ve been up front, but I didn’t think you would hire me if you knew the truth.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“I know. And I’m not makin’ excuses—I
did
lie to you about my…background.” He dug the toe of his dust-covered boot into the grass at the edge of the lawn. His brown eyes were sad. “But I wasn’t lying about horses. I’ve been around ’em all my life. I grew up on a farm and I know how to make one work. We were getting things rolling out here, Caitlyn.”

“We were,” she agreed, feeling a twinge of melancholy for all they had accomplished. The wind blew her hair across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear. “Look, Manny. I still owe you for your last two weeks
of work. I can give you that now, as well as a little extra to help you get started somewhere else…”

Manny looked crestfallen but didn’t argue. Caitlyn went back to the car to retrieve her purse and the Rambling Rose checkbook, which she had brought home with her so she could work on paying bills after dinner. As Manny waited, she wrote out a check on the car’s hood.

“Have you replaced me yet?” he asked.

“No, Manny. I have a feeling that’s going to be hard to do.”

“Did the FBI tell you what I went to prison for?” He’d come a few steps closer as Caitlyn tore the check from the large blue binder. She realized that she should feel some trepidation, but Manny just didn’t provoke that reaction in her. She handed him the check.

“They said you kidnapped someone. And that you were also convicted of assault and battery.”

He peered at her unflinchingly. “I beat the hell out of my ex-wife’s boyfriend. I put him in the hospital—he was in critical condition for six days. I don’t regret it, either.”

The fierceness of his words surprised her, considering his usually soft-spoken nature. “What did he do?”

“He was hurting my six-year-old daughter, Maria. He broke her arm. My ex-wife covered for him, made up some story about Maria wrecking her bike. But I’d been seeing bruises on her for a while.” A shadow passed over his face, his jaw hardening. “The bastard was
hitting
her. But every time I asked questions, I got a load
of bull. So when she came to me with her arm in a cast, I went crazy. I caught up to the son of a bitch in a bar parking lot, and then I took Maria out of there. I don’t call it kidnapping if it’s your own child.”

“You didn’t have custody.”

“No,” he admitted.

“And you took her across the state line.” A federal offense, Caitlyn knew.

He frowned, deepening the lines in his face. “I took her across
three
of ’em. We’d still be running if the police hadn’t pulled us over for a busted taillight. I got into some trouble for forgin’ checks, too, but we were broke and I had to keep my little girl fed and safe.”

Empathy tugged at Caitlyn. Was she a fool to believe him? She hadn’t asked Reid for the details of Manny’s crimes, nor had he supplied them. Despite Manny’s lie of omission on his employment application, she still held her belief that he was an otherwise honest man—his story seemed too heartfelt to have been conjured up for her benefit. In addition, for more than a year he’d had full access to the Rambling Rose’s bank accounts and not a penny had been unaccounted for. Still, there had to have been a better way for him to help his daughter.

“Manny,” she asked. “Couldn’t you have gotten the police involved, or Child Protective Services?”

“I’m from a small town in South Texas,” he confided. “My ex-wife’s new boyfriend was the son of the town’s mayor. His family owned the biggest factory around. I tried to get custody, and I tried to go through the proper
channels. All it got me was fired from my job. I handled things the only other way I knew how.”

Caitlyn heard the raw frustration in his voice.

“I have one more question. Did you know my brother?”

He shook his head. “We never met, I swear. I knew who he was, but he was in maximum security. I was in genpop. I know it looks suspicious, considerin’ we were both at Springdale at the same time. But, Caitlyn, you have to know I would never hurt you.”

“Where’s Maria now?”

“Still with her mother, although the boyfriend’s been gone for some time.” Manny’s eyes saddened. “I sent Maria some letters after I got out of prison, but I never heard back. She’s not a little girl anymore. She’s thirteen. She’s probably embarrassed by her ex-con father.”

Gazing across the lawn toward the low, stacked-stone wall, Caitlyn surveyed the acreage that made up her property. With the loss of fall leaves, she could just make out the Rambling Rose stables in the distance, including the big red barn with its high-pitched roof, paddocks and equestrian rings. She could also see the now-barren fields that in the summer grew organic vegetables that were sold to area restaurants. Manny had been a big part of the success she had managed so far.

“Caitlyn, if you could find a way to forgive me, to overlook my past, I’d be forever grateful.” Manny’s voice was hoarse. He stared at the ground. “I don’t want to leave here.”

Caitlyn released a small sigh.

“I don’t want you to leave, either,” she admitted.

“Just try to relax, Mr. Novak. This will take about forty-five minutes.”

Reid lay on the conveyorlike table that moved him slowly into the core of the MRI machine. He’d had these screenings before; he knew the drill firsthand. And yet this time he felt a mild sense of panic as his head and shoulders were fed into the cavern’s maw.

He’d had a few more headaches—the one last night severe enough to increase his anxiety over the routine scan, his last before being given a clean bill of health. Reid closed his eyes, pushing away the encroaching claustrophobia. The machine sounded like the inside of an engine, its loud knocks and pings increasing his discomfort. He realized his hands were clenched into fists and he uncurled his fingers as he willed his shallow breathing to deepen.
This scan will be clean, just like the others. Relax.

Desperate for something to distract him from the curved roof of the MRI cylinder, Reid concentrated on Caitlyn and her situation. An image of her delicate features and wide, green eyes appeared in his mind.

Did she go down on you? Caitlyn’s got a real nice mouth.

Cahill’s provoking statements at the prison had struck a raw nerve. It also confirmed that he thought of Caitlyn as no different from any of the women he had tortured and destroyed. What he wanted with her
exactly, Reid wasn’t sure. But Cahill was a poison Caitlyn didn’t need in her life. He’d damaged her enough already.

“Mr. Novak?”

His thoughts faded, his focus returning to the confined space of his metal coffin.

“I said,
doing okay, Mr. Novak?
” the female technician standing next to the machine repeated loudly enough to be heard above the mechanical roar. He could see only the lower portion of her floral-print smock through the open end of the cylinder.

Reid worked to find his voice. “I’m fine.”

He wondered if she could even hear him.

Less than an hour later, he walked out of the MRI outpatient center. He’d been told the results would have to be interpreted by a neurologist, and that he would have them within a few business days. He had tried to get a read from the technician, but her face had been carefully composed, even blank.

Her eyes had avoided his, however, and that worried him.