Run (8 page)

I trusted him. Instead of getting up and walking away
, I pulled out my files and started going over my suspects. I gave him a list of who I was looking at. I wanted his input. I didn’t want to be alone in this whole thing anymore. I wanted his help.

He seemed reluctant to give any opinions. He was not happy with the suspect list. All the same
, he looked them over. He reviewed my guidelines. He asked what led me to my conclusions. After 45 minutes plus of reviewing the case and suspects, he asked if he could have a copy. I guess part of me must have been planning on this all along because I had a flash drive in my bag with a copy of everything -- a copy of all my research, all my suspects, everything.

When I reached down to get the flash drive out of my bag
, the scarf I had carefully wrapped around my neck slipped aside. When I dressed before coming down here, I had been careful to cover the remains of the attack. I don’t know why I felt the need to cover everything up. I think I wanted to be strong or I wanted to appear strong, and somehow the idea that I had been attacked was shameful. Somehow I thought it made me weak.

I didn’t realize that he had seen the bruise along my neck until I handed him the flash drive. Instead of grabbing the flash drive
, he grasped my wrist. I started and tried to pull away.

“
It’s okay; it’s okay Char. I just want to see.” He was talking to me like I was a scared animal. Easily startled. Maybe I was.

He
turned my hand over and ran his fingers over the scratches on my palm. I couldn’t help but flinch away from his touch. It was too much. I had been alone and scared. Now this small piece of gentleness was going to make me break down.

“Shhh,
it’s okay.”

He reached slowly across the table giving me time to move away
, and gently pulled the scarf aside. The bruise across my neck from where he had tried to choke me was the worst. It was slowly fading, but the yellow-green of the healing bruise was enough to make me cringe. Watching him look at the evidence of my attack made a strange uncertainty twist through my stomach.

“What happened?”

I told him the whole story, every part of it. I told him about coming back from the museum, and about the attack. I told him about seeing the rock on the ground and biting his arm. I told him about getting away and my panicked flight, about sleeping in my car and getting motel rooms with made up names.

He listened and asked questions
, asked if it was okay, and took some notes. I think for the first time he really believed me. For the first time, he was fully on my side. I decided to trust him completely. I decided to stop defending myself, to stop hiding. From this point forward, I would trust Agent Moore.

_______

We sat at the table for 4 hours. We had narrowed the suspect list to four. Jack planned to look into the files of the FBI agents, and try to determine their location during times when we knew the killer was travelling.

“How can I get in touch with you?”

The ultimate test of faith. If I gave him my throwaway phone number, he would be able to track me. (At least I think he could. I am not always sure of the difference between what is real on television and what is you know, real, real. Especially with my current level of paranoia). I was trusting him with my research, with the information I had found so far. I was trusting him not to tell others that he had seen me, and that I was looking for the killer. So really this was just one more way for me to get help, right?

“My number is 856-555-
9341. Why don’t we plan to call at a specific time?” I figured I could always leave the phone off until the time we planned to call.

We made plans to touch base
the next morning at 10:30. We would each work on our research and then figure out what to do from there.

______

I drove away from the museum feeling lighter than I had in weeks. I needed to get back to the motel and pick up Kitty and Max. I was feeling better and more settled than I had since this whole thing began. I was going to get out of this.

By 9
:00 I had completed my nightly ritual and was in bed. I planned to get up early again the next day and be on the move before sunrise. I had a lot to do. Plus, now that I had an ally things were looking up.

Chapter 12
: April 4, 5:00 am– April 5, 3:23am

That morning I was up by 5
:00 and ready to go out the door by 6:00. I did a last check of the room and then put Kitty in her makeshift carrier (once in the car I would let her out to roam) and Max on his leash. With bags in hand, I left the motel room and headed toward my car. I planned to load the car and then drop the room key in the available box.

I was a woman on a mission. I was going to beat him. I had help, but even more than the help I wasn’t running. I wouldn’t run.

Once settled in the car, I decided to use the motel wireless before leaving. I wanted to have a solid plan for the day, and I figured a quick check of my e-mail to see if I had heard back from Lawrence Pheares would help me plan. I checked the e-mail I had created for Lorean Associates. Nothing back from Mr. Pheares. I checked my personal e-mail. I admit I was hoping maybe a friend had sent me some ridiculous e-mail with cats or something. I could use a good laugh. Instead I had another e-mail from [email protected]. I stared at it for a minute frozen. I was torn between wanting to just delete it and having to know what it said. Finally, I watched almost in slow motion as the cursor moved to open the e-mail. It read, “Hi there smart girl, did you enjoy your stay at the Court Motel?” I looked from the e-mail to the neon lit motel sign declaring that I had spent the night at the Court Motel, the r in Court blinking erratically.

When fear takes over
, reality takes a back seat. Time flashes by, with each moment separate and isolated like a picture. I had felt fear so much in the past few days it had become my new normal. I had settled into it. This morning, this moment was different. This morning I made a choice, conscious and thought out. I would not be afraid. If I was afraid, he won. He was taunting me, tormenting me. I wouldn’t let him win. For me and for my girls, I wouldn’t let him win.

I started my car
, rested my head on the steering wheel, and focused on breathing. I felt like I was in a cycle of highs and lows -- feeling great, sensing victory, and then realizing that a monster was stalking me. At times it was overwhelming. My choices had led me here, but I felt like he was circling ever closer like however close I got to him he crept that much closer to me.

Closing in but not here yet.

Focus Char … keep moving … keep working
.

Three deep breaths later and I star
ted the car. I needed to find a place to work for the day with a wireless connection. I had work to do.

_____

After driving for a good hour, I settled into another suburban neighborhood. I made sure my car was pulled back and under trees where it was unlikely to be spotted by pedestrians or drivers passing by.

I climbed into the back of my SUV and set up a mini office. I leaned the whiteboard against the back seat and pulled my files and pictures out. In half an hour I had
everything out. Now I just needed to figure out what to do next. On TV it looks so easy. The protagonists were able to limit their suspect list easily and they always stumbled across some key piece of evidence that took them straight to the killer. I felt like I had done pretty well getting down to four suspects, but now I had no idea what to do next. I didn’t know how I could further limit the list. I didn’t know how I could get any further information. I suppose I could have waited to see what Jack would find, but that didn’t really sit well with me. This was personal. This was about him and me. Jack would help, had helped, but this was something that I needed to do. Something I needed to work out.

I just needed to figure out another avenue to take
; another way to look at the case. Emily’s picture stared up at me. It probably sounds crazy, but it seemed like she was talking to me. All along I felt like she was leading me. Pushing me. Maybe that was my problem. I spent all this time looking at suspects, maybe I needed to look at the victims.

______

With my girls laid out before me I tried to start myself back at zero. I looked at what was similar. I looked at what was different. I looked for something. I had read a book once by a profiler where he talked about getting inside the mind of the killer. He said killers were predators stalking their prey. He said they had ways to identify their victims. He said that looking at the victims told investigators something about the predator.

By looking at my girls, at this killer
’s victims, I had already figured he was 45-55 years old, professional, employed in law enforcement, and travelled a lot. After reviewing each case for something different or unique, the only case that jumped out was the 1984 murders of Leslie French and Georgia Layeen. This was the only case when two girls were targeted and killed together. Taking two girls seemed like it would be much more difficult than one. What was it about these girls that led the killer to break his pattern and take two girls at the same time?

I put all my other files away and focused on Leslie French and
Georgia Layeen. I needed to find out more about these two girls. I needed to figure out what made them different.

______

I took a break from my research for my call to Jack. I decided to call while driving. Not the safest choice, but harder to track, or at least I thought I would be harder to track if I was moving. I was mostly making decisions based on knowledge gained from television and movies, so I didn’t really know how accurate my information was. It was better than nothing though, and at least it helped me feel like I was doing something.

The conversation with Jack was brief since he had not
been able to do much on our case yesterday. He did have some inquiries out and said he would get back to me later today when he had some information. It sounded like things were pretty crazy for him. I let him know I was looking at the 1984 murders to see if I could figure out why they were different.

We said our goodbyes and made plans to touch base later in the day.

_______

I found another unprotect
ed Wi-Fi, this time at a corner coffee shop. For the first time, my research was relatively easy. I found answers almost immediately. The family of Leslie French had set up a website in her memory. The website had a brief biography as well as information about her death, and information from the police report. I felt like I was moving faster than I ever had before. The website had a small section on Georgia Layeen, but most of the information focused on Leslie.

That afternoon I drove to a parking lot with a lot of traffic where I would be able to go unnoticed. I took a little break to walk
Max and Kitty. After taking care of my babies I sat in my car again. Bertha was becoming a bit of a mobile office.

I needed to find something different or something similar about these girls in order to figure out
why the killer took both of them at the same time. The girls’ families had been vacationing together. That night, Leslie and Georgia were up on the boardwalk. Their families expected them home by 10:00. According to the website, they didn’t start to get worried until midnight. The families called the police and organized a search of the area. They walked the boardwalk and asked everyone they could about the two girls. The police didn’t declare them missing until the next day. By that time, the families had already talked to store keepers and others on the boardwalk. They discovered that the girls had been seen talking to a “college-aged” boy. He was wearing a baseball cap and had his back to the store so the clerk wasn’t able to give any further information. A month later Leslie’s body was found. The body of Georgia was never found. Police found her sweatshirt with her blood on it in a warehouse in Atlantic City. The conclusion was that her body had been disposed of some other way, burned or buried.

It looked like Georgia had been an unintended victim while Leslie was the focus.

Both girls were 15, dark haired, and small. That however is where their similarities ended. Leslie was outgoing, involved in sports, popular, and a straight “A” student. Georgia, on the other hand, was shy, bookish, uninvolved in school and activities; by all accounts Georgia was smart, but she did not do well in school. Leslie was beautiful, with pretty long hair, and classic features. Georgia was awkward, with glasses, bad hair, and acne. It was hard to imagine that the two girls were friends, but the girls had grown up together. Their families were close.

It looked like Georgia was not the target, but a victim of opportunity.
So what was different? Why didn’t he wait until Leslie was alone? Why didn’t he kill Georgia right away if she wasn’t his intended target? Instead, he kept her alive for over a month. Nothing about it made sense. Despite all of the information I now had, I still felt like I had more questions than answers.

I pulled out the other cases. Maybe there was something
in one of them that would give me more information. I felt like there was something I was missing. There was something about the Leslie and Georgia case. I had all the information I could find. Nothing was jumping out at me. There was something I was missing. There had to be.