Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (8 page)

In the end, she found two mugs and a teacup with dainty red roses lined with gold leaf. She kept that cup black and poured sugar and cream in the other two. She hoped they’d meant a lot of sugar and cream, because if you asked her, there couldn’t be too much—that’s why she never made her own coffee.

She put everything on a plastic tray with little dog bones on it. She was sure it was meant to be a dog bowl tray, but what the hell, it worked. She added her wine, hoping she didn’t spill it along the way, and carefully walked back toward her bedroom, where she figured the menfolk were busy invading her privacy.

They were, all three of them crowded around her monitors, Agent Patel in the center clicking away like the expert he obviously was.

“All right, boys, coffee’s here.” She set the tray down on her dresser, picking up the mug she’d designated as Mr. Patel’s and delivering it to him, while the other two men went to her dresser, clearing some room next to the computers for their cups.

“Agent Patel.” Chris set the mug on an empty space between all the papers. “Your coffee.”

He looked up at her as if she’d appeared suddenly out of the woodwork, the screens reflected in his glasses.

“I haven’t really touched anything, Ms. Pascal. Can you show me how everything is organized?”

Chris complied, showing him her various websites, as well as the search programs she had running for the signs of the missing.

“You maintain all this?” He sounded impressed.

Chris sipped her wine, letting her gaze roll over the various screens, searching, ever searching. She’d become a watcher, she realized. At some point, she’d stopped looking for her own life and started looking for theirs.

“Yep. I can walk you through everything.”

“Call me Sandeep, miss.” He handed her the mouse.

“And I’m Chris.” She turned and looked over her shoulder at the other two agents. “There are some folding chairs in my yoga studio downstairs. In the closet next to the bathroom. The keys are on the little table by the door.”

Agent Midaugh nodded. “All right. I’ll get them. Helmer, why don’t you stay here?”

“Yeah, Helmer, stay here and make sure I don’t do anything naughty.” She didn’t look at him when she made that comment, her attention on the screens, but she could see his reflection. He looked . . . displeased. Good. That’s what she’d been going for, although she usually reserved this level of aggressive aggravation for her father, the librarian (Mrs. Cooley), and the Triplets’ Aunt Jane. The only thing those three people had in common was their unquestioning disapproval of everything about her.

10

RYAN FOUND HIMSELF
looking over his shoulder toward the living room more frequently than necessary. For whatever reason, he couldn’t quite get her out of his head. She was different than he’d expected. He’d expected her to be a little bizarre, and she was—she jumped around like a damn June bug, she was distracted as easily as his four-year-old niece, and she seemed to like antagonizing him—but damn, there was something about her. Something about those big gold eyes and curly brown hair.

“She is very good at what she does,” Sandeep commented, his brown fingers racing over her keyboards.

“Why do you say that?” Helmer leaned over the man, wanting to know as much about her as possible . . . for the case.

Sandeep shrugged. “She reminds me of a gamer in a way; they can sit for hours just playing in a virtual world. She has created worlds for these people, but more than that, she listens and hunts for specific language, for words or phrases that will help her find what she is searching for—the missing. She is logged in and working constantly; this is what she does,” he concluded, his tone indicating tacit approval.

“Isn’t that strange?” In Ryan’s experience, women, especially women as beautiful as this one, did not spend the majority of their lives glued to a computer.

“Not for some,” Sandeep argued, but he was from Cyber Crimes, of course it didn’t seem strange to him.

“She also went through something traumatic as a child,” Midaugh argued. They’d researched her background before coming over. There’d been several articles about the disappearance in the local paper. “That can change you.”

“Hmm . . .” Ryan glanced at the picture of the pretty eight-year-old girl who was at the center of the tableau Chris had created on her wall. He supposed that if he’d lost one of his brothers, or a niece, at an early age, he might be equally driven to search for the missing.

“Anything else so far?” Ryan questioned Sandeep further. “Any evidence that she’s been in contact with the unsub?”

“Not that I can find. I’ve traced two of the names the unsub has used back to the original requestors. They seem legitimate, though I’ll confirm tomorrow. I believe she’s been hacked. The unsub is using her usernames and passwords to take over the identities she’s created. She leaves them ‘alive,’ for lack of a better word, but stops actively posting once a job is complete.”

“Why would she leave them ‘alive’?” Ryan had trouble spitting the word out of his mouth.

Sandeep continued to click the mouse and talk at the same time. “According to her records, occasionally a client will request that a persona they’ve used in the past be resurrected for some occasion.”

“She doesn’t actually arrange physical meetings, does she?”

“No, it’s all online. Mostly it’s people wanting to look like they’re attached on Facebook to avoid romantic entanglements or look good to their friends. My cousin Babita would love this service; it would get her parents off her back about getting involved in a relationship.”

Ryan started to argue that the concept was insane, but then he thought about his parents and how they’d been hinting that he needed to get involved with someone since he’d broken up with his fiancée, Cara, two years ago. A girlfriend would shut them up, at least until they asked to meet her.

“Okay, so if she’s been hacked, is she able to log in to these identities and see what he’s been communicating?”

“It’s hard to say.” Sandeep frowned. “She may not have tried. It’s possible that he changed the usernames and passwords of the accounts, but if she contacts Facebook or any of the other platforms, she can likely claim her account was hacked and prove she’s the owner by validating a method of payment.”

“Can you check?”

“Yes, though it will take some time to check them all. It would help if she assisted us in matching the identities she’s created with the information we’ve gathered about the victims.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to her about coming in tomorrow.”

“I think that would be best.”

“So we’re going with the idea that she’s not involved with the killer at all,” Midaugh clarified, looking out the window at the brick building next door.

Sandeep stopped what he was doing to look at Agent Midaugh. “I haven’t found any evidence that she is anything more than what she seems, a woman passionate about finding the missing.”

Ryan interjected, “Then if the unsub considers her his Creator, she could be in danger if he finds out she’s helping us.”

Sandeep shrugged. “Anything is possible,” and he turned back to the computers.

Ryan scowled. Anything was possible, his ass. From the crazy shit Ryan had read on the
Mysteries of Fate
blog, this guy was obsessed with her.

He glanced up at her wall of success, at the six kids posted there, their faces smiling. Somewhere out there, those six kids were alive because this strange woman had spent most of her time hunting for them. It seemed strangely pointed that six little girls had been dead at the end of his previous serial murder case, a fact that made his teeth clench in rage and sorrow.

“What does she do that’s different from other rescue groups or law enforcement? Does she use the same methods and she just spends more time doing it, or what?”

“That’s part of it,” Sandeep agreed, and hesitated.

“What?” Ryan shoved his hands in the pocket of his coat, wishing he could leave this tiny room with its staring faces. How did she stand it; how could she sleep with all those kids watching her?

Sandeep looked deeply uncomfortable. “She also uses less sanctioned methods, venturing into the Undernet, pretending to be interested in child porn, to look for the missing among trafficked girls. Sometimes she has help hacking people’s sites—she doesn’t have to worry about warrants . . .” Sandeep trailed off.

Ryan got the idea. She broke the law. She wasn’t worried about paperwork or procedure, she just wanted to find them, was obsessed with finding them at any cost, but in the meantime she created lies for money. She was a professional liar.

Ryan understood obsession. He’d been obsessed on his first serial murder case, trying to prove to his father that he was just as good at catching killers as any Texas Ranger. If he hadn’t been such a stubborn jackass, determined to crack the case single-handedly, maybe some of those little girls would be alive.

Ryan couldn’t help but feel a sting of resentment for her brazen disregard for the law that he had dedicated himself to upholding. In his mind, if Ms. Pascal hadn’t spent her time making up lies, maybe this killer wouldn’t have been nearly so successful, and they would have caught him long ago.

11

THE AGENTS WERE
still going through Chris’s computers at ten o’clock, gathering evidence of god knew what from her files. She’d walked Sandeep through most of it and then gone into the living room to pretend to read a book.

Suddenly her thoughts drifted to her father, who would be appalled that she hadn’t called an attorney . . . though his attorney certainly hadn’t kept him out of prison. The IRS didn’t fucking play, especially when millions of dollars were kept from them over a course of several years. Both Agent Helmer and Agent Midaugh were on the phone to what she assumed was the task force assigned to the case on and off throughout the evening. She caught snippets of conversation, but they always stepped out onto the landing. She wished they’d share the details of the case with her, or at the very least that she could look up what she could on her iPad, but it was in the room with them.

She glanced at her own cell phone, which she’d fetched from the kitchen and set next to her wineglass on the coffee table. She wanted to call Tavey and Raquel to get their take on the situation, but she didn’t want to call while the FBI was in her house.

From what she understood about serial murders, the cases were usually run by a task force headed by one or two lead investigators. The FBI wasn’t always the lead, but if it made sense in the situation, like when a killer crossed county or interstate lines, they might take charge. She imagined that with the plethora of small towns in northwest Georgia, the crimes may never have been linked together at all, especially if the details hadn’t been entered into ViCAP.

If Tyler Downs was involved in the case, then it was likely that at least one of the murders had been committed within Cherokee County. She couldn’t remember if Raquel had mentioned that or not.

Chris brooded, drank another glass of wine, and thought, not for the first time, that she should get a TV. A TV would distract her from worrisome thoughts about serial killers using her work, about weird teenagers with cryptic messages, about the intel she could be missing while they meddled about in her business. Still, if it helped catch this guy, it was worth it.

“Okay, Ms. Pascal, we think we’ve gotten what we need,” Agent Midaugh informed her.

Chris sat up on the couch and set her wine down on the table. “So, I’m good. You believe I’m not involved with him?”

“We haven’t ruled anything out.” Helmer seemed determined that she be to blame for something.

Chris wiggled her eyebrows mock-seductively. “Ooh, so everything’s on the table, huh, Helmer?”

Helmer looked away, a muscle in his cheek twitching, while Sandeep looked confused at the byplay between the two of them. Chris knew that, for her, there was a direct correlation between nervousness and obnoxious behavior. And if you threw alcohol in the mix, well, you got a lunatic who couldn’t behave appropriately even in the most serious situations. She immediately reverted to the gracious hostess she was supposed to be. “Sorry, Agent Patel. I hope something you found helped the investigation.”