Tell No Lies (14 page)

It took him a while to answer. He continued staring up at the night sky, his jaw tight and his profile hard. “They don’t have a case,” he suggested. “Or I wouldn’t be here with you right now . . .”

Patterson wasn’t guilty.

The thought squirmed around in Jack’s brain like a maggot.

He sat at his desk, staring at the lab report, uncertain how to process the newest information. The feeling that arrived in his gut as he stared at the blood results was a twisting jumble that manifested itself as pain.

Through this entire investigation, he had been so certain Caroline was wrong. He had been furious with her for interfering when she went after Patterson using the
Tribune
. And then Patterson had been caught red-handed—so it seemed—and his arrest had shaken Jack’s morale. Enough that he’d strongly considered retiring from the force. But right now . . . that sick, niggling feeling was back in force. Despite evidence that seemed to point to the contrary, Patterson didn’t
feel
like the perpetrator, and little by little the evidence they had acquired was breaking down.

He had allowed his personal relationship with Caroline to interfere with his instincts. He’d held his ground, right up until the night of Caroline’s abduction, but seeing Patterson with her in his arms had shaken him to his core. He’d immediately judged the man guilty from that moment forward, despite Patterson’s insistent claim of innocence.

Patterson claimed he’d been sent a text and photo from Augusta’s cell phone, luring him to the ruins. Apparently, those two had been in communication, though Patterson completely clammed up after the arrest, keeping the nature of their relationship to himself—and his lawyer. Now Jack was beginning to understand why. Augusta had not only paid his bail, but they were together right now. Patterson’s tail had just relayed that news.

He pushed back the screen of his laptop, examining the photos of Amy Jones. He had them up on his screen, comparing them to the photos they had taken of Kelly Banks after her body had been dumped at Brittlebank Park, along with the new photos of Pamela Baker. Except for the laceration from Baker’s pelvis to her breastbone, the rest was the same. All three women had been found stripped completely bare, their hands tied and posed prayerfully, their mouths taped and their tongues removed. The inside of their mouths were dyed blue with common-variety food coloring—the type that could be bought at most any grocery store. All three had died of asphyxiation associated with drowning. No hands or bindings had been used around the vic’s throat. During the autopsy they had discovered evidence of cyanosis and petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes, and blood staining around the mouth and nose. They also found water in the lungs, which suggested all three girls probably died sometime after entering the water.

Maybe some sort of baptism?

In his notes for ViCAP he had already entered asphyxiation, strangulation, manual, non-manual, blue dye, nudity and now baptism and sacrificial wounds. Although not all law enforcement agencies contributed to the FBI’s violent crimes database, most did, and he wanted to be sure the killer was on everyone’s radar.

It was beginning to feel a bit religious in nature—especially in connection with the notes the perp had left on each of the women’s windshields:
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18:21

What did that mean? Had the victims been targeted because of something they’d said? Something that was said about them? Something they didn’t say? Was the perp eating their tongues because he believed they held some sort of divine power? Was he removing them symbolically to keep them from talking?

In Greek mythology Tereus raped his wife’s sister and cut out her tongue to keep her from telling anyone of his crime. Andrei Chikatilo, a Ukrainian serial killer, bit off the tongues of his lovers as a way to get off. Natives in the southernmost part of New Guinea supposedly ate the tongues of slain enemies to steal their power. Serial killer and cannibal Joachim Kroll killed and ate his victims simply to save on his grocery bill. And Dennis Rader considered his victims projects. He compared killing them to putting down animals. He strangled them multiple times, reviving them, getting off on their struggles, until he finally killed them and ejaculated into one of their personal items. So the gist of it was that their guy could be removing the tongues for any number of crazy reasons, though it was definitely part of his MO. In every case, he had cut out the tongue and painted the mouth blue. But if it was about keeping trophies, nothing had ever been discovered in Patterson’s possessions.

As for the blue dye . . . Jack couldn’t even begin to decipher that one. Ancient Picts painted themselves blue as a form of war paint, though some claimed it was a form of antiseptic. Blue was the color of water. It was also the color of the sky. And it was the color of flame at its hottest point. Blue was associated with peace, serenity and spirituality. It was associated with the blood of aristocracy and little boys. The god Krishna had blue skin. The associations were endless. But if Ian had been messing with blue dye, you’d think that at some point, he would have spilled it on himself or somewhere in his house. His house had been clean. So was his car. So was he. They’d inspected him from head to toe after his arrest.

On the scene they had discovered a wet suit in Patterson’s trunk, along with a “hit bag” containing a roll of the same tape used to cover the victims’ mouths, rope, a half-used vial of blue food coloring, as well as a bloody knife and a rag that had both blood and blue dye stains—which proved the killer wasn’t spill-proof. But the only piece of evidence Patterson had actually claimed was the suit—purchased, he’d said, to make his search of the river easier. But he also claimed he hadn’t used it as yet, and sure enough, an examination of the suit showed it had never been worn.

Patterson claimed he’d arrived only minutes before the first squad car, saw the rising flames after spotting Caroline’s car and ran toward the ruins to find her lying unconscious with flames licking all about her. He saw no one—conveniently—but said he didn’t waste time looking either. He lifted her up and ran toward the road, where he heard sirens.

The rest was history.

The squad cars arrived, they held him at gunpoint, he dropped Caroline, put his hands up and stopped cooperating from that moment forward.

In retrospect, it was entirely possible Patterson was telling the truth and that he had actually been trying to
save
Caroline, not harm her.

According to Caroline’s testimony, she arrived first and didn’t recall another car being there, which meant Patterson must have arrived after her. His car doors had been left wide open with the trunk easily accessible. Anyone could have popped the trunk and tossed evidence inside. In fact, when the squad cars arrived, Patterson’s trunk had been left wide open, which made absolutely no sense for someone who planned his kills so meticulously. Everything about that night seemed rushed. Cars left in plain sight, doors ajar, trunks wide open.

And then, with sirens racing toward them, and no way off that peninsula but the one road—except over salt marsh—where did he intend to go? If he’d planned to escape into the marsh, he had been walking in the wrong direction. Nor had they found any evidence of stray boats in the surrounding creeks.

All Jack’s deliberations brought him to the same place.

Ian Patterson wasn’t guilty.

Jack picked up the lab report—the final nail in the coffin of their case against him as far as Jack was concerned. The blood from the knife and rag in Patterson’s car had been sent to a private lab. Normally, the state would have processed the work and the turnaround would have been six months to a year, but this was the case of the decade. No expense had been spared. Even before Patterson’s arrest, they had gathered the DNA of all known missing persons and entered them into CODIS, the national DNA indexing system.

According to the lab report in his hand, there was more than a 99 percent probability that the blood found on the rag and the knife in Patterson’s car belonged to Pamela Baker, but her time of death posed a serious logistics problem since Patterson couldn’t have killed her while sitting behind bars.

The rest of the evidence was compromised, as well—a notebook belonging to Amanda Hutto, a camera belonging to Amy Jones, complete with photos cataloguing her grisly death. Those had been seized from Patterson’s house, though he claimed the evidence had been planted. His prints weren’t found anywhere on the items. Not even the surfaces that would have retained latent prints had produced anything of value. The truth was that it felt to Jack as though it had been planted—all of it—just like Patterson said.

And then there was the tongue ring: Discovered in the ashtray of Patterson’s car, they had pinned so much hope on it, because they’d learned belatedly that Amy Jones had had a tongue piercing—something they’d missed during the investigation—something Amy’s roommate couldn’t have known to tell them because they’d never fully disclosed the details of her friend’s mutilation and death. But the organic matter didn’t match Jones’s DNA. Nine to one it belonged to the girl who gave Patterson his alibi, just as he had claimed during both polygraph tests he’d passed—and that was easy enough to find out.

Although Patterson could be working with an accomplice, Jack didn’t think so. Why the hell would he agree to be the fall guy? It didn’t make sense.

No, the killer was still out there, somewhere, and now he had Cody Simmons. It didn’t matter that Cody didn’t fit the profile of his past victims. Neither did Amanda Hutto, but he was starting to believe they were all connected. Jack just had to find the kid before he turned up dead, as well.

He got up and lifted his jacket from the back of his chair, leaning over to turn off his computer before shrugging into it. Then he picked up his cell phone and called his partner. Don Garrison answered on the first ring—probably bored as hell. “Where is he?”

“He left The Shack and headed down East Ashley with Augusta.”

“Just the two of them?”

“Yep.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“There’s only one way to go from here, boss, and they had that look, if you know what I mean. I didn’t follow into the dunes. I figure she’s safe enough since they both made me.”

Jack sighed. “Alright, let them go. Moving forward, we’ll just check in on him. Go on home, Garrison.”

“Will do, Jack. Thanks.”

Jack hung up and shoved the phone in his pocket, then grabbed his keys off the desk and sighed. Augusta’s involvement with Patterson was something else for Caroline to be upset about, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to keep it from her and jeopardize his relationship. As far as he was concerned, she might as well hear it from him since Augusta didn’t seem the least inclined to share that information. As far as he was concerned, Augusta was on her own.

 

On the street in front of The Shack, the lights were on, but dimly lit, obscured by bell-shaped black shades to keep the glare down. Only Augusta and Ian’s cars were left on the road. His sat conspicuously beneath the streetlight in front of The Shack, while hers was guarded by the half torso of a plastic shark that protruded from the building above a law office sign. At this hour of the night, the flickering streetlights lent the shark movement, giving her a creepy feeling.

Ian walked her to the Town Car, and they stood in front of it for a moment before Augusta unlocked the door and slid behind it, using it as a shield.

Ian was right. There was enough going on in their lives that they didn’t need to add relationship drama to the mix. Besides, for the first time in her life, she was determined to do this differently. Sex wasn’t the smartest reason for any relationship and somehow, she felt closer to Ian now. Sex alone couldn’t have accomplished that. They’d talked all night, baring secrets, wishes and fears . . .

Ian had been a troubled kid, whose life before the Church had been filled with difficulty—one of those for whom the Scared Straight program had actually worked. In his case, probably because the man who had put the fear into him was his own dad. He got involved with his local church because of an uncle, and from there ended up in the seminary, intending to spend his life in service to the community. They were more alike than she might have realized. No wonder she was drawn to him.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he reassured. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Augusta smiled and leaned on the door. “Despite everything that’s going on, I had a really nice time, Ian.”

He smiled back at her, shoving his hands into his pockets—Augusta sensed it was his way of controlling himself. The impulse to kiss him was strong, and the tension between them was palpable. “Me, too.”

“What’s that?” he asked suddenly, withdrawing his hand from his pocket and reaching toward her.

Augusta assumed he’d failed his own test of willpower, but he reached past her to the windshield to pluck up a little yellow paper umbrella that was stuck into the black plastic of the wiper.

She grimaced as it flashed past her eyes. “Some drunk’s idea of a parting gift, I suppose. I hate those things!” she told him. “They remind me of my mother.”

He lifted a brow. “I take it that’s a bad thing.”

Augusta eyed the little umbrella with no small measure of disgust. “You might say that.” But she volunteered no more than that. Another day, another time, and she would tell him anything he wanted to know, but at one-thirty in the morning, this wasn’t the time or place.

He lifted a brow and twirled the little umbrella daintily between his fingers, lifting it mockingly over his head. “It matches your car,” he remarked.

Augusta laughed. “Keep it,” she directed him. “Call it a memento.” And then she slid into the car before she could do or say something she might regret—before he might begin to feel obligated to give her a kiss good night. One rejection for the night—even if it didn’t really feel like one—was quite enough.

He started to toss the umbrella away, and then at the last minute shoved it into his pocket. Augusta raised both brows, and said, “I was kidding. You don’t have to keep that junk.”

He shrugged. “With my luck, a cop will jump out from behind a bush and charge me with littering. I’ll use it to pick my teeth clean on the way home.”

Augusta laughed and started the car, fighting the urge to say three ridiculous little words. At this point, it was hardly appropriate, no matter what her heart was telling her.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised, then turned and made a dash for his car. Augusta waited for him to start his car before pulling out into the road and heading home, giving him time to get behind her. As he said he would, he followed all the way, stopping just outside the gate when she went through. He made a three-point and turned around, but sat there, waiting. Staying within his sights, she parked the Town Car in the circular driveway and lingered only long enough to wave good-bye. Then she unlocked the door and hurried inside.

Caroline’s car was outside, but the house was dark. It was two in the morning. Everyone was probably in bed, and not even Caroline’s righteous anger would have kept her from the opportunity of being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning. God forbid she might be off her game. The thought made Augusta smirk a little.

With just the briefest glance in the hall mirror, she made her way up the stairs toward her room. The stairs creaked on the way up, and in the dark, she passed over the loose board at the top of the steps, tripping.

“Damn!” she said, and remembered her appointment with the contractor tomorrow. Hopefully that would make Caroline happy.

Tango barked in Caroline’s room, and Augusta dove for her bedroom door, unwilling to brave even a brief discussion before bedtime. Thankfully, the dog settled down after another halfhearted
woof
, and she closed her bedroom door, dropped her purse. She kicked off her shoes, and shrugged out of her skirt before making a beeline toward the bed, intending to sleep in her tank top and underwear. It was too late to brush her teeth. The idea of sand in her mouth was far more inviting than an encounter with her wrathful sister.

Once in bed, she stretched out, feeling the tiny grains of sand that had followed her home. But all in all, sleeping in a grainy bed was a small price to pay for the evening, and a tiny smile curved her lips as she thought of Ian, holding up that silly paper umbrella.

 

Ignoring her lunch, Caroline shook her head over the wedding announcement in the newspaper. “The woman apparently wanted a full-blown plantation wedding, with servants dressed in period costume and everything.”

“Jesus!” Jack said, and laughed. “I wouldn’t say I had a clue what’s appropriate, but even I know that doesn’t come close.” He took a halfhearted bite of his gyro.

They were still in the planning stages of their own wedding, though Caroline would be happy if they simply eloped. They had yet to set a date and a big wedding didn’t feel right—not with everything that was going on. Jack had surprised her by insisting on a big to-do. He said he wanted the entire world to know she was his wife. It was a sweet gesture, but she knew it had roots in a previous life, when weddings had been among her mother’s most coveted affairs. That Flo hadn’t lived long enough to see a single one of her daughters stand before the altar made Caroline feel strangely obligated to carry it through, despite her reservations.

She set the paper aside with the realization that her mother was still her greatest weakness. The need to prove herself persisted, like a gnat floating before her face. While some people tapped away on their phones over lunch, tethered to Facebook, she couldn’t seem to stop reading the newspaper—not simply the
Tribune
, but every newspaper within reach. She read voraciously, trying to gauge the competition to make certain the
Tribune
hadn’t missed any opportunities or leads. Jack was extremely patient with her, and for that she was grateful, but she also knew that his pensive mood probably had just as much to do with the ongoing investigation. For Caroline’s part, it was never far from the edge of her mind, but she had promised Jack not to get involved beyond her personal relationship with the Simmonses. That wasn’t easy to do, especially now that it seemed she had some sort of influence. The key was in learning when to flex her media muscle.

“Okay, so what was so important that you had to see me
right now
—not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’m counting the days until we can be together every second.”

Jack lifted a brow, obviously mistaking her tone for sarcasm, since Caroline wasn’t the most forthcoming with her feelings. She’d caught him with a bite of his lamb in his mouth, and he continued to chew. She smiled to reassure him.

“How can you count days when you’re avoiding setting a date?” he challenged her.

“It just doesn’t seem right yet,” Caroline defended. “And now with Rose and Cody . . .”

He’d been tense from the instant they’d sat down, avoiding the reason he’d asked her to lunch in the first place. As pleasant as the morning was, and as happy as she was to see him after spending the night away from him last night, they had been seated now for more than thirty minutes since opening the place up.

“Augusta was with Ian Patterson last night,” he blurted.

Caroline’s stomach sank somewhere beneath her chair.

“If it’s any comfort, Caroline, I don’t believe the man’s guilty.”

For a moment, Caroline stared at her own plate, trying to determine what to say. She couldn’t control Augusta, but she couldn’t handle Jack defending the man, too. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was struggling with the burgeoning possibility that Patterson could be innocent, but if she accepted that fact, it meant she had gone after an innocent man with the tenacity and grace of a pit bull, thinking of nothing else but the story. Right now she couldn’t figure out which was worse—the idea that she had been so terribly wrong, that she was becoming exactly like her mother or that her sister had taken a total stranger’s side over hers—because that’s what it felt like, even though her rational side told her it wasn’t true.

“He didn’t kill Pam,” Jack said more certainly. “We know that.”

She knew better than to ask him
how
he knew. They had made a pact to stay away from potentially explosive subjects. “Okay,” she said, taking a moment to process the information he had given her. “So what about Cody?” she asked, steering the conversation to safer ground. “Any word there?”

He shook his head. “No.”

He peered down at his plate, suddenly shoving it away, with half a gyro still on it. She realized he was taking Cody’s disappearance hard. Did he feel they had wasted time with Ian Patterson and that it was Caroline’s fault they didn’t have the right man behind bars?

She couldn’t blame him for those thoughts, because they were exactly the same thoughts she had been struggling with herself.

Her desire to help—in some way—was overwhelming, but this time she had handed the story over to her editor-in-chief, Frank Bonneau, and walked away, putting her energy into comforting Cody’s family. It made it easier that she trusted Bonneau implicitly—nearly as much as she trusted Jack—so she let the subject of Augusta and Ian Patterson go entirely . . . for the moment. Still, she had to ask. “It’s been days, Jack. Do you think he’s still alive?”

Jack nodded, but then shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s impossible to say. I don’t think this guy’s killing them right away. The official stance from the public information officer is that we’re hopeful he’s still alive.”

So that was what she was bound to report.

Caroline hoped it was true.

 

The phone rang, waking Augusta out of a dopey sleep. She fumbled for the receiver, wondering who would be calling on her mother’s landline. It wasn’t a private number, but neither was it a number she gave out.

“Hello?”

A dial tone was her answer, but not right away. For a few brief seconds, she heard the sound of music playing on the other end of the line . . . or maybe the music was playing here in the house? She couldn’t tell. She hung up and heard the music like an echo in her brain.

Admittedly, morning wasn’t her best time of the day.

Within seconds, as soon as she set the receiver down, the phone rang again, and she stifled a curse as she lifted the receiver to her ear. “Yes?” she said, irritated.

“Lucas Skywalker, Skywalker Construction,” the voice offered.

Augusta lay there, disoriented and confused for a moment. It might have been a prank, except that she had actually gone to Skywalker Construction yesterday afternoon to meet with a contractor. She simply hadn’t realized that was the guy’s full name.

Correctly interpreting the silence, he offered, “I know, sorry. It always takes people by surprise at first. That’s why I rarely use my real name. I’m part Cherokee,” he explained. “At least that’s the explanation I prefer over admitting my parents were stoned when they signed the birth certificate.”

Augusta laughed. “Hi,” she said.

“You can call me Luke.”

“Hi, Luke,” she said, and spoke to him briefly about his schedule, relieved to hear that he could start first thing this morning. Luckily, her mother’s reputation in the community still loomed large, even from the grave. Plus, Augusta had hinted at their first meeting that money wasn’t an object. She supposed she wasn’t above throwing her name around after all—not when it meant saving her and her sisters from having to forfeit thirty-seven million bucks.

He reassured her that he was gathering his crew as they spoke, although they wouldn’t be available until after lunch. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be here. Thanks so much,” she said, and hung up.

Still groggy, she sat up in bed, cocking her head toward the persistent sound of music coming through her closed bedroom door. A small headache lurked in the back of her brain, but not enough to make the idea of rising all that daunting. The clock by her bedside read 11:38
A.M
. and she grimaced. She had never been an early riser, but the last time she had gotten up near noon, she had had a roommate and test scores to worry about. Since then, she’d been running on a gerbil wheel. Without a doubt, life was slower paced here than in New York, but waking up at noon was just unacceptable.

Stumbling out of the bed, she opened the bedroom door, and the sound of music spilled into the room. She could make out the disoriented melody of Harry Nilsson’s “Blanket for a Sail” playing downstairs as she went back to fish a pair of shorts out the dirty pile of clothes in her closet. As a child, Savannah had loved that song, but it was a weird choice to be listening to now—not that she had anything against Harry Nilsson. The man was a genius. But it was a song she recalled from a children’s collection—one that included songs like “This Old Man” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”