The Prettiest One: A Thriller (34 page)

A photograph of Caitlin on plain copy paper. The picture wasn’t sharp, as though it was a detail that had been cropped from a larger photograph, then enlarged to five inches by seven. Though the image was grainy, it was unmistakably a picture of Caitlin before she’d cut and dyed her hair. Beside the five-by-seven was an eight-by-ten copy of a photograph of several people standing in front of a building. Josh recognized it.

“I don’t understand,” Caitlin said. “While I was out looking for him, he was . . . what? Watching me?”

Josh slid past Caitlin into the room and over to the desk, where he leaned toward the photo on the corkboard. The caption listed the names of the people in the photograph, including Caitlin Sommers.

“This was in the newspaper last winter,” Josh said, “when the new real-estate office opened.”

“He’s been watching me for that long?” Caitlin asked. Josh thought she sounded less scared than she had a moment ago, less scared and more . . . angry.

“Not necessarily,” Bix said. “He might have gotten that off the web three days ago, for all we know.”

“But why?” Caitlin asked. “How did he know me when
I
didn’t even know me?”

Bix said something to Caitlin but Josh didn’t hear what it was. Caitlin responded and Josh didn’t hear that, either. He was focused on something else, something he saw sticking out from the bottom of a pile of papers and magazines. It was a manila folder with the name
Caitlin Sommers
written on the tab. The magazines and papers on top of the folder told Josh that it probably had not been opened in a while. He slid the folder out and flipped it open to find, inside, pages of writing, as well as more photos on cheap copy paper. There were also news articles printed from the Internet. Josh skimmed the items at first but quickly realized that he had to go back to the beginning and read more carefully. After a few minutes, he realized that Caitlin was standing close to him, looking at the folder’s contents as well. Bix was looking around the room.

“What do you think all that is?” Caitlin asked, and again, Josh marveled at how strong she seemed. He wasn’t sure how many people would find something like what they had found in this room and not been completely freaked out. But not Caitlin.

Josh said, “I’ve looked these over pretty quickly, but . . . well, it seems that Bookerman Junior has been following you for a while . . . or at least your story.”

“What do you mean?” Bix asked. In his hand was a small stack of photographs he’d found on top of a dented metal file cabinet.

“First of all,” Josh said, “he knew your real name, Caitlin, which nobody else in this town did.”

“How?” Caitlin asked.

Josh referred to Bookerman’s notes, skimmed for a few seconds, and said, “He actually has a few names for you here, Caitlin. Let me see . . . Goldsmith? Isn’t that the name of—”

“The foster parents I was living with when I was abducted. Yes. But I never took their name, at least not legally.”

“Well, he has that name in here,” Josh said. “Could you have told your name to Darryl Bookerman all those years ago, back when . . .”

Caitlin shrugged. “It’s possible.” She thought about how the Bogeyman of her nightmares would call her by name. “Yes, I probably did.”

Josh nodded. “He also has Caitlin Dearborn in here.”

“My name after my parents adopted me.”

“And then Caitlin Sommers,” Josh said, reading. His eyes skipped through the pages some more. “There are notes in here referring to a private investigator named Larry Seger. Gives his phone number, too. It’s after that that the names appear. It looks to me like Mike Bookerman started with Darryl’s memory of your name and hired someone to find you.”

“But why?”

“Because his father remembered you,” Bix said as he looked through the pictures in his hand. “Remembered that you escaped. He probably knew that you were the reason he was caught and sent to prison for more than thirty years.”

Josh said, “With Daddy in prison, Junior essentially grew up without a father. We have no idea what his life was like for the last twenty-two years. No idea how he was raised or by whom. But it can’t have been easy being the son of a convicted pedophile. He might have had a hard life and, irrational as it might be, he may have blamed you for it.”

“And then what?” Caitlin asked. “He wanted revenge for that? His father was the guilty one here, not me. I was just a kid.”

“This guy was probably one screwed-up individual,” Bix said, “like his old man. Can’t expect him to think rationally. He probably thought you ruined his life.”

Josh continued flipping through the folder.

“So why didn’t he ever do anything about it?” Caitlin asked. “He obviously found out who I was. Easy to find out where I lived.”

Under the section where Junior had apparently written notes as he spoke with the private investigator, Josh had already seen the address of his and Caitlin’s home in New Hampshire. “Maybe he did try to do something about it,” Josh said.

Caitlin and Bix looked at him.

“Maybe he went after you seven months ago. Maybe when you left our house that night, he was already watching it.”

Bix added, “And he followed you to the strip mall where Josh said your car was found, and he tried to abduct you. But somehow, you got away.”

They all took a moment to think about that scenario.

Josh nodded and said, “Somehow you got away from him, but the experience, as traumatic as it was, triggered a fugue state . . . just like when his father abducted you twenty years ago . . . and when you escaped from Junior, you got into the nearest car: Junior’s.”

“Yup, that’s what happened,” Bix said without a trace of doubt in his voice. “Check this out.”

He held up a four-by-six photograph of Bookerman’s son leaning against a car.

“That’s the piece-of-shit Dodge Charger Caitlin drove into town the night we met,” he said. “The one we ended up trading in. I recognize this dent in the hood.”

“So we’re right,” Caitlin said. “I got into Bookerman’s car that night. And I must have found the takeout menu from the Fish Place and drove there, without any real idea what I was doing . . . or even who I was.”

“And I was there that night when you arrived,” Bix said. “You came home with me and we didn’t step foot out of my place till we left to sell the Charger a couple of days later, so it’s not like Bookerman would have seen you driving around town in it.”

“But why did he just give up on me after that night?” Caitlin said.

“He didn’t,” Josh said. “There are articles from the Internet in here about your disappearance that night, and articles over the months that followed detailing how the authorities couldn’t find you. Mike knew you were gone but had no idea where you’d gone to. According to these notes, he had his investigator try to find you for a little while, but you were just . . . gone.”

Caitlin shook her head. “Little did he know that I’d driven back to his stomping grounds in his car.”

Bix said, “Must have surprised the hell out of him when you showed up here and—” He cut himself off.

“And shot him,” Caitlin finished for him. Her voice was harder than the previous times she had talked about the possibility of her having killed someone. She certainly didn’t seem happy to have done so, and Josh knew she probably regretted it, but she also didn’t seem as torn up about it as she had before they pieced together their theory.

“I’m not the world’s biggest cop fan,” Bix said, “but if you insist on turning yourself in, the fact that Junior was stalking you is bound to help your case with the police.”

Josh thought about it. The police would investigate and find out, at a minimum, what
they
already knew—that for some reason, Caitlin had searched for Mike Bookerman, and when she found him, she had killed him. Sounded a lot like premeditated murder. So maybe the stalking angle might help a little, possibly with sentencing, but he doubted it would keep Caitlin from going to prison.

“Anything on the computer?” Bix asked.

“I don’t know,” Josh said.

“Aren’t you a computer whiz or something?”

“No.”

“I assumed you were. You’re always playing with your tablet thing.”

Josh looked at the screen of Bookerman’s laptop. He wasn’t sure how much he would be able to get off the device, which he could see by its little green light was already on. “I can use a computer as well as most people can,” he said, “but it’s not like I’m some kind of forensic cyber tech or anything. If this thing is locked with a password, I won’t be able to get into it unless we find it written down somewhere.”

He sat in the chair in front of the desk and reached for the laptop’s mouse. He paused and looked questioningly over his shoulder at Bix.

“We’ll wipe it down after,” Bix said.

Josh turned back to the screen and gave the mouse a nudge. The screen crackled itself awake.

Josh involuntarily pushed his chair back. Caitlin gasped. No password was required, which was stupid of Bookerman, considering what they saw pop up on the screen. Bix said quietly, “Shit.”

On the screen was a still image of Mike Bookerman engaged in sexual intercourse with a naked woman. She was on her hands and knees on the mattress of a pullout sofa—the same sofa, no doubt, as the one in the living room down the hall. Bookerman was behind her, and the look frozen on her face made it difficult to believe that this act was consensual. Josh’s suspicion was confirmed when he saw a handcuff around one of the woman’s wrists.

“It’s a video,” Josh said. “On pause.”

He looked at the video’s progress bar at the top of the screen. The scene had been paused eighteen minutes into a ninety-two-minute video.

“Close that out, Josh,” Bix said.

Damn it. He was an idiot. He used the mouse to shut down the video player. When he did, a list of numerous video files appeared on the screen. Realizing immediately what the files were, he exited the video program entirely.

“No,” Caitlin said quietly. “I need to know.”

“Caitlin . . .” Josh said.

“I won’t watch, but I need to know. Bring them back up.”

Josh sighed and opened the program again, then clicked on the File tab. The video icons reappeared. They were all labeled. Josh saw file names like “Blonde With Big Tits” and “Tall, Skinny Girl” and “Older But Great Ass.” He quickly scanned the file names, looking for any reference that could be applicable to Caitlin. He knew the others were doing the same thing. A quick count revealed that there were eleven videos, but none of their titles immediately stood out as referencing Caitlin. They were arranged chronologically, by the dates they had been created, with the older files toward the bottom of the screen. The earliest video had been created fifteen months ago. A little mental math told Josh that Bookerman had averaged nearly one video every month and a half during that time. Josh quickly looked at the most recent file and saw that it was titled simply “Curly Hair, Long Legs” and had been created almost a month ago. According to everything they had learned, that would have been before Caitlin had found him, and presumably before he knew that Caitlin was in town. Thank God. Josh shared his thoughts with the others, who were obviously as relieved as he was . . . Caitlin even more so, of course. But she didn’t look relieved.

She said, “Do you think he killed these woman after . . .”

“No,” Bix said. “It would have been in the news if almost a dozen women went missing or turned up dead over the last fifteen months. And I didn’t hear anything like that.”

That made sense to Josh.

Caitlin nodded. “How had he been getting away with this for so long?” she asked.

“He drugged them, right?” Josh said. “Some of the women may not remember anything. And even if they do, maybe they’re too embarrassed to come forward.”

Bix added, “And maybe he threatened the hell out of the ones who did remember. Also, maybe some or even all of the women are hookers. I’m not sure how many of them would be anxious to go to the cops about something like this.”

“It’s disgusting,” Caitlin said.

Bix nodded. “No argument from me. Time to go now, though, I think.”

“We can’t just leave those videos on there,” Caitlin said. “It’s not fair to the poor women in them.”

“It’s evidence,” Josh said.

“Evidence that might end up helping you,” Bix added, “if I can’t talk you out of your plan to go to the cops.”

Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s the smart thing, hon,” Josh said. Caitlin sighed, which Josh took to mean that she would relent on the issue. “I guess we leave this folder behind for the cops, too, right?” he asked.

“Leave it,” Caitlin said. “We need them to find it. If we miraculously produce it later, it could look suspicious, right?”

Josh nodded in agreement and Bix didn’t object.

One by one, they headed back down the hall and through the living room. As they walked, Josh noticed that Caitlin kept her head up when she passed Bookerman’s corpse.

At Boston’s Logan International Airport, Chops Maggert snatched his small suitcase from the baggage-claim conveyor belt. It was almost the last one down the chute, as always. Someone’s bag had to come down first. Why had that bag never belonged to Chops in his entire life? He wouldn’t have checked his bag for this trip except that he wanted to bring a couple of his favorite knives with him—just in case—and he couldn’t have done so in a carry-on bag.