The Watcher (35 page)

Bauer bounced like a little boy ready to pee his pants. “When they ran it through AFIS, they got a hit, a single fingerprint found in an unsolved federal case.”

Slater knew that the techs heated super glue and blew it on areas where they couldn’t normally get a print, especially on nonporous surfaces. After about five hours the fumes adhered to the latent print and acted as a developer.

“Because it was a cop, they rushed the evidence,” Matt continued. “It’s a match to the feds’ UNSUB,
and
to our killer.”

He forgets to wipe down certain places, the underside of levers and door handles. Not as smart as he thinks.

“The print from the Pontiac matches the print found on Marconi’s vehicle and another FBI case?” Slater clarified.

“You bet.”

“So now the feds are forced to get involved. Was that victim one of the ones we’d listed?”

“No, it’s a seventeen-year-old girl from Gainsville, Florida. The feds got involved because her body was found in Georgia a few months later.”

“So this is our guy, the one Kate’s been chasing. Plus, he’s tied to the Sheriff’s disappearance and our two vics. I can’t wrap my mind around this, Matt. What’s the connection?”

“Other than the blood, it doesn’t make sense. Why would our UNSUB take the Sheriff? That’s not part of the profile. Do you think we’ve been wrong about this guy?”

Slater lowered his voice and slanted it toward Bauer’s ear. “I don’t know, but I think he’s got Kate too.”

Shock registered on Matt’s young face. “God, no. How? Why?”

The shakes threatened to overcome Slater again. “I don’t know,” he repeated, “but we’re going to find out.”

“Do you think the Sheriff’s dead?”

Slater aimed a look at his partner meant to quell the same fear he had. “Don’t even think like that.”

“I mean, if Marconi’s dead, then Kate’s – God, Slater, I’m sorry.”

Slater rounded on Bauer as a deputy rushed up to him, holding a woman’s handbag. When Slater recognized the purse as belonging to Kate, he broke out in a clammy sweat, and a cold tremor raced like packed ice from his nape to the base of his spine. Instinct deep in his bones told him that the blood the techs were processing right now in the parking lot behind him belonged to Kate. Now the proximity of her abandoned bag so close to her vehicle, combined with the signs of a struggle, made it clear that someone had kidnapped her.

If it was their UNSUB, she was in grave danger.

He glanced at his watch again. It’d now been six hours since he’d last seen her. That meant the perpetrator had a six-hour jump on them, and Kate was six hours closer to whatever horror the attacker had in mind.

What in God’s name happened? Was the killer changing his M.O.? Switching from girls to women and men? That didn’t correlate with the profile. Serial killers didn’t change their basic methodology. According to Kate, they were compelled to repeat the same act in the same way over and over again.

First Marconi and then Kate. The killer had to have been stalking them. But why?

What was the connection with the Sheriff? Early on Kate had been suspicious of someone in the department. She suspected a cover up in the Stuckey case. Marconi? Were they looking for two suspects?

How had the killer found her? Had she been right when she’d said it was supposed to be her, not Kassie? Slater’s mind whirled with unanswered questions. Six hours. He’d be damned if he’d let Kate die because of six lousy hours.

Bauer tugged on his jacket sleeve. “Man, are you okay?”

“Let’s get back to the office and let the techs finish up here. The answers have to be in the reports and the evidence.”

Slater told the techs to contact him at the precinct as soon as they finished processing the crime scene site. He and Bauer rode the twenty-minute drive from Kate’s duplex in silence.

Slater knew he wouldn’t survive losing Kate. He’d never get over it. Max’s death and his wife’s betrayal had almost destroyed him. Losing Kate would finish him off.

Chapter Thirty-nine

The purple-eyed bitch hadn’t been easy to take. She’d fought like a she-witch, but she was light and a cinch to transport and carry down to the basement bunker. Though tall, she weighed barely more than most of the girls he’d taken.

Afraid she’d die before he began, he’d given her too small a dose of the chloroform and she kept coming out of the drug. He had to put her back under several times, a practice which could be fatal.

He didn’t want her to die on him. Not yet, anyway. Not until he found out the truth about her.

After he fastened her to the wooden slab he’d dragged from outside and affixed to a concrete platform, he ripped off her outer clothing with utility scissors. She wore black, lacy underwear, and he flinched when he saw her undergarments. Where were the plain white panties she’d worn before?

He hurriedly ripped the underclothes from her body and tossed one of the military blankets from storage over her. He left then. Seeing the grown-up parts of her unnerved him, and the hand that held the scissors trembled. He needed liquid courage for the rest of this.

When he returned an hour later, he heard a moan and knew she was waking up. Applying another dose –
careful, careful, not too much
– he kept her under. He needed more time to screw up his courage. What was it Lady Macbeth said in the play? Something about screwing your courage to the sticking place.

He giggled at the double entendre. Screwing and sticking. Ha, ha, that was funny. The girl-woman certainly was screwed and he’d stick her with the largest knife he had in his arsenal.

Suddenly those purple eyes jerked open. He jumped inadvertently and then forced himself to draw closer. How exciting to have her helpless at last, how redeeming she would be. He felt her shiver as he whispered into her ear. “I’ve got you now, bitch.”

Her eyes narrowed darkly, and her chapped lips fell apart. “They’ll catch you,” she said hoarsely. “They’re after you right now.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. No one will find you here. This is a much better hiding place than the cabin,” he gloated. “You won’t get away this time. This time, we’re going to have
real
fun.”

#

Between the two of them, Slater and Bauer literally tore apart the case documentation accumulated on the Bigler County Butcher case. They examined each file and notation for a clue, any scrap of evidence or testimony previously overlooked. Bauer searched the witness interviews and follow-ups while Slater reviewed the autopsy reports and the files from previous cases they believed were tied to their unknown suspect.

Galt Police were keeping them apprised on the disappearance of Sheriff Marconi. Slater assigned a separate task team to get a warrant for his house and to liaison with Galt P.D.

At the same time, deputies at the abduction site knocked on every house and apartment door within a five-mile radius of Kate’s duplex, trying to find anyone who’d seen or heard something. The crime scene unit methodically gathered and processed evidence from the parking lot. By unspoken agreement, no one wanted to make a mistake. This case involved two of their own, and everyone wanted to nail the son-of-a-bitch who had the balls to nab a county sheriff and Kate Myers from her own apartment.

The three-hour time difference between the west coast and Virginia allowed them to access the FBI head-quarters in Quantico as early as 5:00 a.m. Slater decided to call in his markers, and began phoning everyone he or Marconi knew who owed them a favor.

The payoff came by 7:30. In addition to the five previous cases, which Slater’s team had found, the feds had uncovered seven more connections to the unknown suspect. After days of ignoring them and refusing to get involved, the FBI showed interest in the Bigler County murders. Including the Chief and the two girls from Placer Hills, the total was nearly two dozen. The emerging pattern of kidnapping and murder appalled Slater. He was positive the UNSUB had Kate, but worrying wouldn’t help, so every time his imagination ran wild with images of this maniac hurting her, he forced it away. Stepped outside his body and willed himself to think of her as a stranger, just another case. He remained so calm and detached that when Patch Wilson entered the squad room later that morning, the doctor took him aside and forced Slater into a cursory examination.

“Blood pressure’s shot to hell, Ben,” the coroner warned in uncharacteristic lack of sophistication.

Slater knew he was in trouble when everyone from Bauer to Wilson continued to call him Ben with sympathy in their voices. That familiarity spoke of their deep concern and made him more afraid than anything else. Everyone else believed Kate was already mutilated and dead.

The first break in Kate’s disappearance came at 11:13 a.m. when the computer expert from the state offices broke down the bogus email address from Sheriff Marconi and traced the source to the offices of Paxton-Bell, a local computer company that employed over five thousand people.

The way Paxton-Bell’s system was configured made it impossible to tell which of their hundreds of computers actually sent the email. Slater immediately deployed deputies to check backgrounds of all persons hired at that company during the last twelve months.

Making these contacts wasn’t going to be easy. Like many businesses, Paxton-Bell employed part-time or contractual employees to keep their benefits packages at a minimum. And they were very serious about protecting employee privacy. He’d been counting on the general willingness of citizens to assist in their murder investigation.

Bauer and Slater remained at the command post, Slater pacing restlessly, stopping at intervals to stare at the notations on the major case board. Bauer cross-referenced names on the new-residents list with employee records provided by Paxton-Bell Human Resources and looked over the faxes sent by the feds.

Slater glanced up to see Sanderson leave his post at the duty desk and walk back to the special investigations room. Under his arm he carried the purse the crime scene techs had found in Kate’s apartment parking lot.

“Lieutenant, here’s the doc’s purse. The techs said the only prints they found on it are hers. Sorry man, no trace.” Sanderson hesitated in front of Bauer’s desk, the handbag gripped in his large hands. He shuffled his feet and stood awkwardly. “Should I put it in impound with the other evidence?”

Slater halted in his pacing. “Yeah, sure.”

Sanderson turned to leave for the basement archives where evidence, along with old case files, was stored. Slater stopped him. “Hold on a sec, Sandy. Let me take a look.”

He rolled his chair close to the desk, sat down, and dumped the contents of Kate’s purse on the desktop. He picked up the items one by one and placed them back on the desk. Then he stood up, pursed his lips, and sat again, staring at the items that represented Kate Myers’ life.

Compact, lipstick, wallet, cell phone, hand sanitizer. Slater smiled wryly. Kate didn’t like to get her hands dirty and was always using the stuff on them. He’d teased her about that.

Kleenex, notepad and pen. No keys – not for the car, apartment or work. The suspect must’ve taken them. A zippered section in the lining, half open and brimming with papers.

Bauer looked up from his list as Slater fingered the items on his desk. “What’s in there?”

The inside compartment was full of scraps of paper, mainly receipts, a dry cleaners slip, several business cards. Slater took them out and unfolded them one by one, stacking them in separate piles. A single, lined sheet of paper ripped from a binder was folded in half, the edges loosely fastened with a paper clip.

“I don’t know.” Slater unfolded the paper and laid it on his desk. “It looks like she’s written a bunch of dates and times, along with annotations of some sort. ‘Probate will,’ dash, ‘Shawn Fraley,’ and a reference that has ‘the’ followed by the letter ‘b.’ The bottom half’s torn off.”

“Fraley, that sounds familiar. A name or something? I think I remember seeing it somewhere.”

“Wait a second.” Slater pulled the scrap of paper from his pants pocket where he’d stuffed it earlier after picking it up from under Kate’s car tire. He’d forgotten about it. Not very good detective work, he thought, but he’d been distracted. Smoothing out the wrinkles, he held the two segments together.

The scrap was a perfect match to the piece of paper found in Kate’s purse. The binder paper listed a series of dates in her smooth, slanted cursive:

15 August

11 August

4 August

24 July

21 July

and below that:

Shawn Fraley

Probate will

The b

M

The final line unclear. What did the incomplete letters mean?

Sanderson walked back into the squad room at that moment.

“Say, Sandy, you heard of anyone named Shawn Fraley?” asked Slater.

Sanderson thought a moment and ran his thick brown fingers over his bald head. “Fraley, yeah, dude’s a lawyer in Sacramento, wills, probate, stuff like that.” He started to walk away, but turned back. “Uh, he called the Sheriff a couple a times.”

“He called Marconi? Do you remember when?”