The Wreck (14 page)

“Ours, too,” Matt Collins said.

“Each girl also reported he used two
condoms at a time, except for the oral sessions.”

“Jesus, what’s the point?” Barclay
muttered.

“What do you mean by that?” Michael
asked, annoyed by the agent’s cavalier tone.

“I don’t know what you think of condoms,
but most guys hate them because you can’t feel a damned thing through one of
them, let alone two,” Barclay said.

“So you’re suggesting he’s not looking
for sexual satisfaction?” Matt asked.

Barclay shrugged. “Maybe our guy has a
perfectly satisfactory sex life at home and this is all about torture, plain
and simple.”

Michael wanted to say there was nothing
plain or simple about it. And if his years of law enforcement had taught him
anything, rape was never about sexual gratification.

“Let’s keep our minds open to the
possibility our perp might not be a loner, but a family guy with a wife and
two-point-five kids at home,” Barclay said.

“What else do we know about him?” DiNardo
asked.

“He’s big,” Matt said. “The lab report on
the partial footprint found at the Holbrooks—where one of the notes was
discovered—indicate it was made by a work boot that was at least a size
fourteen.”

“And we’ve ruled out the home owner as
bigfoot?” Barclay asked.

Matt nodded. “Steve Holbrook wears a ten-and-a-half,
and his son, who hasn’t been home in more than a month, wears an eleven.”

“Most shoe stores carry up to what?”
Barclay asked. “Size thirteen?”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “I’m a
fourteen. I special order most of my shoes from Gleason’s. I could check with
them to get a list of other local residents who special order larger sizes and
see if any of them have a tread that matches the print.”

“Good,” Barclay said.

“Um, we also know his feet aren’t the
only thing that’s big.” Matt’s face flushed with embarrassment. “An
average-sized … man … doesn’t do the kind of damage this guy did to these
girls. They all reported he was extremely well endowed.”

“Big feet, big dick,” DiNardo commented.

Michael glared at him.

“Sorry,” DiNardo said under his breath.

“There are a few other common elements,”
Matt said. “We already mentioned they were all cheerleaders, but they also
walked to and from school, which is how he managed to nab them.”

“We’ve concluded it would take a
tremendous amount of time, patience, and planning to identify the cheerleaders
at four schools in two different states and then to find one at each school who
was vulnerable,” the detective from Danielson, Connecticut, said.

“You read my mind, Detective,” Barclay
said. “Our guy has either a flexible schedule or a seasonable job where he has
downtime in the winter.”

“The attack in our town happened in late
spring,” the detective from Smithfield said.

“He could’ve planned it earlier,” DiNardo
said.

“We need to put out a bulletin to all high
schools in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, warning them a serial
rapist is targeting cheerleaders who walk to and from school,” Barclay said to
the administrative assistant he had brought with him.

She nodded as she typed notes on a laptop.

“You might want to add colleges,
universities, community colleges, and technical schools to your distribution
list,” the Pawtucket police chief interjected. “Our carjacking victim—a former
high school cheerleader—was a freshman at Rhode Island College.”

Barclay accepted the suggestion with a
gesture to his assistant. “Let’s talk about tie-ins. You’ve mentioned the
carjacking, which had the cheerleader factor as well as the absence of DNA.”

“Right,” the Pawtucket chief confirmed.
“Except for some reason he went a step further in this case and murdered the
victims.”

“That was also his only known sex crime
against a man,” Matt added.

“Give us the details on that one,”
DiNardo requested.

“The guy was twenty-one, she was
nineteen. They had been dating about a year. On July 6, 1995, they stopped at a
convenience store on Broad Street. He left the car running and went in to buy a
soda. Security cameras showed him in the store alone, so we assume while he was
inside, the perp got into the back seat and pulled a weapon on the girl. The
car was found ten miles away in a wooded area.”

“Again with the woods,” Barclay
commented. To his assistant, he said, “Make a note to mention wooded areas in
the warning memo.”

“The victims were found in the car,
arranged in a sexual position,” the Pawtucket chief continued. “They were
strangled, naked, bound, and bloody. Like the other victims, they’d been raped
multiple times and ways, and autopsies showed their injuries were consistent
with those of the recent victims. The lack of hair and fibers in the car led us
to suspect the attacks took place outside the car. We compared the time from
the convenience store camera with the time of death to determine he had them
for five or six hours before he killed them.”

He let the impact of that settle in the
room before he added, “Ten frustrating years later, we haven’t had a single
suspect.”

After fifteen years of looking for a guy
in a road, Michael could sympathize with his colleague’s disappointment.

“So let’s recap,” Barclay said, attempting
to bring the two-hour meeting to a close. “We have four recent aggravated
sexual assaults and a series of notes found in Granville at the graves of
deceased cheerleaders, at a memorial where six cheerleaders and athletes were
killed in a car accident, and another found at a former Granville cheerleader’s
parents’ house. In addition, we have a carjacking where several elements match
the current spree. Without the lack of DNA, I’d say the carjacking victim being
an ex-cheerleader was a coincidence. I’m also bothered by the fact they were
murdered, but I’m not ruling out a connection.”

“When you add the same kind of sex and no
DNA,” DiNardo said with a shrug, “it sounds like the same guy to me.”

“For now, we’ll operate under the
assumption it’s connected,” Barclay decided. “Anything else?” When no one
answered, he said, “You’ve all done an excellent job thus far. I want to
reiterate that we’re here to help, not step on toes. So let’s meet here again
the day after tomorrow at nine a.m. to regroup. In the meantime, I’ll be
holding a press conference at noon to warn the public. I don’t want to mention
the possible connection to the carjacking yet. There’s no sense getting the
hopes of the victims’ families up until we know more. Thanks very much, everyone.”

The others engaged in animated
conversation while they gathered up their files and belongings. As they moved
toward the door, Michael said, “Wait.”

“Chief Westbury?” Agent Barclay said.
“What is it?”

Michael made eye contact with Matt across
the room. Matt’s expression urged caution.
But if there was a chance, even
the slightest chance…
“There might be something else.”

“I’m listening,” Barclay said.

“In the interest of full disclosure, I
should mention that the accident site where one of the notes was found…”

“What about it?” DiNardo asked.

“The younger of my two sons was killed in
that accident.”

“I’m sorry,” Barclay said soberly.

“Me, too,” DiNardo added.

“Thank you,” Michael said. “About a month
before the accident, my older son was coming home late one night and had to
swerve to avoid hitting a man who was standing in the road at the exact place
where the accident later happened.” In a rush of words, Michael laid out his
theory. When he was done, he waited breathlessly for their reaction.

“I ran a search for unsolved cases from
1990 and 2000,” Matt interjected. “Nothing jumped out from 1990, but in 2000,
two high school cheerleaders—one in Providence and another in
Cumberland—reported attempted abductions on their way home from school. They
were able to get away—one kicked him where he lives, and the other said he
bolted when a car approached them.”

“No description of the perp?” Barclay
asked.

Matt shook his head. “All the girls
who’ve been attacked said he grabbed them from behind and wore a face mask during
the actual assaults. They did say he was big, though. So if Chief Westbury is
right about the five-year pattern, our perp tried twice but failed in 2000. I
also checked all the in-between years since 1995 but found nothing else that
stood out as possibly connected.”

Michael glanced at Matt, hoping his eyes
conveyed his appreciation for his deputy’s support.

Barclay stood with his hands on his hips
as he contemplated Michael.

For a long moment, Michael had no idea if
he was about to be dismissed as a grieving father hoping to exonerate his son.

Finally, Barclay said, “Let’s hear the
rest.”

At
Miss Molly’s, everything came to a halt during the busy lunch hour as regular
TV programming was interrupted to carry federal Agent Nathan Barclay’s chilling
announcement that a serial rapist was targeting popular young cheerleaders in
Rhode Island and Connecticut. With Chief Westbury standing next to him at the
podium, Agent Barclay said the investigation was focused on Granville in part
because of disturbing notes found in five places around town, including the
graves of the three cheerleaders killed in the 1995 car accident on Tucker
Road.

As she heard that for the first time,
Carly’s legs gave out under her, and she sat down hard on one of the stools at
the counter.

Agent Barclay called on young people to
travel in groups and to be wary. He added a further warning to young women who
had once been cheerleaders. “We’re looking for a dangerous predator who’s
targeting cheerleaders and ex-cheerleaders,” Barclay concluded. “However, I
urge all young women between the ages of thirteen and thirty-five to be highly
vigilant, especially in wooded areas, until he’s apprehended.”

The twenty-minute press conference ended
without the agent taking any questions from the media. Patrons of Miss Molly’s,
stunned by the news, conversed in low murmurs rather than their usual
boisterous tones.

Molly Hanson rested a hand on Carly’s
shoulder. “Are you all right, honey? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Trying to shake off the unease that had
settled over her, Carly nodded.

“Disturbing,” was Molly’s take on it.
“Could be someone who sits at one of my tables every day.”

The thought sent a cold shiver of fear through
Carly as she glanced around the room full of familiar faces. These were people
she had known all her life. The idea that she or anyone else could have reason
to fear one of them was absurd.

Molly brushed a loving hand over Carly’s
cheek. “Do you feel up to working?”

Embarrassed that the news had rattled her
so deeply, Carly nodded, got up, and reached for the coffee pot to do refills.

“Carly,” her coworker Debby called from
behind the counter. She waved Carly over to her. In a low tone, Debby said,
“Chief Westbury called for you. He asked that you wait for him here when your
shift ends. He wants to talk to you.”

Carly smiled her thanks and began her
rounds with the coffee, wondering if the chief wanted to talk to her about the
notes she had found. What else could it be?
I guess I’ll find out soon
enough
.

Michael
Westbury felt the eyes of the town on him as he walked from the station to Miss
Molly’s just before two. If he were a regular citizen, he supposed he, too, would
be wondering why the man charged with keeping their town safe had failed so
miserably.

Desmond Kane, a member of the volunteer
fire department, stopped him outside the hardware store.

“What do you know, Mike?”

“Not as much as I should,” Michael muttered.
He glanced down at Desmond’s feet and found them to be normal sized.

“You really think this guy lives here?”

Michael shrugged. “The only thing I know
for sure is he has a beef with cheerleaders.”

“I heard he did a real job on Tanya
Lewis,” Desmond said, his interest in knowing more about just what had been
done to Tanya apparent on his face.

It disgusted Michael that people always
wanted the details, especially in sex crimes. If they could see the pictures
and read the reports, they wouldn’t be so curious. The images were burned into
Michael’s brain, and he wouldn’t wish them on his worst enemy. “Take care,
Desmond,” Michael said, continuing down Main Street.

Miss Molly’s had emptied out for the day,
and Carly was working with the other waitresses to clean up. She looked up with
a smile when Michael walked in and sat in a corner booth.

Carly brought him a steaming cup of
coffee and patted her stomach, raising a questioning eyebrow.

“I’m good, thanks.”

With her fingers, she suggested a little
something.