Twisted (29 page)

Following Kelsey’s suggestions, Allison and Jonah had spent yesterday afternoon tracking down the artificial knee, which had led them to the victim’s identity. Their luck hadn’t held out, though, and all the other leads the task force had been following yesterday had netted them nothing.

And meanwhile, the clock was ticking.

“Gotta say, I think Wolfe’s right about this one.” Sean stood beside the victim wall and surveyed the pictures. “She’s different from all the rest. Older, short hair. She wasn’t out jogging at the time of her abduction.”

“Maybe he needed a substitute when Jordan Wheatley didn’t turn out like he wanted,” Ric said. “He could have seen on the news that a jogger was attacked in that nature park and survived. Maybe he just grabbed the next woman he saw, no planning.”

Allison wasn’t sure she bought into the theory. But
if it was true, then it made sense that the killer actually knew this victim and explained why he’d gone to some effort to hide the body, unlike before. The woman had worked as a librarian on the outskirts of San Antonio. Had Damien Moss visited this library and known the woman personally? Had he been in there frequently using their computers?

Mark had gone to the library yesterday and flashed the suspect sketch around. One staffer said he looked “familiar” but that they got hundreds of people a week in and out of their doors. And the place was open to the public, no library card required unless someone wanted to check out material.

“We should stake out her workplace,” Jonah said from the other end of the conference table. He was poring over a stack of e-mails that had been printed out from Stephanie Snow’s account, hoping to figure out how she’d crossed paths with her killer.

“Think Wolfe’s already there,” Sean said.

Allison shifted in her seat. She hadn’t seen Mark all morning. Or last night, for that matter. She’d foolishly allowed herself to hope he might come over at the end of their grueling workday, but of course he hadn’t. Her doorbell and her phone had remained silent and she’d gone to bed alone.

She glanced around the table now and realized everyone was looking at her.

“What?”

“You know where he is?” Sean asked pointedly.

“No. Do you?”

He gave her a baleful look and turned back to the
board. “Okay, what about hunting licenses? That lead pan out?”

“What hunting licenses?” Allison asked.

“David Moss told you his brother likes to hunt,” Jonah said. “I figure maybe he applied for a license with Parks and Wildlife.”

“That doesn’t mesh with the profile,” she pointed out. “Wolfe specifically said he doesn’t like to interface with government institutions, he doesn’t like to get anybody’s permission to do his thing.”

“Yeah, well, the game warden doesn’t give a damn what he likes,” Jonah said. “Those guys are more powerful than God. They can go onto anyone’s property without a search warrant and demand ID from any hunter they see. And they dole out hefty fines. If Damien Moss hunted around here, he probably wouldn’t want to risk drawing attention to himself by hunting without a license.”

It was a thought. Allison still wasn’t sure it had potential, but they were getting desperate now. Time was running out for getting a location on this guy and bringing him in.

The phone in the conference room rang, and Ric grabbed it. “Santos.” He looked at Allison. “Yeah, we’re in a meeting right now. I’ll put you on speaker.”

Ric shoved the phone to the middle of the table. “It’s Roland over at Delphi. He said he was running some trace evidence for you.”

“Hey, I got those results back.” Roland’s voice came over the phone line.

Jonah looked at Allison. “What’d we send to Roland?”

“Jordan Wheatley’s clothing. It was collected with her rape kit.”

“So, Allison told me the victim reported smelling paint in the van where she was attacked,” Roland informed them. “I looked at her clothes under the stereo-microscope, and she was right, that’s exactly what I found: paint residue. Lots of colored spheres, no bigger than the head of a pin.”

“What kind of paint?” Sean asked. “We talking house paint?”

“That’s the thing that caught my attention. Even at a glance, I could tell it’s not house paint. Not unless he’s painting Walt Disney’s house. This is a rainbow of colors. Stuff you wouldn’t see on a house. And not only that, the spherical shape is typical of aerosol paint, which forms spheres when it floats in the air and then adheres to surfaces.”

“The kind of paint used for graffiti?” Sean asked.

“Higher quality than that. This stuff’s more expensive.”

“Help me out here,” Allison said. “You’re saying he paints things
inside
the van?”

“No, but maybe he grabbed a drop cloth from wherever he does paint, put it on the floor of the vehicle. Maybe if he was trying to keep blood off the floor? Or for easy cleanup?”

“Damn, that’s cold,” Sean said.

“So, anyway, these polymers I saw are commonly found in decorative paints. Think signs, metal furniture, that sort of thing.”

“Car paint?” Ric asked.

“Not cars,” Roland said. “That’s a whole different kind of paint.”

“So our guy maybe works in some kind of paint shop,” Allison summarized. “Or knows someone who does, and that’s where he got the drop cloth. It’s a decent lead.” She was already firing up her laptop to search for sign-painting businesses anywhere between here and San Antonio. Their target area now included four counties.

“That’s not all,” Roland said. “It wasn’t just paint I found on her clothes, but very fine dust. Looked at it under a microscope, turns out it’s glass. And this isn’t just any glass; it’s a special kind of safety glass. The stuff they use in fancy shower doors, things like that.”

“Shower doors?” Ric straightened in his chair and reached across the table for a thick manila folder. “Shit, hold on.” He started flipping through the file.

Allison leaned closer. “What’s that?”

“List of green or white vans in all four counties we’re looking at.” Ric flipped through the pages. “I struck out with the name ‘Moss’ but I’ve got a ‘Thompson’ here who has a green van registered to his business.
Shit
, look at this: Thompson Shower and Bath Solutions, 646 Mesquite Creek Road.” Ric looked at Allison. “That’s in Waynesboro.”

Jonah whistled. “Best lead we’ve had all day.”

“Hey, Roland, I owe you one.” Allison got to her feet and grabbed her coat. “Let’s go.”

Mark was operating on almost no sleep and didn’t have time for coffee. And yet he entered Home Depot at
precisely ten a.m. and went straight to the lumber aisle, as he’d been instructed. It smelled like sawdust, and he couldn’t resist running his hand over the pile of smooth two-by-fours stacked waist-high about midway down the aisle.

“Agent Wolfe.”

He turned around and saw Jordan walking toward him with Maximus at her side. She wore jeans and a canvas barn jacket. Mark noted the green scarf wrapped around her neck and wondered if she wore it to keep out the cold or to hide her scar.

Maximus strained against his leash and wagged his tail as they reached him. Mark petted the dog’s head as Jordan held out an oversized cup from Starbucks.

“Black,” she said. “This is the biggest they had. Figured you’d need it.”

“Thank you.” He took the cup and rested it on the pile of lumber. “This is a first for me. Don’t think I’ve ever been invited to breakfast at Home Depot.”

“Yeah, well, most places don’t like dogs.” She rubbed Maximus between the ears. “I’ve thought about getting one of those harnesses and people would think he’s a service dog. Because he sort of is.”

Mark looked at her and tried to conceal his pity. When he’d first seen her car covered with dust and leaves, he’d figured she was practically a shut-in. She seemed to be confirming that.

“But . . . ?” he prompted.

She arched her brows at him as she took a sip of her coffee.

“You were thinking of getting a harness, but . . . ?”

She set her cup down beside his. “I don’t know. It’s
like saying I have a disability.” She shook her head. “In some ways I guess I do, but I’m not ready to give in to that.”

Mark was glad to hear it. This woman’s life had been decimated, but she was still fighting. He wondered how much courage it had taken her just to come out here today, even with a protective German shepherd at her side.

She stared down at their coffee cups, and Mark waited for her to tell him what she needed.

“Look, I can imagine how busy you must be today.” She glanced up at him. “I know what tomorrow is.”

He waited.

“Still no arrest?”

“No.”

She nodded. “I figured I would have seen it on the news.” She cleared her throat. “I was watching this morning. I saw the coverage about that woman from San Antonio. Meredith Devins.” She looked at him somberly, and Mark knew what she was going to ask him even before she said it. “I need you to tell me—do you think he killed her because he didn’t kill me?”

Mark gazed down at her. He couldn’t bring himself to lie to her, but he didn’t want to burden her with what he believed to be the truth, either.

She looked down and closed her eyes. “That’s what I thought.”

“We don’t know for sure why he killed her. We only know that she was abducted the day after you were.”

“It’s okay. I just—” She shook her head as her eyes welled with tears. “I just needed to know. I feel responsible. I realize that doesn’t make sense, but still it’s how I feel.”

“Jordan.” Mark waited for her to look at him. “You can’t do that to yourself. You can’t take that on.”

For a few moments, she simply looked away and seemed to be trying to compose herself. Then she met his gaze. “Sometimes it amazes me,” she said. “How one person can be so destructive. Can ruin so many lives. Ever since it happened, I’ve had this huge inadequacy thing. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s this feeling of . . . not being worthy. That maybe my life was spared for some kind of reason, only I have no idea what it is. Some days I can barely get out of bed, and I don’t know why God would choose
me
over someone else, someone who’s a much better person than I am.”

God didn’t choose you—Damien Moss did.
Mark wanted to tell her that, but he didn’t want to quibble with her religious beliefs.

“It’s like he pried this door open into my life, and I can’t get away from him,” she went on. “There are times I’m outside, in my garden, and I feel like he’s watching me. And I feel like that in my bed in the middle of the night, like I’ll open my eyes and see him standing in the doorway.” She shook her head. “One time I even thought I saw him in the window, standing out on our deck, and I
totally
flipped out.”

Mark went on alert. “You saw him at your home?”

She looked at him with watery eyes. “No, I just
thought
I did, but of course it was nothing. See, it’s like I’m going crazy. I’m so scared all the time, and I can’t tell anyone because they’ll think I’m unstable or something. And then I get so
angry.
” She clenched her hand into a fist. “And it’s like he’s destroying my life all over again,
every day I give in to it. Every day I let myself be too afraid to even do anything. I used to be so blissfully ignorant, so
stupid
. And now I wish I had that back.”

Mark frowned down at her. Much of what she was describing could result from post-traumatic stress disorder. But what if there was more to it? What if Damien Moss was, in fact, still stalking her?

She produced a tissue from the pocket of her jacket and dabbed the end of her nose. She looked up at him. “Do you have kids?”

The question caught him off guard. “No.”

“I used to want children more than anything. Back before . . . what happened, we’d been trying for a year.” She looked away. “Now I don’t know. I’m not sure I have the heart for it. Too many what-ifs.” She looked at him. “Do you know what I mean?”

Her gaze was so direct—it was as though she could read his mind.
Too many what-ifs.
In a few simple words, she’d just articulated the reason he’d never caved in to Trisha’s relentless pressure, even though it had cost him his marriage.

“I know what you mean,” he said.

She looked away again. She took a deep breath. “I think my husband’s planning to leave me.”

Mark didn’t say anything.

“I’m not sure I blame him.”

He watched her, uncomfortable now, and not only because she was dumping her marital problems on him.

“Jordan . . .” He waited for her to meet his gaze. “Your instincts, they’re always a response to something. They always have your best interests at heart. Don’t discount that, no matter who tells you you’re paranoid.”

She smiled slightly. “So, you think he
is
leaving?”

“I’m talking about your safety. If you ever get that feeling—if you ever truly feel threatened—you shouldn’t ignore it.”

The stark look on her face made him feel guilty. He’d probably set her recovery back by months. But she needed to understand this.

“You think he’s coming back?”

“I think we’re going to find him before he hurts anyone else.” They’d never been
so
close, and Mark was more determined than ever. “But I’m also a big believer in caution. You should take commonsense safety measures. Keep your doors locked when you’re at home. Keep Maximus with you. Be wary of strangers. All the basic stuff you already do now.”

She nodded, looking somewhat numb.

“You don’t need to go around in a panic all the time, because that’s not helpful, just exhausting. But if there
is
something to worry about, your brain gives you signals. You don’t have anything to be afraid of until you
actually
feel fear.” He stopped to make sure she was listening. “Does that make sense?”

“The only thing I should fear is . . . fear itself?”

“That’s exactly it,” he told her. “And if your instincts start yelling at you, sit up and listen.”