Bernie had tried to talk her father and Raymond into staying at home with her mother and Helen Long, but they had followed behind her and Jim, in Raymond’s car, arriving at the fitness center right behind them. As soon as they got out of her Jeep, John Downs emerged from his car and joined them at the front entrance.
Using the spare set of keys for the fitness center that her parents kept at home, Bernie unlocked the door and shoved it open; then Jim eased her aside and stepped over the threshold. She and John Downs followed Jim into the vestibule, both with their weapons drawn. Illumination from the streetlight cast shadows across the wooden floor. With her free hand, Bernie felt along the wall until her fingers encountered the light switch. She flipped it and light flooded the area.
Carefully, the three of them crept through the vestibule and into the main work room filled with various types of exercise equipment. Bernie turned on the lights. Ron Delaine lay on the floor, facedown, fresh blood circling his head like a sticky red halo.
Bernie gasped, but continued moving forward. Carefully.
“John and I will check things out,” Jim said. “You see if Delaine’s dead.”
She nodded, then knelt down and reached for the bodyguard’s arm. “He’s been shot in the head.” She felt for a pulse. “He’s dead.”
A couple of minutes later, Jim dragged her to her feet. She stared at him, slightly dazed and far too emotionally involved to do her job properly.
“There’s no sign of Robyn or Scotty Joe,” Jim said. “But there’s a blood trail leading to the back door. It can’t be Delaine’s blood. He fell where he stood and didn’t get up. Someone else was wounded and either was pulled or crawled across the floor.”
“He’s got Robyn. That bastard has my baby sister.” She looked at Jim, her vision blurred with tears. “And he probably shot Scotty Joe. But what did he do with Scotty Joe’s body?”
Jim wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“I’m taking myself off this case officially,” Bernie said. “From here on out, you’re totally in charge. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, honey. I understand.”
Robyn opened her eyes and screamed. The sound of her terrorized shrieks echoed in the darkness. She couldn’t see anything. Dear God, had he buried her alive? Panic overwhelmed her. Then she felt something on her face, covering her eyes. She reached up, grabbed hold of the thick material, yanked it off and tossed it away. It took several minutes for her eyes to adjust to the semidarkness and to focus on the small, faint light in the corner. She tried to sit up, but a sudden dizziness momentarily halted her. She dropped back down onto the bed and rested her head on the pillow.
After taking several deep breaths in an effort to calm her near-hysteria, Robyn surveyed her surroundings.
You have not been buried alive. Thank God.
After her brain absorbed that knowledge, she relaxed a little, enough to think more clearly. Before she could assess her present situation, her mind had to replay her last coherent memories.
Oh, God, no! No, no, it wasn’t possible. He had shot—he had killed—blood. So much blood. Blood on him…on them. Blood on her. She glanced down at the top of her leotard. The leotard was gone; the blood was gone. She was naked.
She had tried to fight him, but he’d handled her as if she were a helpless child, spinning her around, covering her face with that foul-smelling rag. After that, everything had gone blank.
What had he done to her so that she couldn’t remember what happened next? Had he raped her while she’d been unconscious?
It doesn’t matter what he did; you’re alive and that’s what counts.
She vaguely recalled that when she’d realized
he
was the Secret Admirer killer, she’d stared at him in disbelief and said, “You? It can’t be you.”
Except for her father and Raymond and Jim, he was the last person on earth she would have ever suspected. Was it any wonder that no one had been able to discover his identity? He was liked, trusted, even admired. He was a man who set an example for others.
What was the point of trying to figure out how he’d been able to fool so many people for such a long time? He had managed to abduct her, despite all her so-called protection. What she had to concentrate on now was figuring out a way to get out of here—wherever the hell “here” was.
When she tried again, she managed to sit up. She slid herself around and eased her legs off the side of the bed. That’s when she felt something attached to her ankle and heard the clank of metal hitting the concrete floor. Peering down at her feet, she realized that one ankle was shackled. A long, metal chain was attached to the cuff and the other end disappeared under the bed.
Robyn shoved herself up and onto her feet, then tried to take a few steps. One step, two, three, four, five, six…jerk! She had gone as far as the chain, which she now realized was connected to the metal bed frame, would allow her. Without dragging the bed with her, she could go no farther than where she now stood, directly beside an old, dirty commode.
There were no windows. No doors. No means of escape. She was trapped.
But he hasn’t left you here to die. He’ll come back. To rape you and torture you and eventually to kill you.
Robyn dropped to her knees in front of the commode, retched several times, and then threw up again and again until there was nothing left in her stomach except sour, yellow bile.
When the phone rang, Jim answered on line one, hoping it was the call he’d been waiting for all morning. He was temporarily using Bernie’s office, per her instructions. Until her sister was found, she was taking a leave of absence to be with her parents. He knew that it had killed her to withdraw from this case, but she was smart enough to realize that she was far too emotionally involved, as was her father. She trusted Jim to take over for her because of his years of experience and because she knew he’d move heaven and earth to save her sister.
Charlie Patterson was in the field, manning the search for Robyn and for Scotty Joe. They were certain that Robyn was still alive and hidden away somewhere, the way Abby and Thomasina and Stephanie had been. They weren’t so sure about Scotty Joe. Everybody figured the young deputy was probably dead. If so, where the hell was his body?
“Captain Norton speaking.” Jim placed the receiver to his ear.
“Captain Norton, this is Marilyn Ogletree, Courtney Pettus’s mother. My husband phoned me here at work and explained that you wanted to talk to me about my daughter.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. But first, let me tell you how terribly sorry I am about what happened to Courtney.”
“Thank you, Captain. She was my only daughter…my only child from my first marriage. Her father died when Courtney was only five.”
“Did your husband tell you about all the other women who we believe were murdered by the same man who killed Courtney?”
“Yes, he told me. And I’m heartbroken for the families of all those other young women. But I can’t imagine how I could possibly help you.”
“You can help me by simply answering a few questions. Will you do that?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll do anything I can to help catch that monster and put him behind bars forever.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ogletree. I was wondering if you were aware of the fact that your daughter belonged to a four-person club called the Sable Girls when she was a junior at Leighton Prep in Greenville, South Carolina.”
Mrs. Ogletree gasped softly. “How did you—? You’ve been investigating my daughter, haven’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I knew about that silly club, but only after the fact.”
“Courtney left Leighton Prep after her junior year. Why did she leave?”
“Oh dear. It was such a terrible thing that those girls did to that poor boy. Courtney was so ashamed afterward. She called me in tears and begged me to let her come home but wouldn’t explain then why she wanted to leave so desperately. I made her stay a few more months and finish out the year; then when she came home for the summer she told me about what happened.”
“What did happen?” Jim asked. “What terrible thing did the Sable Girls do to some poor boy? It was the Sable Girls, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was the Sable Girls. It was all that Heather Stevens’s fault. She was nothing but a rich, spoiled brat. And she must have been mentally disturbed to have concocted such a cruel hoax to play on that poor boy.”
“Who was he, and what did they do to him?” Before Mrs. Ogletree explained further, Jim’s gut instincts told him that whoever that poor boy was, he had become a serial killer. The Secret Admirer serial killer.
“I believe his first name was Melvin, but I can’t remember his last name. I’m not sure Courtney ever mentioned it. This young man was skinny and what the kids referred to as a geek. He wore glasses and was very clumsy. And it seems he had a crush on Heather. She found out about his feelings and…” Mrs. Ogletree sighed. “Heather decided to use this boy in some stupid initiation into the Sable Girls. It was a diabolical scheme.”
“What was the scheme?”
“When Courtney told me what had happened, I couldn’t believe anyone could be so cruel. Heather totally humiliated that boy.”
Mrs. Ogletree continued talking, giving Jim all the details that her daughter had shared with her that summer twelve years ago. Jim listened without interruption to the story of how cunning and heartless Heather Stevens had been.
“The janitors found that poor boy the next morning, still naked, huddled on the quilt on the floor and quite out of his mind. His family had called the police when he hadn’t come home from school, but no one had any idea he might be in the basement. Courtney heard a few days later that he’d had a complete nervous breakdown and his family had been forced to commit him to a psychiatric hospital. My sweet Courtney felt guilty that she’d played a part in Heather’s sick little scheme.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to Melvin?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Mrs. Ogletree, are you aware that Heather Stevens was murdered a year before your daughter was?”
Silence.
“Mrs. Ogletree?”
“No, I wasn’t aware…Was her killer ever found?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And you think that Melvin killed Heather and Courtney? If he did kill them, why didn’t he kill Shannon and Sara, too? The were both Sable Girls.”
“He did kill them,” Jim said. “And at the time, no one connected their deaths. Shannon was killed in Greenville and Sara Hayes was killed a few months later in the city where she’d moved after college—Asheville, North Carolina.”
“Merciful God.”
“I’m sorry.” Jim couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“My husband said you told him this man has murdered other women. If it’s Melvin, why is he killing more women? Why didn’t he stop with the Sable Girls?”
“Each woman he’s killed was a young, pretty, popular brunette.”
“He’s killing the Sable Girls over and over and over again, isn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am, it would seem he is.”
Bernie met Jim at the hospital. He’d waited for her outside and the minute she approached, he pulled her to himself and hugged her.
“Hold me for a few minutes,” she told him. “Please just hold me.”
He kissed her temple. “How are you holding up, honey? How’s Brenda and R.B.?”
“Mom’s a basket case. I finally got her to take a sleeping pill and lie down around four this morning. Dad’s holed up in his den with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. And me—I’m on the verge of falling apart.”
“I’m not sure Scotty Joe’s going to be able to help us,” Jim said. “John stayed with him in the ambulance and he’s waiting for us in the ER. But he said Scotty Joe was pretty incoherent, that he kept saying, ‘I couldn’t save her. I tried, but I couldn’t save her.’ They’ve had to sedate him to calm him down.”
“Tell me again where he was found, when, and by whom?” Bernie eased out of Jim’s arms, but held on to his hand.
“He was wandering around out on the highway over near the river, blood all over his shirt from the gunshot wound in his arm, and he was blabbering out of his head,” Jim said. “He flagged down a guy on his way to work, then promptly passed out.”
“How is he? Is he going to be okay?”
“Yeah, as far as I know.” He grabbed her hand. “Let’s go on in and see if John’s talked to the doctor yet.”
She nodded, then went with him through the ER entrance, down a long hall, and to the ER waiting room. The minute they entered, John Downs spotted them, threw up his hand, and waved. He headed toward them. They met in the middle of the room.
John pulled them aside. “The doctor just came out. He said the bullet went clean through Scotty Joe’s arm, so I figure the bullet is one of the ones we dug out of the wall at the fitness center. Besides the bullet wound, he’s got a concussion. Our killer probably knocked him out. I’m just glad he didn’t hit Scotty Joe as hard as he did Brett Dennison.”
“Have you gotten a chance to question Scotty Joe?” Bernie asked. “Did he get a look at the man who kidnapped Robyn? Can he identify him?”
“We talked on the ride in the ambulance,” John said. “He told me that he and Delaine had heard an odd noise and Delaine had gone outside to check on things while he looked around inside. When Scotty Joe went back into the main room that houses all the exercise equipment, he saw Delaine lying there on the floor, and before he knew what was happening, somebody shot at him. Scotty Joe figures the guy must have gotten the drop on Delaine while he was outside and forced him back into the building. Seems this guy was wearing a stocking over his face, so Scotty Joe can’t ID him. But he knows the guy was about six feet tall, he was Caucasian, and had dark hair.”
“A six-foot white guy with dark hair.” Bernie groaned. “That could be at least a sixth or more of the guys in Adams County.”
“Scotty Joe said he tried to stop this guy, that he managed to follow him out to his SUV, and that’s when the guy forced him to unlock his vehicle. The guy was using Robyn as a shield, so Scotty Joe couldn’t get off a clean shot. When Scotty Joe unlocked his vehicle, the guy hit him over the head. That’s all he remembers. We figure he must have shoved Scotty Joe inside and drove off, then dumped him down by the river later.”
“What about Robyn?” Bernie asked.
“Scotty Joe said the guy must have drugged her, that she was out cold when he carried her outside.”
“Oh, Lord…Lord. He could have already raped her. He could be hurting her right now. Doing all sorts of—” Bernie choked on her tears.
Jim put his arm around her. “I’m taking you home.” He looked at John. “Tell Scotty Joe that we came by and we’ll be back. And when he’s up to it, see if he can remember anything else.”
John nodded, then looked sympathetically at Bernie. “I’m sorry. I wish…”
Jim practically dragged Bernie out of the ER. Once in the parking lot, she stopped and dug in her heels, refusing to budge. “I’m okay now. I can drive myself home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t want you wasting your time babysitting me. I want all your time and energy spent on trying to figure out who this guy is and where he’s holding Robyn.”