Dead Even (17 page)

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Will leaned over the desk, the phone up against his right ear, while he took notes on the back of an envelope.

“That would be great, yeah. That’s what we’ll need. Thanks. I owe you one. . . .”

He hung up the phone and opened a desk drawer, hoping to find a piece of paper to transfer his notes to, when he noticed Miranda in the doorway.

“That was Evan,” he told her as he opened the center drawer, rooted around, and found a pad of Post-its.

“Has he been able to identify the deputies who were on duty the day that Channing, Giordano, and Lowell were in the courthouse together?” She came into the office and draped herself over the back of the communal visitor’s chair, which somehow had found its way into Will’s cubicle today. A few days ago it had been in Miranda’s cubicle, and before that she remembered seeing it in Livvy Bach’s cubicle down the hall.

“He has the names, but he’s only been able to speak with three of them. They were all assigned to the front of the building when the courthouse went on lockdown that day. He still has several others to track down. One retired in August and moved to Phoenix; another is on vacation; and another one just entered the police academy. But Evan will keep on it.”

“If we can prove they were together, that they had opportunity to hatch this plan, we can go after Giordano on conspiracy charges.” She gazed into space, thinking out loud. “If nothing else, the threat alone might make Giordano open up.”

“And if we can catch up with Archer Lowell in the meantime, we can avert two more murders.”

“All good, all around.” She nodded.

“So what have you got?” Will asked. “You have that look in your eye.”

“I may have found someone who could have pissed off Channing in a big way.”

“Who’s that?”

“A guy named Ronald Johnson. He was Channing’s boss in a little restaurant in Wynnefield.” She leaned back in the chair and looked just a little smug. “Wynnefield, Ohio, where three bodies were found within two weeks time. DNA was just recently matched to Channing.”

“What’s that got to do with Johnson?”

“Johnson fired Channing. Shortly after he lost his job, the killings stopped. Picked up about three weeks later in Union.”

“Why’d he fire Channing?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“Maybe we should speak with Mr. Johnson.”

“I’ve already made a call to the Wynnefield police.” She smiled. “We’re booked on a three o’clock flight to Cincinnati. We’ll pick up a car and drive on down to Wynnefield.”

“Great.” He glanced at his watch. They had another two hours before they’d have to leave for the airport. “Who put you on to Johnson?”

“The owner of one of the restaurants Channing worked for. I got the names of his prior employers by running the social security number he was using back then. I matched up the restaurants with the towns where we had confirmed kills that matched back to Channing. Seems he drifted from town to town for several years, restaurant to restaurant.”

“Kill to kill,” Will murmured.

“So it would seem.”

“The owner didn’t have a number for Johnson?”

“No. He said Johnson left his employ about three years ago, left no forwarding information. The Wynnefield police are doing a search for me. I’m expecting to hear from them.” She glanced at her watch. “I hope they call back soon. I’d love to know what caused Johnson to fire Channing and how Channing reacted.”

“Well, I say for now, we put Johnson’s name on our list of maybe victims.”

“I already did. You find anything interesting in your stack of files?”

“Only that there’s a stretch of time when Channing seems to have disappeared from the area for a while.” Will frowned. “For almost a year, there were no kills in the Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, or Pennsylvania areas that we can attribute to him.”

“You sent his DNA through CODIS; if he’d been active elsewhere, it would have shown up.”

“
If
he left DNA behind. If he’d smartened up by then, who knows? He could have been just about anywhere.”

“Did you imput his kills for similar MOs?”

“I just started doing that when Evan called.”

“Want me to help?”

“No, thanks, that’s okay. It’s giving me an opportunity to take another look at his patterns.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.” She stood up and stretched. “By the way, I spoke with Regan Landry this morning. Apparently all’s quiet on the Plainsville front. She isn’t happy about having to be in Philadelphia right now—she feels she should be with her dad until this is over—and her father isn’t particularly happy about having Art Phillips in his hair, as she put it.”

“Her father would be even less happy to have Archer Lowell in his face.”

“Regan agrees. But she said Landry and Phillips keep rubbing each other the wrong way. Landry goes outside without telling Phillips, Phillips gets pissed off. Landry gets pissed off.”

“Sounds like one big pissing contest in the fields of New Jersey.”

“That pretty much sums it up. Regan told her father he’d just have to live with it. She’s trying to keep him in line, but you know, as she explained it, he thinks he’s the authority on the criminal mind.”

“Thinks he can outsmart Lowell, does he?”

“Well, so did we, if you remember.”

“Ouch.”

“Anyway, Regan’s riding herd on her father to just ignore Phillips and just let him do his job.”

“Let’s hope he listens to her.”

“Yeah, well, in the meantime, Livvy’s ordering lunch. You want anything?”

“Where’s she going?”

“Luigi’s. They deliver. No one really feels like going out into this storm.” She nodded toward the window. “Or hadn’t you noticed it’s raining like crazy out there?”

“I noticed,” he said, nodding. “But I heard it’s supposed to stop early this afternoon.”

“Hopefully before our plane takes off. I don’t relish going up in this. So. Are you ordering lunch?”

“Ham and cheese on whole wheat. Lettuce and tomato.” He reached for his wallet.

“I’ve got it,” she told him as she started for the door. “It’s the least I can do, since you insist on picking me up in the morning and driving me home at night.”

“Gotta keep you among the living, Cahill.”

“There’s a man in a van who is watching my house twenty-four hours each day now. I doubt I need an escort back and forth to the office.”

“Tell it to the boss.” He tilted his head in the direction of John Mancini’s office. “Besides, it gives us a chance to go over what we’re finding in the files.”

“Ha. All we went over on the ride in this morning was Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon.
”

“A classic, in the best sense of the word.”

“Yesterday, it was
The Wall.
Tuesday, it was . . . what was that, anyway?”

“
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Very sixties, very psychedelic.”

“Yeah, well, it was a little too sixties for me. I’ve heard enough psychedelic rock to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”

“What can I say? I just got the CD player in the car fixed. I haven’t been able to play Floyd in . . .” He glanced to see the look on her face. “Oh. It’s the Mad Marlow thing, isn’t it?”

“There are some people who never left the sixties, Fletcher. My mother is one of them.”

“Stuck in a time warp?”

“World’s oldest living hippie.”

“She looked pretty straight when I met her. So did your stepfather.”

“Roger is an insurance salesman.” She laughed and shook her head. “My mother waited twenty-five years for my father to come back and marry her, then turned around and married an insurance salesman.”

“Hey, easy on the insurance salesmen. My favorite uncle sells insurance.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just that, well, look at Jack.” Miranda shook her head. “He’s a crazy man. I saw an interview with him on television a few years back. He has seven children by five different women in different parts of the world, one of whom, by the way, is reported to be a princess in some small, obscure European country.”

“Hey, you’re related to royalty.” He tried to make light of it.

“No. I have Portia. I have my mother. Roger. That’s it.”

“Aren’t you even curious about—”

“No.” Her blue eyes darkened to cobalt. “Not about any of it. Not about Jack or his life, not about his kids or his music. He’s never been involved in our lives, and he doesn’t exist in mine.”

“Those photos I saw the other day, he looked like he was pretty involved then.”

“I think we were a novelty to him back then. After all,” she said dryly, “we were his first offspring. He did support us financially when we were growing up, but he’s never been a father to us. And we could have used one, since our mother wasn’t much of a mother. I find his attempts to get in touch with us now little more than an annoyance.”

“How did the two of you grow up to be what you are?” he wondered aloud.

“How could we have been any different? When you grow up fending for yourself, you get strong because you have to be. Your instincts about people grow sharp because they have to be. And you trust the law because you never learned to trust anything else.”

“You’re really something else, Cahill.”

His phone rang, and she pointed to it. “Answer it,” she said, and left his cubicle.

“So, have you thought about what you might want for your reward?” Genna slowed her stride as she and Julianne approached the drugstore. Her heart was beating like crazy. She’d been in more dangerous situations, surely, but she could count on the fingers of one hand the number that had held such personally high stakes. She’d gotten Julianne out of the Valley of the Angels. Could she get her out of Linden?

“I don’t know.” The girl shook her blonde head.

“Well, Eileen got a sketchpad, and Caroline picked out a journal. Maybe something along those lines?” Genna opened the door to the store and held it until the girl stepped inside.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of an artist.”

“A journal is nice to write your thoughts in.”

“My father . . .” she began, then stopped.

“Your father what?” Genna asked casually.

“He doesn’t like me to be secretive. He always tells me to talk everything over with him.” She smiled faintly.

“But every girl has her secrets,” Genna whispered conspiratorially.

“I don’t.” The admission seemed almost apologetic.

“You tell your father everything?”

“He likes to know what I’m thinking about.” Julianne stopped to look over a package of faux tortoiseshell hair clips. “I guess it’s because I don’t have a mom. That’s why he makes me stay with him and Pamela, in their apartment, instead of in the cabins with the other girls. He wants me to know her.”

Genna had seen Jules with his new young wife. She was pretty and blonde and, well, young. Barely of legal age, Genna guessed, though she suspected that Jules Douglas was just too smart to take an underage bride.

“You stay with them, not in a cabin, like the other girls?” Genna asked, though she knew. It appeared Jules used his position as one of the reverend’s financial advisers to keep his daughter from harm’s way. For that, Genna grudgingly gave him credit.

“My dad says a family should stay together.”

“Well, the cabins are a bit crowded. And I’m sure your father likes to have you close to him,” Genna said.
And your father would probably like to keep you from forming any attachments that might cause you to ask too many questions when girls you become close to disappear.

As she’d anticipated, Genna had had a hard time getting Jules to agree to permit Julianne to leave the compound today. Only the fact that Reverend Prescott approved of Genna’s mission and would be sending Daniel to accompany them persuaded Jules to let his daughter leave the Valley of the Angels. Genna was grateful for Prescott’s backing. There was something about Jules Douglas that she found menacing. The sooner she could get Julianne away from him and back in her mother’s arms, the happier Genna would be.

“I think I like this little dish.” Julianne stopped in front of a display of small ceramic items. “See, it has a little lid.”

She carefully lifted the box to show Genna. “It has a tiny pink flower painted inside.”

“Pretty, yes.” Genna peered inside. “But what will you put in it?”

“Tiny stones, maybe.” Julianne smiled. “Or other pretty little things I find.”

“Sounds like a winner. Let’s take it.” Genna gestured for Julianne to follow her to the front of the store and the cash register, where she paid the unsmiling clerk for their purchase.

The middle-aged woman hadn’t been the only person in Linden to show a lack of friendliness to Genna and her charges over the past few weeks. It was an odd position for Genna to be in. She’d made a solid place for herself in the Bureau by being one who always fit in, wherever she was. Here in Linden, she was the odd man out, identified as a member of Reverend Prescott’s followers by the white scarf she wore around her neck. Apparently the good people of Linden had their reservations about strangers, especially those who dwelled in the Valley of the Angels.

As well they should have,
Genna thought as she accepted her change and pocketed it.
What will they think, once the reverend’s little empire is exposed for what it is?

She could almost hear the interviews on CNN and the morning news shows. “We always knew there was something going on out there. . . .”

Soon enough,
Genna told herself as she took Julianne by the arm and leaned into the wind that snaked around them and blew the snow in whirls of icy mist.

Soon enough,
of course, assuming that those who were responsible for their escape from here on out had everything in place. Genna simply had to trust.

The Jeep was still where Daniel had parked it outside the grocery store, but Daniel was nowhere to be seen. They were just crossing the street when Julianne tugged at her sleeve and said, “Look, there’s Daniel.”

They stopped in the middle of the street.

“Who are those men he’s talking to?” she asked, and pointed to the three men in black who surrounded Daniel at the entrance to the store.