Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (4 page)

“To be perfectly honest, Dr. Street, my investigators didn’t make any headway when
the second vic disappeared eight months ago,” Sheriff Meltzer told me. “APD says you’re
a good investigator and a good profiler. I could use both right now. Can you take
a few days? You’d be on our dime, of course.”

“Would you mind holding while I check the schedule?” I hit the
HOLD
button. I didn’t check the schedule. I didn’t do anything but watch the vein in my
wrist tick, tick, ticking. I was thinking about the kind of killer who would kidnap
and murder young girls. I was thinking about the thing that frightens me and tugs
at me, pulls me like a magnetic field—the calculating mind of a killer.

“What’s the time line on the subpoenas?” I asked Latisha.

“The deposition is five weeks away.”

“Okay, so I can get them out next week,” I said.

“You have to,” Latisha warned. “Folks have to be given a reasonable timeframe to prepare.”

“There’s nothing here we can’t handle for a couple days, I guess,” Neil said.

I released the
HOLD
button. “Sheriff, would you mind sending the lab reports and scene photos? I’d like
to review them tonight and call you in the morning.” I gave him my email address.
“You didn’t mention how long the first victim had been out there.”

“About a decade, according to the forensic anthropologist.”

“And the second girl for eight months?”

“Closer to sixty days.”

I sat forward. “But she disappeared eight months ago? She was held for six months
before she was murdered.”

“The first victim disappeared a year before she was killed,” the sheriff told me quietly.
“Dr. Street, we’re not bad cops down here, but we don’t understand this kind of monster.
And we don’t understand how someone held these girls without detection.”

“Speaking in broad terms, Sheriff, offenders who kidnap and imprison their victims
tend to be sexual sadists. Their gratification comes in dehumanizing their victims.
In children and young adults dependency on the captor is created fairly quickly. The
offender is generally the only human contact the victim has. Every scrap of food,
every drink of water, every glimpse of sunlight depends on the generosity of their
jailer. Lot of power in that for someone who craves it. And prisoners don’t always
run away or scream when there’s an opportunity. Sometimes it’s about traumatic bonding.
Usually the offender has made threats. They’re told no one will believe them, that
he will find them, that their family will die, their pets will be murdered. Neighbors
don’t always know what’s going on. Look at what Ariel Castro did in Cleveland. It’s
twenty feet to the next house and he held three women in his homemade dungeon for
a decade.”

“Like I said, we don’t understand this kind of monster,” the sheriff said. “But we
do realize we’re dealing with the same suspect since we have the same disposal site,
which is why I’m calling you.”

“I assume you checked family members and local sex offenders?”

“It’s the first place we looked. Brought in a few for questioning. Cleared the families.
And in my experience it’s not the registered offenders you have to worry about. They
know they’re the first ones we’re going to shake when something happens. The system
does work sometimes.”

“And you haven’t wanted to reach out to the Bureau. Why?”

“Whisper is a little outside the touristy areas around the lake. It’s quiet. Hardworking,
private people. Having the Feds around isn’t going to do anything to put the community
at ease.”

“The Bureau makes a good partner, Sheriff. They have resources.”

“This is our case,” he told me, and even though I didn’t know him, I knew he wasn’t
going to take my advice. “We want to see it through ourselves if we can.”

Most cops feel that way. Especially in small towns. It’s personal for them. I didn’t
think it was smart, but I understood it. “I’ll go over the files and speak with you
in the morning, Sheriff.”

“Look forward to it, Dr. Street.”

3

I read the names on the email from a sheriff I didn’t know in central Georgia. Tracy
Anne Davidson. Melinda Jane Cochran. I tried to remember my life at thirteen. I thought
about boys, sports, my friends, fitting in, kissing, what to wear. I was happily and
completely absorbed by my own narrow teenage world. My brother Jimmy left school when
the bell rang, so I walked home alone after practice. Nothing bad happens in good
neighborhoods, right? How easy it would have been for someone to approach me, trick
me, and snatch me out of my life, my parents’ life. It’s hard to even consider the
kind of wreckage that would have left behind. Or the suffering the families of these
two girls had endured, first having their children vanish and then coming to terms
with the lost hope they would be found alive when their bodies turned up in some remote
crater in Georgia’s red clay earth.

I opened an attachment with copies of the reports from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
lab and sent them to the printer in the outer office. I followed with the photographs
from the disposal site, and glanced up from my desk when Neil groaned in his desk
chair. I carried my laptop to the conference table. “You have time to give me a hand?”

“Are you kidding? I’m so frigging bored I’m ready to assign sex offender ratings to
the Super Nannies staff.”

Super Nannies On Call was one of our regular clients. We ran thorough background checks
on their applicants. It was a thousand or so a month that I very much wanted to keep.
Neil’s overdeveloped technological know-how and frequent bouts with boredom were a
recipe for mischief. The combination had been his undoing in the past and nearly landed
him in jail. “Actually, that’s exactly where I want to start—registered sex offenders
in Hitchiti County and the surrounding area, level two and three. They would have
needed access to the area in the last eleven years. Let’s also look at offenders who
came back into the area in the last two years. Melinda disappeared a little over eight
months ago so she was probably active on social media. Latisha, get Sheriff Meltzer
back on the phone for me.”

Latisha did as I asked and put the sheriff on speaker. “Sheriff Meltzer, sorry to
bother you. Quick question. Have you checked to see if Melinda Cochran had social
media sites?”

“She did,” the sheriff told me. “But her parents don’t know the password and our tech
guy hasn’t been able to get in. All we’re able to see currently is her profile picture.
We’ve started the warrants necessary to get admin privileges but it’s not moving as
fast as we’d like.”

I glanced at Neil. He gave me a thumbs-up. Okay, so sometimes we walk a crooked line
in regard to privacy. Welcome to the private sector. “Thanks for your time, Sheriff.
I’ll speak to you in the morning.” I disconnected, looked at Neil. “Their suspect
is local. I can almost guarantee it.”

“Wonder where he held them,” Neil said. “I mean it can’t be that easy to hide a live
girl.”

“I don’t like being around when y’all start talking about some guy in the basement
making him a girl suit,” Latisha said. “I done saw that movie.”

“They made a book out of it too,” Neil said, and winked at me.

Latisha rubbed her arms like she had a chill. “That man had a dog named Precious.
Okay? I will never be able to forget that.”

“Break down Melinda’s Twitter follows and Facebook friends for me once you get in,”
I told Neil. “Kids, adults, family, locals, and out-of-towners. And get whatever contact
info you can on them. We’ll pass it on to the sheriff’s department.”

“You’re sounding a lot like you’re going to take the job,” Neil said.

“If he looks anything like he sounds,” Latisha said, “I’ll take it.”

“Whether I take it or not, let’s contribute what we can,” I told Neil. He looked at
me. I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t like the police consulting work. The last
two jobs had turned sour. A serial murderer had nearly killed me last year, and Neil
was still nursing a limp from a bullet that pinged off our concrete docks six weeks
ago when the subject of an investigation wanted to warn me off.

“Okay,” he said, finally, and swiveled around to face his computer. “Registered offenders
and social media.”

“Latisha, how about you go with me to check on Larry Quinn’s slip-and-fall.” Latisha
brightened. Neil looked at me as if a cabbage had just popped out of my nose. “What?”
I said. “She has to learn the ropes. She can handle it. If we don’t get anything today,
you can do a couple of shifts on your own tomorrow.”

“Do I get to carry a gun?” Latisha asked.

I laughed. “Good Lord, no.” I cleaned out the printer tray, put the sheriff’s reports
in a manila folder. My phone went off. Rauser’s ringtone. Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks
Like a Lady).”

“Miss me?” Rauser’s gravelly voice had years of cheap bourbon and cigarettes in it.
“I mean it’s been four hours. You don’t think the day-to-day is killing the romance,
do you?”

“It depends,” I said. “You still mad? Because I gotta tell you that’s not exactly
an aphrodisiac.” Neil handed me a parabolic microphone and hung a camera on my shoulder.

“That was icy,” Rauser said. “I just got a chill.”

“Is there something I can do for you, Lieutenant?”

I heard phones ringing in the background, voices. The homicide room was hopping as
usual. “Can you go home and give Hank a pee break?”

“Speaking of killing the romance,” I said. Hank is a white miniature poodle who once
belonged to a serial killer. I’m still deciding if this makes Rauser more or less
attractive to me. A masculine guy who is kind to animals really tugs at my heart.
Holding Hank up in the air and baby-talking him, well, not so much.

“I’m slammed,” Rauser said. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I promise.”

“I think we need to hire that pet-sitter we interviewed last week,” I told him. “She
could give him a nice walk in the middle of the day. Maybe it will calm him down.”

“You think she’ll come back? He humped her leg during the entire interview.”

“I think she liked it,” I said, and Rauser chuckled. The vet had warned us it might
take Hank a few weeks after being neutered to get over his, well, hormonal urges.
He wasn’t there yet. “I have to run by and switch cars anyway. I’ll take him out.
But call the sitter today, okay? I may need to go out of town.”

“Sheriff Meltzer called you?”

“He did. You know him?”

“Nah. The major told me he’d referred you. What’s it about?”

“Two dead girls,” I answered. “Ten years apart. Same disposal site.”

“Uh-oh,” Rauser said. He understood the implications very well. A killer had been
free in central Georgia for at least a decade. “So you’re taking the job?”

“I want to look over the files tonight before I decide.”

“Which means you’re taking it.” Rauser disconnected.

I pulled into the garage at the Georgian Terrace Hotel with the top down and Latisha
in the passenger’s seat. “I’m just going to put the equipment in the Neon and take
Hank outside for a minute,” I told her. “Then we can go. Come upstairs and wait inside.
You’re okay with animals, right?”

“I don’t like it when they lick me. Will they lick me?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at my dingy, banged-up white Plymouth. “We’re gonna sit in that thing all
day?”

“It’s important to be inconspicuous.”

“Ah,” Latisha said as we pushed through the double doors at the Georgian Terrace and
headed for the elevator. “Stealth.”

“Exactly.”

I heard Hank’s toenails on my wood floor as soon as I opened the door to my tenth-floor
loft. Hank is a dancer when he’s excited. But he wasn’t dancing today. He was limping.
I swept the room for White Trash and saw her perched on the bar between the kitchen
and living room. I knelt down to Hank. “Did you have another spat?”
Spat
is code for White Trash kicking his ass again. I inspected his paws and shoulders
and face and could not find a mark on him. His eyes looked okay.

“Eeeww,” Latisha said. She was standing over me. “His thing is out. Like all the way
out.”

I stood him up on his hind legs and looked under him. “
Wow
. I’ve actually never seen anything like that. That’s not good.”

“Ya think? No wonder the cat’s up there like that. Look into her eyes, Keye. That
cat has seen some shit here today.”

I put Hank down. He hung his head. “I think he’s in pain.” I found the vet’s number
on a refrigerator magnet, held on until someone could get an overworked vet tech to
the phone. I then awkwardly described the emergency. When I hung up, I told Latisha,
“We need to get it unstuck.”

“That’s not in my job description.”

“Well, at least pet him or something while I figure it out.”

“I ain’t touching that.” She backed up.

“The vet tech said to use something cold or something that lubricates.” I pulled a
pair of surgical gloves from my scene kit and opened the refrigerator. Buttery spread.
Oily and cold. Problem solved. I dipped in my gloved finger.