FATAL FORTY-EIGHT: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mysteries Book 7) (17 page)

“Yeah,” Skip said.

“Can’t make out much else. Writing’s too light and shaky.”

“Let me see.” Rob reached over the back of the seat.

Rose shook her head and held up a hand, covered in a blue latex glove. “Don’t have any more of these, and we shouldn’t be handling this without gloves.” She gave Rob her penlight and held up the pad.

He twisted around in his seat and squinted at it, then shook his head. “Nope, I can’t make it out either. Just a word here and there.”

“Have to wait for better light,” Rose said.

Skip was mulling over their options. “What’s the best way to get this info to the Feds?”

“Call them,” Rob said. “The sooner they have this stuff, the sooner they can piece it together and maybe figure out where Sally is.”

“Not sure I’m high on the FBI agents’ list right now.”

A short bark of laughter from Rose behind him. “Maybe their ‘most wanted’ list.”

“Not funny, partner.”

“Call Kate,” Rob suggested. “She’s got that Cornelius dude’s ear. If anybody can get them to put aside how we came by the info, she can.”

Skip stifled a groan. He’d known all along that was the best approach, but he wasn’t looking forward to talking to his wife right now.

“Might hold off on telling anyone that we took evidence out of the house,” Rose said. “Until we see what this victim wrote.”

Skip pulled over on the shoulder. “You wanna drive, Rose? While I call Kate.” He sure as hell wasn’t having that conversation on speaker through the truck’s Bluetooth.

~~~~~~~~

4:15 a.m. Sunday

The room seemed familiar. Kate felt along its walls in the dim light. Smooth and blank. But there had to be a door somewhere. She kept moving, sliding her fingers up and down the surface, feeling for any irregularity, any crack that indicated an opening. There had to be a way to get to the other side.

To get to whoever was on the other side. Whoever’s voice was calling, muffled, through the wall.

Suddenly she knew it was Sally and she had to get to her, she only had minutes left to get to her. Kate banged on the wall. “Sally, Sally. Where are you?”

A buzzing sound. Where was that coming from?

Kate’s head jerked up.  The room was now bright. She blinked against the harsh florescent lights.

She was in the conference room, alone, her arms crossed on the table in front of her.

It had been a dream.

Her pocket buzzed again. She yanked her phone out and checked caller ID. Skip.

She held the phone to her ear. “Hello.” It came out more a croak than a word.

She grabbed a half-empty water bottle from the table, not knowing nor caring whose it had been. She clamped her phone between chin and shoulder so she could yank the cap off.

“Kate? You okay?”

“Yeah.” She took a quick swallow of water. “My mouth was just dry.”

“Where’s Cornelius?” Skip asked.

“I don’t know. I’m alone at the moment. How about you?”

“Huh? The others are here. Rose is driving so I can concentrate on telling you what we found. You got a pad and pen?”

“Hold on a sec.” She shuffled through the pile Tim had made of their notes and the case files and located a pad. She grabbed a pen. “Okay.”

Skip described the house, referring to the furnishings as Goodwill rejects.

“He never meant it to be a home,” Kate said.

“No, although he probably did live there. It was mainly a place to hide his victims.” He told her how Rose had discovered the hidden room, and what they had found in it.

She wrote it all down, working hard not to think about the four women and one young man who had spent the last forty-eight hours of their lives in that room.

“That’s the gist of it,” Skip finally said. “Can you figure out the most diplomatic way to get all that info into the hands of the FBI?”

“Yeah. You didn’t forget anything, did you?” The question slipped out without forethought.

“No, not that I can think of.”

Her stomach twisted. “Good, because you’ve been kind of forgetful lately.”

“I have?”

Why the hell aren’t you wearing your ring?
a shrieking woman clamored in her head.

She couldn’t make herself ask the question out loud.

A pause, then Skip said, “What the hell are you talking about, darlin’?”

“Well, it’s understandable that you’ve gotten forgetful,” she said, even though she didn’t understand it at all. “It’s been a very stressful weekend.”

A longer pause. “Actually there is something I forgot to mention. Uh, there was a note, from Delaney. Said something to the effect that if we’d found the room, then we knew who he was. So I don’t think he’s planning on going back there. Oh, and Mac found a vent that this guy probably installed himself. So this guy must be pretty good with his hands, to be able to build secret rooms and install air vents and such.”

Kate seethed inside as she added that information to her notes. Working to keep her voice under control, she said, “Yeah, we found out he was a mechanical engineer, before he retired.”

“That explains a lot.”

She said nothing.

“Kate, you there? Can you get that–”

“Aren’t you going to call
Julie
and tell her yourself?”

A siren wailed in the background on Skip’s end of the line. “Yeah, it looks like I’m gonna get that chance right now. She just found us. But you talk to Cornelius, get him started on figuring out what all this means in terms of finding Sally.”

The siren cut off abruptly. “Canfield!” A woman’s shrill shout. “Get outta that vehicle.”

“Gotta go, darlin’.”

“Skip, wait…” But he was gone.

Kate dropped the phone on the table and hoped Julie Wallace didn’t shoot her husband. A woman scorned is nothing compared to a woman who believes she’s been made a fool of.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kate tucked the pad under her arm and went in search of Tim Cornelius.

She found him standing next to the desk where they had installed Charles. They’d given him the task of locating and reading the classifieds in any of the local papers or community newsletters to make sure they hadn’t missed any recent rentals. Hopefully, he wouldn’t figure out that the FBI tech was already doing the same thing, and probably more efficiently.

But Kate had pointed out to Tim that they had to give the man something to do, to save his sanity while he waited.

Kate crooked a finger at the FBI agent. He patted Charles on the shoulder and came toward her.

“I’ve got some information,” she said in a low voice, “from an awkward source.”

He took her elbow and steered her out of the bullpen. Once they were in the main lobby of the station, he said, “I’m taking you to breakfast.”

Kate hesitated.

“It’s not a date. We both need to eat and it’s the best way to talk privately.”

She nodded.

Out on the sidewalk, he looked around. “Uh, can we take your car? I forgot Wallace took off with ours.”

“Sure.” She led the way.

Kate put the pad under her purse on the backseat. She didn’t want Tim looking at her notes until she figured out the most diplomatic way to present the situation.

“Look, you don’t need to dance around with me,” Tim said as they settled into the front seat. “Canfield and his crew broke into that house. Probably fouled our case up royally. What’d they find?”

Despite her annoyance with Skip, she bristled. “I can assure you, they did not compromise the crime scene.”

“So they found a crime scene then?”

“Yes.”

But no Sally!
The vice squeezed her chest.

“Tell me,” Tim said.

She debated, then decided it might be best to get the gory details out of the way. Before they had food sitting in front of them.

4:45 a.m., Sunday

The waitress at the Towson Diner set down a plate piled high with eggs, bacon and toast. Kate’s stomach growled so loudly she was sure they could hear it out in the parking lot. She shoveled some eggs into her mouth. Her stomach received them well and begged for more.

Apparently one
could
adjust to just about anything, even the knowledge that someone she cared about was in the hands of a killer. That thought closed her throat, but she forked more eggs into her mouth anyway. The delectable taste on her tongue seduced her throat into opening. Her stomach desperately accepted the offering and growled again.

When her plate was empty, except for one corner of toast, she looked up. Tim was watching her with an indulgent expression on his face.

“Haven’t eaten much since Friday night. My stomach just took over.”

He grinned. “S’okay. I like to see a gal appreciate her food.”

She swiped the corner of toast across the plate, sweeping tiny flecks of egg and bacon along before it. “So what does all this tell us? How does it help us find Sally?”

“Hmm, mostly it confirms what we already suspected. Delaney is our killer. And he has the wherewithal to create hidden rooms in which he stashes his victims.”

“And it looks like he’s abandoned the White Plains house, so he probably has found a place in this area.” Kate squished the crumbs of egg and meat into the bread and tossed the lot into her mouth.

“I’ve got Jane looking for connections to anyone in this area,” Tim said, “but I think that’s a long shot.”

“How about interviewing the people he used to work with at that company? What was it? American something Plastics? And what about his neighbors there in White Plains?”

“Ameri-Syn Plastics,” Tim said. “I’ve already got the New York state police tracking down the coworkers. My buddy Jack will have his people out canvassing the neighbors in White Plains at first light. We need something concrete to link this guy to the earlier cases in order to get that search warrant.”

“You can’t use what Skip found to do that?”

“Nope, not when he entered the house illegally. If we base the warrant on any of that, anything we find will get kicked out. Besides…”

She looked up from stirring cream into the coffee the waitress had just topped off. “Besides what?”

Tim sat forward a little. “Jack had me take him off speaker to tell me something. In his warrant request, he mentioned that the current victim is African-American. He thinks the judge turned him down partly because of that.”

Kate’s mouth fell open. “The judge is a bigot?”

A couple people’s heads swiveled their way.

“Shh,” he said.

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “That’s kind of amazing, in this day and age.”

“Yeah, well bigotry is alive and well in America, it’s just better hidden than in the past. Our probable cause for the warrant was a bit shaky, but most judges would have considered the circumstances and granted it, since a person’s life was at stake.”

Anger filled Kate’s chest, burned in her throat. “He would let a fine woman like Sally die, because she’s black?”

He nodded.

“When this is all over,” she said through gritted teeth. “I think I’ll be writing to the governor of New York. Might even go see him, take a few influential friends with me.”

“Don’t bother. The governor’s a friend of his, but the good news is that the judge is retiring in a few months.”

“Can’t be soon enough.”

Tim cocked his head to one side. “You know, people worry about the younger generation, but I think they’ll do fine, once a few more of us old farts get out of the way.”

“Oh, come on. You’re not that old. What mid-forties?”

“Ha. Try fifty-one.”

“So you had your child a bit later than most as well.”

“Late for me, not so much for my wife. She’s seven years younger than me.”

Hmm, which makes her three years younger than me.

“Finish your coffee,” he said. “I’m gonna pay the check.”

As he stood up and walked away, Kate noticed how lean and lanky he was.

Like Eddie.

That had always been her type–rugged face, lean and lanky body. Moderately attractive like herself.

Until Skip had come along and actively pursued her. She knew intellectually that he didn’t think of himself as a hunk. His internal body image was still influenced by all those years he had been the scrawniest, shortest kid in his class, until a late growth spurt blessed him with his current physique.

But she’d taken social psychology in college and was familiar with the research on romantic attraction. People tended to be attracted to those at a similar level of physical beauty. Her social psych prof had tried to put a positive spin on it.
So that’s good news; there’s someone for everyone.

“You ready?” Tim was standing next to her.

“Yeah.” She slid across the bench and stood up. He took her elbow as they headed out of the diner.

She knew she should gently pull away, but she didn’t. She let the warmth of his touch spread. The tension in her shoulders and chest relaxed.

They reached her car. Was that reluctance she detected as he held on a moment longer? Heat crept up her cheeks. She was grateful for the relative darkness of the parking lot.

They settled into the car and she put her key in the ignition. Her cell buzzed in her pocket. She released her seatbelt so she could dig it out.

“Hey there, darlin’. It is good to have friends in high places.” She heard Rob snort in the background.

“Uh, so how’d it go?”

“Well, I was about to be arrested for obstruction of justice when our brilliant lawyer friend reminded the very pissed-off federal agent that she had absolutely no concrete evidence of wrongdoing.”

“You’re headed back?”

“Yeah. You okay?”

“Uh, sure. Tim and I are just leaving Towson Diner.” She wanted him to know she wasn’t alone. “We got some breakfast and we’re headed back to the station.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Was that a note of jealousy in his voice? You got no room to talk, buddy.

She knew she should leave it alone for now, but she couldn’t help herself. “So you do realize that some of this is about what you forgot?”

“Huh?”

Kate let the silence stretch out, even though Tim was shifting restlessly in the passenger seat beside her.