FATAL FORTY-EIGHT: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mysteries Book 7) (21 page)

Kate shook her head sadly. “Why did he still kill the guy, when he knew he’d accomplished his goal? Because the guy knew his face? Does he let his victims see him?”

“Probably, since he plans to kill them. But he would have killed the guy anyway. Remember? He was in it for the thrill by then.”

“Yeah, so the note was self-justification. They hadn’t really been looking for the guy, so he still needed to kill him.” Kate paused. “But why didn’t he stop with the last woman, after her family went on TV?”

“Because that was the family, not the authorities, responding.” Tim winced. “We convinced her mother just to say her daughter was missing and ask for anybody with information about her to come forward.”

“So no mention of foul play or the FBI’s involvement.”

“No.” Tim sagged in the passenger seat, his face pinched with guilt.

Kate took one hand off the steering wheel and patted his arm. “He would have killed her daughter anyway.”

“Yeah, but the fifth victim might still be alive.”

“I’d imagine it’s a tough call,” she said, “deciding how much to tell the public.”

“Yeah, we didn’t want him to get scared and go underground, and then start killing again someplace else, which was exactly what he did after the press conference. Go underground, that is. So I felt justified in my stance that we should have kept a lid on it and maybe we would have caught the guy. Stopped him once and for all.” He turned away, looked out the side window. “If I’d known that we were feeding into his motivation, by playing down that we were looking for the victims…”

Kate shook her head. “We can only do the best we can with the information we have at the time.”

He gave her a small smile. “That sounds almost like a mantra.”

Kate’s eyes suddenly stung as she remembered where she had first heard that line. She blinked hard. “Sally taught me that, when I was a novice therapist.”

This time, Tim patted her arm.

Kate’s phone rang in her purse. She dug it out one-handed and glanced at the caller ID. Skip’s cell number.

It was illegal in Maryland to drive while talking on a hand-held cell phone, but she wasn’t about to waste precious time pulling off the road to hold a conversation.

“Watch for cops,” she said to Tim as she answered the call.

He snorted. “I am a cop.”

She flashed him a quick grin. “Hey, are you back?” she said into the phone.

“Not quite but we’ll be there soon. There was an accident and a backup on a bridge near New York. You think it’s safe for us to show our faces in official circles?”

“Uh, I think Judith and SSA Cornelius are okay.” She glanced over at Tim.

He nodded.

“Not so sure about SA Wallace however,” Kate said.

“Okay, we’ve got another sticky issue here. We did remove one piece of evidence from the scene up there. Looks like the journal of one of his victims. Not sure I should show up at the police station with it.”

“Why’d you take it?”

“Not enough time to read through it there, and I figured it was more important to get whatever hints we can from it, see if it helps us find Sally. There’s plenty of other evidence intact in that house that they can use to fry this guy once we catch him.”

Kate nodded, even though Skip couldn’t see her. “Uh, do you want to take it to our house and we’ll meet you there?”

“Good idea, darlin’.”

Silence on the line for a couple beats.

“So are you over being mad?” Skip asked in a low voice.

Kate wasn’t sure how to respond to that, especially with Tim listening. “No,” she finally said. “But you were right. It can wait.”

Another moment of silence. “Okay. So you wanna feel out your buddy Tim to see if he’s gonna flip out over this journal. If so, dump him back at the precinct and come home yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Love you.”

It was their standard sign-off from phone conversations, but for some reason she was reluctant to say it in front of Tim. “Hm, me too. See ya in a little while.”

Tim’s flip-out over the journal was moderate. He cursed vehemently for a minute, then growled, “I thought you said he knew better than to contaminate a crime scene.”

Kate frowned. “He knows better, but thought these were extenuating circumstances.”

Tim’s eyebrows pulled together in a scowl.

A few seconds of silence ticked by. “Do you want to see the journal or not?” she said. “I can drop you at the station and go through it myself, see if there’s anything helpful in it.”

“I ought to press charges.”

“On what evidence?” He was really starting to tick her off. “I’ll swear that we never had this conversation, and you can’t prove that there ever was a journal or that Skip was in that house.”

She let him stew as she navigated through Catonsville and made the turn onto the ramp for the Baltimore Beltway. When they were halfway around the loop of highway, she said, “My house or the station?”

“Your house.”

“You swear you won’t turn him in?”

Tim huffed. “I won’t turn him in.”

The tension was back, their silence no longer companionable. Kate opted to ignore his presence. She’d always loved to drive and the highway was practically deserted this early on a Sunday. The soothing activity took some of the edge off her jangled nerves.

She glanced Tim’s way. His face was set in a grim expression as he stared out the windshield.

“Look,” she said, “we’re normally law-abiding citizens.” That wasn’t totally true. Skip had used those lock picks before, but only for a good cause and when he was relatively sure he wouldn’t get caught. This time he’d gone out on a much bigger limb, tampering with a federal investigation after a judge had turned down a search warrant.

A barrage of emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She opted to focus on gratitude toward her husband. Tears pooled in her eyes. One broke loose. She swiped at her cheek with the back of her hand.

Tim glanced over. “I know.” His voice was gentle. “You’re just trying to save your friend.”

Kate nodded, still fighting back the tears. Her white knuckles, wrapped around the steering wheel, made her realize just how tense she was. She willed herself to relax. Her muscles were rebellious teenagers, slow to comply.

She took a deep breath. “Sally and I aren’t super close. She doesn’t let all that many people
get
close to her. But she’s the finest person I’ve ever known.”

He gave her a brief pat on the shoulder. “We’ll look at the journal. Hopefully, it will give us a lead. I don’t think we’ll need it as evidence to nail this sucker, once we find him.”

“That’s what Skip said.”

She could feel Tim’s gaze on her. She kept her own eyes on the road.

“You’ve got a good man, if he’s willing to risk his career for your friend. Especially a friend you’re not all that close to.”

She swallowed another lump. “Yes, he is a good man. And he’s just old-school Southern enough to believe he’s supposed to protect and take care of women.” It was a trait in Skip that both impressed and irritated her.

“I kinda figured that,” Tim said, “when he took Julie under his wing.”

Her head jerked around toward him. “You–” She caught herself. She’d been about to say
You really think he’s just mentoring her?

She brought her eyes back to the road, then caught herself again as she was about to smack her forehead with the heel of her hand.

Of course, that’s what he’s doing, you idiot.

Fortunately, Tim didn’t notice her odd body language, or he noticed but opted to ignore it. Most likely the latter.

He shook his head slightly. “Julie’s father was FBI. It’s important to her to do good, make him proud. She’s more insecure than the average newbie female agent. I think it also has something to do with her looks. She seems almost embarrassed that she’s drop-dead gorgeous.” His tone said he found that baffling.

Another piece fell into place with a mental clang. Skip would have quickly caught on to that dynamic.

She chose her words carefully. “It’s funny how most of us strive to look better, while those who are naturally beautiful strive to be taken seriously as something other than Barbie and Ken dolls.”

Again she felt his gaze on her as she kept her eyes on the road. She breathed out a soft sigh when the Towson exit came into sight. Almost home.

Tim was quiet for a few more seconds. Then he said, “That explains a lot.”

~~~~~~~~

Sally had longed to know what time it was before. But now she was developing a true hatred for clocks, especially for ones that ticked loudly.

She scowled at the damn thing sitting on the table beside her. She needed to think, but fatigue and residual fog from the drugs were making that difficult. And the incessant ticking wasn’t helping.

For some reason it made her aware of every itch, every ache and pain in her head and body.

She was out of ideas. If she couldn’t get him to take off the straightjacket so she… Hell, even if she could, what good would it do her? The door was activated by his palm print. She couldn’t escape even if she did manage to wiggle free of the straightjacket.

She thought again about climbing up on the sink in the bathroom and using the door as a weapon to knock him out when he came looking for her. Might work, if she could at least stun him enough to overpower him.

At the moment she didn’t feel like she could overpower an ant. Her nose itched. She instinctively tried to raise a hand to scratch it.

And of course couldn’t. Her body was so hot and sweaty inside this damn cocoon. The acrid stench of body odor rose from the canvas. She gagged, then opened her mouth to breathe through it. That helped some.

She glanced again at the clock. Almost nine o’clock. Part of her wanted the time to move faster. To just get this over with. Intellectually she knew that meant she would be dead, but she didn’t care. Wouldn’t that be preferable to this hell?

She probably had a couple hours before he came back. Might as well try kicking the wall again. Surely the people next door must be wondering by now what all the pounding was about. Obviously they weren’t getting it that someone was in trouble in here, but maybe she could annoy them enough they’d call the police.

But then what would happen? The police would come, knock on the outer apartment door, get no answer, and go away again.

Since she’d heard Kate’s voice earlier–or at least she’d thought it was Kate’s voice–she had reason to hope that people were looking for her. And probably the police were involved, from the way Joe was talking to his friend on the phone, just before they’d had “visitors.” There was probably a be-on-the-look-out bulletin out on her.

So if her captor decided to take her outside for a walk, that might help. Otherwise, how likely was it that uniformed officers responding to a disturbing the peace call would connect that complaint with a particular BOLO bulletin?

Possible, but not probable. Still, she had to try.

It took all the energy she could muster to force herself onto her feet. She shuffled around the bed, then leaned against it to help her slide down into a sitting position on the floor. She stretched out a leg only to discover she was too far from the wall.

Rocking back and forth to get some momentum going, she tried to scoot forward. Instead she fell over backward. She wanted to cry, but even that would take too much effort.

After a few minutes, she rolled onto her side and hooked a foot around the leg of the bed to pull herself closer to the spot of bare wall showing. Pieces of the white foam insulation hung in clumps from the edges. For the first time she noticed that the wall behind the foam was a pale buttery yellow. She looked around the room and realized the other walls were the same color, not the stark white of most apartments. Maybe this was a condo that Joe owned.

Not that this tidbit of information did her a damned bit of good. She cocked back her leg and thumped her heel against the bare spot.

She pounded on the wall for a few minutes, then stopped to catch her breath. Should she scream? She’d done that earlier and had just ended up hoarse and thirsty.

She resumed pounding, stopping periodically to rest for a moment or two. Her efforts became more listless.

She paused.

What time is it? Is he coming soon?

She was trying to get up the energy to struggle to her feet when she heard it. Tap, tap. Faint, through the wall.

Was she imagining things? She pounded her heel against the wall several times, then stopped.

Tap, tap, tap.

Heart pounding, she screamed, “Help!” Again, more frantic, “Help! Help! Please help me!”

Tap, tap, fainter now.

She screamed again, “Please help me!”

Silence.

She waited for an eternity. Screamed again. “Help! Help!” She pounded the wall with her heel, then waited.

Silence.

~~~~~~~~

8:30 a.m. Sunday

Her children came running when they heard the front door open. The puppy galloped after them, but skidded to a halt when Peaches came out from under the coffee table. Hissing, she arched her back.

For a moment the dog was a twisted scramble of uncoordinated puppy limbs and oversized paws. Then he bolted from the room.

Kate met Maria’s gaze over the heads of the jabbering children. The housekeeper’s eyes twinkled. “He finally figure out he and de cat are not de friends.”

Kate flashed her a brief smile. Stifling a moderate surge of maternal guilt, she shooed her children back to their breakfast cereal. She turned to Maria. “I’m so sorry to make you miss church, but I still need you to watch the kids.”

“Iz not a problem. I ’splain to Fr. John tomorrow. You need find Sally.”

Out of nowhere, a jumble of emotions exploded in Kate’s chest. Her eyes stung. She wrapped her arms around the plump little woman. “Thank you,” she breathed into her ear.

Maria patted her trembling back. “Iz gonna be okay,” she murmured. “I pray to de Virgin Mary dat Sally be safe.”

Kate fought back tears. Maria’s simple faith humbled her. She’d been praying off and on throughout this whole ordeal, but she hadn’t really believed it was doing much good.