Bell shook her head and then stopped, “Alarmed isn’t the right word.”
“What is?” Mac asked.
“Now that I think of it, cautious is the better word. I know that for the last week or two she had a member of the crew walk her to her car at night in the parking lot.”
“Just like last night?”
“Yes. It wasn’t the same person every night, just someone from the crew who was available. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, a woman asking for an escort at night. It’s pretty common.”
“So why do you mention it now?”
“Sandy always ended up parking at the back end of the lot. You know how it is, you tend to park in the same place all the time, and since when she typically arrived for work the lot was full, she parked in that last row. She’s done it for a couple of years. But only in the last two weeks did she …”
“Have someone escort her to the car,” Wire finished the thought.
“Yeah.”
“And the only time you ever remember seeing this man we’re talking about is in the last week or so?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Mac asked Bell, “give me the days and times again. And can you show me on a map where you saw this man?”
After they were done talking to Bell, the three stepped into a small conference room Landsman was using to conduct interviews. “Detective, we need to get back down to the Inner Harbor and see if we’ve got any security cameras of these areas.”
“Follow me,” Landsman answered. “I’ll be in the black Ford Fusion.”
As they drove back down, Mac was noticeably quiet. “I know the faraway look. What’s on your mind?” Wire asked.
“Faye noticed this guy. She’s in the media, she’s probably reported on the Reaper story and she sees this guy who maybe looks like the Reaper. However, instead of calling the police, she starts having people escort her to her car and watching her back. She was on guard, she took some precautions but she didn’t call the people who could have really protected her.”
“So?”
“Why not tell the police? Why not report it? I don’t get it.”
Wire agreed, “It is very odd behavior.”
“So odd it’s got me thinking a very terrible thought.”
“Which is?”
“That whatever connects these victims, Dara, is so bad they can’t go to the police. If they go to the police, they’ll be exposed and that exposure is so bad, they’ll risk their lives to avoid it.”
With the locations given by Bell, Mac, Wire and Landsman made their way down to the Inner Harbor. It was midafternoon, the sun was bright in the sky and the temperatures approaching a sultry ninety degrees. Mac was down to his off-white casual dress shirt and jeans and Wire had shed her black nylon jacket and was down to her black sleeveless shirt and blue jeans. Following the map they found the first location at Pier 3. Mac stood right where Bell said the man was standing. He looked in every direction and didn’t see a camera anywhere.
“We have uniforms that walk this area all day,” Landsman said. “But it would not appear surveillance cameras.”
“Let’s try the other spot,” Mac suggested and Landsman led them off on a ten-minute walk as they weaved their way through the various piers that jutted out into the harbor. Each pier contained a collection of shops, restaurants and seating areas. They passed the large concert pavilion and walked over a footbridge from Pier 6 to East Falls Avenue. Once again, Mac stood where Bell described the man as standing, elbows resting on the railing, underneath a series of small shade trees. Again, there were no visible surveillance cameras covering the area. Mac turned to look to the east, towards the Marriott Hotel and smiled, “Detective,” Mac pointed to two cameras hanging down from the Marriott parking structure.
“Worth a try,” Landsman answered and the three walked over to the Marriott.
Ten minutes later they were led by the hotel’s head of security back to the security offices. A security technician pulled up the replay of footage from the day before.
“What time window?” the tech asked.
“Between 10:30 and 11:30 for this past Monday. We need the footage for the two cameras on the northwest corner of your parking structure,” Mac answered.
The tech maneuvered the mouse on his computer, “Here we go, starting at 10:30
A.M.
”
It took a half an hour and then there he was, walking from the northeast towards the bridge to go to Pier 6.
“There he is, Mac,” Wire said. “Just like Bell said, he’s wearing jeans, dark T-shirt, baseball cap and sunglasses.”
“I’d give anything, just once,
just once
, for this guy to not be wearing sunglasses,” Mac answered and then thought. “If he’s coming from the northeast, are there any other cameras that might have caught him?”
The tech maneuvered his mouse, opened another file and started the playback. It took a minute. “There’s your man,” the tech pointed. “He’s walking northeast and as he crosses there, he’s probably continuing east on Fleet Street. He could turn left and go more north on Presidential, but I would think he’s just continuing east on Fleet.”
Wire looked to Landsman, “Detective, looks like we need to check the businesses on Fleet Street and see if we can keep tracking our guy. Or maybe get an even better look at him.”
Mac’s cell phone rang. It was Gesch. Mac filled him in on what they were finding. “I’m thinking maybe we can trail him back to his vehicle.”
“Mac, that’s great. Keep the Baltimore detective on it and I’ll get him some help right away. I just got the autopsy report and we’re going to do a conference call with the director here shortly. I need you two here for it.”
“Aubry, I’d much rather stay on this …”
“If it were my call, I’d let you, but it’s not my call. The director wants you two on it. You and Wire are all the rage with your media debut this morning.” After another minute of back and forth, Gesch hung up.
“Detective, keep on this and help is on the way. An even better picture of this guy would be great. Finding him getting into his vehicle, getting a make or plate would be even better,” Mac stated and he and Wire left him to continue.
The conference call started at 5:30
P.M.
in a conference room at the Baltimore Police Department. The call included Gesch, Delmonico as well as the Baltimore Police commissioner, a Colonel Wilson, the head of detectives, as well as two other detectives who’d been assigned to the ever growing Reaper Task Force.
Gesch handed Mac and Wire each a copy of the autopsy report and then began the conference call. “Good afternoon, Director Mitchell. I have a number of people in the room with me …”
The autopsy report wasn’t going to tell him anything, so Mac tossed it onto the table. Baltimore detectives brought in several boxes from Faye’s apartment.
“Those were in her closet,” Wire explained as Mac walked over and tossed the top off the first banker’s box and started flipping through the photos in the box while listening to Gesch run the conference call.
“It appears,” Gesch reported, “that McRyan and Wire did confirm that the Reaper was tracking Faye. They have him on surveillance footage.”
“Is that right, Mac?” Director Mitchell asked.
“Yes sir,” Mac answered looking up from a photo album. “It looks like our man was watching Faye while, among other things, she was taking a regular morning run along the Inner Harbor area here in Baltimore. He appears, however, to have shaved off his beard. Baltimore PD detectives are working right now to see if they can get an even better image than the one we have. Another thing that we’ve found is that Faye appears to have been cautious lately, having people escort her to her car at work, something she’d never done until recently. She’s in the media, she has undoubtedly seen the photos of the Reaper and she saw him, or someone who sure looks like him, yet …”
“She never called the police or the FBI,” Director Mitchell said over the phone.
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Any idea why, Mac?”
“No sir,” Mac answered, deciding now wasn’t the time he wanted to get into his terrible thought. That was for later.
Gesch continued the report and Mac returned to the photo album and scanned a few more pictures. He put the album back in the box and started flipping through individual photos when he stopped on one, a group photo of college-aged men and women in front of Lake Seneca Lodge. The kids were stacked up on the steps as well as leaning over the porch and second-floor balcony railings. The date on the photo was seven years ago almost to the day in July. He found Faye standing on the steps. Even back then she was a looker, wearing short white shorts and a tight red tank top that accentuated her figure which caused Mac to linger over the photo for a moment, then he froze. The woman standing right behind her, “You look familiar,” he muttered.
Mac scrambled back to the table and started thumbing through the files until he found the photo array he was looking for. He took out his cell phone and thumbed through his applications and found his magnifying app.
Wire noticed the frantic look on Mac’s face and slid her chair over and whispered into his ear, “What are you doing?”
Mac pointed to the picture, “There’s Sandy Faye,” he said, pointing to the attractive Faye. “And who is that standing two steps up behind her?”
Dara peered at the picture through the magnifying glass app on Mac’s cell phone and her jaw slowly dropped open, “Oh my gosh,” she whispered, looking at the photo closely. “Look at the logo on her shirt, on a lot of the shirts.”
“AAHC,” Mac answered. “I knew I’d seen that somewhere before.”
“You know, I wonder,” she muttered, scanning the rest of the photos.
“Right, anyone else?” Mac added, scanning with his finger and a few seconds later their fingers landed on a face standing on the second-floor balcony and their voices shouted in unison, “There!”
Their excitement drew stares from everyone in the room.
“You two have something you’d like to share with the class?” Gesch asked, a perturbed look on his face.
“Aubry, there’s no connection we’re aware of between our victims, right?” Mac asked.
“That’s right. No record of their paths ever crossing as far as we know.”
“Well now there is,” Mac answered, holding up the photo. “Seven years ago, Sandy Faye, back then named Helen Williams, Melissa Goynes and Hannah Donahue were in a picture together at Lake Seneca Lodge for the AAHC, American Academic Honor Society. That is not a coincidence.”
“Mac, are you sure?” Gesch asked walking towards them.
“No doubt,” Mac answered as Gesch leaned over the table. Mac held his cell phone over the picture, still using the magnifying glass app. “See?”
“I’ll be damned,” Gesch said in agreement. “Director, we’ve just found a connection between at least three of our victims. They were at the AAHC camp in Lake Seneca, New York.”
“Aubry, get after it,” Director Mitchell ordered.
Ten minutes later Mac, Wire, Gesch and Delmonico looked at a blowup of the picture on a large flat screen. There were seventy people in the picture, thirty-eight women in the picture along with thirty-two men.
“Janelle Wyland is not in the picture,” Gesch stated, going over it again and again. There was not one redhead.
“Any chance she had a different hair color back then?” Wire asked.
They all scanned the picture again, each holding a picture of Wyland. She was not there.
“So we have three of the four victims in a picture. There is a connection of some kind,” Mac answered. “And we have thirty-five potential other victims and …”
“Perhaps thirty-two potential suspects,” Wire finished, scanning the men.
“And we don’t have a serial killer just picking women at random. We have a killer with a very specific purpose.”
I
n the late afternoon, Mac pulled up to the Donahues’ family compound on the southern outskirts of Wilmington. Gesch and Delmonico were on their way to see the parents of Sandy Faye and Detective Dorsett in Harrisburg was on his way to see the family and friends of Melissa Goynes.
Seven years ago all three women served as counselors at the AAHC camp on Lake Seneca for eight weeks from mid-June through mid-August for junior high and high school students. A quick call up to the lodge revealed that the three of them had been students who attended the camp in prior years, although never together. However, for that summer, they spent eight weeks together. The three of them may not have stayed close or in contact in the years since, but for eight weeks, they were together at a lodge in upstate New York.
Now seven years later, within a matter of two months, the three of them were murdered by the same killer.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
Mac was thinking something bad happened in upstate New York.
“So we have a serial killer interrogating, torturing and killing women and at least three of them served as counselors at this summer camp. So what happened up there and what’s Wyland’s connection to them?” Wire asked.
“My initial thought is maybe she was at the camp as a student,” Mac answered, “but Wyland’s actually a year older and the camp had no record of her, but she fits in here somehow, Dara. I think we’re eventually going to have to head up to that camp and start poking around.”
“Maybe the Donahues can shed some light on it.”
“That’s the plan.”
The Donahues welcomed them into the home and walked them back to a sunroom that overlooked the Delaware River. Coffee, iced tea and cucumber sandwiches were waiting for them.
“So, do you have news?” William Donahue asked, sitting next to his wife on a small sofa with his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “I saw on the news this morning that this man … struck again in Baltimore, a television news anchor. Please tell me you have made some progress.”
Mac nodded, sitting down in a chair across from the Donahues. Wire took a chair to his right. “We may have made a breakthrough this afternoon, but to know for sure we have to ask some questions about Hannah’s time up at Lake Seneca Lodge.”
“Lake Seneca Lodge?” Bill Donahue asked, confused.
“When she was a camp counselor?” Mrs. Donahue asked. “That was years ago.”
“Seven to be exact,” Mac answered and pulled out the picture from the camp. “Seven summers ago Hannah was a counselor at the camp. Now, I think when we were here last time we asked if you’d ever heard the names of our first two victims Melissa Goynes or Janelle Wyland and whether Hannah knew them, right?”
“And we don’t think she did.”
“Turns out she probably knew one of them and she knew Sandy Faye,” Mac answered and showed the Donahues the picture. “Have you ever seen this picture?”
Both the Donahues shook their head.
“Well, here’s Hannah,” Mac pointed and then moved his finger, “Here’s Melissa Goynes and there’s Sandy Faye. Back then her name was Helen Williams. The three of them were at Lake Seneca Lodge for the summer together.”
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, we don’t think it is,” Mac answered.
“Do you remember anything about Hannah’s time there?” Wire inquired. “Was there anyone she had problems with?”
Bill Donahue shook his head but Mrs. Donahue didn’t right away. Mac picked up on it. Bill Donahue noticed the look on Mac’s face and turned to his wife. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, but now that I think of it, when Hannah came back home from that summer she was … different.”
“Different?” Mac asked, “Different how?”
“Hannah was a very outgoing, energetic and happy person. Maybe I was the only one who noticed it, but when she came home that summer she was more, I don’t know …”
“Serious,” Bill Donahue added, remembering now. He looked to Mac and Wire and explained. “Up to that point, she’d been something of a party girl, not all that serious about school, a little bit like a rich girl who had Daddy’s money. She didn’t have to worry about how to pay her Cornell tuition or room and board. She had it pretty easy and was having a really good time.”
“It wasn’t long after that summer that she started talking about giving back, working with kids and becoming a teacher,” Barbara Donahue noted. “She’d never ever talked of that before.”
“Did you ask her what triggered it?” Wire asked.
“No,” Barbara Donahue answered, shaking her head. “I always figured it was that she matured, maybe had something to do with serving as a counselor those summers up at Lake Seneca with those younger kids. Sooner or later most college age kids figure out they have to get their act together and plan for life. Whatever it was, when she left that summer, she was carefree. The change wasn’t dramatic, but when she came home, she was a different and a more serious person.”
“And she never said what might have triggered that?” Mac pressed.
The Donahues shook their head.
“And you never asked? You never asked Hannah what’s changed? Where did all of this sudden maturity come from?”
They both shook their head.
“Seriously?” Mac pushed, going bad cop, needing to be sure. “I find it hard to believe you noticed this change in your daughter and you never asked her what triggered it.”
“I don’t like the tone,” Bill Donahue barked.
“I don’t care. I’m trying to find a killer.”
“And we’re trying to help.”
“We’re just trying to be thorough,” Wire suggested quietly, putting her hand on Mac’s knee to calm him while putting her hand out towards the Donahues. “There’s a connection here. The Biblical verses the killer leaves behind suggests he’s punishing the girls, they’re reaping what they sowed. So we’re just trying to find anything that gives us some insight into what that might have been. We have three of the four victims as counselors from that camp. We think something happened up there.”
“Hannah and I were very close,” Barbara Donahue answered, her eyes welling. “And she never said a word. To be honest, I just thought she started maturing and found some purpose in life. I was happy with what she decided to do and had no desire to question it.”
“We were proud of her,” Bill Donahue added. “I respected what she was doing and the direction she chose.”
Mac still pressed forward. “And now seeing this picture, Melissa Goynes and Sandy Faye don’t mean anything to you?”
“No,” Bill Donahue answered emphatically. “I swear to you, McRyan, I never heard her mention those names.”
“If she knew them, she never said a word to me about it,” Barbara Donahue added, wiping the tears away from her face. “We’ve seen, and I’m sure, in fact I know, Hannah has seen Sandy Faye on television doing the news and not once did Hannah ever,
ever
, say she knew her. Not once.”
“How about Janelle Wyland,” Mac asked, still pressing. “Her name never came up?”
William and Barbara again shook their heads. “Other than these killings, we’ve never heard the name before. We don’t recognize her. She was not a friend of Hannah’s.”
The Donahues’ sons arrived at the house and Mac and Wire walked them through the same series of questions. Hannah’s brothers recognized Sandy Faye from television but had never met her and never heard their sister talk about her. The same was true of all of Donahue’s friends that Mac and Wire talked to, including Wendy Jonas, who they reached in Singapore.
From the front lawn of the Donahue’s home, well away from the house, the sun quickly descending in the west, Mac put his phone on speaker and called Gesch and reported in. Gesch basically received the same responses from Faye’s family and friends as did Dorsett from that of Goynes’s family. They even had the detectives in Salisbury questioning Wyland’s family and friends even though she wasn’t in the picture, the thought being if Donahue, Goynes and Faye were connected, Wyland fit in somehow.
None of the names rang a bell with anyone.
The picture triggered no recollections.
“I thought this was our break,” Gesch moaned.
“It is Aubry, it is,” Mac answered.
“But what is it? What happened, Mac?” Wire asked. “I keep running it around in my head and I ask: what happened up there?”
“Something bad,” Mac answered. “Something very
very
bad. Something that these women experienced that they never talked about, never acknowledged and I’m betting never spoke of again. In fact, I’m betting they agreed not to see or talk to each other ever again.”
“You don’t know that’s what it is,” Delmonico stated.
“I’m guessing, sure,” Mac answered, “but I’ve got four dead bodies, three of them with a direct connection yet no record of them being in contact with one another since that summer seven years ago. If something bad happened to make someone angry enough to start killing, then it’s not a stretch to think these women vowed never to discuss it, never to see one another again.”
“Get back to DC, Mac,” Gesch ordered. “Tomorrow morning I’m flying you two up to Lake Seneca. If something bad happened up there, it’s time for the two of you to find out what it was. And Mac, one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t want to read about our break in the
Post
tomorrow morning.”
• • • •
Just after midnight, Mac slithered into the bedroom and Sally popped awake. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he answered, coming over and kissing her lightly. “You should be sleeping.”
“That always happens better when you’re in bed with me,” she answered sweetly. “Besides, I wanted to wait up for you. Why so late?”
“We were briefing the director and attorney general.”
“You got a break, didn’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Seriously?” Sally answered and then did her best cavewoman, “Me prosecutor, me really good reader of witnesses, me know you and see look in your eyes, me know you caught break,” she said smiling. “Besides, if you’re briefing the attorney general and director late at night, you have something more than an update to provide. So what happened?”
“A small break, nothing big. I’m going on a day trip to upstate New York tomorrow to look into something,” Mac said as he put his clothes in a hamper and then walked back into the bedroom in his boxers.
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got.”
“That’s all I’m giving,” he answered as he slid into his side of the bed.
“What? You don’t trust me?”
Mac leaned over and kissed her, “Trust? You work in the White House. People are already talking about how you got us involved in the case. I think it might be time for me to talk less and you to ask less.”
“Really? You think I’d compromise your case?” Sally asked, lying on her side, facing him.
Mac shook his head, “No. But I wouldn’t put it past others in the West Wing.”
“Didn’t take you long to get cynical.”
“What are you talking about? I came to this town cynical,” he answered as he adjusted his pillows.
“But now you’re cynical about me,” Sally said, a tinge of hurt in her voice and on her face.
Mac turned to face Sally and saw the disappointed look on her face and felt terrible, for about three seconds. Then he recognized her expression for what it was, “Quit working me.”
“Shit,” Sally replied, laughing, rolling onto her back. “I almost had you.”
“Listen,” Mac answered, seriously, leaning on his side, facing her. “I’d like to tell you more but I think the less you know right now, maybe the better. If the director wants to give the White House more, he can give it. I’m keeping my mouth shut.”
“I have just one question.”
“Sally,” Mac warned, rolling onto his back.
“Have you found something that could embarrass the White House?”
“I don’t think so,” Mac answered, hedging. He’d not worked that out in his mind yet.
“You’ll tell me if we could be damaged, somehow, you’ll tell me, you’ll let me know, right?”
“Yes,” he answered and then rolled and gave Sally one last kiss. “Now go to sleep.”