Authors: Mariah Stewart
11
Salsa or cheese?
Mia stood in front of the open refrigerator and debated the meager dinner choices. She hadn’t eaten since she’d picked up a muffin and a cup of coffee on her way into St. Dennis that morning. It was a little after eight and she was too tired to cook and too lazy to go for takeout, so she was stuck with what she had on hand.
She decided to go with the salsa, having snacked on cheese last night. Besides, it would go nicely with the bottle of red wine she’d opened and taken out onto the screened porch, where she’d set up a sort of temporary camp. The file she’d brought home lay open on the wicker table and the lamps had been turned on and repositioned where they’d shed the most light for reading. She poured some of the salsa into a bowl, grabbed the box of crackers from the counter, and with her foot pushed open the door that led from the kitchen to the small porch. She moved the table closer to the loveseat and sat, placing what would serve as dinner to the right of the file and surrounding herself with the extra cushions.
She filled the wineglass, then raised it in a mock toast and said, “Here’s to you, all wildlife lurking outside the fence. The pool is all yours. I’ve work to do. Tonight, however, snacks are not included.”
The setting sun left streaks of color in the low clouds that hugged the horizon, so she sipped her wine and watched until the last bits of lavender faded into the darkness.
“Time to work.”
She opened the file and began to read, then looked around for her phone before remembering she’d left it in her bag on the counter.
Mia retrieved the bag, found the phone, and set it next to her. She wiggled a bit to find a comfortable spot, then tucked a few more pillows behind her. Leave it to Connor to find a sofa with seat cushions that felt like concrete.
Well,
she reminded herself,
he does spend most of his time in places where—let’s face it—even this uncomfortable thing would seem like a luxury.
She smiled, remembering how shocked everyone in the family had been when her cousin actually bought a house for himself.
“So, does it have indoor plumbing?” Connor’s brother, Aidan, had asked with a perfectly straight face.
“Are you going to buy a real bed,” Mia’s brother Andrew had chimed in, “or are you going to use that grass mat you used to take camping?”
“Indoor plumbing, real furniture, a kitchen with a real stove and refrigerator.” Connor had laughed good-naturedly. “Granted, it’s tucked away by itself on a dirt road, but since I spend so much time alone, I figured a little bit of isolation will make it really seem like home.”
Well, he got that part right. It’s isolated.
Mia shifted again on the sofa, lifted her glass to take another sip, and frowned when she found it empty. She hadn’t remembered draining it, but not a drop remained. She refilled it and went back to her reading.
An hour later, she’d gone through all the interviews connected to the Colleen Preston murder. From what Mia read, it seemed that Colleen had been a really special young woman, liked and respected by everyone who knew her. That a stranger had taken her from those who loved her…
Ah, she told herself, there’s the thing. It wasn’t a stranger. She knew it in her gut.
Her rumbling stomach reminded her to eat, so she dipped into the salsa with the crackers and ate for a minute or two, focusing on what she’d just read. She drank a little more wine, then went back over the interviews to track the victim’s movements on the day she disappeared.
8:45-left home for work at women’s clothing store in shopping center near Chestertown
9:30-arrived at work
1:00-left store for lunch with friend at restaurant in shopping center (coworker interviewed—nothing out of the ordinary discussed, no mention of anyone or anything bothering her. Looking forward to upcoming weekend in Ocean City, MD, with three friends)
3:15-took break in store
5:45-rang up last sale
5:58-left store through back door
Mia put down her pen and refilled her glass. She went back through the notes made by the officers who first investigated the case, but found no description of the area behind the store. Was it a private parking lot? Who had access to it? Was someone waiting there when Colleen left work?
She blew out a long breath. In her mind’s eye, she saw the young woman leave, saw the door close behind her. Saw her starting for her car…
She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to imagine what came next. Bastard. Had he taken her there, or had he followed her, taken her someplace else? Was he an acquaintance, or someone she knew well enough to trust?
She rubbed her temples. Sometimes the job just plain hurt.
Over the course of the two hours since she’d started reading, her muscles had cramped. She stood to stretch, reaching her arms over her head and bending from side to side, almost losing her balance as she leaned to the left. She caught herself on the arm of the loveseat and righted herself.
Must have been sitting longer than I thought,
she told herself.
She sat on the edge of the cushion and picked her bag off the floor, opened it and began to search through the contents. When she found the small tape player, she removed it and set it on the table, then slipped in the copy of the tape Beck had given her. She poured another glass of wine, then punched play.
“This is your chance, now, Colleen. If there’s anything you want to tell your parents, your brother, your sister, you’ll want to do it now.”
There was a sound she couldn’t make out in the background, then, “That wasn’t nice. I’m giving you an opportunity to leave something behind that might comfort your family.”
“Momma, Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize…I never thought he’d…” Then sobs.
“Is that all? This is your last chance, Colleen. No words of wisdom for your sweet little sister?”
“Fry in hell, you disgusting degenerate psychopathic pig…”
Mia’s hands were shaking. She stopped the tape and sat in silence, tears welling.
Colleen Preston’s sobbing plea spoke directly to Mia’s own conscience. It spoke of that moment of recognition that there would be no second chance to make this right, no way to turn back the clock to that moment she’d somehow ended up in this nightmare. Mia knew that Colleen had wept not for herself, but for her parents, and the unspeakable pain her death would cause them. She’d wept because she knew that the loss of her life, her suffering, would bring infinite grief and sadness to those who loved her.
“It’s all about expectations,” Mia said softly. “Your parents expect certain things of you. In your case, your parents expected you to outlive them.”
Colleen must have felt that she had placed herself in harms way.
I didn’t realize…I never thought he
…
Realize what? That this person you maybe knew—this
he
you perhaps trusted, was a raging maniac? That by befriending this person or maybe by merely speaking to him, making eye contact with him, stopping to answer a question for him—somehow you left yourself open for him to abduct you? Torture you? Take your life?
If something bad happens because we don’t realize the consequences, are we just as culpable?
Momma, Daddy, I’m sorry
…
Mia could relate. How many times over the past two years had she whispered those same words?
“You’re going to have to be the little mother now,” an uncle had told the seven-year-old Mia on the day her mother was buried. “You’re the only girl in the family, you’re going to have to keep your brothers in line, just like your mother did.”
Yeah, well, we all know how that turned out, don’t we? If I’d been anything like Mom, I’d have known something was wrong. I’d have seen it coming.
…
But I wasn’t like her, and I never saw what surely she would have seen. Dylan, Missy, even Brendan—they’d all still be alive if I had. None of that crazy shit would have happened.
I just wasn’t big enough to fill her shoes
.
Mia tossed back what was left of the wine in the glass.
The phone rang, a lightning bolt of sound that jolted Mia out of her trance. She cleared her throat, hoping to clear her head at the same time, and picked up the phone after checking the caller ID.
“Annie, hi.”
“Hey, Mia. Sorry to call so late, I should have looked at the clock before I dialed. I was speaking with John about a case and he asked me to give you a call when we finished. He said you called him earlier, about a case you wanted to discuss with me?” Anne Marie McCall, one of the Bureau’s most respected profilers, was Mia’s first choice to work on this case.
“Right, I did. I have this case over on the Eastern Shore, maybe you heard about it? The killer is grabbing these girls off the street…maybe not off the street, we don’t know where he’s getting them or how, but he keeps them someplace and rapes them. At least we know the first one was raped repeatedly; the second one, she was just pretty much mush—”
“Whoa, Mia, slow down. You’re not making any sense,” Annie said. “You’re rambling.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Mia’s voice cracked. “It’s just so sad, Annie, and I thought maybe I could do the profiler thing, but not this case. Not this time. It’s too complicated. The killer’s too smart and if we screw up, another young girl is going to die. Maybe another one already has because we don’t have a clue—”
Annie interrupted, asking quietly, “Mia, are you all right?”
“Well, yeah, I’m fine, but these two vics we have…Annie, if you saw what he did to them…”
“Mia, what’s going on?” Annie hesitated for a moment. “It isn’t like you to fall apart like this.”
“I’ve never seen a case like this.”
“You’ve seen plenty of hard-core stuff over the years. I’ve worked with you on other cases.”
“Not like this,” Mia protested. “I’ve never seen anything this evil.”
“Mia, I have to ask…Have you been drinking?”
“I just had a little wine, while I was reading through the file.”
“How much?”
“Just a little, really.” Mia picked up the bottle and was surprised to find it was almost empty. No wonder her head was spinning and her focus was off. She took a deep breath. “I guess I didn’t eat as much as I should have today. I missed lunch, I missed dinner, then tried to snack on salsa and crackers, and I opened a bottle of wine to have while I was munching. I guess I lost track.”
“You do this often?”
“Of course not.” Mia forced herself not to snap. “I just got home late, and I was working my way through this file and just not paying attention. It’s all so sad, Annie. This guy is a demon. He’s a monster. This is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
“Okay, tell me what you know.”
Mia stumbled through the case, unaware of how she was ambling this way and that. Finally, she said, “And he leaves these tapes inside the plastic wrap, all wrapped up inside with their bodies. You hear him talking to her, you hear his voice. And you hear her, Annie, she’s crying and telling her mother and father how sorry she is…”
“I see,” Annie said softly.
“Here, I’ll play it for you—”
“No, no, Mia, don’t put the tape on. Leave it for now. Close up the file and go to bed; you sound tired. We’ll listen to the tape when I get there.”
“I hate to ask you, it’s the weekend.”
“It’s okay. Evan’s working both days anyway. I’ll be there by afternoon so we can sit down and go over the case together.”
“Okay.” In spite of herself, Mia felt tears begin to well up again. “Maybe by two? I’ll need to tell Beck.”
“Who’s Beck?”
“He’s the chief of police in St. Dennis. I think he might be a very interesting man. Cute, in a hard-cop, all-business sort of way. Not that I’m interested in that type.”
“Of course not. Nothing appealing about cute, interesting, hard-edged cops who do their job.”
“Ha. You should know.”
“I do know. Now, do us both a favor. Don’t play that tape again. Just put everything in your briefcase and go to bed, all right? You need some sleep. And put the wine away for tonight, hear?”
I put it away, all right.
“Sure. Thanks, Annie.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Now go to bed.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Mia hung up the phone and slipped it into her bag. She closed the file and put it into her briefcase and snapped the lid. Took everything back into the kitchen. Set the plate with the remaining crackers on the counter and the empty wine bottle on the floor next to the trash can. Locked the back door and turned off the lights. She wouldn’t listen to the tape again, as she promised Annie.
She wouldn’t need to play it again to hear that tormented voice. It was there, in her head, amid the jumble of her own pleas for forgiveness.
Momma and Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry
…
12
Mia waited patiently outside the manager’s office in the rear of the apparel store where Colleen Preston had worked. The national chain clearly catered to young women—there were racks of colorful summer merchandise and accessories. The store sold everything from straw hats and flip-flops to summer formal wear. At the glass counter to the right of the door, several of the employees gathered, speaking in hushed voices. Judging by their furtive glances in her direction, Mia assumed the topic of conversation was the reason for the FBI’s presence.
Clarise Holden, the store manager, appeared in the doorway, offering an apology. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Agent Shields. I was on the phone with the national office. We’re all so upset about Colleen…”
“Understandable. I’m sorry you weren’t notified directly. Hearing about it through the news has to have made it even harder for you and your employees.”
The store manager, a thin woman in her thirties, re sponded flatly. “It’s been a terrible shock to us all. Colleen was such a cheerful person, so nice to the customers, even the crankiest ones. She never complained about her hours or anything else.”
“Ms. Holden, are you aware of anyone who might have been bothering Colleen?”
The woman held up a hand laden with silver rings. “I already answered all these questions for Chief Daley. Have you spoken with him? I’m assuming you’re working with him?”
“I did read the statement you gave to the Ballard police,” Mia said circumventing the question. She had not contacted the local police, and had not spoken with Daley. “You told him you really didn’t know much about the private life of any of the employees.”
“That’s correct. And I still don’t. I’m sorry, but Colleen just came in here and did her job. She didn’t hang around before or after her shift, and we never had a conversation about anything that didn’t pertain to her employment here.”
“Was she friendly with any of the other girls who work here?”
“Danielle Snyder. They worked the same shifts and sometimes took breaks together.”
“I’d like to speak with her. Is she in this morning?”
“She is. I’ll get her, if you’ll excuse me.”
Mia moved her handbag from the floor to her lap to permit the older woman to open the door. Clarisse Holden stood in the doorway and waved to someone, then stepped back inside the office. A moment later, a young woman in her early twenties stepped into the room. She had red hair and blue eyes and freckles, and under other circumstances might have appeared perky.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked warily.
“Danielle, this is Agent Shields from the FBI. She wanted to ask you a few questions about Colleen.”
“I already spoke with the police,” Danielle told Mia.
“I know you did.” Mia turned in her chair to make eye contact with the young woman who appeared flustered. “But I wanted to talk to you for a minute about Colleen.”
“Okay.” Danielle nodded.
“We’re trying very hard to find the person who killed her, Danielle. I know you’ve been asked this before, but if you can think of anyone who might have been bothering her, someone she might have mentioned, even one time…”
Danielle shook her head. “She never said anything about that.”
“How about someone from one of the other stores in the shopping center? Was there someone who came in to see her? Did she ever mention that anyone in particular got on her nerves?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Ms. Holden said you and Danielle often worked the same shifts. Were you working the day she disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the last conversation you had with Colleen?”
Danielle’s eyes misted, and she nodded. “Yes. She was talking about going away that Friday with one of her girlfriends from high school. They were going to Ocean City for a long weekend. They’d rented a condo or something.”
“Do you know who the other girl was?”
“I only met her once. Jessica Flynn. She and Colleen had lunch together the day before…before Colleen disappeared.”
“Do you know how I can reach Jessica?”
“I think she lives in Ballard. She just moved back home, I remember that. She had been living in College Park, but she came back because she got a teaching job with the local school district. She got her master’s in May, I think she said. She stopped in here a few times since she’d moved back. She and Colleen were pretty tight.”
“Thank you, Danielle,” Mia said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Can I go back to work now?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mia told her.
“And thank you, Ms. Holden.” Mia pushed back her chair and stood. “I appreciate your time.”
“Of course.” Clarise Holden stood as well.
“By the way, the parking lot behind the store…is that accessible to the general public?” Mia asked.
“Yes. Each of the stores has so many parking spots allotted for their employees, but occasionally a customer will park back there. It’s not a private lot, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mia thanked her again for her help, and left the store. Danielle was huddled with a coworker near a display of beach bags, discussing, no doubt, her interrogation by the FBI.
Mia got into her car and drove to the back of the shopping center. Behind the stores, parking was a narrow strip, two rows deep, with an entrance and exit a mere one-car width. Each store had a solid metal door opening out to the parking lot, but none had a window. Unless someone else was leaving their store at the same time Colleen had left, no one would have seen if she’d met up with someone when she left work that day. According to the statements taken by the Ballard police, no one saw anything.
She thought it might be worth a shot, so she drove back around to the front of the center and went store to store, but learned nothing new. No one had seen Colleen leave that day.
On her way into St. Dennis, she called information and got a number for Jessica Flynn’s parents’ home. Jessica was at home, and agreed to meet with Mia immediately.
“Anything that can help,” she told Mia.
Following the directions Jessica gave her, Mia arrived at the Flynn home in less than fifteen minutes. Jessica was waiting for her on the small front patio. When Mia pulled into the driveway of the split-level home, Jessica walked to meet her. She was tall and pretty, a confident looking young woman with a mane of light brown hair and a tan she must have been working on for several weeks.
“Hello, Jessica,” Mia said after she’d gotten out of the car. “I’m Agent Shields. Thanks for agreeing to see me right away.”
“I don’t really know what I could tell you that might help, but you can ask me anything.”
“I just have a very few questions, Jessica.”
“Call me Jessie, please.” The girl pointed toward the house. “We can sit up there, if you want.”
“That would be fine, thank you.” Mia followed her to the patio and sat on one of the cushioned chairs. “Jessie, I heard you had lunch with Colleen shortly before she disappeared.”
Jessie nodded. “I drove over to the store on Monday, the day before…before.” She swallowed hard. “I had to give her money for the place we were renting on this trip we were taking. We were leaving on Friday for Ocean City for the weekend, and Colleen was going to see the guy who owned the property to pay him.”
“Was she meeting him that day?” Mia bit her bottom lip. This wasn’t reflected in the police file she’d read.
“No, I thought she was going to see him Wednesday.”
“Do you have a name? Do you know where she was supposed to meet him?”
Jessie shook her head, “No. It was someone Colleen knew who had a place to rent. She was handling everything. I just gave her my share of the rent at lunch. She was going to meet the owner and give him the money and get the key to the place.”
“Do you know the address of the place you were renting?”
“It was someplace on the beach.” Jessie toyed with a strand of hair. “She said it was right on the beach, and the owner was giving us a real good deal on the rent.”
“Condo? Single home?”
“Condo,” Jessie said. “It’s in one of those high-rises right on the beach, that’s all I know.”
“And she never mentioned the name of the person she was dealing with?”
“No.”
“Do you know how she found out about the place?”
Jessie hesitated and made a face, as if trying to recall. “I think she said he told her about it.”
“So it was someone she knew?”
“Maybe. Or maybe someone she called. I know for a while there, she was checking some places online.”
“Any particular website?”
Again, Jessie shook her head. “No. She called and told me she’d found a great place that was still available for the following weekend and did I want in, and I said sure.”
“Do you remember when that was?”
“A few days before I met her for lunch. The end of the week before, I think.”
“So you met her and gave her your share of the rent.” Mia looked up from the notes she’d been taking. “Was she planning on paying the owner in cash, did she say?”
“She said she’d put it in her account and write a check to the owner.”
“Do you know if she did that? If she wrote the check?”
“I have no idea. I never saw her again.” Jessie’s bottom lip trembled. “Do you think it’s him, the condo guy? Do you think he killed her?”
“I think we need to speak with him,” Mia said, “just as we need to speak with anyone who might have seen Colleen or had dealings with her that day.”
“I wish now that I’d asked more questions,” Jessie told her. “I wish I’d made her tell me who he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I asked her, she just said it was someone she’d met, and he was giving us a special deal, so he didn’t want his name passed around, because he usually charged more and he didn’t want anyone to know he’d given it to us for so much less. Do you think that was why it was such a deal?” She started to cry. “Because he wanted to kill her?”
Beck had just walked into the kitchen at the station when he looked out the window and saw Mia pull into the lot. She parked in the same spot she’d parked in the day before. He watched as she got out of the car and slammed the door, locked it with the remote, and dropped the keys into her bag. It was hard for him to look away, same as it had been the day before. Mia was one of those women that you couldn’t help but notice.
And Beck had noticed pretty much everything.
He’d noticed the thin gold band she wore on the middle finger of her right hand, her gold hoop earrings, and the small diamond set in a gold circle that she wore around her neck. Hair so dark it was almost black, worn straight down around her shoulders, neat but not fussy. Eyes as green as emeralds. She dressed conservatively in tailored linen, but then there were those mile-high heels. She was slender and not too tall, and feminine in the same way his sister Vanessa was feminine.
Girly,
he thought, but knew she wasn’t as much of a cream puff as she appeared. A cream puff wasn’t likely to make it through the rigorous FBI training.
And there’d been that odd comment about the one brother who was dead…
Overall—that odd comment aside—the package was pretty nice.
Still, he had a bone to pick with her.
He realized his mind was wandering. He snapped back to the task at hand—getting a cold drink for the FBI profiler who sat in his office. He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and a paper cup and went back into his office.
Mia arrived seconds after he’d handed the water and cup to the profiler.
“Hi, Beck,” Mia said as she entered the room with a perfunctory knock on the door. “Hi, Annie. You made it.”
“Your directions were great, thanks.” Anne Marie McCall smiled as Mia dragged a chair closer and hung her bag on the back.
“I had a very interesting morning,” Mia told them.
“So I heard.” He replied dryly from behind his desk.
“From…?”
“From Chief Daley over in Ballard. He got a call from the parents of Jessica Flynn asking about the FBI agent who’d interrogated their daughter less than an hour ago.”
“Yes, that was me. So?”
“So he wasn’t happy, thought I’d done an end run around him by sending you over there.”
“I’m trying to find a common link between the victims, so I followed up on some witnesses his department interviewed. And, by the way, picked up a bit of information his people missed. So what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is he’s pissed that he wasn’t informed first.” Beck sat in his chair and returned her stare. “Look, most of the communities around here are covered by the state police, but there are a few that have retained their own departments. St. Dennis is one, Ballard is another, Cameron…there are a few more. The point is, we try to stick together, work together—”
“And he’s pissed because he thinks you sent me into his town to second-guess his officers.”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“I’m sorry, I had no idea. Last night, I was reading through the file, and it was in my head that the guy we’re looking for is local. Maybe not from St. Dennis, but close enough to know the town. I mean, obviously, since he knew where you lived. I thought if we could figure out what the victims had in common, we’d be closer to figuring out who he is. I called this morning when I was on my way to Ballard but you weren’t in.”
“You could have left a message.”
“I did. I left the message for you to call me.”
He leafed through the messages in his in box, then held one up.
“My apologies,” he said, silently cursing the fact that he’d somehow missed the message.
“Look, I’ll call the chief over there and tell him you didn’t know I was going to do interviews this morning.”
“I told him that.”
“And he believes you?”
“Of course. We’re friends.”
“Which makes this even more difficult. I see.” She nodded slowly. “I’ll make certain that I reach you next time.”
“Fine. Now, are you going to tell me what you found that Daley’s people missed?”
“Yes, but I think we need to bring Annie—Dr. McCall—up to date on the case.”
“Chief Beck has already done that,” Annie told her. “He was just filling me in on some of the observations you made about the unsub.”