Authors: Renee Andrews
“Come on, dear.” Jackie hugged her as they crossed the foyer. “I’m sure you’re anxious to see him. He’s doing fine now. I just thought I should tell you and Angel about him leaving again. She called you, I guess?”
“Yes, she did. Do you have any idea where he went?”
“No.” Jackie turned down a long hallway, where four rooms branched off each side. Most of the doors were open, and the elderly residents, all familiar with Lexie’s visits, smiled, waved and spoke as she passed.
She greeted each of them by name, wanting them to know someone cared, even if they might not remember her visit tomorrow.
Murrell’s Assisted Living was divided between those older individuals who were still sharp-minded but needed a place to stay and those who were lost inside themselves while their outer bodies continued to thrive. Most of the latter group were diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s. However, the one Lexie came to see had stopped wanting to remember twenty-eight years ago and even though he probably couldn’t tell whether she came or not, even though he may not remember her visits after she left the confines of his room, she would continue to come, continue to visit and continue to hope.
“You know, this isn’t the type of place where I can keep my residents from going outdoors.” Jackie’s tone indicated her guilt that he’d wandered off again. “And he isn’t getting hurt or anything when he leaves. But I still feel responsible.”
Lexie stopped walking just shy of his door, the only one in the hallway that remained closed. “It isn’t your fault. He loves it here. On the few times he’s said anything to us, that’s been the one thing that he made clear. And I don’t want to move him, nor do I think he needs to be in a lockdown facility. He must’ve wanted some fresh air, which a lot of your residents want, right?” Lexie didn’t believe her own words, but she didn’t want Donovan and Jackie Murrell blaming themselves. They hadn’t caused the mental shutdown.
Jackie nodded, but her eyes glistened. “Yeah, but most of our guests go out to the gardens for a while, or sit by the pond. I don’t know where he went, Lexie. He had dinner with everyone Saturday night, but at breakfast Sunday morning, he didn’t come out of his room.” She shrugged. “He does that sometimes, you know, when he wants to sleep in, so we didn’t disturb him. Then, right before lunchtime, he came walking in the front door. He looked tired, and he’d been crying.” She clasped her hands together at her chest. “I was worried, but since he’s done it before, and since I have no authority to stop him from going where he wants to go...”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Jackie. I have no idea where he went either, but you said he’s doing okay now, right?”
Jackie blinked her tears away and nodded. “And he does seem better today. Whatever he does when he’s away, I think it helps. But I still get worried about him leaving, since I never can tell when it’s going to happen, or how long he’ll stay away. As far as I know, nothing upset him to make him leave. He was in the TV room with several of the other residents then everyone thought he went to his room. But the next morning, he wasn’t there.”
“What were you watching on the television?” Lexie feared the answer.
Jackie shrugged. “The news.”
Lexie tamped back her anxiety. Even if he’d seen her on the TV and even if he knew the killer had returned, that didn’t mean he’d gone out looking for the guy, did it? But where had he gone? And
had
he seen Lexie on TV? Had her broadcast been picked up by Valdosta too? And if he had seen her, would he have even recognized her? Then again, last time she visited, he’d said her name.
“You said he seemed better after he got back though, right?” Lexie needed reassurance before she entered his room.
“Oh, yes, and he looks very good today. Hasn’t spoken yet, but he ate a big breakfast this morning and smiled at his little brother.”
“Little brother?” He didn’t have a brother. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have anyone anymore, except Lexie and Angel.
“One of the local churches started a program where teenagers come into the centers around town and visit with our guests. His little brother’s name is Jacob. I thought I told you about him, Jacob Zimmerman. Must’ve been Angel I told.”
“Must’ve been. Is Jacob here now?”
“Oh no, he came before school. He’ll come back on Thursday morning. Mondays and Thursdays are when he visits, always before school. Sometimes on Saturdays, if he doesn’t have anything else going on.”
Lexie nodded, glad he had other people visiting when she and Angel couldn’t be here. But she wondered if this teen had anything to do with his disappearance. Had he gone out looking for Jacob? Had he found him? “The next time Jacob comes in, will you give him my number and ask him to call me?”
“Sure.”
“Anyway, he ate real good this morning while Jacob was here.”
“I’m glad.” Maybe the teen reminded him of Phillip, Jr. It’d been a while since Phillip had made his way to Valdosta since he’d been so busy with school. Maybe this teenager filled that void. If so, she’d have to thank Jacob Zimmerman.
“I’ll go make sure Donovan got your things over to the guesthouse.”
Lexie smiled, then turned the knob and entered the room that, for the past twenty-eight years, had been her grandfather’s home.
Nicholas Truman’s striking emerald eyes were fixed on the large screen television composing the majority of one wall in his room. With his hand on the remote, he nodded, agreeing with the anchorwoman, then flipped the channel and listened to another newscast. He stopped on CNN, then moved on through the local stations. When he hit Macon’s news, his trigger finger for the remote stayed at a standstill.
She knew what he wanted to see. Or at least she thought she knew. Why hadn’t she or Angel thought about him seeing her broadcasts about the killer? Had he realized seven more years had passed and the monster who tore his life apart had returned?
Lexie looked at the tray resting on the table beside his bed. “Granddaddy, you never ate your pudding after lunch.” She indicated the white ceramic bowl filled with his preferred dessert. “It’s chocolate, your favorite.” Jacqueline Murrell spoiled him, but she spoiled all of her guests. Murrell’s Assisted Living had been dubbed the best facility in the south, and for the mighty Trumans, only the best would do.
The mighty Trumans. Lexie couldn’t bear to think of her heritage in that light anymore. True, the money still abounded, but the strength of the family disintegrated on that day so long ago.
Lexie swallowed hard and took a seat beside his bed. While her grandfather stared at the television and dozed throughout the afternoon, she sat, hoping against hope that he’d turn his head her way, that he might speak her name again, or that he’d do something indicating he remembered her for good.
Nicholas cleared his throat, straightened in the bed, then pushed the sheet aside.
“You need something?”
He smiled at her, and Lexie’s heart squeezed within her chest. Then he stood from the bed and went to the bathroom. In a few minutes, he returned. He looked at her again, but didn’t smile. Then he grabbed the remote from atop the bedding and sat in the chair on the opposite side of the room.
At 5:30, Jackie brought both of them dinner. “Thought you’d want to eat in private.” She placed the trays on a circular wooden table by the window. “You’ve got a great view of the magnolia grove. Might as well enjoy it while you eat.”
“Thank you.” Lexie moved to one of the chairs.
“Enjoy your meal, Nicholas.” Jackie gave Lexie a soft smile then left.
When the door closed, he moved to the table and sat across from his granddaughter. They ate in silence, while the news chanted from the television screen.
Then it happened. Nicholas Truman’s fork, filled with a healthy hunk of garlic mashed potatoes, dropped from his hand to the plate, and Lexie turned her attention from her grandfather to the television screen, where the pretty brunette news anchor, a woman who had worked with Lexie in Atlanta, updated Georgia on Macon’s Sunrise Killer.
“Granddaddy?” Lexie jerked her head from the television back to her grandfather.
Tears streamed down his slack cheeks.
She moved from her chair to kneel in front of him. She knew better than to turn off the television. He’d waited for this all day.
“Granddaddy.” She made certain her voice sounded strong and determined, in spite of the emotion making her insides churn. “We’re going to get him this time. Angel and I will get him this time. I promise you, we will.”
He inhaled a ragged breath, closed his jaw and swallowed. Then those vivid green eyes stared at hers. “Yes. You—will.”
Chapter Nine
Angel’s behind was numb from sitting. Perched at this conference table for over ten hours, she’d participated in the call with Quantico and met with each member of the task force, except Lexie, at some point throughout the day. They hadn’t scheduled an official meeting, but Ed, Lou, Ryan, Zed and John had taken turns reviewing the bulk of information they’d gathered, then each had followed his respective lead on the investigation. Most followed up with victimology, studying autopsy protocols and CSI files from the past murders. Lou Marker had returned to Cami Talton’s house and Vickie Jones’ duplex to see if they’d overlooked any details at the most recent murder sites. Tucker left Macon altogether, saying he had another lead that would take him out of the city and that he’d report the details as soon as they were available.
Angel didn’t know why she trusted him, but she did. He meant something to Lexie, and she’d never known Lexie to misjudge a person’s character. Therefore, for now, he’d moved down on the list of potential suspects. Not that she’d removed him from the list, but he wasn’t as near the top.
She grabbed her cup of coffee, her fifth cup today, judging from the empty Styrofoam containers littering the table, and she worried that her perceptiveness was slipping. The stuff tasted half good.
Captain Pierce poked his head in. “Still here, huh?”
“That’s what I’m paid for.”
“You eat today?”
“I’m planning on it, but right now the caffeine is keeping me sustained.”
He grunted. “If that caffeine is satisfying you, you’ve got some serious issues.”
She laughed. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Here.” He entered and plopped in the chair beside her. “It’s tuna salad. My wife makes a mean tuna salad.” He placed a brown bag beside her empty coffee cups.
“Don’t you want it?”
“She never knows how late I’ll be working, so she always sends extra. Today, she made three. I ate two. There’re two bags of chips in there too. I’ll take one of them, but you can have the other.”
Angel opened the brown bag, withdrew a sandwich covered in foil and unwrapped it. The scent of tuna filled the room, and her stomach growled.
“That’s what I thought.” He pointed to the sandwich. “Go on, start eating, and tell me what you’re working on. I haven’t got the profiling experience you do, but I’ve solved my share of cases. Maybe I can provide a bit of insight.”
She took a bite of the sandwich, then closed her eyes and enjoyed the delicious conglomeration of tuna, boiled eggs, sweet relish and mayo. Aunt Carol used to fix tuna sandwiches for Saturday lunches. She swallowed then looked at Pierce. “This is delicious.”
“I know.” He grinned. “I’ll tell her you said so, though. Always means more when it comes from a stranger.”
Angel laughed and took another bite.
“So tell me what you’re following here.” He indicated the stacks of books.
She had to consider how much to disclose, but Ed Pierce wasn’t on her list of suspects since he didn’t live in Macon at the time of the first murder series, and he seemed to want to help her solve the case. When she’d first met him, she’d had the suspicion he had his eye on John Tucker as a suspect; however, as she’d watched him interact with the remaining task force members, she’d come to realize Ed Pierce didn’t merely suspect Tucker. He suspected everyone, and that suspicion could help her narrow her list, since he knew more about the task force members, and the additional personnel involved with the case, than Angel. Past experience told her the killer would be close to the investigation. What she hadn’t determined, though, was how close.
“After my conversation with the guys at Quantico, I realized I may have focused too much on the signature and not enough on the modus operandi.”
“But the signature is the more reliable guide to the behavior of serial offenders.” He removed one bag of chips from the lunch sack, opened it and popped one in his mouth. “It’s static; MO is dynamic. Chances are, if our killer has come up with a better means of pulling off the crime, he’s done it. What he won’t change is the signature.”
“I know, but that’s just it. His signature has stayed the same. He strangles blonde, pregnant and single women. Seven of them, every seven years. However, his MO changed between the first series and the second.”
“He stopped leaving their bodies outdoors.” Pierce followed her train of thought.
“Right. And his method for abducting them changed as well. He not only left the bodies indoors; he also attacked them within their own homes.”
“That’s still the case, based on the past three series.” He ate another chip. “What about the MO bothers you?”
“The part we haven’t covered.” She took another bite of her sandwich, then flipped back in her notebook to find where she’d annotated her theory. “Okay. I was thinking about the case I completed before I came here, involving a serial rapist in Oklahoma City. His MO was to scope out upscale restaurants for attractive women arriving alone. He’d wait until his target entered the restaurant, then he’d give her enough time to get seated. Afterwards, he’d drive through the parking lot and note the license plate on her car. Then he called the restaurant, told them he had just finished eating there and was on his way out when he noticed a car with its lights on. He’d recite the tag number, then he’d wait.”
Pierce followed the scenario. “They’d tell her she left her lights on, she’d go out to turn them off, and he’d grab her.”
“Then he’d abduct her in the parking lot, take her away to a remote location, torture her, rape her, kill her and leave her body in the woods.”
He shook his head. “You got him?”
“Yeah, we got him.”
“How does his MO remind you of our guy?”
“His MO involved taking all of his victims in the same manner. At a nice restaurant, with the ploy that they’d left their lights on.”
“Our guy always comes to their homes,” Pierce said, not following her point.
“But the guy I mentioned found the women he wanted at restaurants. He always found them in the same manner.”
“We don’t know how our guy finds them. That’s the whole problem with Vickie Jones. She apparently hadn’t told anyone she was pregnant, so how did he know? How could he have found her, when he looks for such specific criteria, and she wasn’t showing any signs of pregnancy yet? Do you think he’s keeping track of all EPTs purchased in the city? Because if he is, he still wouldn’t know which ones were positive.”
“No, I don’t think it was the EPT that did it. I believe it was her trip to Dr. Weatherly’s.”
“That’s what Tucker thought too, but you talked to him this morning after he visited the doctor. There aren’t any male staff members, and she hasn’t seen any men fitting the profile hanging around.”
“Just because she didn’t see him doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”
“You think he’s finding his victims at OB-GYN offices?”
“I think he’s finding them at one particular OB-GYN’s office.”
“Dr. Weatherly?”
Angel nodded while she opened her bag of chips. “I called Cami Talton’s mother today, asked her if she’d mind telling me the name of her daughter’s doctor.” She popped a salty chip in her mouth.
“Let me guess. Weatherly?”
“Yeah. Mrs. Talton said Cami loved her doctor. She said since Yvette Weatherly is the only female OB-GYN in Macon, that’s the only doctor Cami wanted. She went on to explain Cami wanted a female doctor because she wasn’t happy with males at the time.”
“That makes sense. If some guy got you pregnant then abandoned ship, you wouldn’t want to go to another guy to discuss what happened. If you could go to a woman, someone who would understand, you would.”
“Right. And, according to these statistics,” Angel withdrew a report she’d generated earlier, “during the past twelve months, Dr. Yvette Weatherly has handled eighty-five percent of all pregnancies in Macon involving single mothers.”
“He’s stalking her patients.” Pierce’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Whether the doctor has seen him there or not, our perp has his eye on her patients.”
“I think so.” Angel snatched another salty chip and popped it in her mouth.
“All right. Tucker’s already got what he needs to access her files. He can get a list of Dr. Weatherly’s single patients by tomorrow, I’m sure. Then we’ll know who to watch. And I’ll put a guy on her office as well to keep an eye out for anyone fitting our profile. We’ll catch him.” He finished off the last chip. “Good observation, Jackson.”
“It’d still be better if we were on the offensive. Pro-active, that’s the way to catch this guy. We won’t have to worry about trying to pick the right victims if we catch him first.”
“I agree, and maybe putting someone on Weatherly’s place will help us do it. By the way, the State called today. We should have our missing persons info by tomorrow morning. That’ll help, but I still plan to keep an eye on the women most at risk. Matter of fact, I’m going to call Tucker right now, let him know we want that list by our meeting tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.” Angel watched him leave then looked back at her notes. How he learned they were single, Angel didn’t know, but she knew without a doubt he learned they were pregnant via Dr. Yvette Weatherly’s office. Now she had to find out how many single, blonde, pregnant women were seeing the doctor. She got up, walked across the room and closed the door. Then she returned to the table and withdrew her cell phone from her purse. Keying in the numbers from her notes, she waited for the receptionist to answer.
“Dr. Yvette Weatherly’s answering service, can I help you?”
Angel’s eyes darted to the clock. 7:30. Was it really that late?
“Can I help you? If this is an emergency, or if you’re in labor—”
“No, it isn’t an emergency. I’ll call the office in the morning.”
“The office opens at eight.”
“Thank you.” Angel dropped the phone back in her purse. No, it wasn’t an emergency, and no, she wasn’t in labor, but she did need to see the doctor soon—and do her best to figure out how to keep Dr. Weatherly’s blonde, single and pregnant patients...breathing.
Tucker hadn’t planned on taking longer than an hour to determine where Lexie had headed. His impromptu meetings with the captain and the profiler put a slight wrench in his plan, as did the amount of time it took to persuade the good folks at Lexus that he was a homicide detective on the trail of a killer. But, as he’d predicted, he’d found her. Or at least he’d found her car, as good a starting point as any.
Last night, Lexie hadn’t said anything about leaving town. In fact, she’d talked about interviewing the victims’ families today and bringing their stories to the public. She’d been bound and determined to humanize each and every victim, until the public felt that every girl who’d been murdered had been a member of their family.
John had no doubt Lexie could do it. But she hadn’t. She’d called in and requested a personal day, then headed to—he checked the address again—Valdosta.
Valdosta? A hundred and fifty miles from Macon. A hundred and fifty miles from the killer. Or so he thought.
The sun turned in for the day as he exited I-75, and his cell phone rang. “Tucker.”
“Tucker, this is Pierce. How’s your lead going?”
“Still working on it.”
“Let me know if anything comes of it.”
“Will do.” John didn’t know what he’d say if the captain pressed him for additional information. That he’d followed Lexie McCain to Valdosta on the possibility she had a lead on the killer? Or that he’d followed her to Valdosta on the possibility she might be in danger?
Or
that he’d followed her to Valdosta because he wanted to—period.
Captain Pierce had seen enough of John’s work in the past to know he deserved full reign of his investigations, even this one, the only case that had ever yielded his own name as a potential suspect. That must have been enough reason to keep him from asking for additional details. “You’ll be back in Macon tomorrow, right?”
“Planning on it.”
“Good. I need you to use that warrant for Dr. Weatherly’s office. Jackson determined both of the victims were patients there. What’s more, the majority of single pregnant women in Macon go to Weatherly.”
“She’s the only female OB-GYN in town, isn’t she?” Tucker followed the reasoning. “Why didn’t we think of that before?”
“Maybe we needed a female’s perspective. But the important thing is we’ve got a probable link in his MO, so I want to pursue it. Get everything you can on the patients who fit his criteria and bring it to the meeting tomorrow.”
“Done.”
“And if you learn anything else tonight, let me know. I’d rather go on the offensive with this thing, rather than sitting around waiting for his next attack. We’ve only got thirty-eight days until he kills again.”
“If I get anything at all, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good. I’ll look for you in the morning.” Pierce disconnected.
Tucker followed the directions he’d been given and turned down a side street off Mulberry. Within minutes, he entered a long driveway lined with towering magnolias. The branches met above him and formed a tunnel of leaves that absorbed every ounce of moonlight. At the end, however, the moon made up for lost time, illuminating a massive structure that resembled an elaborate dollhouse, complete with a wraparound porch and gingerbread trim at every peak. To the right of the entrance, a wrought iron sign identified the place as
Murrell’s Assisted Living, An Exceptional Home for Exceptional Guests.