“That’s harsh. I’m not stupid. Well, I guess it was crazy to peek into windows, but I’m not an idiot.”
“That’s debatable,” Rainey commented.
“Okay, I’m an idiot but haven’t all these crimes been linked to one UNSUB? You used linkage analysis, right? I live right in the middle of his territory. There’s a good chance I could have run into this guy. I mean, I actually kind of hoped I would. You know, for—”
Rainey finished for him, “Authenticity, yeah we got that. Still, you look real good for this Shaun.”
Shaun puffed out his chest. “Wasn’t the first murder committed the day after Christmas? I was on a cruise with my family. Check my phone records, call my parents, ask my soon to be ex-girlfriend. As soon as I get out of here, she’s moving out. I can’t believe she didn’t ask me about that stuff before she called the cops.”
“You don’t have to worry about her moving out. I understand she packed a bag and went to her mother’s, but I’m pretty sure she’s the least of your concerns, at the moment.”
“One of the assault victims, Dr. Sweet, is like a mother to me. She’s been my advisor through undergrad and grad school. I was so pissed when she was attacked,” Shaun offered in his defense.
Glena Sweet would have recognized Shaun as her student, Rainey thought. The professor remembered so clearly the conversation the UNSUB had with her, the exact words he had used.
Rainey asked Shaun, “What about the second murder? January seventeenth. It was a Saturday. Where were you then?”
He smiled. “Ask my girlfriend, ex-girlfriend. It was her idea.”
Rainey smiled back, picked up her panties and stuffed them into her pocket. “I think you better go ahead and tell us. We’ll verify your story, of course, but it’s probably best if you just say where you were.”
“We went to Asheville. She wanted to go to the Biltmore Estate. She’s all into Downton Abbey. We stayed at the Village Hotel on the grounds.” He beamed at Rainey. “I have the credit card receipts. No linkage, no suspect, right?”
Rainey stood up and looked down at the lawyer. “You might want to hear your client’s story and do some fact checking before you start talking plea bargains. You were about to send an innocent man to prison, asshat.”
To Shaun, she said, “You’re going to be charged as a voyeur. You’ve admitted to it on video, so they have you. I’d get a new lawyer and go to trial. You might find some jurors who are as dedicated to authenticity in books as you are or who have done some really bonehead shit in their lives.”
“Hey,” Shaun called after her, as Rainey headed for the door, “can I send you my manuscript? I could use you as an expert. It would give me more authenti—”
Rainey’s, “No,” cut him off and the door closing silenced any further requests. When Rainey stepped into the observation room, she landed in the middle of Sheila’s reprimand of the detectives cowering under her glare.
“No one bothered to check where this guy was on the dates of the murders? Well, this has been a monumental waste of time. You better hope we find Wendy King alive. Total incompetence.”
Rainey redirected her, “Sheila, I really need Wendy’s phone.”
Sheila was disgusted with the detectives. “I’ll call down to the lab. In the meantime, you two go in there and find out where this idiot has been playing at peeping Tom. Maybe we can use that to catch the real UNSUB.”
Two detectives slinked off, shoulders drooping, their hope of being the conquering heroes dashed. The other two left the room with phones to their ears, already moving the investigation forward. Rainey, Teague, and Sheila were but a small cog in the justice machine searching for Wendy’s abductor. Sheila took out her phone and stepped into the corner, leaving Rainey standing with Teague.
He smiled at her. “I suppose we’ll have to just keep looking for the Triangle Terror. Fascinating interview technique. The panties were brilliant,” he said, glancing at the pocket that contained them with a smile that made Rainey uncomfortable.
The facial muscles around Teague’s eyes were not participating in his smile, an indication it was not genuine. Rainey was in no mood to swap professional accolades, nor was she happy with his use of “we.” Rainey had worked plenty of investigations with academics contributing considerably to the process. It was not his education, title, nor his smugness that bothered her, but something did, even if she couldn’t name it. It may simply have been Rainey noticed the tarnish on the professor’s polish. His research and class materials gave her pause, as well. She needed to talk to him about the essay. She needed to know if Teague knew how it came to be in Wendy’s possession.
She said, “Excuse me, I’m going to the restroom. Tell Sheila I’ll be right back.”
Rainey exited without further comment and found the restroom down the hall. She slipped into a stall and put her panties back on, all while mentally running scenarios of what could have happened to her sister. If Rainey’s calculations were correct, Wendy had been missing for almost five hours. Five hours with a sadist was a long time.
While Rainey washed her hands, the phone chirped in her pocket, signaling a text message had been received. She dried her hands and entered the passcode. It seemed Danny had been made aware of Wendy’s abduction.
His message read, “Whatever you need.”
Rainey typed, “I need the cross-referenced list of property owners and women who take a sleeping aid. Absent partner scenario is too broad.”
She paused. Having ignored the thought since finding the essay, it was difficult to give into it. Deciding it wasn’t all that crazy to want to know with whom she was dealing, Rainey added, “Run Dr. Edward Teague for me. Tell Brooks to look beneath the surface.”
Rainey hesitated, not yet ready to send the message. She looked into the mirror above the sink and saw the reflection of the uppermost track of the Y-incision scar. Rainey’s mind recalled the cost of ignored disconcertion. She was suddenly subjected to the memory of JW at the kitchen counter reading with detached emotion the newspaper article describing her attack. She discovered later JW fed the media the details himself. Physically reacting to the recollected nausea brought on by the remembrance of JW’s cologne, Rainey placed the phone on the counter and splashed cold water on her face.
With her face buried in a couple of paper towels, she heard Sheila’s voice ask, “Are you okay?”
Rainey finished drying her face and forced a smile. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” She picked up the phone, hit send, and slipped it back into her pocket. “It’s been a long day already. Just freshening up and putting my underwear back where they belong.”
Sheila put her hand over her mouth, trying to contain the volume of her laughter. “Oh my God, when you dropped your drawers in there I nearly had a heart attack. Do you have any idea how many sexual harassment rules you just violated? I don’t think the boys will bring it up. That would mean admitting what a shitty job of investigating they did.”
“Don’t be too hard on them. Shaun George looked guilty. He just wasn’t.”
Her laughter subsiding, Sheila collected herself back into detective mode.
“I have to tell you, Rainey, I’m not comfortable cutting a guy loose with that much evidence in his home. We will hold him until he’s arraigned on the voyeurism charge Monday. Luckily, he admitted to his peeper pattern and we can charge him here in Durham before sending him back to Chatham. That gives us some time to be very sure he’s not responsible for any of the assaults or burglaries before he’s back on the street.”
“He’s guilty of peeking but as unlikely as it seems, I think he is telling the truth about the UNSUB following him.”
The chirping of another text message arriving sang from Rainey’s pocket. She paused to take out the phone and read Danny’s short but direct text, “Teague?”
Rainey’s reply was just as succinct. She typed, “Stranger things…”
Assuming wrongly that it was Katie, Sheila asked, “Is everything okay at home?”
Rainey slipped the phone into her pocket and moved toward the exit with Sheila. “All is well. Now, let’s go find my wayward sister.”
Rainey ran into Teague as she stepped into the hallway. He winced and grabbed his ribcage where she bumped him.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly trying to disguise his pain. “I was looking for the men’s room.”
Rainey apologized, “I’m sorry, I should have been more careful. Are you okay?”
Teague answered with a pained smile, “I slipped on a wet boulder on my run this morning—bruised my ribs pretty good.”
Sheila pointed toward the end of the hall. “The men’s room is on the other side of the elevators.”
“Thank you,” he nodded and started away. Three tiny red scratches peeked from the top of his turtleneck collar and were just viewable in the closely cropped hair at the nape of his neck.
Ding. Ding. Ding. The jackpot bells were chiming in Rainey’s mind. She called after him, “When you come back, I have an essay I’d like to show you. I think it may be from your class.”
Teague stopped. He turned to Rainey—and there it was. She saw the blink. He was the consummate predator, above reproach, and yet she saw that split second view of his lizard brain stare. Teague was the fetish burglar, rapist, and murderer they were searching for. Now she had to prove it. All she had was an essay and a gut feeling. No one would believe her, not even Sheila.
Yet, he proved an even more viable suspect when he walked back to them, explaining, “Well, I didn’t have to go. Just thought it was break time, you know.” He chuckled. “So, let’s see the essay.”
I’ll be damned,
Rainey thought. She didn’t dare speak her observations aloud, as her brain asked,
What are the freakin’ chances of that?
And rightly so, but as she hinted to Danny, stranger things had happened in Rainey’s life. Now, what? As long as he was with her, he wasn’t with Wendy. If he took her, Rainey needed to make sure he did not leave without a full confession. If she accused him, he would walk out the door and kill Wendy the second he reached her. She wasn’t wrong about Teague, but she could be wrong about him taking Wendy. She needed Wendy’s phone to keep the investigation moving on all fronts while she dealt with professor terror one on one.
“Sheila, are they bringing Wendy’s phone up to you?”
“Yes, they should be here any—and there she is.” Sheila tipped her head in the direction of a young woman in a lab coat carrying a plastic evidence bag and a clipboard, coming down the hall.
“Sergeant Robertson, we haven’t processed the phone yet, so could you leave it in the bag?”
“Yes,” Rainey said and took the phone while Sheila signed for it.
She made Teague stand and wait, uninformed. Rainey didn’t know if there was evidence on the phone to tie him to Wendy’s disappearance, but neither did he. She knew Wendy’s passcode. She knew everyone’s passcode in her immediate circle or had administrative access. She put trackers and emergency alert networks on her loved ones’ phones because they were her loved ones and thus vulnerable to the trouble that seemed to find her. Rainey went to the recent calls menu, ran her finger down the list until she saw what she was looking for,
Peter Pan
. She tapped the screen revealing contact information. She tapped a few more times and heard the ding on the phone in her pocket, as Connor’s information was received.
“Is that it? The tech can take it back with her if that’s all,” Sheila said.
Rainey saw Teague’s eyes following the phone and replied, “No, I need it to communicate with this kid. I’ll hang on to it for a bit.”
She led Teague back into the observation room and went straight to the corner, where she’d left her coat and Wendy’s backpack.
Turning back to Sheila, Rainey said, “Could Dr. Teague and I use one of the other interview rooms? I think we can help each other process if we work together, without outside influences.”
Not waiting for Sheila’s answer, Rainey was already moving with Teague right behind her. She entered the interview room and walked over to the table. She dropped her coat and Wendy’s backpack in one chair and set about moving the table and the other two chairs. When she was finished, one chair sat in the corner, one chair held her coat, and the other chair, the only one on wheels, faced the one in the corner.
“I hope I didn’t mess up the camera angles.” Glancing at Sheila, she continued speaking only to Teague, “Have you ever been in an actual interview room, Edward?”
“No, not like this. I’ve interviewed inmates at Butner and I did my study at Walpole.”
Rainey stood in front of the rolling chair, leaving only the one in the corner open for Teague. She talked while she pulled out her phone and placed it with Wendy’s on the table.
“Walpole, I saw that in your study. Did you get a chance to meet some of the guys in the DDU?”
“I’m sorry, DDU?” Teague asked.
“The special discipline unit, strictly geared to punishment, not for rehabilitative purposes. It’s where the impulse control challenged go to stay for years in some cases. It takes that long to punish a man who has nothing left to lose after he slits a guard’s throat or shanks his roommate.”
“No, I never had the pleasure. I worked in group therapy sessions and one on one interviews within the general population, but there are still some individuals walking around in there I would not care to meet on the street.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Rainey said, and then switched gears again. She pointed at the various video cameras. “I believe they automatically record in this particular room. Is that right, Sheila, or is that in the new ones over at the detention center?” She smiled at Teague. “You may want to request a copy of this conversation for future use.”
“That would be an excellent teaching tool,” he said, smiling.
“I was going to have Sheila turn it off, but since you’re aware that we’re being recorded, it’s all good then?” Rainey nodded as she asked the question, watching as he began to nod too.
“Yes, sure, record away,” replied Teague.
Intentionally ignoring Teague for a moment, Rainey spoke directly to Sheila, “Hey, did you make contact with Lilly?”
Sheila searched Rainey’s face while wearing a befuddled expression. “I did,” she answered, “I’m waiting for a response from his personal assistant.”