Silent Graves (21 page)

Chapter 38

“I like your angle with the women.”

Did I just hear Jack correctly?
I trailed behind him, down the hallway toward the room with the crime boards.

“Well, it’s another viewpoint on this. Maybe the women had an association, and that might be how our unsub got to both of them,” I said.

Jack picked up his cell. “Nadia, one more thing for you. Check into charity events where both Amy Rogers and Sydney Poole were involved. While you’re at it, see if any of the other women got involved with this type of thing.” He clicked off—he must have had to leave a message for her.

I’m certain I was wearing the smug smile that came with validation. Jack had Nadia acting on my suspicions. I had to bask in these moments. They didn’t come along as often as I would have liked. Even when I made a hefty contribution, most of them were dismissed with
hmm
.

We entered the room with the crime boards. Jack just cleared the doorway and was already asking questions. “All right, what do you guys have?”

Paige and Zachery were standing in front of the spread on Lindsay Parks.

“The financials came back on Parks.” Zachery turned to face us. “There is nothing that stands out as elaborate spending. She went to Reborn Spa every Wednesday, and it doesn’t seem that she belonged to any gym.”

“That agrees with what her husband told us,” I said.

“No connection that way. What about any cash withdrawals?” Jack pulled out a cigarette.

“There was a regular withdrawal of five hundred a week,” Zachery said. “That’s not a lot, considering the money the Parks have. To us, maybe a weekly cash spending budget of five hundred would be a lot.”

“Tell me more.”

“The other thing that stands out is most things that Parks spent money on was via her banking card or Visa. So why this need for cash?”

“Possibly for tipping?” I offered with a shrug. “You said she went to the spa weekly. What about regular salon appointments for her hair? I know if I pay cash to the lady who cuts—”

My words stopped there due to the correction meted out in Jack’s eyes. I knew what they were saying,
so you can avoid the tax.
I averted eye contact.

Paige consulted the folder she held. I assumed it must have contained the financials of Lindsay Parks. She bobbed her head side to side. “It could be. I don’t think any of the names that showed up on the banking report belonged to any hair salons. Reborn Spa doesn’t do hair, just massage, etcetera.”

“There aren’t any names there that do. You know I remember everything I read.” Zachery flashed a cocky smile.

“What else would she need cash for?” I asked the question out loud, not necessarily expecting an immediate answer.

“She pays for a gigolo.” Paige laughed after she said it.

“A gigolo?” I smiled at her. The word instantly brought to mind the movie from the late nineties—
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
.

“Being a male gigolo, professionally known as a male escort, is a thriving business,” Zachery began.

“Think about it,” Paige said. “It would fit perfectly with our victimology as well. You have lonely wives who need attention. They know the comforts of a secure relationship—”

“At least, when it came to their financial status Paige. Come on, these women were on their own—married yet single,” I said.

Paige closed the folder and tossed it on a nearby desk. “Secure in the sense that they probably didn’t want to risk their marriages, their comfortable financial status, on a tryst. There were probably prenups in place for all of them.”

Jacked pulled out a cigarette. “Then you believe these women paid our unsub for sex?”

“Not necessarily Jack. It’s quite possible that these wives weren’t cheating on their husbands, at least not in the typical sense. If their relationship with the unsub was free of physical interaction, in the least, they would have bonded emotionally. That is cheating to me anyway.” Paige’s eyes slid to me.

Zachery paced the perimeter of the room. “Let’s say these women meet up with him for company. They want to feel needed, wanted, and important. How does our unsub go from being a confidant to a killer?”

“The money withdrawals. You said five hundred a week?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Paige answered.

“We need to find out where the money was taken out. On the statement, there’s just code. Was it always the same place or different? It might get us closer. It is possible Parks stopped for money en route to the unsub.”

Paige took out her phone and dialed. “That’s probably something Nadia can handle quickly. Hello, Nadia, need you to check on something for us…yes, I know. This is an easy one for you…yes, I promise.” Paige smiled at us, and, when her expression fell to me, it erased, and she turned away.

The situation between us had become complicated, and, at times I wondered if I were deceiving myself to think everything would be all right. Rarely, when mixing a prior sexual relationship—what I liked to classify as encounters—with business, did everything work out.

Zachery watched me as if he knew what I was thinking. I was giving too much consideration to the situation anyway. Go with the flow. That was typically my motto, and it was one I needed to readopt. Everything would be fine.

Paige slipped her phone into its clip and faced us again. “The money was always taken out at the Capital One ATM machine located on Fortuna Center Plaza.”

Zachery’s finger bolted up and then he pulled out his phone and started tapping keys. He extended it to us as if we could all get a clear picture on a four-inch screen from this distance. “This is the location of the ATM.” He spread his fingers on the screen, expanding the grid of the map. “Right near Route 234. She’d just have to follow the highway straight north.”

“Toward Keyes’s cabin and the property where Nina Harris was found,” I said.

Zachery smirked. He must have found my contribution rhetorical. “She could have hit the machine before heading out of town to meet with the unsub.”

Jack addressed Zachery. “Did the withdrawals from Parks’s account always come out on a certain day?”

Zachery thought for less than five seconds. “Every seven days, on Wednesdays, and that’s the day of the week she was last seen.”

“She definitely had a regular appointment corresponding with the withdrawal and easy access from the ATM to the highway.” Jack paused, letting the summation sit in the air.

“He made the women come to him,” Zachery said.

“Or they didn’t want him in their homes?” Paige’s eyebrows hitched upward.

“Why go to the trouble?” I interjected.

“Their husbands were never around. They would have had time to clean up any evidence of their infidelity.”

She crossed her arms. At the same time, a knock came at the door.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Detective Hanes entered the room. “Forensic results have come back on Nina Harris.”

Positioned over her, he swept back a strand of her hair with his hand. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she refused to meet his.

“Shh. There is no reason to worry. You will be fine. You were perfect.”

The sobs started again, racking her body.

“Now, now.”

When he moved, she would do one of two things—scream and run or continue to lie there without the strength to get up. He put his wager on the latter. Not only was she beautiful, she was submissive as well. She was willing to let him have anything if it meant her life in exchange. Those were the ones he could best control.

“You are going to come with me.”

She shook her head. “Please, don’t…please, leave me.”

“No, I can’t now, you see. I’m a wanted man.”

“I won’t tell the…police…please…just go.” Crying fragmented her words.

“Nice offer but unacceptable.”

Kill her.

He ignored the voice. He had something in mind for this one—just her high cheekbones, her round facial structure, and the color of her eyes. The FBI was after him, and, if they were going to take him down, he wasn’t going without His Angel.

Chapter 39

“Rideout has concluded the cause of death as a brain hemorrhage due to being hung upside down for an extended period of time.” Hanes’s eyes surfed over ours, and, when none of us said anything, he continued. “There was evidence of food working its way through the small intestines, but we weren’t able to confirm what it was exactly. This does tell us she ate approximately two to six hours before death.”

The group of us shared glances.

“That sounds like a last meal. Our unsub feels guilty about what he’s going to do so he gives them a last supper?” Paige tightened her arms across her torso, heaving her chest in the process.

“That’s exactly what I thought when I read it.” Hanes’s voice sliced through the room. “But why would he feel guilt before killing them? If he felt this way, why not stop before he followed through?”

Zachery answered. “He had come too far by that point. We also believe that he is being controlled, at least in part, by the need to appease or please someone. It may also be a voice conjured by his mind. He’s likely not a natural killer but has evolved into one over time and due to circumstance.”

“He follows through on the acts of abduction and rape, but murder is one thing he would rather avoid. If he had his way, he would pamper these women, at least as the term applies in his mind. He might not even have gone back to abduction and torture had it not been for Leslie Keyes,” Jack added.

“Back to?” Hanes asked.

Jack took a deep breath. “We feel quite strongly, as we have stated before, he was involved with at least the rape of the victim from two thousand. He would have been a young teenager.”

Hanes nodded.

“Were there any drugs found in her system?” Paige asked.

“Not that the tox results show, but—”

“I know. Doesn’t mean he didn’t drug her.” Paige smiled at him. “What about any trace from the sexual assault?”

Hanes’s focus drifted as he stoically rhymed off some statistics.  “You know the evidence points to forced sex. Rideout feels this didn’t just happen on one occasion but that the victim was repeatedly assaulted. No recoverable DNA from semen.”

“She probably welcomed death in some ways,” Paige said.

“That would never be the case.”

Becky Tulson came into the room and stood beside me. “You could never say something like that if you were a victim.  I’m surprised the FBI wants you thinking like that.”

Paige clenched her teeth, and her arms tightened and lifted again. The two women were going to have a fight, and, even though I wasn’t the base of their conversation, it felt like I had added an underlying conflict to the fire.

“I just can’t imagine being those women,” Paige said.

“No, you can’t. I can’t either really.”

Paige’s head angled to the side. I read the expression in her eyes,
why get in my face then?

The tension between the two fed through the room. None of us men wanted to say anything.

Becky broke the silence. “I was raped. I recovered. These women would too, given the opportunity. The human spirit is strong. I believe they would need extensive therapy, but they would—well, they could if they chose to—get through this.”

“When I said what I did, I didn’t mean that she would be better off dead. I just can’t imagine the horror of what they lived through. I’ve been fortunate not to have the experience of being raped.”

“You would never forget it, but you can choose to let it occupy you or learn to let it go. I chose, a long time ago, that it wouldn’t have control over me. I accepted that it wasn’t my fault, that he was the one who had the issues.”

Paige nodded. Even though she agreed to Becky’s point, I never saw the two women getting along beyond this room.

Hanes continued with the forensic results. “The bug recovered from her remains was part of an exoskeleton belonging to an emerald ash borer.”

“And I assume there are a lot of those in the area?” I asked.

“The emerald ash borer has infected a lot of ash trees. It might not lead us to our killer, but it might help to put us in the right vicinity.”

“That doesn’t help us a lot because we already know where we found Nina Harris. I don’t remember any ash trees right around her.”

“There wasn’t,” Hanes said. “She must have picked it up at the burial location.”

“Well, that gets us somewhere.”

“We need to locate areas where it is known to have ash borer infected trees. We’ll canvas out from there. Hopefully, the stretch isn’t too big, and it can narrow the search to a limited number of residences and properties,” Jack said.

Hanes nodded and left the room with the words, “I’ll contact the city.”

“You know, that might help you, but I’m not so certain. The ash borer was local news,” Becky added. She shifted her weight, her hip jutting more toward me, and she passed me a glance. “It was in different parts of the countryside if I remember right. And, if I caught the news, it was big. I rarely listen to the news.” She smiled at me, and I returned it.

Paige extinguished my expression with a bitter edge reflecting in her eyes. She addressed Becky. “You’re a cop. Shouldn’t you be aware of what’s going on around your community?”

“Too busy doing the real work as opposed to watching it on television.”

Zachery’s cheeks rose and balled. He fought back laughter.

“You are an officer, but not with PWPD. I’m not even sure what you’re doing in this room.”

I winced. Paige wasn’t being her typical self. Was I to blame for the animosity between the two women, or had I glorified the situation in my mind? Maybe I had nothing to do with it.

“Brandon,” Becky turned to me, and I shrank back. “Maybe we can repeat the other night tonight.”

The room was silent enough that I heard my breathing and my heartbeat as it pulsed in my ears. Everyone’s eyes were on me. Despite the glare on Paige, I feared Jack’s expression more.

“We’ll see.”

“I guess that’s all a girl can ask. Later everyone.” Becky reached the doorway and turned around. “I better get back to my little station and do some paperwork. If I get really good at it, they might even let me out sometime.”

Jack’s cheek held a pulse. He gave one look at Paige, and she followed him out of the room. They reached the doorway and nearly knocked Stenson over.

He doubled in half, winded, and then straightened out. “There’s been a murder, and there’s another missing woman.”