Silent Graves (27 page)

Chapter 49

“We’re going in hot and fast. We don’t need this guy using Poole or Rice in a hostage negotiation.” Jack laid out the directions as to how we were to go about it once we arrived at Holmes’s residence. As normal, Jack and I would take the front, Paige and Zachery the rear.

Jack continued. “The warrant should be signed, even if the ink is wet, by the time we bust down his front door.”

Jack had referred to the women being used as hostages, but I’m sure we were all thinking the same thing—if they were still alive.

Jack pulled the SUV to a stop on a side street, and we all slipped out. Holmes’s bungalow was dark, and all the curtains were drawn. There wasn’t a vehicle in the driveway.

There was no response to our knocks or to the announcement that it was the FBI.

Jack and I entered. We swept the front rooms of the house, the living room and offshoot bathroom. We reached the base of the stairs at the same time as Paige and Zachery did coming from the back door. Jack gestured that they go up. We headed to the kitchen. My mind was on the door that led to the basement.

The thought of going underground brought back the one case I was certain would haunt me for my lifetime. I suppose this was all part of the job. We put our lives on the line to bring about justice and an end to the madness. An idealistic thought, but one I wanted to believe.

The basement door closed, but turning the handle revealed it wasn’t locked. I nodded to Jack, and he acknowledged. I opened it, gun ready, and was met with darkness.

Light from the kitchen seeped down the stairs and revealed a light switch on the right. I turned it on, my gun aimed to the base of the stairs and started going down.

I was relieved to see the clearance on the stairwell was well over my six-foot height, and the width was comfortable. The walls didn’t feel like they were closing in on me. I took a deep breath, my mind transferring back to Kentucky, the underground burial chambers, the tight space, and the compression on my chest as it heaved to derive a full breath.

I took the steps slowly, preparing my mind to handle what we might find when we reached the base. The women’s dead bodies could be down here, or they could be found constrained and stripped of their dignity. With each step, I went over what we already knew.

Chad Holmes had connections to the victims, easy access.

He was an attractive man and would have no problem gaining interest from women.

He had a trustworthy face.

I thought about how his lust, or, in his view, love for Leslie Keyes had propelled him into a spiral of events that could have pulled him to his past.

My thoughts halted there.

My feet hit the unfinished floor of the basement.  

Nothing stood out. Everything was as one would expect to find in any house. Storage shelves lined the walls. They were mostly empty, except for a few cardboard boxes.

Jack and I made our way around the perimeter of the room.

“Clear.” Zachery’s voice came over the headpiece.

Not long after, Paige and Zachery made their way down the stairs.

“We’ll have a team pull every inch of the place apart. If the women were ever here, they’ll find it.” Jack pulled out his cell, dialed, spoke a few minutes, and then hung up. “Forensics will be here in about an hour.” He never got his cell put away before it rang again. “Supervisory Agent Harper.”

I waited for Jack’s expression to change, to give some sort of a telltale sign as to the news he was receiving. Nothing registered there—good or bad.

He hung up a few seconds later.

“They have a match to the blood found in Monica’s apartment. It’s the same as the unidentified male from the cabin sheets,” Jack said, “and the murder victim from two thousand.”

“There has to be proof that the women were here.”

“We’ve been through this entire house, and there’s no sign of what would have been used to kill the women,” Paige gestured, “no pulley system.”

“He has a secondary location where he does the killing. The fact that a woman was even here—if she was,” Zachery faced me, “assuming the shower that you heard running was regarding one of the missing women, tells us that he really admires Monica. She’s his ideal, or why bring her to his home?”

“She looked the most like Leslie of all the women,” I said.

“But it makes you wonder, why did he bring her here at all?” Paige asked. “Did he need to pick something up? Did he have to take care of something before heading north?”

“Nadia hasn’t gotten back to us on the property owners yet, has she?” Jack dialed on his cell. “It’s Jack…all right.” He hung up. “She’s in the process of sending the list over. Said there’s no Chad Holmes noted as a property owner in the surrounding area where Harris was found.”

Chapter 50

Zachery didn’t even take a full ten seconds to recognize a name on the property owner list. “Ken Campbell.”

Paige glanced up from her cell. “The reason we couldn’t find a Steve working at Straightline, who was nicknamed Ladies’ Man, was because there wasn’t one. It was Campbell all along.”

Jack was already on his cell phone with Nadia, demanding the man’s full background. He put her on speaker.

“Ken Campbell is the adopted son of Steve Manning, but there was never a name change done. Based on records, Campbell never had any children.”

“Is there any connection between Chad Holmes and Ken Campbell?” Jack asked.

“Just a minute.” There was a bunch of keyboard clicking coming from the other end. “I’m pulling up the record on Holmes—”

“Nadia?”

“Whoa, you’re not going to believe this. All right, Campbell did share an address with Chad’s mother.”

“Her name and address?”

“Jenny Holmes, but she’s dead. Died in ninety-eight.”

“Chad would have been eleven. Potentially, two years later, Campbell has him go along with him to rape and murder a woman,” I said.

Paige rubbed her stomach. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Was his mother sharing the address with Campbell at the time of her death?” Jack asked Nadia.

“It looks like it, yes.”

“Who was given legal guardianship of Chad?”

“You’ll have to give me some time to work on that one.”

“Who was Chad Holmes’s real father?” I asked.

“On the birth record, it was put down as unknown. Manning is long dead, but the good news is Ken Campbell is still alive.”

“We know. We visited him.” Paige shook her head. “He was right in front of us, but there’s no way that man could be doing the abducting and killing now. It has to be Chad.”

“Like we figured. Who’s paying for Campbell’s care?” Zachery asked.

“I’d need some time to figure that out too, but
Holmes’s health records just opened. Seems he does experience auditory hallucinations. He received a prescription meant to help quiet the voices.” Nadia provided the exact name of the drug.

“That one has been known to quiet the good voices and increase the intensity of the destructive ones,” Zachery said. “Those pills, combined with Leslie rejecting him six years ago, would explain a lot.”

“The records show he started on them—oh God.”

“Nadia?”

“He started on them in the fall of two thousand. Didn’t we figure the unsub raped the victim in the summer of that year? Also, Campbell shows a Ruger Single-Nine revolver and a hunting rifle had been registered to him, but it expired years ago.”

Jack disconnected the call. The determination in his eyes told me he felt the same way I did. We were close to catching a killer.

Trent Stenson was ready to make full disclosure, but only to Hanes. He wouldn’t be going to the FBI and letting them take the credit for all the hard work he put into solving this case. Sure, they went around and did all the questioning, but it was only because of him that their jobs were easier. He had pieced together that there was something more serious going on before anyone—despite their rank or position. He rang Hanes’s doorbell and stood back, waiting for an answer.

The door opened wide. Hanes stood there. “What are you doing here?”

The way judgment and concern married in his eyes had Trent questioning their friendship.

“Can I come in?” Trent asked.

“The wife is finishing up, and, if I ruin Sunday dinner, I’m a dead man.” Hanes drew a finger across his throat but stepped out onto the front steps. “I have two—”

“Lenny, who’s there?” The question came from his wife inside the house.

Hanes mouthed the word,
see.
“It’s Trent. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“Okay. Dinner’s almost—”

Hanes closed the door and remained outside. “What is it?”

“I’m going to tell you what I’ve pieced together. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but it might. I’m sure the FBI is close to putting it together for themselves.”

“You should be talking to them.”

“They’re probably going to find out the unsub had a stepfather.”

“Now you’re talking like them? Unsub? Come on, Trent. We both know they’re onto Chad Holmes.”

Trent took a deep breath. “Chad had a stepfather, but the man never adopted him.”

“Okay. What does it matter?”

“All the victims,” Trent paused for emphasis, “had more in common than good looks and slender bodies. They—”

Hanes’s cell rang. “They what—” He lifted his cell and looked at the caller ID. “It’s them.”

He answered. “Detective Hanes…yes…okay…I’ll be right there.” He clipped the phone back in the holder on his hip. “They’ve tracked Holmes down to a rural property north on Route 234. So much for not ruining Sunday dinner. I’ve gotta go.”

“Not without me you’re not.”

Sydney heard his footsteps long before his shadow cast across the room. There was something different about his pace and the way his boots hit with each step. He was here to kill her.

“It’s time, Syd.”

His voice was flat, carrying no emotion.

Her thoughts were clear and the one that keep repeating was she didn’t want to die. There was a part, deep in her soul, wanting to cling to life, to continue fighting, but another side, a darker side, begging her to succumb.

“Why are you doing this?” Her own voice was foreign. It had been so long since she had spoken a word, let alone formed a sentence.

“We had fun, didn’t we? But all good fun must come to an end. I have Leslie now.” His eyes were on her, but with the distant gaze of a stranger, a cold spirit inside him. It was the same each time he had taken her since she had shown up at his Wooded Retreat for a ‘time she’d never forget.’

“We used to be happy.” Her words roiled her stomach.

He paused a few feet away from the end of the table.

She had his attention. She had to try to change his mind about killing her. “I really cared for—”

Emotion welled in her throat. All she had been through and had suffered over the last while.

He leaned over her and studied her eyes. “Do you love me?”

She was terrified to say no. What would he do to her? Would he make her death even more unpleasant?

“I do.” She swallowed bile.

He moved closer to her. There was a light that appeared in his eyes. He swept back her hair with his hands and cupped her face. There was softness there, dare she even compare it to tenderness. She recognized his touch from when they were truly lovers, an innocent tryst between two consenting adults. From a time when he satisfied her and made her crave his fingertips. Now the thought of him made her instinct recoil. She had to fortify herself when he bent farther down and took her mouth.

“In this traffic it’s going to take us an hour to reach the place.” Jack flicked the butt out the driver’s side window. “I don’t want anyone going in before us. They follow our lead, our strategy. This could turn into an ugly hostage situation, and that’s the last thing we want.”

Here I thought the last thing was Holmes killing someone
. I kept that to myself.

“How do you want to play this out, boss?” Zachery asked.

Jack laid out his plan to us.