Speak No Evil (28 page)

C
aroline was nearly home when her phone rang. In the few minutes since she’d turned down Fort Lamar Road, the sky had grown black. She answered without checking the number, hoping it was Jack.

“Calling . . . reward.”

It was a male voice, although barely a whisper and Caroline could only make out the single word: reward. Her heart skipped a beat and she turned down the radio. “Can you repeat that, please?” she requested. “My battery is dying. You’re breaking up.”

“Calling . . . claim . . . reward,” the man whispered, so low she almost couldn’t hear him again. Caroline pulled the phone away from her ear to check the caller ID and gasped at the sight of Pam’s number. Her foot slammed the break in reaction, jerking the car and nearly spinning her back end off the road. She put the phone back to her ear, but words caught in her throat.

It seemed an interminable moment before he spoke again. “I know where she is,” the voice whispered.

He hung up suddenly and Caroline pulled the car over to the side of the road, unnerved, her hands shaking too hard to drive even the mile or so left before home.

She picked up the phone and started to dial when a text came through.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

The text was coming from Augusta’s number. Caroline clicked on it and waited with bated breath, heart hammering against her ribs, for a picture message to download. The battery was red and blinking. The saliva dried in her mouth as she waited for the image to fully materialize, fear clutching at her heart. She blinked as a close-up of charred bricks crystallized in the photo and she barely made out the initials next to a dark stain that looked like . . . blood. Her chest constricted.

The initials were hers and Jack’s.

The photo text had come from Augusta’s number.

The battery finally died. Her screen went black.

Caroline didn’t think, only reacted. Spinning the car out onto the pavement, she gunned it toward the road’s end, toward the ruins.

 

Jack hit more dead ends.

Was it possible he was manufacturing a connection where there was none? Could it be these were two completely separate cases, with simple coincidences seeming to connect them?

He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated. Pam’s e-mails were clean. Every file on her desktop seemed work-related. There was not one single personal e-mail in her trash bin. He checked her history, and one by one visited the sites she had browsed and bookmarked.

There were a few Internet articles about Ian Patterson, a few articles from the
Tribune,
one from the
Post.
She also visited quite a few sites on serial killer pathology and theory—one that outlined applications of geographical offender profiling for rapists in particular. Through geographic profiling for rapists, they had learned that perpetrators seldom committed crimes outside a circle that was determinable by the rapist’s two furthermost offenses. Was she researching an article on the site of Amy Jones’s murder? Could that be his missing link?

On a whim, he pulled up another browser. The default was set to her Google account and she was still logged in. Feeling hopeful, he clicked through her e-mail. Evidently, she didn’t use the service—nothing in it but spam. Gritting his teeth, he clicked on the link that took him to her photos, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and prickled as one by one Pam Baker’s pictures materialized.

Apparently, her smartphone automatically pushed her photos online. The last update was Saturday, July first. At a glance, the photos all looked like mistakes, misshots, and then he realized they were close-ups and he clicked through them one by one, swallowing hard when he realized what he was looking at. A bad feeling twisted in his stomach as he continued examining the photos. More than a dozen, all taken at different angles. All photos of bricks—and particularly a dark stain. He noted the initials carved in the stone and that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach turned into a black hole.

His cell phone rang.

“Bingo, Jack!” Garrison shouted on the other end of the line. “The invoice matches the pad they use at the car wash. The window crayon, too. We’ll get the lab to confirm it, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same. Get this . . . the biggest news is that we found Kelly’s Jeep, sitting all nice ’n shiny up in one of the parking spaces with a big ole number two written on the driver’s-side window—and you’ll never guess . . .”

More prickles jetted down Jack’s spine. “There was a note on her windshield?”

“Bingo again! You were right!” Garrison said. “Yellow—says exactly the same thing as the other two.”

Jack had never wanted to be wrong more in his life. “Where is Patterson?” he asked, his chest squeezing the breath from his lungs.

Now there was dead silence.

“We sent the guys home at four,” Garrison said, his tone a mix of self-defense and regret. “Nothing was happening, Jack. Those guys have been working round the clock. Keith’s wife was threatening to divorce him if he didn’t get home in time to watch his kid’s ball game.”

Ice cold fear swept down Jack’s spine. “Where was Patterson when you last saw him?”

“Home, but . . .”

Jack tensed. “Garrison?”

“Well, we got an anonymous tip he is on Fort Lamar Road, headed toward Oyster Point. But don’t worry, Jack, we’ve got men on the way out there right now.”

Jack blinked as comprehension dawned. The first copy—the white copy—was on Caroline’s windshield.

He must have left his head between Caroline’s thighs because he saw with crystal clarity the one thing he’d been denying to himself. The mystery in the message wasn’t
why
or
what
he was doing with the tongues. Straight up, he was telling Jack who his third victim would be.

He hung up and dialed Caroline’s cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. He seized his car keys.

 

Caroline plowed her car into the brush and bolted out of the driver’s seat, leaving the door open. The sky was darkening to black, but her car’s headlights lit her path as she ran toward the ruins, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.

“Augie!” she shouted. “Augie!”

Winded and confused, she reached the remains of the old Georgian house, with its jagged vine-covered walls, but there was no one there.

No one . . . except . . . she recognized that smell . . . not the pungent odor of the marsh, but fumes . . . like gasoline.

It was all around her. She was standing in it. Instinctively, she peered down at her feet, searching for the stain in the picture. There it was, a dark sprawling black shadow next to the initials she and Jack had carved into the bricks the summer before she’d gone off to college. He’d carved those initials the day he’d asked her to marry him and he’d promised he would always be there for her....

That was the last coherent thought she had, and then something sweet and acrid pressed against her nose and mouth—something like the smell of rotting magnolias.

 

He sent one more text from Augusta Aldridge’s cell phone to ensure his players would all be present. He worked quickly, deftly, feeling like a master conductor. This was perfectly orchestrated, but if a single note was out of place . . . but no, no, it wouldn’t be.

Dousing the bricks with more gas, until it covered the bloodstain in its entirety, he heard the sirens in the distance. Distracted for an instant, he took a deep breath, searching for the scent of the marsh, taking comfort and energy from it, and just for good measure, he doused the branches overhead and the surrounding brush until the scent of gas overpowered even the scent of the marsh. When he was done, he lit a single match and smiled.

“Thank God you were actually working for once or you might not have heard the phone ring!”

Savannah cast her sister an exasperated glance, trying not to be annoyed by the backhanded gratitude.

“Actually, you’re lucky Sadie was at the house, because without a car or any money, you’d still be sitting on a street corner waiting for rain.”

“Yeah, remind me never to give her a hard time again—Jesus! That shit spooked the hell out of me!” Augusta slid her bare feet up on the car dash. She’d taken off her offending heels and tossed them onto the floorboard, vowing to wear only flat shoes for the rest of her God-given days. “Think the car will be okay overnight?”

Savannah shrugged. “Who knows? There probably won’t be anything left of it to sell come morning, but I don’t think it would have been smart to stand out there and wait for a locksmith either.” Savannah kept her eyes on the unbroken yellow line, unnerved by the premature darkness. She hated driving at night, and thought maybe she had a touch of night blindness. It put her on edge—but maybe something else was bothering her, too. She’d had an awful premonition all day long . . . like a black, hovering cloud that just wouldn’t go away.

With the trees arching overhead, Fort Lamar Road somehow seemed darker than the rest of the world. Savannah eyed her sister. “Good thing you didn’t follow him into that alley, right?”

“Yeah . . . about that,” Augusta countered, turning to look at her as though she were some odd curiosity. “How the hell do you seem to know this shit? You’re—”

From somewhere down the road came a sudden fireball and Savannah stiffened behind the wheel. “Did you see that?”

Augusta sat up, peering down the road, where there was a rising glow. “Jesus . . . is Sadie’s house on fire?”

Flames shot up distant trees like giant peat torches, lighting up the darkening sky like a medieval torch in the bowels of a dungeon.

Suddenly, they heard sirens—police sirens, not fire. Blue lights whizzed past them, coming out of nowhere, shrieking down the road.

“Holy shit!” Augusta said as they neared. “I think the old house is burning again!”

Despite the recent rains, after a scorching spring and summer, the trees and scrub were ready to burn. The flames were already streaking up the trees, incinerating moss and crackling dead branches in their path. A burning limb cracked and plummeted to the ground. Aided by the rising wind, the fire was spreading fast.

Jack wasn’t the first to arrive, but no one could have held him back.

Patterson’s car was parked precariously by the roadside. Caroline’s car was in the brush, as though she had driven in too fast to stop—as though she had been run off the road in pursuit.

Jack raced past his men toward the ruins, weapon drawn.

The brick façade and the brush surrounding it were completely engulfed . . . and then he saw the figure emerge from a portal in the flames—Patterson, holding Caroline in his arms.

“Put her down!” Jack commanded. “Put her down!”

The look in Patterson’s eyes was that of a caged animal, angry and wild, but he moved forward with his burden, unfazed by Jack’s demand.

Jack’s hand shook as he aimed.

Caroline lay completely lifeless. He could see her mouth was taped and his heart sank. She didn’t move.

“Back off, Jack!” Garrison’s voice yelled at his back.

“Put her the fuck down!” Jack demanded once more. He aimed at Patterson’s head, ready to put a bullet right between his eyes.

Behind him, more squad cars screeched to a halt. Doors opened and slammed.

He didn’t take his eyes off Patterson for a second.

Eyes blazing almost as hot as the flames at his back, Patterson stopped suddenly, stooping, spilling Caroline’s body onto the ground, then slowly rose and lifted his hands in surrender.

Armed men moved in, bringing him down. Jack ran to Caroline’s side, ripping the tape from her mouth.