Authors: Allison Brennan
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Thrillers
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Hans said to Megan as he punched buttons on his cell phone, “I’ll get a military transport out of McAllen. We should be in California in a couple hours.”
Jack said, “I have a plane. I’ll take you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Hans said, putting the phone to his ear.
Megan caught Jack’s eye. He was a hard man, but he wasn’t too hard to read. He’d go with or without them. Scout was his friend, he felt responsible. Megan understood that all too well. “Jack’s contacts may come in handy,” she said. “And we can leave now.”
Hern said, “The victims were a young truck driver, twenty-three, and his wife. She was pregnant.”
“Any witnesses?” Megan asked.
“I don’t know. Barker and I can stay here and follow up on the autopsy and potential witnesses in the Bartleton investigation.”
“Father Francis may have seen a potential witness, or possible suspect, at the church Tuesday night. Can you get a sketch artist to work with him?”
“We’ll jump on it,” Hern said.
“Appreciate it,” Megan said. “My e-mail is on my card, and I can receive images on my BlackBerry. Get it to me as soon as you can.” She looked at Hans, who was on hold, and then asked Jack, “You have a plane that can fit all of us?”
“Yes.”
“How long to Blythe?”
“Three hours in the air, plus or minus.”
Megan glanced at Hans again. Why didn’t he want to use Jack? He wouldn’t have been her first choice, but right now the fastest way to Blythe would bring them that much closer to the killers. They’d been at a rest stop. Someone had to have seen
something.
There had to be a witness. Even if they didn’t know they were a witness.
Hans said into the phone, “Sheryl? Sorry to bother you. I found transportation. . . . Thanks anyway. I appreciate it.” He hung up and said to Jack, “I guess you’re our pilot.”
Jack found Padre kneeling in front of the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the St. Ignatius chapel off the main church. He didn’t say anything for a long minute. While he often came to church because of Padre, he hadn’t really thought about the reasons, if there were any. Today, he took in the old, lovingly cared for stained glass, antique statues, worn wooden pews, simple altar with the polished brass tabernacle behind it, the candle in the sconce proclaiming Jesus was present. He’d given a lot of money to Padre’s church, but he never gave a thought to what it went to. In the back of his mind guilt spread. He was trying to buy off God.
Jack was no saint. He blamed God for most of the wrongs in the world. Blasphemy, he was sure. After all, God let Satan roam free. How else could a pregnant woman and her husband end up murdered at a roadside water hole? Where was God in that?
“I can feel your anger and frustration, Jack,” Padre said without turning around.
“I’m taking the feds to California. They have a lead on Scout’s killer.”
“Good.”
“I just talked to Tim. He’ll be here in half an hour. Until then, Ranger Hern will be around.”
“Hmm.”
Jack sat in the pew behind Padre. “Frank.”
“It has to be related to Thornton.”
“Excuse me?”
“That last mission. It was . . . a disaster. I’ve gone through every mission on that list, and that’s the only one that was major-league fucked. Unless you count the assassination of a family of terrorists. Including their fourteen-year-old son.”
“Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Go, Jack.”
“I need to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not.”
They stayed there for several minutes, Jack sitting, Padre kneeling.
Jack asked, “What do you know about George Price?”
“Quiet guy. Dedicated. Career soldier. I was surprised he’d gone AWOL.”
“He’s not dead.”
Padre looked over his shoulder at Jack.
“The victim’s prints didn’t match Price. The feds think he’s alive, and either hiding or a part of this.”
“I’ll find him.”
“No. What if he is part of it? What if he snapped? He attacked his lieutenant.”
“You’re not my commanding officer, Jack. Never have been.”
Jack’s jaw tensed. “Frank—”
“I’m careful. Five years in the priesthood isn’t going to erase sixteen years as a sniper.”
“Keep Tim in the loop. I—” He didn’t know how to say it. He couldn’t lose Padre like he’d lost Scout. How do you say something like that?
“Same here,” Padre said, as if reading Jack’s mind. “Get going. Find whoever killed Scout. I’ll find Price. I can’t imagine he’d be part of this, but I’ve been surprised before.”
“I’ll let you know what happens. And . . . let me talk to Price when you find him. Please.”
“All right.”
Jack rose, put his hand on Padre’s shoulder, and squeezed. He turned and left. He didn’t have anything else to say and prayed his friend would be safe.
They arrived in Santa Barbara at two that afternoon. Ethan could hardly contain himself. The sand! The ocean! It was beautiful. He laid down in the sand and smiled at the bright, bright blue sky. He loved the beach. Volleyball, chasing seagulls, finding seashells. He sat up and started digging in the coarse sand and found one. It was broken, but it was still really cool.
“I can’t believe you got us a place on the beach!” He clapped his hands together. “I love the beach.” He dug around for more shells, grinning. He pulled out another and it was perfect.
She didn’t say anything, and Ethan tried to remember why they were here in the first place. Vacation? No. They were meeting someone.
“Is he here?” Ethan blinked. Who was he waiting for? It was important. Very important, but he couldn’t remember.
“Not yet,” she said.
“Good.” He smiled at the waves, at the seagulls’ squawk-and-dive routine, turned his face to the sun. Still smiling, he said, “Let’s go swimming.”
“As soon as you teach me one more trick.”
He pouted. “I want to play. Please.”
“I need to know now. It’s important, Ethan. Very important.”
“
Please
let me play in the sand. Just
five minutes.
”
“Show me what I need to know, and you can play the rest of the day.”
“What do you want to know?” he whined.
“The needles, Ethan. Snap out of this idiocy. I have questions and you have the answers. You will tell me. Then you can come back to the beach. I promise.”
They stayed in their cabin for two hours and Ethan answered all her questions. He used his own body as an example, the pain breaking through his happiness of being young again. He wasn’t young; he wasn’t a child anymore.
He left her happy—giddy with her killing knowledge—in the cabin and walked back out onto the sand. He didn’t know what to do. Why was he here? He hated the sand. It reminded him of the desert. He went back to the cabin and found a small pile of seashells near the door. He took a rock and smashed them.
He wished he was dead.
But the bitch had taken his gun.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The bodies had long ago been taken to the morgue when Megan arrived at the crime scene. Thirty miles east of Indio, California, it was near the highway leading to Joshua Tree National Park. The entire rest stop had been taped off and dozens of law enforcement officers from the California Highway Patrol to National Park Rangers to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department scoured the area for evidence that would point a finger at whomever had shot and killed a young pregnant wife and her husband.
The man in charge was Assistant Sheriff Red Warren. Megan introduced herself and Hans, then Jack by his military rank of staff sergeant—easier than explaining who he was and why he was here.
“You sure came quickly,” Warren said.
“We weren’t far,” said Megan. “This may be connected to a serial murder investigation,” Hans added. “Can you walk us through the crime scene?”
“We’ll start over there.” Warren gestured to a big rig on the far side of the lot. As they walked over, he said, “According to the male victim’s driving log—Thomas Hoffman—he stopped at the rest area at oh three hundred hours. The Highway Patrol drove through the rest stop at oh seven hundred hours and the rig was here, no activity. CHP noted the plates and went on. We’ve put a call out to the other big rigs in the area—” He gestured toward the opposite end of the rest stop where three eighteen-wheelers were lined up, and another was pulling in, being directed by a CHP officer where to park. “We asked who had been in communication with Hoffman in the last twenty-four hours. They started showing up—it’s a tight community. Last word we had is that Hoffman told another trucker that he was getting a late start, but planned on making his destination—Portland, Oregon—by midnight. It’s about fifteen hours, taking mandatory rests, so he couldn’t have planned on leaving much after nine this morning.”
“What time was that?” Hans asked.
“Eight-thirty this morning.”
“When were the bodies found?” Megan asked.
“Ten-ten. An older couple stopped to use the facilities and found the bodies.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“Not that we’ve found. This stop doesn’t see a lot of traffic during the week.”
Warren opened the cab of the truck. A simple wood cross hung from the rearview mirror. A well-worn Bible rested on the center console. Knitting needles attached to a half-made white and green blanket stuck out of a needlepoint bag with a Thomas Kincade design and the phrase “With God All Things Are Possible” embroidered in fancy script.
“Where were the bodies?” Megan asked, her voice sounding unnatural. She should know better than to get emotional. But this double homicide hit her unusually hard. She should have been able to stop it. What had she done wrong? Had she missed something? Could she have been able to save the lives of these two young married lovers and their unborn child?
“Behind the facilities.” Warren led the way.
Jack was behind Megan. He put his hand on the small of her back, so lightly she wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not. She glanced over at him; looking straight ahead, he applied more pressure on her waist. She took a deep breath and pushed aside the unexpected emotion.
“Why did they park so far from the building?” Hans asked.
“Privacy,” Warren replied. “The restrooms are open twenty-four hours. Headlights from oncoming cars could be distracting. And over there, where the Hoffmans parked, big rigs often park overnight. It’s not technically legal, but we never rouse them. I’d rather have them rested and living on the cheap than exceeding their limits.”
“Were they the only rig here last night?”
“We’re trying to find out. Probably not, there are usually a few on any given night.” He shook his head in disgust. “We’ve never had any problems here. Never had a serious crime. Nothing more than simple vandalism. Nothing like this.”
The assistant sheriff stopped in a clearing behind the restrooms, approximately fifty yards from the truck. There were half a dozen wooden picnic tables cemented to slabs of concrete surrounded by hearty grass and low-maintenance evergreens.
“We’ve had our best people out there going through the entire area with a fine-toothed comb,” Warren said. “The M.E. is performing the autopsies today, so we can extract the bullets and rush ballistics; half my off-duty cops are asking to work on their own time. The sheriff has the word of the attorney general that this case is a priority, but when I found out your people were involved, I was hoping we could ask for a bit of forensic assistance. Your ballistics capabilities are the best in the world, from what I’ve been told.”
Hans said firmly, “I’ll fly the bullets to the lab tonight and personally assure you that we’ll have a report in less than twenty-four hours, if I have to return to Quantico and do it myself.”
Hans’s raw voice surprised Megan. She glanced at him, saw that he was staring straight ahead, eyes dry but red. She’d seen him angry, she’d heard him express sorrow and frustration over victims or the system, but she’d never seen him emotionally involved at a crime scene.
He’d been quiet during the plane ride, but Megan thought he’d been asleep. Now she wondered.
Megan noted the evidence markers—one to the left of the facilities, one halfway between the picnic tables and the first victim. “Was the husband at the tables approaching his wife or here moving away?”
“We believe that the husband was at the picnic tables and his wife was here, near the facilities. Evidence in the restroom suggests she’d used the facilities to freshen up. A small trash bag was next to that table,” he gestured, “and we think they’d had breakfast, then Mrs. Hoffman entered the restroom. We don’t have a good indication as to which victim was shot first, and no idea why. The female victim was shot once in the chest at close range; her husband three times.”
“Robbery?” Megan asked.
“Not that we can tell. Mrs. Hoffman had her purse, with about forty dollars cash and two major credit cards. Mr. Hoffman had nearly two hundred dollars, credit and gas cards. The rig was unlocked, nothing appeared disturbed. My men have already printed it.”
“Where did you find the dog tag?” Megan asked.
Warren gestured for them to follow. Thirty feet from the building was another police marker. He said to one of his deputies, “Grab the dog tag. It’s in the van.”
Warren pointed to the ground. “Right there, on the asphalt. We were hoping initially that they belonged to the killer, but when we ran the name we learned he was recently murdered.”
“The killer took the I.D. off the body,” Megan said, glancing at Jack. He’d been so quiet she would have forgotten he was there except for his stalwart and commanding presence.
“It could have been another sign,” Hans said. “A sick way to connect these murders with the previous. Was Mr. Hoffman or his wife ever in the military?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I’ll have one of my deputies check immediately.”
Megan frowned. She didn’t want to disagree with Hans in front of anyone, but cautiously she said, “It doesn’t make sense. While these killers take risks, I don’t see them shooting someone and tossing evidence like garbage. If they’d planned on leaving the tag, it would be more purposeful, like when Price’s tag was mailed to me. They wouldn’t have dropped it here as if by accident. It would be with the bodies.”
“We can’t assume anything,” Hans snapped. “Sheriff, have you printed the bathrooms? Male and female? The dog tag? What about the picnic tables, looking for anything that might belong to the killer? Quantico has state-of-the-art facilities to help with trace evidence. Does your CSI unit have a forensic vacuum?”
Hans’s unusual brusque manner had Megan both concerned and irritated.
“Let me walk you through what we’ve done, Dr. Vigo,” Warren said, straightening his back, “and you can let me know if I’ve forgotten anything.”
Megan watched Hans walk off with the assistant sheriff. Jack said, “What do you think?”
“I think—” She stopped. She was committing an investigational sin, snap theories that could cloud her impartial judgment.
“We need more evidence,” she said.
“But you have a theory,” Jack prompted.
“I don’t have proof.”
“Lay it on me.”
Megan looked around. The rest stop—unseen from the road. The picnic tables—obscured, but not completely hidden, from where the killer’s car was presumably parked.
“The killers stopped here. To rest, to use the bathroom, to look at a map. It’s secluded and they would have the expectation of some privacy. With robbery as a motive pretty much ruled out, I don’t see why they killed the couple. For the thrill?”
“The thrill,” Jack said flatly.
“They’re not dumb criminals. They’ve killed too often and left too little evidence to be spontaneous and undisciplined. Maybe they heard a car approach and got out of the lot fast. Or panicked because the murders weren’t planned. Maybe the Hoffmans witnessed something or overheard the killers talking about murder. Our killers feared a witness. Something made them pull out fast. I’d stake my career on the theory that they didn’t know Scout’s dog tag was left behind.”
“Aren’t most criminals caught because they do something stupid? Wasn’t Ted Bundy pulled over for speeding or something?”
“Exactly. And that’s why I think they didn’t know about the dog tag. It’s a screwup, and let’s hope for more of them. They may well lead to our perps. We know much more about them now.”
“How so?”
“We know that they were in Hidalgo Tuesday night and killed Scout, and then here, near Joshua Tree, Thursday morning before ten a.m. That’s less than thirty-six hours. There’re not a lot of routes they could have taken here in that short time. The most likely route is I-10, which means we can contact all the motels immediately off the interstate, restaurants, gas stations. It might not yield anything, but it’s more than we had yesterday.”
“But we have no descriptions,” said Jack. “Nothing to show people.”
She sighed. “It’s still a thread to follow. With high-profile murders, we can call in extra people and resources and scour security tapes. Especially if we narrow it down.”
“How?”
“That there’s a woman involved.”
Jack thought on that for a moment. “You think the brunette who came by the church is involved?”
Megan took a deep breath. She didn’t like running forward on a hunch, but her ex-husband had told her time and time again to trust her instincts, and she’d recently been trying to do just that. It wasn’t just her gut feeling, it was the circumstantial evidence. . . .
It had been circumstantial evidence that had her wrongly identifying the body in Sacramento as George L. Price.
“I don’t know,” Megan mumbled.
“But you think she’s part of it?” Jack pressed.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense with what we know,” she said, qualifying her comments. She glanced over to where a tight-lipped Hans was standing, writing down everything the assistant sheriff was saying.
“They would have made it more obvious,” Megan said to herself. She put her hand to her mouth and looked up at Jack, heart pounding with the realization. “That’s it!”
“What?”
“Price. What if the killers had Price’s tags—and put them on the homeless John Doe?”
“Why would they do that?”
“To connect the murders.” As she spoke, Megan knew she was on to the
something
that had been eluding her for the last four days. “We now know John Doe in Sacramento wasn’t George Price, but for a couple days, we assumed he was until CID said the prints didn’t match.”
Meg had bought into the assumption the killers wanted her to. She had ignored her years of experience and training, which taught her that no matter what you thought, assumptions were not facts supported by evidence. One of her Quantico instructors told the class,
“If you walk into a crime scene and see red drops on the floor, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s human blood—but it’s the one time it isn’t, and you assume it is, that’s going to jeopardize your entire case, embarrass you, and put the entire FBI on the hot seat. It’s not blood until you prove it’s blood.”
“Why would the killers want us to think the homeless victim was Price?”
“We may not know until we find them. But I do know that it would have taken us longer to make the military connection between the victims. The tags gave us a clue to pursue, and sending one to me was another big arrow telling us that it was important. It’s the
why
that stumps me.”
“They’re taunting you. Mocking. Showing their superiority. ‘You,’ meaning the police in general.”
Megan nodded. “I think you might be right.”
“How do you know the homeless guy didn’t just find the tags in the garbage?” Jack said.
“I don’t. And up until CID took the body, I’d considered that possibility, but I screwed up. When CID came in, I labeled him Price and didn’t question his identity any further.”
“So is it a coincidence or not?”
“Not. Price was in the same unit as Padre and the others. His tags were found on a dead John Doe. Scout’s tag was taken from his body, and dropped at this crime scene—accidentally or not, it came from Hidalgo, which means the killers were here. Whether they were planning to send the tag to the police again, or planned on leaving it on another body, we don’t know, but we definitely have a connection.”
Her cell phone rang and she glanced at the caller I.D. J.T. She didn’t want to take it, knowing he most likely had a report on Jack’s background for her. She almost sent it to voice mail, when Jack said, “Answer it.” He seemed to sense the nature of the call.
A tic throbbed in Jack’s neck as he walked past her, toward the far end of the rest stop.
She answered the phone. It was J.T. “You’re not going to believe the latest,” she said.
“That the victim isn’t Price?”
“Dammit, J.T., how do you know these things?”
“From the same guy who told me about the autopsy. CID knew yesterday, by the way. They kept it to themselves. What does that mean on your end?”
“It means I need to find George Price.”
“Thought so. I put some feelers out, but so far not even a nibble.”