“We will,” Charlie promised, and Tony nodded agreement.
David summoned his newest research assistant—a pretty college senior who seemed just as eager to please David as Charlie, inwardly wincing, remembered she once had been—to make a copy of the file, and they all stood up to take their leave. David took advantage of the fact that the other three had moved ahead of them into the hall to pull Charlie aside and ask her quietly if she’d like to go out to dinner with him that night, “for old times’ sake.”
When foolish little girls grow a brain,
was what Charlie thought, in the spirit of
when pigs fly.
What she said, with scarcely any acidity at all, was, “Don’t you think your wife might object?”
“I’m divorced. Three years ago.” He smiled at her. “That’s one of the reasons I reached out to you when I got pulled into these murders. I’ve never forgotten you, you know. In fact, I’ve followed your career with great interest. And pride, I might add. After all, you were once my star pupil. I was hoping we could get reacquainted.”
“We’re leaving town tonight,” Charlie said. Then she added, very gently, “And David—even if we weren’t, I’m not interested.”
She wouldn’t have been human if that softly spoken rejection hadn’t made her feel a little bit better. As far as her pride was concerned, it evened the scales some small degree. But the other truth was that she would have refused even if there hadn’t been a history between them that needed avenging. She no longer felt the slightest interest in him as a man: the girl who had thought that he was the greatest thing since sliced bread was long gone.
“Guy’s a douche bag,” Michael said as they joined the others in the hall and observed the adoring smile the research assistant gave David as she handed him the file she had copied for him. “One of these days you’re going to have to tell me how you ended up hitting that.”
The look Charlie shot him said
Not in this life
. And for the first time since lunch, he smiled.
Saul Tunney was waiting for them in his mother’s home in Ballentine, a Columbia suburb. He was now sixteen, although he was still round-cheeked and faintly baby-faced, which Charlie thought he tried to counter by sporting a blond crew cut that looked almost defiantly masculine. At about five-eight and a hundred thirty pounds, his size wouldn’t have posed much of an obstacle to someone bent on kidnapping him, especially since, a year ago when the crime had occurred, he’d presumably been even smaller. Having apparently told his story dozens of times, he related it to them in a few terse sentences. He had been snatched off a Columbia street after a baseball game. He’d found himself in a cage, and, later, a grain elevator with two other kids: Isaac Stein, 14, and Sofia Barrett, 18. If they wanted to know what had happened in the grain elevator, they could read the police reports: he was done talking about it. What it came down to was, in the end, he had lived, the other two had died.
No, he hadn’t known them previously. No, he couldn’t identify his attacker: he’d just caught a glimpse of the guy, who had worn black clothing and a white Halloween mask, with a Joker kind of grin. No, he had no idea why he had been targeted.
He did have two things of interest to tell them: he thought the attacker had used some kind of voice synthesizer to disguise his voice; and, four years previously, Saul had been out hunting with his uncle and cousin when his uncle had accidentally shot his cousin dead.
That last had been in response to Kaminsky’s question about any other violent deaths he had witnessed in his life.
“I think that’s the answer, it really might be our common denominator,” Kaminsky said with barely suppressed excitement once the interview was over and they were on their way to meet with the local detectives and FBI agents who had worked the case, to see the Group Six kill site.
“Now all we need to do is uncover a violent death in the pasts of seventeen other victims, tie them all together, and figure out what it all means, and we’ll have solved the case,” Buzz said dryly.
“At least it’s a place to look,” Kaminski snapped.
Their subsequent visit to the abandoned grain elevator that only Saul Tunney had escaped alive was, for Charlie at least, heartrending. At the time, the silo had been full of corn. Standing on the surface of the stored grain was much like standing on quicksand, one of the local agents who was walking them through what had happened explained. When none of the victims had done anything in response to his warning that he would kill them all unless they started killing one another, the Gingerbread Man had opened a floor hole, which was designed to speed the flow of grain from the silo to a loading chute. The girl, Sofia, had been swept away. Her body was found with grain clogging her throat, her nose, her eyes. It was, the detective said, a particularly hideous death. The boy, Isaac, had subsequently been killed by Saul Tunney. With a pickaxe, the kind that was sometimes used in grain elevators to break up hard clumps of grain. The silo had since been emptied of its contents, but traces of Isaac Stein’s blood still stained the walls.
Looking at those rust-colored speckles, Charlie felt sick.
It wasn’t until much later, when they were getting ready to land at the Charlotte airport, that Charlie finally realized what had been bothering her so much about this case. She’d been listening with only half an ear to the various discussions swirling around inside the plane while she mentally twisted the facts that they knew like the pieces of a puzzle in hopes of getting something to fit, when it clicked.
“I think,” she said, looking at the others as if she was really seeing them for the first time in a while, “that he’s killed before. Before these group murders began, I mean. This whole thing is too elaborate. He has to have worked up to it. This is his escalation. We need to start looking at unsolved single murders.” She paused to let her thoughts settle. “We should probably begin in the same geographical area in which the first Gingerbread Man murders occurred. We should work backwards from the date of those murders. He will have an MO, although it will be different from what he’s doing now. There will be a pattern. There should be a series of single murders, because this—these death scenarios with multiple victims—represents a major escalation.”
For a moment everyone simply looked at her.
“Makes sense,” Michael said. He was lying on the couch again, and his eyes had been closed until he looked at her as he spoke. Charlie hadn’t even realized that he had been paying attention.
“What kind of time frame are we talking about?” Tony asked.
Charlie shook her head. “If he is at the upper age limit for serial killers—and with this severe an escalation I’m guessing that he is—we’re probably looking at the last twenty years.”
Buzz whistled through his teeth. “What’s the geographical area?”
Kaminsky consulted her laptop. “The first Gingerbread Man murders occurred right outside Clarksville, Virginia.”
“Buggs Island Lake,” Charlie said suddenly. She looked at Michael, started to say,
Remember
,
Laura said,
swallowed that, and quickly switched her gaze to Tony. By leaving off the first three words, the rest of the sentence was perfectly acceptable. “The van Jenna McDaniels and the other girls were put into smelled like fish, remember? Buggs Island Lake is this huge fishing destination. And part of it is near Clarksville, Virginia. We should check it out.”
“That’s in Mecklenburg County,” Kaminsky said. “And how do we know the van smelled like fish?”
“We just do,” Charlie said impatiently.
Kaminsky eyed her askance.
“Okay, we look for unsolved murders with a single MO in the vicinity of Clarksville, Virginia, and this lake,” Tony summed up as the pilot announced they would be landing in Charlotte in five minutes. “Starting around the date of the Group One murders and going back twenty years.”
“Got it,” Buzz said, and Kaminsky added, “Not that this is going to be hard or anything.”
“Look at it this way.” Tony smiled tranquilly at the pair of them. “If it was easy, none of us would have a job.”
It was full dark by the time they got to their hotel, which in late August meant that it was after ten p.m. Charlie was tired, wired, and a little on edge. They grabbed a quick dinner in the hotel restaurant—Charlie had salad and a bowl of soup—and then they went up to their rooms, which were in a block on the eleventh floor. They each had their own, with Tony on one side of Charlie and Kaminsky on the other. Crane’s room was next to Kaminsky’s. For security reasons (actually, Charlie knew it was for
her
security), Tony had requisitioned a local FBI agent to stand watch in the hallway all night.
She appreciated it. Now that it was night again, Tam’s warning was crowding in on her. The thing was, she had never known Tam to be wrong.
“I’ve stayed here before,” Tony said to Charlie as they walked along the hallway to their rooms. “They’ve got a great jogging track up on the roof. I’m going to go make use of it. Want to come?”
“Yes,” Charlie said instantly. Running was what she did for relaxation, and tonight she badly needed to relax.
“You notice he’s not inviting us,” Buzz said to Kaminsky, only partly under his breath, as they passed Charlie.
“I noticed,” Kaminsky agreed. They were moving on to their respective doors, while Tony had walked Charlie to hers and stopped.
“I heard that,” Tony called after them good-naturedly. “And it’s because you don’t run. But you’re welcome to come along if you want.”
Declining, they both disappeared inside their rooms.
“I’ll be back in ten,” Tony told Charlie, who nodded. Then he waited until she was inside and had closed the door.
Flipping the switch beside the door caused a lamp to come on, which allowed Charlie to see her surroundings. Decorated in soothing earth tones, the room was typical hotel: two queen beds with a nightstand holding said lamp between them, an armoire containing a TV and, on its lower level, a mini-fridge, an armchair with a floor lamp in the corner by the heavily curtained window, a bathroom, and, opposite it, a closet. Having preceded her inside, Michael now stood in the middle of the room, giving her an unreadable look.
“What?” Charlie said.
“Not a thing,” he answered. She didn’t probe further. Instead she extracted her running clothes and her small cosmetics case from her suitcase and went into the bathroom to change. When she emerged a few minutes later, she was wearing silky black running shorts, a pale pink tee, and sneakers. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
“Cute,” was Michael’s comment as his eyes swept her. “Dudley’s going to think he hit the jackpot.”
Charlie glared at him. She was carrying his watch—she didn’t feel like having it slide around on her arm while she ran.
“Is there something you want to say about me going running with
Tony
?”
“Nope.”
Walking over to the nightstand between the beds, she set the watch down by the phone. His eyes tracked her.
She gave him another inimical look. “Good. Then I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me enjoy my run in peace.”
“Whatever you want, babe.”
Then Tony was at the door and the three (!) of them were heading for the roof.
The track ran along the perimeter of it, which was thirty stories high and provided an excellent view of the glowing skyline of downtown Charlotte. In the middle was a swimming pool, lounge chairs, and a few fake palm trees all decked out in white Christmas lights. There were a couple of people in the pool. Otherwise, the roof was deserted. Almost as soon as Charlie started to run, she felt the tiredness and tension and, yes, even the fear, start to ebb away. The warm summer breeze smelled faintly of chlorine. The black sky and full moon and twinkling stars overhead seemed almost close enough to touch. Street sounds drifted up from below. There was an occasional laugh or splash from the swimmers in the pool.
“I hate it that you’re caught up in this, of course, but I have to admit I was glad to get the chance to work with you again,” Tony said as they rounded the far side turn for the eighteenth time. They’d been talking about the case in a desultory way without coming up with anything new. A seasoned runner herself, Charlie appreciated the fact that they were at the four and a half mile point and he wasn’t even breathing hard yet. She also appreciated how good his lean, fit body looked in his shorts and tee. It made a nice change from his FBI agent suits, and she thought for what must have been the thousandth time that she was a fool if she didn’t at least give this budding attraction between them a chance.
Of course, the fact that she was afflicted with the ghost from hell was quite a deterrent. Especially given the fact that he was within easy earshot, keeping pace without the slightest difficulty. Not that she would describe what he was doing as running, exactly. She wasn’t even sure his feet were touching the ground. But he was indisputably there, glancing at her from time to time with mockery in his eyes.
“I’m glad to have the chance to work with you again, too,” Charlie replied. It was absolutely true. The seeds of a promising relationship were there, she thought: they simply needed nurturing.
Hard to do when she had a ghost on a leash.