Thread of Fear (6 page)

The baby gurgled from the playpen, and Lucy looked over and murmured to her in Spanish.

Then she glanced at Fiona, and her expression hardened. “When Jack called me yesterday, I told him he was crazy.”

“I told him that fifteen minutes ago.”

Fiona had decided to be brutally honest. Lucy seemed like the straightforward type. And Fiona didn’t want her getting her hopes up about what they could accomplish today.

The corner of Lucy’s mouth quirked up. “So he didn’t tell you, huh? That this was a cold case?”

“Not until this morning.”

Lucy shook her head. “Typical Jack.”

Fiona felt a prick of annoyance at the implied intimacy. Clearly, Jack and Lucy had a history of some sort, and Jack had purposely avoided mentioning it. Fiona busied herself
getting out her drawing board and pencils, the whole time mentally cursing him. She didn’t think she’d ever been so misinformed about a job before.

When the board was ready, she took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. This was her last case, and likely one of her most challenging. She needed to focus.

“That last picture was all wrong,” Lucy said. “I told the cops that over and over, but they didn’t listen.” She tipped her chin up and stared at Fiona with a challenge in her eyes. “But, shit, what do I know, right? I’m just the witness.”

“I’m not a cop,” Fiona stated. “I’m an artist, same as you.”

Lucy shrugged and loaded a spool of white onto the machine. She dampened the end of the thread with her tongue and carefully maneuvered it through the eye of the needle. Lucy’s hands were sure and steady, which was uncommon for this sort of interview. The sewing machine whined into action as her foot pressed the pedal.

“Jack really wants to get this guy,” Lucy said, not looking up from her work.

“What about you?”

The machine stopped. Lucy’s eyes lifted, and Fiona recognized the look in them, something almost feral.

“Sadistic fuck tortured me for two straight days. I want him to burn in hell.”

Fiona nodded. Selected a pencil. “Do you remember him well enough to describe him?”

Lucy pressed her lips together, gazed down at her work. The needle became a blur as she fed the white fabric beneath it. “Yeah.”

“Because it’s okay if you don’t. If you can’t remember something, just say so. We’ll do the best we can.”

“I remember.” She shook her head. “Little details, too. Like it just happened.”

The mind was strange. It stored away some things from long, long ago, and jettisoned others from as recently as yesterday. Fiona could recall the exact outfit she’d been wearing when she watched the World Trade Center collapse. She remembered the precise color of the sky that morning, the coffee mug she’d held in her hand as she stood before the television. Yet if someone asked her what she’d worn to the movies two weeks ago, she’d have no idea.

Emotional trauma, especially fear, cemented memories. It was one of the body’s survival mechanisms, she’d learned.

“Tell me about his face,” Fiona said. “Whatever you can remember.”

The machine stopped. Lucy’s hands stilled on the fabric, and she stared off, past the windowpane to the wintry day outside.

“I remember all of it,” she said quietly. “It’s tattooed on my brain.”

“So? What’d you get?”

Jack’s deputy sighed on the other end of the line. “This isn’t as easy as you think, J.B. Some of this shit, you need to have a warrant.”

Jack propped a hip on the wooden railing surrounding the Arrellando porch. He glanced at his watch. An hour and forty minutes, and they were still back there drawing.

“So problem-solve,” Jack insisted. “Come on, Carlos. That’s the beauty of small-town policing. We can cut through some of the red tape.”

Carlos muttered a curse in Spanish. “Why don’t you go
talk to her? You’re the pretty face around here. I’m the guy with the beer gut and six kids.”

Jack smiled. “Don’t forget the wife.”

Another curse.

“Okay, so Norma won’t cooperate,” Jack said. “She’s not the only one over at Parks and Wildlife. What about Melvin?”

Carlos didn’t say anything, and Jack realized his mistake. Melvin was something of a racist. He didn’t talk about it openly, but it became apparent whenever the old man dealt with the two Hispanic officers in Jack’s department.

“Forget it, I’ll talk to him,” Jack amended, glancing at his watch again. He had so much to do today, and he hadn’t made a dent. Now he’d probably spend an hour shooting the shit with Melvin in the Texas Parks and Wildlife Bureau’s local office, trying to talk him out of a list of every bubba in the tricounty area who’d applied for a deer license eleven years ago. Maybe he’d delegate this job to Lowell.

As leads went, this was pretty thin. But Jack had reviewed Lucy’s original police report a dozen times in the last few days, along with the statements provided by the hunters who found her after the abduction. She’d been picked up in a remote area northwest of here accessed by a few ranch roads and surrounded by thousands of acres of flat brushland. Deer country. And no one working the case at the time had checked out who owned the land or had access to those deer leases. According to Lucy’s statement, she’d been held in some sort of small trailer, the kind you hitch to a vehicle, the kind many people kept at their deer camp. Lucy had said the trailer hadn’t been hitched to a vehicle at the time of her escape. The trailer could have
been anyone’s, but an officer should have at least attempted to find out if it might have belonged to someone who had reason to be on the acreage near the pickup site.

And if Jack could cross-reference
that
list with a list of drivers who had gray Chevrolet Caprices registered to their names eleven years ago…

Of course, the car Lucy described could have been stolen. Or maybe the perp owned the car, but had no connection to the property where he’d taken Lucy and he was just squatting there for a few days. Still, it was worth a try. This guy was local. Jack felt it in his bones.

The vehicle, the nearby property owners, the hunters—all these aspects of the case should have been checked out over a decade ago, but they weren’t. Of course, the lead in the case back then was more interested in where his next doughnut was coming from than where the killer might be hiding. Jack couldn’t change the past, but he could avoid a repeat performance. This time around, there would be no sloppy police work, no half-assed investigating. This time around, the Graingerville Police Department—all six of them—would do the job right.

“J.B.? You listening, man?”

“Sorry. What?”

The screen door screeched opened, and Fiona stepped out of the house.

“I said I got a lead on that twine from our victim. The fluorescent green that Lucy described? They used to carry it at hardware stores all over the Southwest, plus Wal-Mart.”

Lucy followed Fiona onto the porch with Vanessa on her hip again. Neither woman looked at Jack. As he watched,
Fiona reached over and squeezed Lucy’s hand, and then Lucy—to Jack’s astonishment—pulled Fiona into a hug. They whispered back and forth for a moment and then stepped apart.

“So we got a break there,” Carlos was saying.

Shit. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

“I said,
you can’t get it anymore
!” Carlos evidently thought Jack was having trouble hearing. “Now they only manufacture it for a few customers. Stopped mass distribution about six years ago.”

Lucy gave Jack a curt nod and went back into the house. Fiona descended the steps and waited in the yard, her back to him.

“So that narrows it down to specialty stores. Farming supplies, mostly. You can find green all over, but for this exact color, you gotta really look.”

“It’s a good lead,” Jack said, watching Fiona’s shoulders tremble in the biting wind. Why the hell hadn’t she brought a jacket?

“I’m on my way in now,” he told Carlos. “Don’t go anywhere because we need to discuss the ME’s report.”

“You got it.”

Jack disconnected and shoved his phone into his pocket. Fiona started across the path, and he had to stride to keep up with her.

“Fiona?”

She didn’t turn around. “Can we go now, please? I’m cold.”

She pushed through the gate and stood beside the pickup, gripping her art case and shivering. Jack popped the locks and opened her door for her. Not making eye
contact with him, she stowed her bag on the floor and climbed into the truck. She stared straight ahead at the windshield.

“Where’s your coat?”

“In my car.” She looked at him. “I spilled something on it earlier.”

Her nose was red, as were her cheeks and her eyes. She was crying.

Jack reached over her lap and snagged a crumpled flannel shirt from the back of the cab. He shook it out and handed it to her.

“Put this on,” he said, and closed her door.

He went around and climbed behind the wheel, reviewing the exchange he’d just seen between Lucy and Fiona. Jack didn’t know Fiona very well. He didn’t know her at all, really, except what he’d read on the Internet and what he’d learned from Nathan. But Lucy, he knew. And she was—hands down—the least
huggy
woman he’d ever been around. She did not squeeze, kiss, cuddle, or do any of that warm-fuzzy shit in public, and especially not with women. Lucy was a loner and a hard ass and, according to many people, a bitch.

Yet obviously Fiona had bonded with her.

Jack steered onto the highway and cast an apprehensive glance in Fiona’s direction. She’d put on his shirt and flipped up the cuffs, but still the thing damn near swallowed her. She sniffled. He didn’t see any tears, but she dabbed her nose with the back of her hand.

Jack popped open the console and retrieved a stack of Dairy Queen napkins. He stuffed them into the cup holder and passed one to her.

“Thanks.” She took the napkin and did one of those dainty nose blows. “Sorry. I’m usually better at this.”

“At what?”

“I don’t know. Compartmentalizing.”

“It’s a rough case,” he offered. Understatement of the century. Lucy’s ordeal was as vicious as he’d ever come across, and it was amazing she’d lived through it. Looking at it now, Jack doubted that had been part of the perp’s plan.

Fiona folded her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. “So…You guys have a motel around here?”

“Sure. What for?”

She looked at him. Her eyes looked emerald green now because she’d been crying. “I need a quiet place to work. I’ve still got to refine the preliminary drawing and do the age progression.”

Holy shit. “You got a drawing?” Jack had pretty much talked himself out of that hope.

“I got something.” She looked at her hands. “The question is whether it’s usable. I don’t really know yet. I’ll have to spend more time on it and make a judgment call.”

Jack focused on the road, trying to seem open-minded. In reality, it wasn’t Fiona’s decision. If he paid her fee, he’d do what he wanted with the picture.

“How long does the age progression take? Maybe you could work at the station house.”

Fiona stared out the window. “I prefer to work without distractions. And this could take a while. Especially if I do another subject.”

Another subject…?

She looked at him. “You were planning to ask me, weren’t you?”

He debated whether to answer that truthfully. He’d misled her about pretty much everything from the get-go, and this was no exception.

“I hadn’t counted on it,” he said. “If you don’t want to—”

“Don’t make excuses. You can’t work a homicide without an ID.”

She was right. The victim’s identity was a critical missing piece in this puzzle. But Fiona looked drained. He hadn’t expected this case to have such an impact on her, and guilt needled at him.

“You want to go to the motel first?” he asked. “Maybe take a nap or something?”

She shook her head, looked away. “I don’t need a
nap,
” she said. “Just take me to the morgue.”

S
helby Sherwood’s abductor had rented a Chrysler mini-van in Minneapolis yesterday afternoon.

An hour later he’d checked into an Econo Lodge in Bangor, Maine, and at 7:15 this morning he’d been seen buying super-unleaded gasoline at a Shell station in Tucson. The clerk who took his twenty said he looked exactly like that drawing on the news, except maybe heavier and with a ponytail.

Garrett Sullivan downed his last gulp of truck-stop coffee and flipped open the file on the Taurus’s front seat. Since Fiona’s sketch had been released three days ago, leads had been pouring in by the hundreds. The guy’s in Nashville. No, Roanoke. Someone just sold him a set of snow tires in Peoria…

A dedicated team of cops and volunteers had spent hours sifting through all the tips. The promising ones resulted in police visits, and a small handful of those interviews had netted information worth pursuing. It was tedious work, and stressful because one overlooked lead could be the only one that mattered. Everyone who worked child abductions was haunted by the Polly Klaas case. Just hours after the twelve-year-old was snatched from her
slumber party, police detained a man on a trespassing complaint at some property not thirty miles from Polly’s house. Unaware that the man was wanted on a parole violation, the police helped him pull his car out of a ditch and sent him on his way.

Weeks later that trespasser—Richard Allen Davis—confessed to killing Polly and led investigators to her body.

Child abductions were a nightmare, but Sullivan remained hopeful, in large part because of Fiona Glass. He had faith in her drawing, and now that he’d finally met her, he understood how she’d earned her reputation.

Psychic, some said. Others called her telepathic. When these high-profile cases came up, those labels got a lot of media play. Sullivan dealt in facts, not magic. Fiona wasn’t psychic, but she
was
gifted. He had no doubt that when they finally tracked down this UNSUB, he’d be a dead ringer for the picture she’d drawn. The woman was highly intuitive. He’d seen her in action, spied on her methods while standing silently outside the bedroom where she’d worked with Colter Sherwood. She had amazing instincts with people, somehow knowing precisely how to coax out vast quantities of information they didn’t even realize they possessed.

Sullivan flipped through his file until he found the brief write-up on the woman he was about to meet. He reviewed a few key facts before getting out of the car, leaving the file behind on the front seat. He liked to do interviews empty-handed. People tended to clam up when they thought he was taking notes, although most times that’s exactly what he was doing. Sullivan locked the Taurus, crossed the sidewalk, and entered Second Go Round.

The resale shop’s owner led Sullivan to the back as she reiterated what she’d said in the preinterview.

“It’s Ron,” she declared. “I’m sure of it. It’s like I told that agent on the phone, I got a knack for faces. There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

She shoved aside a rolling clothes rack and stepped through a narrow doorway. Sullivan followed her into the dimly lit back office.

“’Scuse the mess,” she said.

The room smelled like mildew and vanilla air freshener, and “mess” was something of an understatement. Giant piles of clothes lined the cinderblock walls—shirts, pants, dresses. A large black bin on wheels was filled to the brim with shoes. Another similar bin held child-size jackets and coats. Along the very back wall, a set of clear plastic boxes overflowed with socks, belts, and other items Sullivan couldn’t make out. It was difficult to see clearly. The sole light in the room came from an antique-looking floor lamp with a fringed yellow shade.

“He used to sort the merchandise,” the shopkeeper said. “People drop off whatever. It’s all mixed up.” She nodded toward several clothes racks crammed with hangers, but no clothes. “I been short-handed since he left. ’Specially with the New Year’s rush—people cleaning out closets and whatnot.”

The back door had been propped open with a rusty shopping cart, and Sullivan wondered whether this was for light or ventilation. He stepped over a pile of men’s sweaters. “You said he filled out an employment application? Do you have it on hand?”

“Sure.” She walked over to a black metal desk hardly
visible beneath a heap of papers. “I got it filed here somewhere.”

Sullivan mentally composed a description of the witness. Her platinum blond hair was twisted atop her head in some kind of bun, and several frizzled strands fell in her face as she shuffled through the desk. She’d given her age over the phone as forty-nine, but Sullivan put her closer to sixty.

“Here it is!” She tugged a paper loose from the drawer and held it out for him.

“Thank you.” He took the form and stepped closer to the back exit where the light was better.

Ron Jones.
The handwriting slanted sharply left.
339 Elm St.
A phone number had been listed, then crossed out repeatedly.

A prickle of anticipation traveled down Sullivan’s spine. Practically every piece of information on the form looked invented.

“You check out these references?” Sullivan asked.

“Heck, I was just happy to get an applicant.” She fisted a hand on her hip. “This isn’t exactly dream work, and I cain’t afford to pay more than minimum wage.”

Sullivan’s pulse quickened as he scrutinized the form. “Ron” had listed a ten-digit social. “You ever see his driver’s license? A Social Security card?”

The shopkeeper shook her head. “He said he’d lost his card, but he was getting a new one. He was American, though—I could tell that just by looking. So I told him not to worry about it.” She bit her lip guiltily. “I always paid him in cash. I’m not real caught up on some of my tax stuff, to tell you the truth.”

Sullivan didn’t comment, so of course she hurried to fill the silence.

“He just seemed like a regular guy, you know? Until he quit coming last week. No forwarding address, nothing.”

“How did he get to work?”

“The bus.” She gazed up at the ceiling and tapped her chin, as if trying to remember. “I can’t recall what line.”

Sullivan glanced around the room. “You have a computer on the premises?”

“Sure, out front.”

Investigators were working the theory that Shelby had met someone in an Internet chat room during the weeks prior to her abduction. “He ever use it that you know?”

“Every now and then he would, if we weren’t busy. But most days he stayed back here. Real quiet type.”

Sullivan glanced out the door, which led to a service drive. His heart was pounding like it did sometimes when a lead panned out.

“You give him a key?” he asked.

“No. But he closed up a couple times, so I’d lend him my hide-a-key, and he always put it back. Like I say, I never had any problems with him.”

Sullivan poked his head outside.

“That’s where we get all our drop-offs,” she explained. “I come back and quote them a price. They either take it or leave it.”

He surveyed the surrounding area. Across the driveway was a narrow strip of grass, then the edge of another parking lot. The shopping center about forty yards away included a Mailboxes, Etc., a sandwich shop, and a ballet studio. A trio of girls was standing outside. They huddled against the cold
in bulky jackets, their legs bare except for pale pink tights. A white SUV pulled up to the curb to collect them.

Sullivan took out his cell phone. His supervisor answered on the first ring.

“It’s Sullivan. I’m over here in Birmingham.”

“And?”

“And I think we’ve got something.”

Fiona entered the autopsy suite and sent a silent thanks to whatever thoughtful staffer had just left here.

While she had been signing in and receiving a visitor’s badge, someone had transferred Jane Doe from the cooler to a gurney in the autopsy room, which was a relatively bearable sixty degrees. A metal folding chair had been set up for Fiona alongside the sheet-covered body. Having put in many grueling hours under much less hospitable conditions, she appreciated such considerations and attributed them to Jack. From the moment he’d ushered her into the Grainger County Administrative Building, it had been apparent he was a popular man around here. It shouldn’t have surprised her, really. He had that confident, easygoing way about him that made the men want to talk sports and the women want to flutter their lashes.

Fiona crossed the room, which seemed blessedly quiet for a county morgue. She glanced around, quickly taking in the stainless steel tables and sinks, the lights and hoses, the metal cart neatly loaded with sterilized tools, and felt vaguely comforted. From county to county and state to state, these rooms all had a sameness about them.

She took a small plastic container from her bag and un-screwed the lid. After dabbing some Vicks under her nose,
she sat down and felt the cold, hard chair through her jeans. She shivered briefly, and was grateful to Jack once again for the loan of his flannel shirt.

She snapped on a pair of light blue surgical gloves. Then she pulled the cloth back from the face and tucked it in around the girl’s shoulders, all the while going through the mental routine she used to ease herself into the task. Hispanic female. Estimated age, sixteen or seventeen. Height, five-foot-two. Weight, one hundred and six pounds. Name, unknown. These details and others had been provided in the preliminary autopsy report, which the medical examiner had shared with her. The report also had been accompanied by several well-intentioned but practically useless Polaroids.

Many autopsy photos were taken with the victim lying down, giving little thought to scale, lighting, or the effects of gravity. To get a useful picture, the photographer would have to wait for rigor mortis to pass, then prop the body up, letting the tissues hang naturally, and strategically place a ruler or some other object to show scale. But many morgues didn’t go through all that, meaning Fiona was usually better off drawing directly from the body itself if it was available rather than a photograph.

Fiona spent a quiet moment now simply looking at the girl.

She’d been pretty, Fiona saw right off. The brown, slightly shriveled appearance of her lips and eyelids didn’t mask her attractiveness to someone accustomed to seeing death. Her right temple and upper lip showed several moderate lacerations, and a series of dark, oblong contusions encircled her neck, evidence of the manual strangulation detailed in the
ME’s report. Another telltale sign—the tiny red dots visible at the corners of her eyes. The bruising around her cheeks and jaw told Fiona that her last hours had been painful. If Lucy’s experience was any guide, they’d been horrific.

For the first time in weeks, Fiona felt glad for the cold. Homicide investigators liked cold weather, particularly in Texas, where they more frequently dealt with heat, humidity, and abundant insects. In this case, the recent frigid temperatures, combined with the body’s quick discovery, had cooperated to minimize decomposition. The ME estimated she’d been found between eight and twelve hours after death. He’d also noted that the finger marks encircling her neck were consistent with an attacker who had large hands.

Fiona squinted at the girl’s face, trying to see beyond all the signs of violence and visualize the way she’d been in life. The critical identifier would be the arrangement and proportion of her features—not necessarily the details of the features themselves. Correct proportion was more important than a perfectly reproduced nose or eye. This was the reason some criminals could be apprehended on the basis of a blurry surveillance tape. It was the overall impression of the face that mattered most when it came to recognition.

Once a tentative ID was made, police could use more conclusive means to get a definite match. Fiona was the middleman here, and her drawing would be the bridge that linked this lonely corpse to a living, breathing family somewhere. At least she hoped so.

She spent a few moments selecting her drawing materials and then stood up to begin the sketch. She rested her board on her hip so she could peer around it at the girl.
She started by lightly sketching the heart-shaped face, then blocking out the features. Working from top to bottom, she sketched in the brow line, the eyes, and then the delicate nose. Gradually she built up more and more detail until the picture started to resemble the subject. When the eyes and nose were refined sufficiently, she moved on to the mouth.

With a latex-covered finger, Fiona peeled back the girl’s lips and examined the teeth. Her upper lateral incisor was missing, but the ME had concluded this injury occurred around the time of death. It wasn’t a physical characteristic that could be used to help identify her, so Fiona ignored it. She spent a few moments repositioning the chin, trying to correct for the slack-jaw effect that could make a dead body appear quite different from a living person. Once she had an idea of what she wanted, she sketched in what she hoped was a naturalistic mouth and then leaned back to study her work.

Not bad.

Finally, she added the most challenging feature of all—the ears. The vast majority of her suspect sketches were men, so drawing ears realistically was a skill she’d been forced to learn early in her career. In this case, the ears might be important because the victim had two piercings in each lobe, which could be helpful for identification.

Fiona’s legs felt stiff, so she sat down and did some shading. For a few minutes she added highlights and shadows with an array of umber-toned pencils.

“Cold enough for ya?”

Fiona glanced up into the kindly brown eyes of the Grainger County ME. Dr. Russell Jamison was white-haired and grandfatherly and had a big, bulbous nose. Fiona
had met him when she’d arrived, but he’d seemed to be on his way out, and she hadn’t expected to see him again.

“I’m okay.” She suppressed a shudder. “Nice and quiet today, huh?”

He glanced around his empty work room. “So far, so good.” He winked. “I’m not making any plans, though. Something tells me we’re in for a big night out on the roads. What do you want to bet we get a tree hugger by nine o’clock?”