Twisted (35 page)

A bitter lump clogged her throat, and she swallowed it down. She needed to get a grip. She had a job in front of her. The legendary profiler might have left the case, but there remained a lot of work to do, and Allison intended to do it. She planned to dot every
i
and cross every
t
and not give those anal-retentive prosecutors a single reason to bitch about anything.

She spied a dilapidated country gas station up ahead and decided to pull over. A jolt of caffeine would get her head back in the game. She parked her pickup in front and dialed Jonah’s number as she entered the store.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

She grabbed a soft drink from the refrigerator. “On my way in. Why? Where are you?”

“I’m at the jail in Waynesboro. Is Wolfe with you? I thought he’d be here by now.”

“He went back to Quantico.”

Silence on the other end.

“Had a meeting with the director,” she added, wondering why she felt compelled to make excuses for him.
“Listen, I was just at Jordan Wheatley’s. She agreed to come in for a lineup.”

“You’re bringing her?”

“Her husband wanted to take her. He’s cleaning up from a job right now. They should be there in the next half hour.” Allison turned into the snack aisle and plucked a Snickers bar from the shelf as Jonah muttered a curse. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t believe Wolfe left. We need him to interview Moss today.”

“I thought the sheriff wanted first crack at him.”

“He does. That’s the problem. Hundred bucks says he’ll botch the interview and we’ll never get anything.
Damn
it.”

Allison paid for her snacks and turned around, nearly bumping into a woman behind her.

“Sorry,” Allison said, but the woman didn’t make eye contact. She stepped straight up to the register and paid for a carton of eggs.

With dimes and nickels.

Allison watched from the door as she counted out the coins while the clerk waited impatiently. The woman had that downtrodden look about her that Allison had seen many times before. She studied her face for bruises, but it was partly concealed by a mop of brown hair. A long-sleeved T-shirt covered her arms. Thirty-five degrees outside, and she didn’t even have a jacket.

“Allison?”

“Yeah. Look, Mark’s gone. We’ll make do without him. Keep an eye out for Jordan, okay? I’m going to swing into town, pick up a vehicle from the motorpool. I’ll be there by eleven.”

“Make it quick, would you? This girl gets skittish on us, we’re going to need you around.”

“She won’t get skittish. She really wants to do this.”
It’s an important part of her healing process.
But Allison didn’t say that, because the guys on her squad wouldn’t get it. Allison got it, which was why she’d paid Jordan a personal visit this morning to explain what had happened and ask her for her help.

Allison hung up with Jonah and held the door open for the coatless woman. She met Allison’s gaze with a look of suspicion. She had watery blue eyes, pale skin, and chapped lips. She wore no makeup, but the sun glinted off a glittery pendant on a chain around her neck.

An opal, surrounded by diamonds. Allison got a quick flash of it as the woman stepped past her.

The door thumped shut and Allison stared after her. Where had she seen that necklace before?

Allison’s heart lurched. The front page of the newspaper. Stephanie Snow. She’d been wearing a pendant just like that in her graduation picture.

We know he takes souvenirs. Several of the victims were missing jewelry.

The woman rounded the corner of the building as Allison stood frozen with shock. She couldn’t let her leave. She needed to—

An engine grumbled to life. Allison followed the sound of it around the corner and saw the woman backing out of a parking space in a dusty white van.

Allison dropped into a crouch and ducked her head down, pretending to tie her shoe.

Too bad her boots didn’t have laces. But it didn’t matter—the driver didn’t look her way as the van rumbled
out of the parking lot. It turned right onto the two-lane highway and headed north. As soon as it was gone, Allison jumped to her feet and rushed for her truck.

Her pulse raced as she coaxed the engine to life. A diamond-and-opal pendant. A white van. Coincidence? It
could
be a coincidence. But taken with that look in her eyes . . . Allison wasn’t sure why, but she felt almost certain the woman had some link to Damien Moss. Maybe she was his girlfriend. His wife. His accomplice. Allison had to find out.

She eased onto the highway as the now-distant van took a curve and disappeared. Allison followed, punching the gas to catch up. She looked herself over and made a quick plan. She was in civilian clothes. She had her pickup. With a bit of skill, she could keep a low profile as she tailed the woman to wherever she was going.

Allison took the first curve and saw that she’d closed the distance. Still, though, she wasn’t close enough to read the license plate. And she couldn’t
get
close enough without drawing attention to herself.

Another curve, and then the highway straightened out. Allison hung back, hoping not to attract the driver’s notice in the rearview mirror.

Who was she? And if she knew Damien Moss, did she know he was in jail right now? Moss had used his one phone call to contact a lawyer, not a girlfriend. But maybe he simply hadn’t wanted to draw attention to her. Or to his home, where police might attempt to execute a search warrant. The task force still had no current address on the man. The most recent address they had was from a job application at Thompson Bath Solutions. The information listed there had led them to a dumpy
apartment in Waynesboro that was currently occupied by a family of five.

The van stopped at a juncture. No blinker, but the woman turned left onto another highway—this one leading
away
from Waynesboro and farther into the countryside.

Allison watched the van recede down the highway. She bit her lip. To follow or not to follow? She could call backup, but this wasn’t her jurisdiction. This wasn’t even her county. And anyway, she didn’t need backup simply to explore a lead.

The real question was,
was
this a lead worth pursuing on a crazy-busy day when her colleagues needed her at a suspect lineup?

Trust your instincts.

Allison could almost hear Mark whispering in her ear. She took a deep breath. And followed the van.

Mark squeezed past the crowd of people pouring through the security gates. He found a place to stand and scrolled through his list of recently dialed numbers until he spotted the one he needed.

Shit.
Let him be wrong about this.
Shit, shit, shit.

“Wayne County Jail.”

“Mark Wolfe, FBI. Get me the sheriff.”

“Sheriff Denton’s out right now—”

“Is Peabody on duty? Put me through to him.”

“One moment.”

Mark gripped his phone as he waited to be connected to the jail supervisor. God
damn
it, how had he missed this? And it was November 19.

“Peabody.”

“Mark Wolfe, FBI. We talked yesterday. I need you to go see Damien Moss. Take him a form and make him sign off on his Miranda Rights.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “We did that already.”

“You had him sign a form?”

“No, we read his rights on camera. He said he understood. We got it on tape.”

“I need you to put the form in front of him. Make him sign it. Come back and tell me which hand he uses.”

Another pause.

“Do it now.”

“All right, just . . . hang on a minute.”

Mark stood in the concourse, waiting. A river of people ebbed and flowed around him as the minutes ticked by and a cold ball of dread formed in his gut. He didn’t want to be right about this. He wanted more than anything to be wrong. But he knew that he wasn’t.

Come on, come on, come on.
He glanced at his watch. Eleven a.m. Just thirteen hours left. He might already have started.

“Agent Wolfe?”

“I’m here.” Mark held his breath.

“I gave him the paper, gave him a pen.”

“And?”

“He signed it with his right hand.”

Jordan sat in the sheriff’s office with butterflies in her stomach. She didn’t want to be here. And yet she did. She didn’t know what she felt, she only knew she’d had to ask Ethan to pull over twice on the way here so she could open the door and throw up.

“You okay?”

She glanced over at her husband, who was sitting beside her now outside the interview room.

“Fine,” she said, and Ethan lifted an eyebrow at the lie. It was one of hundreds she’d told him over the last thirteen months. But instead of pushing the issue, he simply looked away. He was nervous, too. She could tell by the way he had his arms folded tightly over his chest. And he’d been grinding his teeth for the past ten minutes.

“Ma’am. You can come in now.”

Jordan’s stomach clenched. Ethan stood up.

“Alone, if you don’t mind.” The deputy gave Ethan a pointed look, and he started to object.

“It’s fine.” Jordan smiled and got to her feet, then turned her back on her husband and stepped into the room.

She’d expected a two-way mirror and was surprised to see plain cinder-block walls, just like the waiting area.

She turned a puzzled look on the deputy as he plunked a file on the table. Beside him were Moss’s attorney and also the Wayne County D.A.

Jordan looked at the district attorney. “I’m sorry. Where’s the window?”

He smiled. “This is a photo lineup.”

“But I thought—”

“Problem with using real people is we gotta drum up five other guys the same basic description as the suspect. Some of the bigger sheriff’s offices, that’s no problem, but around here, we’d have to resort to throwing some of our deputies in the mix, and they look like what they are: cops. So, we’ll be showing you a six-pack.”

A six-pack. Six
pictures
. The relief was so intense, Jordan felt dizzy and had to sit down.

The deputy seated himself in the plastic chair across from her while the lawyers remained standing. Jordan took a deep breath. She felt three pairs of eyes on her as the deputy opened the folder, revealing a color copy: two rows of mug shots, three pictures per row. He turned the page to face her.

The room went silent. Jordan leaned over the page. She held her breath as she scanned the faces.

She looked up at the D.A. “He’s not here.”

Mark had been speeding down the highway for forty minutes before he finally managed to get a detective to pick up the phone.

“It’s not him.”

“We know.” Jonah didn’t sound surprised, just frustrated. “We heard from Waynesboro. The shit’s hitting the fan up there. Jordan Wheatley failed to pick him out of a photo lineup, and I’m trying to figure out what the hell happened. I thought she saw the guy.”

“She did.” Mark spotted his exit and skated across three lanes of traffic. “Edgar Allen Moss, 10-30-70.”

Silence.

“Damien’s brother,” Mark added.

“I thought his brother was in Huntsville?”

“Different brother, same gene pool.”

“
Shit.
The D.A.’s going to go ballistic.”

Jonah was right, but that was the least of their problems.

“I’ve been on the phone with the records office up in Sacramento County,” he told Jonah. “Turns out there
were three boys, not two. First kid was nine years older than his brothers. Which means—”

“He wasn’t in the home when Child Protective Services went there.”

Mark exited the highway and ran a stale yellow at the nearest intersection. November 19. Of all days for a screw-up of this magnitude . . .

“
Three
brothers?” Jonah was still in denial. Mark, on the other hand, had accepted the extreme shittiness of the situation and moved forward. “Shouldn’t they have had this in a file someplace anyway?”

“California has some of the most overwhelmed social workers in the nation,” Mark said. “We had to go back and find him through birth records after one of our agents turned up a Moss at Santa Clara University.”

“So he did go to college.”

“Made a perfect score on his SAT, too, like David told us. Everything he said about his brother was true, only he was talking about Edgar, not Damien, just to jerk us around. Anyway, I’m on my way up to Waynesboro, and we can go over this there. Is Allison with you?”

“No. Why?”

“I left her a message, but she hasn’t called me.”

“Think she’s on her way in.”

A police radio squawked on the other end of the phone.

“If you see her,” Mark said over the noise, “tell her to call me, ASAP.”

“What?” More noise.

“I said
have Doyle call me.
” The noise halted abruptly and his shouts reverberated inside the car.