Unstoppable (14 page)

Her shock lasted maybe a second, and then she sprang into action, jerking a pair of handcuffs from her belt and elbowing the suit out of the way. “I got it,” she said, taking control of the prisoner by dropping a knee onto his back.

The robber squirmed and spewed obscenities as she yanked his wrists back and slapped on the cuffs. Allison’s back felt damp. She took a steadying breath and tried to regain composure as she conducted the pat down.

“You’re under arrest,” she said, with much more bravado than she felt at the moment. Her lips were dry, her hands clammy. She glanced up at Sal, who was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. “Tell them to send a cage car.”

Sal nodded.

“You got any other weapons on you?” she asked the perp. “Knives, needles, drug paraphernalia?”

He didn’t answer and she checked his pockets. When she was satisfied, she started to climb off him.

He exploded in a blur of movement. Pain stung her cheek as she caught an elbow, and she had to sit on his butt to make him stop thrashing. The man in the suit pressed a shiny black wing tip between the prisoner’s shoulders as Allison struggled with his legs. At eye level was a shelf of fishing supplies, and she grabbed a roll of twine. She ripped open the package with her teeth and lashed the binding around his ankles. The prisoner cursed and squirmed for a while, but finally the fight went out of him.

She tied the final knot. He was trussed like a turkey now, and she knew she was going to catch all kinds of S and M jokes from the guys at work.

Allison glanced up at the man now leaning against the checkout counter. His palms rested casually on the Formica, and the Glock had disappeared back beneath his suit jacket. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

He lifted a brow at her. “Not bad, Officer.”

Okay, he was definitely a cop. DEA? Immigration? FBI? And suddenly it hit her. She knew exactly who he was and why he was here.

The corner of his mouth curved up, and she felt a surge of annoyance.

“You have a permit to carry a concealed handgun?” she asked, although she knew the answer.

He sighed and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a leather folio and flipped it open.

“Special Agent Mark Wolfe, FBI.”

The legendary Mark Wolfe. Allison had heard he was coming to town, but she didn’t say so. Better to save that little tidbit until after the tweeker was booked, and they could have a conversation about a real criminal. And maybe she’d finally get some answers.

Mark prowled the chat room, searching for any trace of Death Raven or one of his aliases. He hadn’t found him yet, but it was still early, and many of these men were nocturnal. As he entered his second hour of searching, the sites started to blend together and the words became a blur. Only this and nothing more. The phrase echoed through his head. Tapping at my chamber door. His temples throbbed. He rubbed his eyes. Tap-tap.

Mark looked up.

Tap-tap-tap.

He crossed the room and checked the peephole, even though he already knew who he’d see standing on the other side.

He paused for a moment. Then he pulled open the door.

“Detective Doyle.”

She nodded. “Special Agent.”

She leaned a palm against the doorframe and looked him squarely in the eye. She wasn’t intimidated by his federal badge or his height or the hard stare he used on vicious criminals. He knew why she’d come to see him.

Mark steeled himself. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

“You can talk,” she said. “I want to hear about Stephanie Snow.”

He weighed how much to tell her. It wasn’t her case, yet she was interested—interested enough to come looking for him after an unusually difficult day to pump him for information. He could tell she was smart. Plus, she was young, which could mean open-minded. Maybe she’d listen.

Or maybe talking to her would put the freeze on his already cool relationship with the local police lieutenant overseeing the case—a guy who probably didn’t want one of his people talking to the FBI behind his back.

But what the hell? What did he care about the politics of it? He’d be on a plane in the morning, and he hadn’t managed to convince anyone who mattered to consider his theory.

Mark pulled the door open. She stepped past him into the room and glanced around. His laptop sat open on the rumpled bedspread, and he’d forgotten to clear the screen. She turned to look at him.

“I work for the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. You know what that does?”

“Profiling?”

“That’s what gets most of the attention. We cover a lot of bases—counterterrorism, white-collar crime, crimes against children, kidnappings. Sometimes we get pulled in on homicide cases if the local police think they’re dealing with a serial killer.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“In the fall of 2000, I got a call about a murder out in Shasta County, California.”

“That’s north of Sacramento, right?”

He nodded. “This was near Redding. The year before, a woman went hiking in a park on October thirtieth, never came home. Her boyfriend reported her missing that same night. Her remains were discovered in a shallow creek east of the park a week later.”

“Cause of death?”

“Sharp force trauma—her throat had been slashed.”

“Sexual assault?”

“Too much water damage to know for sure.”

“Lemme guess—boyfriend had an alibi?”

“Airtight,” he confirmed. “November nineteenth that same year, another woman went missing, this time from a dog park. Same county. Her remains were discovered in a ravine six months later.”

“Not a lot to work with by that point.”

“You’d be surprised. A forensic anthropologist examined what was recovered. Marks on the bone indicated another throat cutting.”

She propped a shoulder against the wall and folded her arms. “So the boyfriend’s off the hook and now you’re looking for a serial killer.”

“I wasn’t looking for anything yet. They didn’t call me in until the next fall. Another missing woman, another body dumped in a remote area. Dara Langford. Twenty-three. She’d just graduated from college and found a job in Redding.” He visualized Dara’s smiling young face on all the fliers he’d seen tacked to lampposts and stoplights throughout the area. “She was living with her parents at the time. They reported her missing when she didn’t come home from a jog on October thirtieth.”

Allison tipped her head to the side. “So it’s the dates that match up, not just the MO?”

“Looks that way. That same year, we had another disappearance on November nineteenth. Sheryl Fanning, a thirty-five-year-old mother of two. And another woman the following fall, Jillian Webb.”

“October thirtieth?”

“Around there, yes.”

Her brow furrowed. “What do the dates mean?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Maybe some kind of Halloween connection? Day of the Dead, that sort of thing?”

“We looked into that. Came up with zip. Which isn’t to say it isn’t a factor, we just don’t know how it fits.” Mark swallowed his frustration. For years he’d studied this case, and still he hadn’t put all the pieces together.

She was watching him closely. He doubted she missed much, which meant she’d sensed this was personal.

“With that last victim,” he continued, “we can’t pinpoint the date for certain because she was living alone. Her disappearance was reported after she didn’t show up for work two days in a row.”

“So five women.” Her eyes had turned somber.

“That we know of.”

Allison gazed away, looking pensive. “Stephanie Snow went missing October thirtieth.”

The media hadn’t connected Stephanie to the killings in California yet. Maybe they never would. Maybe nobody would, and Mark was spinning his wheels here.

But he didn’t believe that. From the way Lieutenant Reynolds had reacted in their meeting today, he could tell there were some holes in the case against Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend.

And besides that, Mark had a hunch. This murder
felt
connected, and his hunches about cases often turned out to be right—mainly because they weren’t hunches, but predictions based on dozens of different factors, all viewed together through the lens of experience.

“So,” Allison said. “Three years in a row you get these close-together murders in northern California, and the dates match up.”

“Also, the MO. The crimes are remarkably similar.”

“How?”

“You haven’t seen the case file?”

“It’s not my case.”

“Maybe it should be.”

She looked uncomfortable now, and he could tell he was touching on something that was going to make her life complicated.

But she clearly didn’t mind complicated, or she wouldn’t be here.

“So, then what?” she asked.

“Then nothing. He’s been inactive, as far as we know, for a decade. Now this.”

“You’re the expert, not me. But I didn’t think serial killers just . . . stopped.”

“They don’t, usually. After about five years without anything similar popping up in ViCAP, we began to think he might be dead or in prison. By ten years, we were sure of it.”

“But now he’s at it again.”

“Maybe. Depends who you want to believe—me or your lieutenant.”

She eyed him silently. November nineteenth was two weeks away.

“I’d much rather believe Reynolds,” she said. “I just don’t think I do.”

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