Into the Devil's Underground (32 page)

“You’re sure of this?” Julian asked.

“Positive.”

“And the hostage negotiator accompanied her?”

“That’s what I was told.” His informant blew a foul gust of smoke in his face. “Apparently, he’s her new champion. Fighting for her, even.”

Julian crushed the hundred-dollar bill he was holding. “I hadn’t foreseen this complication. Why was she there?”

“Maybe she’s grown a set. Or maybe she just wanted to see what you had planned. How should I know?”

“That’s what I’m paying you for, isn’t it?”

“You want me to leave another message?”

“No. I want you to find out if Emilie reciprocates this attention. If she has any interest in this man.”

The smoker took another drag. “You promised me I wouldn’t still be in this mess after you robbed the bank. I thought she was just your extra bit of sugar icing.”

“Do I look like I need to rob a bank? You’re a fool for ever believing that.”

“I still want my cut.”

“I’ve already given you plenty of cash.”

“Easy come, easy go. And that cash wasn’t half of what you originally promised.”

Julian had grown tired of the conversation. “Find out how Emilie feels about this negotiator, and I promise you shall have payment in full.”

The cigarette was smashed beneath the toe of a black dress shoe. “You’d better. I can always go to the cops and cut a deal.”

“Just do as I ask. You’ll be well taken care of.”

Julian slipped through the horde on the Strip, impervious to the shouts of the drunk and greedy. He’d anticipated Emilie to feel a rush of grief and guilt at her mother’s death, but after the initial shock, she should have been relieved. Grateful, even. Claire Chambers deserved to be eliminated. She had only cruelty to offer.

The gluttonous pig had begged for her life, growing so desperate as to plead for a second chance for her daughter’s sake.

Julian would have preferred a quick and easy end, but Claire needed to be held accountable for the years of misery afflicted on Emilie—all thirty-four of them.

The duct tape had muffled Claire’s screams. The woman’s face was streaked with tears and smeared make-up. Her cold eyes grew glassy as her body lost more blood.

“This is for Emilie,” Julian whispered as he sunk the knife into her stomach. “My ultimate gift to her before I bring us together for eternity.”

Claire had slowly blinked and then moaned in understanding.

“Yes, I am her stalker. And now you will pay the ultimate price.”

32

“G
IVE ME TWENTY
minutes, and we’ll bust out of here early.” Jeremy dug through the teetering mound of papers on his desk.

“Don’t worry about me.” Emilie rubbed her pounding temples. She was too tired to care. She’d hardly slept, and when she did her dreams were of dark passages full of crying children. They pleaded for help while an unknown woman screamed in the distance. Emilie had woken in terror just before dawn. She had been the one screaming and begging for her life.

“You never said anything about the tunnels.”

“What did you want me to say?”

“How bad were they?”

She thought about the tattered baby doll. “Worse than I could have imagined.”

“Good thing you didn’t get a hair up your ass and go in alone, then.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if Nathan hadn’t been there.”

Jeremy scrawled a comment on the report she’d just given him. “He’s good for you.”

“He is.”

Her phone vibrated. “Agent Ronson. Have you been able to release Claire’s body?”

“No. But I’ve got some information from the Louisiana field office. Can you come downtown?”

“I’m on my way.”

She hung up the phone. “I have to go to the police station.”

Jeremy closed the report. “I’ll take you.”

“You don’t—”

“Save your breath. Let’s go.”

Lisa stood at the teller’s counter talking with Mollie and Miranda. She glared as Emilie walked past. “Where are you both going? It’s only three.”

“Emilie has to go to the police station,” Jeremy said. “I’m taking her.”

“Sorry about your mother.” Lisa’s eyes were empty. “Such a tragedy.”

“Thank you.”

“The paper said police had proof the Subterranean Stalker did it. Is that true?”

“Emilie can’t discuss that, Lisa.”

“Of course.” A snide smile crossed her narrow face. “Well, at least you’ve got a sexy cop willing to protect you.”

“Excuse me?”

“The black-haired hottie from the other day. The one who slugged that pencil-necked detective. He sure seemed into you.”

Emilie snapped her bag onto her shoulder. “That’s none of your business.”

“Hey, I think it’s awesome. About time you had a man back in your life. Although,” she looked down at her manicured nails, “isn’t that against cop rules? Dating a victim?”

Emilie squeezed her phone to keep from smacking Lisa. Was she fishing for information or just trying to screw up her life?

“That will be enough,” Jeremy said. “We’ve got to get to the station. Call me if you need anything.”

“She’s Creepy’s informant,” Emilie spat as soon as they were outside.

“Who? Lisa?”

“Yes. It’s obvious, Jeremy.”

“I don’t know.”

“You just don’t want to see the bad in anyone. I don’t have that problem. That bitch is a snake, and I’m making sure Ronson knows it today.”

*   *   *   *

“
J
UST LAY IT
on me.”

Detective Avery and Agent Ronson sat across from Emilie at the small table in the conference room while Jeremy fidgeted on her right. “I know it’s going to be bad, so just get to it.”

“In 2004, a woman matching your description disappeared from New Orleans,” Agent Ronson said. “She’d filed a stalking complaint a month prior. Cops didn’t have much to go on.”

Cold sweat broke out across Emilie’s forehead. “What happened to her?”

“They found her body in a shallow grave in the Cane River Valley area weeks after her disappearance. Animals had dug it up.”

“Cane River. That’s thick Creole area and very historic. Old South.”

“He’s from that area,” Ronson said. “He took the victim back to the place he knew best.”

“Why’d he leave Louisiana?” Emilie asked.

“To keep the heat off him.” Detective Avery opened a manila folder. “Vic’s name was Marie Adrieux. Twenty-five, a French Creole from New Orleans. She was a grad student at Loyola and was putting herself through school waiting tables at a popular French Quarter restaurant. In 2004, she reported a stalking incident to the New Orleans PD.”

“What was the incident?”

“A man she once waited on showed up on her doorstep asking for a date. She declined and after that noticed him following her.”

“Did she give police a description?”

Ronson slid a composite sketch across the table. Emilie gasped. He was clean-shaven, but she recognized the eyes. They were the only distinguishing features. “He looks average.”

“Exactly,” Avery said. “Girl could only remember his eyes in detail.”

“What about his name?” Jeremy asked.

“Lawrence Dupart,” Ronson said. “An alias.”

“Two days before her disappearance she received flowers.”

“Casablanca lilies,” Emilie guessed.

“White jasmine,” Avery said. “Grows in abundance in the South. Adrieux called the police. They told her they’d check into it. Then she disappeared.”

“Where was she taken from?”

“Outside her apartment complex around eleven at night,” Ronson said. “She was just getting home from work.”

“Do you have a picture of her?”

Agent Ronson slid a photograph across the table. An attractive woman smiled back at Emilie. Her skin was light enough to easily see the freckles scattered across her nose. Her hair was a darker red than Emilie’s.

“I don’t see the resemblance.” Jeremy peered over her shoulder. “Same face shape, but Emilie’s hair is lighter. And she’s fair skinned.”

“It’s in the eyes,” Emilie whispered. Framed with thick lashes, Marie’s eyes were almond-shaped and green, just like her own. “Look into mine and then into hers.”

“I agree,” Ronson said. “Your stalker obviously saw the similarity between you two and latched on. Your necklace just fed into his delusion.”

“So you think he’s trying to replace this girl with Emilie?” Jeremy asked.

“Looks like it. He probably took her thinking he could get her to reciprocate his feelings and then when she didn’t, lost it,” Ronson said. “Based on the time between her disappearance and estimated time of death, the coroner believes she lived for at least three weeks after she was kidnapped.”

Emilie couldn’t wrap her brain around this. “
Three weeks
?” she whispered. A creeping sense of horror made her fingers tingle.

“He fled Louisiana and started a new life,” Avery said. “He either didn’t act on his compulsion or couldn’t find the right woman. Then he saw you.”

Emilie looked into the woman’s smiling face. She had been so young, her entire life ahead of her. “Josephine is the key.”

“I agree,” Ronson said. “I think this woman was his first replacement for her, and it didn’t work out. He might have started looking because of a debt he believed your grandmother owed him, but something changed when he saw you. This other obsession with Josephine took over. You became her new replacement.”

“I’m sure she was a child.” Emilie closed the file. She couldn’t look at the dead woman anymore. “Something happened to her. I don’t know how, but this all goes back to her. I feel it in my gut.”

“We went back ten years and couldn’t find any record of children with that name going missing or dying,” Avery said.

Emilie looked at the sketch of Creepy. “Go back further.”

“She could have been a sister,” Ronson said.

“It’s a long shot,” Avery countered.

“One that’s worth taking. We need all the information we can get.”

“Where exactly was Marie Adrieux found?” Jeremy still stared at Adrieux’s picture.

“In a low-lying field in the Cane River Valley area. A hundred feet or so from the river. Smack in the middle of plantation alley,” Ronson said.

“Plantation alley?” Jeremy asked.

“The Cane River Valley is a historical area heralded for its plantations,” Emilie said. “Many of them are restored and are big tourist attractions.”

“They never found his hideout.,” Avery said. “From the looks of her, she was kept somewhere very primitive, most likely underground. He definitely put a lot of time into planning her abduction.”

“How’d she die?”

“Strangled. There’s evidence he revived her more than once.”

“So he wasn’t sure he really wanted to kill her?”

“He was torturing her,” Ronson said. “We’ve seen it before, especially in serial homicides.”

“Because she didn’t want him.” What were Marie’s last days like? Had she known her ultimate fate? Had she done anything to save herself?

“She wasn’t sexually assaulted,” Avery said.

“Why?” Jeremy asked. “Isn’t that what he wanted her for?”

“He’s evidently not sexually motivated,” Ronson answered. “He’s trying to replace something he lost, and he wants the affection in return. Physically forcing himself on her would have given him no gratification.”

“Then what would have?” Emilie couldn’t understand how Creepy’s motivations weren’t sexual. He’d had a hard-on when he dragged her into the basement.

“Compliance. Attention. Interest,” Ronson said. “He wanted her to love him.”

“But wouldn’t that lead to him wanting sex? If he thought she felt the same?”

“Possibly.” Ronson looked directly at Emilie. “But making him believe the feeling is truly mutual would have been Marie’s only chance at survival.”

“How was she supposed to know that?” Jeremy asked.

“By taking her cues from him. Paying attention to what he says and does. Making him feel rejected in any form would have been a fatal mistake.”

“What about forensic evidence?” Jeremy asked. “There had to have been some.”

“There was. But the FBI had nothing to match it to until now. Hair taken from Emilie’s blouse matches hair found on Marie’s body. Your mother also managed to scratch him. It’s the same guy.”

“So you have a DNA profile?”

“He’s not in CODIS,” Avery said. “Until we get a suspect to match it to, the DNA is worthless. And so far, we aren’t turning up anything from your grandparents’ former shop. The building was demolished long ago, and there is no record of their legal inventory or customers.”

Emilie shuddered. What if offering herself up as bait was the only way to draw him out?

“Agents are looking at all the suspects in Marie’s case and trying to find matches here, but there are a lot of people to go through,” Ronson said. “Good thing is, we’ve got this composite without any facial hair now. We’re hitting the streets with it. I’m sending a squad back into the tunnels as well. Someone’s seen this prick. It’s only a matter of time.”

33

J
ULIAN DROVE PAST
the hookers strolling Bonanza Road and pulled the clunking old Chevy Malibu into one of the many in-and-out motels in the area. He’d purchased the car for two hundred dollars cash at an auction. His black Lexus stood out like a rose in a neglected flowerbed.

The motel consisted of a dingy office and eight “bungalows”: small boxes with creaking beds and dirty bathrooms. It was a high traffic area full of people with their own secrets.

Julian and his informant had been coming to the same motel since meeting through HELP of Southern Nevada, a program designed to help individuals and families overcome various hardships. Julian had been happy to sponsor the informant’s new lease on life in return for a few favors.

He parked in front of the last room and killed the rattling engine. It continued to knock as he walked to the door. The Chevy was soon destined for the junkyard.

The informant opened the door. “You’re late. I’ve been here twenty minutes already.”

Julian took care not to touch anything in the soiled room. God only knew how much bodily fluid lay about. “Pardon my tardiness. I had a last-minute client.”