Cold Fear (26 page)

Hanrahan snorted. “What makes you think I’ll take it?”

“I know you’ll take it.”

Hanrahan grunted. “I thought you weren’t done punishing me yet?”

“I’m not.” Frazer knew his smile was thin as he glanced at an incoming text. “Petra Danbridge is meeting us there.”

“Sweet Mary and Joseph.”

“Apt. The name of the school where the latest victim was found is St. Joseph’s School for Boys.”

Hanrahan’s brown eyes widened, forehead crinkling. “That’s where Denker went to school.”

Frazer’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “We need to check out the school records. See who his friends were.”

But Hanrahan was shaking his head. “All destroyed in a fire, years ago.”

“Did you talk to any of the staff? Anyone who might remember Denker and who he hung around with back then?”

“I never had a reason to track any of them down. The evidence was irrefutable and we never suspected a partner.”

“Then that’s priority number one.” Building a deductive profile was time consuming and this case was going at warp speed with clues from the past and the present colliding. He needed to see this new victim, he needed to check into Denker’s connection with St. Joseph’s. His phone rang again. Randall. He answered, trying to think where he could find a helicopter and pilot at short notice.

“We have another missing girl.” Randall didn’t bother with pleasantries.

Shit. Frazer switched him to speakerphone because Hanrahan needed to hear this.

“Jessica Tuttle went jogging this morning around six AM. Didn’t return home.”

“This is Jessica Tuttle as in Jesse Tyson’s ex-girlfriend?” Frazer clarified. “The girl who spread the picture of Kit Campbell far and wide on the Internet?”

“One and the same.”

“Where was Kit at the time Jessica disappeared?”

“Lucky for Kit, I saw her taking Barney for a walk on the beach at about 6:20 AM. No way she could make it to Roanoke and back in that time.”

Frazer crushed the insidious idea that Randall might have spent the night with Isadora Campbell to make that convenient observation.

Who she spent her time with was none of his business—but it could be. He knew it could be, if one of them ever got the nerve to make the first move. He’d never been accused of lacking nerve before.

He concentrated on the road ahead, and the case, not the woman he wanted to get naked and plunder. “Any history of the girl taking off without telling her parents?”

“She’s not the most reliable of teenagers, which is why her parents track her phone. It went dead at pretty much the exact moment Jessica is believed to have disappeared. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies are organizing search parties and door-to-door even though it hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet. Helena’s murder has everyone spooked.”

With good reason. Dammit. “I’ll call you when I get closer to OBX. Meet you at the police department unless they’ve already found her.”

“What about Maysville?” asked Randall.

“I’ll go there for a quick look-see but Art Hanrahan is coming back onboard for this investigation, and he’s going to be our FBI liaison at Maysville. We’re about to have a lot more warm bodies working on this.”

“We need them.”

“Yeah. Keep me apprised of the search for Jessica Tuttle.” Frazer hung up. With a teenage girl missing this case was about to explode. And if this case went viral what would that mean for the photograph of Kit Campbell and Damien Ridgeway? Despite Kit’s bravado he didn’t want to see her destroyed when the national and international media got hold of this thing. He called Parker again. “I need another favor, several favors. In fact, I’m gonna need your whole cyber security team working on this, and we don’t have much time.”

*     *     *

T
HE COPS HAD
dusted the door handles of her SUV for prints and then Seth Grundy had towed the vehicle to his garage up in Whalebone. Agent Randall didn’t know if this was the work of the same person who killed Helena or some random act of violence. No one had seen anything and she had no idea why anyone would target her this way. Even if someone knew what she’d done seventeen years ago, it made zero sense to trash her car unless they were just trying to piss her off. In which case, it was working.

Ted had told her countless times she could use his truck without asking permission should she ever need it. For reasons known only to himself, he had three working vehicles. Izzy decided to walk over to his house rather than ask him to bring it over. Barney needed the exercise and she needed to cool off. It was late afternoon and Ted lived a few miles north of Rosetown in the small cottage where he and her mother had grown up on the southwest edge of Bodie Island. She put Barney on his leash to walk through Rosetown and over the Bonner Bridge, which linked the islands. Officially, pedestrians were not allowed on the bridge, but it was quiet and Izzy figured the cops had better things to do than give her a ticket. The sea was calm in the Oregon Inlet below.

On the other side of the bridge she moved off the road and onto the track that ran through the marshes, up into the shrub thickets. It wasn’t rental cottage country, nor were there any towns or hotels close by. It was isolated and quiet and Izzy had often wondered what it had felt like to grow up in such a lonely place. After a while small trees began to appear, live oak, black cherry, buckthorn, and holly. She usually liked this part of the island, but the dense shadows under the canopy put her on edge. Suddenly every tree trunk and bush seemed to conceal possible danger.

She stumbled over a stone and cursed. The biggest thing she had to fear was fear itself. It stopped people thinking and acting rationally. She had a gun and a dog and she was fit and not too proud to run for her life if she needed to.

Really, what were the chances some bogeyman was stalking her through the forest when she hadn’t told anyone her plans?

A noise off to her right had her jolting and whirling around to face the threat. Heart hammering, she tried to see through the gloom, but short of going into the bush to investigate she couldn’t see anything. She eased Barney’s leash into her left hand so her right hand was free to reach her weapon. Barney whined and normally she’d have let him go. He knew the way to Ted’s house and in the winter this area was generally deserted. Today, she held him tight.

The wind was getting up and on top of everything else going on in the world, another big Nor’easter was sitting out in the Atlantic stirring things up, trying to decide if it wanted to go north or over the top of the Carolinas.

Storms were a fact of life here, but a really big storm, like Hurricane Irene in 2011, could destroy the bridges between the island chain and cut them off from the rest of the world for weeks, if not months. The idea of being trapped here with a killer made her stomach cramp.

She lengthened her stride, sweat blooming across her shoulders as another rustle came from deep within the woods. Dammit. It was probably a frickin’ squirrel, but by the time she saw Ted’s home amongst the trees, she and Barney were almost running. They burst out of the trees like lunatics.

The house sat in an open space with a large raised vegetable garden and a barn that was almost the same size as the house. All the trees close to the property had been felled because of the danger from frequent storms. The two-story house was painted a pale gray with white trim, and had a wraparound porch. The storm shutters on the windows on the top floor were still closed. It didn’t look like Ted had bothered to open them since the last storm had battered them the night Helena was killed. Ted tended to be economical with his labors and considering his bedroom was downstairs and with this new storm hovering, Izzy could understand why he hadn’t bothered taking them down. Barney barked excitedly and she let him off leash, knowing he wouldn’t go far from the main house. She hurried up the steps onto the porch and knocked on the door.

When no one answered she turned the knob, expecting it to be open, but her shoulder crashed against the wood. Locked.

“Well, hell,” she said. Even Ted must be spooked.

She headed back down the porch steps and peered inside his truck. There were no keys in the ignition or under the sun visor. Damn.

His SUV was parked beside the barn that doubled as a garage so she walked over and opened the door of the four-wheel drive, leaning inside to check for keys.

“How’s it going, Iz-biz?”

She jumped so hard she cracked her head on the doorframe. “For the love of God, Ted!” She rubbed the knot she now sported on the back of her head. “Stop creeping up on me. I could have shot you.”

“You’re the one stealing my car,” he pointed out, giving her a wry smile.

“I was going to borrow your truck—the way you’ve told me a million times to do and ‘not to ask’—but the house was locked and the keys weren’t in it. Is this you finally being security conscious after sixty-plus years of pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist?”

He dug into his hip pocket and pulled out a set of keys and dropped them into her palm. “I figured if someone could hurt a nice girl like Helena then who knows what they’ll do to an old goat like me. Dingbatters everywhere. Place is going to hell. Talking of dingbatters, how is the FBI getting on finding Helena’s killer?”

“I have no idea. They don’t confide in me.” She clasped the keys, which were still warm from his body heat. She looked at him properly. “You look very smart. New jacket?” She reached out and touched the lightweight but sturdy material of his black jacket.

He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “There was a sale on in Manteo. We all bought one.” He looked a bit embarrassed by that.

“You, Seth, the pastor, Hank, and Mr. Kent? What, are you like a gang now?” she joked.

He snorted and shook his head. “We thought it’d look cool if we went bowling or whatever—Seth’s idea.”

“Are you off to the bar?” She checked her watch. He met his buddies there almost every Saturday night, but it was a bit early yet.

“Nah, not tonight. Carl’s taking Mary out on that date so I figured I’d go to the movies in Corolla. Wanna come with me?”

“Who’s going?”

“Me and Kenny. Seth and Hank are both working.” Lines creased his forehead and fanned out from the corners of his eyes as he frowned. “Where’s your car?”

She was surprised the grapevine hadn’t been quite so efficient this time around. “Someone smashed all my windows when it was parked outside the hospital. It’s at Seth’s place getting fixed.”

“I guess that’s why he’s busy tonight. He never mentioned it, though.”

“It’s not exactly big news…” She trailed away. It still pissed her off.

Ted’s lips mashed together. “Why’s it happening, Izzy? We don’t normally get this sort of trouble around here.”

“Hell if I know.” She huddled into her jacket, wishing she had answers and could feel safe again. With the theft of her shovel, then being smacked on the head and now this, all in the wake of Helena’s murder, it was starting to feel personal. “Seth said he’d get the glass tonight and it’ll be ready by morning. Mind if I keep the truck until then?”

“Sure. Actually you’ll be doing me a favor. Leave it at Seth’s place when you pick up your car because it needs a service. If I do it in winter he gives me a special discount.”

“Cheapskate.” She kissed his sandpapery cheek. “Thanks.” She whistled to Barney who came crashing out of the woods like a thing possessed. She opened the door and the dog jumped into the cab as if he rode in the front every day.

“You be careful. Keep that gun loaded and your doors locked.” Ted put his hands in his pockets and stared off into the bush. “Something doesn’t feel right around here.”

“I’ll be careful.” She looked into his tired eyes, the ones that reminded her so much of her mother’s.

“Storm’s coming,” he warned.

She could feel it.

Ted stood back as she reversed the truck in a wide half circle. Out of the open window she called, “You be careful, too, Uncle Ted. I worry about you out here alone.”

“Don’t you worry about me, Iz-biz. Just take care of yourself and your sister. You’re all that really matters.”

Chapter Seventeen

L
INCOLN
F
RAZER DIDN’T
remember the last time he’d slept for more than two hours straight, and he was beginning to think the zombie apocalypse wouldn’t be such a bad thing—he’d fit right in. He was in the rental car, heading west on Interstate 40 toward Beaufort, North Carolina.

At Maysville, he’d had to smooth over Petra Danbridge’s ruffled feathers and bring her up to speed on the investigations. Officially, the Charlotte Division was now running the show on the mainland, but Chief Tyson was conducting his own part of the investigation on the islands—and Frazer was consulting for him, alongside Lucas Randall.

After Frazer had spent forty minutes reassuring SSA Danbridge that he wasn’t a backstabbing blue-flamer who was trying to steal all the glory for himself, he’d then had to persuade local cops that once they’d finished processing the current crime scene they needed to bring in cadaver dogs and start searching for more bodies—all on the word of a condemned serial killer.

He needed a stiff drink, but consoled himself with a bottle of water and some headache pills. By the time he’d finished at Maysville it had been too late to drive to the morgue before they closed for the day, and Simon Pearl hadn’t returned his calls. Frazer didn’t know if that meant good or bad news.

The old abandoned school had been a fitting place to find a dead body. It looked like the classic haunted asylum, complete with eerie mist that had clung to the crooked peak at the top of the central clock tower like wisps of smoke from that long ago fire. Boarded-up windows had stared sullenly out at the world in blind despair. Frazer was surprised it hadn’t been bulldozed years ago. The Catholic Church owned the land. Maybe it was appropriate it was now a burial ground.

Dense thickets surrounded the clearing in the woods where Elaine Patterson’s body had been found. He had the suspicion that Denker, or his accomplice, had hoped the FBI themselves would be the ones to stumble upon the dead woman. She’d been displayed in a demeaning way, designed to maximize shock value. The track marks on her arms confirmed she was a drug user in addition to being a well-known sex trade worker in the Greenville, North Carolina, area. The killer had considered her trash, something to be used and discarded, with a total disregard for the sanctity of human life.