Deadly Messengers (31 page)

He ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Yes, I do care. We’ll help her be free, just like the others.”

Andy’s face lifted, a huge yellow-toothed smile easing the dark circles beneath his eyes.

Maybe he should clean Andy up before the end came, so in death he looked as though someone loved him, someone cared.

“Do you want me to track her accounts? I can have the movements ready for you by Wednesday.”

Doug shook his head, placing a firm hand on Andy’s arm.

“No, it’s fine. I already know where she’ll be. Remember, she’s on our side. You understand what needs doing next, right?”

Andy’s head bobbed again. His tongue flicked out, licking his lips like a lizard.

“Do you have a target position in mind, Boss17, or do you want me to find one?”

“Oh, no, that’s fine, I know exactly where I’m sending her, too. It’s all worked out perfectly.”

Andy swayed in his chair. “I’m so excited.”

“So am I, my boy. So am I. We’re almost done. Almost there.”

Doug McKinley had stayed straight and true. And he was almost there.

KENDALL FELT PROUD. SHE’D STAYED in control of her emotions in the presence of the high-and-mighty Lance O’Grady. Why did he harbor such animosity toward her? Yet why couldn’t she stop her heart pointlessly spinning like a crazy top when near him?

Kendall waited on a call from a
Vanity Fair
editor.
Vanity Fair
was the big time, the real big time. She’d made some headway on a story on Doug McKinley’s SSRI precipitating violence theory.
Vanity Fair
was interested after she used a contact to get to the commissioning editor.

She should be happy, but every time she thought of O’Grady, she suddenly wasn’t so on top of the world. Where was her head, no, wait, her heart going with such a pointless emotional exercise? For the umpteenth time, she told herself:
get it together, Kendall.

But she
couldn’t
get it together. Couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d looked at her as they sat only feet apart. She’d detected—maybe imagined—something in his eyes, something more than animosity or disgust. She’d even caught him glancing at her, not in the way he’d looked in her dream, but glancing with something else besides hostility.

Kendall checked the clock on her computer.
Where was this editor?
It was thirty minutes past when he’d said he’d call, and she was getting herself more worked up. She just wanted to know what was up and what wasn’t. If she could get stuck into the story, then she wouldn’t have time to think about O’Grady.

Ten minutes later, still no story. Without thinking, she’d absently tapped O’Grady’s name into Google.

Lance O’Grady police detective

Then, as an afterthought, she typed

Angry. Crime.

523,000 links appeared.

The third heading down caught her attention:

Detective speaks out on brother’s death

Kendall clicked on the link to a newspaper page.

“They drove him to suicide,” claims brother.

The date was ten years ago. Everything suddenly added up. Kendall read through O’Grady’s interview, and realized, by the way he spoke of losing his brother, that Lance O’Grady was not the tough, unemotional man she knew. At least, he wasn’t then.

By the time she’d finished the article, it crystalized for her that it wasn’t personal, it was her occupation. He couldn’t differentiate between her and those journalists who’d hounded his brother. She wondered if she might find a way to show him she was different. Maybe it might help him heal. Not that she was the expert in handling grief. Although, she’d found the more she’d written about the massacres, the more she felt somehow released from her own tragedy. Maybe when this was all over, she’d find a way to speak to him. Now wasn’t the right time. No doubt, he’d think it was further subterfuge.

Her thoughts turned to O’Grady’s partner, Trip. Around her, he was like a puppy chasing a ball. At some point, she must take away the ball. Maybe after they’d visited Doug McKinley’s this morning, she’d explain to him while she was flattered, she wasn’t interested.

She decided to call Doug McKinley yesterday, give him warning she was coming, that she had some news—the Vanity Fair article. He’d sounded excited, but insisted they wait until today, that he had some preparations to make. She hadn’t told him about Trip yet, either. She wanted the
Vanity Fair
commission and the police’s renewed interest to be a surprise.

She looked at the time on the toolbar of her computer: nine forty-four a.m. In fifteen minutes, she needed to leave for Doug McKinley’s house, and still the editor hadn’t rung. She had this terrible feeling that today, which had dawned with promise, was sliding downhill toward disappointment.

She had a small health piece needing filing before close of business today, so she decided to get on with that. She’d only written fifty or so words when she pushed back from her desk.

O’Grady was in her mind again, and it was driving her nuts. He wasn’t some lost animal needing saving, he was an angry, obstinate man who somehow, because of a stupid dream, meant something to her.

Okay, change of plans.

Visit Doug McKinley. Tell Trip she wasn’t interested. Contact Lance O’Grady and insist they meet. After that?

Let fate decide.

O’GRADY GLANCED UP AT THE wall clock. Thick red hands and a dark black circle surrounding the face, it was an ugly relic of the seventies. That was about how he felt right now, as though he’d sat here since bell-bottoms and long hair were the rage.

Every time he glanced at the clock, another thirty minutes had silently ticked away. It was already ten-thirteen, and he’d been here since six this morning. He’d wanted to do this on his own with no one around to query his line of thought and cause him to second-guess himself. The small video room was empty when he’d arrived.

Several coffees later, the fingers on his right hand throbbed from hitting the rewind and play buttons dozens of times. His eyes stung like they’d taken an acid bath after staring at the blurred black and white images for so long. He’d printed several stills, thinking perhaps on paper the image of the mysterious paper man might be clearer. It hadn’t helped.

He hadn’t shared his thoughts with Trip. Let him pursue his ghosts with Kendall Jennings and O’Grady would chase down his own. These cases had left him unsettled and uneasy. He’d missed something. He knew it like he knew his brother would still be alive if it weren’t for parasitic journalists like Kendall Jennings. Although when her face came into his mind, she didn’t really fit in the same box. She didn’t have that harsh, rough feel about her.

He couldn’t think about her now. She was with Trip, he was here, and staying focused was the order of the day. Let Trip and the girl visit Doug McKinley and waste their time. McKinley was a bereaved father on a wild goose chase attempting to make sense of his son’s death. When they found him on the DMV database, turned out the guy was almost seventy. In his experience, there weren’t many near-septuagenarians involved in major crimes.

O’Grady raised his cup to his mouth, anticipating the hit of caffeine. The precinct’s coffee was harsh, but it was all that stood between him and exhaustion.

Nothing came with the swig. The cup was already empty.

He sighed. Ten more minutes of checking footage and he’d call it quits. He figured the three cups of caffeine coursing through his veins would last him about that long.

What had he missed?
Something was there in the captured film footage of Tavell and Benson prior to their crimes. An alarm pinged in his head like a broken doorbell. Damned if he didn’t feel the answer was there plain as day, he just unable to see it.

His remembered his first partner’s words. They always came to him.

Hickok was a hardass, O’Grady a fresh-faced detective, if there was such a thing. They never did get along, but he’d taught O’Grady one thing. Co-incidences were rarely random.

“If there’s one thing you respect, it’s coincidences. They never are and never will be just coincidences. They’re shining neon signs, and you gotta read the signs.”

The neon lights shone bright over this video. Common sense told him these mass killings couldn’t be connected, yet this stranger who briefly interacted with Tavell and Benson had to be the same man. Something happened in those moments when he stood with the killers. But what?

A thread dangled before him, long and glistening like a spider’s web in the sunshine. No matter how many times his mind swiped at it, it remained there annoyingly close, teasing him.

He’d run the man’s image through Viisage, their facial recognition software. That threw back 263 possible matches. It wasn’t as accurate as they’d hoped; a real hit and miss system, nothing like the moviemakers would have you believe.

Staring at the screen, though, wasn’t getting him anything except tired, stinging eyeballs. He yawned and ran both hands through his thick hair, then buried his face into his palms. He’d call it quits for the moment and grab some breakfast, before it became more appropriate to do lunch.

O’Grady stood, the noise of the scraping chair, loud in the small room. He reached for his jacket, draped over the back of the chair. As he leaned in to shut down the computer, the niggle hit him again.

What would one more Viisage search hurt? Maybe while he’d sat there something new had come in. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, paused. Kate Wilker’s face flashed into his mind. She was part of the trio of mass killers. But no stranger had approached her. Could his gut instinct be wrong? Maybe, sometimes, coincidences were just coincidences.

He pulled his notepad from his pocket. He’d made a note to check on something to do with her while interviewing her friend Wendy Thompson. Flicking back through the pages, he found the comment.

Check traffic cam footage outside mall.

He’d requested the footage, but he hadn’t checked whether it had arrived. These days it was a simple process to access requested files from government departments. Once actioned, they’d simply be placed in a designated secured cloud file. This sped things up when several agencies were involved in a case. O’Grady opened the Wilker case file and scanned down the titled video files.

It was there.

08.21.15. Danbridge_Fair_Carson_Street CCTV Time_11.06.04—11.07.25 angle_camera 31.

Allen was meticulous with his metadata.

O’Grady clicked on the file and settled back. Allen had done a good job editing down to what they needed. Within five seconds, Kate Wilker’s Toyota sedan appeared on the screen leaving the mall. At the end of the street, just as her friend Wendy had said, the car came to a stop at a red traffic light.

The car was stationery at the lights for only a few moments, when a windshield washer suddenly moved from the intersection to begin madly scrubbing at the front shield of Kate Wilker’s car. Then he came to her window, looking for money—just like they all do. The lights changed, and the car moved off, turning left into busy North Taylor Road. O’Grady watched two more traffic cam files, which had captured her movements, but there seemed nothing suspicious. No stranger holding a piece of paper had stopped her.

O’Grady, sick of staring at the screen looking for God knows what, felt drained. His concentration wasn’t helped by his mind bouncing back to Kendall Jennings. He’d begun to wish he’d gone with Trip and her. If nothing else, he could have babysat Trip, and ensured he follow protocol—least that’s what he told himself.

Too much death, too little rest, and too many people telling him to put these cases to rest had fried his perspective. Kendall Jennings had gotten under his skin, even invaded his sleep. He had a vague memory of the journalist last night in his dreams. Upon waking, all he recalled was an enormous spider’s web, she trapped within it, while the monster creature lumbered slowly toward her, its murderous intent clear. Hard as he frantically climbed over the sticky twines, he knew he would reach her too late. That as much as he wanted to save Kendall Jennings, he would fail.