Fatally Bound (6 page)

“We could probably fix that.”

Mac nodded. “I made a couple of calls over to Minneapolis and we’ll get it taken care of for her. She’ll have her do a little community service. But Tess,” he smiled ruefully, “was all over her like white on rice.”

“Was Maura upset?”

“Natch. But I really think she was just more embarrassed that her mom and dad had to come and pick her up. Of course, I was able to cheer Maura up a little bit.”

“How?”

“I told her about the time my dad and I went to pick up Tess from the jail up in St. Cloud. She was arrested for public intoxication and ended up with a minor consumption when she was a sophomore up at St. Ben’s. Oh man, did Dad have fun with her on that hour-ride home. I told Maura all about it.”

Sally laughed. “Tess will love you for that.”

“I told her I told Maura about it.”

“Oh God. You did not?”

“Hell yeah.”

“When you have kids she will get you back.”

“Kids? Did you say something about kids?” Mac asked with raised eyebrows.

“A conversation for another time,” Sally demurred. “Let’s get back to Tess. She had to be hot with you.”

“Oh yeah, she went off on me something fierce. I said pot meet kettle. It was hilarious.” He reached for the bottle. “More wine?”

“Please,” Sally replied happily and Mac filled her glass with more of the pinot noir. He emptied the rest of the bottle into his glass.

“I could get another,” he offered. The wine fridge was five feet away.

She waved him off, “I’ve had plenty and I do, after all, have to work tomorrow.”

“You work every day,” Mac replied.

“Such is life at the White House,” she replied with enthusiasm, raising her glass in a mock toast. Mac figured at some point the euphoria of working in that building would wear off and it would become more of a job, with the usual grumbling and the like, but seven months in, she was still like a kid in the candy store.

“Man, did you and the Judge work me today,” Mac said.

“A little,” Sally replied, taking a sip of her wine, “but I didn’t have to work you
that
hard, Mac. You wanted in on this.”

Mac shrugged. It was the truth; he did.

“And that’s okay,” she added. “It’s what you do, Mac. You’re gifted at it. I figured something like this would happen eventually and I think the Judge did too, and you just needed a little
teeny tiny
push.”

“I was just a little surprised you were so gung ho for me to do it.”

Sally shook her head, “I’m not necessarily. I was happy when you turned down the FBI job and I’m happy you’re safe and I don’t have to worry so much. But I didn’t want you chained to the radiator with nothing to do either.”

“You know I didn’t turn down the FBI job for safety reasons.” They’d never discussed his reasons. Sally always assumed he did it for her. She got after him pretty good after the election case, the danger of the case, the risks he took. There were some long conversations about it and she expressed her fears and worries that she was scared she would lose him. The fierceness of her worries put him back on his heels, she could tell. She’d always felt a little guilty about it.

“Then why did you turn it down?”

“There were a couple of reasons. I wasn’t sure I’d have the same edge for the job after the election case. It’s pretty hard to ever imagine having a bigger case than that, Sal. That was like the Mount Everest of investigations. I mean, think about it. What could top it? Would I bring the kind of effort and motivation to the run of the mill case anymore? I wasn’t … I just wasn’t sure I could or would.”

“What’s the second reason?”

“I like being the lead dog, being the one at the head of the pack, not one of the dogs in the middle. In the job the director offered, as attractive and generous as it was, I wouldn’t be the lead dog. I would just be one of the dogs. So I passed. Now, if I wasn’t sitting on this pile of money, my decision might have been entirely different, but I didn’t have to take the job. I don’t have to take any job.”

“The money helps,” she suggested, looking down, digging for more spaghetti.

“You know what the money
really
does, babe?”

“What?” she asked, looking up.

“It lets me live life on
my
terms. It let me move here with you without even having to think about it. It gives me the freedom to do what I want. Whether that’s rehabilitating this townhouse, writing this book or taking on a case if it interests me. Like the robbery case in St. Paul? That interested me. I made a difference there. I cracked that thing open. This case definitely interests me. Maybe I can make a difference here. And I get to be the lead dog the way this thing is set up. I get to work with Wire, someone I,
and you
by the way, can absolutely trust to have my back, so that’s why I said yes.”

She leaned forward and kissed him softly, “Good, I was feeling just a little guilty about working you.”

“No you weren’t.”

Sally shook her head and got quiet, “No, I am, I was, but for very selfish reasons. I want you to find this guy, Mac, I really do. He’s so evil. But …”

“But what?”

“Please, just don’t get hurt. Please don’t get hurt.” She realized she’d have to go back to living with that fear, a fear that had been gone for seven months. She’d gotten comfortable living without that fear. Now it was back.

“Part of the gig, babe,” he answered, reaching for her left hand. “There’s always some risk.”

She nodded, looking down, “I know,” she whispered. “You thrive on it.”

Mac started to object. She put her fingers up to his lips. “It’s okay. I don’t think you’d be as good as you are if you didn’t.
When you’re the lead dog
,” she said, turning his phrase against him just a little. She crawled over to and straddled him, wrapping her legs around his back and her arms around his neck. “You live on the adrenaline that a case like this gives off. On cases like this you run into the fire without regard to the consequences,” she pecked him softly on the lips and leaned her forehead against his. “Please, just don’t get burned.”

“I’ll try not to,” Mac answered quietly, leaning back, moving his hands gently under her T-shirt and lifting it over her head, admiring her wonderful figure in the flickering candlelight. “You are so gorgeous.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, McRyan,” Sally purred back as she reached down and slid off his boxers. “So, what’s the next surface we should test in here?”

• • • •

As he watched the CNN report on the investigation and took a sip of his bourbon, the faces came back to him, particularly the two he made certain understood their circumstances and what he could do to them. Of course, as he watched he realized there was yet another; one that had disappeared inexplicably two years ago that, at the time, struck him as a conveniently fortunate elimination of the weakest link. Now, perhaps that disappearance had an explanation, and a troubling one.

Someone knew.

The situation was no longer under his or his client’s control.

He picked up his cell phone and dialed.

“Wallace, I knew you would call.”

“Then you have been watching the reports on the Reaper?”

“I have.”

“I think we have a problem. You’re going to need some protection.”

J
ust before sunup, Mac pulled up in front of Wire’s new townhouse in Arlington, a tall Starbucks in the cup holder for her. The tall, athletic brunette sauntered down her front walk dressed casually in blue jeans, a black sleeveless top with a light green blazer draped over her arm with her hair pulled back in a long ponytail. She had a black backpack, much like Mac’s, hanging on her left shoulder. She matched Mac’s casual look of blue jeans and thin, cream, button-down collar Polo dress shirt. A blue sport coat was lying in the backseat just in case he needed to class it up a little more. They both had bureau credentials but neither of them was wearing the bureau uniform.

“Nice Beamer,” she said as she hopped in. “This is new.”

“Had it about a month,” Mac answered easily, dropping the fully loaded black BMW X5 into drive. “I didn’t like driving the Yukon around Washington, it was too big, so I stored that in the garage back in St. Paul and bought this for here.”

“Rich people problems,” Wire teased.

“
Whatever
. With the book advance and the way your business is booming, you’re not exactly living check to check at this point, so you can stow the rich guy cracks. I’ll take them from Lich, but not from you, honey.”

Mac plugged the address for Hannah Donahue into the GPS, pulled away and began the two-hour trek east to Dover, Delaware. A little before 7:00 they hit the long stretch of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and enjoyed the bright morning sun as it rose rapidly in the east over the deep blue, cloudless sky of the bay. The temperature would rise into the high eighties with plenty of summer stifling heat.

“In Minnesota in the summer, it gets really warm and there’s humidity, but nothing like this. The humidity here is at another level.”

“It does get thick in the summer,” Wire answered. “I’m used to it, lived around here my entire life.”

At 8:00
A.M.
sharp, he pulled up in front of Hannah Donahue’s house, the crime scene tape still floating with the breeze, keeping people away. In addition to an unmarked police car, there was a mid-forties man dressed in a brown suit and a red tie with graying hair at the temples and a petite woman, mid-thirties, dressed in a navy blue pant suit and white blouse with short black hair swept behind her ears, leaning against a black Suburban, drinking convenience store coffees.

Mac and Wire slipped out of the SUV, each grabbed their backpacks and walked over to the two FBI agents and introduced themselves. The weather was heating up but the reception was decidedly cool.

“So what do you two think you can accomplish here?” Delmonico asked with an edge. She might have resolved herself that they were coming in, but she still wasn’t happy about it. She had some questions.

Mac was going to make this short, “Look, we didn’t go looking for this. We were asked to come in and see if we could help.”

“How exactly? Neither of you have much experience with serials,” Gesch stated.

“No, we don’t,” Mac answered reasonably. “I’m not a profiler, that’s your specialty. Me?” he held his arms out, “I’m a homicide detective. I’m a hunter, a pretty decent one.”

“And you’re what?” Gesch asked of Wire.

“I read people and I’m former bureau,” Wire answered. “Look, you guys don’t want us here, we get that …”

“It’s not necessarily that,” Gesch started, putting his hands up. “It’s just that this feels like a political maneuver. I’ve got enough on my plate and then to have to deal with that? I don’t have time for it.”

“Oh it is political,” Wire answered. “The White House is worried about Donahue’s dad making their life miserable.”

“And you see, I don’t see how that helps us,” Gesch said.

“Neither of us really gives a rip about politics,” Mac offered.

“Seriously?” Delmonico replied skeptically. “That’s what you’re going to go with? You’re both here at the behest of the president and his political guru. And you,” pointing at Mac, “you live with the White House deputy director of communications. So don’t give me this ‘we don’t do politics’ shit. You two reek of it right now.”

Mac could understand where she was coming from and her view of things wasn’t illogical. It was just that he didn’t really give a shit. “Look, are you here to fight me or find this guy?”

“Find this guy,” Delmonico answered, standing her ground.

“Really? Because, Special Agent Delmonico, I could swear you’d rather chew my ass. Me? I want to find this jackhole. So we can sit here and debate the finer points of why we’re here, or how we got here, or who put us here; or, since we are here, we could start working to see if Wire and I can help you guys find this killer.”

“So what’s it gonna be?” Wire added, hands on hips.

Gesch looked at Delmonico, “Do they pass?”

Delmonico shrugged her agreement, “Yeah, I think so.”

Mac and Wire both snorted their disgust. “Do we pass?” Wire bitched. Now their backs were up.

“Look,” Gesch looked back to Wire and McRyan, hands raised, “the director gave us the lowdown on you two. I think you
can
help. I really do. We just wanted to make sure this wasn’t some political or media play. Two suits showing up to look good and get some press for their book.”

Wire laughed and Mac grunted.

“What?”

“Media play? You don’t know us very well,” Wire answered. “I don’t talk to reporters.”

“You know about the investigation we were involved in around the election, right?” Mac asked.

Gesch and Delmonico nodded.

“Neither of us granted an interview to anyone. So if I wouldn’t grant an interview then, I’m certainly not going start seeking them out now, my girlfriend notwithstanding,” Mac added. “When we nail this bastard, you can do the interviews, you can handle the press conference and I will be nowhere to be found. I’ll go back to fixing the brownstone I bought.”

“
Riiiight
,” Delmonico replied.

“Watch me,” Mac retorted.

“Okay, okay, okay, that’s enough dog sniffing,” Gesch stated, stepping between Delmonico and McRyan. “Everyone’s marked their territory. So let’s go to work.” The senior FBI agent led them up the sidewalk to the front door of the white-sided, two-story house. At the front door, a plainclothes cop awaited their arrival.

“Agents Wire and McRyan,” Gesch stopped. “Is that what I should call you guys?”

“Dara or Wire works for me,” Wire answered.

“Call me Mac,” Mac stated. “Everyone does. This FBI agent business is temporary.”

“Okay, well Dara and Mac, please meet Detective Dane Wente of the Dover PD. He’s our Reaper Task Force man here in Dover.”

Everyone shook hands and Wente cut the seal on the front door of the house and dug in his pocket for the key.

“The director told me he gave you copies of the case files, right?” Gesch asked.

Mac and Wire nodded.

“So, fresh eyes, anything jump out at you?” the senior agent asked.

“Only the question I’m sure you’re asking; what is it that connects these women?” Mac answered. “Now you’re the experts, but don’t serials almost always have a type?”

Gesch nodded as he opened the door, “They usually do.”

“We’ve seen nothing in the case files thus far that connects the women; that explains his type. Until we figure out how he’s picking these women, we’re not going to get far.”

“I would agree,” Delmonico answered as she led them through the living room, to the kitchen and the back stairway down to the basement.

The pool of blood was still on cement floor of the basement, sitting to the left of two chairs. The message from the Reaper was on the cinder block wall, and seeing it written in blood was chilling.

Wire opened up her backpack and pulled out the case file for Hannah Donahue. She handed Mac the photos and kept the case file. Mac laid the pictures on the floor around the area where Donahue’s body was found.

Delmonico, Gesch and Wente stood back and let them work.

First, Mac and Wire worked the basement. Mac went to the chairs, noting the duct tape still on the chair to the right. He took the chair to the left, which was set back seven to eight feet from the other chair. Wire sat down in the other chair. They both looked up to the ceiling and Wire’s chair was right under the single hanging light bulb. The shade focused the light such that, were the basement otherwise completely dark, Mac’s chair would have been sitting outside the circle of light. “So he chloroforms her upstairs and then injects the sodium pentothal. Knocked out, he carries her down here, puts her in the chair and binds her to it. Then he sits here, and what? Interrogates her?”

“Something like that,” Gesch answered.

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” Delmonico replied. “But her time of death was somewhere around 4:00
A.M.
and she left a bar a little after 11:00
P.M.
and we presume came right home.”

“So he had her down here for a while, working her over,” Wire surmised, shaking her head at the brutality of it.

“The biblical verses probably provide a clue on that,” Mac suggested. “I’ve read the files. Is there anything not in the files we saw that provides insight on what these women did?”

“How do you know they did something?” Delmonico asked.

“I’m assuming based on the biblical verses. Reaping what you sow. Taken literally, that suggests to me that they’re being punished for something. What?”

“We’ve been through their lives,” Gesch responded. “Nothing hits on them, at least yet.”

“Is there any connection between the three of them?” Wire asked.

“We’re probing that as we speak,” Delmonico answered, “but nothing as of yet. They’re all from different places, never went to any level of school together. As far as we know, they never crossed paths with each other.”

For another hour, McRyan and Wire walked the house, looking in every room of the main level, checking every window and looking in all the closets. They next inspected the basement, which was simply a storage area.

“Thick cinder block,” Wire noted. “You could scream down here and might not be heard upstairs, let alone outside.”

Next was the second story. Wire searched Donahue’s bedroom while Mac worked through her office. Wire searched her dresser and spent some time looking through her personal drawers, sifting through pictures and keepsakes but not finding anything probative.

At her desk, Mac looked through the file drawers, finding the typical items, bills, banking information, her mortgage and other papers about her house. There was a computer monitor on top of the desk but no computer tower, although there was a stand for one underneath. The FBI probably had it. In the center desk drawer were pens, paper clips, random photos and a series of business cards, one for an auto dealership, another for a roofing contractor, a series of business cards for various people and other random business cards and phone numbers written on sticky notes. To the left of her desk was a small bulletin board with flyers for events posted, a couple of pictures drawn by kids from her elementary school class and a hanging calendar with notes of events listed on various dates. Her father was a key political figure and Hannah was clearly interested in politics. Her office walls were adorned with campaign posters of candidates. She also had her college diploma from Cornell on a bookshelf, along with her high school diploma and a certificate for the American Honor Society for scholastic achievement in high school. Mac recognized it as he had one himself. All in all, standard stuff, nothing unusual or eye popping. Maybe when he looked at the other victims’ lives in this fashion, something would emerge.

Wire stuck her head in the office, “Anything?”

“No, you?”

She shook her head as he followed her down the stairs and back into the living room where Gesch, Delmonico and Wente were sitting, reading through the case file and waiting.

It was time for first impressions.

“What are you thinking?” Mac asked Dara, as they both stood in the middle of the living room.

“Say I’m the killer. How do I get in the house?”

“No sign of forced entry,” Mac said, looking at the forensic report. “The dead bolts were pretty new, no damage indicating they were jimmied in any way. No signs any of the windows were compromised. So how does he get in the house?”

“We had the same question,” Gesch intoned. “We were thinking he perhaps grabbed her outside and forced her to bring him in.”

Mac and Wire walked outside and into the backyard. There was a two-car garage detached from the house with a fifty-foot mostly exposed walk from the garage to the house. The backyard had one fairly large tree on its south side but there were no low-hanging braches, the tree having been well trimmed. There was a cement slab patio with four chairs and a small table leading to the two steps up to the back door. The landscaping around the house consisted of some small perennials, hostas and other small short plants and bushes. There was little if any cover, certainly not enough if you were to have to wait a significant amount of time for Donahue to come home. “If he took her out here, he’s pretty exposed,” Mac stated. “There are houses on both sides. Were the neighbors on both sides home that night?”

“They were. Nobody heard or saw anything, but it was dark when she arrived home; she’d been at a bar fairly late with friends,” Delmonico reported. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t or couldn’t have taken her out here.”

“No, but I think it is unlikely,” Wire replied.

“How about taking her in the garage?” Gesch inquired.

“That’s an even worse problem, if you ask me,” Mac answered, looking between the garage and house. “He’d have had to take her in the garage and then get her into the house. That would be more likely to be noticed than if, for example, he either took her in the garage or came up behind her when she was unlocking the back door. However, to do that he would have had to have been lying in wait out here and I don’t see a good spot to do that.”

“So you’re thinking he was inside waiting for her?” Wire asked McRyan.

“It’s an educated guess,” Mac answered. “It makes the most sense. There is no security system for him to defeat. He just needed to get in the house and wait.”