Finding Claire Fletcher (38 page)

“You still have that on tape?” I said.

Brianna wrinkled her nose. “On tape? I have it on DVD.”

“What’s DVD?”

Her eyes widened. “Wow,” she said. “Sometimes it really is like you were in a coma for ten years.”

“I wish I had been,” I said.

She grimaced. “Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Don’t worry about it. Really. It’s fine. I’d prefer it sometimes if we could pretend that’s where I was.”

“Maybe we can, kind of,” Brianna said. I followed her down the hallway to the living room. My parents had gone to bed. “We can come up with a code word. You just say ‘coma’ and I’ll know to pretend that’s where you were.”

I laughed. “Maybe,” I said.

“I’m going to mix the brownies. You turn on the TV. When I’m done, I’ll give you a lesson on DVDs,” she said.

“Okay.” I used the remote to turn the television on. I flipped through a few channels but the same thing was on every channel. It was a breaking news report. An Amber Alert had been issued for thirteen-year-old Emily Hartman. She had been abducted six hours earlier from outside her home in Bakersfield, California. The news programs showed a photo of her. It was a candid shot, probably taken by a family member. She had a wide smile, big blue eyes and long, curly brown hair. She looked a lot like me. Like Alison Ward. She had been abducted by a man and a young woman.

Brianna came back into the room. Her voice barely registered. “Claire? Claire. Hey, are you okay?”

Nausea rocked my body. Acid burned the back of my throat. A man and a young woman. Him and Tiffany.

I felt Brianna’s hand on my shoulder. “Claire. You’re freaking me out.”

Numb, I gestured to the television. “It’s him,” I said. “He’s taken someone else.”

“It’s been two weeks since Emily Hartman was abducted. You don’t have any leads?”

Connor watched Claire pace in Farrell’s kitchen. She kept folding her arms across her chest and unfolding them, like she didn’t know what to do with them. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. Connor estimated she had lost at least five pounds, if not more. She had already been thin. She was approaching gaunt now.

“Claire, that’s really not up to us. Bakersfield PD is handling that case. That’s a long way from here,” he pointed out.

She stopped walking and gave him a stricken look. “But it was
him
.
He
took her. I know it. Have you called the police in Bakersfield? Did you tell them?”

Connor sighed. “Yes, Stryker contacted them. He suggested to them that the man who abducted you might have also abducted Emily Hartman.”

She shook her head, as if disgusted with this paltry offering and resumed her frenetic pacing.

Connor took a step toward her. “Claire, your mom said you haven’t been eating or sleeping.”

She stopped pacing again and met his eyes with a serious look. She lowered her voice in case any of her family members were outside the kitchen, listening. “I can’t…I can’t do this,” she said.

“Do what?”

She gestured around her. “This. Live a normal life. He’s out there, he has taken another girl, and now the same thing that happened to me is happening to her. I can’t…I can’t do this.”

Tears leaked from her tired eyes. Connor fought the urge to gather her in his arms and comfort her.

“I keep seeing Alison in my mind.” Claire shuddered and hugged herself. “It wasn’t real until I saw her. Can you understand that?”

“What wasn’t real?”

“That he could do what he did to me to someone else—that he
would
do it. There was only ever me. Tiffany was there willingly. But when I saw Alison and after that, when I came home, I found out about that other girl, Noel…” A sob choked off the rest of her sentence.

Connor laid a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t wince. He wanted to comfort her, hold her but he didn’t want to scare her or add to the tremulous fear he saw in her eyes. The more time he spent with her, the more Connor felt an inexplicable pull toward Claire. She was traumatized, and with it angry, frightened, overwhelmed, and confused. But she was also her. There were panic attacks, nightmares, and tears. In spite of that, being with her was effortless. The whole thing was making his mind spin.

“
Claire,” he whispered. “This isn’t your job. Believe me, the police are looking for this guy. The whole state is looking for him.”

She took a moment to compose herself, swallowed and looked up at him. Her eyes made him ache. “Do you have any leads?”

Connor cleared his throat. “Not on the photo yet, but they started digging at the house you took us to—the one where Miranda Simon was killed.”

As Connor had anticipated, Claire’s abductor had switched aliases from Rod Page to George Minarik and bought the property outright. Boggs and Stryker had tracked down the realtor who sold it. Rod Page aka George Minarik had paid cash over nine years earlier.

They had caught two breaks this time. First, because the suspect bought the house under a false name and was wanted in connection with two abductions, three counts of attempted murder, and several counts of assault and rape, they were able to get a search warrant and dig up the yard, which would add at least two murders to the man’s crimes, although it had taken two weeks to get all the requisite technicians and equipment before the digging started.

The second break was that George Minarik had a recent driver’s license.

Finally, they had a photo. Both Claire and Alison had positively identified the man as their abductor and the photo was almost an exact match to the composites the police department had created in the previous weeks. The driver’s license photo was released to the media, and for the last two weeks, Connor could hardly turn on the television without seeing the man’s face. The department got over a hundred calls but no viable leads. Boggs and Stryker were still waiting for fingerprint matches in the national database, although Stryker had called Connor today to say they might have something by tomorrow morning.

Claire stopped pacing. Her face was incredibly sad, and Connor felt like a failure. “That doesn’t sound like very much,” she said.

He grimaced. “It’s not, but I promise you, my division is working on this. Look, Boggs and Stryker wanted me to come by the division tomorrow morning. They think they may have found some new leads. Why don’t you meet me there and see if they’ve turned anything up?”

Claire sighed. Her face was so drawn and haggard. She looked like she had been through a war. He saw now why Jenny had called him, asked him to talk to her. “Fine. I’ll meet you there tomorrow.” She didn’t sound the least bit enthused. “But Connor,” she broke off, and he saw a raw mixture of anger and fear in her eyes.

“Yes, Claire.”

“Every hour that goes by is another hour that he is spending torturing Emily Hartman.”

Claire was already waiting for him when Connor arrived at work the next morning. She sat outside the building that housed the Major Crimes Unit with a cup of coffee in her hands. He could tell she had not slept overnight. In spite of that, he felt a little thrill go through him at the sight of her. She rose abruptly when she saw him and smiled. Once again, looking into her eyes, he felt a split second of panic. This time it wasn’t from the sorrow he often saw in them—it was her.

He looked away from her eyes, instead studying the dark, untamed curls resting against her cheek as she gazed up at him. He was completely disarmed by her, and it frightened him to think how much he had come to care for her in such a short period of time. The last time he’d even come close to feeling what he felt for Claire, he’d wasted eight years of his life only to have his heart trampled on. But he already knew he could not turn his back on her. It was far too late for that.

He smiled. “I heard you got your driver’s license. Did you drive yourself?”

Her eyes lit up a little. “Yeah, I did. I’ve driven before—as you know—but not as a licensed driver.”

Connor laughed and led them inside. Stryker greeted them as they got off the elevator at the division. Connor and Claire followed him to his desk. Stryker pulled out his chair and gestured to Claire. “Sit,” he said.

Claire took a seat, and Connor sat on the edge of Stryker’s desk. “Where’s Boggs?” he asked.

“Following up on something. He should be here any minute.”

Claire fidgeted with her hands and looked from Connor to Stryker.

“What have you got?” Connor asked.

Stryker sighed. He folded his arms across his chest and looked directly at Claire, his eyebrows drawn together. “Miss Fletcher,” he began.

“Claire. Please, call me Claire,” she said.

“Claire, what I’m about to tell you is generally not released to the public during an open investigation. A lot of it is public record but pretty much if the press doesn’t splatter it all over the front page or the six o’clock news, then people aren’t aware of it.”

“I understand,” Claire said. “I’m not a police officer or an investigator.”

Stryker nodded. “First, we found the remains of Jim Randall. At least that’s the initial report from the ME. It’ll take him a few days to write it up in his official report and release it to the press but the dental records match.”

Claire’s face turned pasty white. One of her hands flew to her chest. She swallowed with difficulty. “Where?”

“A few yards away from Teplitz and Simon,” Stryker said.

Claire squeezed her eyes closed. Connor saw a tremor move through her frame as she fought off the shock and horror of the revelation.

Stryker gave her a moment before he continued, “Second, I want you to hear this because I know a lot of victims of sex crimes who blame themselves for what happened to them. Almost all of them do at some point or another. But you gotta know that none of what happened to you was your fault. This guy was a creep from the get-go.”

Claire looked at Connor. The color did not return to her skin. She radiated dread. Connor could feel it where he stood. He smiled briefly at her. He was used to this. There weren’t many rap sheets or criminal pasts that surprised him. Repeat offenders made crime a lifelong habit. Many of them started out with misdemeanors and escalated into felonies. Before Stryker read off the various charges levied against Claire’s abductor in the past, Connor could almost tell her word for word what they would be.

Claire blinked. “Please. Just tell me.”

Stryker reached between Connor and Claire and pulled a thick file off his desk. “This guy’s rap sheet reads like a pedophile’s resume,” he said. “This is the reason the goddamn prints took so long. Not all of this shit was in AFIS.” For Claire’s benefit, he added, “AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It was before the technology came along. We turned up so many matches we thought the system was on the blink. Took a while to sift through them and confirm we were looking at the right guy. We’ve got several aliases but all their prints match up and so do photos and descriptions. He moved around a lot. He got mostly misdemeanors in a number of states—trespassing, stalking, indecent exposure, and a couple of peeping toms. Not all states have laws against that.”

“What happened with those?” Connor asked.

“He paid the fines and they let him go. He only ever spent one month in jail and that was in Vermont twenty-two years ago.”

“So he has money,” Connor said.

Stryker pursed his lips momentarily. “Oh you don’t know the half of it, Parks.” Stryker pulled a sheet of paper out of the file and placed it on the desk in front of Claire. Connor saw a black and white photo and a summary of criminal charges beneath it on the page. Claire studied it for a moment before gasping.

“It’s him,” she said.

Stryker nodded. “Bradley Cullen, Minnesota. One count of sexual assault and battery against a minor. This is the first record of a more serious offense that we could find. It’s pretty old. He made bail and took off. They never found him. The statute of limitations ran out but we managed to get a copy of the file thanks to our good buddies in the Minneapolis PD.”

“What does that mean?” Claire said.

Connor frowned. “Well that’s a tough one. Depending where you are, sexual assault and battery can include anything from the guy rubbing himself against you to rape. It has to involve contact.” Connor turned to Stryker. “What did the file say?”

“Thirteen-year-old girl. Apparently she lived across the hall from him in an apartment complex. He let her come over to his place to watch television. One day he starts fondling her. Kid starts screaming to high heaven. Parents called the cops and he was arrested that day,” Stryker said.

“What else?” Claire interjected before Connor could glean more information on the case from Stryker.

Stryker pulled out another sheet of paper similar to the first one. Again, he placed it in front of Claire. “Meet Timothy Bush. Virginia. One count of sexual assault and battery. Same story. He made bail and took off.”

Stryker placed another sheet in front of Claire. “Jem Nebesky. Tennessee. One count of statutory rape, two counts of sexual assault and battery. Makes bail, takes off. Next, we have Henry Kreisher. Florida. This is where our guy got a little smarter. He hooked up with a single mother. She had a twelve-year-old daughter. He ended up with six counts of aggravated sexual assault. Made bail, took off. Then he went to Colorado. Called himself Doug Spellings. Hooked up with another single mom who conveniently had a thirteen-year-old daughter. Three counts of aggravated sexual assault. Four counts of statutory rape. Made bail, took off. Next thing we hear from him, he’s living with Irene Geary.”