Going Gone (8 page)

Patty set the bag of food down on the desk and went to get her raincoat. She did a last walk-through of the boutique to make sure everything was okay, then picked up her food and opened the back door again. Her keys were in one hand and her food and umbrella in the other as she pulled the door shut behind her, then used the remote on her key ring to set the store alarm.

The rain was loud, drowning out the sound of traffic as well as the footsteps of the man who came up behind her. She felt something sharp at the back of her neck, then excruciating pain. She fell to the ground, seizing in every muscle. The horror was being able to see and hear her assailant without the ability to move or speak.

“Dinner is going to be late,” Hershel muttered as he kicked the sack of takeout aside and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Patty Goss was finally leaving, but she wasn’t going to make it home.

He got her into his van, yanked the electrodes from the Taser out of her neck and calmly strangled her. Then he drove out of D.C. with her body hidden beneath a pile of painters’ drop cloths. He also had a stepladder, some empty paint cans and some used paintbrushes he had pulled out of a Dumpster as part of his cover, should he ever be stopped by the cops.

The rain was really coming down by the time he reached his chosen dump site. It was far away from the city limits, along the banks of the Potomac River.

He wasn’t a big man, but he was strong. Still, it was with no small effort that he dragged her body through the mud and grass, then rolled her into the water. Then he stayed, standing in the downpour and watching until she sank from view.

By the time he got back to his apartment, the rain was a deluge. He got out on the run and hurried up the steps as fast as his aching knees would take him, thankful for the covered overhang as he fumbled with his keys.

Once inside, he shed his wet things at the door and proceeded to turn on lights as he went through the apartment, unaware that his landlady was standing at her bedroom window, watching him in the dark.

Lucy Taft didn’t trust a businessman who carried large amounts of cash and chose to stay in a secluded garage apartment rather than a posh and accommodating hotel. She didn’t know what he was up to, but she didn’t want to become complicit by ignorance.

* * *

After two frantic hours of no contact with his wife, Patty’s husband called the D.C. police and asked them to do a welfare check at her place of business. They found her car in the back parking lot, her purse and umbrella near the back door, and what was left of the food scattered and rain soaked, but no Patty. The only security cameras were in the front of the store, so there was no way to know exactly what had happened. The next day, her picture and the story of her disappearance were on the local news.

* * *

Cameron saw it and felt bad for the husband, thinking how he would have felt if it had been Laura.

* * *

Lucy Taft read about the abduction in the paper and made a mental note to remind Mildred to make sure the security system in her house was in proper working order.

* * *

Hershel saw the broadcast. The first clue was out there; now the rest was up to them. He was satisfied with the way things were going and began the planning of clue number two.

* * *

Two days later the badly battered body of a woman was pulled out of the Potomac. From the Taser marks and the strangulation bruises around her neck, it was obvious she’d been murdered. Despite the damage to her face, she was positively identified as Patty Goss by her hysterical husband, who recognized her flying-monkey tattoo.

Now the missing person case was handed off to Homicide, and to make the cops’ job a little harder, Patty had no known enemies and a husband with an airtight alibi.

* * *

Hershel was watching TV and having toaster waffles and scrambled eggs when the floater in the Potomac made the news. He turned up the volume and then added extra syrup to his waffles. The authorities were talking about her job, her family and how long she’d worked at the boutique. His eyes narrowed as he took another bite. The game was on.

* * *

Cameron was propped up in bed reading the morning paper and happily anticipating the breakfast in bed Laura was making when he found out about the missing woman whose body had turned up in the river. He thought briefly about the similarity to the way the Stormchaser’s victims turned up and wondered if Tate knew, but for the moment he put his curiosity on the back burner. He could smell bacon and fresh coffee. Beyond that, breakfast was supposed to be a surprise.

He paused before turning the page, and not for the first time examined the bedroom décor. It pleased him to see the tiny pieces of Laura’s life still hanging on the walls and sitting tucked away on the shelves among her books. He knew she had lived here all her life, sleeping in this very room throughout her childhood, her teenage years with all the drama, then coming back to visit during college, and finally moving home to care for her elderly parents after they became too old to live alone.

He was sure the decorations and colors had changed throughout the years, but her spirit had not. The loving energy within the walls of this house was powerful. He knew because he felt it every day.

Being the only child of an older couple, he’d never really known that kind of life. His father’s job as a research chemist for an oil company had them moving often, so he had no personal ties to any particular city. Both his parents had died in an accident when he was in college, and he had been without family ever since.

And now he had Laura. In just over a month they would be married, and with the words
I do
he would be gaining a wife
and
a sister. Becoming part of the Stormchaser team had also turned his partners into the brothers he’d never had. It had taken him a while, but in a roundabout way, he had family again.

The blast from a passing car horn ended his musing as he glanced back down at the paper. A few moments later, he heard footsteps coming down the hall and looked up just as Laura walked in with a cup of coffee.

“Breakfast needs about ten more minutes, but I didn’t want you to have to wait for this,” she said.

Cameron grinned. “This breakfast-in-bed thing could really become a habit. Am I to assume this will be a regular Saturday routine?”

She arched an eyebrow. “You are not to assume anything of the sort.”

She set his coffee on the nightstand at his elbow and blew him a kiss.

“I love you most,” he said as she went out the door.

“You better!” she yelled back, and kept on walking.

It made him laugh. Her sass was part of why he loved her, but it was also part of the personality that had helped keep her alive, a fact he no longer took for granted.

He took a sip of the coffee and sighed. One sugar, no cream and nearly hot enough to melt the taste buds off his tongue. Perfect, just like her.

He set the coffee aside and went back to the story on the dead Reston woman. He frowned as he continued to read. They’d found her in the river, obviously a murder victim, which didn’t surprise him, considering what had been reported about her disappearance. Taser marks on the back of her neck. Autopsy pending.

His frown deepened, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. In the grand scheme of murders, the use of a Taser wasn’t that unusual, but it had been the Stormchaser’s favorite method of disabling his victims.

He kept reading the article, part of which echoed what the newscaster had mentioned on the news last night, before the discovery of the body. The husband’s alibi was rock solid, and robbery was not a motive. Now that the body had been found, something useful might turn up in the autopsy. For the time being, the FBI would simply follow the case’s progression without intervening in police procedure. He wondered if Tate had heard anything more from the Louisiana agents. It was too early to call, but on impulse, he sent a text.

Have you seen news? Missing Reston woman found floating in Potomac w/ Taser marks on her neck. Heard anything from Louisiana?

The mere act of sending it lessened the knot in his gut. He took another drink of coffee and turned to the sports page to see which college football games were being televised, but his conscience was bugging him. He had yet to mention anything to Laura about their concern, but he would have to say something soon, just in case.

Then she walked in carrying a tray heaped with steaming-hot food and drove every other thought from his mind. She was wearing a pink bibbed apron and nothing else. The smile on her face said it all. She’d surprised him, all right.

“Even though breakfast doesn’t come with dessert, I made an exception. However, you can’t have it until you’ve eaten your meal,” she said primly.

He smiled, threw the paper aside and patted the bed beside him.

“Then put that tray down and grab a fork. Either you help me eat, or some of this is going to waste.”

She stifled a giggle as she set the tray down in front of him, and when he reached out to stroke the thrust of her breast beneath the bib, she slapped his hand lightly.

“Not yet, Mr. Man,” she said, and made a point of sliding onto the bed sideways, so there were no sneak peeks of her bare backside.

He groaned. “Have mercy, Laura Jean. How do you expect me to eat with you sitting there like that?”

She handed him a fork. “Why...just like everyone else, lover boy. One bite at a time.” She waved her hand over the tray. “Does it look good?”

“It looks amazing,” he said softly.

She pointed at the food. “I meant the food.”

“Dessert is my favorite.”

She smiled, got up, removed the tray from the bed and untied her apron, letting it fall to the floor at her feet.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“We’ll nuke the eggs later,” she drawled as she climbed back into bed.

Eight

T
ate was in the shower when Nola tapped on
the door. He leaned out with a smile on his face, about to invite her in, when
she put a finger to her lips and held up his cell phone.

“It’s Agent Delroy from Louisiana,” she said, handing him a
towel.

He went from play to business as he turned off the water,
grabbing a towel as he stepped out.

“This is Benton.”

“Good morning, Agent Benton. Sorry to call so early, but I
wanted to fill you in before we left on a new case.”

“I appreciate it. What did you learn?”

“That a lot of roses were sold on August thirty-first,” Delroy
said drily. “Over three hundred dozen in more than one hundred and fifty area
florists, and that doesn’t include the floral departments in supermarkets.”

Tate groaned inwardly. “Really? That many?”

“Yes,” Delroy said. “That many. We showed pictures of Hershel
Inman’s DMV photo, as well as an artist’s rendering of what he might look like
after his potential injuries if he survived, and not one person recognized
him.”

Tate sighed. “We learned early on he was a master of disguise.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. Did you get any kind of a lead
on the card?”

“No. Unfortunately the same design was in nearly every
shop.”

“Were they able to get DNA or a print off it?”

“There were so many prints on the card it was impossible, and
the same went for DNA. Lord knows how many people handled it before someone
chose it for Louise Inman’s roses.”

Tate sighed. “Thank you for your hard work. We had to try.”

“More than happy to do what I could.”

“Good luck on the case you just caught,” Tate added.

“Thank you,” Delroy said, and disconnected.

Tate ended the call and finished drying off. It wasn’t until he
picked up the phone to take it back to the bedroom that he noticed he’d missed a
text from Cameron. He read it and laid the phone aside without responding. There
was nothing to say. Everything in him accepted the possibility that it could be
Inman, but the contact phone they had used with him for so long had been
deactivated, and without a way for Inman to taunt them, there was no easy way to
verify that he was still alive—which Tate was afraid he was. He hoped he was
wrong about that. God in heaven, he hoped he was wrong.

* * *

Megan Oliver was twenty-seven and had been working as a
court reporter for the past six years in and around D.C. When the weather was
nice, as it had been for the past two days, she ate lunch outside so she could
chat with her boyfriend on the phone.

She didn’t pay attention to the people around her and was
unaware of the man sitting nearby and listening to every word she said. She
didn’t see him when she walked to her car every evening or know that he followed
her home.

Hershel already knew from overhearing her phone conversations
that she took night classes in D.C., and that she had a business-law class
tonight. He’d also heard her comment that she planned on slipping out early.

That was all the opening he needed. When she left her apartment
later to go to class, he followed her. She wouldn’t see him until it was too
late.

* * *

Business law was boring, and when Megan’s three-hour
class took a break about an hour and a half in, she went to the bathroom and
didn’t go back. She had to be in court early in the morning and needed to get
some sleep. The morning drive from Reston to D.C. was always hectic, and if the
past two days were any example, court would last all day. She would be glad when
this trial was over. The testimony was gruesome, the evidence was grisly and it
was giving her nightmares.

She glanced over her shoulder as she hurried down the hall and
then out of the building. The wind was rising. She glanced up at the sky. It was
overcast. It would probably rain again before morning. She clutched her iPad and
water bottle up against her chest as she hurried across the parking lot.

About halfway there she realized three of the pole lights were
out and frowned. That was odd. Someone needed to take care of that. At the same
time, she heard a noise beneath the car she was passing, then screamed when a
yellow tomcat darted out and ran past her, yowling and hissing its
discontent.

“Dear Lord, no lights, crazy cats. What next?”

She lengthened her stride, trying to find her dark car in an
even darker lot. She could remember the row, but not how far down, and without
the pole lights, she couldn’t spot it easily. She aimed the remote on her key
ring and started pressing it, then kept pressing and clicking until suddenly a
set of car lights came on.

“Bingo,” she muttered, and lengthened her stride.

She was almost there when she saw something dark on the hood
and hoped to God it wasn’t another crazy cat.

She was all the way past the bumper before she realized there
was a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in tissue paper, lying on the hood.

Her first thought was that her boyfriend had done this, and
then she remembered he was out of town. The next thing that occurred to her was
that the guy who sat behind her in business law was finally through flirting and
making a move.

“So what have we here?” she said lightly as she reached across
the hood to pick up the flowers.

* * *

Hershel had followed Megan to class and then parked in
the back of the lot, waiting for traffic to clear out. Once activity slowed
down, he pulled out of his parking space and began cruising until he’d located
her car again. Then he drove back through the lot, stopping three different
times to shoot out security lights with a pellet gun before parking back behind
her car. He jumped out quickly, laid a bouquet of flowers on the hood and then
went back to his van and settled down to wait.

An hour passed with more people arriving and a few of them
leaving, but none of them were Megan Oliver. It was well on the way into hour
two when he saw movement at the front of the building again. He could tell it
was a woman with short dark hair like Megan Oliver’s, but from this distance he
didn’t know if it was her.

He rolled down the window to listen for footsteps. A couple of
minutes later he heard someone coming down the row, and when a tomcat suddenly
squalled and hissed, he heard a woman scream.

That was when he made his move. He slipped out of the van and
ducked down to wait.

He watched her hesitate in the spotlight of her headlights,
then saw the smile break across her face as she saw the flowers. When she turned
sideways to reach across the hood, he stood up and fired the Taser.

Her body flailed as the electrodes hit her cheek. She fell
forward onto the hood of the car, her body jerking as her brain exploded. Some
of the flowers fell under her, the rest beneath their feet. From a distance, had
anyone see them, it would have looked like a couple locked in an embrace as he
pulled her up from the hood. But then he quickly ducked down and began dragging
her backward to his van. He opened the doors and rolled her up and into the
back, then climbed in and hit the lock button.

She was twitching and jerking, and he could hear a faint moan
as she kept trying to scream. He got down on his knees, wrapped a length of rope
around her neck and proceeded to strangle her. When it was done, he yanked the
electrodes out of her face, pulled the drop cloths over her body and drove off
into the night.

Halfway to the river, the first drops of rain began to fall,
but he kept on driving, going back to the same distant dump site he’d used
before. He needed the body to be found, but not immediately. She needed to stew
in the Potomac for a while before being swept downstream toward the city. It was
better to draw out the tension of her disappearance, let everyone worry like
he’d worried—let everyone wonder where she was like he’d wondered about Louise’s
body when it had slipped into the floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina. Fair was
fair.

He was tired by the time he got back to his apartment, and he
still had to negotiate those damn steps. His back was hurting. It felt as if he
might have pulled a muscle. He would be glad when this was all over so he could
get back to Lake Chapala. Everything in his life there was on one floor.

* * *

Lucy Taft was in bed with the lights out, watching
television in the dark, when she saw headlights flash across the opposite wall.
This was how she used to know when her grandson came home. Now she was using it
to keep tabs on her renter.

She got up to peek out the window and saw him through the rain,
walking up the steps. He appeared to be wearing the same brown raincoat and
hiking boots he wore every time he went out, which told her that wherever he’d
been, it hadn’t been at any business meeting. She watched him turning on lights
inside, then marked the time down in her journal and went back to bed.

* * *

It wasn’t until the next day when Megan Oliver didn’t
show up for court that anyone began to take notice. Then, when she didn’t call
in or answer her phone, her coworkers began to worry. After sending a police car
to her residence, all they learned was that no one answered the door and her car
was gone.

At that point her friends began to backtrack her whereabouts
from the night before and found her car in the parking lot where she had class.
When they found her purse beneath the car and a bouquet of bedraggled flowers
scattered nearby, they called the police again.

Now she went from late for work to missing.

* * *

The story and Megan Oliver’s photo made the third page
of the paper the next day, along with a phone number for the Washington, D.C.,
police department, should anyone have information as to her whereabouts.

Lucy Taft heard the information on the news while eating her
breakfast and frowned. A second woman was missing? What on earth was going
on?

* * *

Laura was finishing her cereal and Cameron was making
himself another piece of toast when she saw Megan Oliver’s picture.

“Oh, no!” she said, and pulled the paper closer.

Cameron turned around. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“I recognize her,” she said, pointing at the picture. “She and
Sarah were in school together.”

Cameron went back to the table to read over her shoulder. When
he realized another woman had gone missing, his heart sank.

“So you knew her?”

“Not like a best friend, just like someone you would see around
school.”

“And she’s missing? Is she married?”

“I don’t know. No, I guess not. At least, she still uses her
maiden name.”

Cameron eyed the expression on her face and then reached for
her hand.

“I need to talk to you. I’ve been putting it off, but I can’t
any longer.”

Laura dropped the paper and turned to face him.

“What’s up?”

“This is the second woman who’s gone missing in the area in the
past week.”

She frowned. “So what does that mean to me?”

Cameron rubbed a finger lightly across her forehead, as if
trying to smooth away the frown.

“The thirty-first of August was the anniversary of Louise
Inman’s death. Someone left a bouquet of roses near her grave in New Orleans in
her name with a card that said, ‘Love you.’”

Without thinking, she grabbed the locket, tightening the chain
around her neck.

When Cameron caught the move, he knew she’d connected the
dots.

“We don’t know anything for sure. We’re just keeping track
right now.”

“Has he contacted Tate like he did before?”

“No, the Bureau deactivated the phone months ago.”

Her fingers tightened on the necklace.

“So you can’t be sure?”

“Not yet.”

Her eyes welled with tears.

“Is he coming after me? Will I be next?”

Cameron felt sick. She’d already made the same connection he
had.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because he went after Nola, then Jo, and I’m all that’s
left.”

He stood up and took her into his arms, sick that he’d put fear
back into her life.

“We don’t know it’s him, so right now let’s not borrow
trouble.”

She could feel the thunder of his heartbeat beneath her cheek
and knew he was as upset as she was. She looked up, her fingers still tight
around the locket.

“You can’t lose me now, remember?”

He brushed a kiss across her forehead.

“Of course I remember, and no, I won’t lose you. Ever.”

She was shaking from head to toe. She heard him say the words,
but they both knew that when it came to the Stormchaser, there were no
guarantees.

* * *

Megan Oliver had always liked long soaking baths, but
thirty-six hours’ worth of river water had been overkill in the worst kind of
way. Unfortunately, it was a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout working on a cleanup
project for a merit badge who found the body. After a frantic call to his father
a short distance away, they contacted the police. They showed up within minutes,
roped off the area and sent the boy and his father home. His good deed for the
day had been done.

It took another twelve hours before they got a positive
identification, and then the news went out. Megan Oliver was no longer missing.
She had what appeared to be Taser marks on her face, and she’d been strangled
the exact same way as boutique manager Patty Goss. No one at the precinct had
said serial killer yet, but they were all thinking it.

When Tate Benton found out they had another murder victim, he
sent a text to Wade and Cameron.

Another murder victim w/ Inman’s M.O. Going to talk to director.
Catch up w/ you later.

Wade was coming out of court and frowned when he saw the
message. He had his own grudge against Inman and would like nothing better than
to drop him out of a plane, but his job demanded capture and arrest.