Her Last Scream (8 page)

“You have no idea where Rick lived. Even after a week?”

“No. We were in a big old wood house in the country, almost no traffic on the road. The satellite TV didn’t carry local stations. I’d figure it was in the South. The weather was warm and humid and I saw flowers blooming in Rick’s back yard.”

“You never asked your location?”

“He said we were somewhere in America, and it would be best if that was all I knew.”

“You didn’t question him?”

“Rick put his life on the line for me. No, I didn’t.”

“You really think he put his life on the line?”

“If James somehow managed to find me in Rick’s house, he would have killed us both.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

The Doc leaned close to Gail. “Do you think James is still looking for you?”

Gail nodded without hesitation. “If he’s alive, he’ll never stop. He’ll kill me in the worst way he can think up.”

“Because you left him?”

Gail thought a moment and turned sad eyes to Kavanaugh.

“No. Because I embarrassed him.”

Interview over. Kavanaugh and Gail stood, hugged, left the room. Sally, Harry and I waited until Doc K saw Gail to the door.

“Great job, Doc,” I said.

“Rick creeps me out. Taking pictures of eyes.”

“Spooked us too.” I turned to Sal. “The week-long stay at a single safe house – is that normal?”

“Longer than usual. But Rick was right: the runner might be in a place where only three other folks are positioned to take her without driving three hundred miles. These people aren’t like firefighters, poised to spring into action. They’re ordinary folks with ordinary lives, except two or three times a year they do something extraordinary for someone they’ve never met and will never see again.”

“Isn’t the secrecy over the top?” Harry asked.

Sal said, “It was more casual a couple years back, Harry. Everyone along the chain knew in advance when someone was coming, who she’d stay with, where she went next. One day a woman went through four exchanges, made it about halfway to her destination. Turns out her husband was a sociopathic planning machine who followed her every step through the system, living in his car, watching and waiting.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. “Jesus. What happened?”

“Remember the husband-and-wife academics in Durham? The home-invasion murder that was never solved? At least in the press.”

I recalled the grisly crime. And how it had disappeared from view.

“The killer was the sociopathic husband?” I asked.

“The academic couple ran a safe house, Carson. Few know that. But crazy hubby missed a hand-over – pure luck for the abused wife. She was on the road again when her husband appeared at her former safe house. Finding he’d missed his wife, the husband decompensated and butchered the couple over a two-hour reign of horror, making them name the folks who’d picked up his wife. He was preparing to go after them. Luckily, a neighbor heard screams from the house, called the cops.”

I recalled the ending. “The psycho blew his head off with a .45.”

Sal nodded. “The law-enforcement people didn’t see how publicizing the network would achieve anything. Perhaps because the prosecutor and deputy chief of police were women. The system was revamped, anonymous ever since. No passing off travelers at homes, only places where people can look over their shoulders, head home when assured of not being tailed.”

“What keeps everything running?”

“A computer network, from what I hear. Someone gets on the computer and says they have a traveler near Dubuque trying to move east and caregivers east of Dubuque post their availability. Arrangements are made via throwaway cell phones, no home numbers.”

“The people at the two safe houses don’t meet?”

“Never. Everything’s compartmentalized.”

“Like spy cells,” I noted. “No one knows what’s going on except in their own link of the chain. It’s the perfect way to keep the freaks out of the railroad. Or …” I raised an eyebrow at Harry, knowing he’d already gotten to the bottom line.

“Or give them a private carriage that’s completely off the radar,” he said.

“Jesus,” Sally whispered, seeing the other side of the coin. “And no one’s the wiser.”

I nodded grimly. “It’s a killer’s dream universe, Sal. From first touch to last scream, the perp has total anonymity.”

I called Detective Amica Cruz of the Colorado State Police. It was an hour earlier there, seven o’clock Mountain Time. She sounded tired, like it had been a long day.

“Ms Cruz, is there a Women’s Crisis Center in Denver?”

I heard her stifle a yawn. “Yes. Why?”

I told her what we’d discovered from Gail. And that she might want to speak with local women’s services centers. “It’s a long shot,” I added. “But …”

“I’m going to make a call or two, Detective Ryder,” Cruz said, her voice suddenly all business. Don’t go far.”

Harry took his chair across from me, Sal pulled up another. My phone rang fifteen minutes later: Cruz. She said, “No woman of that description entered the local node.”

I tried to recall if I’d used the word
node
in my explanation. If I hadn’t, Cruz had somehow selected the terminology used within the system. “Did you know of the existence of the railroad before this?” I asked.

No response. It was odd, a simple yes or no was all I was after.

“Detective Cruz? Are you there?”

Sal said, “Give me the phone, Carson. You and Harry take a hike for a few, right.”

I shot Harry the eye and passed the phone to Sal. We walked out of earshot until waved back by Sally. She gave me the phone.

“Yes,” Cruz admitted. “I’m familiar with the center. And a supporter, in most cases.”

“But our victim down here didn’t go into the system there?” I said.

“The only women put in the system in the last two months are a black woman in her late twenties, a thirtyish Hispanic under five-foot-three and a thirtyish Caucasian woman …”

“That’s what we’ve got, dammit! I said she was –”

“… with heavy tattoos over her neck and upper torso.”

“Oh.”

“I actually listened when you talked, Detective Ryder. You might extend me the same courtesy.”

I apologized and hung up. I looked to Sal. “What did you say to Cruz to get her to open up?”

“I know folks at the center here. And that I consider the center an entity that does a lot of good, but occasionally operates in a legal limbo. Detective Cruz feels the same way. She was worried about negative publicity if you started flailing in all directions.”

“Publicity? Flailing?”

“Telling the press your suspicions, making it appear the center had been negligent in protecting a woman. This could become a Missing-Blonde story, Carson. That’s what’s worrying Cruz.”

The world was ablaze with economic uncertainty, nascent wars, regional massacres, and here and there the uplifting saga of hope. But the relentless maw of the twenty-four-hour news cycle seemed fixated on stories of missing young women, often blonde coeds; news organizations turning sad stories into national spectacles, an endless parade of talking-head experts analyzing and decrying every sordid aspect three times an hour. If the story stepped into the news eye, every women’s center in the country would be besieged by cameras and reporters.

“
Are you part of the women’s underground railroad system?
”

“
What do you do when battered women show up here?
”

“
Aren’t you afraid of angry husbands or boyfriends bombing your center?

The truth about the case would out, I figured. But better when all the facts were known, the lurid aspects muted by reality. Now would only be speculation and sensationalism, good for no one but the voyeuristic parasites who reveled in tragedy.

“So what did you tell Miz Cruz?” I asked Sal.

“That you and Harry were on the side of the angels. You’d keep everything under your hats. I was right, wasn’t I?”

Professor Thalius Sinclair had left his office at the university three hours earlier, had a light supper and a Scotch. He’d been to several men-only chat rooms – picking up conversations from last night – but had shifted to his favorite. He had certain special information to convey, but only if conditions were right.

Sinclair took another hit on the joint and glanced at the clock on the wall: 11.13 p.m. There would be few folks online, maybe just the ever-present HPDrifter.

1 member online

Sinclair typed in his password.

2 members online

3 members online

2 members online

Sinclair sighed and turned off his desktop computer. He reached down the desk and shut off his laptop as well. It was critical that he talk to Drifter, but alone. He’d try again in the near future.

Our bizarre case took a one-day sidetrack to a court action that kept Harry and me in suits and running to the stand in between objections and ploys by the defense. We did good and I was glad the opposing team was sloppy, nothing near the defense a Nathaniel Bromley might have mounted. The case went to the jury late the second morning, getting us out of the municipal courthouse near eleven, just in time to get a nervous call from Kavanaugh.

“Carson, Harry, I just heard from the Pensacola police. There’s a body in the morgue they want me to look at.”

Pensacola was an hour’s drive down the coast. “Why you?” I asked.

“The woman had my business card in her purse. Her name is Rhonda Doakes. I’m sure I’ve never known anyone by that name. This whole thing is spooky.”

“Maybe she had the card for the address,” I ventured, my cop’s mind generating solutions. “How about your gardeners? Other part-time employees?”

“They’d probably have my business cards,” she said, mentally reviewing companies that kept her home and business running smoothly. “I’ve got a gardening service, housecleaning service, maintenance for my heating and AC, computer-system types, folks who keep the koi pond running smoothly, the place that services my car …” She paused in surprise. “I must hand out twenty cards a year to non-patients.”

“You may never have seen this person, Doc,” I counseled.

“I’m not sure if that helps, Carson. But thanks.”

Kavanaugh’s work didn’t usually involve looking at dead bodies; tough for the first dozen or so. Harry and I volunteered to accompany Kavanaugh on her journey, part out of friendship, part detectively interest.

We made Pensacola in under an hour, entering the cooler room to see a round mound of gowned pathologist sitting and sipping coffee, and a slender black guy in a tan suit leaning a wall and reading the paper. The detective who’d caught the case, I figured. He was young, late twenties or so, meaning he was either good or connected. They rarely went together.

The pathologist was Leo Bates, morbidly obese, mid-forties, a six-foot egg with pumpkin head and a Van-dyke beard. Bates had started his career in Mobile fifteen years back, working with Clair. When it became clear she was the new Leonardo on the forensic pathology scene – or Newton, or Einstein; name your genius – Leo booked for Pensacola, where his two-hundred watts wouldn’t be outshone by Clair’s thousand.

Bates had done well, but harbored an infantile resentment of Clair for being better and brighter, and since I was a friend of Clair, he didn’t care for me either, expressing himself via finely honed passive-aggressivity.

“Well, well, the infamous Piss-it duo,” Bates said, making drama out of leaning to study my feet as I approached.

“I got something on my shoe, Leo?” I asked.

He straightened, wheezing from the effort. “Just seeing if your feet ever touch mortal ground.”

“You should see how they walk across water,” I said, too busy to be bothered by ego games. “You know Harry Nautilus. This is Doctor Nancy Kavanaugh. Your forensics folks found the Doc’s number in the vic’s purse.”

The guy against the wall snapped the paper shut and walked over. “Actually,” he said, “it was me who found the business card. I’m Detective Honus Clayton, Pensacola Homicide.”

“Honus is an upcoming star here in Pennsy,” Bates offered, licking his lips. “Had his name in the paper a half-dozen times this year, Pensacola’s own version of Carson Ryder.”

Clayton was studying a tray of implements. He selected one and held it in his closed hand. “We super law enforcement types have to talk, Leo,” he said. “Why don’t you take a restroom break and we’ll call you when we need you.”

Clayton flipped a shiny object to Bates, who made a clumsy catch. He puzzled at a pair of tweezers in his fat fingers.

“What the hell are these for, Clayton?”

“You got to find that thing, don’t you?”

Bates snarl-whined something nasty we were supposed to infer and not hear. He padded plumply away and Clayton moved into Alpha position, waving us to follow him to the bank of coolers. “We haven’t found anyone who knows the victim well, since she just moved into the neighborhood,” he said, checking a pocket notepad. “She and the next-door lady got on real good, both interested in gardening. Oddly enough, the vic had told the neighbor if she dropped out of sight to call the police.”

“Never good,” Harry said.

Clayton nodded. “After two days of not seeing Miz Doakes, the neighbor called. It was the day the body appeared, so everything went together fast.”

“Where was the body found?” I asked.

“Floating in the river and fouled in mangroves. It was discovered by kayakers.”

“Left in the water?”

“We found a shallow grave-sized hole fifty paces into the mangroves. We figured the body got dumped, sand shoveled over it. There’s a road and bridge two hundred feet upstream. The perp probably parked there, carried the body into the vegetation. They didn’t figure on high tide floating the body free and into the channel. But the same tide obliterated any footprints.”

“Cause of death?” Harry asked.

“Bates is a creepy twelve-year-old at heart, but he knows his stuff. He says Miz Doakes was beaten with fists, probably in weighted gloves.” He looked to Kavanaugh. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but she’s not a pretty sight.”

“You don’t know much yet?” Harry asked.

“We’re finding a lot of dead ends. Things she appeared to be, but wasn’t.”

“I’m ready,” Kavanaugh said, meaning she wasn’t, but was as ready as she was going to get. Clayton grabbed the handle on the cooler door, rolled the body out. The face was covered with a drape. He pulled back the fabric and Kavanaugh looked down.

“Oh shit,” Kavanaugh whispered, the first time I’d ever heard her curse.

My eyes went to the face of the dead woman and I felt the hard shock of recognition, despite the purple, busted-bone damage to the face. It was the woman we’d known, albeit briefly, as Gail.

The woman who’d made it through the tunnel to a brand-new life.

Kavanaugh’s place was closer on the return trip, so we regrouped at Casa Kavanaugh, pushing through her front door at five p.m.

“Doakes was in the system four months back,” I argued after Doc K had brought bottles of Pete’s Wicked Ale. “It’s the same killer.”

“Not so fast,” Harry said. “Gail – I mean Doakes’s eyes and hair were intact, her breasts were undamaged. She was chucked into a swamp, not set in a tableau of garbage and filth. It’s a different killer, Carson.”

“Maybe it only looks different to throw suspicion somewhere else.”

Harry looked to Kavanaugh, sipping white vino and watching the tennis match of theories. “Doc? How about some refereeing here.”

I looked expectantly toward the Doc, but she came down in the other court, handing the set to Harry. “The person who savaged Lainie Krebbs and butterfly Lady was driven to hurt women and display them as trash and sewage. Rhonda Doakes’s death was horrible, but lacking symbolic attacks on her womanhood.”

“Bottom line?” I asked.

“Doakes’s murderer was killing one woman. The other murderer was killing all women.”