Profile of Fear: Book Four of the Profile Series (Volume 4) (15 page)

“Three women were murdered Tuesday in Indy. Same M.O. as the Brandy Murphy and Shirley Metz killings. One of them was from Shawnee County.”

“What’s her name?”

“Carol Sue Henley. The coroner identified her by her dental records.”

Cameron scrubbed his hands over his face. Could his morning get worse? “Damn it. I was hoping we’d find her alive. She’s been missing for nearly a year.”

“The other two victims had been reported as missing, too.”

“Carol Ann disappeared from a shopping mall. The mall surveillance tape showed her getting into a white Dodge utility van with a man and a woman, who were savvy enough to keep their backs turned away from the cameras.”

“So no identification of the couple?”

“No, and God knows I tried. No license plate either.” She pulled out a thumb drive and pushed it across his desk. “Here’s a copy of the tape if you want to view it yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you know the girl?”

“Yes, I’ve known the family for years. Her parents, Bob and Sue, own a farm near our property. After our mom died, Bob and Sue checked on my brothers and me every week, always bringing a casserole or a pie. They had us over for holiday dinners. Good people. Carol Ann was just a baby then, but I watched her grow up. I saw her just before she disappeared. She was with her parents at Mollie’s Café. She’d just gotten her learner’s permit to drive and they were celebrating. This is going to devastate them.”

“I’m sorry. They were notified earlier this morning.”

“Tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”

“I got a call from dispatch reporting bodies found at a house fire. By the time I got there, the whole place was engulfed in flames, and there were so many neighbors in the streets gawking, it looked like a street party. We had to send for backup to clear the area before someone got hurt.”

“Arson?”

“Yes, but the fire isn’t what killed the girls. The response team was able to carry the bodies out, at least what was left of them, before the house burst into flames.”

“What do you mean?”

“All three of them were in the upstairs bedroom where they were found with their throats slit.”

“Just like Brandy Murphy and Shirley Metz. Did they have the tattoos?”

“All three.”

“It’s our perp. That makes five victims that we know of.” He shook his head with disgust. “What kind of an animal does something like that?”

“The same kind of animal that gets himself a starring role on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

Cameron felt the blood drain from his face. “Who?”

“Juan Ortiz. He’s wanted for”

“I know who he is and why he’s wanted. How can you be sure it’s him?” It was as if he were entering his own private nightmare, and he feared he’d never get out.

“We’ve got an eyewitness. We had intel suggesting Ortiz was in Indiana last month, so we put out a BOLO on him. I had a photo of him along with some of his crime buds that I showed to the neighbor. She picked Ortiz out of a photo lineup and insisted that was the guy, along with two other men, she saw entering the house that night before the fire. Said she was looking out her window because she couldn’t sleep, and saw a black SUV pull up in front of the house next door. She’d become curious and concerned about its occupants because there were men visiting the house at all hours of the night. Once or twice she’d seen an older woman leave the house and come back with shopping bags. Although she was away the day they moved in, the woman across the street told her a mother and her daughters lived in the house.”

“Did she ever see the girls?”

“No. She was just going on what she heard about them. I interviewed the woman who lived across the street to get confirmation.”

“Any DNA or fingerprints?”

“Not at the house, but we got lucky. A patrolman found a black 2013 Cadillac Escalade with Illinois license plates abandoned behind an empty, foreclosed house. He ran the plates and discovered the SUV was stolen. CSI techs dusted it for prints, and guess whose prints they lifted from the seat adjustment lever? Mr. Juan Ortiz.”

Cameron paled and swallowed to push bile back down his throat. As much as he wanted to believe that Donda had hatched those stories she told Carly about seeing Ortiz in Shawnee County, he now had to face the facts. Ortiz
was
in Indiana, and the threat to Becca and his family was very real. The only safety net was the fact that no one but Social Services and his family knew where Becca was living. At least not yet. If Donda had a chance to exchange Becca’s location to save herself, he was sure she would. He pulled out his cell and texted the county jail to make sure Donda had been placed in solitary. When he did not get an immediate response, he decided to check it out for himself. Something was wrong. Alarm tightened his gut.

“What’s wrong?”

Cameron shook his head and grabbed his keys. “Robynn, let’s take a ride. We have an inmate who says she has information about Juan Ortiz.”

Chapter Thirty

The first thing Cameron and Robynn noticed when they pulled up to the Shawnee County Jail was one of the Coroner’s white vans parked outside.

“That’s odd,” Cameron said, as he opened the driver side door. “Wonder what happened?”

He and Robynn entered the jail and spoke to the jail administrator, Paul White. “We’re here to see inmate Donda Hicks.”

Paul’s face drained of color. “Sgt. Chase, I was about to call you.”

“What’s up?”

“We just discovered Donda Hicks hung herself in her cell.”

Cameron exploded. “What the hell are you talking about? I just saw her an hour ago.”

“Yes, sir. When they brought her back to the jail, the other inmates were on their break in the yard. She said she didn’t feel well and wanted to go straight to her cell. So that’s where they took her.”

“My order was that she be put in solitary with no visitors.”

Paul nodded nervously. “They were going to do that after the yard break was over and they’d done roll call. During roll call, by the time they got to her cell, she was hanging from the top bunk by bed sheets. She died before they could get to her.”

“I’d like to see her cell.” Robynn said.

“So would I.” Cameron agreed, thinking they might find something in Donda’s cell that would tell them why she killed herself.

Cameron and Robynn checked in their weapons and a guard led them to Donda’s cell. The inmates in the cells surrounding Donda’s were visibly upset and stared at them as they passed by.

Donda’s cell was sparse, with two metal structures jutting from the wall across from the bunk bed, anchored to the floor. One structure served as a table, the other as a chair, while a stainless steel toilet was attached to the far wall. Donda’s body had already been taken to Bryan’s facility for autopsy.

On the metal table were four paperback books. Cameron flipped through each one then set it aside. As he was flipping through the pages of the fourth book, a slip of white paper fell out.

“There’s writing on the paper. What does it say?” Robynn leaned toward him.

Cameron held out the note so they both could read it.

The kid is dead or you are. You choose.

Just then a guard came to the door. “Sgt. Chase, you have a phone call. Said it was an emergency.”

Cameron took the guard’s cell phone and lifted it to his ear. “Sgt. Chase.”

“This is Brody. Another body’s been found near Hillsboro by a family of campers.”

“On my way.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Following Brody’s directions, they got onto U.S. Highway 136 heading toward Hillsboro. Once he reached the crime scene, he noticed one of Bryan Pittman’s Shawnee County Coroner vans was already parked at the side of the road, just before the curve.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. This is where Shirley Metz’s body was found.” Robynn exclaimed.

“Unbelievable. I don’t need Carly to tell me if this is the same killer, he’s shoving it into our faces.”

Once they’d walked to the curve in the road, they turned right and crossed the drainage ditch. That’s when Cameron noticed a freshly cut path leading deeper into the woods.

“This path wasn’t cleared last time we were here. Remember how we had to plow through the brush? Did the killer actually take the time to come out here to make a path to the body? That’s pretty damn brazen.”

Robynn considered that. “Maybe. But there could be other reasons for creating a trail. Maybe his victim was alive when he brought her here, and the cleared path was part of his con to get her here in the first place.”

The pathway led them by the huge oak tree where Shirley Metz’s body had been found. The papery wasp nest still hung on a branch. They moved farther until they came to a grassy clearing near a brook. They saw Bryan Pittman standing next to a bloodied young woman tied upright to an elm tree.

Cameron approached him, while Robynn moved closer for a better look. “Bryan, what do we have?”

“Looks to be a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. Just a guess, but it looks like she’s been dead twenty-four hours or so. I’ll know more during the autopsy.”

“Cause of death?”

“Deep cut to her throat.”

“Like Brandy Murphy and Shirley Metz?”

“Yes, her throat was cut like theirs. But there’s a couple of differences here.”

“What’s that?”

“No tattoo, and she has smaller cuts and jabs all over her body. I counted twenty. Looks like she was tortured before her death.”

“That’s new. Why would he torture this victim and not the others? What did he want from her?”

Cameron stepped around Bryan to get a better look at the victim. Long brown hair covered her face, her legs and arms had horizontal cuts, and blood soaked the blue sundress she was wearing.

“Any identification?” Cameron asked Bryan.

“No purse or anything.”

One of the crime scene technicians appeared with a camera, another tech was at his side. While one pushed the victim’s hair away from her face, the other took photos. When Cameron was able to see her face, his heart stopped.

He turned to Bryan. “I know her. That’s Melanie Barrett. She’s a social worker.”

“Why would anyone want to torture a social worker? What could she have that the killer wanted?”

Cameron pulled out his cell phone to call home. “She was
Becca’s
social worker.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Robynn jumped into the car, slamming the door behind her. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Not answering, Cameron speed-dialed Kaitlyn’s cell number and got her voice mail. “Kaitlyn, call me as soon as you get this message. It’s important.”

He then called dispatch and ordered a deputy to do a wellness check at the main house. Tossing his cell on the console, he revved the engine and did a U-turn onto the highway.

“Talk to me, Cam. What’s going on?”

“It’s a long,
personal
story. You don’t want personal from me, remember?”

“If it has to do with this case, and I have a feeling that it does, I need to know. From the beginning.”

He shot her a quick glance, worry lining his mouth, deep and drawn. “Yes, it probably has something to do with this case.”

“Talk to me.”

“Not long ago, at a meth bust, I met Becca, a two-year-old who had been physically abused and exposed to meth. Both parents were jailed with a laundry list of charges and faced lengthy prison terms. I made a request to be her foster dad and was approved.”

“You’re fostering a little girl?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” He snapped.

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I had no idea you’d do something like that.”

“That’s on you, Robynn. You’ve kept your distance and I’ve respected that. If you had wanted to know more about me, I figure you would have asked.”

“I deserve that. But what does this little girl have to do with our case?”

“According to her meth-head mother, Donda Hicks, Juan Ortiz is Becca’s biological father. I believe her. She thought Ortiz tracked her to Shawnee County because he wants his kid.”

“What does any of this have to do with the victim at the crime scene?”

“The victim’s name is Melanie Barrett and she’s Becca’s social worker. Besides my family, she was the only one who knew where Becca lives.”

“Cam, we have no evidence that Juan Ortiz killed this woman.”

“He has plenty of motive. She stood between him and the kid he’s searching for.”

“Others might have motive, too. Social workers put their lives in danger every time they remove a child from his or her home. The parents get angry, as do the grandparents, and the rest of the family. How do we know that someone from her work didn’t kill her?”

“You may be right. But what if you’re wrong? I have a two-year-old who depends on me to protect her. And right now, I have no clue where Kaitlyn and Becca are.”

He flicked on the light bar atop his SUV and stomped on the accelerator. “I’ve got to get home. I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to Becca. Christ, that maniac could abduct her and take her to Mexico and I might never find her. He’s a trafficker who would sell his own mother, if he thought he would profit.”

“We’ll get there in time, Cam. We’ll protect Becca.”

“We?” Surprised, he glanced at her.

“We. I’m involved now, and I’m in it for the long haul.”

They reached the house and Cam turned into the driveway. Kaitlyn’s car was parked in one of the four-car garage spaces. Slamming the gear to park, he jumped from the car and ran into the house, Robynn not far behind. With guns drawn, they searched the house, clearing each room. No one was there. They met downstairs in the kitchen and Cam searched for some kind of note from Kaitlyn that might let them know where she and Becca were. There was no note to be found.

Robynn peered outside the kitchen window. “Cam, come here. There is something you need to see.”

Cameron moved next to her. In the garden, Becca stood over some tomato plants, watering them with a sprinkling can with Godiva at her side. Kaitlyn was nearby, pulling weeds.