Ruthless (25 page)

“What about Mr. Bullock?” Jess asked just to see what the lady would say. “Is he on his usual route today?”

Ruthie shook her head. “No, he’s out sick. Someone else is taking care of his route.”

“He’s sick?” Jess repeated. “Did he call in?”

“Mr. Cagle said he had a call from him early this morning. Jerry has one of those stomach bugs or something.”

Actually what he had was a fractured skull and rigor
mortis. Jess would have to wait for time of death but she would bet her favorite pair of shoes Cagle hadn’t gotten a call this morning. “And what about Mr. Gifford and Mr. Kennamer?”

“Both are on their usual routes,” Ruthie confirmed.

“I need Mr. Cagle’s cell number, please.” Jess had the routes for the other two. It wouldn’t be too difficult to find them. Besides, it was Cagle she wanted to talk to.

When Ruthie hesitated, Jess tacked on, “This is police business.”

“Well, all right then.” She wrote the number down and passed it to Jess.

“If Mr. Cagle calls in, please be sure to let him know I’m trying to reach him.”

“I’ll tell him,” she promised.

With Harper leading the way, Jess hurried out of the building, barely able to keep her mouth shut until they were outside. As soon as she was in Harper’s SUV with the door closed she let loose. “We have to find Cagle.”

“You think he’s our perp?” Harper started the engine.

“What I think is that we have a missing child and a dead guy at the scene—a dead guy who worked as a meter reader for better than three decades. No one else had carte blanche for getting so close to each victim’s home every damned month of the year.”

The coincidence was just too big. Cagle claimed to have heard from the victim this a.m., and that was most likely impossible. Cagle had dogs. There were pictures in his office. He loved them that much… which meant he knew how to handle a dog like Samson, the Myerses’ Lab. He had the means and he had the opportunity. All they had to do was find the motive.

Jess struggled to restrain her anticipation and no small amount of excitement at the idea that she had him. She didn’t have squat in the way of evidence, not unless they got something from this morning’s crime scene, but she was certain as she could be without it.

The jangling sound in her bag had her fishing for her cell. She stared at the number. Not one she knew, but it was local. Wouldn’t be Gina Coleman. Jess had already sent her a text to let her know her lead didn’t pan out, but there was a story to be told about Atkins Electric. Giving Gina the scoop was the least she could do. “Harris.”

“Jess Harris?”

Worry insinuated its way between the barely restrained sense of victory and desperate urgency thumping inside her. She was onto something here. She didn’t need any distractions. “This is Jess Harris.”

What if her sister was back in the hospital? Her heart jolted and immediately she felt guilty for having thought she was too busy.

“This is Elise Van Valkenburg at the Second Life store.”

For a moment she hadn’t a clue what the woman was talking about and then it hit her. “Did my credit card get declined?” Jesus. Talk about humiliating. These were people Sylvia Baron and Gina Coleman knew, for heaven’s sake. Irritation kicked aside the mortification. It sure took them long enough to let her know. She’d bought her sofa and a few other small items at the Second Life thrift store more than a week ago.

“No… I was calling about something you left in our store room.”

Storeroom? She hadn’t gone into their storeroom. “I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave anything.”

“It has your name on it.”

Jess wanted to reach through the phone and shake the woman. “Well, what is it?”

An impatient sigh sounded in her ear. “It’s a blanket all bundled up and… oh… my…
God
.”

“Mrs. Van Valkenburg?” What the devil was going on with this woman?

“Mrs. Harris, this blanket of yours is full of
bones
.”

Birmingham Police Department, 12:30 p.m.

D
an thanked the search team commander and ended the call. He collapsed in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers. With the manpower being utilized on this case it was incomprehensible to admit they had nothing.

“I take it he didn’t have good news?” Harold Black surmised.

“No hits on the Amber Alert and no sign of her in the wooded ravine that borders her neighborhood.” Jesus Christ, they had to find this kid. “Sorry for the interruption.” Dan cleared his throat, worked at keeping his cool. “You’re here to give me an update.” He doubted any of it was good news but a man could hope.

Harold slid his eyeglasses into place and studied his notes “I have a conference call with Special Agent Gant at three. I’m hoping we have some news on the Spears investigation.”

Every muscle in Dan’s body tightened as he thought of Spears. “Maybe we’ll get really lucky and Spears’s rotting corpse has turned up.”

“We can always hope,” Harold agreed. “I wanted to update you on the Allen case.”

Ted Allen. Captain Allen, head of the Gang Task Force, had been missing almost two weeks now. Until yesterday there was nothing. No credit card activity. No calls to his family. The last time his cell phone had pinged a tower was near Jess’s apartment. That he and Jess had been locked in battle over the Lopez case didn’t lend itself to the idea that he’d driven by hoping for a friendly visit.

Whatever the hell Allen had been doing, it hadn’t been in the line of duty.

Until he showed up or they found his body the only hope for figuring out his mysterious disappearance was if someone came forward with information. Except that his cell phone suddenly turned up yesterday—mixed in with Dan’s trash.

“The cell phone held traces of material picked up on the street that had come from your city trash receptacle.”

“You said the blood on the phone was confirmed as Allen’s.”

Harold nodded. “It was.”

Dan felt his temper rising at the idea of where this was going. As the chief of police he understood it was the right and only thing to do. But that didn’t make it feel right. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Now the investigation turns to how his cell phone got into my trash, right?”

Harold nodded again. “You understand this in no way means we believe such a ludicrous scenario. Yet we have to follow proper protocol.”

“Of course.” Dan forced a smile. “Do what you have to do, Harold. I have nothing to hide.”

Harold made a face. “Certainly not.”

A rap on his door was a welcome reprieve. Tara, his receptionist, poked her head in. “Chief, there’s a delivery for you on my desk.”

On her desk? Tension rippled through him. “What kind of package?”

He was on his feet and halfway across the room before she could get out an answer: “A padded envelope from… Eric Spears. At least that’s the name on the return address.”

Spears?
A fist of fear slammed into Dan’s gut. He and Harold exchanged a look.

As they rushed down the hall, Dan deliberated about two seconds on calling in the bomb squad, but since the package had passed through the X-ray machine in the lobby he wasn’t going to waste the time.

Spears wanted to taunt him, not kill him… at least not yet.

At Tara’s desk, Dan started to open the package, but Harold stopped him and handed him a pair of gloves. The seconds it took to drag on the gloves had his frustration level skyrocketing. He opened the flap and looked inside. Photos. A stack of glossy four-by-sixes.

His heart stumbled as he shuffled through the stack. They were all of Jess. Leaving her place over on Conroy. Entering the BPD lobby downstairs. Some included Dan. The two of them together this past weekend. Jess leaving the coroner’s office… at the creek where the flowers had been left from a supposed secret admirer.

At a restaurant he didn’t recognize with Detective
Wells and Corlew. That one gave him pause. What the hell was Corlew doing there?

“He’s getting closer, Dan.” Harold pointed to the FedEx label. “This was sent from the Twentieth Street location.”

Fury twisted in Dan’s gut. “We need someone over there now. See if the clerks can ID the sender. Maybe there’s video surveillance.”

“I’ll check out the FedEx store myself,” Black assured him. To Tara he said, “Call forensics and have them send over a tech to get this to the lab for analysis.”

Tara reached for the phone on her desk.

“You should call Agent Gant,” Black suggested. “I’m heading to FedEx.”

Dan already had his cell phone in hand. “Call me as soon as you know anything.” The tightness in his chest made it harder and harder to breathe. He put through the call as he walked back to his office but got Gant’s voice mail. Dan left a message.

After he’d closed the door of his office, he leaned against it. One of the photos was of Jess climbing the stairs to her apartment.
How is he getting this close with twenty-four-hour surveillance on her apartment?

He pushed off the door and stalked to his desk. Probably a rooftop across the street. With the right high-powered lens he might not even need to be that close. Dan shook his head. Their suspicions that Spears had more than one of his so-called followers right here in Birmingham watching her had just been confirmed, as far as he was concerned.

His cell vibrated. Dan tensed, hoped it was Gant.

Jess.

A surge of fear thudded in his chest. “Everything
okay?” If his greeting didn’t tip her off that everything was
not
okay on his end, he wasn’t sure what would. He had to get a handle on his emotions.

But damn it, he was only human.

“There’s been another delivery.”

Her voice was thin. Why the hell was this bastard taunting her? “Where?” That he managed the one word without his voice trembling was a flat out miracle.

“At the Second Life thrift store. Harper and I just pulled up.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Don’t bother coming here,” Jess argued. “We won’t be at the scene long. I’ll let you know when we’re en route to the coroner’s office. I’ve called Sylvia, and she and one of her assistants are en route.”

“All right.” He forced air into his lungs. “I’ll see you there.”

He dropped his cell back on his desk as Tara announced via the intercom that Agent Gant was returning his call.

“Thanks, Tara.”

Dan stabbed the blinking light. Before he shared this latest development, he wanted whatever updates the FBI had. “Gant, tell me you’re about to make me happy.”

“What I have is bad news.”

Defeat tugging at him, Dan lowered into his chair. “Let’s hear it.”

“The chatter on the Net about Jess stopped abruptly. That’s a bad thing considering we were so damned close to tracking down the source. Now that won’t happen unless a new thread surfaces.”

Dan bit back a string of curses. “Still nothing on where he is?”

“Zilch. We’ve taken control of his company, SpearNet. We’ve got forensic experts in there digging through electronic files and every piece of hardware in the place.”

That could take a lifetime or two. Defeat tugged at Dan. He could not let this guy get to Jess. There had to be a way to stop him or to distract him.

“Worse than any of that,” Gant went on, “we just got IDs on two of the three women in the photos. One is from Mobile, the other from Somerville. Both moved to Alabama just this summer to start college this fall. That’s why they weren’t in your DMV database.”

“Why am I just hearing about this?” And why wasn’t this good news?

“We didn’t want to put out the word until we had the women in protective custody. That’s where the worse news comes in. Both are missing. It seems each one was recently notified of winning a weekend getaway. No one has seen either woman since last Friday, and no one we talked to had the slightest idea where they were going. We’re hoping someone will help us identify the third woman before she goes missing as well.”

“So we can assume that Spears has at least two of them already.” More of that red-hot fury roared through Dan. He needed to stop that son of a bitch.