Stone Maidens (34 page)

Shortly after the lunch hour Prusik got the call from the lab that she’d been waiting for. She now had the goods on the killer: the canning jars recovered from the Delphos tenement clearly contained human viscera. She had hoped preliminary DNA testing would be completed, matching the remains to one of the victims before giving Thorne the full details, but that would take another seventy-two hours, and she didn’t think she should wait.

Entering the managing director’s office, Prusik was surprised to hear Howard’s voice on the speakerphone. Beside Thorne’s desk stood a security guard.

“What in God’s name is the meaning of this!” Thorne slammed his best inkwell pen—the Montblanc—on the desk so hard it bounced. Veins bulged on either side of his shirt collar.

Thorne sailed a fax over his desktop. Prusik scooped it off the floor: the signed directive.

“What were you thinking, Christine? That you’d wait until Howard was out of the office before springing this?”

Prusik kept her eyes down, concentrating, trying to formulate words that wouldn’t come.

“No, Roger, sir, not at all. My actions were predicated on late-breaking information and forensic evidence discovered at a condemned building at thirteen seventy-one Hawthorne Boulevard in Delphos, apartment 3C. I called you. I tried to tell you on the phone, sir, at the time of the discovery.” She spoke louder to address Howard, who was still on the call. “Bruce, if you want to check out the apartment, we can—”

“Check it out?” Thorne tossed another paper her way. “Why don’t you check this out first? Please explain, Christine.”

Prusik scanned the face page of the Weaversville District Court’s stipulated bail order, which was dated earlier that morning.

“You mean the terms of Claremont’s bail release?” Prusik’s heartbeats ratcheted up.

“You know damn well what I mean!” Thorne’s forehead bunched up. “Howard has confirmed already that you were instrumental in this. That you assured Prosecuting Attorney Gray he had the full backing of the bureau to release the suspect. For God’s sake, Christine!”

“Roger, if you’ll give me a moment to explain, I can. We’ve uncovered critical new information on a Donald Holmquist, Claremont’s twin, that will answer all your—”

“Then you’ll have no trouble explaining this to me!”

Thorne flung a third document over the desk edge, which Prusik snatched midflight. It was an APB for David Claremont, now at large, who was wanted for three murders and the kidnapping of Dr. Irwin Walstein, a court-appointed psychiatrist who had gone missing from the Claremont farm following a scheduled medical appointment earlier that same day.

Prusik gasped. She took a chair, speechless.

“Since you’re at such a loss for words, I’ll talk. Effective immediately you’re relieved of duty. I’m suspending you. Consider yourself on paid leave for now. Be thankful—I could have your badge
for this, permanently. The lab team is being notified as I speak that you are off the case. They don’t follow your orders anymore.”

Thorne removed his glasses. “Whatever your reasons, they’re unimportant now. Save them for your administrative discharge hearing.”

Prusik swallowed hard and then somehow found her voice. “The reason for Claremont’s release on bail—there’s a perfectly logical explanation if you’ll let me. It’s important that I explain.”

“Explain?” Thorne shook his head and snorted in disgust. “You had no business pulling a stunt like this, Christine. Signing a directive, speaking on behalf of the department on such a high-profile matter.
Releasing a suspected murderer?
Really, there is no explanation that will suffice.” His face was red with heat. “‘The complete backing of the FBI’—have you gone mad? You’re lucky I’m not firing you on the spot. As it is, my hands are tied now. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”

He meant Washington knew. He was following their orders.

“For your information, your Sheriff McFaron is part of the dragnet combing the southern Indiana area for Claremont right now. Am I correct, Bruce?” Thorne spoke directly into the speaker pod on his desk.

“I just got the call,” Howard’s voice came back. “He said he’s checking out someone down his way that identified Claremont from the police sketch.”

“Your hands may be tied, sir, I grant you that,” Prusik said, steeling herself, “but that still leaves open the matter of Donald Holmquist’s being at large. Eisen and Higgins ran background checks on his history.”

Prusik planted both hands on the front edge of Thorne’s desk. “I’ve got the goods, Roger. The physical evidence is an eye-opener from hell. David Claremont is no more responsible for Dr. Walstein’s disappearance than he is for those girls’ deaths. Holmquist is our man, sir. And...” She stopped short of telling
him about the feather under her windshield wiper, realizing how ridiculous that would sound to Thorne. “And he’s on the move.”

“An interesting theory, Ms. Prusik.” Howard’s voice over the speakerphone was grating. “Especially since we’ve already obtained a set of Claremont’s prints from the doctor’s syringe that was found on the barn floor at the Claremont farm.”

“Fingerprints prove what? That Claremont may have been present? He lives there. And, besides, by my estimation, those are most likely his twin’s prints on that syringe, not Claremont’s. The friction ridges and whorls of Donald Holmquist’s are a very close match. Too close to exclude without running a bilateral print comparison of them both.”

Prusik held up the APB fax Howard had sent Thorne. “I challenge you, Bruce, to show me one bit of corroborative evidence that you’ve taken from the Claremont farm incriminating your suspect. So far, nothing you’ve sent to the lab even remotely ties Claremont to any of these crimes.”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Thorne, “but there’s an outraged community calling for my hide, demanding an answer from the FBI for authorizing Claremont’s release. The fact is, Special Agent Prusik, you’re officially relieved as of this moment. End of discussion.”

“You should know, sir,” Christine said, holding her ground, “that on the night of Claremont’s arrest, a report was filed with our Indianapolis field office by a Mrs. Henrietta Curry. The woman saw Holmquist riding on a bus bound from Chicago to Indianapolis. She sat next to him for over three hours, sir. We lost track of him once he arrived in Indianapolis, but I’m sure that very soon we’ll be able to confirm he subsequently traveled to Weaversville. He’s within our reach, sir.”

Thorne smiled bitterly, shaking his head. “You’re really something,” he said. “You don’t know when to let it go, do you? You never have, Christine.” His expression turned dead serious. “The local deputy charged to watch the Claremont farmhouse saw
Walstein’s car leave,” he said. “He logged in the doctor when he first arrived at the Claremont farm, nobody else. A half hour later he noted the doctor’s car leaving. And now Claremont’s missing, just like that. The prints on the syringe corroborate more than mere presence at the scene, Christine.” Thorne thumped his forefinger on the desk. “You should have known better than to pull this kind of stunt! His prints are all over the hypodermic!”

Thorne’s secretary poked her head in. “Deputy Commissioner on line one.”

“That’ll be all.” Thorne shooed Christine away.

The security guard shadowed her as she walked back to her office and stood conspicuously outside her door while she collected a few personal things. She moved as slowly as she could, trying to sort things out in her mind and formulate a plan. The true killer remained at large. In spite of present circumstances, she must find a way to navigate or another girl would surely die. She had to get in touch with McFaron.

She closed her briefcase and tried to phone Eisen and Higgins but with no luck. No doubt they were all down in the conference room being filled in by Howard over the speakerphone there.

Margaret stuck a pained face in the doorway.

“I’m so sorry, Margaret. I had no right getting you involved like I did. None. Please don’t tell me you’ve been put on leave, too.”

“Oh, pooh.” Margaret waved it off. “This will blow over, and I need a good vacation anyway.”

“I’m so, so sorry.” Prusik ducked her head and futzed at her desk.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Margaret stepped into the office and closed the door. “Your flight to Crosshaven—it leaves in ninety minutes.” She held out a plane ticket.

Prusik looked up, puzzled. “You don’t understand. I’ve been taken off the case.”

“Don’t you remember? I reminded you after Sheriff McFaron flew back. Mrs. Greenwald, the scout leader, called to confirm.
It’s all been arranged, Christine. The Brownie troop is expecting you to speak to them at their Echo Lake State Park outing this afternoon.”

Prusik flopped back in her chair. “I can’t go now.” She massaged her temples. “I’ve been put on administrative leave, probably on my way to being fired. I can’t very well show up as an example of professional success.”

“So you’re not going to honor your commitment to those little girls?”

Prusik raised her head, caught off guard by the older woman’s crustiness. “I’ve been relieved of duty, Margaret. Even if I wanted to go, I couldn’t. They’ve practically fired me, for Christ’s sake!”

“Woe unto you—flustered FBI agent cancels speaking engagement to a group of hopeful Brownies.” Margaret’s scorn was unmistakable. “Aren’t you forgetting that
I
was actually the one who signed your name to that directive?”

“Yes, under my orders.”

“What are all those young hopefuls going to think when they hear that the professional agent who was going to come speak to them didn’t because she was taken off a case and then was too embarrassed to look them in the eye?” Margaret looked almost as disturbed as Thorne. The older woman leaned forward. “Look, it may be none of my business, but I overheard you speaking to Special Agent Eisen. Don’t let these coots bully you, Christine. Not when you see things as clearly as you do.”

Prusik pressed her lips together and swallowed hard. “Thanks,” she said after a moment.

She shoved the plane ticket inside her jacket pocket and picked up her briefcase. “Someday very soon we’ll have a nice long talk over some stiff drinks.”

“A car’s waiting downstairs.” Margaret motioned her hand toward the door. “Now get to it, Special Agent.”

Prusik walked out of the building that had been her life for the past decade, tossed her case on the backseat of the waiting car, and asked Bill to take her to the airport terminal. It relieved her that he just smiled and nodded, meaning he hadn’t heard yet that she hadn’t authority to even issue instructions to be driven to O’Hare. And he was good enough at reading signals to know she wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Which was good, because she didn’t want to have to outright lie to him. Telling him the truth would only get him in trouble.

Her cell phone vibrated. Dr. Katz’s name flashed across its display. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Something’s been bugging me ever since you left my office about this dichotomy business between the man who is doing the killing and your suspect who is not and who may share the same genes.”

Judging from the doctor’s focus to task it was clear he hadn’t been given word of her being relieved of duty, either. “I’m listening.”

“Extreme abnormal behavior such as you described may be part of a broader progression.”

“What are you saying?”

“Christine, something severe is lacking. A person who removes the organs of his victims most certainly is experiencing a tremendous state of emptiness—a void—which is all consuming. These visions of David Claremont’s, if the transposition phenomenon is at work, probably mean that they know the other exists by now. If so, the killer knows that his brother has been arrested. It’s been on TV, the radio, all over the newspapers. This could change things dramatically, escalating out of control. I’m not sure I mentioned it to you in our last conversation, in cases of metabolic brain disease, there is a higher than expected concordance among monozygotic twins in more than one study.”

“Meaning exactly?”

“One twin may trigger the other into performing these despicable acts. You said yourself you haven’t evaluated the suspect
properly. I certainly haven’t. We don’t know the full extent of his pathology. It’s a troublesome unknown. I advise you to proceed with caution.”