Vanish (30 page)

that day. Finding five women shot to death was bad enough. Add in the politics, the FBI

meddling, and I’m ready for goddamn early retirement.” Wardlaw inserted the tape in the VCR,

grabbed the remote, and pressed PLAY.

On the TV monitor, a view of snow-dusted trees appeared. It was a bright day, and sunshine

sparkled on ice.

“Nine one one got the call around ten A.M.,” said Wardlaw. “Male voice, refused to identify

himself. Just wanted to report that something had happened in a house on Deerfield Road, and

that the police should check it out. There aren’t many homes on Deerfield Road, so it didn’t

take long for the cruiser to find out which residence was involved.”

“Where did that call come from?”

“A pay phone about thirty-five miles out of Ashburn. We were unable to get any usable

fingerprints off the phone. We never did identify the caller.”

On the TV screen, half a dozen parked vehicles could now be seen. Against the background

noise of men’s voices, the camera’s operator began to narrate: “The date is January fourth,

eleven thirty-five A.M. Residence address is number nine, Deerfield Road, town of Ashburn,

Virginia. Present are Detective Ed Wardlaw and myself, Detective Byron McMahon . . .”

“My partner worked the camera,” said Wardlaw. “That’s a view of the driveway in front of the

residence. As you can see, it’s surrounded by woods. No neighbors nearby.”

The camera slowly panned past two waiting ambulances. The crews stood in a huddle, their

breath steaming in the icy air. The lens continued its slow rotation, coming at last to a stop on

the house. It was a two-story brick home of stately proportions, but what had once been a

grand residence was showing the signs of neglect. White paint was peeling off shutters and

windowsills. A porch railing tilted sideways. Wrought-iron bars covered the windows, an

architectural feature more appropriate to an inner-city apartment building, not a house on a quiet

rural road. The camera now focused on Detective Wardlaw, who was standing on the front

steps, like a grim host waiting to greet his guests. The image swayed toward the ground as

Detective McMahon bent to pull on shoe covers. Then the lens was once again aimed at the

front door. It followed Wardlaw into the house.

The first image it captured was the blood-smeared stairway. Jane already knew what to expect;

she had seen the crime scene photos, and knew how each woman had died. Yet as the camera

focused on the steps, Jane could feel her pulse quicken, her sense of dread building.

The camera paused on the first victim, lying facedown on the stairway. “This one was shot

twice,” said Wardlaw. “Medical examiner said the first bullet hit her in the back, probably as

the vic was trying to flee toward the stairs. Nicked her vena cava and exited out the abdomen.

Judging by the amount of blood she lost, she was probably alive for five, ten minutes before

the second bullet was fired, into her head. The way I read it, the perp brought her down with

the first shot, then turned his attention to the other women. When he came back down the stairs

again, he noticed that this one was still alive. So he finished her off with a kill shot.” Wardlaw

looked at Jane. “Thorough guy.”

“All that blood,” murmured Jane. “There must have been a wealth of footwear evidence.”

“Both upstairs and down. Downstairs is where it got confusing. We saw two large sets of shoe

prints, which we assume to be the two killers. But in addition there were other prints. Smaller

ones, that tracked across the kitchen.”

“Law enforcement?”

“No. By the time that first cruiser arrived, it was at least six hours after the fact. The blood on

that kitchen floor was pretty much dry. The smaller prints we saw were made while the blood

was still wet.”

“Whose prints?”

Wardlaw looked at her. “We still don’t know.”

Now the camera moved up the stairs, and they could hear the sound of paper shoe covers

rustling over the steps. In the upstairs hallway, the camera turned left, aiming through a

doorway. Six cots were crammed into the bedroom, and on the floor were piles of clothing,

dirty dishes, and a large bag of potato chips. The camera panned across the room, to focus on

the cot where victim number two had died.

“Looks like this one never even got a chance to run,” said Wardlaw. “Stayed in bed and took

the bullet right there, where she was lying.”

Again, the camera was on the move, circling away from the cots, turning toward a closet.

Through the open doorway, the lens zoomed in on two pitiful occupants slumped together.

They had crammed themselves into the very back of the closet, as though desperately trying to

shrink from sight. But they had been all too visible to the killer who had opened the door, who

had aimed his weapon at those bowed heads.

“One bullet each,” said Wardlaw. “These guys were quick, accurate, and methodical. Every

door was opened, every closet was searched. There was no place in that house to hide. These

victims never had a chance.”

He reached for the remote and fast-forwarded. Images danced on the monitor, a manic tour of

the other bedrooms, a race up a ladder, through a trap door and into an attic. Then a jittery

retreat back down the hallway, down the stairs. Wardlaw hit PLAY. The journey slowed again,

the camera moving at a walking pace through a dining room and into the kitchen.

“Here,” he said quietly, pressing PAUSE. “The last victim. She had a very bad night.”

The woman sat bound by cord to a chair. The bullet had entered just above her right eyebrow,

and the impact had shoved her head backward. She had died with her eyes turned heavenward;

death had drained her face pale. Both her arms were extended in front of her, on the table.

The bloodied hammer still lay beside her ruined hands.

“Clearly they wanted something from her,” said Wardlaw. “And this gal couldn’t, or wouldn’t,

give it to them.” He looked at Jane, his eyes haunted by the ordeal that they were all imagining

at that moment. The hammer blows falling again and again, crushing bone and joint. The

screams echoing through that house of dead women.

He pressed PLAY, and the video mercifully moved on, leaving behind the bloodied table, the

mangled flesh. Still shaken, they watched in silence as the video took them into a downstairs

bedroom, then into the living room, decorated with a sagging couch and a green shag rug.

Finally they were back in the foyer, at the foot of the staircase, right where they had started.

“That’s what we found,” said Wardlaw. “Five female victims, all unidentified. Two different

firearms were used. We’re assuming at least two killers, working together.”

And no place in that house for their prey to hide, thought Jane. She thought of the two victims

cowering in the closet, breaths turning to whimpers, arms wrapped around each other as

footsteps creaked closer.

“They walk in and execute five women,” said Gabriel. “They spend maybe half an hour in the

kitchen with that last one, crushing her hands with a hammer. And you have nothing on these

killers? No trace evidence, no fingerprints?”

“Oh, we found a zillion fingerprints all over that house. Unidentifieds in every room. But if our

perps left any, they didn’t match anyone in AFIS.” Wardlaw reached for the remote and

pressed STOP.

“Wait,” said Gabriel, his gaze fixed on the monitor.

“What?”

“Rewind it.”

“How far?”

“About ten seconds.”

Wardlaw frowned at him, clearly puzzled by what could have caught his eye. He handed

Gabriel the remote. “Be my guest.”

Gabriel pressed REWIND, then PLAY. The camera had backed up to the living room, and

now repeated its sweep past the tired couch, the shag rug. Then it moved into the foyer and

suddenly swung toward the front door. Outside, sunshine glinted off icy branches of trees.

Two men stood in the yard, talking. One of them turned toward the house.

Gabriel hit PAUSE, freezing the man where he stood, his face framed in the doorway. “It’s

John Barsanti,” he said.

“You know him?” Wardlaw asked.

“He turned up in Boston, too,” said Gabriel.

“Yeah, well, he seems to show up everywhere, doesn’t he? We got to the house barely an hour

before Barsanti and his team arrived. They tried to step right into our show, and we ended up

having a tug-of-war right there, on the front porch. Till we got a call from the Justice

Department, asking us to cooperate.”

“How did the FBI get wind of this case so quickly?” asked Jane.

“We never got a good answer to that question.” Wardlaw crossed to the VCR, ejected the tape,

then turned to face her. “So that’s what we were dealing with. Five dead women, none of them

with fingerprints on file. No one’s reported them missing. They’re all Jane Does.”

“Undocumented aliens,” said Gabriel.

Wardlaw nodded. “My guess is, they were Eastern Europeans. There were a few Russianlanguage newspapers in the downstairs bedroom. Plus a shoe box with photos of Moscow.

Considering what else we found in that house, we can make a pretty good guess as to their

occupations. In the pantry, there were supplies of penicillin. Morning-after pills. And a carton

full of condoms.” He picked up the file containing the autopsy reports and handed it to Gabriel.

“Check out the DNA analysis.”

Gabriel flipped directly to the lab results. “Multiple sexual partners,” he said.

Wardlaw nodded. “Put it all together. A bevy of young, attractive women living together under

the same roof. Entertaining a number of different men. Let’s just say that house was no

convent.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

The private road cut through stands of oak and pine and hickory. Chips of sunlight filtered

through the canopy, dappling the road. Deep among the trees, little light shone through, and in

green shadows thick with underbrush, saplings struggled to grow.

“No wonder the neighbors didn’t hear anything that night,” Jane said, gazing at dense woods.

“I don’t even see any neighbors.”

“I think it’s just ahead, through those trees.”

Another thirty yards, and the road suddenly widened, their car emerging into late afternoon

sunshine. A two-story house loomed before them. Though now in disrepair, it still had good

bones: a redbrick facade, a wide porch. But nothing about this house was welcoming. Certainly

not the wrought-iron bars across the windows, or the NO TRESPASSING signs tacked to the

posts. Knee-high weeds were already taking over the gravel driveway, the first wave of

invaders, preparing the way for encroaching forest. Wardlaw had told them that an attempt at

renovations was abruptly abandoned two months ago, when the contractor’s equipment had

accidentally touched off a small fire, scorching an upstairs bedroom. The flames had left black

claw marks on a window frame, and plywood still covered the broken glass. Maybe the fire

was a warning, thought Jane.
This house is not friendly.

She and Gabriel stepped out of the rental car. They had been driving with the AC on, and the

heat took her by surprise. She paused in the driveway, perspiration instantly blooming on her

face, and breathed in the thick and sullen air. Though she could not see the mosquitoes, she

could hear them circling, and she slapped her cheek, saw fresh blood on her hand. That was all

she heard, just the hum of insects. No traffic, no birdsong; even the trees were still. Her neck

prickled—not from the heat, but from the sudden, instinctive urge to leave this place. To climb

back in the car and lock the doors and drive away. She did not want to go in there.

“Well, let’s see if Wardlaw’s key still works,” said Gabriel, starting toward the porch.

Reluctantly she followed him up creaking steps, where blades of grass grew through seams

between the boards. On Wardlaw’s video, it had been wintertime, the driveway bare of

vegetation. Now vines twisted up the railings and pollen dusted the porch like yellow snow.

At the door, Gabriel paused, frowning at what remained of a padlock hinge that had once

secured the front entrance. “This has been here a while,” he said, pointing to the rust.

Bars on the windows. A padlock on the door. Not to guard against intruders, she thought; this

lock was meant to keep people
in.

Gabriel jiggled the key in the lock and gave the door a push. With a squeal it gave way, and the

smell of old smoke wafted out; the aftermath of the contractor’s fire. You can clean a house,

repaint its walls, replace the drapes and the carpets and furniture, yet the stench of fire endures.

He stepped inside.

After a pause, so did she. She was surprised to find bare wood floors; on the video, there had

been an ugly green carpet, since removed during the cleanup. The banister leading up the stairs

was handsomely carved, and the living room had ten-foot ceilings with crown molding, details

that she had not noticed while watching the crime scene video. Water stains marred the ceiling,

like dark clouds.

“Whoever built this place had money,” Gabriel noted.

She crossed to a window and looked through the bars at the trees. The afternoon was slipping

toward evening; they did not have more than an hour before the light would fade. “It must have

been a beautiful house when it was built,” she said. But that was a long time ago. Before shag