Believe No One (40 page)

‘What's your
point,
Deputy?' Launer demanded.

She pointed to the pin that signified Mr Guffey's pond. ‘Laney Dawalt – dumped a few miles east of town.' She moved to the next pin. ‘Sharla Jane – Cupke Lake, just twenty miles south of here.' She took a new pin and stuck it in the map to mark the place where the new victim disappeared. ‘Faith Eversley – twenty-five miles north of Westfield.'

The three points made an obtuse triangle, with the town of Westfield a few miles west of the longest side. ‘He changed his hunting ground,' she said.

Fennimore sat up. ‘He's come home.'

‘What in the hell makes you think this is home?' Launer demanded.

‘Because
that
looks like a cluster,' Fennimore said, jabbing the three points in the air with one finger and joining the dots.

‘You got something to say about this?' Launer said, challenging Detmeyer.

‘Serial offenders often begin their aberrant behaviour close to home,' Detmeyer said.

‘Did I miss something? 'Cos my notes say victim one was dumped in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri – that's
two hundred
miles from here.'

‘We don't know that Fallon Kestler
was
his first victim,' Detmeyer said, quietly, firmly, but without rancour, giving the victim a name.

‘Okay, fine. But don't these squirrelly sons-of-bitches usually spiral
out
from home ground, moving
away
from where they live?'

Detmeyer nodded. ‘But until now, our unsub was acting under instruction; someone else made those decisions for him – his mentor in Scotland. He broke that bond when he murdered Sharla Jane. He's starting over, going it alone for the first time, feeling under pressure because of press and law-enforcement interest in the murders. Extreme narcissists are often insecure; familiar home ground would offer the reassurance he needs to continue to function.'

‘Excuse me, Doctor,' Hicks said. ‘Didn't our guy put
himself
under pressure, going public?'

‘Yes, he did, but he would feel compelled to do it for the same reason Dennis Rader contacted the police after being inactive for thirteen years: he craves approval, recognition, validation.'

‘Didn't he think what would happen when we found out about him?'

‘I believe our man
feels
more than he
thinks,
Deputy,' Detmeyer said. ‘But remaining below the radar was more perilous to his psyche than exposure could ever be. For what it's worth, I believe he gave himself the name BTK because he wants to be associated with someone who terrorized an entire state for decades, because at heart he feels he's a cipher, a nobody, someone who only ever followed orders.'

‘My heart bleeds for him,' Launer said. ‘But can we concern ourselves with the two people he has right now? That bitty triangle on the map happens to be the highest-populated area of Williams County. You got forty thousand people in Hays and Westfield alone.'

‘We could narrow the search,' Hicks said. ‘Canvass haulage companies along a shorter section of I-44.'

The suggestion was approved. Fennimore had dropped out of the discussion and returned to doodling on the sheet of paper. But, as the meeting geared up to a division of tasks, he said, ‘Before we break up the meeting, I'm afraid I may have another complicating factor to add to the mix.'

Fergus had chosen to drive rather than fly from Chicago, because he was travelling under his own name, on a legitimate passport, and he was sure that when he had finished with his erstwhile collaborator, a check of flight manifests at Tulsa airport would be top of the Task Force's ‘to do' list. He stopped to eat and rest in St Louis, the halfway point of his 650-mile journey, reasoning that a British tourist must surely be less conspicuous in a city café than ordering pulled pork and pickles at a rural truck stop. From St Louis, he joined Interstate 44, heading south-west; another five or six hours until he was where he needed to be.

The landscape from St Louis, Missouri to Williams County, Oklahoma was largely featureless. With the exception of a few limestone escarpments, the road rolled across hundreds of miles of flat terrain, with a few small hillocks: a mix of a grassland, fruit farms, cattle ranches and large tracts given over to the cultivation of maize and wheat. Billboards cluttered the edge of the highway, inviting travellers to visit the local museum/shopping mall/historic town, and occasional water towers reared up on spindly legs like Martian invaders from
War of the Worlds.

To keep from dozing, he listened to country music and read the billboards. The average person would call the drive dull, but for him, the journey was punctuated by moments of intense excitement. He knew this road as if he had travelled it himself – and in a sense, he had, traversing it in the virtual world a thousand times, discovering a new world without ever having set foot in it. His landmarks would seem prosaic to the casual observer: a gloomy stretch of US Highway 68, north of St James, Missouri; a shining patch of water glimpsed from an overpass near a town called Cuba; the whole thrilling tract of forest at Fort Leonard Wood that he would always associate with Fallon Kestler; a zigzag county road west of Marshfield.

Cuba and Marshfield still belonged to him; the police hadn't found those two yet. He would like to stand and look at the actual places, to feel the sun on his skin, to hear the insects and birdsong, to smell the lush, wet grasses, replaying the kills in his head. Perhaps he would make time on the return journey. For him, part of the pleasure was in the deferment of gratification, and knowing where those bodies were – knowing even that they
existed
– was enough for now. He chose not to consider his own recent impulsiveness; the woman in Alemoor Loch was a regrettable aberration. Will had driven him to extremes, but now he was himself again – purposeful, in command. His purpose was clear: Will was dangerously out of control, and the profile the police released of him was uncomfortably close to the reality.

He slipped unnoticed across the Missouri state line into Oklahoma at nightfall as news broke on the radio that another woman and child were missing. He quelled a tremor of rage, knowing who was responsible before the newsreader began to theorize and make comparisons with Laney Dawalt and Sharla Jane Patterson, the age of their children and the degree of concern expressed by the police. They pretended outrage at the thought of one man's private, intensely personal exploration of power over life and death, and called it monstrous. Yet they picked over the dead remains like scavenging birds, speculating on the women's lives and the shocking violence of their deaths, and called it
human interest.
And which of those arbiters of good and evil would refuse if he went to them now and offered to sell his story?

But Fergus has no appetite for notoriety. For him, neither fame, nor infamy, was ever the point: his is a private passion, an extravagance he allows himself at discrete, well-controlled intervals. Will's role had always been to find the kills and execute – yes, ‘execute' is the right word – his instructions. Fergus chose the time, means of death, location and method of disposal. Until now. Will had overstepped the mark, and he was about to learn that actions have consequences.

Incident Command Post, Westfield,
Williams County, Oklahoma
Wednesday, 2.30 a.m.

‘This is him?' Dunlap asked.

‘My best recollection of him.' Fennimore circulated, handing out sketches of a clean-shaven man with sandy hair and an unremarkable face. The man who had appeared at one of his events in Chicago, the puppet-master to their killer. Dr Detmeyer had set up a videoconference with a specialist at the FBI's Forensic Imaging Unit, and Fennimore had just finished working with a forensic artist. The Bureau preferred artists to police standard e-fit technologies.

Simms checked her watch; it was late, and the team had already worked a double shift. A few had given up and gone to bed. Launer was long gone – he had a meet-and-greet in Hays at 9 a.m., and recent media coverage promised a good turnout.

‘I'll send this to Police Scotland,' she said. ‘They should be gearing up for the day about now. Why don't you get a few hours' sleep – I'll call you if they find anything in their databases.'

Fennimore said nothing, but he didn't seem ready to leave either. The look behind his eyes said he was tormenting himself, thinking he should have read more into the man's words, and she realized that for Fennimore, this meant far more than a random encounter with a killer – this could be the man he had been hunting for five years.

Sensing a change of mood, Dunlap looked up from his copy of the sketch. A quick glance and he had the situation summed up.

‘I'll get the sketch out to US Law Enforcement,' he said. Chicago PD had already recovered CCTV recordings from Harold Washington Library, where Fennimore had been approached. ‘The security footage will be on the first morning flight into Tulsa. You can review it with my guys, if you want, Professor.'

Fennimore nodded his thanks and Dunlap left them alone.

Simms moved in closer. ‘Nick,' she said. ‘Don't do this to yourself. You couldn't have known.'

‘I shook his hand, Kate, and I felt nothing.'

‘Thanks to you, we now have a likeness of him, we might even have him on CCTV. You'll need to be sharp to review those recordings; get some rest,' she said. He began to speak and she added, ‘I promise you, if there are any new developments, I'll come and fetch you myself.'

Fennimore gave her a bleak look, but after a moment he walked away. Simms watched him through the door, and tears sprang to her eyes.
Bloody hell.
She turned to face the room. Dunlap was sending an alert out on LEO, the Law Enforcement Online portal, Valance was dozing in his chair; the two deputies on night shift had been told to stay at the Command Post. One sat with a stack of campaign flyers at one elbow and a cup of coffee at the other, and he was painstakingly folding the flyers in half, with Sheriff Launer's face and the word ‘VOTE' above the fold; the other, Deputy Hicks, was taking a call at her desk. Suddenly, Hicks sat bolt upright and nodded a couple of times, saying, ‘Uh-huh. Yes, sir.' She glanced up, seeking to make eye contact with someone in the room, finally lighting on Simms.

Dunlap was bashing away on his keyboard.

‘Greg,' Simms said.

‘What?'

Simms raised her chin, indicating the deputy.

‘Sir,' Hicks said into the phone. ‘I want to put you on speaker, would that be okay?'

In a second, she had everyone's attention.

‘I got Jack Tate, from Tate Trucking, on the line,' she said, switching to speakerphone. ‘Mr Tate thinks he recognizes the driver's licence photo we sent out.'

‘I don't
think,
I
know
.' Mr Tate had a voice that would ring like a bell across a truck yard. ‘He changed up a little bit, but that's Bill Weaver, all right.'

Another alias,
Simms thought.

Dunlap pointed to Detective Valance, who immediately began a search of the databases.

‘Mr Tate's been out of town,' Hicks said. ‘His assistant didn't recognize the DMV picture as one of their drivers.'

‘I'll have something to say to that dumbass tomorrow,' Tate grumbled. ‘I stopped by the office on my way home to see if there was anything urgent, found the picture in my in-tray, called you right away. We got twenty trucks, sixteen drivers and he can't see the likeness?
Jeez.
'

‘Do you know where Mr Weaver would be right now, sir?'

‘I wish to hell I did – he went AWOL with one of our trucks.'

‘He did?' Hicks said. ‘Do you have the licence-plate number for that vehicle, sir?' She jotted it down.

‘He just completed a delivery to Sullivan, Missouri, picked up an empty container at St James he was
supposed
to drop off at a depot outside of Tulsa, but he never showed.'

‘You don't have GPS on the trucks?'

‘No, but I could give you his delivery route, and all our truck tractors got a PikePass.' This was the electronic prepay tag system for Oklahoma's toll roads.

‘We'll need the ID for the truck Weaver's driving and an ISO Mark and description for that shipping container, too,' Hicks said.

‘I'll wake up my sorry-assed nephew, didn't know one of his own employees, get it to you in under fifteen minutes.'

‘Thank you, sir. But before you do that, can you tell me how long Mr Weaver has been on your payroll?'

‘Eight months, thereabouts.'

‘Has he ever done anything like this before?'

‘Matter of fact, he was late delivering an empty container to the depot last fall.'

Hicks made eye contact with Dunlap and Simms.

‘Could you be more precise about the date, sir?' Simms had to remind herself that this was an untrained officer on a probationary period; Hicks asked all the right questions and thought like a detective.

‘October, early November – something like that.'

The air in the room seemed to contract; Laney and Billy Dawalt went missing in late October.

‘We'll need your help to trace that container, as well.'

‘Oh, God.' All the strength had gone out of his voice, realizing the significance of her request. Suddenly, he sounded much older. ‘I'll get you an exact date, and those serial numbers. Whatever you need, Deputy.'

‘There
is
one more thing, Mr Tate,' Hicks said. ‘Do you think you could give us a description of Mr Weaver, so we can update that picture?'

‘I can do better than that,' he said, some of the earlier vigour returning. ‘We take a picture of every new employee – it'll be on his file.'