Cold Fear (27 page)

Her shoes were missing, but then so were all her clothes and belongings. Were shoes this killer’s thing? Were they paraphilia, or trophies? Or both?

Was there another body buried around here, or was Denker jerking them around for fun?

Ground penetrating radar could be used in the clearing itself, but the whole school property would now need to be searched by dogs, which was going to take days of meticulous police work. Hanrahan was working his magic at the scene and impressing the hell out of everyone in attendance with his legendary reputation. As long as he got the job done, Frazer didn’t care. Frazer didn’t allow anyone to sit on their laurels or ride past glory. Not even himself.

Alex Parker and his cyber security team could not find any trace of Jessica Tuttle’s cell phone. This was very bad news as the girl was still missing. The good news was they’d removed the image of Kit and Damien from every server it had been saved on, and from every cell phone it had been sent to. That wasn’t to say someone couldn’t have saved it separately on their hard drive or on a flash drive and it could resurface at any time. But between them they’d done everything they could to minimize the damage to a couple of vulnerable young teens.

It was a small victory in a morass of losses.

Damien Ridgeway was still on his list of suspects, and he intended to grill the young man tomorrow morning. Right now, he was on his way to the home of one Mildred Houch, former secretary at St Joseph’s School for Boys. Parker had tracked her down for him. He didn’t call ahead and hoped to God she was home and he wasn’t wasting his time.

The clock was ticking for Jessica Tuttle, though it was possible she was dead before they even knew she was missing.

He drove past Beaufort city limits and the GPS system told him to hook a right down toward the water. He eyed the giant mansions lit up with glittering arrays of Christmas lights and wondered why anyone with less than a dozen children would choose to live in rambling mausoleums. He hung another right and then immediately another. The houses on this row were smaller, but had big yards separating the properties. He pulled up outside number nineteen, noticing the lights were on and a TV was flickering inside. He climbed out of the car and dialed Mildred Houch’s phone number.

As he listened to it ring, he saw the silhouette of a person crossing the drapes. A woman answered and repeated the number back to him.

“My name is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Frazer of the FBI. Am I speaking to Mrs. Mildred Houch?”

“That is correct.” She sounded elderly and fragile and intrigued.

“I’m hoping you can help me with my inquiries. Are you available?”

“Oh, I’m not sure how I can help the FBI—”

“It will only take a moment of your time, Mrs. Houch.”

“Oh,” she repeated. “Well, I suppose I could…when would be a good time?”

Frazer knocked on her front door. “Now would be perfect, ma’am.”

A shocked gasp came through his cell and then silence as she hung up. She opened the door with a security chain on. He held his creds up to the light. “Sorry to bother you so late, ma’am.”

The door was shut in his face and for a moment he feared she wasn’t going to talk to him after all. Then he heard the slide of the chain and she opened the door and motioned him inside. “You’d better come in.”

She was tall and graying. Her bent posture reminded him of a crane. She peered at him through thick glasses. “Can I get you a warm drink, Agent Frazer? It’s freezing out tonight.”

“No, thank you, ma’am. I need your help regarding St. Joseph’s School for Boys.”

Enlightenment moved over her features. “This is about Ferris Denker.” She wrapped her cardigan tight around her tall, thin frame and moved back into the lounge. She sat in a chair that was pulled close to a gas fireplace. She picked up the TV remote and turned it off. The sudden silence had weight.

“I’m curious what you remember about him?”

An amused smile curved her lips. “It’s a bit late, isn’t it? Unless you’re writing his obituary.”

This was true. “I take it you weren’t close to him?”

She pursed her lips and regarded him curiously. “He was no worse than some of the others.”

Frazer frowned. “It seems like an odd way to phrase it.”

“St. Joseph’s School for Boys was a boarding school for troubled youth, Agent Frazer,” she said primly. “The boys who came to us might have sung in the choir, but they were not choirboys.”

“Any idea why Denker ended up there?”

She regarded him quizzically as if wondering why he was asking this now. She was right. This work should have been done years ago. “He’d been upsetting the neighbors. Rumor had it he was tinkering with the little girl next door.”

“Tinkering?” his voice grew quiet.

She shrugged. “I don’t think there was ever any evidence. No one pressed charges. But he was sent to us and from what I understand the neighbors moved away soon afterwards.” She eyed him over her specs. “It happened a lot more than you might think. Not everyone wants to get the police involved when their children misbehave.”

He knew it, but it turned his stomach that there were so many voiceless victims out there.

“Did he cause trouble at school?”

“Like I say, he wasn’t particularly disruptive. He got good grades. Was talented at music. Not very good at sports.” She opened her mouth and closed it again.

“What?” He pressed.

Her eyes shifted nervously. “I don’t know if it was true or not, but a couple of the boys claimed they’d been sexually assaulted by one of the teachers around the time Ferris Denker attended our school.” Her chin ducked into her chest. “The gym teacher. Mr. McManus.” Her cheeks went crimson. “I overheard some of the boys calling him some very inappropriate names.”

“Was Denker one of the pupils who claimed to have been assaulted?”

“No.” She flapped her hand at him as if the idea was absurd.

Frazer frowned. “Were any charges ever brought?”

She shook her head. “There was probably nothing to the accusations. Gerry McManus categorically denied ever doing anything wrong. He was a nice man with a wife and children.”

Many pedophiles were. “Were any of the boys who claimed to be abused examined by a doctor?”

Now her ears turned pink. “Of course, we had a doctor on staff. He said there were no bruises or physical signs of abuse.” Her voice lowered as if sharing a confidence. “Dr. Rabon suggested some of the boys might have been engaging in sexual relations with one another, which was against school rules, obviously.” Her lips primped. “He suggested some of the older boys
might
have been interfering with some of the younger boys.” She looked away. “It was an all-boy boarding school.” She shrugged a gnarled shoulder. “These things happened.”

A thin thread of rage ran through his veins. He’d gone to an all-boys boarding school. His mother had been a teacher at the school before she’d been murdered. If a kid had gone to her claiming abuse, she’d have kicked ass and taken names to get to the truth. It was the school’s job to protect the weaker children from those ready to abuse them.

His school had kept him on as a pupil after his parents’ death. He’d inherited a little money, but could never have afforded to stay on there without the school’s charity. They’d provided tuition, room and board, and he’d known how lucky he was to get the opportunity. He’d worked his ass off, needing to be the best at everything he did, to make his parents proud and to pay back the school for their generosity. Ever since he’d been rescued, he’d known exactly what he was going to do with his life. And to do it, he’d first needed a degree and a scholarship.

Fifteen years old and he’d known exactly what he was going to do with the rest of his life—and here he was doing it, listening to weak people repeat the excuses they’d fed themselves that enabled monsters to flourish. He couldn’t afford to show his disdain or his contempt, but it didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. “Do you remember Denker having particular friends?”

Two lines appeared between crinkled iron-gray brows. “There were two other boys he spent most of his time with. I don’t remember their names.”

“The school records?”

Her face went white. “Everything was destroyed in a fire in 1985. The school closed down. I decided to take early retirement.”

Damn. “Is the gym teacher still alive?” That was one thread he could chase up and tie off.

“No. Gerry died of a heart attack on the football field—in front of all the kids actually. It was horrible. It was the second death at the school that year.”

If the accusations were true, Frazer suspected some of those kids would be been dancing for joy on the sidelines.

“The other death?”

“Some of the boys went swimming in the pond even though they weren’t supposed to. One boy drowned. Another was revived with CPR, but it was a close thing.”

“Can you remember the names?”

She frowned, starting to look agitated.

This was getting him nowhere. “I’ll leave you my card. Please call me if you remember anything. Anything at all. Do you know where any of the other teachers are?”

She shook her head, her eyes widening behind the lenses of those thick glasses. “No, I’m sorry.” Her hands clutched one another in agitation. “I thought they might question us back when they arrested Ferris for those awful crimes, but no one ever came.”

Maybe they could figure out who worked there by tracking old tax information and social security numbers, but it would be a laborious and longwinded process. He paced and glanced around the room. There was a framed photograph of a much younger and prettier Mrs. Houch sitting on the steps of an old red-bricked building.

It was the school, he realized. He picked it up. She’d been very pretty. “You must have caused quite the stir in an all-boys school.”

Her hand went to her chest and she laughed. “Oh, I had my moments, Agent Frazer. But I was married to a wonderful man who worked for an insurance company. He died young, but I never found anyone to replace him.” She pointed to the wedding portrait that hung on the wall. Her advanced age was obvious in the crepe skin of the hands she used to adjust a framed photograph’s position on the sideboard, but not in the eyes that twinkled with happy memories.

“I still think of myself as the woman in that photograph,” she said sadly. “It’s a reminder life’s short even when you live to a ripe old age like me.” Her eyes turned sad. “I can see now that I didn’t do the right thing by those boys who accused Gerry McManus of abusing them.” Her mouth firmed. “I was a rule follower. I never thought to step out of line. I expected those in charge to take care of everything the way it should be taken care of.” She frowned at her array of framed pictures. “I haven’t been much help, have I?” Her forehead furrowed. “But I do have a big box of loose photographs, some will be from the school. Would you—”

“Yes.”

She smiled at his abruptness. “I do respect a man who knows what he wants and goes after it. My Harry was like that—and he would have done the right thing.” Her cheeks plumped into little apples. “Come on, you’ll have to help me get the box from the bottom of my wardrobe.” She set off, chuckling to herself, but he stood rooted to the spot because he hadn’t gone after what he wanted. Not when it came to anything except his job. He wanted Isadora Campbell. In his bed. He wanted her hair tangled in his fists and the taste of her skin on his lips as he came inside her.

Shaking his head at himself, he followed Mildred Houch down the hall. He was tired. Cranky. Not thinking straight. He was not taking advice on his sex life from a woman in her eighties—although she’d been young and beautiful once, so why the hell not?

He forgot about everything else as he pulled out a large box from the old lady’s wardrobe. He suppressed a groan because it was going to take hours to sort through this mess.

Then he got a text, and he knew time was up.

*     *     *

T
HE IMAGE MADE
Ferris go as hard as stone. He stared at the pale limbs open and splayed. The vivid red secret center of a woman. The long dark hair that draped over milky white breasts, tipped with tight cherry-pink nipples he wanted to bite. The sense of longing was so vicious inside him he wanted to smash everything in his tiny cell into smithereens. What he wouldn’t do to touch her warm flesh. To smell the essence of her, the stench of her fear. To hear her scream and beg as she gave him what he wanted.

He stared at the precious image with a delicious hunger that both hated and loved the person who’d sent it. He needed to do this again. Needed to feed his inner animal. Tomorrow he’d talk to his lawyer. Try and find a way out of this awful place where his humanity was as worthless as the women he’d killed.

He turned off the cell and removed the SIM card and battery, and slipped it into the hole he’d made in the mattress.

His erection throbbed in the sweaty cotton pants he wore to bed and he touched himself, knowing it wouldn’t be satisfying, but it was better than nothing. He picked through his memories for someone who looked like the dark-haired girl in the image. Remembered a woman he’d grabbed from a hiking trail over in Tennessee. He closed his eyes, mentally took out his knife and went to work.

*     *     *

F
RAZER STOOD AND
looked down at the waves that extended within a few inches of Jessica Tuttle’s toes. The water crept closer, as if the sea wanted to claim her, wash her clean and embrace her in its depths.

He’d managed to get a pilot of a small plane to fly him from Beaufort to the First Flight Airstrip—where the Wright brothers had flown the very first airplane. His modern-day pilot had been skillful but certifiable because he’d been quite happy to land on the strip in the dark even though it didn’t have any lights. Chief Tyson had used patrol cars to light up the landing zone. Frazer had survived. Jessica Tuttle hadn’t.

Yesterday he’d been angry with this young woman. Today she became another one of his victims.

She lay naked across what looked like beach but, he’d been informed, was apparently Route 12 on this part of Currituck. She was displayed like Helena and Elaine had been, but this time her cell phone was stuck in her mouth and, unlike the others, she’d been severely beaten.