Find Me If You Dare (The Chronicles of Elizabeth Marshall Book 2) (26 page)

                        Chapter Sixty-Eight

The Bureau booked us rooms in a nearby hotel that night. It was hard to get any sleep. I couldn’t turn off the local news with non-stop coverage of the manhunt with reporters covering the roadblocks the police had set up and their own news helicopter flying above the city.

There were
multiple news vans parked outside the Marshall home. Pictures of Robert, his wife Joyce and their daughters Amber and Cassidy were flashed across the screen every few minutes. A murder here was big enough news, let alone one possibly attached to a national news story.

So far, the news reporters thought Robert had just been a random victim of an unnamed serial killer on a cross-country killing spree. They hadn’t made the connection
yet. The story would get even bigger if they did.

If it wasn’t the news that was keeping me awake
it was the updates from Logan or Director Phillips.

There had been a white Ford truck going north on I-25
. The driver had panicked as soon as they saw the roadblock and had turned around and sped southward. A high-speed chase had begun until a few local officers had chased them into a field and shot their tires out. It had turned out to be a couple of local teenagers who had had a bag of marijuana on them and were afraid to get caught.

By five o’clock the next morning I had given up trying to get any more sleep. 
I dressed and walked down to the front lobby of the hotel, noticing several armed law enforcement officials standing guard. I wasn’t surprised to see Logan helping himself to a cup of coffee at a beverage bar near the front desk. His tired smile was a welcome sight.

We hadn’t had any pers
onal time for weeks. Between this investigation and his responsibilities with his own police department, we were lucky to exchange more than a brief glance. Now, in the nearly empty lobby, with the morning sun still hiding behind the eastern horizon, maybe we could steal some time together.

“Herbal tea, right?” He poured hot water into a paper cup and showed me a small assortment of teas in small packets.

I smiled in gratitude and picked out one of my favorites. We stood silently next to each other for a moment, stirring the hot drinks. Sometimes, with Logan and I, nothing needed to be said between us. Just having him near had a way of calming me and reassuring me.

“How are you holding up?”
It was the same question he had asked before when we had been in similar situations. The question was casual but loaded. He knew what an emotional roller coaster I had been on. He knew my fatigue, shared my frustration and worried about me just the same.

“As well as can be expected, I guess.” It wasn’t much of an answer, but Logan didn’t always need one.

The lobby had a large fireplace to keep the cold away on chilly desert nights. A few stuffed chairs and a small couch were placed around it. We sat together on the couch, close enough to touch but not to draw too much attention. I sat my drink down on a small coffee table while it cooled.

“You’re doing an amazing job.” His quiet words, spoken from someone like him that dealt with crime for a living, meant so much to me. He knew I doubted myself, that I questioned my instincts and judgment. I looked over and met his dark, blue
-gray eyes and saw the truth in his words. “I’ve been a detective for more than eight years now, and this is far and above the most difficult case I’ve ever worked. Even some of our veteran federal agents are struggling with this one. You’ve really done well, though. I don’t know if we would have made it this far if it hadn’t been for you.”

“We’ve been so close a few times,” I leaned my head against his solid shoulder. “She was just a few feet away from me this time. I didn’t even know she was there. If I had known she was there sooner, if I had known she was in the drive through…”

“You used yourself as bait and it worked,” he still wasn’t happy with me that I had done that, but I knew he was glad for the results. “I’m just grateful she didn’t get any closer to you than she did. If anything had happened to you, if she had hurt you again…” He grabbed my hand and gave it a good squeeze. “It was brave but stupid. You can’t take risks like that again.”

It was a plea as well as a demand. I reached up and placed my hand on his stubbly cheek. He’d probably been up most the night too and hadn’t taken the time to shave. The love and concern in his eyes was apparent. I leaned over and gently brushed my lips against his.

The rustle of papers tossed onto the coffee table before us broke us apart before we could go any further. I looked up to see a tired Director Phillips standing a few feet away then down at the table.

On the table were
several enlarged, grainy photographs, all about 8 x 10. They had probably come from a surveillance camera.

“This was taken at the border crossing in Juarez a few hours ago.” He took a heavy breath, stretched his weary shoulders and ran a frustrated hand though his close-cropped hair.  “She might be in Mexico.”

      
                   Chapter Sixty-Nine

The lighting on the photographs wasn’t the best. It was obviously night time and there were only tall street lights at intervals along the walkway. There was a regular stream of pedestrians going both directions.

The focus of the picture
s seemed to be a woman of average height. She wore a light colored T-shirt, possibly white and had on dark pants, perhaps jeans. She also had on a cowboy hat and dark sunglasses. I studied the photographs for a moment then looked up at the director.

“Aside from the obvious, what makes you think this is her?”

“Same description as the employee at the coffee shop gave us.” He seemed to want to pace the floor in front of us. I could feel the energy vibrating from him. He was a man of action. He had another lead to follow. “The border is only about a half hour away from here between El Paso and Juarez. She could have reached it in time. Then there are the sunglasses.”

Logan and I both glanced down at the photograph
s again. Yes the woman in the picture was wearing sunglasses, but so did most people that lived in sunny climates.

“The
se photographs were taken at one o’clock in the morning. Who wears sunglasses in the middle of the night unless you’re hiding something?” He had a good point, but still, everyone owned sunglasses. Cowboy hats were pretty common in the Southwest too.

“Any sign of the white truck?” Logan asked. It was one of the few other clues we had to go on.

“The parking lot at the boarder was filled with white trucks. Every Ford, Dodge or Chevy you could ask for. Without a license plate, it’s like trying to find a grain of sand in the desert.” His frustration was only barely kept in check. “We also know she’s been to Juarez before.”

My gaze snapped up to look at the director. He had my full attention.

“Juarez sounds familiar.” I conceded. Where had I heard it before?

“After the Texas murder, we traced a cell phone
signal from her. It came from a cell tower near Juarez. She’s been there before. Do you have any idea why she might be going back there?”

For a moment, I sat there quietly and thought about it. Was there any connection between Elizabeth and a Mexican border town? I raked through my memory, conversations we’d had, information her mother might have left. I couldn’t see any connection. There was only one thing that made sense.

“The first time she came through Juarez, she had just killed the man who had molested her as a child.” The director nodded in agreement and I continued. “I think even then she was searching for her biological father. She must have been looking for Robert Marshall then. She might not have been able to find him but she knew she was close. She knew he had moved to New Mexico after he left her and her mother.”

There was the connection.
Now it seemed to make a little more sense. The director had a determined gleam in his eyes. He pointed back down at the pictures still in my hands then pierced me with that direct gaze of his.

“Take a closer look, Caitlyn, is there anything about this person that seems familiar? Anything you recognize?”

I studied them again, leafing through the five or six pictures. I knew the director wanted me to make a positive identification. I felt the pressure of my ability to identify her weighing on me.

It was hard to say. With just a still figure, I couldn’t see
the way she walked, her movements and mannerisms. It was hard to judge her exact height with little to compare it against except for other people. Even the features of her face were shadowed and blurry from being enlarged. I couldn’t make that call.

“It’s hard to tell from just a few
dark photographs.” I handed them back to Phillips, unwilling to confirm it was her unless I was really certain.

He took as step back, trying not to show the disappointment I was certain he felt.

“Well, I have
some our best forensic photographic analysts working on this and we’re using some of the most advanced facial recognition software we have.” He took the pictures back. “We might be able to get some actual video footage that might be more helpful. We’ve already alerted the Mexican authorities and sent a few of our agents across the border as quietly as possible. Of course, if we do find her, extradition can be a nightmare when dealing with the Mexican government.”

His voice took a hard edge to it. He looked right into my eyes as he said the next words.
I think he really wanted me to understand what he was saying.

“
What she’s done could be a capital offense. We could possibly be going for the death penalty. Mexico won’t extradite if it’s a death penalty case, they don’t believe in that.”

                         Chapter Seventy

It was the first time that anyone had ever really talked about the aftermath to all this. I had been so focused on just finding her, of stopping this nightmare of a killing spree she had been on. I hadn’t taken the time to think about what would happen after we found her, if we found her.

She had viciously murdered numerous people. This was a death penalty case if I had ever seen one. Did I have what it takes to be there for a trial and watch her get convicted and sentenced to death?

Logan must have felt me tense next to him.

“She could just as likely plead insanity,” he suggested quietly, “it might save her life.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and thought about that. The first time she had been about to go to trial, when she had been suspected of her mother’s murder, she had fought the insanity plea. I had been willing to help her because she had been so convincing of her innocence. This time though, I wouldn’t fight it. It might be the only thing that kept her locked safely away while sparing her life.

Did she deserve to die for what she had done? It wasn’t my
decision. If she was caught alive, if she was brought to justice, I was grateful I wouldn’t have to sit on that jury and make that kind of a decision. I had too much emotionally invested in this to be impartial and to make a rational decision.

“Well, there won’t be a trial if we don’t find her.” Phillips gave a resigned sigh. “I
’m going to see if we can get any more footage at the border crossing. I’ll keep you posted.”

He was gone again, his stride confident and determined. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know if he ever slept and it seemed he rarely ate. Did he have a wife and family back home somewhere? I realized that I didn’t even know where he was from.

As he was leaving the hotel lobby, he passed Madeline as she was entering it. They paused and spoke quietly to each other for a moment before he continued down the hall and she approached us. I guess we weren’t the only ones with insomnia.

She sat down on a stuffed chair across from us
. Her cream-colored blouse was without wrinkle, her camel-colored pants loose but tailored to her small height. She hardly looked as though she had been combing through a bloody crime scene with me just the day before.

“It looks as though I’m not the only one having a hard time sleeping.”
Her tired smile was the first indication that all this was affecting her too. “Phillips just brought me up to speed. So they’re thinking Mexico now.”

She let the statement hang. I was familiar with Madeline’s methods by now.
She never said too much. She wanted others to come to their own conclusions in their own way. She was asking for my opinion on whether or not I through Elizabeth had really gone into Mexico. She wanted my insight.

Had she fled south? We’d thought of the possibility before. It just didn’t seem like something she would do. I shook my head at the thought.

“I don’t see a reason for her to cross the border.” Logan was quiet beside me, listening to me. “I can’t think of a reason why she would want to go there. Besides, I don’t think she would want to risk possibly being identified. When we were at the crime scene, we talked about how see seemed to be even more frenzied than before. She’s driven, she’s not about to lay low in Mexico for a while.”

Madeline nodded in agreement.

“The note she left you at the coffee shop.” Logan had a look on concentration on his face. I knew that look. “She was trying to tell you where she was going next.”

“Do you still think she’s heading north instead of south?” Madeline asked.

“We had every major road going north out of Las Cruces closed as soon as we could yesterday,” Logan pointed out, “we would have spotted her.”

“I don’t know.” I stood up and paced a bit around the sitting area. “If you think back, most of the times she gives me specific clues, they end up being accurate. Elizabeth might not have a clearly drawn out plan as to what she’s doing, but she’s not completely random either. She said she was going to destroy the first people who r
ejected her. Her mother is gone. She just killed her biological father. I think we need to go back further.”

“I think you’re right.” Madeline stood up too, ready to put things into action. “I doubt there’s much more to do here anyway, unless they find her soon. I’m going to go see what it will take to get a flight to Iowa.”