Full Disclosure (26 page)

He missed her hand in his. “How serious a legal problem?”

“It will start with a lot of press, and who knows where it goes from there. I'm expecting at least a few depositions before this is all over. I kept a secret. This is the price of it.” Her
phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “I'm sorry, this one I have to take.”

She entered her security code and answered, “Hello, sir.”

She glanced over. “Yes, sir, he's right here. Hold on.” She held out the phone. “Paul Falcon, former Vice President Jim Gannett. He would like an update on the lady shooter. He was the FBI director when she first started killing, and knows the case even better than you—if that's possible.”

He accepted the phone. “Good evening, sir.”

Ann half listened to his side of the conversation as they walked. She didn't particularly care tonight about the latest on the lady shooter case, as fascinating as she would otherwise find it to be. She had prepared for tonight as carefully as she could, and she still didn't know if she'd made the right decision on how to introduce him to what awaited them. She'd felt slightly queasy all day, and Paul's arrival had only intensified that churn.

“Ann . . .” Paul handed back her phone.

She slid it in her pocket, saw his face, and smiled. “He's retired, and he is a nice guy.”

“You still call him sir.”

“I'm a bit in awe of him in spite of having known him for years. He asks me to call him Jim, but I can't do it. He dominates a room like the state of Texas towers over Delaware. You didn't tell him about the letters or the tapes.”

“Eleven people know they are coming in, and that's already too many. Gannett knows about the cash gift you made, so I told him about the one hundred twenty-three interviews under way. It's nice to have your cash. Otherwise I would've had to tell him I'm being stalled by budget concerns.”

“I'm glad you told him about the interviews, as he was instrumental in that award transfer, and he likes to be helpful. He's had the lady shooter case as a personal interest for as long as I've known him.”

She pushed her hands into her pockets and her smile faded. “I'm known for being able to keep a secret, Paul. It's why I'm
trusted as the MHI. It's why I've been working on the VP's autobiography. But sometimes a secret comes with a price. I weighed years ago what keeping this secret was going to cost and concluded I could live with the costs. The legal risks are part of that. It's not going to be a secret much longer. I can tell you this much: in about a week you'll have a good understanding of what is going on. Please trust me that I'm not interested in causing you trouble. And I'm not trying to hide things from you—it's simply not mine to explain.”

“The case you need to show me is part of it.”

“Yes.”

“I'm not comfortable with you pulling away, Ann.” He stopped and turned to look at her. “I'd prefer you to trust me, let me make my own decisions.”

“In a week, after you know what this is, I'll let you make whatever decision you would like regarding the possibility of us.”

Paul thought he could almost feel her sadness. But he didn't know how to untangle her desire to pull away until he understood why she thought it was necessary. He reached for her hand, even though she was reluctant to accept the reassurance. “There's going to be an us, Ann.”

“You'll understand soon, Paul, why that may not be the right decision.”

They reached her home. She unlocked the front door, let Black enter first. Paul followed as she led the way into her living room. And he stopped. Surprised.

He walked over to the murder board filling the wall. The O'Malley series was gone and in its place was laid out a complex case. Buried skeletal remains, crime-scene photos, missing-person police reports—and a lot of victims. “Ann?”

“Sixteen years ago there was a serial killer who worked the Midwest,” she said quietly. “We didn't even know he was out there until he called to confess. We just had missing-person cases that we hadn't put together with a common suspect.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “He called to confess, and
at the end of the call shot himself in the head while the cabin he was in burned down around him. We have his DNA, dental work, the locations he gave for his eighteen victims' remains, and no name. He's the John Doe Killer.”

“This is a closed case, not an active one?”

“Yes. I'm writing a book about the case.”

“Are you trying to identify him? You know the day he died. You know his victims. Even the fact his DNA wasn't in the database will tell you something about him. You can eliminate any suspect in the original missing-persons investigations who's still alive.”

“His identity is not a priority for me. The book is mainly profile pieces on the victims—eighteen chapters, one for each victim. I'm working on it with the help of the families, and they will split whatever royalties the book generates.”

Paul was surprised at her answer. There was a reason the killer had chosen these eighteen victims. Identifying the killer would turn a good book into a bestseller. A murder cop not wanting to name a serial killer and give him notoriety for his crimes? Yes, that might be reason enough for her not to pursue it.

“I don't understand what it is you want me to do, Ann. Do you want me to fact-check your work? Find a problem in the case? Are there more victims he did not admit he killed? Is one of these victims not his?” He looked over at her.

“I need you to know this case inside and out. That's the best description I can give you of what I need. When you feel like you have the case solid in your mind, tell me. And I will take you to someone who will explain the whys. It's all I can give you now. I know it's not much. But I need you to take it on blind faith that there's a reason behind this, and it's a big deal.”

He knew a few things she didn't consider a big deal. If this was a big deal to her, it was something critical. “How long have you been working on the book?”

“I've known about the case and the victims from its earliest days when cops were recovering the remains. I secured written
agreement from all the families three years ago, and I've been working on the story since then. It's my first true-crime, nonfiction book, focused more on the victim profiles than the crime itself.”

“Can I read what you've written so far?”

“Those soft gray pages on the corner of the table are the latest draft. It's about done. The families have the right to read the chapter about their loved one, ask me to not include it in the book, or add a family-written five-page addition to it. I've verbally heard back from every family that they are comfortable with what I've written, but I've asked that they think about it a few weeks before they sign the final approval paperwork.

“The book covers a lot of the personal information I was able to find out about the victims, the texture of who they were that goes beyond what the missing-person case file includes. I don't know how relevant it will be for what you need, but it does bring the victims alive.”

The case files occupied more than twenty boxes. And her manuscript looked to be more than three hundred pages. He'd be reading for hours to get through what was here. Something in this case put her at legal risk—something she had learned about one of the victims?

“Did you work this case?”

“No. What's here is what I've collected from the cops who worked the various missing-person cases, and the cops who worked on the recovery of the remains. I've added to it what the families could provide—letters, photos, calendars, details about the victims before they disappeared.”

“I assume time is important on this.”

“Very important.”

“Then I'd better get started.” He began at the start of the timeline and pulled the file for the first missing-person case. He chose a comfortable chair and settled in.

“Thanks for this, Paul.”

“Ann, if you don't realize it yet, let me put it in words. I trust
you. You need me to know this case. That's a good enough reason for me to do the work.”

“I don't deserve that blind trust.”

“I think you do.”

She didn't know how to reply, and he found that fascinating. She'd never had someone willing to stick before? She needed to realize he would. When a business empire covered the territory his dad's did, legal tangles came up all the time, and often simply because someone carried the Falcon name. Whatever this was about, he knew Ann well enough to know she would have done what she believed to be right. He would figure out what was going on, make a decision about what he thought of her actions, and then probably tug her into going to a movie with him. They still hadn't worked one in, that first choice of a date, and it had been part of his plans for this weekend.

She started to smile. “If pizza is okay with you, I'll order in dinner.”

“That works for me.”

Paul pulled two slices of pizza from the box and nodded toward the board. “Tell me the story of it, Ann. The day this killer called and announced he was out there.”

She balanced her plate on her knees and gave Black a piece of jerky. “This is the first case I've seen where it opened fully developed and didn't move much beyond the initial day's facts.”

She reached for a napkin. “According to the police reports, it began when the killer called a man named Ben Harmon. Ben had thirty years with the Secret Service, was retired, was well known in his hometown. The local paper had done a profile piece on him not a week before the call came in. Not a bad choice for whom to call if your goal was to make news. Ben was driving to meet up with a friend, planning to go fishing for the day, when the call came in. It was an older male voice, no accent. ‘I've killed eighteen people, and I've chosen you as my confessor.'
Ben pulled over to the side of the road. The guy told him to get a pen and paper, and he proceeded to give GPS locations for eighteen victims. Then Ben heard a gunshot. It sounded to him like the phone hit the floor. The line stayed open for about four minutes before it went to a fast off-hook tone.

“Ben turned around and headed to the police station at Petersburg, Georgia. The number for the call he received traced back to a cabin about twelve miles outside of town. Cops swarmed the place. They found the cabin burned to the ground and still smoldering, a body inside, the man shot in the head, a gun and the phone receiver near his body. No car was at the scene, but there was a metal-bottom fishing boat at the pier. It belonged to a business on the other side of the lake, and the security chain had been cut. There were several gas cans recovered at the scene, but no gas purchases were found that might match. No car was found that might be his. The cabin was owned by a businessman in town whose son used it occasionally when he went fishing, but the son had deployed with the military. No one had been at the cabin in months.

“The man's remains were never identified. Victims were found at each of the eighteen locations—the missing-person cases from across seven states and over nine years. The cases had been worked hard, as they were people who just abruptly disappeared from the daily routines of their lives. Foul play was suspected in each case. The recovery of the victims' remains let those cases be closed, but the reasons for why they were taken didn't appear. With the confession, cops knew the cases were related by a common killer, but there didn't seem to be links between the victims otherwise.”

“This didn't make the national news?”

“Local papers reported when the individual missing-person cases were closed, but no reporter put together the larger picture. Part of it was the age of the cases, part of it was the time it took for all eighteen locations to be investigated, part of it was the geography and the number of police departments involved. It
was several weeks of work before it was clear the killer would not be identified, for the scope of what he had done and who he had killed to become clear. The case got enormous work from the day of the call until the victims were identified, but giving a serial killer press wasn't something any of the cops were interested in doing. They wrapped it up and couldn't identify him and wrote it up as the John Doe Killer.”

“Anything in particular strike you about the case?”

“The victims were one moment leading normal lives, and then they were gone without a trace. All eighteen victims were clean disappearances. Some of the best cops I know worked the missing-person cases when they originally occurred, and worked the task force when the bodies were recovered, trying to figure out who this guy was. But the case didn't move much from the initial day's facts.”

Paul studied the board. “Thanks, that helps.”

She nodded and took their plates to the kitchen.

He returned to his reading.