Jilliane Hoffman (28 page)

He finished his report and went to navigate out of TeenSpot. In another chat room, he watched as the sexually charged, drug-referenced acronyms flew back and forth. No one was who they said they were. One guy, makeitfit12, just kept asking for single hot girls who liked to party hard to respond – ‘The younger the meat, the sweeter the flesh.’ There was no beating around the bush. Not even a little friendly word-foreplay. Even sexting – sending sexually explicit text messages and pictures in the hope of hooking up – was becoming more and more impersonal.

He popped back into the hot tub to see if TheCaptain was still there. He wasn’t. But a new name, babygurldee, had logged into the chat room. Mrpimpin16, drinkpoison, and sykosid raced to say hello.

Like flies on shit …

Mike sure was glad his girls were all grown up.

64

A few weeks back Mark Felding was a nobody. He could say that now. He’d been trying to hold on to a career that had been slipping through his grasp for years – shuffling from station to station, begging for airtime with fluff pieces, and feeling like he was just one Friday away from a pink slip. And socially … well, Mark had found that, just like in LA, nobody in superficial Miami wanted to date someone who was almost a name. Why waste their time on a has-been when they could have the latest and greatest model? The girls were all hot, tight and young in South Florida, but they wanted to be arm candy for someone who could either match them in the looks department, or if not, could buy them whatever they wanted to compensate. Mark’s looks were pretty good, no doubt, but hair dye wasn’t smoothing the wrinkles, and a few hours in the gym every week wasn’t carving a six pack into the love handles. No matter what he’d tried, Father Time kept slinging the wrecking ball, and while aging might be easier for a guy than for a girl, it was still South Florida and anything less than perfect was defective. As for compensating with his charm and a fully charged wallet, on Mark’s salary he was lucky he could still take himself out to dinner, much less wine and dine an aspiring supermodel to her heart’s content.

What a difference three weeks had made.

Today in Walgreens someone had come up to him and said, ‘Hey! Aren’t you that guy from, from … oh, yeah! From the news!’ while he stood in line buying toothpaste. The masses were beginning to recognize him. It was a rewarding feeling. It wouldn’t be long before all those hot, tight, young wannabe supermodels dumped their sugar daddies and took a second look in his direction. With the amount of national publicity he’d been generating, he’d be weekend anchor soon enough.

Of course, he owed his recent success to another. He tapped his fingers on the yellow envelope on the dining-room table. On the front of the mailer was a thin strip of newspaper with his name on it. His covenant with the devil.

Decisions, decisions.

Mark wiped the sweat off his upper lip with the back of his hand and sucked down another shot of Crown Royal. Then he picked up the phone. Given their acrimonious recent history, he didn’t expect Special Agent Robert Dees to pick up, though.

He was right. ‘Agent Dees,’ Mark said at the tone, straining to keep his voice calm. ‘This is Mark Felding with Channel Six. I know it’s late and I know that we’ve had, well, issues recently, but it’s time to make peace, because I have another package here. Here, as in
at my house
. I just returned from the studio to find it under my door. I’m calling you because … well, you know why – you’re running this show. And I’m thinking that it’s pretty fucked up that this guy knows where I live. Call me as soon as you get this.’

The dark apartment was perfectly still. The only sound was the kitchen clock a full room away, loudly ticking off the seconds like a game show. Mark finished his scotch at the dining-room table, poured himself another and just waited for the phone to ring.

65

Bobby looked over at the cell phone on the nightstand, his right arm wrapped protectively around a sleeping LuAnn in the darkness. He spotted the name Mark Felding on his caller ID.

Why the hell would that asshole be calling him at almost midnight? Was he drunk?

Bobby thought back to that night in the bar after the grisly finding of Gale Sampson’s body at the Regal All-Suites. Mark Felding had been pounding down the hard stuff before they’d met up. It was entirely possible he
was
drunk and dialing Bobby’s digits in the middle of the night just to harass him with some question or a new ‘theory’ of the case. A madman’s seemingly random choice of a washed-up field reporter to be his messenger boy had not only revitalized the guy’s career, but had also emboldened the idiot into thinking he was the next Bob Woodward. It was as if he were competing with Bobby to solve the case. He stared at the phone, waiting for it to do something.

Why the hell would he be calling at this hour?

Maybe he had something important to tell him. Maybe there was another painting.

Bobby closed his eyes. Another victim.
Please no …

It was late. Another mailing would have come to the TV station a lot earlier than midnight, right? So it must be the midnight ramblings of a drunk, or Let’s All Play Detective time.

Bobby rubbed his eyes.
Please let that be it. Let the madness end …

The phone blurped, indicating a new message.

‘You better get that,’ LuAnn whispered in the dark. She was wide awake, too.

Bobby nodded. ‘Let me check my voicemail. It may be nothing.’

‘Who is it?’

‘You don’t want to know.’ They both knew it was never good at this time of night, no matter who was calling. He sat up on the edge of the bed and went to his voicemail.

This is Mark Felding with Channel Six. I know it’s late and I know that we’ve had, well, issues recently, but it’s time to make peace, because I have another package here. Here, as in
at my house.
I just returned from the studio to find it under my door. I’m calling you because … well, you know why – you’re running this show. And I’m thinking that it’s pretty fucked up that this guy knows where I live. Call me as soon as you get this
.

Bobby stood up and walked to the window.

‘I heard,’ LuAnn whispered, her soft voice shaking. ‘I heard what he said.’

‘I have to go out,’ he replied, dialing the number back. ‘Try and sleep.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’ She sat up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. He knew what she was thinking. He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t. He still hadn’t told her about Ray. So he said nothing.

‘It’s Dees,’ he said when Felding picked up on the first ring.

‘I was about to call 911. He’s been to my home, Agent Dees.’

‘All right. I’m on my way. Where are you?’

‘In Tamarac. At the University Apartments on University and Hiatus. Um, 304. That’s apartment 304 in Building C.’ He paused for a split second before adding, ‘It’s bad. It’s really bad …’

‘Don’t touch anything, Mark! Don’t open it.’

‘It’s too late for that. I saw. I had to see.’

‘Just put it down and leave it wherever it is right now! Just leave it. I’m on my way!’

He hung up the phone and rushed to get dressed while he chirped Zo and the rest of the task force.

Expect it to be even more brutal. Expect a shock to the conscience. This guy has tasted infamy, gentlemen, and like a genie, it’s going to be impossible to get him to go back inside his bottle. He likes what he does way too much to ever stop
.

How could one top kidnapping, torturing, murdering and dismembering two young sisters together? What could this psycho possibly do that would, as Christine Trockner warned just a few short days ago, ‘shock his conscience’?

Bobby couldn’t even begin to imagine.

66

Tamarac wasn’t too far from Fort Lauderdale – just fourteen miles to the west. It took Bobby fifteen minutes from the time he pulled on pants, strapped on his badge and raced out the door. Of course there was no one on the road and he was doing eighty.

The first thing he spotted as he pulled into the parking lot of the University Apartments wasn’t a cluster of cop cars with sirens sounding and lights ablaze. It was the WTVJ 6 news truck. His chest tightened. The truck must’ve just pulled in, because he watched as the driver and passenger – who were watching him back – scrambled to get out and grab their equipment. Just as Bobby pulled to the curb and stepped out, the uniform response he’d called in from BSO arrived in two cruisers.

‘Keep them down here,’ he directed a young uniform as the cameraman and his assistant hurried across the asphalt, frantically trying to make it across the finish line and into the elevator before they were tagged. They got as far as the Coke machine. ‘Unless they have a badge, no one goes upstairs!’ Bobby called out, heading for the outdoor staircase.

At 304, he rapped on the door. ‘Felding, it’s Bobby Dees. Open up.’ A weary and worn Mark Felding opened the door. Bobby could smell the scotch on his breath before he even said, ‘Hey.’

‘Where is it?’ Bobby asked, walking in. Somehow Zo was right behind him, rushing down the hall.

‘You all right, guy?’ Zo asked Mark as he entered, looking around the apartment with a frown. He took a peek into a back bedroom and bathroom, to make sure no one else was hiding either with a weapon or a camera. ‘Your boys from Channel Six are downstairs. They said to say hello, but they won’t be coming up to join you. Tsk, tsk … calling them out. You know the rules.’

‘It’s my job, guys. I just called and told my producer that I had another one. You know, to be ready. I don’t know what he did or who he called with that information.’

‘Who’d you call first this time?’ Bobby asked sarcastically.

‘You,’ Mark answered wearily. ‘But the public has a right to know …’

‘Yeah, yeah. Where is it?’ Bobby asked again. Then he spotted the manila envelope on the kitchen table, next to a pile of magazines and mail. Pasted in small, bold-faced newspaper strips across the front was the name
MARK FELDING.
The top had been ripped open. Right next to it was a folded piece of canvas, lying face down. On top of the canvas was a small white place card, like the type you see at wedding receptions. Even from five feet away, Bobby could make out what it said in pasted letters cut out from the newspaper.

FDLE SPECIAL AGENT SUPERVISOR ROBERT DEES

The distinctive squawk and chatter of police radios was making its way down the hall, along with the sound of rushed voices. In just seconds, the room would be full of people.

‘Tell me you wore gloves when you opened this,’ Bobby said.

Mark shrugged again and looked down.

Bobby shook his head. He couldn’t even look at the idiot any more. ‘Zo, make sure they don’t touch the door. Have them secure the hallway and start looking for witnesses.’ He reached for the canvas.

Mark looked up at him then, with bloodshot, tired eyes. He shook his head. ‘It’s bad, man …’

Using gloves, Bobby carefully unfolded the canvas. He stomach tightened, as it did when he went on a roller coaster. The bad drop was always the one you didn’t prepare for, the one you never saw coming.

Expect it to be even more brutal
.

Expect it to shock the conscience
.

‘Bobby, we’re here, man. I’m gonna have Crime Scene start dusting …’ Ciro called.

‘There’s video on premises, but it’s broken in this building, go figure. I’m pulling it anyway, and the other buildings …’ someone barked.

‘Do you want to release a statement?’ another called out. ‘They’re already asking for one downstairs …’

Dozens of voices chattered around him, but all Bobby heard was the whoosh of blood as it rushed to his head. He stared at the twisted image in front of him. Of the girl in the baby blue T-shirt and striped Abercrombie sweater, her chained hands raised up toward the ceiling, the slight fingertips whittled to raw, bloody stubs. Her eyes, like the others, were black, empty sockets. Her cheeks were dotted with teardrops of blood. Her mouth was contorted in a horrific scream. Long, dusty blonde hair spilled over her shoulders, some caught in the coils of shiny chains wrapped around her slight neck. Hanging right below them, resting on her creamy, white skin dotted with freckles was a shiny round silver pendant with a scripted K engraved in it.

Bobby knew that necklace. He knew that dusty blonde hair, the T-shirt and sweater. He could smell her breath, still sweet with bubble gum, hear her melodic voice as it called out to him to watch her on the playground, watch her dive in the pool, watch her climb a mountain of cheerleaders to get to the top.

Time stopped and everyone moved about him in slow motion. He watched as Mark Felding just shook his head back and forth, his red eyes tearing up.

‘Bobby? What is it?’ Zo asked quietly, walking up behind him, his hand on Bobby’s shoulder. ‘Shep? What’s the matter?’

‘Jesus Christ, Zo,’ Bobby replied slowly, his voice shaking. His knees felt like they were going to give way. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the macabre painting in his hands. ‘It looks like Katy …’

67

‘OK. It looks like a cement floor here, so it’s a structure she’s either in or next to. But behind her, there are clearly flames …’

‘A furnace, maybe?’ Jeff Amandola offered.

Don McCrindle, a detective with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, sipped at his coffee and scratched his head. ‘But over here it’s sunny. A furnace would be in a basement, right? And Florida don’t have no basements, right?’

‘Is he going out of state?’ Ciro asked.

Larry piped in. ‘Doubt it. How the fuck are we gonna find her then? He wants us to find her, doesn’t he? That’s what the shrink said.’

‘Profiler,’ corrected Roland Kelly, a big burly homicide detective with the City of Miami. ‘So maybe it’s religious. Fire and brimstone,’ he offered.

‘You need to turn off the freaking televangelists, Kelly,’ quipped Don. ‘And stop giving them all your money. The world ain’t coming to an end now.’

‘Very funny.’

‘So where do you see flames and sunshine at the same time?’ asked Larry.

‘How about the Port? They’ve got incinerators?’

‘That’s real tight security, but yeah. We’ll check it out,’ Don replied with a nod. ‘I don’t know if they’ve got incinerators. And we’ll check out Port Everglades, too. Anything with smoke or fire.’

The Crimes Against Children squad bay was still filled with bodies at three a.m. They surrounded the conference table, standing over the graphic portrait – now preserved in a clear plastic evidence bag – like surgeons working on a body, trying to save her with their questions.

‘You don’t need to be here,’ Zo had cautioned Bobby more than once. ‘You should go home. We’ll tell you if we come up with anything.’

Bobby had nipped that idea right in the bud, the last time in the hallway of the University Apartments, before the task force headed over to the command center at MROC. There was no way he was abdicating control of this case. If, God forbid, it was Katy in that picture, he would make sure she was brought home proper. He would make sure justice was served. And he knew from experience that that couldn’t and wouldn’t be done watching from the sidelines. So he stood at the head of the table, throwing ideas around with the boys, listening to their measured banter and all the while trying very, very hard not to look at the terrified painted face on the table in front of him.

By four a.m., the consensus was to get back together in the morning, after everyone had had some rest. It took the coaxing of all nine men and an actual order from Zo to get Bobby to leave the building, though. Because all he wanted to do was figure it all out – in his office, in front of his computer, staring at his corkboard, like he had with hundreds of other cases over the years. He didn’t want downtime. He just wanted to find out for himself that it was Somebody Else’s kid in that painting. As horrible as it would be for someone else, he wanted it to be anybody else but Katy. Anybody else but My Kid. And he didn’t want to go home.

But he didn’t have a choice.

‘You know what today is?’ he asked Zo as they walked across the empty lot to their cars. The sun was still far from coming up, but the birds had started to chirp in the palm trees overhead. At the far end of the lot were the administrative offices and Troop E station of the Florida Highway Patrol. Bobby could see a Christmas tree twinkling in the lobby through the front window. FHP troopers always started early in putting up the holiday decorations; it seemed every year they moved it up another week. Thanksgiving was just a week out. Exactly a year ago today was the last time he had heard or seen from his daughter.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Zo replied quietly.

‘You think its coincidence?’

‘In this business, nothing’s coincidence. He knows what buttons to push, though, Bobby, so I’m not gonna jump the gun. What she was last seen wearing was posted on the fucking internet, for Christ’s sake. Anybody could have seen it. He could very well be playing you, Shep.’

Bobby nodded.

‘Let me drive you home …’ Zo offered.

‘I’m not drunk. I’ll get myself home,’ he said, climbing into his car. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’

Bobby pulled out of the parking lot and swung on to the Turnpike northbound. The silence in the car was deafening, so he turned on the radio. But that didn’t help, either.

‘What was she wearing, LuAnn? Think.’

‘Um, um, she had on her blue T-shirt. The one she got from Abercrombie with the matching striped sweater. I just washed it. It covers her arms, that’s what I was thinking this morning, Bobby. I was thinking, “It covers her arms.” Oh my God …’

‘OK. I’ll get a description in right away. They’ll check the hospitals, bus stations, Amtrak, TriRail and airports. How much money does she have, Belle?’

Um, I don’t know. A couple of hundred, maybe, from her birthday and confirmation and work? No, wait – what am I thinking? She’s working a lot. She’s been saving up for a car, so maybe it was more. No, it was more. She was looking at a car, so she had at least a thousand. Maybe she had more. I don’t know. I don’t know, Bobby!’

‘What about a suitcase? Did you check her closet?’

LuAnn began to scream, banging her fists on the counter behind her. ‘No! She did not run away! No! You have to find her! You have to bring her back home, Bobby! You have to bring her back home to me!’ Tears streamed from her panicked face. ‘I want to say I’m sorry! I want to do it over! I want another chance!’

He rubbed his eyes. How was he going to act normal in front of LuAnn? How was he supposed to not completely drop to his knees and fall apart? And if it was true, if it turned out that it really was Katy in that horrible portrait, how in God’s name was he ever supposed to tell his wife that?

His mind raced, flipping between the alternate personalities of dad and detective. He tried his best to shut them out, but bittersweet memories flooded his brain. The last time he saw her, the last time he kissed her cheek, the last words she said to him … Much like how he would remember someone as he headed off to their funeral.

He shook the images out of his head. Focus. Find her, whoever she might be. If it’s Katy, bring her home. And don’t think about what he’s done to her. Don’t go there, whatever you do.

It was useless going home. Bobby sat at the kitchen table and drank more coffee until the sun finally came up. For all he knew, LuAnn was above his head, still wide awake and rocking with her hands wrapped around her knees. She knew something was up before he left. Call it instinct or a premonition or whatever, but she knew something was not right. She knew something was very, very wrong. And he didn’t want to walk into that bedroom and confirm her worst suspicions with just one look.

He took a quick shower in the guest bathroom – Katy’s bathroom – grabbed some clean clothes out of the laundry room and headed back into the office somewhere around eight thirty.

And, of course, he didn’t sleep a wink.