Mortal Sin (39 page)

Kate strode to the counter. “On Monday, you had a customer calling himself Cody Lorenzo, who ordered a dozen red roses to be delivered to Lucy Kincaid on Volta Place.”

“Yes. He paid cash.”

“I need you to look at some pictures and tell me if one of these men said he was Cody Lorenzo.”

She frowned. “I don’t know if I can help you …”

“You can,” Kate said. “This is important.”

The woman shrugged, and Kate showed her first the picture of Lorenzo. The woman showed no sign of recognition and shook her head. “No,” she said. “The guy who came in here was white, not a Mexican.”

Sean tensed.

Kate showed her the picture of Mick Mallory. The woman again shook her head. “This guy is too old—the guy who came in didn’t have gray hair.”

“He could have been wearing a wig or hairpiece,” Sean said.

“It’s not him. This guy looks Irish—round face, blue eyes—but the guy who came in had a skinny face. Average, under forty. Short.”

“How short?”

The woman frowned and looked from Sean to Kate. “Shorter than you,” she said to Kate.

Kate was nearly the same height as Lucy, about five foot seven. That put the guy at five and a half feet.

Kate frowned. Her last photo was of Biggler, and he was five foot ten. Kate flipped the picture.

“No,” the woman said. “None of them. Now what’s going on?”

“We need your security tapes from Monday.”

When the florist went in the back, Kate turned to Sean and said, “Mallory must have another partner.”

Sean wasn’t so sure.

“Sean, what are you thinking? You’re unusually quiet.”

“This has nothing to do with Mick Mallory.”

“Cody being killed by the same man who sent Lucy flowers? It has everything to do with Mallory.”

Something didn’t feel right to Sean, but he didn’t
know what it was. He looked at his phone for the tenth time since he’d sent Lucy the text. Lucy hadn’t responded to his message. He sent another message.

Luce, let me know you’re okay
.

“Sean, talk to me,” Kate said.

He couldn’t explain it to Kate, so he didn’t try.

“I have to go,” he said. “I need to get to the church.”

“Sean—”

Kate’s comment was interrupted when the florist returned with a DVD. “This is everything for the last week. It’s set to record over every Sunday night.”

Sean took the disk before Kate could grab it. “Thanks,” he said and walked out to his car. He tossed Kate his keys. “I’ll look at this while you drive to the church.”

As soon as he sat in the passenger seat, he pulled out his laptop and popped in the DVD. The quality of the black-and-white image wasn’t stellar, and the image was slightly distorted because of the wide lens, but he could see enough.

Kate said, “Talk to me, Sean.”

“Bad feeling,” he said.

“If it helps, she said the guy came in between eight-thirty and nine.”

“Thanks.” Sean pulled down the search window and typed 8:25 for the time stamp on Monday morning. He fast-forwarded, looking for a short white guy.

At 8:39, he walked in.

The stalker admired a display near the front of the store. He had dark hair, cut conservatively, and was pleasant-looking—neither attractive nor unattractive. Average. Normal. He had a nice-guy appearance, and Sean would peg him in his mid- to late thirties.

He paused in front of the refrigerator unit, and Sean gauged him in comparison as being five foot eight. He chatted with the owner, pointed to the vase of roses—which Sean presumed were red—and walked over to the counter.

It was at the counter that they had the clearest shot. He wrote out a card and handed it to the woman.

Sean clipped the image, sharpened it in a photo-editing program, and sent it directly to both Noah Armstrong and Jayne Morgan at RCK West.

Sean slammed his laptop shut and tossed it on the backseat. He itched to take over the driving; Kate was moving too slow.

“Come on, Kate!”

“It’s snowing, if you haven’t noticed,” she snapped. Her fingers were wrapped tight around the steering wheel.

“Just—” He bit off his verbal criticism. It wouldn’t help the situation. He tried calling Lucy again. No answer. He stared out the window and watched the snow falling harder. He feared they were too late.

Sean was about to call Noah to make sure he’d got the image and message, when Kate’s phone rang. He heard only her end of the conversation, but his heart froze.

“Are you sure? Did you check the bathrooms? Other rooms? … We’re two, three minutes away. I’ll call Noah.”

Sean swerved. “What happened?”

“Dillon is at the church. Lucy isn’t there.” Kate bit her lower lip.

“And?”

“Her coat is. She stepped outside to get air twenty minutes ago and no one has seen her since.”

I am pleased
.

Lucy Kincaid sleeps in the back. I laugh out loud. Lucy Kincaid is
unconscious
on the backseat. Her wrists and ankles are bound with duct tape. She wasn’t unconscious when I tied her up. She almost knew what was happening. But the GHB-isopropanol combination I hand-crafted did the job it is supposed to do. By the time she exited the church, she was already disoriented. When she fell in the snow, I knew she would put up little fight
.

I may have given her too much, but I was unsure how quickly skin absorption would work. This was the only time I’d found her alone or in a place where I could grab her. She has wasted so much of my time with her games, I couldn’t allow her to waste another minute. In case her boyfriend had been at the church, I had an alternate plan
.

I’m glad I didn’t have to resort to killing another man, pussy-whipped though he is. But if necessary, I would do it, just like out of necessity, I had to kill that cop
.

Lucy Kincaid must be trained. I must break her. She is the problem. I am the solution
.

I do not believe she’ll be a good student. But she cannot be allowed to get away with her pathetic attempt to send me back to prison
.

I have great plans for her. I already have her first lesson ready. The lesson that will teach her that I am in
charge, that her life is mine and I can take it when I want. The lesson will show her that she has no power, no hope. It’s the first step but always my favorite. Endings, and beginnings
.

As I drive, I keep looking in my mirror at her. Her eyes are open, but glassy. I hope she is not dead
.

I worry a bit. Dead girls are no fun—and I have not had my time with Lucy. I pull over to the side of the road and turn halfway around in my seat. I pick up the whip next to me and lash out at the female
.

She convulses, a cry coming from her gagged mouth. I smile. She’s alive. Of course she is. I am too good to make a mistake with dosage, even when trying something new
.

I merge back into traffic. Normally, I do not like driving so slowly, even in such weather, but tonight?

Tonight, I am very pleased
.

When Kate parked illegally in front of Holy Trinity Church, Sean saw a lot of police activity but few police cars. Three dozen officers, some in uniform and some in street clothes, filled the vestibule. More were outside looking for signs of Lucy and what might have happened to her. They had all been in the church when Lucy went missing.

Dillon spotted them as they trudged up the stairs. A section had been cordoned off and Sean frowned. “We may have a witness,” Dillon told Sean and Kate as soon as they were within earshot.

“What happened?” Sean demanded. He hadn’t let himself think that Lucy had been abducted. But Mallory hadn’t sent Lucy the roses. He hadn’t killed Cody Lorenzo. And he hadn’t taken Lucy.

Yet she was gone.

“Cody’s partner, Officer April Dunnigan, noticed that Lucy was feeling poorly and walked her to the vestibule. Lucy said she needed some air and stepped outside. After a couple of minutes, April and another officer went to check on her but she wasn’t outside or anywhere in the church,” Dillon explained. “But a detective thinks he might have seen her getting into a car with a man.”

Dillon led them into the church where a detective was talking on the phone. When he spotted Dillon, he hung up. “I spoke to the chief of police. He’s notifying all state troopers in Maryland and Virginia. We have every cop in D.C. on alert.”

“Thank you. Detective John DeMarco, my wife, FBI Agent Kate Donovan, and Sean Rogan, with Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid.”

DeMarco said, “I saw a woman with long black hair wearing black slacks and a black and white sweater, walking as if intoxicated with a man toward a parked car right where that patrol car is now parked out front. I was coming up the stairs, and I thought if she wasn’t drunk she was extremely upset. It looked like she’d fallen—there was snow covering her clothing. And because she looked a bit Hispanic, I thought she might be one of Officer Lorenzo’s relatives. She didn’t show signs of being in distress, other than needing help to walk.”

“And the man with her?”

“Approximately five foot eight to five foot ten. Lean. He wore black as well—trench coat and hat. Caucasian. No distinguishing marks, but I only glanced at them as I was coming up the stairs.”

“And the car?”

“A late-model black sedan. He laid her down in the backseat. I didn’t register the license number, but I noted it was a current Virginia plate.”

Sean opened his laptop and showed the detective the picture from the florist’s security camera. “Is this the man you saw?”

The detective looked closely. “It could have been. I can’t say definitively, but it’s the same physical build.”

“Is that the stalker?” Dillon asked.

“Yes,” Kate said.

April came over. “Agent Donovan, I’m so sorry. If I had known Lucy was in any danger, I’d never have let her go outside alone. I thought you had Cody’s killer in custody.”

“So did we,” Kate said.

“Detective DeMarco!” An officer stepped in from outside and introduced himself as he approached the group.

Detective DeMarco said, “What did you find?”

The officer held up a string of pearls in a plastic evidence bag. “We found these in the snow at the bottom of the stairs,” he said.

Dillon’s voice was rough when he said, “Those are Lucy’s. They were our mother’s. She gave them to Lucy when she graduated from college.”

“It looks like the clasp broke,” DeMarco said on inspection. “Anything else?”

“Officers Craig Jackson and Lloyd Breck arrived in a taxi at approximately five thirty-five p.m. Both noted the black sedan out front and because it was illegally parked, considered talking to the owner, but a man exited the church and walked to the car. They let it go and came in.”

“Do they have a description?”

“White, five foot nine, wearing a black trench coat.”

“Hat?”

“No, sir. Not that they saw. Hair cut short, brown.”

Dillon said, “He was exiting the church. He would have taken it off inside, or it would have drawn attention.”

“What time did Lucy arrive?”

April said, “Just after the priest stepped behind the altar, when everyone was standing.”

“The processional?” Dillon asked.

“It was at the beginning. I’ve only been to a couple of these things.”

“The processional. So about the same time the man left,” Dillon said. “And Lucy stepped out before communion?”

“Everyone was saying the Lord’s Prayer and she looked sick. I walked her to the bathroom, but she wanted to go outside for fresh air. She seemed better when she opened the door, though she was a little green.”

Sean’s phone vibrated. It was Jayne. He stepped away from the group. “What’s his name?” Sean asked.

“I don’t know,” Jayne said. “I wanted to make sure you know I’m working on it. It would help if I could narrow it down to a state.”

“Start with D.C., then Virginia and Maryland, and work out from there.”

“Okay, give me some time and I’ll—”

“The guy has Lucy. We don’t have time.”

“I’m doing the best I can, Sean, I’m sorry.”

“I’m just worried. Keep me informed.” He dropped the call. “Kate—get Noah on the phone.

“Why? Do you have an ID?”

“No—but I have an idea. Mallory.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s too coincidental that Lucy is kidnapped at the same time the vigilante group is shut down. Cody’s murder, the stalking, Mallory—it has to be connected, and I think he has the answers.”

“Show him the picture,” Dillon interjected.

“Exactly. This guy has to be involved, otherwise why Lucy? Why now?”

Kate nodded and dialed Noah’s number.

Noah wasn’t sitting down when the guard brought Mick Mallory into the interrogation room at the D.C. jail. He slapped the photograph down on the table.

“This man kidnapped Lucy. Who is he?”

Mallory stared at the picture for a long minute. When he realized who it was, his face turned ashen.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes, dammit! We have a witness. Who is it? One of your vigilante friends?”

“No. This is Peter Thomas Miller. He was a high school teacher arrested for statutory rape in 2002. He had sex with six of his female students, at least the ones we know about who came forward, but was only convicted for two of them because after making a statement, the other four recanted. He did a number on the girls—psychologically abusing them as well as seducing them. He only raped virgins, but it was never violent—only mentally sadistic.”

“Mentally sadistic?”

“He convinced them they were inferior, but he did it in such a way they didn’t feel threatened—he never yelled and initially didn’t hit, but instead reasoned out why they were weak and useless and how they should live their lives to serve their husband. He was training them for their future husbands, he’d told one of them. He was sentenced ten-to-twenty, and paroled last summer in Delaware. He registered as a sex offender, then disappeared.”

Mallory paused, then stared at Noah. “Lucy found
him online. He was trolling for virgins. But he never showed.”