Profiled (28 page)

“Yeah, I do. You said ‘we.’ Who else is here?”

“Just Omar and Sal. Omar is over there in the meadow. See?” Richard pointed toward the flat field bordering the forest, where a cop wandered around the edge of the trees looking more like he wanted to stay out of the rain rather than solve a crime. “Sal is checking out the area surrounding the old altar, where the bodies were found.”

“Oh.”

“You going back in to view the scene? I’ll go with you. We can see if Sal has found anything worth noting.”

“Nah, that’s okay. I’d rather take a look on my own. Guess I’m like you, trying to find additional clues. I’ll steer clear of Sal and let him do the same.”

“Right, get more clues. I knew that’s what you were doing. That’s your thing, after all, right? Getting information.”

“Right.”

“Richard, I haven’t found anything, and it’s coming down like a Bible plague! I say we head out!” Omar yelled.

Like a Bible plague. What a unique reference. Perhaps Omar knew the law of the land, this land in particular.

“All right!” Richard grinned again. “Guess we’re heading out. He’s right. This rain is working up.” He slung water off the side of his face to emphasize his point. “You still going in? Wanna tell Sal we’re in the car, where it’s dry?” His eyes squinted through the water.

“Yeah, I’ll tell Sal.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Barnes?”

The cop stopped walking. “Yeah?”

“I thought you were watching the doctor’s place.”

“I was, but there’s no reason to anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

“All the females fitting the description have left town.” Richard laughed. “Can’t say as I blame them, but for the past two weeks, there haven’t been any patients who aren’t brunette, black-haired or redheaded. Well, except for the profiler, and we know he’s not gonna touch her.”

“Why is that?”

“Everyone knows those FBI agents know their way with a gun. And besides, she flat out said she wants to do him in.” He winked, made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I think the only way he’ll go for Angel Jackson is if she’s the last blonde, single, pregnant lady in Macon.” He laughed out loud. “Then again, with all of them jumping ship, she may be.”

Thunder boomed in the distance, and the rain grew as thick as a water wall.

“I’m outta here. Tell Sal to get to the car. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait too long about heading out too. But do whatever ya want.”

“Thanks.” He watched Richard jitter away in the rain like a nervous little kid. “I will. In fact, I’ll do exactly what I want.”

But he wasn’t going to do what he wanted today. He
wanted
to go back to the now open grave and remember the day so long ago when he put Hannah and Logan Finley inside. But that desire died when Sal’s scream echoed through the woods and rain.

“Barnes! Get over here! We’ve got another body!”

Chapter Seventeen

Angel stormed into Ed Pierce’s office without the common courtesy of knocking. He didn’t deserve courtesy today; he deserved a throttling. What had he been thinking?

His head jerked to attention, and he stopped typing on his computer keyboard. “Jackson. You may be FBI, but this had better be important for you to barge in uninvit—”

“What were you thinking?” Her voice sounded calm in comparison to her anger. “And tell me you’re not communicating with him now.”

“With who?” He didn’t sound convincing. He knew, and he’d give her the truth about it soon, before he blew their case—correction,
her
case—out of the water. “Want to tell me what you’re talking about, Agent Jackson?”

“I’m talking about this.” She held emails from the techies at the field office. Emails that identified the website of the “New Fellowship,” as well as the transcript of this morning’s heated chat session, a session between TRUTHLUVR and PROTECT&SRV.

He took the paper, scanned the text. “So your guys found the website they use.”

“Yes.” She sat in the closest chair, scooted up to his desk to face him head on. “And they also learned the identity of most of the users, courtesy of their home computers.”

“Most of the users?” He frowned at the confrontational text between the two screen names on the page.

“Yeah. See, the techies explained it to me today. It didn’t take a whole lot of searching online to find those who called themselves the ‘New Fellowship of Macon,’ or NFOM, for short. Then they set about defining the users who had logged on over the past four months, assuming the killer would want to stay aware of the group as he planned—and committed—his murders.”

“I see.”

“It didn’t take a lot of effort to get the Internet Protocol addresses for the computers, but identifying their MAC addresses, the Media Access Control for each individual computer, proved a little more difficult. In fact, one of the computers had its MAC address so encrypted, the guys in Atlanta still haven’t identified the machine’s location. But they will.”

“Which user?” Ed’s tense jaw line said he knew.

“TRUTHLUVR. Our killer. But the guys had no trouble identifying his online nemesis, PROTECT&SRV. The computer is registered to Edward Allen Pierce. Sound familiar?”

“I wasn’t a member of the original Fellowship. I’m not the man you’re after; he is.” He pointed to TRUTHLUVR’s text on the page and let the pad of his first finger thump it. “And the New Fellowship isn’t anything like the old. We’re focused on serving Macon, providing help to charities and promoting a unified glorification to God. That’s it. No ‘power in children’ and no condemnation for marriage outside of the Fellowship body. Those things have changed. It’s a very positive, very private organization, and I’ve been blessed to be a part of it. I don’t want this lunatic ruining what we have.”

“But he is ruining it, whether you like it or not. And he’ll continue to do so, unless we stop him. By keeping your communications with him from the task force, you’re withholding evidence, Captain, any way you look at it.”

“I didn’t want to betray the Fellowship. I couldn’t. Judith and I hadn’t ever gotten into religion before, but we had always felt we wanted something. Our neighbor is a member and introduced us to it. The Fellowship is online now, but we know each other and help to communicate the strong values of the organization throughout the city by supporting charities, formulating neighborhood peacekeeping organizations, you know, the things behind the scene that keep Macon safe, but don’t involve the police force. Let’s face it; cops can only do so much. It’s people who get the job done and give the community the face of peace or violence. But I never realized
he
was online until this morning. In fact, I planned to tell the task force about the interaction, even if I hadn’t determined when or how.”

“Well, I’m here now.” She pointed to herself. “Tell away. And you can start by explaining who this ‘Tiny Tina’ person is.”

“That’s the thing. I have no idea.”

Angel took the pages from him and read aloud, “TRUTHLUVR: I know who you are, and you can’t stop me.” She peered at Pierce over the top of the paper. “
Does
he know who you are?”

The captain shook his head. “He thinks he does, but his comments say he doesn’t. I have no idea who he thinks he’s talking to.”

“Well, it’s a cop, and a cop who would know this ‘tiny Tina’ person.”

“I gathered that much, but I’ve never heard of anyone called ‘Tiny Tina’ in Macon, or anywhere else, for that matter. I planned to ask the task force if anyone knew.”

“When you decided to tell the task force of your involvement, you mean?”

“I
was
going to tell them.”

“He says that he can hurt you again, if you don’t get out of his way. Then he asks if you think Tiny Tina pulled that trigger. And you have no idea who this Tina person is?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Well, someone around here does, and I’d say it’s about high time we find out who that someone is.”

After John received the Captain’s call that there had been a new development in the case, he and Lexie wasted no time returning to the station. He held a large, black umbrella over the two of them as they hurried toward the main entrance, where Etta Green opened the door and urged them inside. Her thick ringlets whipped around her face as she pulled the door closed against the heavy rain. “Well?” She grabbed the umbrella, gave it a good shake to remove the excess water, then plopped it in a plastic stand by the door.

“Well, what?” Though John knew Etta could spot a break in a case as well as the greenest field cop.

“Well, what’s going on down the hall?” She raised her dark penciled brows while she waited for his response. “And don’t you dare say it’s nothing, because I’ve never seen Captain Pierce looking so tense before in my life, and that includes the day one of the guys arrested his nephew for drugs.”

“We don’t know,” Lexie said.

John added, “But we will find out.”

“Do that. And when you find out, tell me.”

“We will.” John led Lexie down the hall toward the conference room. “You sure you’re ready to deal with whatever they’ve found out, after everything you’ve gone through this afternoon?”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re sure you’re ready to deal with whatever they’ve found out, after everything
you’ve
been through this afternoon.”

He smirked. “Is there anything you’re afraid of, Ms. McCain?”

“Yes, there is. But the one thing I’m not afraid of...is facing that fear head on.”

He turned the knob on the conference room door. “Then I’d say we’re ready for anything.” But upon entering, and hearing the name that had haunted him for years, John wondered if he’d
spoken too soon.

“So, we need to know who she is.” Angel directed the question to Zed. “This ‘Tiny Tina’ he refers to.”

Zed Naylor and Ed Pierce, the only other task force members in the room, turned toward John and Lexie.

Angel acknowledged their arrival with a brief nod. “We’re discussing an update in our information on the killer. We’ve called and left messages for Sims and Marker to get here too, but we’re not going to wait for the whole task force. This needs our immediate attention.”

“I told you,” Pierce answered, “I haven’t heard that name before today.”

“No.” Zed looked at John as he spoke. “No, you haven’t, but I have. Tucker, you better sit down for this one.”

The room seemed to close in around John as he moved toward Angel and the paper she held. “What is that?”

“It’s a long story, but the meat of it is that Captain Pierce is a member of the ‘New Fellowship,’ which is an off-shoot of the original, but without the outlandish notions. Is that fair enough to say?”

“Fair enough.” Pierce didn’t seem happy.

“And this New Fellowship has a website where members can share news, inspiration and all, as well as chat with each other in online chat rooms.” She lifted several sheets of paper. “This transcript, taken from one of those chat rooms this morning, shows where Captain Pierce talked to someone with the screen name of TRUTHLUVR. It appears this TRUTHLUVR is our killer.”

“We’ve found him?” Lexie whispered.

“No, not yet. The techies are working on it, but he used a public computer at an Internet Café on the south side of Macon this morning, so the trace didn’t do us any good. At previous times, however, he logged on from a computer system encrypted well. The guys at Quantico believe it’s his home system, but it’s going to take a bit of time to break through the encrypted information.” She crossed her arms and looked resolute. “But they’ll get the job done, I have no doubt. However, right now what we need to figure out is who our killer
thought
he talked to. He believed Pierce, or rather PROTECT&SRV, was someone else.”

“Protect and serve?” John looked at the captain.

“My screen name. I didn’t think it’d hurt for them to realize they had a cop who believed in the Fellowship.”

“Until today, TRUTHLUVR had never participated in an active chat session, though he had several recorded sessions where he’d logged into various chat rooms on the site,” Angel confirmed.

“He lurked, but we have a lot of lurkers in the Fellowship.” Pierce shrugged. “So we never questioned when he entered the chat room. Lots of folks enter and merely observe.”

Angel huffed out a breath. “Okay, in any case, he started chatting today with Pierce about the previous murders. He stated he followed the Supreme One’s plan. But when Pierce told him his interpretation of the plan was skewed, TRUTHLUVR sent a message of pure venom, blasting the entire New Fellowship as”—she read from the page—“hypocritical whoremongers, and then he ended with a single sentence about this name.”

John’s throat tightened. “Read the sentence.”

“Wait. Agent Jackson needs to know who Tina was, so she can—”

“No,” John said. “Don’t sugarcoat anything for me, Zed. I want to know what he said about that day.”

“What day?” Lexie asked, but John remained firm in his decision to stay quiet until he heard what the killer knew about the day his father died.

“It says,” Angel held the page out as she read, “Stay out of my way, officer, or I may have to hurt you again. Did you really think it was Tiny Tina who pulled that trigger?”

“No way.” Ryan Sims entered the room. “Where did you get that? And what do you think it means?”

“It’s from an online chat session I had this morning,” Pierce informed the last two members of the task force, as Lou Marker took his seat. “A chat with our killer.”

“How did you manage that?” Marker asked. “And why are we just finding out?”

“I—” Pierce started, but Angel intervened.

“We don’t have time for all of that now. What we have to concentrate on is dealing with the situation and determining what this means. You all know more about this Tiny Tina person than I do, and I’d appreciate it if you would clue me in.”

John cleared his throat then spoke with a voice that sounded strong and secure, betraying the fury pulsating through his veins. “She’s the woman who killed my father.”

The entire room fell silent. Angel read the sentence again in little more than a whisper. “Did you really think it was Tiny Tina who pulled that trigger?”

“I never thought she did it. It was too bizarre, but then all of the evidence said that’s what happened.” John’s words were steady but filled with the emotion, with the memory of losing his father. He’d been with Abby and several of their friends at a local drive-in watching the movie
An Officer and a Gentleman
. He’d been nineteen, and none of the guys their age wanted to go, claiming it too girly, but the females in the group had prevailed. Odd that he remembered what movie played when the cop car pulled into the drive-in and Zed Naylor delivered the news that his father wasn’t coming home. Then again, why wouldn’t he remember the movie’s title? It summed up the man who died that night. An officer and a gentleman...Milton Tucker.

“What happened?” Angel asked. “Or what did the evidence show?”

Zed’s face looked grim. “Want me to tell her?”

“No, I will.” John couldn’t recall sitting down, but he had, and everyone’s attention focused on him at the table. He sensed Lexie’s presence in the next chair. She’d moved closer but hadn’t said a word. No one did. In fact, the room fell silent as he began to speak.

“On July 15
th
, 1988, like I said, I was at the drive-in with Abby and some of our friends. Dad wasn’t on duty, and Aaron Rainwater called him at home. Aaron and Dad were fishing buddies and Fellowship deacons, so when Aaron called him over saying he and Ernestine, his wife, were having trouble, Dad went. Aaron and Ernestine were known for their heated disagreements, but they always worked things out until that night. Anyway, Dad left me a note saying where he’d gone then drove to their home on his own.

From what the crime scene guys put together, Ernestine shot Aaron, then waited for Dad. When he got there, she fired at him, killing him with a single bullet to the chest, then she turned the gun on herself.” John paused, his throat tense at how vivid the memory replayed in his brain. “It didn’t make sense to anyone. They were always fighting, but Aaron and Ernestine had never taken it that far, never had any weapons involved before. But the evidence showed a triple homicide and suicide case.”