Ruthless (8 page)

“Thanks.” He scarcely got the word out before he tore off a bite.

She had to admit the scent coming from that bag was undeniably mouthwatering. Her stomach abruptly rumbled loud enough to have Harper glance her way. She winced. “I guess I’m hungry after all.”

He made a sound of agreement. Conceding, Jess unwrapped one for herself. She’d barely chewed off a bite when, surprised, she let out a little moan of her own.

By the time they reached the office, Jess had consumed two of the flaky biscuits and juicy sausage sandwiches.

“Told you,” Harper pointed out.

She could feel the belt she’d cinched tightly to prove her abdomen was as flat as ever cutting into her waist.

No way could she be pregnant.

No way.

Before they got to the office she warned Harper about the message from Spears.

He stalled, looked directly at her. “I get my hands on that son of a bitch, he’ll know just how much of a handful I can be.”

The sausage roiled in her belly.

She had drawn yet another of those around her into this sick game.

Birmingham Police Department, Special Problems Unit

“Good morning, Chief,” Officer Chad Cook called from his desk.

“Good morning, Cook.” Before she could get out a greeting to Lori the detective was on her feet and following Jess to her desk.

“I had a couple of scenarios about the Man in the Moon case I thought you might be interested in hearing.”

Jess smiled. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Sorry.” Lori tapped the folder in her hand. “I got a little excited about this. Good morning, Chief.”

“Pull up a chair.” Thank God for work. She needed to work. She needed to be with her team. Whatever else was upside down or sideways in her life, it would straighten out in time. Solving this case was long overdue.

Harper strolled over to join them. A good kind of tension instantly started to hum between him and Lori. The smile she attempted to hide was priceless. “Chief Black dropped off a list of retired and former cops who worked on the Man in the Moon case. If you’re going to be in the office for a while,” Harper offered cautiously, looking from Jess to Lori and back, “Cook and I could start the interviews.”

“Get on it,” Jess said without hesitation. “If I need to leave the office Detective Wells will accompany me.”

When he hesitated, Lori sent him an evil eye.

He held up both hands, conceding the idea he hadn’t dared to suggest out loud. “Okeydokey. We’re gone.”

Jess exchanged a look with Lori. There would be more.

Just as she suspected, both men hesitated at the door. “If you need either of us,” Cook offered, as he held his hand to his face in the call-me gesture, “you know what to do.”

“We’ll be fine,” Lori assured him.

With the testosterone out of the room, Lori huddled closer to Jess. “Before we get to the case, I told Chet I went to the movies with my mom and my sister last night, but what we actually did was talk to his mom. His birthday is Sunday.”

So that was what the girls’ night out was about. Maybe there wasn’t any trouble in paradise. The vibes Jess had picked up between them hadn’t suggested problems.

“Are you planning him a surprise party?” Jess wasn’t
so sure how their work schedules would go this weekend, but she didn’t want to miss whatever Lori had in mind.

“With the Spears case and this one I didn’t consider anything that complicated.” She gave a hopeful shrug. “I thought maybe lunch Sunday afternoon at his favorite restaurant. His mother traditionally prepares dinner for him, so I don’t want to step on her toes.”

Jess opted not to ask about his son and ex-wife. Life was complicated these days. Seemed everyone had one kind of baggage or another.

“Count me in.” Even if they were working they had to eat.

“Do you think it would be okay to ask Chief Burnett?” Lori ventured.

“I’ll ask him.” She and Dan spent most weekends together, when they weren’t on duty. Why kid herself about the upcoming one, on duty or not?

She’d tossed and turned last night wishing she were in Dan’s big old bed at that fancy house of his in Mountain Brook. No matter how hard she tried convincing herself that they could continue with this charade indefinitely, the truth was they needed to make some decisions. Soon.

“Thank you. I thought this could be a kind of work-friends get-together.”

Which meant she wasn’t inviting the ex or the kid. “Sounds great.”

“So.” Lori held the folder in both hands and tapped it against Jess’s desk, leveling the thick contents. “I could hardly sleep last night trying to figure out a connection between the children. There has to be one.”

“Absolutely.” Jess had tossed and turned herself. Missing Dan and this case were the primary reasons. And the
text from Spears. She pushed that subject aside and still a shiver stole over her.

“According to the official reports from over the years,” Lori continued, “the usual connections have been ruled out. It’s not the schools, churches, doctors, or any sort of extracurricular community program.” She shook her head. “It’s almost as if these girls weren’t even from the same planet despite the fact that they were all residents of the Birmingham area, Jefferson and Shelby counties.” She inclined her head, her gaze narrowing. “Yet their lives didn’t seem to cross paths at all before their disappearances.”

“The parents insist there’s no contractor or handyman connection,” Jess noted. That was generally the next tier of suspects considered. Like Lori, it was driving her nuts not to be able to lay her finger on at least one connection. “No beauty shops, boutiques, or grocery stores in common. Nothing other than the Galleria mall that some say they rarely visited and others went to with more regularity.”

“The Galleria employees were interviewed during the investigations of the final four victims,” Lori reminded her. “Backgrounds checked. Other than the routine traffic troubles and a few who’d had misdemeanor possession charges and one three-year-old DUI, the investigators got nothing there.”

That was the hardest part in a case like this where there was no evidence and no witnesses. “The potential for contact is unlimited, really,” Jess confessed. “Even when you think you’ve covered all the bases there’s usually one more you didn’t think of.”

“True.” She tapped that file on Jess’s desk again. “So true.”

Jess felt a little trickle of anticipation. Lori had found something. Something important. “It almost always narrows down to something small,” Jess went on. “Something no one was even looking for.”

“Exactly.” Lori grinned outright then. She opened the folder and placed a crime scene photo from thirty years ago in front of Jess. “The one thing every one of these families had in common was public utilities.” She pointed to the meter base right next to the missing child’s bedroom window.

Her heart thundering, Jess moved through photo after photo and it was the same in each one. The angles were different but in every single photo of every damned window belonging to a missing child there was a power company meter base.

“I want the name of every meter reader whose territory covered these homes during the past thirty-five years.”

“Already made the call.” She gave a little acknowledging nod. “We should have the list by noon.”

Jess surveyed the case board across the room and the sweet faces there. This was another monster she intended to get.

He wasn’t taking another little girl on her watch.

Pelham, 1:05 p.m.

I
spent thirty years with Alabama Power.” Lawrence Patrick leaned back in his rocker. “Went to work there right out of the army. I’d just turned twenty-two.”

Jess had learned that in interviews like this one far more could be gleaned by allowing the person of interest to talk about her-or himself for a while first. In this case, the tactic allowed Mr. Patrick to relax and feel as if he were in charge of the information exchange and that he was providing input to the investigation versus being questioned as a potential suspect.

“Thirty years.” Jess made a note on her pad. Next to her Lori did the same, using the notepad on her smartphone. The old-fashioned way suited Jess just fine. “That’s an admirable accomplishment, Mr. Patrick. You retired last year?”

“I did.” He cocked his head and studied Jess. “Do you really believe any of my meter readers could have been involved with the disappearance of those little girls?”

Now they got to the heart of the matter. Jess had been waiting for him to get there before she launched the first direct question. She’d started with the top-ranking name on the list Alabama Power provided. A field supervisor. “We have to retrace the steps of anyone who visited the homes of the children on a regular basis. Someone who might have known all the families involved.”

“Well.” He shrugged. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told the other cop who made that same statement thirteen years ago.”

Jess stalled the frown that wanted to furrow her brow. “You were interviewed by someone from the Birmingham Police Department before?”

He nodded. “Sure was. When that last little girl went missing, the Myers child, a Detective Corly or Corlon. He asked me about the meter readers for the routes that covered the Myerses’ home as well as the others that devil stole children from. Me and that detective went over each address, one by one, all the way back to the first abduction thirty-three years ago. The first two kids went missing before I started with Alabama Power,” Patrick pointed out, “but by the time the Myers child disappeared I was a supervisor, so I had access to the personnel files, knew the guys who’d worked those routes personally. Not one of those men would dream of hurting a child. I’d bet my life on it.”

Unfortunately it wasn’t his life at stake.

If the BPD interviewed this man, why wasn’t there a report? Jess had specifically looked for that connection after Lori suggested the possibility. She would be asking Black about the discrepancy. Meanwhile, she wanted to talk to that detective. “Could the detective who interviewed you have been named Corlew?”

“This is a photo of Detective Corlew.” Lori showed Mr. Patrick the image on her cell. “Is he the man who interviewed you?”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s him. He was a little younger, of course.” Patrick pointed to the screen. “I remember now, there was some kinda hubbub in the news about him a few years later. Got fired, I believe.”

“Why don’t we go over the statement you gave Detective Corlew?” Jess suggested. “Perhaps you’ve remembered something you didn’t think to mention at the time.”

Patrick shook his head. “I don’t mind going over what I told him but nothing about what I said then has changed. For the twenty or so years in question there were a total of six full-time meter readers and two fellows who filled in from time to time to take care of those particular routes during vacations and illness. Four of ’em have passed on since then.”

“What about the other four?” She’d come this far, and she wasn’t going to leave a stone unturned just because Mr. Patrick felt confident there was nothing to find along that path. “They’re still alive? Working?”

“Fergus Cagle took my place as supervisor. The other three, Mike Kennamer, Jerry Bullock, and Waylon Gifford, are still reading those meters. All upstanding men with children and grandchildren of their own.” He shook his head. “You won’t find the devil you’re looking for among ’em, Chief Harris.”

That was the problem with the devil: most folks didn’t recognize him until it was too late. Sometimes not even then.

Half an hour later Jess thanked Mr. Patrick and followed Lori to her snazzy red Mustang. “Before we move
on to the interviews with Cagle and the others, I’d like to find out why Corlew’s interviews with these guys weren’t in the case files.”

“We could ask Chief Black,” Lori suggested, as she opened the driver’s-side door.

Jess sent her a skeptical look. “I was thinking something a little less volatile. He’s still stinging from last week’s revelations about the Five.”

“I was hoping you would say that.”

When they’d settled into the oven Alabama’s August sun had transformed the car’s interior into, Lori snapped her seat belt into place. “Corlew’s having lunch at Jim ‘N Nick’s. He invited us to join him.”