Split Second (42 page)

Boston, Massachusetts
Thursday, April 2

W
ill Finley couldn’t sit still. He had been jumpy all morning. Now he roamed the halls of the county courthouse. He swiped a jerky hand over his face. Too much caffeine. That was his problem. That and very little sleep. It also didn’t help matters that Tess McGowan hadn’t returned any of his phone calls. Today was already Thursday. Since Monday, he had left messages on her answering machine and at her office. Or, at least, what he thought was her office. He had taken one of her business cards from the antique desk in her bedroom. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had her home phone number or known her last name. Hell, he had even tried leaving her messages at Louie’s until the burly owner told him to “leave Tess alone and fuck off.”

So why couldn’t he leave her alone? Why did she consume his thoughts? He had never been obsessed with a woman before. Why this one? Even Melissa had noticed his preoccupation, but she had accepted his explanation of being overloaded at his new job and stressed out about all the last-minute wedding preparations.

It didn’t help matters that he had avoided having sex with her since his night with Tess. Hell, it had only been three nights and yet he’d been afraid Melissa would notice, especially last night when she had hinted about spending the night at his place. He had practically shoved her out the door, using the lame excuse that he had to get some sleep for a big trial in the morning. What was his problem? Was he really afraid that Melissa would discover his betrayal somehow if he touched her differently? Or did he simply not want to erase the memories of having sex with Tess? Because he had played back that night over and over in his head so many times he could conjure it up at will.

Shit, he was fucked up!

As he turned the corner, heading to Records he ran into Nick Morrelli. The contents of Will’s folder spilled across the floor, and he was on his knees before Nick had a chance to know what hit him.

“Hey, what’s the hurry?” Nick said, joining Will on the floor.

Others stepped around them, not paying any attention as their heels smashed and crumpled the scattered papers.

Nick handed him the papers he had gathered while they stood up. But Will’s eyes darted across the floor, making sure he had everything. That was all he needed—to lose some piece of paper that would give the defense an edge in whatever this trial was.

“So what’s the rush?” Nick asked again, hands in his pockets, waiting.

“No rush.” Will straightened the stack and raked his fingers through his hair. He wondered if Nick could see the slight tremor in his hand. Although the two men were new to the D.A.’s office, Nick had been one of Will’s professors in law school back at the University of Nebraska. He still looked up to Nick as a mentor instead of a colleague. And he knew Nick had sort of taken him under his wing, helping a fellow Midwesterner adjust to the rush of big-city life in Boston.

“You look like shit.” Nick looked concerned. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’m fine.”

Nick didn’t look convinced. He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost lunchtime. How ’bout we get burgers down the street? I’m buying.”

“Okay. Yeah, sure. If you’re buying.” Geez! Even his speech was jerky. “Let me drop this stuff at Records.”

It was warm enough for shirtsleeves, but both men wore their jackets. Will realized he’d need to wear his jacket for the rest of the day if the pools under his arms were as obvious as they felt. Maybe all these physical reactions were simply cold feet. After all, the wedding was, what, three or four weeks away? Holy crap! How could it be that close?

Will filled the conversation with boring stuff about the trials Nick had missed while in Kansas City. It was the only way to ignore the concerned look in his ex-professor’s eyes. Nick politely listened, then seemed to wait until Will’s mouth was full of fries before he asked.

“So you ready to tell me what the hell’s bugging you?”

Will wiped away the ketchup on the corner of his mouth and swallowed. He grabbed his Pepsi and washed down what threatened to stick in his throat.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“I didn’t say wrong. I said what’s bugging you?”

“Oh.” He wiped his mouth again, buying time. Leave it to a lawyer to fuss over the wording.

“So what’s wrong?”

Will shoved his plate aside. He had managed to wolf down half his burger and almost all his fries before Nick had taken a second bite of his burger. He could feel the heartburn tightening into a fist and settling in the middle of his chest. As if he needed one more physical discomfort.

“I think I fucked up big time.”

Nick continued eating, waiting, examining him over the burger that he held with both hands. Finally he said, “It wasn’t the Prucello case, was it?”

“No. No, it wasn’t anything to do with work.”

Nick looked relieved. Then his brow furrowed again. “You getting cold feet about the wedding?”

Will gulped his Pepsi. He waved at the waiter and pointed to his glass for another, wishing he could trade it for something stronger.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Then he pulled in his chair and leaned across the table so he could keep his voice down despite the noisy lunch-hour crowd. Two of the tables next to them were filled with people he knew from the courthouse.

“Sunday night I met this woman. Christ, Nick! She was…incredible. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.”

Nick chewed and watched him as if contemplating what to say. If anyone would understand, surely it would be Nick Morrelli. Will knew that years ago, all the talk around campus about Nick and some of his own students, as well as several female professors, had not been idle rumor. Nick Morrelli had had his share of one-night stands. Even after he had left the university to take the position as sheriff of Platte City, the reputation and the activity had followed him.

“This woman,” Nick said slowly, carefully, “was she a hooker?”

Will almost choked.

“No, hell no,” he said, glancing around the small diner to make certain no one noticed he was agitated. “The guys—Mickey, Rob, Bennet—they sort of dared me into picking up this woman who was at the bar. She was incredible, sexy and so…I don’t know, uninhibited. But no, she’s no goddamn hooker.” He stopped and lowered his voice, noticing two women at the next table staring at him. “She’s older, probably about your age. Very attractive with this amazing…sensuality. But in a sophisticated sort of way, not, you know, cheap or anything like that. In fact, I think she’s a real estate agent or something.”

The waiter brought Will’s refill. He slid back in his chair, grabbed the glass and gulped half of it. Nick continued eating, as if it was no big deal. Will started feeling anxious and a bit angry. Hell, he had just spilled his guts, and Nick seemed more interested in finishing his goddamn burger.

“So what you’re really saying is that she’s a pretty incredible fuck?”

“Jesus Christ, Nick!”

“Well? Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“You know, man, I thought you of all people would understand this. But forget it. Forget I mentioned it.” Will pulled his plate closer and started shoving French fries into his mouth, avoiding looking at Nick. One of the women at the next table smiled at him. Evidently she didn’t know that he was an idiot.

“Come on, Will. Be sensible for one minute.” Nick waited until he had Will’s attention. “Are you willing to piss away three or four years with Melissa for one incredible fuck?”

“No. Of course not.” Will slumped in his chair and wrestled with the knot in his tie. He looked up and met Nick’s eyes. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Look, Will. I’ve been with a lot of women, incredible women. But you can’t let one incredible fuck rule your life’s decisions.”

They sat in silence as Nick finished eating. Will sat up, leaned across the table again, only now noticing the sleeve of his jacket dripping with ketchup. Shit! These days he seemed to spend more money on dry cleaning than he did on food.

“It wasn’t just the sex, Nick.” He felt he needed to explain, but wasn’t sure he understood it himself. “There was something else. I don’t know what. Something about her. I can’t get her out of my mind. I mean, here’s this strong, passionate, sexy, independent woman, who could also be…oh, hell I don’t know…vulnerable and sweet and funny and…and real. I know we both had too much to drink, and we know very little about each other, but…I can’t stop thinking about her.”

He watched Nick take out crisp bills and lay them on the plastic tray with the tab. Had it been a mistake to say any of this out loud? Should he have kept it to himself?

“Okay, so what do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Will said, giving in and fidgeting with the ketchup on his sleeve. “I guess maybe I want to see her again, just to talk, to see…hell, I don’t know, Nick.”

“So call her. What’s stopping you?”

“I tried. She won’t return my messages.”

“Then stop by and see her, buy her lunch. Women like a guy taking action, not just talking.”

“It’s not that easy. It’s a five-hour drive. She lives in this little town outside D.C.—Newton, Newberry, Newburgh. Yeah, Newburgh, I think.”

“Wait a minute. Outside D.C.? Newburgh Heights? In Virginia?”

“Yeah. You know it?”

“I think a friend of mine bought a house there.”

“Small world.” Will watched Nick, whose mind suddenly seemed preoccupied. “You think they know each other?”

“I doubt it. Maggie’s an FBI profiler.”

“Hold on. Is this the same FBI Maggie who helped you on that case last fall?”

Nick nodded, but he didn’t need to answer at all. Will could see it was the same woman. Will had noticed months ago that this woman couldn’t be mentioned in general conversation without Nick getting all weirded out. Maybe this woman was Nick’s obsession.

“So how come you’ve never called this Maggie or stopped by to see her?”

“Well, for one thing I didn’t realize until a few days ago that she was getting a divorce.”

“A few days ago? Wait a minute. Was she at the Kansas City thing?”

“Yes, she was at the Kansas City thing. She was one of the presenters.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

Will noticed Nick’s demeanor had changed to frustration with a hint of irritation. Yep, he was all weirded out again.

“But you saw her, right? You talked to her?”

“Yeah. We spent an afternoon digging through garbage together.”

“Excuse me? Is that some new code for foreplay?”

“No, it isn’t,” Nick snapped, suddenly not in the mood for Will’s attempt at humor. “Come on. Let’s get back to work.”

Nick stood, straightening his lopsided tie and buttoning his jacket, indicating that was the end of this conversation. Will decided to ignore it and press on.

“It sounds like this Maggie is your Tess.”

“Jesus, kid. What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Nick shot him a look, and Will knew he was right.

“This Maggie drives you as crazy as Tess drives me. Maybe we both need to make a trip down to Newburgh Heights.”

M
aggie was surprised to find that Agent Tully had managed to make her old office look smaller than it was. Books that didn’t fit in the narrow floor-to-ceiling bookcase formed leaning towers in the corner. A chair intended for visitors was hidden under stacks of newspapers. On his desk, the in-tray was crushed under a pile of lopsided documents and file folders. Strings of paper clips were left in odd places, a nervous habit of a man who needed to keep his fingers occupied. One lone mug teetered on a stack of legal pads and computer manuals. Peeking from behind the door, Maggie glimpsed gray running gear where normal people hung a trench coat or rain slicker.

The only thing in the office that held some prominence was a photo in a cheap wooden frame that sat on the right-hand corner of the desk. The entire corner had been cleared for its place of honor. Maggie immediately recognized Agent Tully, though the photo appeared to be several years old. The little blond girl had his dark eyes, but otherwise looked exactly like a younger version of her mother. The three of them looked so genuinely happy.

Maggie resisted the urge to take a closer look, as if doing so might expose their secret. What was it like to feel that completely happy? Had she ever felt that way, even for a brief period? Something about Agent Tully told her that happiness no longer existed for him. Not that she wanted to know. It had been years since she had worked with a partner, and the fact that Cunningham had made it one of the conditions of her return to the Stucky investigation was annoying. She felt as if he was still punishing her for the one stupid mistake of her career—going to that Miami warehouse alone. The warehouse where Stucky had been waiting for her. Where he had trapped her and made her watch.

Okay, so partly she knew Cunningham was doing it to protect her. Agents usually worked together to protect each other’s backs, but profilers often worked alone and Maggie had grown accustomed to the solitude. Having Turner and Delaney hanging around had been stifling enough. Of course, she would abide by Cunningham’s rules, but sometimes the best agents, the closest partners forgot to share every detail.

Agent Tully came in carrying two cartons, stacked so that he peered around the sides of them. Maggie helped him find a clear spot and unload his arms.

“I think these are the last of the old case files.”

She wanted to tell him that every last copy she had made for herself had fit nicely into one box. But instead of pointing out what a little organization could do, she was anxious to see what had been added to the case in the last five months. She stood back and allowed Agent Tully to sort through the mess.

“May I see the most recent file?”

“I have the delivery girl on my desk.” He jumped up from his squatting position next to the cartons and quickly riffled through several piles on his desk. “The Kansas City case is here, too. They’ve been faxing us stuff.”

Maggie resisted the urge to help. She wanted to grab all his piles and make order of them. How the hell did this guy get anything done?

“Here’s the file on the delivery girl.”

He handed her a bulging folder with corners of papers and photos sticking out at odd angles. Immediately, Maggie opened it and started straightening and rearranging its contents before examining any of them.

“Is it okay if we use her name?”

“Excuse me?” Agent Tully continued to rummage over his messy desktop. Finally he found his wire-rimmed glasses, put them on and looked at her.

“The pizza delivery girl. Is it okay if we use her name when we refer to her?”

“Of course,” he said, grabbing another file folder and shuffling through it.

Now he was a bit flustered, and Maggie knew he didn’t know the girl’s name without looking. It wasn’t a matter of disrespect. It helped to disconnect. Profilers often referred to a body simply as “the victim” or “Jane Doe.” Their first introduction to the victims came when they were bloody, tangled messes, often sharing little or no resemblance to their former selves. Maggie used to be the same, using general terms to disassociate, to disconnect. But then several months ago she met a little boy named Timmy Hamilton who took time to show her his bedroom and his baseball card collection just before he was abducted. Now it suddenly seemed important to Maggie to know this girl’s name. This beautiful, young, blond woman who she remembered being so cheerful when she had delivered Maggie’s pizza less than a week ago. And who was now dead simply because she had done so.

“Jessica,” Agent Tully finally blurted out. “Her name was Jessica Beckwith.”

Maggie realized she could have found the girl’s name just as easily. The top document was the medical examiner’s autopsy report, and the girl had already been identified at that point. She tried not to think of the parents. Some disconnection was necessary.

“Any trace recovered at the scene that could be used for DNA testing?”

“Nothing substantial. Some fingerprints, but they aren’t matching Stucky’s. Weird thing is, everything looked wiped clean except for this set of fingerprints—one index, one thumb. Chances are they belong to a rookie cop who touched stuff he wasn’t supposed to touch and now he’s afraid to admit it. AFIS hasn’t come up with anything yet.”

He sat on the edge of the desk, laying his folder open on a pile, leaving his fingers free to string more paper clips together.

“The weapon was not retrieved. Is that right?”

“Correct. Looks to be very thin, razor sharp and single edged. I’m thinking maybe even a scalpel, from the way he’s able to slice and dice so easily.”

Maggie winced at his choice of description, and he caught her.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s the first thing that came to mind.”

“Any saliva on the body? Any semen in the mouth?”

“No, which I know is different from Stucky’s usual M.O.”

“If it is Stucky.”

She felt him staring at her but avoided his eyes and examined the autopsy report. Why would Stucky hold back or pull out early now? He certainly wouldn’t go through the trouble of using a condom. After they had revealed his identity as being Albert Stucky, he had blatantly gone on to do whatever he wanted. And that usually meant showing off his sexual prowess by raping his victims several times, and often forcing them to perform oral sex on him. She wished she could take a second look at the girl’s body. By now she knew what kinds of things to look for, otherwise insignificant physical evidence that telegraphed Stucky’s patterns. Unfortunately, she saw at the bottom of the form that Jessica’s body had already been released to her family. Even if she stopped the transfer, all the PE would be gone, washed away by a well-intentioned funeral director.

“We did find a stolen cellular phone in the Dumpster,” Agent Tully said.

“But it was wiped clean?”

“Right. But the phone records show a call to the pizza place earlier that evening.”

Maggie stopped and looked up at Agent Tully. My God, could it have been that easy? “That’s how he abducted her? He simply ordered a pizza?”

“Initially that’s what we were thinking,” he explained. “We just found the delivery lists in her abandoned car. We’ve been running down the list, checking addresses and phone numbers. When Cunningham recognized Newburgh Heights as your new neighborhood, we checked for your address. Found it right away. Likewise, all the addresses are residential. But most of the people I’ve talked to so far were actually home and did receive their pizza. I have only a few left that I can’t reach by phone, but I plan to drive to Newburgh Heights and check them out.”

He handed her two photocopies of what looked like pieces of paper torn from a spiral notebook. The copier had even picked up the frayed edges. There were almost a dozen addresses on both lists. Hers was close to the top of the list labeled “#1.” She leaned against the wall. The exhaustion from the night before was catching up with her. Of course, she had spent most of last night pacing from window to window, watching and waiting. The only sleep she had gotten had been on the flight back from Kansas City, and how could anyone get any rest while bobbing thirty-eight thousand feet above control? Now she couldn’t even remember how long ago that was.

“Where did you find her car?”

“The airport’s long-term parking lot. Also found a telephone company van parked alongside it that was reported stolen a couple of weeks ago.”

“Any trace inside Jessica’s car?” she asked as she glanced over the list of addresses.

“There was some mud on the accelerator. Not much else. Her blood and some blond hair—also hers—were recovered from the trunk. He must have used her own car to dump her body. No signs of a struggle inside the car, though, if that’s what you’re thinking. He had to have taken her someplace where he could take his time with her. Problem is, there aren’t many abandoned warehouses or condemned properties in Newburgh Heights. I was thinking he might have given a business address, knowing the offices would be empty at night. But nothing commercial shows up on either list.”

Suddenly Maggie recognized an address on one of the lists. She stood up straight and away from the wall. No, it couldn’t be this easy. She reread the address.

“Actually, he may have had someplace much more luxurious in mind.”

“Did you find something?” Agent Tully was at her side, staring at the list that he must have examined over and over himself. But of course, he wouldn’t have seen it. How could he?

“This address,” Maggie pointed halfway down the page. “The house is for sale. It’s empty.”

“You’re kidding? Are you sure? If I remember correctly, the phone is still connected to a voice messaging service.”

“The owners may be forwarding their phone calls. Yes, I’m sure it’s for sale. My real estate agent showed it to me about two weeks ago.”

She no longer cared about the rest of the file, which she had tucked under her arm. She was almost out the door before Agent Tully stopped her.

“Hold on,” he said, grabbing his wrinkled jacket from the chair behind his desk. As he did so, he stumbled over a worn pair of sneakers Maggie hadn’t noticed. Agent Tully reached for the corner of his desk to catch his balance and one of the piles gave way, scattering papers and photos across the floor. When he waved off her help, Maggie leaned against the doorjamb and waited. It was bad enough Cunningham was making her see Dr. James Kernan, but saddling her with her Dudley DoRight seemed almost laughable.