Split Second (54 page)

“For McGowan?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. But why bother to leave us a print that doesn’t even belong to him? Just like on the Dumpster behind the pizza place and on the umbrella in Kansas City.”

O’Dell hesitated, stopping her hands from shuffling papers and looking at him as if wondering whether or not to tell him something. “Keith hasn’t been able to find a match for those prints in AFIS. But he says he’s almost certain all three sets of prints belong to the same person.”

“You’re kidding. He knows that for sure? If that’s the case, maybe these murders aren’t Stucky, after all.”

He stared at her, waiting for some kind of reaction. Her face remained impassive, just like her voice when she said, “Jessica’s murder and Rita’s in Kansas City are awfully close together. I know I just said that Stucky could pull it off, but the anal penetration with Jessica is not Stucky’s M.O. Also, she’s much younger than any of his other victims.”

“So what are you saying, O’Dell. You think this one was a copycat?”

“Or an accomplice.”

“What? That’s crazy!”

She buried her eyes in the files again. He could see she was having a difficult time with the theory herself. O’Dell was used to working and brainstorming alone. Suddenly he realized that it probably took a good deal of trust for her to share this idea with him.

“Look, I know you’re serious, but why would Stucky take on an accomplice? You have to admit, that’s out of character for any serial killer.”

In reply, O’Dell pulled out several photocopied pages that looked like magazine and newspaper articles and handed them to Tully.

“Remember Cunningham said he found the name Walker Harding, Stucky’s old business partner, on an airline manifest?”

Tully nodded and began sorting through the articles.

“Some of those go back several years,” she told him.

They were articles from
Forbes
, the
Wall Street Journal, PC World
and several other business and trade periodicals. The
Forbes
article included a picture. Though the grainy black-and-white copy had obliterated most of the men’s features, the two of them could have passed for brothers. Both had dark hair, narrow faces and sharp features. Tully recognized Albert Stucky’s piercing black eyes, which he knew to be void of color despite the poor reproduction. The younger man smiled while Stucky’s face remained stoic and serious.

“I’m guessing this must be the partner?”

“Yes. A couple of the articles mention how much the two men had in common and how competitive they were with each other. However, they seemed to have ended their partnership amicably. I wonder if they might still be in contact with each other. Maybe still in competition with each other, only with a new game.”

“But why now after all these years? If they were to do something like this, why not when Stucky first started his game?”

O’Dell sat down and tucked strands of hair behind her ears. She looked exhausted. As if reading his thoughts, she sipped her
Diet Pepsi
, which he had noticed was her coffee substitute. This was her third one of the morning.

“Stucky has always been a loner,” she explained. “I haven’t done any research on Harding except for these articles, but for Stucky to have chosen anyone as a business partner is remarkable. I’ve never thought about it before, but perhaps the two men had, and still have, some strong connection, a connection Stucky didn’t realize until recently. Or perhaps there’s some other reason he decided he needed his old friend.”

Tully shook his head. “I think you’re grasping at straws, O’Dell. You know as well as I do that statistically, serial killers don’t take on partners or accomplices.”

“But Stucky is far from fitting any of the statistics. I’m having Keith run a check to see if Harding has ever been fingerprinted. Then we can see if we have a match to the fingerprints being left at the crime scenes.”

Tully looked over the articles, scanning the text until something caught his eye.

“Looks like there’s a slight problem with your theory, O’Dell.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a footnote to this
Wall Street Journal
article. Stucky and Harding ended their partnership after Harding was diagnosed with some medical problem.”

“Right. I saw that.”

“But did you finish reading it? This part is blurred at the bottom from the copier. Unless Walker Harding found some miracle cure, he can’t be Stucky’s accomplice. It says here he was going blind.”

M
aggie waited until Tully left to meet his daughter. Then she began unearthing every scrap of information she could find on Walker Harding. She pounded the computer’s keys, searching the FBI’s files and other Internet sites and directories. The man had virtually disappeared after announcing his ambiguous medical problem almost four years ago. Now she realized Keith Ganza might never find a fingerprint record, either. Perhaps it was simply a gut instinct, but she felt certain Harding was still connected to Stucky, helping him somehow, continuing to work with him.

From what little she had read, she knew Harding had been the brains of their business, a whiz with computers. But Stucky had been the one who had taken all the financial risk, investing a hundred thousand dollars of his own money; money he had joked about winning one weekend in Atlantic City. Maggie couldn’t help noticing that the investment capital and the start-up of the business happened the same year Stucky’s father died in a freak boating accident. Stucky had never been charged though he had been questioned in what looked like a routine investigation, and only because Stucky had been the sole beneficiary of his father’s estate, an estate that made that hundred thousand dollars look like pocket change.

Harding appeared to have been reclusive long before his business venture with Stucky. Maggie could find nothing about his childhood, except that he—like Stucky—had been raised by a single, overbearing father. One directory listed him as a 1985 graduate of MIT, which made him about three years younger than Stucky. The state of Virginia listed no marriage license, driver’s license or property owned by a Walker Harding. She had begun a search of Maryland’s records when Thea Johnson from down the hall knocked on the open conference-room door.

“Agent O’Dell, there’s a phone call for Agent Tully. I know he left for a while, but this sounds important. Do you want to take the call?”

“Sure.” Maggie didn’t hesitate and reached behind her for the phone. “What line?”

“Line five. It’s a detective from Newburgh Heights. I believe he said his name was Manx.”

Immediately, Maggie’s stomach took a dive. She sucked in a deep breath and punched line five.

“Detective Manx, Agent Tully is at lunch. This is his partner, Agent Margaret O’Dell.”

She waited for the name to register. Even after a sigh, there was a pause.

“Agent O’Dell. Barge in on any crime scenes lately?”

“Funny thing, Detective Manx, but here at the FBI we usually don’t wait for engraved invitations.” She didn’t care if he heard the irritation in her voice. If he was calling Tully, he wanted something from them. Besides, what was he going to do? Go tell Cunningham she was mean to him again?

“When’s Tully gonna be back?”

So that was the way he wanted to play.

“Gee, you know, I don’t remember if he told me. He might not be back until Monday.”

She waited out his silence and imagined the scowl on his face. He was probably swiping a frustrated hand over that new buzz hairdo of his.

“Look, Tully talked to me last night about this McGowan woman down here in Newburgh Heights that’s supposedly missing.”

“She is missing, Detective Manx. Seems you have a problem with women disappearing in your jurisdiction. What’s up with that?” She was enjoying this too much. She needed to back off.

“I thought he should know that we checked out her house this morning and found a guy snooping around.”

“What?” Maggie sat up and gripped the phone.

“This guy said he was a friend and was worried about her. He had a screen off a back window and looked like he was getting ready to break in. We brought him in for questioning. Just thought Tully might like to know.”

“You haven’t released him yet, have you?”

“No, the boys are still chatting with him. I think we got him pretty damn scared. First thing, he insisted on calling his fucking lawyer. Makes me think he’s guilty of something.”

“Don’t release him until Agent Tully and I have a chance to talk to him. We’ll be there in about a half hour.”

“Sure, no problem. Lookin’ forward to seeing you again, O’Dell.”

She hung up, grabbed her jacket and was almost out the door before she realized she should probably call Tully. She patted her jacket down until she felt the cellular phone in the pocket. She’d call him from the road. No, of course, this wasn’t a matter of her running off on her own. It wasn’t breaking any of Cunningham’s new rules. She simply didn’t want to ruin Agent Tully’s lunch with his daughter.

That was what she told herself. The fact was, she wanted to check this out on her own. If Manx had Albert Stucky or even Walker Harding, Maggie wanted him all to herself.

M
aggie waited until Tully left to meet his daughter. Then she began unearthing every scrap of information she could find on Walker Harding. She pounded the computer’s keys, searching the FBI’s files and other Internet sites and directories. The man had virtually disappeared after announcing his ambiguous medical problem almost four years ago. Now she realized Keith Ganza might never find a fingerprint record, either. Perhaps it was simply a gut instinct, but she felt certain Harding was still connected to Stucky, helping him somehow, continuing to work with him.

From what little she had read, she knew Harding had been the brains of their business, a whiz with computers. But Stucky had been the one who had taken all the financial risk, investing a hundred thousand dollars of his own money; money he had joked about winning one weekend in Atlantic City. Maggie couldn’t help noticing that the investment capital and the start-up of the business happened the same year Stucky’s father died in a freak boating accident. Stucky had never been charged though he had been questioned in what looked like a routine investigation, and only because Stucky had been the sole beneficiary of his father’s estate, an estate that made that hundred thousand dollars look like pocket change.

Harding appeared to have been reclusive long before his business venture with Stucky. Maggie could find nothing about his childhood, except that he—like Stucky—had been raised by a single, overbearing father. One directory listed him as a 1985 graduate of MIT, which made him about three years younger than Stucky. The state of Virginia listed no marriage license, driver’s license or property owned by a Walker Harding. She had begun a search of Maryland’s records when Thea Johnson from down the hall knocked on the open conference-room door.

“Agent O’Dell, there’s a phone call for Agent Tully. I know he left for a while, but this sounds important. Do you want to take the call?”

“Sure.” Maggie didn’t hesitate and reached behind her for the phone. “What line?”

“Line five. It’s a detective from Newburgh Heights. I believe he said his name was Manx.”

Immediately, Maggie’s stomach took a dive. She sucked in a deep breath and punched line five.

“Detective Manx, Agent Tully is at lunch. This is his partner, Agent Margaret O’Dell.”

She waited for the name to register. Even after a sigh, there was a pause.

“Agent O’Dell. Barge in on any crime scenes lately?”

“Funny thing, Detective Manx, but here at the FBI we usually don’t wait for engraved invitations.” She didn’t care if he heard the irritation in her voice. If he was calling Tully, he wanted something from them. Besides, what was he going to do? Go tell Cunningham she was mean to him again?

“When’s Tully gonna be back?”

So that was the way he wanted to play.

“Gee, you know, I don’t remember if he told me. He might not be back until Monday.”

She waited out his silence and imagined the scowl on his face. He was probably swiping a frustrated hand over that new buzz hairdo of his.

“Look, Tully talked to me last night about this McGowan woman down here in Newburgh Heights that’s supposedly missing.”

“She is missing, Detective Manx. Seems you have a problem with women disappearing in your jurisdiction. What’s up with that?” She was enjoying this too much. She needed to back off.

“I thought he should know that we checked out her house this morning and found a guy snooping around.”

“What?” Maggie sat up and gripped the phone.

“This guy said he was a friend and was worried about her. He had a screen off a back window and looked like he was getting ready to break in. We brought him in for questioning. Just thought Tully might like to know.”

“You haven’t released him yet, have you?”

“No, the boys are still chatting with him. I think we got him pretty damn scared. First thing, he insisted on calling his fucking lawyer. Makes me think he’s guilty of something.”

“Don’t release him until Agent Tully and I have a chance to talk to him. We’ll be there in about a half hour.”

“Sure, no problem. Lookin’ forward to seeing you again, O’Dell.”

She hung up, grabbed her jacket and was almost out the door before she realized she should probably call Tully. She patted her jacket down until she felt the cellular phone in the pocket. She’d call him from the road. No, of course, this wasn’t a matter of her running off on her own. It wasn’t breaking any of Cunningham’s new rules. She simply didn’t want to ruin Agent Tully’s lunch with his daughter.

That was what she told herself. The fact was, she wanted to check this out on her own. If Manx had Albert Stucky or even Walker Harding, Maggie wanted him all to herself.