The Dying Room (23 page)

June 29

Richmond

Jess stared at the man beyond the glass. She hugged her pad and pencil to her chest and tried unsuccessfully to chase away the cold that had settled there.

Eric Spears
. The Player. The man who had brutally tortured and murdered thirty or more women.

Lieutenant Randolph, the lead homicide detective on the Richmond case, had already interviewed Spears. Jess would have preferred that he wait for her but it hadn’t worked out that way.

The local authorities were in a frenzy. The articles of clothing found in the box belonged to the six victims from the Richmond area. Blood matching that of two of those victims had been found on the undergarments.

Eric Spears’ prints were on the box.

That was where the good news ended.

The box was from his company, SpearNet. Anyone who worked there, or who had access to the trash taken from the facility, could have picked up the box and used it for nefarious purposes. Once the box left the SpearNet facility, it couldn’t be connected to Spears. Other prints were on the box but no matches so far.

They couldn’t connect Spears, or anyone with whom he was associated, to the storage unit, to the box or to the items in the box, much less the burner phone used to lure Jess there.

The text messages she had received and the call to the storage unit manager were from the same burner phone that was conveniently untraceable. A cyber expert was attempting to track down where the email she’d received had come from.

Gant and the locals were in an uproar because she’d gone into the storage unit without a warrant. Jess wasn’t a fool. She’d had exigent circumstances, in her opinion. How was she to know the weeping was coming from a recording device? It could have been coming from a victim via a cell phone set to speaker inside the box.

She’d had no choice but to go in. At least that was the story she was sticking to. Maybe she could have decided to stand down once she saw there was only a box inside—not one large enough to hold a person, by the way. But she’d needed to know what was inside and the scenario about the cell phone wasn’t totally outside the realm of possibility. At least not unless a judge said so anyway.

As if her worrisome thoughts had summoned him, Gant appeared at her side. “They’ve agreed to allow you to interview him.”

Jess resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. She hated, hated, hated when local law enforcement treated the support from the Bureau as if it were more in the way than anything else. “I’d be grateful except they wouldn’t have a suspect in custody if not for me.”

Gant shot her a look. “We don’t need to talk about this right now.”

He was not happy that she’d gone rogue, as he called it, last night. In hindsight, it wasn’t one of her better choices but then she’d known that at the time.

“Fine.” She turned her attention back to the man waiting alone in the interview room. “Whatever you say.”

“Tread carefully in there,” Gant cautioned.

As if she didn’t know how to interview a suspect. “You’re well aware this isn’t my first dance with a sociopath.”

“He has three attorneys, Jess.” Gant stared at her until she met his gaze. “Three legal eagles who are right now looking for cause to toss out your evidence. Spears is so sure he has nothing to worry about he’s agreed to talk to you alone—against the counsel of those three attorneys.”

“Got it.” She should have known Spears would have the best lawyers money could buy. If she’d taken a minute to think about it, she would have been telling Gant that instead of the other way around.

Maybe he was right. Maybe her head wasn’t on straight with this case.

“I’ll be watching,” Gant reminded her as she prepared to enter the room where Spears waited.

Before she could open the door, the chief of police as well as the lead detective on the case and the Richmond Bureau field agents working the task force had gathered behind the one-way mirror to watch.

She stepped into the interview room and closed the door. She could almost feel the camera in the upper left corner of the room zooming in on her. The scent of extravagant cologne, subtle and undeniably appealing, filled her nostrils.

Jess cleared her head and took a seat across the table from him. Her pulse jolted before settling at the realization that only about two feet separated her from the man she was absolutely certain was the Player. “Good afternoon, Mr. Spears.” She placed her pad on the table and readied her pencil for taking notes. She liked doing certain things the old-fashioned way. Recorders and electronic notepads were fine for some, she’d given both a shot, but she preferred her pencil and paper.

Spears watched her for a long moment before he spoke. Assessing her no doubt. He deliberately inventoried every part of her visible to him before he was through.

“Special Agent Jess Harris,” he said. His voice was deep, smooth, elegant—like the obscenely expensive silk suit he wore. “I finally have the pleasure of meeting you face-to-face. I’m a lucky man, indeed.”

Jess ignored his attempt at humor. “I have a few questions for you, sir.”

“You’ve been watching me,” he said. “Driving past my home. Touring my SpearNet facility.”

How nice of him to tell the world. She felt certain Gant was shaking his head this very second. Spears was trying to rattle her. She wasn’t going to let him.

“I’m a profiler, Mr. Spears. Part of determining all that I can about a subject involves learning about his life. His work. As a successful business strategist, I’m certain you grasp the concept of understanding your target. Once a goal is set or a choice is made, it’s important to gather as many facts as possible. Routines. Strengths. Weaknesses. It’s the only way for any hunter to win the game and ultimately catch the prey.”

He smiled. If it was not for the fact that she knew he was a vicious murderer, the expression would have been pleasant. Eric Spears was a handsome man. A charming man. A brilliant one.

A cunning and deadly animal.

“The only hunting I do, Agent Harris, is in the world of technology.”

The situation became perfectly clear at that precise moment. This was not going to go down the way she wanted. Spears was far too smart to make a mistake. Unless he could be connected to that damned box, he would walk. She would never have this opportunity again.

She returned his smile with an amiable one of her own. “You choose six women each year to hold hostage and murder, one at a time. Why six?” she asked. “Why not five or seven? Is there some relevance in the number six? Is that how many women rejected you as a young man—before you were rich enough to buy attention and affections.”

Those watching in the viewing room would be demanding that Gant get her under control. She hoped like hell he didn’t end the interview before she said what she had to say to this bastard.

“Six is the devil’s number, Agent Harris. Did you know that?” Spears inclined his head and studied her. “Perhaps your monster chooses six victims for that reason.”

Fury started to simmer deep inside her.
Don’t let him get to you
. “I’d say you’re right, Mr. Spears. He is a monster and a devil. Both of those terms are in my profile.”

“Are you analyzing me now?” He angled his head the other way as if needing a different perspective of her. “Have you labeled me a psychopath or a sociopath?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

He laughed. “Oh yes. A sociopath. I fit most of the criteria, don’t I?” He shrugged casually. “What successful businessman doesn’t?”

“You may be right about that.” Might as well go along. Maybe he’d trip up in spite of his brilliance. All that arrogance had to be hard to carry around.

“Your reasons for bringing me here still elude me, Agent Harris.” He turned his hands up. “You have no evidence. I can’t fathom your point.” He leaned forward, his face so very close to hers. Jess stood her ground without as much as a flinch. “If you wanted to meet me that badly, you should have left a message with my assistant. Blondes are not usually my type, but I’ve been known to make the occasional compromise.”

That fury that had been simmering boiled over. “It isn’t the murder that turns you on, is it?”

He stared so deeply into her eyes she couldn’t breathe, could hardly hold his gaze. “I don’t know what you mean, Agent Harris.”

“It’s the torture.” This time she inclined her head, studied him openly. “That’s the part you enjoy.” His eyes turned ice cold. Jess barely staved off a shudder. “You see, Mr. Spears—”

“Call me Eric,” he said softly, something menacing in the gentleness.

“Eric,” she amended, her throat so damned dry at this point she could hardly swallow. “I’ve spent a lot of years studying the levels of evil and you, sir, are at the very top. The only way you get any pleasure in this life is to inflict pain. You feel nothing without the pain of others.”

He inhaled deeply as if trying to catch her scent. “Since you have me all figured out, Agent, what else is there to talk about?”

Jess forced a smile. Oh he was good. So very nonchalant. “April North. Sierra Timmons. Wendy Commers. Lola Wayans. Allison Fleming. Frieda Clark. And, of course, Naomi Proctor. That’s what I want to talk about, Eric. Where would you like to begin?”

He leaned back in his chair. “As entertaining as this lovely visit has been, I’ve grown quite bored, Agent Harris. I think I’d like to speak with my attorneys now.”

“First,” Jess reached into her pocket for her cell phone, “do you mind if I snap a photo of you?” She shrugged. “You’re the first sociopath at the top of the evil scale I’ve ever interviewed.”

“This is your party, Agent Harris. Be my guest.”

“Thank you, Eric.” Jess took his picture and gathered her pad and pencil. “I’ll see that your attorneys are called for you.”

Before she could rise from her chair, he reached across the table and touched her. Just the briefest caress of his fingertips across her hand. She shuddered before she could block the reaction.

“The pleasure was all mine,
Jess
.”

Present day...

Birmingham

“He touched you...”

The words were hardly more than a breath. Jess nodded in response to Gina’s stunned comment. “He hasn’t stopped touching my life since.” Jess rubbed her hand as if she could erase that moment in her past. Eric Spears had marked her.

“What about the anonymous contact? Did it continue? Do you still get emails or text messages from him or whoever sent them?”

Jess suddenly felt more tired than she had in her entire life. “The emails continued for a few days. Then they stopped. I didn’t hear from him again until the text messages started after I came here.” She remembered the first text message she’d received from Spears after his release. Jess sucked in a sharp breath. “As it turned out, the emails were sent through my home computer. The handheld recorder in the box at the storage unit was the one I’d bought years before and tucked into a desk drawer after carrying it around for months. It was just something else cluttering my bag. Who knew it would become the linchpin in the demise of my career.”

“Spears’ prints were only on the box?”

That was the most frustrating part of all. “Only on the box that came from his place of business. A place where any number of folks could have picked it up. The recorder, however, only had my prints.”

“So the evidence was thrown out.”

Jess nodded. “Between the evidence being a step below circumstantial and my method of obtaining it, yes. The evidence was thrown out and Spears was released from holding.”

“That was just a few days after you returned to Birmingham,” Gina said.

“Right before Detective Wells was abducted.” Jess realized now that Eric Spears had chosen her for some reason. Maybe he’d known she’d been searching for him, for five long years. Whatever it was, his perverse murder games had evolved into something else... something that involved her.

“He picked you,” Gina offered, reading her mind.

“He wanted me to know the monster I’d been tracking with no success was him. He couldn’t help himself. It was an ego thing.”

“He took a significant risk reaching out to you.”

“He knew what he was doing,” Jess countered. “He planned every move too carefully to be trapped. I was the one who ended up caught between a rock and a hard place. I was so involved in my own game of trying to figure him out I made mistakes I’d never made before.”

“He destroyed your career with the FBI.”

“He did.” There was a time when Jess had regretted that so very deeply, but coming home was the right thing. Spears had done her a favor on that one. “Although, my name was eventually cleared and Gant offered me my job back, there are some who will always see what happened as a failure on my part.”

Gina contemplated her for a moment. “You could have gone back to Quantico and yet you decided to stay here.”

“I did.” Jess thought of the child she carried and the man she had loved since she was seventeen years old, even when she’d refused to admit it. “It was the right choice.”

“Do I hear wedding bells in the future for you and our chief of police?”

Jess reached across her desk and shut off the recorder. “That’s not part of this story, Miss Coleman.”

Gina ducked her head in acknowledgement. “Off the record, then. You said Dan’s in trouble.”

Jess hesitated for only a moment. “Someone inside the Birmingham Police Department is setting him up for the disappearance of Captain Ted Allen.”

“That’s ludicrous.” Gina shook her head. “Allen was head of the Gang Task Force. More likely some drug lord he pissed off took him out.”

Jess feared it wasn’t that straight forward. “Whatever happened to Allen, we both know Dan couldn’t have been involved with anything like that.”
Impossible
.

“Do you think this has anything to do with Spears?”

“I can’t rule it out, but it may be about jealousy. There are those who would like to be where Dan is.”

“Are you suggesting Deputy Chief Harold Black is out to get the promotion he thought he should have had four years ago?”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Black wasn’t happy when Dan was selected as chief of police?” Jess had suspected as much, but she hadn’t returned to Birmingham until the middle of last month. She had no idea what happened four years ago. Dan would never speak ill of Black. He was far too classy to stoop that level.

“Not at all,” Gina confirmed. “There was tension for a while.”

“Check with your sources,” Jess urged. “See what you can find out.”

“Here you are with a deranged serial killer after you and you’re worried about taking care of Dan. Who’s going to take care of you?”

Jess forced a smile. “I know what I’m up against. Better the devil you know, as they say.” Dan spent most every waking hour trying to take care of her. She intended to do the same for him. She needed Gina’s support on this. “What I need from you,” she pressed, “is help pinpointing the source of this threat to Dan.”

“Count on it,” Gina promised.

“This stays strictly between us.” Jess couldn’t allow any member of her team to pursue her theory. Though any one of them would gladly do just that if they knew about her suspicions, she would not permit them to risk their careers.

“You have my word,” Gina promised.

The door opened and Dan walked in.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he announced with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Jess had done that to him. She had brought this evil to his door.

Gina pushed to her feet. “Jess was just giving me an exclusive on Spears.” She looked from Dan to Jess. “It’s quite a story.”

“That it is.” Dan’s gaze rested on Jess.

His concern wrapped around her, but rather than comfort her it tightened so that she could hardly breathe. It was his love for her and their child—his determination to keep them both safe—that was going to cost him far too much. That terrified her more than anything. She wanted to protect him as much as he wanted to protect her.

“I’ll call you,” Gina said as she gathered her recorder and bag.

“Thank you.” Jess hoped her eyes conveyed how much the other woman’s help meant to her.

Gina hesitated at the door and gave Jess a nod. Jess wasn’t going to second guess her decision to ask for Gina’s help. Certainly, the reporter hadn’t climbed to the top in Birmingham without walking over a few bodies. But it was a risk Jess had to take.

“You had lunch?” Dan glanced at the pizza box.

Jess pushed away the worrisome thoughts and produced a smile. “I did. You?”

Dan shook his head. “It’s Sunday. With the briefing over there’s nothing else we can do here. What do you say we go someplace where we can relax for a little while?”

Part of her resisted. How could she relax when Spears was out there, planning his next move... his next murder? She stilled. No. Dan had the right idea. They wouldn’t even be in the office on Sunday if not for the special briefing Gant had called. There was nothing else she could do today. She and Dan had no promise of tomorrow but this moment was theirs. She didn’t intend to take a single minute of her time with the man she loved for granted.

“That sounds like a plan,” she agreed.

Dan came around to her side of the desk and drew her into his arms. “I love you, Jess. If it’s the last thing I do, I will protect you and our child.”

That was the very thing that terrified Jess the most.

Don’t forget to look for my next romantic suspense novel, SEE HIM DIE, coming June 25, 2015! You can order it by clicking
here
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