The First Victim (11 page)

“Good.” Was that relief in his voice? “If these two give you any trouble, just let me know.” With a quick salute in Morgan’s direction, he was gone.

“We got off on the wrong foot, Ms. Wright.” Sounding genuinely contrite, Special Agent Black walked up to her. “Can we start over? Hello, I’m Sebastian Black.” He extended his hand, and she automatically shook it.

“Please call me Emily.”

“Em, the alarm!” Bailey bellowed from the foyer.

“Excuse me.” She ran from the room.

Bailey was waiting by the front door. Anna was nowhere in sight.

“That girl’s an odd child,” he said as Emily grew near. “I’ve never seen anyone so excited to sit in the back of a squad car.”

“She is unique.”

She reached for the alarm keypad, but he stopped her, grabbing her hand.

“If you need anything, you’ll call me, right?”

Her flush flared back to life at the naked intensity in his voice.

His eyes narrowed, gauging her reaction. Lifting a hand he brushed his knuckles against her heated skin. Her entire body caught fire at the contact. Eyes drifting shut, she swayed unsteadily toward him.

“I’ve got to go.” They were standing so close that his whispered words fanned her cheeks.

Opening her eyes, she could see that his lips were mere inches away. In a bold move that took them both by surprise, she grabbed his shirt. His eyes widened. Slowly and deliberately, making her intention clear, giving him plenty of time to pull away, she tugged him closer and closer until only a millimeter separated their mouths. This was no desperate last-ditch attempt on her part, no drunken fumbling on his. This was two people intentionally giving themselves to one another. While their other two kisses had been riddled with impulsivity, this calculated move on both their parts ratcheted up the intensity. This was not just a kiss, this was a beginning.

She wasn’t sure which of them closed the final distance between them, but suddenly their lips touched. Unlike outside The Garden Gate, this time Bailey kissed her with an aching tenderness that made her feel more cherished than she ever had in her life. This was how she’d always imagined it would be with him. Perfect.

His lips, like the rest of him, were warm and solid. Releasing her grip on his shirt, she flattened her hands against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm. A shiver of desire had her pressing closer to him as he teased her tongue with his.

Hearing a sound from the other room, she pushed him away just as quickly she’d grabbed him. Despite the way he made her feel, they weren’t the only two people in the world.

He loomed above her, staring down. His eyes had changed to the shade of a storm-tossed sea, and a scowl had been etched on his face.

Her heart sank as she realized kissing him had been a mistake. She wished she could think of something to say to make light of her foolish gesture, but her mind remained blank.

His stubble-covered jaw worked as though he was going to speak, but he too stayed silent.

After a long, painful moment, while Emily wished the earth would open up and swallow her whole, he simply turned around and walked out, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Idiot, idiot, idiot.” Fingers trembling, she punched the code into the keypad. What the hell had she been thinking kissing him like that? All she’d succeeded in doing was confirming that Bailey O’Neil, despite the mixed signals he’d sent, was definitely not interested in her. That, and the fact she’d made a total fool of herself. Again.

Desperately wanting to crawl under a rock, she instead had to go talk to the two FBI agents conferring in the Big Room. Fanning her still glowing face, she forced herself to take a deep breath, and mentally chanted the mantra that never failed to center her,
Calm, cool and collected. Calm, cool and collected.

Black and Morgan had switched positions. The older agent now examined the wall, while his partner stared out into the dark night.

Avoiding her father’s favorite chair this time, Emily instead perched on a leather ottoman.

“According to O’Neil’s report, you found the body at approximately 9:00 a.m.” Black didn’t turn away from the window as he spoke.

“If that’s what he says…I could double-check my cell phone if you’d like.”

“That’s not necessary. You discovered her after returning from a run?”

“Yes.”

“And how long was that?”

“The loop around the lake is about five miles, figuring I probably averaged a ten-or eleven-minute mile, I’d say less than an hour.”

Turning toward one another with the precision of synchronized swimmers, the two agents shared a look she couldn’t read before Morgan asked, “Do you run around the lake as part of your regular routine?”

She laughed, the sound tight and brittle even to her own ears. “I haven’t run around the lake in fourteen years.”

That revelation had both men spinning to stare at her.

“I don’t live in Lakeside Acres. I live in New York. My routines, my
life
is there.”

Another loaded look passed between the two men. This time she could see that something was clearly concerning them. “What?”

Black shook his head, clearly not wanting to share his thoughts. Morgan though stared at her for a long moment, assessing.

Her palm began to itch the way it did when a creep, no matter how well dressed, stared too long on the subway. She remembered the instructor of the first self-defense class she’d ever taken saying, “Everyone’s got a built-in early warning system. Never ignore it.” Clasping her hands together, her thumb rubbing the scar, she braced herself for the bad news she knew was coming.

“The body was—”

“Chase!” The warning tone in Sebastian’s voice was unmistakable.

“She deserves to know.”

An eddy of tension and despair swirled in her gut.
Calm, cool and collected. Calm, cool and collected.
The mantra wasn’t working. The nervous energy made her jumpy. She leaped to her feet, unable to stay still a moment longer.

“I’m sorry, Emily,” Chase said gently, compassion shining in his eyes, “but either this guy got extremely lucky, when he dumped Jackie Willet’s body in your driveway or…” He hesitated.

The pressure in her chest grew heavier by the millisecond. She suddenly wanted to cover her ears and scream, “La la la, I can’t hear you.” Instead she concentrated on the effort to breathe.
In and out. In and out.

“This is such a bad idea,” Sebastian muttered.

“Or,” Chase continued gravely, ignoring him. “He knew exactly when he could leave her, because he was watching you.”

The base of her spine went ice-cold as the implications of his suggestion began to sink in. Whoever had killed that poor girl knew when she’d left the house. “Watching me?” She hated the way the words came out as a pathetic squeak.

Chase nodded. “Have you noticed anyone following you?”

Emily immediately thought of the notes and flowers. How they’d given her a bad vibe from the start. She’d told herself she’d been overreacting, but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe her gut had been right.

“You thought of someone, Emily?” Chase was studying her face closely.

She looked away from him, staring blindly out at the lake. She suddenly felt light-headed and her stomach flip-flopped nervously. Balling her hands into fists, she forced herself to take a breath. Giving in to the terrible fear that threatened to decimate her control wouldn’t help matters.

She had to tell the FBI agents what she knew. She had to give them the notes. Maybe they were clues. If the killer had known when she’d gone for a run, it meant he’d been stalking her since she’d returned to town. She and Laurie weren’t safe.

Taking care not to get his dress uniform dirty or wrinkled, Bailey leaned against the wall of the morgue wondering if the chill that had pervaded into his bones was a result of the room’s temperature, or a fear of what the medical examiner would find.

Doctor Eleanor Gershwin, realizing that Sheriff O’Neil’s funeral was scheduled for the late morning, had offered to come in at the crack of dawn to perform Jackie Willet’s autopsy so that Bailey could attend.

He’d been up half the night worrying about how and when The Baby Doll Strangler would strike again. Even when he had drifted off to sleep, his slumber had been less than restful, filled with dreams of Emily Wright. Hot, sex-drenched dreams, the likes of which he hadn’t had since he was a teenager. He’d had to take a cold shower before leaving the house. No wonder he was freezing now.

Exhausted, he was content to stand back and let Chase and Sebastian do their thing. While they stood watch over Jackie Willet’s body, he read over the file on The Baby Doll Strangler that Chase had been generous enough to share. It was thicker than when Bailey had first read it back in the Academy.

He remembered the first girl, Ashley Johnson. Pigtails, gap-tooth grin and a sparkle in her eyes, she radiated mischievous vitality. At least she did in her fourth-grade photograph. It was the most recent picture her grandmother could find of her when Ashley went missing five years later. Bailey compared Ashley’s grinning school picture to the crime-scene photos.

Even though she was fifteen in the photograph, she looked like she was a sleeping baby doll, just like Jackie Willet. That’s how the killer had arranged their bodies. That’s how he’d wanted Ashley’s grandmother and Emily to find them.

He’d laid the Johnson girl on her side, tucking her folded hands beneath her cheek. She looked like a sleeping angel. She didn’t look like she’d been put through hell for two weeks, but Bailey knew the child had suffered. They’d all known it before ever reading the coroner’s report. Even Sebastian, the most stoic member of their class, had been upset by what they’d found.

There had never been a chance to save Ashley Johnson. Hers was the first case that involved the killer the press had dubbed The Baby Doll Strangler. She hadn’t been the last. Ashley Johnson was dead before the FBI was even called in. The local police department hadn’t exactly spread themselves thin searching for a little black girl being raised by her grandmother because her own mother was doing time on a drug conviction.

Her disappearance, like her short life, had barely been a blip on anyone’s radar until the next girl went missing.

He moved on to the next set of photos in the file.

Unlike Ashley Johnson, Kimberly Waldorf’s upper-middle-class parents had a recent picture of their missing daughter. Blond-haired, pink-cheeked and blue-eyed, Kimberly looked nothing like Ashley. Everyone had hoped that because of her different ethnicity and socio-economic status Kimberly had been taken by a different perp. Bailey had wanted to believe that too, but in his gut he’d always known.

Her appearance and parents’ standing in the community had not saved Kimberly from the same cruel end Ashley had met. Like Ashley, Kimberly’s posed and primped body had been left for her parents to find. Like Kimberly, her hair, like her life, had been cut short, and twirled into perfect ringlets.

Thumbing through the file, Bailey read that six months had passed between Ashley’s and Kimberly’s deaths in Brewer, Maine and the murders of Robin McKirdy and Amanda Scheer outside of Pinehurst, North Carolina. The killer had migrated to a warmer climate, as though driven by the changing seasons, and claimed two more innocent victims. That had been ten years ago. He’d claimed another two victims every year since then, with no discernable geographical pattern besides staying on the East Coast, but Bailey didn’t have the stomach to stare into their eyes today.

Instead he glanced over to watch Chase shift uncomfortably, transferring his weight to his good leg. His movement didn’t go unnoticed by his partner who slid his gaze to him and then back to Jackie. The dead girl was laid out under the too-bright lights on the examination table like a chicken on a supermarket rotisserie.

Both agents made a show of focusing on the medical examiner, Doctor Gershwin, a grizzled, middle-aged woman who’d probably burnt out as an ER doc and now drank too much. From their brief contact when she’d arrived, Bailey knew she reeked of stale cigarette smoke. A scent that, when mixed with whatever antiseptic cleanser the hospital used, was enough to make his stomach turn.

“There’s petechial hemorrhaging,” the woman muttered. “First glance I’d say she asphyxiated.”

“Manual strangulation?” Sebastian asked. The Baby Doll Strangler didn’t kill any other way.

“Could be. There’s round bruising near her trachea which would be consistent with that, but I can’t say conclusively at this point.”

Choking the life out of someone was a slow way to kill a person. Wrapping his hands around her throat and squeezing until a girl’s pulse stilled would seem to indicate a perp with an uncontrollable rage. Usually a killer with that kind of emotion got sloppy, made mistakes, but not this guy. This guy never gave them anything besides his M.O. to go on.

“I’ll do the rape kit.” Like a magician pulling a tablecloth free from a loaded dinner table, the M.E. yanked the sheet covering the dead girl off with a flourish.

Cringing, Bailey turned away, averting his gaze. He hated the way autopsies violated victims all over again. Jackie Willet didn’t deserve that. Even dead, her dignity was being stripped from her with careless disregard.

Jackie Willet wasn’t just a body to him. She was a girl. A real person. He’d spoken to her shell-shocked parents the day before. Hearing them extol the virtues of their only child was heartbreaking. The depth of their loss sank in just a little more as they realized they had to change every “Jackie is…a funny girl…boy crazy…a good student” to “Jackie
was
funny…crazy…good.”

Bailey noticed that Chase was focused on the pink pajamas bagged as evidence, lying on the counter near the door. He limped over, wincing against the pain.

He picked up the sealed package, examining it. The costume Jackie had been dressed in was bubble-gum pink, ruffled and frilly. Innocent.

“Oh my God.”

The horror in the M.E.’s voice had the hairs on the back of Bailey’s neck standing up. He shivered, whether from cold or dread, he couldn’t say. He just knew that she’d found something very, very bad. He was pretty sure he could guess what it was.

Sebastian was already moving to get a closer look at the body. “What is it?”

“There’s something stuck inside, something jammed in the vaginal cavity.” Her voice was high and reedy, as though she were going to pass out.

He felt a pang of sympathy for her. This was no big-city doctor. No doubt she was more accustomed to the blood and guts of hunting fatalities than the handiwork of a sick serial killer. If it was The Baby Doll Strangler, she was about to remove his twisted calling card. Glancing over at Gershwin, he could see sweat beading on her forehead. The poor woman was shaking.

“I don’t…” she said, raising her hands in surrender and backing away from the girl on the table. “I can’t do this.”

“It’s your job,” Sebastian snapped. “A girl’s dead. We need answers.”

The woman’s rheumy eyes filled with tears above her mask.

“Black,” Chase barked. “In the hallway. Now.”

Sebastian opened his mouth to respond.

“That’s an order.”

Sebastian stalked out of the room, avoiding making eye contact with Bailey.

Chase limped over to the M.E. and patted her shoulder reassuringly. “I apologize for my partner’s behavior, Doctor Gershwin. I understand that this is very upsetting. Why don’t you take a few minutes to collect yourself, and then we’ll discuss how we’re going to proceed.”

“I’m going to have a smoke.”

“Sounds like an excellent idea.” He waited while she tore off her gloves and gown, rummaged in her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes with trembling hands. “We should have warned you.”

“You knew?”

“We suspected it was a possibility. If you’d like we can call in our own people to complete the autopsy.”

“But you need answers.” Scowling as she echoed Sebastian’s words, she stuck a cigarette in her mouth.

Chase nodded.

“Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Of course.”

Marching out of the room, she breezed past Bailey who stayed rooted to the spot holding up the back wall. As the ranking local law-enforcement officer he knew he should probably say something to calm her, but he couldn’t think of a single platitude to pass her way.

Chase clapped him on the shoulder as he limped past him out into the corridor.

He could hear the two FBI agents arguing in the hallway, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. A few moments later, the partners returned.

Arms crossed, Sebastian strode in. Clenching his jaw, he glared at his superior. It was the kind of stare that had been known to scare witnesses into spilling secrets they’d rather keep secret, but Chase wasn’t impressed. In fact, he laughed at him, the sound echoing off the cold tiled walls.

Chase was still chuckling when Doctor Gershwin marched back in, all business. Wordlessly she pulled on a fresh gown. Snapping on a new pair of gloves, she grabbed a pair of tweezers. “Make yourself useful and hold this.” She thrust a silver specimen tray into Sebastian’s hands.

As she bent between the dead girl’s legs, Sebastian tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, silently asking if he should apologize to her. Chase shook his head. Nothing was going to make this job any easier.

She plopped the first piece of evidence she’d pulled out of the dead girl into the tray. It was an unwrapped lollipop.

The Baby Doll Strangler was definitely at work in Lakeside Acres.