Vanished (7 page)

There was just one man from the original list of suspects who hadn’t been cleared or moved out of state in the past eighteen years. And he didn’t match the profile in a very key way.

Still, with Walter Wiggins not talking, he was the best lead Evelyn had. She’d checked with Carly and discovered he was on their list for follow-up, but it hadn’t happened yet, because he wasn’t a high priority. Then she’d checked with Tomas and learned that the only officer not running down other leads was his head detective, Jack Bullock.

So, the two of them were driving to the nearby town of Treighton. They’d been on the road for fifteen minutes, but Jack had kept up a steady stream of questions that gave no sign of ending.

“If you think Darnell Conway is worth investigating, does that mean we should just disregard your entire profile?” Jack kept his tone casual, his hands loose on the wheel of his police vehicle. But the question fairly screamed his resentment.

Evelyn didn’t even glance his way. “You read the Charlotte Novak file, right? You know why I want to talk to him.”

“So, the profile...”

“Can have details that are off. The thing is to focus on the profile as a whole, not fixate on a particular point.”

“That’s a pretty huge point.”

Evelyn shifted in her seat to face him. “The murder of his girlfriend’s daughter was never solved. But after the investigation went cold, Darnell and his girlfriend left the state and came here. Do you know how old Charlotte would’ve been eighteen years ago, at the time of the first abduction, if she’d lived?”

Jack’s mocking expression slipped off. “You’re kidding.”

“She would’ve been twelve that summer. Same as the Nursery Rhyme Killer’s original three victims.”

“So, then why the hell aren’t those other FBI agents—the ones who
specialize
in this—chasing this guy down with everything they’ve got?”

Evelyn shrugged. “He was never arrested for that crime. He was a suspect, but obviously the cops didn’t have enough on him to make a case. It’s possible he didn’t do it. He’s got no other criminal history. And
that
case is the only reason he showed up on the list of suspects eighteen years ago. Which was probably a lucky fluke, since he was never charged.”

“That’s some fluke. How did they find out?”

“He was part of the search parties back then. The profiler had a weird feeling about him and did some digging. And I trust the profiler’s gut on this. I just want to feel Darnell out, see how he responds to my questions.”

“What if he’s the perp? You said not to get too close to Wiggins so we wouldn’t scare him into killing Brittany if he’s got her. Isn’t the same true here?”

Evelyn leaned her head back against the headrest, still tired from the mob scene that afternoon. She glanced at her watch, realizing it had now been a full twenty-four hours since Brittany was grabbed.

She closed her eyes, trying not to dwell on something she couldn’t change, but she could hear it in her voice when she told Jack, “If Darnell did kill his girlfriend’s daughter, it was within a few hours. Walter is different. His MO was to get his victims comfortable with him first. He wanted to believe they were willing participants. That’s part of his fantasy.”

“Okay, but just like Wiggins...”

“I know. Darnell Conway would probably be noticed on High Street. But I need to check. And there’s only so much I can tell from a copy of a cold case file. I need to see Darnell’s face when I ask him about it.”

Jack gave her a pensive glance as he drove over the bridge separating Rose Bay from Treighton. Fifty feet below them, the water looked calm in the fading light. Peaceful.

That instantly transported her back to when she was ten and she’d first come to live in Rose Bay. Her grandpa’s car had been too warm as they drove over the bridge in the middle of the night. She’d kept quiet, knowing the heat was for her—wearing a pair of threadbare, tattered pajamas and no shoes. Her grandpa had tried so hard not to let her see his anger, his sadness, his guilt.

His weathered hand had folded around hers as they drove, as he’d promised her she’d never have to go back. She was going to live with him and Grandma from now on and they would take care of her. They would protect her.

She’d never been more sheltered than her first two years with her grandparents. But then Cassie had disappeared. And the world had seemed to slide out from under her again.

“...don’t you think?”

“What?”

Jack sent her a perturbed look and she saw that he was on his cell phone.

“Well, maybe you should try to get the dad to let you in the house now.” A pause. “He refused? You think he has something to hide?”

“What’s going on?” Evelyn asked.

“Okay. Fine. Bye.” When he hung up, Jack told her, “Wiggins woke up. He’s in pretty bad shape, though, so they’re keeping him in the hospital. Apparently he’s not too happy about it, but he doesn’t want to press charges against Brittany’s dad. Which is good. Shit like that—protecting the perverts and criminals—is
not
why I became a cop.”

“So Walter’s dad won’t let police search the house?”

“You got it. You think he knows the girl is there?”

Evelyn shook her head. “I doubt it. I know he wants to protect his son, but that’s taking it pretty far. I’ve seen the families of pedophiles do their best to deny what their kid is, even when the proof is staring them in the face. But to be complicit in the abduction? You know his dad better than I do, but that seems like a stretch.”

Jack nodded. “True. Though his dad’s in bad health these days. I doubt he can walk down those basement stairs anymore. Maybe in his heart he knows she’s there, but just doesn’t want to believe it?”

Evelyn felt her lips twist downward. “Unfortunately, that’s a real possibility.”

When Jack’s hands clutched the wheel so hard the muscles in his arms bunched, Evelyn added, “But honestly, I still have a real problem seeing Walter being able to stalk and abduct a girl here. He’s got motive, sure, but means and opportunity?”

“Well, he’s at the top of my list,” Jack said as he pulled onto a dark street. “And frankly, a black guy like Darnell Conway on High Street would get noticed, too, especially eighteen years ago. Isn’t that why you profiled the killer as white?”

Evelyn didn’t answer as she gazed out the window at Darnell’s neighborhood. The houses were small and close together, the yards overgrown; beware of dog signs were posted everywhere. Every house was in need of a coat of paint, most needed new roofs and every yard could have benefitted from an attempt to landscape. The sun was setting, making it hard to see, but Evelyn would bet there wasn’t a single flower on the entire street. From the broken plastic kid’s slide in the front yard of one house to the car without wheels up on cinder blocks in the next, the whole street was depressing.

The house Jack pulled up to was the best of the bunch by far. Darnell Conway might not have planted a garden, but he’d at least mowed his lawn. As they walked up to the front porch, they discovered he definitely believed in security. Next to Darnell’s beware of dog sign was a security company sign; the lock on the door meant business, and all the shades were blackout-style.

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Seems like he’s got something in here he wants to keep locked tight.”

Evelyn nodded, frowning. “I noticed that.”

“And judging by the lack of barking, I’m thinking most of those dog signs are for show.”

“It is pretty silent,” Evelyn agreed, glancing around. The kind of neighborhood where no one saw anything.

“Well, let’s see what he has to say.” Jack lifted his hand to knock on the door, but before he could, they heard bolts sliding back.

Three bolts slid free before the door swung open to reveal Darnell Conway. Evelyn knew he was in his late forties, but he looked younger, with smooth dark skin and close-cropped hair. It was only his deep brown eyes that showed his age. And something about the anger lurking in the depths of those eyes made the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up.

Was he the Nursery Rhyme Killer? Had he taken Cassie eighteen years ago? Had he stalked Evelyn, intending to grab her, too?

Did he recognize her now? It was hard to tell, because Jack reached in his pocket and held up his police shield, drawing Darnell’s instant attention.

It had been twenty years since Darnell had first been investigated by police, when he found the body of his girlfriend’s daughter. But as soon as he saw Jack’s badge, hatred and fury raced across his features, so fast that if she’d blinked at the wrong time, she would have missed it.

Judging by the way Jack’s eyes darted to hers, he hadn’t blinked, either. “Mr. Conway, I’m Jack Bullock, Rose Bay PD.”

“What are you doing in Treighton?” Darnell asked, his voice as smooth and even as his expression.

Jack motioned to her. “This is Evelyn Baine, FBI.”

Darnell’s eyebrows twitched, and then his lips did the same. “FBI, huh? Anything I can help you with?”

If her name meant anything to him, she couldn’t tell. Damn it.

“Can we come in?” Jack asked.

From what little Evelyn could see of the house behind Darnell, she realized the inside was a hell of a lot nicer than the outside. Not just clean and tidy, but expensive furnishings. So, why live in this neighborhood?

Darnell’s gaze flicked to Jack, then to her. “No.”

“We’re investigating the disappearance of Brittany Douglas,” Evelyn told him.

“Never heard of her.”

Jack scoffed. “Her abduction has been all over the news.”

“I drove up the coast for a few days. Got back yesterday.”

“She was abducted yesterday.”

Darnell’s eyes, hard and shuttered, settled on Jack. “Like I said, never heard of her.”

“She’s twelve years old,” Evelyn said.

Darnell didn’t blink, just stared at her.

“That’s only two years older than your girlfriend’s daughter was when she was killed.”

Darnell’s expression shifted into fury. “Are you implying something,
agent
?”

“You found her, didn’t you?”

“So what? I wasn’t arrested twenty years ago and there’s a damn good reason. I didn’t kill Kiki’s kid. Leave me alone and get the hell off my property!”

He slammed the door so hard Evelyn took an instinctive step back.

“That went well,” Jack said dryly. But as they got back into the car, he asked, “You think he did it?”

“I think we’d better take a close look at him. And fast.”

Six

T
omas had never gone home last night, but he’d fallen asleep at his desk sometime after six. The call that had woken him less than two hours later had initially seemed like a crank call, a person who refused to give his name reporting “something suspicious” in the marsh. But when asked to explain the term
suspicious
, the person had said it looked like a body in a trash bag.

Brittany had been missing almost thirty-five hours now. The profiler had been on scene since yesterday and the CARD agents since the night before that. They’d given him the statistics, so he knew it was way too likely the caller was right.

The thought made him slow instinctively as he tracked through the marsh, and his foot sank into the goop at the bottom. Tomas yanked the top of his knee-high plastic boot until it popped free and pushed onward. Ahead of him, Jack Bullock moved forward with seeming ease.

And that was ironic. Except when taking a police call, Jack had probably never visited this part of Rose Bay. Tomas could actually see the house where he’d spent most of his formative years.

It was raised on wooden stilts at the back for when the marsh waters rose, and the exterior was stucco. When he was a boy, there had been a deck off the back, but it was gone now. His parents had finally moved once their last son left home, and since then, the house had gone through a series of owners. From this distance, it looked forlorn and neglected.

“Can you imagine?” Jack huffed, gesturing at a shack up ahead of them. “Who’d want to live there?”

Tomas kept quiet, deciding to assume Jack didn’t know he’d grown up a hundred yards away. As for the shack, it was unoccupied and had been for more than a year. “It’s empty. Let’s check it out when we’re finished here, make sure no one used it to hide Brittany.” More likely, they’d just find someone’s drug stash, but it was worth a shot.

Jack turned to say something else, then cursed as one of his feet slid out from underneath him. He caught himself before he was soaked, but still let out another stream of obscenities. “How far out into the marsh did the caller say it was?”

“It shouldn’t be much farther.”

“We should’ve taken the boat,” Jack groused, breathing hard in the heavy humidity.

“The water level’s too low.” It only came up to their knees in the early-morning tide, and Tomas knew it wouldn’t get much deeper where they had to search.

He’d spent enough time in the marshes as a child to know them. The spot he was now searching for a body had once been a favorite place for him and his brothers; it was where they’d row their dad’s old canoe, race through the marshes and out into the ocean. Back then, the main thing they’d had to worry about was their drunken neighbor, who liked to shoot at anything that moved with his hunting rifle. Tomas longed for that kind of simplicity now.

Since Brittany had been abducted and Evelyn Baine had come to town, Jack had been a bigger pain in his ass than usual, Walter Wiggins was threatening to sue the police department for not protecting him after he’d been threatened and the whole town was in an uproar over yesterday’s arrest of Brittany’s father. To make matters worse, Evelyn had brought him a suspect.

Despite presenting a profile that pegged the abductor as white, late last night she’d returned to the station with Jack and named Darnell Conway as her key suspect. And if Rose Bay learned that a black man was the prime suspect in the abductions of young white girls, the riot at the station the other day was going to look like a peaceful gathering. And he’d be in for a shitstorm he wasn’t sure his small police force could handle.

“How much farther?” Jack asked, sloshing ahead of him.

“We’re close.”

Being from the wrong side of the tracks wasn’t something Tomas liked to advertise about himself. But it gave him an advantage in his job. He’d grown up seeing Rose Bay from the other side. Instead of the perfect, safe community where the rich could feel secure leaving their doors unlocked and their children with nannies, Tomas had seen the dangers.

He’d been raised to respect the natural perils, from the undertow in the ocean to the speed of high tide when it poured in over the sand bars. He’d known to avoid the neighbor who always smelled like sour whiskey and not to let the man who claimed he was from the energy company into the house when his father wasn’t home.

Brittany’s parents, on the other hand, had felt secure in allowing their daughter to play alone in the front yard, lulled into complacency by Rose Bay’s seeming perfection. Nothing bad had ever touched them, so they thought nothing ever could. Until their daughter was taken from right under their noses.

“Over there,” Jack called, pointing, and Tomas could see it, too, floating at the far end of the marsh. An industrial-size black garbage bag, with something heavy weighing it down. Had it not gotten tangled in the reeds, it probably would have sunk.

“Shit.” The caller was right. It did look like it could be a body. A small body.

He’d come across enough dead bodies when he’d worked homicide in Atlanta—including a couple in the garbage. He’d taken the job in quiet Rose Bay, hoping to see fewer. And that was what had happened. But the child cases were always the hardest. If Brittany Douglas was in here, it would rank up there with the worse cases he’d handled.

Tomas wiped a hand across his forehead and it came back wet with perspiration from temperatures that were pushing ninety, at 8:00 a.m. He forced his feet to move faster, splashing through the murky water, until he reached the bag.

Jack got there ahead of him, but he waited, looking apprehensive. “Should we try dragging it out before we open it?”

In answer, Tomas pulled the switchblade from his pocket.

“What if it’s just the air in the bag keeping it afloat?” Jack asked, but it was too late, because Tomas had already run the knife through the top of the bag.

It deflated slightly, letting out a putrid smell. Jack adjusted his stance the way Tomas had seen him do dozens of times at crime scenes in preparation for something he didn’t want to see.

Tomas folded the knife and stuffed it back in his pocket, then slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. He tore the bag open wider with his hands and things started spilling out. A perfectly good basketball. A filthy old pillow. Some green slimy substance he couldn’t identify.

He braced his feet wide in the gunk on the marsh floor and stuck his gloved hand into the bag, feeling for anything that might have been a body. His fingers pushed through cans and tissue and a rubber ball, but nothing in the bag had ever been alive, other than the maggots feeding on old Chinese takeout.

“It’s nothing,” he told Jack, who rocked back on his heels with a relieved sigh.

“What a waste of time,” Jack complained, pivoting gracelessly and plodding back toward shore.

Tomas sighed, shoved the spilled trash into the bag and hefted it over his shoulder. It weighed far less than a body, but it felt a thousand times heavier as he followed Jack back toward a town demanding answers he didn’t have.

* * *

The tide raced greedily at Evelyn, soaking the bottom of her jeans as she walked toward the sand dunes shrouded by long grass. From the main part of the beach, the area was accessible only to the adventurous. To get here, Evelyn had clambered over an outcropping of rocks, fighting for purchase on the slick surface. Combined with the dunes to her right, this was an unlikely spot for beachcombers. For someone trying to hide a body, though, it might be appealing.

Evelyn pushed determinedly toward the dunes. The wind whipped sand around, like little needles dancing on her skin, and the waves crashed loudly into the rocks.

She’d chosen a spot away from the other searchers this morning, needing time alone to think. About Walter Wiggins and Darnell Conway. About the trickier aspects of her profile.

She hadn’t been to this spot since before Cassie had gone missing. It had been Cassie’s mom who’d shown them how to get here. Instead of risking the rocks, they’d come through the dunes. To a twelve-year-old, they’d seemed to go on forever, but then they’d arrived at this little stretch of beach, and it had been like their own private world.

She’d thought about it for the first time earlier today, and realized it had only been a month before Cassie’s abduction that they’d come here. Maybe he’d followed them. Maybe he’d made it his private world, too.

A shiver raced through her, as hard as the wind ripping strands of hair from her bun.

“Hey!”

The unexpected voice made Evelyn’s head snap up. Emerging from the dunes was Darnell Conway.

She felt a new sense of unease. Had he followed her out here?

Evelyn’s hand grazed her hip, where her SIG Sauer rested reassuringly. Her holster had rubbed the skin underneath it raw in the South Carolina sun, but she never went anywhere without it.

After leaving Darnell’s house yesterday, she’d done some more digging and learned he’d kicked his girlfriend, Kiki, out of his house two years ago. It was possible he’d stopped the abductions after Cassie eighteen years ago because Kiki had started to suspect. Now, if he
had
decided to go back to his old ways, there’d be no one around to notice anything.

As Darnell walked toward her, an almost lazy swagger to his stride, Evelyn watched his hands for any sign of a weapon. But they swung loosely at his sides, empty.

“It’s Evelyn Baine, from the FBI, right?” Darnell asked, an artfully blank expression on his face.

“What are you doing here?”

A hint of a smile curved one corner of his mouth, and a predatory gleam flickered in his eyes. “Well, after you and that officer told me about the missing girl, how could I not help with the search?”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’m sure you know I work in sales. From home. I can set my own schedule.”

He stepped closer and Evelyn continued walking, careful to keep him in her line of sight. “Why here?”

“The dunes?”

“Yeah. The cops were assigning searchers to groups.”

“You’re not in a group,” Darnell said, lengthening his stride and moving close enough to give her a whiff of his aftershave. “Should you be out here all alone?”

His tone was neutral, but his words were calculated, intended to intimidate.

Evelyn felt her jaw tighten as she strode up the first sand dune instead of heading back toward the rocks. She’d need both hands for that climb, and with Darnell next to her, she was keeping her gun hand free.

Either he wanted to flaunt his guilt, thinking he’d never be caught, or he was just one of those guys who got off on being aggressive, got power out of trying to bully others.

“Should
you
?” she tossed back, wanting him to know he didn’t scare her.

Darnell kept pace with her, his expression shifting in a way that told her he liked the challenge. “What’s the point of searching with the group? The more area we cover, the more likely someone is to find this little girl, right?”

Or the easier it would be to hide a body, with the convenient excuse of being out searching. Some killers liked to be the ones to “discover” their victims. And if Darnell had, in fact, killed his girlfriend’s daughter twenty years ago, he was one of them.

A sick feeling roiled in her stomach. Was she going to find Brittany in these dunes? Was Cassie here somewhere, too?

She clenched her fists and intentionally slowed, so Darnell could pick the route. If he wanted to lead her to the bodies, pretend to find them, she’d go along with it.

His eyes narrowed slightly as she allowed him to get in front of her. It was as though he could read her. As though he knew exactly what she was doing.

She half expected him to call her on it, but instead he suggested, “Let’s go this way,” and led her deeper into the dunes.

Almost immediately, he started moving faster. He probably had ten inches on her, so his strides were much longer.

Was he trying to wear her out, make her easier to overpower once he got her deep into the dunes?

She kept a careful distance between them as they crested one dune after the next. Darnell was breathing heavily, his T-shirt soaked through and stuck to him, outlining biceps bigger than her thighs.

“Kinda sick, isn’t it?” Darnell wheezed after ten minutes of silence.

“What?” Evelyn asked. She was sweating and thirsty, and the sun was beating down, no cloud cover in sight. The salty, humid air felt thick in her lungs. And the thought that Cassie could be buried under one of the dunes she was trudging over made chills dance across her sweat-drenched skin.

Because if Darnell was the Nursery Rhyme Killer, maybe she was right and he wanted to “discover” the bodies. Or maybe he was simply getting a thrill out of having her—an intended victim who was now investigating him—walk over them.

Of course, if he was worried that after eighteen years someone suspected him again, he could also be desperate. And desperate meant dangerous.

Darnell slowed down, eased in next to her. “Well, come on. No one wants to say it, but everyone knows. None of those girls were found eighteen years ago. The same guy is back now.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

When she didn’t respond, he pressed, “They lure you into these search parties with the idea that you could help rescue this poor little girl. But let’s be honest. We’re looking for her body.”

An image flashed through Evelyn’s mind, and the shock made her slide partway down the dune. An image of a girl with blond ringlets bouncing in pigtails, sky-blue eyes dancing with happiness, a quick smile for everyone she met. Cassie.

The last time Evelyn had seen her, they’d played hide-and-seek in Cassie’s backyard. Evelyn had felt so free, felt she’d finally fit in somewhere, like she had a real home, a friendship that would last a lifetime. Instead, that day marked the last time she’d really been a child.

Anger swelled in her. Had this man taken that away from her? Taken Cassie?

The glare of the sun over the crystal-brown sand dimmed as Evelyn’s hand instinctively jerked toward her weapon.

When she spun around, Darnell was right there, so close that if she breathed too deeply they’d be touching. She recognized the look in his eyes because she’d seen it before, usually in interrogation rooms. His words were meant to get a reaction.