Vengeance Road (22 page)

V
alerie Olson cupped her hands around her mug then left the office kitchen for her desk at the FBI academy in Quantico.

Olson took in the view of the Virginia woods surrounding the secure facility. She was an early riser who loved her job and always started long before her shift began. Today, a note from her supervisor greeted her from her keyboard.

“All right,” Olson said to herself as she logged on to her terminal. She was a case analyst with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. ViCAP was headquartered within the Critical Incident Response Group in what was known as the CIRG building.

Olson had always thought the program could have passed for the claims department of a large insurance company, or a major call center. For nothing betrayed the enormity of the work beneath the clicking keyboards and quiet telephone conversations of the three dozen crime analysts. It was here that they searched ViCAP's ever-growing database for serial patterns among violent crimes across the country.

The program divided the U.S. into six regions and each region had analysts and supervisory agents assigned to them: W-1, W-2, W-3 for the western half, E-1, E-2, E-3 for the eastern.

Olson, a seasoned Minneapolis homicide detective, took the job just over a year ago, not long after she'd retired.

“The program's always looking for someone with your expertise, Val,” the FBI recruiter, an old college friend, had told her.

Olson's husband, a retired airline pilot, encouraged her to go for it.

“Milder winters and closer to Florida,” he said. “Besides, I don't think you're done pursuing justice.”

Her husband was right.

Olson embraced the work, loved helping put the pieces together, loved using her years as an investigator to assure passionate detectives that their cases were safe in her hands.

“I've been in your shoes,” Olson would tell them. “My job is to help you find the links that will lead you to your killer. We're in this together.”

Olson sipped her tea as she began studying the new case. She was attached to the eastern region, which encompassed much of the Northeast, the Great Lake states and the Rust Belt.

All of ViCAP's regions would be analyzing the new submission from Wichita, comparing it with others from their areas of responsibility. Like most cases the program received, this one was gruesome.

Olson read over all the known details. Horrible, just horrible, she thought as she moved on to focus on the key fact evidence.

She concentrated on the word
GUILTY
crudely carved
into the victim's forehead then queried the system. While awaiting the results, she checked the submission's source. Detective Candace Rose, Wichita PD, Homicide.

Olson reached for her tea but stopped.

She'd gotten a hit.

“All right. Let's see.”

Olson entered her security codes to gain access to the other file.

The hit linked the Wichita case to one submitted recently by Michael Brent, an Investigator with the New York State Police. In the New York case, the victim was also a female. Also slain in a ritualistic manner. Body was found by walkers in a wooded area near Buffalo.

Olson's pulse kicked up as she went to Brent's evidentiary key fact mode. Her keyboard clicked and she almost smiled at what she read.

“Bingo.”

In the New York case, the word
GUILTY
had also been cut into the victim's head just under the hairline.

The victim was identified as Bernice Tina Hogan, a twenty-three-year-old nursing student from Buffalo, New York.

In the Wichita case, the coroner estimated the victim's age at being twenty to thirty. Identification had not yet been confirmed. Other key fact evidence in Wichita included a locket bearing the inscription
Love Mom,
which contained the photograph of a small boy.

Olson was typing and reading as fast as she could now.

The New York case had supplemental information of a potential link to the homicide: the missing person case of Jolene Peller of Buffalo, New York. Peller was described as a white female, aged twenty-six. One key descriptive in the file—

Olson gasped, covered her mouth with her hand and continued reading.

The key descriptive: a locket bearing the inscription
Love Mom,
containing the photograph of a small boy, Peller's three-year-old son, Cody.

Olson reached for her phone.

T
he rising sun broke the horizon at Ellicott Creek.

Bernice Hogan had been murdered less than fifty yards from the bench where Michael Brent sat alone reviewing the case. As he gazed at the sky's reflection on the serene water, he grilled himself again.

What was he missing?

The Hogan homicide was all he could think about. He couldn't sleep. But when he did, he woke up exhausted. He'd lost his appetite, lost weight. And after his shot at Karl Styebeck a few days back, Brent suffered a burning sensation in his stomach.

His ulcers had returned.

This morning before leaving his empty house, he'd drunk a quart of milk.

He didn't give a damn about his physical discomfort.

Comes with the job.

It was his sworn duty to see justice done. He needed to clear this homicide before he hung up his badge. He already faced the rest of his life without his wife. How could he bear the torment of letting a killer go free?

He couldn't and he wouldn't

He vowed to close this case.

The pages of his notebook fluttered as he went through his notes again.

Over the last few days he'd believed, truly believed, that he was close. But since he'd questioned Styebeck at the Barracks; since their futile search of Styebeck's house, vehicles, records; since the breaks on Jolene Peller's cell phone and the tire impression, they'd made little progress.

Brent knew in his heart that Styebeck was lying. Knew in his gut that Styebeck was linked to Bernice Hogan's murder and Jolene Peller's disappearance.

All he had to do was prove it.

As Brent flipped pages he reminded himself to be flexible and not get so mired in his theories on Styebeck that he forgot the other aspects.

The angle of the mystery truck.

He reviewed everything related to it. The girls on Niagara had reported seeing “a creepy guy in a big truck.” Jolene Peller's cell phone was found in the Chicago truck stop. Other calls to Styebeck's home came from public phones. Maybe Brent should adjust his thinking.

His cell phone shattered the morning calm, startling him. The number was blocked. He answered with one word.

“Brent.”

“Investigator Michael Brent with the New York State Police?”

“Yes, who's calling?”

“Valerie Olson with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program in Quantico, Virginia.”

“ViCAP?”

“Yes, sir, and I think we have a very strong link to the case you recently submitted concerning the homicide of Bernice Tina Hogan.”

“That so? And where would that be?”

“Kansas.”

“Can you tell me what the strong link is, exactly?”

“I can't, as you know we respect everyone's key fact
evidence. But when you're ready to copy, I'll give you the contact information for the detective on the Kansas case. They've got a very recent homicide and you should talk.”

Brent flipped to a clear page, clicked his pen, noted the date and time.

“Go ahead.”

 

In Witchita, Candace Rose was in the shower when she was interrupted by her husband's loud knocking on the bathroom door.

“Phone, Candy! New York State Police. Something about ViCAP.”

It took Rose less than thirty seconds to towel off, throw on her bathrobe and grab the phone in her bedroom. Within minutes of Rose talking to Brent, the two detectives agreed their cases were linked.

Forty minutes later, Rose was at her desk in the Homicide Section and back on the phone with Brent. Half a continent apart, the two investigators were simultaneously looking at the two homicides on their computer monitors. As they compared their cases, it was clear that Bernice Hogan and Jane Doe in Kansas were murdered by the same person.

Both victims were females in their twenties. Both had shoulder-length dark hair. Both were discovered in outdoor crime scenes amid wooded sections of metropolitan areas. Both scenes, while hidden, were easily accessible by the public. Both involved ritualistic display.

“It's like he wants his work discovered,” Rose said.

She shared photographs of the signature cut into the victim's forehead under the hairline:
GUILTY
.

Brent sent her the crime scene and autopsy photos of Bernice Hogan bearing the single word
GUILTY
, carved into her forehead under the hairline.

“Now, this next item is the one you said may help us
ID our victim here,” Rose said as they came to enlarged photographs of the locket.

“Yeah. We think that locket belongs to a woman who was Bernice Hogan's friend. We have witnesses who saw her with Bernice the night before Bernice's body was discovered.”

“And that would be Jolene Peller, according to the missing person's file you sent me, Mike.”

“Her mother reported her missing a few days after the Hogan murder. Peller was headed to Florida to start a new job, but she never arrived.”

“And she's a single mom with a three-year-old boy, Cody. The little boy I'm looking at right now.”

“That's right.”

“The locket from our case is identical to the one described in Jolene Peller's missing-person's report. Our Jane Doe's age, height and weight are consistent with Peller. We're still working on obtaining a dental chart.”

“We have a dental chart and fingerprints for Peller. I'll send them to you this afternoon for comparison as soon as I do the paperwork.”

“We'll be standing by.”

 

But that afternoon, shortly after Wichita's Homicide Section received Jolene Peller's fingerprints and dental chart, tragedy struck on an interstate just outside the city.

A van carrying twelve high-school cheerleaders to a competition in Wichita blew a front tire and swerved into the path of an oncoming dump truck. The van ignited, killing six people trapped inside.

Two others were ejected.

The shock of the accident reverberated across the entire state. Confirming the identities of the dead superseded all other cases for the coroner's office.

Identifying the female homicide victim was delayed, Rose told Brent in Buffalo.

After five minutes of consideration, Brent made a phone call. Then he collected his files and summoned his partner, Roxanne Esko.

“I don't know, Mike,” Esko said as they drove to Mary Peller's apartment in Schiller Park. “Is this a good idea? Shouldn't we wait?”

“We can't risk this leaking out before she's been told.”

After arriving and parking, they went to Mary Peller's door.

Among Brent's files were enlarged photographs from the Wichita Homicide Section of the locket the victim in the Kansas case had been holding.

Brent was going to show them to Mary Peller.

Then he would gently destroy her world by telling her to brace for the worst. The search for her daughter had likely ended in a wooded area of Wichita, Kansas.

J
ack Gannon returned from Alberta with more than his luggage.

He'd unearthed disturbing facets of Karl Styebeck's life.

That Styebeck came from an incestuous bloodline, and that his father may have murdered his family, was chilling.

Little by little something was taking shape. Should he confront Styebeck now, or keep digging?

Gannon thought it over while driving home from the airport.

It was early evening, traffic was light. He'd eaten and slept on the flight and arrived at his apartment energized. He checked for messages, e-mails and for any developments from the
News
or
Sentinel.
There was nothing. Adell Clark was still out of town on one of her own cases.

Okay, so his trip to Canada had paid off.

He had something but was unsure what his next move should be.

He was frustrated.

While he'd uncovered a terrifying chapter on Karl Styebeck's father, Deke, he still hadn't found much more on Karl, other than the fact that he was married to Alice, a bank teller, and they had a son, Taylor. Styebeck coached ball teams, worked for charities, went to church. He was a small-town hero who'd grown up in Texas, the son of a
prison guard. And he'd joined the Ascension Park Police Department some twelve years ago.

Gannon knew nothing more of Styebeck's earlier life.

His search of records had yielded nothing so far.

It was like Styebeck's past was a secret.

Gannon's phone rang with a blocked number.

“Hello.”

“Is this Jack Gannon, the reporter?”

He didn't recognize the male caller. He'd always kept his name and number listed but not his address. He suffered the whack jobs for the occasional story.

“Yeah, who's this?”

“I don't want to say. I live in Ascension Park and have been following the murder of that college girl and this Karl Styebeck business.”

“Yes.”

“Styebeck lives down the street from me and the other day I was walking my dog when I counted six unmarked police cars parked at his house. Guys who were not in uniform, but obviously cops, were coming and going. It's like they were searching for something.”

“Did you ask them what was happening?”

“Nobody would talk to me. There was nothing in the news, which burns me. I thought we lived in a democracy. Anyway, I thought you should know, seeing how you wrote up a big story about him a little while ago.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe you can put something in the paper?”

“I don't work for the paper anymore.”

“What? I thought—”

“Thanks for the call.”

Gannon grabbed his jacket and keys.

It sounded like they'd executed a warrant on Styebeck.
Now that things were moving faster, he couldn't risk sitting on what he knew.

As he drove to Styebeck's house in Ascension Park, he considered how to play his information. Given that he was not Styebeck's favorite reporter, Gannon figured he should just hit him with Alberta and hope that he'd talk about Deke, maybe reveal other information.

It was a long shot.

Gannon rang the bell. A boy opened the door.

“Hi, I'm Jack Gannon. May I speak to your dad?”

The boy's face tightened slightly as he and Gannon recognized each other from his first confrontation with Styebeck at the ballpark. The boy kept his hand defensively on the door, his eyes on Gannon, and shouted, “Mom!”

“Who is it, Taylor?” His mother's voice came from inside the house.

“Mom, you better come!”

Footsteps, then Alice Styebeck appeared, drying her hands on a dish towel, her chin lifting in subtle defiance.

“Yes.”

“May I speak with Karl, please?”

It struck Gannon that Alice Styebeck was struggling with her answer, as if she
wanted
Gannon,
the enemy,
to visit her husband.

Taylor shot her a look of surprise when she said, “He's in the backyard. You can go around the side.”

What just happened there? Was she sending him to his doom, or was something else at work? Gannon wondered.

He heard thumping as he went round the house.

Karl Styebeck was splitting logs with a long-handled ax.

Thud-crack-thud-crack-thud.

Sweat dripped from his face, blotching the neck and underarms of his T-shirt.

Thud-thud-thud.

“Detective Styebeck?”

He looked at Gannon.

“What the hell are you doing on my property?”

“I wanted to talk to you about your father, Deke. I've just returned from Brooks, Alberta, and I know.”

“You know what?”

“I know everything, sir.”

“You don't know shit!”

“I do. I know about your blood and the speculation of what Deke did all those years ago.”

Styebeck's knuckles whitened as he gripped his ax and pointed the blade to the street.

“Leave, Gannon!”

“Tell me, Karl, does it run in the family?”

Styebeck's face twisted with rage and he invaded Gannon's space.

“Get off my property now or I'll get my gun.”

Gannon stood his ground long enough to let Styebeck know he didn't fear him. Then Gannon turned to see Alice Styebeck glaring—not at him, but at her husband.

 

That night in his apartment Gannon tried in vain to sleep.

He tossed and turned, questioning himself over and over about the way he'd approached matters.

What did he learn from his idiotic confrontation with Styebeck? Nothing. He'd committed the sin of prematurely tipping his hand. He was stupid, stupid, stupid!

His phone rang.

“Mr. Gannon?”

“Yes.”

The woman on the line was crying.

“This is Mary Peller.”

“Mary? What is it? Are you all right?”

“They found Jolene!”

“They found her?”

“She's dead! My daughter's dead!”