Closer Than You Think (65 page)

Shining his Maglite under the bed, he saw the jar lying on its side. At least a dozen opaque eyes floated in a dark fluid.

‘Looks like a cheesy prop from a cheesier haunted house,’ Bishop muttered, but Deacon only half heard her, his mind resurrecting a snippet of conversation from Monday night.

Shelves with jars
, Faith had said, her tone faraway.
Jams and jellies mostly. My grandmother’s cook made preserves back then
. Her forehead had wrinkled.
And olives
.

Deacon had been surprised.
Your grandmother’s cook canned her own olives?

Of course not, she’d replied, as if he’d been silly.
They bought the olives already canned
.

‘Faith saw this jar,’ he said softly. ‘Or one like it, probably from behind the half-wall that hooked around the old basement door. She said that’s where she took off her boots when it was muddy.’ He barely managed to control the shudder at the thought of what might have happened had the killer seen her looking. ‘She remembered seeing jars of olives.’

‘I can see how she thought that. Sometimes the mind won’t allow you to process what you see, especially if you’re very young and it’s very traumatic. How old was she?’

‘I don’t know. Younger than nine, because by the time her mother died, she already had a fear of the basement. It’s why she counted the steps. She’d go down them with her eyes closed.’ New dread filled him. ‘This means he’s been killing for a lot longer than we thought.’

‘Her mother died twenty-three years ago,’ Bishop murmured. ‘This changes things.’ She turned to Hudgins. ‘Is this the only jar?’ she asked.

‘Only one we’ve found so far. Something was stored in the closet. The dust on the floor has been disturbed. Looks like it was about three feet by four.’

‘The rest of his collection,’ Deacon murmured, rising to his full height. ‘Latent?’ he called, and a woman turned from brushing powder on a closet doorknob.

‘Yes, Agent Novak?’

‘Can you get prints off this jar, right now? Thank you.’ He turned to Bishop. ‘Let’s see if we can make sense of this. The killer brought the two dead adult males and two live females to this cabin on Monday night.’ He glanced at Hudgins. ‘He was escaping his playground – a house in Mount Carmel, Ohio.’

‘I thought this might be related to that case. We got the BOLO on the Earl Power and Light tech and the locksmith. The boy?’

‘Son of the cabin owner, Della Yarborough,’ Bishop said. ‘He’d run away from home, was staying here. Probably surprised the killer. I understand the back wall is covered with blood?’

‘Yeah. Right by the gas tank. The gas was turned off.’

‘To lure him out,’ Deacon said grimly. ‘Our killer’s specialty. So he buries the boy with the two men.’ He shone the Maglite on the unmade bed. Several dark hairs were on the pillow and two lengths of rope lay on the tangled sheets. The ropes had been sawed with a small knife. ‘Roza was here. Where was Corinne?’

‘There’s a storm cellar in the back,’ one of the other forensics techs offered. ‘We found a few blonde hairs and some ropes that had been cut, just like those on the bed.’

‘Okay.’ Deacon thought it through, reconstructing the events in his mind. ‘He dumped Corinne in the storm cellar and left Roza here, tied to the bed. Corinne escapes with a Swiss army knife.’ He was growing more impressed with the young woman with every new discovery. ‘Comes into the cabin and frees Roza.’

‘According to Arianna,’ Bishop said, ‘Roza knew she’d be punished for helping her escape the basement, maybe even killed, so she drugged herself.’

‘Brave little girl,’ Hudgins commented.

‘You have no idea,’ Bishop said. ‘Corinne must have then gathered up supplies. She told us she had a few kitchen knives and a shovel for defense. Maybe she goes to the closet, sees a box, open it and takes out one of the jars. Realizes what she’s holding and drops it and the jar rolls under the bed.’

Hudgins blew out a breath. ‘Makes sense. I might’ve dropped it too.’

Deacon pointed his light on an empty soup can on the floor. ‘They must have eaten a little, then Corinne got Roza out of here. We think the next person who showed up at this cabin was Stone O’Bannion, also a son of the cabin’s owner. He was looking for Mikhail, his little brother. He told us he found this mess, saw the pile of dirt inside and the blood outside and started digging in here.’

‘He saw Mikhail’s body and panicked, drove home to Cincinnati to tell Jeremy, and ran into us because we were at his house questioning his father,’ Bishop said. ‘Stone told us nothing, because he didn’t want us to accuse Jeremy. Instead, he came back here to find out from the girl what really happened so that he could protect Jeremy, but Corinne and Roza were gone. He tracked them through the woods, but Corinne assumed he was the one who kidnapped her and tortured Arianna, so she stabbed him with the kitchen knives and hit him with the shovel.’

‘Good for her,’ Hudgins said, and both Deacon and Bishop gave hard nods.

‘I agree,’ Bishop said. ‘Stone passed out, woke up and contacted his brother Marcus, who’d already snuck Jeremy and Keith out the back entrance right under the noses of three federal agents on surveillance.’

‘Don’t keep rubbing it in,’ Deacon protested, but without much heat. The Feds had royally fucked up the surveillance.

‘Hey, I calls ’em like I sees ’em,’ she said. ‘Marcus was with his mother and Jeremy, who had by then realized that Mikhail was missing and started getting worried. Marcus went looking for Mickey, then got the text from Stone and drove out here to find four bodies. That’s when he called me, anonymously.’

Deacon frowned. ‘Wait. That’s important. Stone only saw three bodies. Marcus saw four, so the killer came back in between to bury Elise Lasker.’

‘When did the Lasker woman go missing?’ Hudgins asked.

‘She was last seen a little before five
A.M.
,’ Bishop said. ‘She was killed for her truck, most likely. If the killer grabbed her at five, he would have been here by seven. He finds Corinne and Roza gone. He must have buried the Lasker woman and covered the bodies back up with the floorboards, then gone searching for Corinne and Roza. Marcus arrives in the forest, finds Stone hurt in the woods and puts him in his Subaru. Then he comes here, uncovers the bodies again and calls me.’

‘While the killer is wandering around looking for Corinne and Roza,’ Deacon said. ‘Does it make sense that Marcus could find them in an hour while the killer wandered around for six?’

Bishop shrugged. ‘It’s a big forest. It’s conceivable that he and Marcus passed each other, especially if they were both in stealth mode on foot, although you’d have thought they’d hear each other’s car engines. We’ll need to figure that one out once we establish where everyone on the suspect board was between four
A.M.
and noon.’

‘Assuming he stayed here the whole time,’ Deacon said.

‘What are you thinking?’ Bishop asked.

He was thinking what he didn’t want to be thinking. ‘That the killer has been killing for at least twenty-three years. And that Jordan was very insistent on seeing Faith this morning.’

‘You’re thinking that maybe he wanted to establish an alibi?’

‘Maybe. I hope he simply wanted to give us information on the gardener from the historical society, but I have to be sure. Faith trusts him.’

‘Got it. I talked to Isenberg on the way over here. She said they’ve picked up the gardener and he’s waiting in an interview room. She also said that Keith was waiting outside Jeremy’s ex-wife’s house in the Bentley looking “coldly furious” because Jeremy was inside with his ex. Isenberg notified them of Mikhail’s death, then brought both Jeremy and Keith into the station for questioning. She said Keith’s fury disappeared as soon as Jeremy could see him.’

‘So Keith’s still on the leaderboard in terms of suspicious behavior, but he didn’t shoot Marcus and Corinne either. He’s the wrong body type and he has Isenberg for his alibi.’

‘We need to regroup with the others,’ Bishop said, then pulled her phone from her pocket when it began to ring. ‘Speaking of . . .’ She held up the phone so that Deacon could see Isenberg’s name on the caller ID. ‘What’s up?’ she answered, then blinked. ‘Yes, I’ll hold.’

A few seconds later, Deacon’s cell began to ring, also Isenberg. She was conferencing them in, meaning she only wanted to say what she was going to say once. ‘I’m here,’ he answered, dread sitting on his shoulders. ‘Tell me Faith is all right and that Corinne is still alive. Please.’

‘Faith is fine,’ Isenberg said. ‘Corinne is still in surgery. This isn’t about them. I’ve also got Adam, Vince and Carrie Washington conferenced in. Carrie? Go ahead.’

‘We found the slug in Agent Pope’s body,’ Carrie said. ‘It wasn’t from a nine mil. It was a rifle slug, same as we pulled out of the hotel bellman on Monday night.’

Deacon sucked in a quiet breath. ‘He didn’t come up behind Pope, then. He had a vantage point somewhere in my neighborhood.’ His stomach turned over at the possibilities – and probabilities. ‘We need to do a door-to-door search. I doubt he was courteous enough to pick an empty house, and he never lets his victims live.’

‘I agree,’ Isenberg said, ‘and so does your SAC. I’ve been in contact with Special Agent in Charge Zimmerman, who already had the neighborhood locked down, searching for Antonio Renzo, the kid who bullied your brother and sister.’

‘Pope was one of ours,’ Deacon said. ‘The field office switched gears when I told them that he was shot first. Since then, they’ve been looking for the shooter not the kid. But they still have several agents hunting for Renzo, hoping he can lead them to . . . Oh, hell.’ He heard his own words.
He never lets his victims live
. ‘If Renzo got close enough to the shooter for the shooter to take his knife, then we have to assume he’s dead too.’

‘Zimmerman said the same thing,’ Isenberg said. ‘Next piece of news. Adam, your veterinarian angle paid off. We have an ID on the woman found in the grocery store parking lot – Delores Kaminsky. She ran a shelter for dogs. I sent a squad car to her home address and put out a BOLO for her vehicle. Nissan minivan, silver.’

A silver minivan?
Shit
. Deacon’s pulse started to race. ‘I saw it. The silver minivan. It was parked in front of my house Tuesday morning. It didn’t register at the time. That’s a school bus stop. Parents park there to wait for the bus with their kids.’

‘And most of the moms drive minivans,’ Isenberg said grimly. ‘We were so close to him.’

‘Dammit,’ Deacon hissed. ‘Why didn’t I check it out?’

‘Why didn’t Pope and Colby?’ Bishop asked reasonably. ‘They probably thought the same thing – that it was a mom with kids waiting for the bus.’

‘And now Pope’s dead,’ Deacon said grimly. ‘Thanks, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. We have news of our own, Lynda. We’ve got part of his collection – a jar full of eyes that had rolled under a bed. It appears he took a bigger box with him.’

‘Latent is pulling prints off the jar now,’ Bishop added, ‘so you should expect them soon.’

‘We found a lot more jars at the house,’ Adam said. ‘More than four dozen, filled with eyes and tongues and hearts and more. A lot of them were labeled with the victims’ names.’

‘You found his stash?’ Deacon asked, feeling relieved. Now there would be no need for Faith to go out there. She could stay put in the police station until he arrived to take her home.

‘One of them, anyway,’ Adam said. ‘Now we can begin identifying some of the victims.’

‘We have other news,’ Tanaka said. ‘None of it good. Sophie found seven more bodies.’

‘I’ll prepare the morgue for more incoming,’ Carrie said with a sigh.

Deacon’s relief drained away.
Seven more. Plus the Lasker woman
. He started for the cabin door. ‘I’m going to my neighborhood to help with the search. I owe my neighbors that much.’

‘I figured you would,’ Isenberg said. ‘SAC Zimmerman is expecting you.’

Chapter Thirty-One

Mt Carmel, Ohio, Wednesday 5 November, 3.45
P.M.

‘Dr Corcoran?
Faith?
’

Faith looked up, jerked away from her laptop screen to find Isenberg standing in the open doorway of her grandmother’s living room. ‘Yes, Lieutenant? What can I do for you?’

‘I’ve been calling your name. Are you all right? You looked like you were in a trance.’

‘Just concentrating.’ Looking around, Faith realized that she was alone in the room. ‘What happened to the forensic guys?’ Two of them had been camped out, cataloguing everything they found on their top-to-bottom search of the house.

‘On break. Maybe you should take one too, Faith. Why are you on the floor?’

Faith rubbed her eyes, sore from staring both at her computer screen and at the fine print of the Foundation’s recipient list. ‘It’s easier to spread my papers around me.’

‘Have you found anything?’

‘Yes.’ And it frightened her. ‘We—’

‘Wait. Before you go on, I have a few updates for you. Corinne is out of surgery and stable. Same with your cousin Stone. Marcus is still in surgery and it’s less positive. He was shot in the lung protecting Corinne.’

‘What were my cousins doing there?’

‘Did Tanaka tell you that we have your uncle Jeremy in a room for questioning?’ Isenberg went on, ignoring her.

‘No.’ Her heart sank. ‘You still think he’s guilty?’

‘I don’t know. I do know he didn’t re-abduct Roza, because I was with him no more than a half-hour after it happened and it’s a two-hour drive from the cabin to his ex-wife’s home. But we’ve thought he was working with a partner, so that doesn’t prove his innocence.’

‘Why were Stone and Marcus there?’ Faith repeated firmly. ‘Don’t ignore me, Lieutenant.’

Isenberg sighed. ‘Stone was there looking for their brother – Mikhail – who is Jeremy’s son too. Mikhail was found in a grave with the locksmith and the Earl Power tech. We think he surprised the killer, who wanted to hide in the cabin. Marcus was there because Stone texted him for help after Corinne stabbed him with a kitchen knife and then beaned him with a shovel. She thought he was her abductor. I still don’t know whether she was wrong. Stone fits the description of the man who came through your bedroom window in Miami, Doctor.’

Faith pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Wait a minute. You’ve got Jeremy in an interview room while two of his sons are in the hospital and one is in the morgue? Really?’

‘Really. And he’ll stay there until we’re satisfied he’s not the killer of the seventeen women in your basement.’

‘Plus a dozen other people,’ Faith said, chastised.

‘We’ll hold him until we can get Bishop and Novak together in the interview room, and then we’ll see. Now, tell me what you’ve found.’

‘Okay. Dr Washington had identified three of the seventeen victims – two of whom were scholarship recipients from the Foundation – Susan Simpson and Wendy Franklin. We got another seven names from the jars and five of them were on this list. So far I’ve found five more names on the Foundation list of women who have been reported missing. Three are blondes. That’s his MO, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Isenberg sat on the floor beside Faith. ‘But I heard you muttering “no, no, no” as I was walking up to the front door. Why?’

‘Because I’m seeing a pattern. I wanted to look at more names before I brought this to you.’ Faith tilted the page on which she’d been making notes so that Isenberg could see. ‘The victim he kidnapped in Miami, Roxanne Dupree, wasn’t a scholarship recipient. She went missing the day after the van tried to run me off the bridge. Corinne and Arianna were taken the day after he burned my old apartment building down.’

Isenberg’s brows lifted. ‘Go on.’

‘This victim, Katie Badgett, was taken the day my grandmother’s will was read.’

‘O-kay,’ Isenberg breathed. ‘Very interesting pattern.’

‘It goes on.’ Faith pointed to another name in her handwritten notes. ‘Virginia Dreyfus was reported missing the week after I had a really bad car accident.’

‘You had a car accident?’

She nodded. ‘Three years ago, I lost control of the wheel. At the time, I thought I’d fallen asleep, but now I’m wondering if that’s not too coincidental, what with all the other car accidents in this case – my uncle Jeremy, the woman who bought my Prius.’

‘Now you’re wondering if all these women were taken because your would-be killer was frustrated when you didn’t die.’

‘Yes. I don’t know why anyone would have wanted me dead three years ago, though. It’s after my first run-in with Combs. He was in prison at the time. I’ve been racking my brain as to anything else that happened, but I can’t think of a reason.’

‘Let it go for a little while,’ Isenberg advised.

Easier said than done. ‘Does Jeremy know about his son?’

‘Yes. I told him myself. About all of his sons.’

‘I feel like I should say or do something to help him.’

‘I’d like you to talk to him, but wait until Deacon and Bishop get back so they can observe.’

Faith sighed. ‘But what if he’s not guilty? You know he didn’t take Roza. What if Marcus dies while you have Jeremy waiting in an interview room? Can’t you let him go to the hospital to be with his sons and just keep him under guard?’

‘He may have tried to kill you, Faith. He may have killed dozens of people.’

‘He may not have.’

‘Your marshmallow heart is going to get you killed someday.’

Faith shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I’d rather stay open and risk being hurt than close myself off the way I have been for the last . . . well, almost forever. Please consider it.’

Isenberg rolled her eyes. ‘Okay. I’ll consider it.’

‘Then I’ll keep on task with the list to see if there are any more possible matches between the Joy scholarship recipients.’

‘I can help with that. The team of clerks I mentioned when you were at Novak’s desk? They’ve been crunching through this list all day. I can have them compile a list of the dates that any of the missing women disappeared and you can look them over.’

‘That would be helpful, thank you. This is tedious work.’

‘Well, it’s not out of the goodness of my heart. I want this case solved. To that end, Corinne gave us some valuable information on Roza and her mother. Roza was likely born in the basement, which is why we haven’t found anything in the missing children database.’

‘Oh my God. That poor child. And her mother died here? Oh my God, Lieutenant.’

‘I know. Roza told Corinne that her mother named her father as Eric Johnson.’

‘Common name.’

‘I know,’ Isenberg said again. ‘She also said that her mother and aunt were taken at the same time. Her mother’s name was Amethyst Johnson. She was known as Amy. To make it even more complex, Amethyst may have been from Canada. She used to call her daughter “Roza with a
zed
”
.
Oh, and Roza’s full name is Firoza. But according to my team of clerks, there is no Amethyst Johnson on the list, so she might not have been a Foundation recipient. But I still want everyone looking at the information, in case there’s a name that could be a variation or misspelling of Amy.’

‘Or . . . Amy might not be the Foundation recipient. Her sister might have been. He took Arianna because she tried to save Corinne. Maybe he took Amy because she was with her sister or tried to stop her sister’s abduction. Amethyst is not a common name. Did you ask your clerks to look for other names that had to do with colors, or purple specifically?’

‘No, I didn’t, but I will. That’s very good thinking.’

‘Now Firoza is also a very uncommon name,’ Faith said. She typed it into her laptop’s search screen and felt a spurt of excitement. ‘And it connects. Firoza is a kind of turquoise.’

‘And Amethyst is a gemstone,’ Isenberg said with satisfaction. ‘Nice.’

‘Arianna thought Roza was eleven or twelve,’ Faith said. ‘If she really was born in the basement, he would have taken Amy and her sister at least eleven or twelve years ago.’ She ran her finger down the list until she got to the scholarship recipients from that time period. ‘No Amethysts, but we do have a Jade. Jade Kendrick,’ she said, typing the name into the national Missing Person database.

‘Not listed,’ Isenberg said, leaning over to look at Faith’s screen.

‘Let’s see if she’s out and about on social media.’ Faith did another search and came up with nothing. ‘Her mailing address was Chicago when she was sent her scholarship letter. Her application would likely list her parents’ names. I’ve already asked Henson for the files, but his secretary said they had to search for them in the vault. I’ll call again, but they may need someone to push them.’

‘You try first,’ Isenberg said. ‘If they do any dancing, I’ll cut in. Put it on speaker.’

Faith dialed Henson’s number and Mrs Lowell answered. ‘Is Mr Henson Senior in?’

‘No,’ his secretary said. ‘If you’re calling about the files, we are still working on it. The policeman who’s been standing in front of the office all day is frightening my clients. Calming everyone down is taking time I could be using to get your files.’

‘Oh, I didn’t realize there was a policeman waiting.’ Faith looked at Isenberg, who only shrugged and grinned. ‘Can you give him what you have so far? I can send him back for the rest. That way I get my files and you get a break from soothing the frightened clients.’

‘Well, there are several boxes,’ Lowell said tartly. ‘I hope you have storage room.’

‘I’m sure the police can make room at the station. Thank you, Mrs Lowell. Getting those files could mean life or death for a young girl still being held hostage.’

‘Oh no.’ Lowell’s irritation disappeared. ‘Oh my. I had no idea. I’ll get the policemen what I’ve pulled together so far and you’ll have the rest of the files by morning.’

‘Thank you.’

Miami, Florida, Wednesday 5 November, 4.30
P.M.

Detective Catalina Vega looked away from the two-way mirror as her LT entered the observation room, closing the door behind him.

‘Is Combs’s girlfriend ready to talk?’ Davies asked.

‘I think so,’ Cat answered. ‘Charging her with accessory to murder did the trick. The problem is, I haven’t found a single non-circumstantial piece of evidence to tie Peter Combs to our homicides. I can’t even find anyone who’s seen him in over a month. So unless Paula Boza gives me something, I got nothin’. And her slimy shyster lawyer knows it.’

‘The team in Ohio said that Combs might not even be involved in the mess they’ve got up there,’ Davies said. ‘Maybe he’s not involved in the mess we’ve got down here either. Maybe you haven’t found any evidence simply because there isn’t any evidence to find.’

Cat shook her head. ‘They haven’t ruled him out at all. What they said is that if he was involved, it was as a recent accomplice to a killer who’d been at it for a longer period of time. A killer who might have used Combs’s hatred of Faith Corcoran to his own benefit. I need to know who that might have been.’

‘Okay, so what do you have?’

‘I’ve got an eyewitness who saw a white van in the parking lot of the grocery store where the Prius was parked. It had a sign for an auto repair business, just like the van the Cincinnati team found putting a tracker on Corcoran’s new vehicle. It doesn’t link the van to Combs, but now we have ties to the Cincinnati crimes from both the murder of Gordon Shue and Sunday’s vehicular homicide. There’s no question that they’re connected.’

‘Does he know that?’ Davies asked, pointing to the slimy shyster.

‘I don’t know. He might know it connects to Faith on some level. He’s slimy, but smart. Corcoran’s name has been in the news as the owner of the house where “an undisclosed number” of bodies were found. The articles name her as Faith Frye, because that’s how she’s listed on the deed. This guy was Combs’s trial attorney, too, four years ago. If he does know, he’ll ask for dismissal of Paula’s possession charge in exchange for information, but the DA won’t budge.’

Davies was studying Paula Boza closely. ‘What does she do for a living, Cat?’

‘She’s a nail tech.’

‘Hm. How does a nail tech get her hands on a half-kilo of coke to begin with?’

‘I had the same question. It may be the only opening we have. She says it’s Combs’s, but also denied that he’s had any access to her car since the attacks on Faith Corcoran began. Her prints were found on the bag, though. She says she must have touched it when she was feeling around for her phone that she’d dropped.’ Cat rolled her eyes. ‘I mean, really.’

‘Go shake something out of her. That Cincinnati lieutenant has been calling me every hour. We’ve got two in the morgue, one a child. They’ve got six, plus seventeen buried in a basement. Every time Isenberg calls, the number goes up. Get the girlfriend to talk.’

‘No pressure,’ Cat murmured, taking a deep breath before strolling into the interview room and sitting down across from Peter Combs’s girlfriend. A second-generation Cuban-American, Paula Boza might have been a model, but hard living had aged her. Jail hadn’t helped.

Her WASP lawyer leaned back in his chair, bored. ‘What’s this about, Detective?’

‘Well, Mr Green, I’m looking for something and I think your client knows where it is.’

Paula’s nostrils flared, but she smiled back sweetly. ‘What are you looking for, Detective?’

‘The rest of the coke,’ Cat lied. From the corner of her eye she caught Green’s surprise. Paula didn’t react at all. ‘I have it on good authority that there was a whole kilo, not half.’

‘Somebody’s lying to you then,
chica
.’ Paula said with a shoulder swagger. ‘I didn’t even have half a kilo. Those drugs did not belong to me.’

‘Damn,’ Cat said. ‘I always thought Peter was a liar. So . . . no other drugs?’

Paula’s lips curved with genuine humor. ‘No, Detective,’ she said.

She knows I haven’t talked to Combs. Because she knows where he is?
Cat leaned forward. ‘He warned me you’d say that.’