Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (31 page)

“So, assuming your theory is correct, the UNSUB wanted them alive so they could implicate Hawke. He purposely set up the quarterback to take the fall.” The twist of her mouth was bitter. “But now he kills because he doesn’t need them to identify Hawke. Hawke is already in prison.” Erin’s eyes were huge.

“Or maybe this is a different guy who learned from Hawke’s mistakes and offs the victims so he doesn’t end up in prison the way Hawke did?” Ully suggested, across the table.

“Maybe,” Darsh said carefully. “But I have a feeling he’s stopped using Special-K because he’s grown more confident in his abilities. He’s figured out how to control the women without drugs. Maybe a knife or a weapon? Maybe just fear? They fight back more when they aren’t drugged, they’re probably a lot more fun to torture.”

“But they can identify him now,” Ully said quietly.

“And he doesn’t intend to get caught,” agreed Darsh.

“So he kills them,” said Erin. She looked up. “You think he wore a mask of Drew Hawke’s face?”

“That’s my guess,” Darsh said. “It wouldn’t look perfect, but when you’re drunk, drugged, and traumatized, maybe it doesn’t need to look perfect. Maybe the image just needs to be imprinted on the victim’s brain for a few seconds to be fixed in the memory.”

“Which is why those girls could swear on the polygraph that Drew Hawke raped them, when in fact it was someone pretending to be Hawke. Setting the guy up.” Harry Compton chewed his lip thoughtfully.

“So Drew Hawke might be innocent?” Erin’s voice was thin.

“Or,” Harry interrupted. “Someone might be setting these murders up to make it look like he is.”

“Someone smart,” Erin agreed. “Really smart.”

“Who not only understands how to destroy or contaminate evidence, he also understands exactly the sort of evidence that the cops look for that will stand up in court,” Darsh said.

“Could he be law enforcement?” asked Erin. “Or someone studying criminal justice at the college?”

“Definitely.” Darsh nodded. “The fact that Mandy was treated so differently makes me think he knew and liked her.” And she was studying criminal psychology.

“Or campus security—I went there this morning, but the tapes from that night had been ‘accidentally’ wiped clean.” Erin rolled her shoulders. She looked so defeated he wanted to put his hands on her in reassurance. She wouldn’t appreciate that though. Not surrounded by her peers. “We need to run more thorough background checks. Anyone with law enforcement experience within a ten-mile radius of the town. Anyone who’s studied criminal psychology or criminology.”

“That’s a lot of people,” argued Harry.

“I know.” Darsh rubbed at his eyes, trying to wake himself up. “That’s why I asked for another agent from the BAU to come and work with us on this. She’ll be here in a few hours. She’s a computer whiz and is going to look for red flags in the background checks.”

“Are you looking at football players and coaching staff, too?” asked Erin.

Darsh nodded again. “I want them included in this more detailed background check, yes.”

“But they were a great team with Hawke as the quarterback. The only person who might want to take him out is his replacement, Johnny Weber,” Ully argued.

“Dammit, if he is innocent,” Erin said, “and I’m not saying I think he is, not yet—but I feel like this has to have a connection to the football team in some way—”

“Detective,” Chief Strassen broke in.

“No, sir, because if Drew Hawke is innocent he’s as much a victim as those girls are, especially with Cassie’s murder.” She looked away from her boss and straight at Darsh. “This is personal. This is hatred.”

He nodded curtly. She was not a cop who’d cut corners to get a result. He had no doubt Detective Erin Donovan had performed her duties well, and come up with the same conclusions any officer would. He just hoped he could persuade her boss she was worth fighting for. “That’s why we’re going back to basics.”

“Victimology?”

“Yes. I want to know everything there is to know about each victim, including Hawke. And we’re setting it up in here. Just the six of us know about this, plus Agent Chen, when she arrives. We’re running this dark because we can’t afford for it to leak that we’re onto him. The guy might be one of us, and he might bolt.” He went and closed the blinds of the conference room. “We’ll conduct future meetings in here and not discuss our findings or the direction of the investigation with anyone. Understand?”

Chief Strassen looked pale. Erin didn’t look much better. Then she dug her phone out of her pocket and put it to her ear, obviously getting a call.

Ully came up to stand next to him and spoke quietly. “The town finds out we think these cases are related, Erin will be thrown to the wolves.”

Darsh looked over at her. “Another reason to keep our mouths firmly shut until we find this killer.”

Ully followed his gaze, then must have seen something on his face. “You’ve got no chance there, G-man.”

Darsh held Ully’s stare. “I’m more concerned about her career.”

Ully smirked. “Sure you are. But don’t feel bad when she knocks you back. She hasn’t dated anyone since her asshole husband shot himself.”

Darsh couldn’t help the satisfaction that sliced through him at that. They’d shared something special. Then he remembered that she wasn’t interested in anything beyond the bedroom, and his mood soured.

Erin’s voice got louder.

“Have you reported it?” She had her phone in a death grip. She looked first to the chief and then to him. “Rachel Knight’s mother is on the line. Rachel is missing.”

*     *     *

Erin headed to
Rachel’s house, even though her boss had told her that they couldn’t treat her as a missing person until the girl had been unaccounted for for a full twenty-four hours, which was bullshit. What if Rachel harmed herself?

The truck groaned going uphill in the steadily falling snow. They’d had two more inches already, but a lot more was in the forecast. Darsh sat beside her, talking on his cell. Neither of them had mentioned last night, nor their argument this morning. They were back to being professional and working the case. She was grateful. Oddly, his presence bolstered her courage and security. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but worry for Rachel overwhelmed everything else.

He hung up, and she glanced toward him, then had to correct for a slight slip of the back tires. She needed to keep her eyes on the road unless she wanted to end up in the ditch.

“I just spoke to a friend of mine who co-owns a security firm in DC. They’re sending some extra security guards up to help on campus. The college contacted them for help.”

Which was a waste of time considering how many young women were around here, but the college wanted to look like it was being pro-active until the cops caught the killer. It couldn’t hurt. “Any news on the evidence?”

“Not yet. Lab said they’d have some results by the end of the day.”

She bit back her frustration. Where the hell was Rachel? Had she been suicidal or had she been abducted? Had Erin missed something yesterday? Had she let Rachel down? The thought made her stomach knot with anxiety. The truck skidded again, and she forced herself to focus on driving, otherwise she’d cause a wreck and maybe put both her and Darsh in the hospital.

“She probably just went to a friend’s house,” he told her quietly.

She gave him a curt nod. He was trying to help, but until she spoke to Rachel, the overwhelming sense of guilt would continue to stack up inside her mind.

Finally they reached the Knights’ residence. She pulled up into the driveway, and Rachel’s mom opened the door and stood there waiting for them. The worry in the woman’s eyes broke her heart, but Erin snapped her spine straight and got out of the truck. She had a job to do and getting emotionally compromised wasn’t going to help.

She strode up the path with Darsh at her side. The temptation to reach out and take his hand for reassurance was huge. And completely inappropriate.

“Dr. Knight.” She nodded and walked inside the door. “When did you last see your daughter?”

The woman crossed her arms over her chest. “Last night. I kissed her goodnight around ten.”

“You didn’t hear from her again, or see her leave?”

She shook her head.

“Can we see her room?” Darsh asked.

Erin knew this was the real reason Darsh was here. He wanted to snoop and gain insight into the victim in a way that wasn’t possible when Rachel was here. She shouldn’t resent him for it, he was just doing his job.

Rachel’s mom turned on her heel and jogged up the stairs. “She wouldn’t have gone off anywhere without telling me. She always told me where she was going and what time she’d be back.”

Rosemary Knight strode down a carpeted hallway and opened a door into a large pale blue room with a big four-poster bed in the middle of it. The bed was made. A computer sat on the desk.

“Does she have her phone with her?” Erin asked as Darsh made a beeline for the laptop.

“Yes.” The shoulders were narrow and tight. “At least, I assume so. It isn’t here.”

“What’s the number?” Darsh asked. Pulling his cell from his pocket he speed-dialed someone.

Rosemary told him, and he gave it to whomever was on the other end of the line and asked them to try to ping it and call him back. He hung up. “Was the security system armed?”

Rachel’s mom nodded. “Always. Someone turned it off to leave the house around six.”

Darsh went back to reading email on Rachel’s computer. There was no password.

“And no sign of a break-in?” asked Erin.

“No.”

There hadn’t been at Cassie and Mandy’s house either, but how would the perp attack and kidnap Rachel without someone hearing? And how had he known the code for the alarm? “Would you have heard if she’d disarmed the security system and left?”

She let out a breath, and her features sagged. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I took a tablet to help me sleep.” She put her hands over her face, hiding tears. “A terrible part of me wants to believe she’s been kidnapped. It would be easier than knowing she ran away of her own volition.”

“Rachel is a grown woman, Dr. Knight. Maybe she just needed a little space.”

“You think I smother her?” The words were bitter and biting.

“No,” Erin hedged. “After everything she’s been through I realize you feel compelled to protect her, but maybe she just went to talk to a friend? Or drove out of the state because she was scared about these murders.” Erin was praying with every lapsed-Catholic cell in her body. “Maybe she’ll call you in an hour, and she’ll be standing on a beach in Maine.” Erin was trying to be optimistic for the other woman’s sake. Rosemary Knight didn’t need to hear her other theories.

Darsh’s phone rang, and tension shot through the room. “Send me the address, and I’ll Google it. Thanks.” They all braced themselves.

He hung up and a few seconds later, his phone dinged with incoming email.

“Where is she?” Rachel’s mom asked.

“Agent Rooney managed to ping her phone off a few different cell towers and got an approximate location. Fox Creek Wildlife Park?”

A wash of relief swept over Rosemary’s features. “She sometimes likes to walk there.” Then her eyes darted to the windows and the growing snowstorm. “What if she got lost?”

Erin’s thoughts were darker, and she tried to stop herself from assuming the worst. “We’ll find her, Rosemary.” Erin clasped her arm. “We’ll bring her home.” She hoped she wasn’t making promises she couldn’t keep.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Someone needs to stay here in case she calls or turns up.”

“Donald’s here. Stuck in his study, pretending he’s not scared witless—although really, it would be hard to tell the difference.” She laughed bitterly, proving all was not well in the Knight household. Then they were walking down to the foyer where she grabbed her coat and slid her feet into her boots. “I’m coming with you,” she insisted. “I need to find my baby.”

Erin drove, glad they were in the truck as the snow grew thicker. Her wipers lazily slashed at the snow on her windshield. Fox Creek was about four miles east of town and formed the entrance to over two thousand acres of National Park.
Please be here. Please be crying in your car because fate dealt you a shitty hand and you needed some space
.

She pulled into the small parking lot, and a swell of relief burst through her at the sight of Rachel’s car. But it was obvious the vehicle hadn’t moved in some time, and snow covered it in a thin shroud. The engine must be cold. She drew to a halt a few spaces away, and Darsh sent her a quelling look as he got out.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

Erin stayed because it meant Rosemary Knight would be more likely to stay too, and she didn’t want the mother to be the one to find Rachel if she’d decided to take her own life.

Darsh carefully brushed snow off a side window of Rachel’s car and peered inside, taking what seemed like forever. Then he went to the passenger door and tried the handle. It opened. Erin held her breath and felt Rosemary Knight’s fingers curl into the back of her seat. Darsh ducked inside and then pulled off a glove and dug into his pocket for an evidence bag. He came out holding a cell phone inside the plastic. Then he checked the trunk, but Erin could see it was empty. He strode back to them, shaking his head.

“She isn’t here.” Snow whirled around his shoulders, white crystals landing in sharp contrast to his black hair. He held up the cell phone and showed it to Rosemary in the back. “Is this hers?”

Rosemary reached out, but Darsh withdrew the phone. “I have an agent arriving in less than an hour who might be able to get key information off it, but it
can’t
be compromised if there’s a chance this might turn out to be a crime scene. Do you understand?” His voice was gentle, but firm.

Rosemary covered her mouth and sobbed, nodding.

“Do you know the screen pass code? I’ll see if there’s a text readily visible.”

“It’s four, four, four, seven.” Then she folded into herself and seemed to just hold on.

Erin looked from Rosemary to Darsh. “Even though she hasn’t been gone twenty-four hours, I’m calling Search and Rescue.”