Speak No Evil (24 page)

J
ack waited to leave the station, just in case there were folks willing to brave the receding floodwaters to come see fireworks. Thankfully, people used their brains and stayed home.

For the first time in a long time, he was feeling frisky.

Maybe it was because of the slightly cooler air, or maybe it was the fact that, after all this time, the crushing sense of dread he’d been feeling was beginning to lighten up.

Or maybe it was the simple fact that he’d enjoyed at least a dozen hard-ons during the day, just thinking about Caroline’s ass in his hands.

Whatever it was that was responsible for his mood, he didn’t fight it.

When his phone rang, he hoped it would be Caroline, so he could play hard to get for all of two full seconds before veering his car in the direction of the Aldridge estate. If nothing else, he could talk her into making out on their porch like they had when they were teenagers. His partner’s voice on the other end of the line had the effect of a finger-thump to his dick. “Hey, Jack.”

“What’s up, Don?”

Garrison seemed to trip over his words, uncertain how to say whatever it was he was trying to spit out of his mouth. Finally, he said, “Jack, listen . . . I know you just left, man . . . but you’ve gotta come back . . . now.”

A bad feeling settled in Jack’s gut at the bleak sound of his voice. “What is it, Don?”

“There’s . . . another body,” he said, but there was something about the way he partitioned the words that made Jack’s stomach wrench a little tighter.

He turned the car around immediately.

 

She felt like a criminal, hiding and checking over her shoulder repeatedly to see if anyone was following her. That annoyed Augusta, because she didn’t feel as though she was doing anything wrong.

She just had this feeling about Patterson.

However, she wasn’t stupid enough to meet him at his house. She chose a public place, the only place she really felt at home here—the Windjammer on the Isle of Palms. Although the new construction was nothing like the one-story building that had been there originally, with the volleyball nets tangled out back, it was still the one place she knew where she could escape the scent of mothball-permeated Confederate uniforms and the sweating crush of tourists, even if the one thing the ’Jammer saw in plenty during the summer was people.

Parking was ridiculous, especially in her mother’s boat of a car, but once she made it inside, she went straight for the bar, grabbed herself a beer and walked outside to watch the volleyballers and wait. It was ten-fifteen. He was late.

 

Once back at the station, nobody seemed inclined to tell him anything.

Apparently, they had already called in SLED—the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division—along with the sheriff ’s office, and now they were waiting for the chief to return from across the street, where it seemed he was hijacking Jack’s investigation. At this point, all Jack knew was that it was a woman they’d discovered and he knew the M.O. was similar to the Jones case, but that’s all they seemed inclined to reveal.

Finally, tired of the hemming and hawing, he grabbed Garrison and pulled him out the door, urging him toward the street, toward the park. “Who found her?” Jack demanded.

Garrison wouldn’t look at him. “Some kid and his dad.”

“Where are they now?”

“Inside. Waiting for an interview.” And then he added, “I’m real sorry, Jack.”

The knot in Jack’s stomach grew.

Caroline was the first person who popped into his mind. He hadn’t talked to her at all today and his stomach threatened to empty its contents right there in the street. They crossed into the park, where uniforms were already scouring the perimeter.

The fireworks stage sat on higher ground and the spotlights were still on, but no longer aimed at the equipment itself. Harsh light spilled across the half-submerged park, toward a twisted form by the water’s edge.

As Jack neared, he could begin to make her out, and the pit of his stomach turned violently.

The girl’s long wet blond locks pooled onto the ground around her face. Her body was completely bare, her naked breasts pointed skyward, feet and hands bound. Her body was draped, like a sacrifice over a boulder. He recognized the bags on her waterlogged hands as their own. They lay positioned on her chest in prayerful repose . . . like Amy Jones.

He felt vomit rise up into his throat.

He forced himself not to look away, to go straight to the body and look down on that face he had looked at a hundred times before. Only now her skin would be cold to the touch. She was pale and waterlogged and if he turned her over, postmortem lividity would have begun to stain her perfect white skin. Her mouth was covered with tape, but it was, beyond a shadow of doubt, Kelly Banks.

Her blue eyes stared up at him, unseeing. The whites of her eyes stained with broken vessels spinning veiny webs into her sockets.

He stared down at her a long moment and then walked away and did something he hadn’t done since the early days of his career. He puked in the bushes.

K
nowing Gormley Sr. was waiting in the interview room with his son, Jack returned to the station and took a moment to get his head straight.

He’d seen a lot of dead bodies during his years as a cop—though some of them might not even qualify for the term because they were in such a state—but this was the first time since his mother’s death that he had looked into a face he’d wanted desperately to love and found nothing but vacant space staring back.

How the hell did one interview a four-year-old who might possibly be the sole witness in the entire case?

He thought about Kelly’s mother and groaned, burying his face in his hands. Out of everyone he knew, Kelly had had the most loving, healthy relationship with her parents. Jack would have to be the one to tell them, but what would he say? How did you tell a mother who still brought her daughter bagged lunches to work that her baby girl was dead?

The last time he’d talked to her, he had been cold and distant. He was trying to be kind by yanking off the Band-Aid, but now that dejected look in her eyes would haunt him forever.

Josh had said she was working on something for him. Was she dead because of that? Or was she just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Could this be aimed at Jack . . . as the investigator in charge? The police in general? Or was Jack just the lucky dude picked to play the game?

Now Kelly was dead.

Was it a coincidence she was connected to Jack? A warning? A challenge? How many more innocent women would die? How many missing persons were already notches on this killer’s belt? Had Kelly figured that out?

Chief Condon came in while Jack was mentally preparing himself for the interview. Leaving the crime unit to finish up the scene investigation and wait for SLED, he sat down in the seat facing Jack, his expression sober. “Jack,” he began.

Jack knew where he was going before he said another word.

“I can’t let you keep the case,” he said.

“I can handle it!”

Condon shook his head. “I looked the other way with the whole media leak bullshit, because I trust you to do what it takes to get the job done, but this is different. I can’t let you work this case now that Kelly is involved. We can’t risk it, Jack. ”

Jack’s jaw worked. He stared down at the floor, his eyes burning.

“As it is, I heard from the DA’s office that you may have compromised evidence—”

Jack’s gaze shot up, fury surging through his veins. “Childres told you that?”

Condon shook his head. “It doesn’t matter who told me what. I defended your actions and reminded them as long as you had that piece of evidence in your sight at all times before checking it in, it’s all good. You’re a good enough cop to know when not to break the rules.”

“But?”

“This is Kelly, man.”

“I know who the hell is out there!” Jack assured him. “Please, Bill, at least let me do the interview with the kid.”

Condon shook his head, his mind made up.

“But he’s our
only
witness!”

“Listen to me, Jack. Anything you do on this case at this point could damage the county solicitor’s case. I can’t risk it.”

Jack wanted a cigarette. He wanted to get up and grab his chair and smash the entire room to shreds. He wanted to catch the son of a bitch and strangle him with his bare hands. That would be justice, right?

“You can watch,” Condon conceded.

Somewhere in the rational part of Jack’s brain, he understood that Condon was doing the only thing he could do, but the idea of losing control of this case made him potentially violent.

On top of that, now that he was taking Jack off the case, he was giving the go-ahead to pursue it as a serial homicide. With two bodies that might or might not be connected, they still couldn’t technically classify it as a serial killing, but Condon was willing to trust Jack’s intuition, if not his police work—even if it meant taking a stand publicly. Kelly was one of their own and her murder was clearly a gauntlet tossed down.

“I’m just supposed to stand by and just let someone else work this?”

“I’ll leave Garrison on it.”

“He doesn’t have the experience!”

“Listen to me, Jack. It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave you on this case. They’ll say I did it out of friendship and neither of us can afford that. You can consult so long as you stay out of sight.”

Jack shook his head, unwilling to accept that he was expected to walk away now—especially with so much of his life at stake. He had the awful feeling that they had a narrow window to nab the guy.

Jack was the best DT on the force—no hubris there—his record spoke for itself—especially since his arrests never ended up going free on a mere technicality. That’s what galled him most about Childres’s accusation.

He knew it was Childres who’d blabbed. Who wouldn’t that asshole throw under the bus for political gain?

He tried to see it from Childres’s perspective—knew the guy wanted to land the mayor’s desk, and Jack understood that anything that threatened his reputation or any case he was working on undermined his political ambitions. He understood all that, but it angered him that Josh would take unfounded complaints to Condon.

He felt as tightly wound as a Swiss watch. What if they missed something?

Condon sensed his thoughts. “Our crime scene unit is as good as it gets, Jack. They’ll look at every inch of that park under a magnifying glass and every wrinkle on Kelly’s body. If there’s a pube on her that isn’t hers, we’ll know about it.”

Jack was forced to concede.

After Condon left, he purposely didn’t call Caroline, uncertain how to tell her the news and dreading the wedge it was bound to put between them.

At all costs, they had to find this guy—as much for Caroline’s sake as anyone else’s—but she wasn’t going to deal well with the fact that he would rather have his nuts placed in a crab cracker than compromise the investigation further. Trusting her had probably cost him the case. From now on, he couldn’t treat her any differently than he would treat someone from the
Post.
She would find out soon enough.

 

Thirty minutes into the interview the Gormley kid hit the wall. He was tired and wanted to go home and answered every question posed with a firm shake of his head.

The father grew agitated. “I gave a statement earlier. Can we please come back tomorrow?”

Jack held his breath.

Garrison acknowledged the request, but didn’t give him a verbal answer. He asked the kid yet another question that the boy stonewalled.

The father was about two minutes away from taking his kid home and refusing further cooperation, but if he went home now, a night of bad dreams could wipe away any and all important details from his memory.

Jack paced the observation room, watching Garrison lose his only witness until he tried a different tack. “Dude . . . I heard you saw a frogman tonight?”

Watching through the glass, Jack held his breath while the kid thought about it. He didn’t deny it, but he didn’t respond either, except to kick angrily at the air beneath the table.

Progress . . . maybe.

“I saw Spiderman once, but no one believed me.”

Tommy glanced up at Garrison, probably wondering if he was telling the truth.

“Was your frogman dressed in a superhero costume, Tommy?”

Tommy gave him a narrow-eyed scowl but shook his head slowly.

“Was he wearing a mask?”

The kid looked down at his lap, picking at his pant leg, and shrugged.

“Do you know what kind of mask I’m talking about?” Garrison persisted.

Tommy didn’t look up, but he shook his head.

“I’m talkin’ ’bout the sort people use when they go swimming. Do you ever go swimming, Tommy?”

The boy looked up, shaking his head again in an exaggerated slow motion.

“Why not?”

He gave his dad a beleaguered glance, rolling his eyes and said plaintively, “On ’count . . . I’m not ’lowed in G-ma’s pool, ’cause she prolly pees in it.”

Any other day, Jack might have been amused.

Not today.

“That so?”

The little boy nodded soberly and his father turned red. “The ex’s mom . . . and me,” he said by way of explanation, “we don’t get along.”

Garrison turned back to Tommy. “You’re sure it was a frogman, Tommy?”

Tommy nodded a little more enthusiastically.

“Was he green?”

He made a scared face. “No! He was black with yellow eyes!”

Jack wondered if the guy had been wearing a wet suit and mask. It would explain the lack of fibers on the bodies.

“Think you’ll have bad dreams tonight?”

Jack had to admit Garrison’s patience was far more evident than Jack’s at the moment. The boy hesitated, thinking about the question, then replied, “No, ’cause I’m already big.”

“How old are you, Tommy?”

He held up three fingers and a crooked thumb and said, “Four.” He looked up at his dad, looking for confirmation.

“When will you be five?”

“On my birsday.”

Garrison looked at the father.

“September.”

“So, Tommy, do you want to play detective tonight . . . tell me what happened?”

“What’s a tective?”

“It’s where you help catch bad guys and put them away so they can’t hurt anyone.”

Tommy nodded, even gave a hint of a smile before going through as detailed an account as a tired four-year-old could muster.

“The frogman looked straight at you?”

Tommy rubbed his eyes and nodded again.

“Was he close enough for you to tell his eyes were seeing you back?”

Tommy nodded. “For a long time,” he said sullenly. “I was scared.”

“But he didn’t hurt you and he went away, right?”

He put his hands together and gestured like he was going to dive. “Down and then he swam away!” He kicked his little feet frantically as though he were swimming.

“That’s great. Thank you, Tommy. You’re good at being a detective,” Garrison said. “Next time you see something like that, promise to tell your dad right away?”

Tommy peered up at his father, his little brows colliding fiercely, and that quickly, his temper was back. “I want to go home!” he screamed.

Jack noticed the dad couldn’t meet Garrison’s gaze afterward, and he hoped the guy realized how close he had come to losing his child tonight.

Jack stared at the exhausted little boy with the green rain jacket and little yellow waders and thought about Amanda Hutto.

The number of the missing and dead were adding up. But not a one of them had anything in common except for the fact that they were female. A six-year-old girl. A seventeen-year-old runaway. A twenty-two-year-old college kid and a thirty-year-old police dispatcher.

The whole thing felt disjointed to Jack somehow.

Once the interview was over, he headed back across the street, hoping Garrison’s patience extended to coworkers because Jack intended to be certain they missed nothing.

The body was still unmoved while a team of medical examiners finished their initial exam. Jack stared down into Kelly’s face, knowing she was the only one who really knew what they were dealing with. The best chance they had to catch this guy was to figure out where he would strike next.

“Who did this to you, Kelly?”

Her mouth remained still behind the sheets of tape. They had yet to remove it and wouldn’t until they got her into the lab.

Her mouth and hands had been left just like Amy Jones’s, but something felt different, and he couldn’t get past the idea that this one seemed personal.

His phone rang, and he walked away from the scene, reaching into his pocket and fishing his cell out without looking at the caller ID.

Caroline’s voice had that razor-sharp edge that used to make him dive for cover. “Did you ever plan to tell me?”

From where he stood, Kelly’s face momentarily morphed into Caroline’s, and he couldn’t find his voice to speak. His answer came out sounding more like an unintelligible grunt.

Whatever anger Caroline might have felt seemed to soften when she sensed his distress. “I heard there was another body.”

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

“They haven’t revealed who yet. Can you say?”

He considered his next words carefully. “Are you asking because you give a shit about who we’ve got lying cold on a stone . . . or are you asking as Florence Aldridge’s daughter?”

Dead silence was the answer he got, and Jack remained silent, waiting.

“I can’t believe you would ask me that,” she said finally, sounding defeated, and maybe a little defensive and hurt.

The image of Kelly’s mother flashed across Jack’s brain.

Despite the circus of newspeople already gathering outside the station, no one had disclosed the name of the deceased—and they wouldn’t—not before they were able to notify her next of kin. He took a deep breath and gave her the standard line, “The identity of the victim isn’t being released at this time pending notification of next of kin.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

“Bye, Caroline,” he said, and ended the call.