Under Cover of Darkness (23 page)

In seconds Gus was in his daughter's bedroom. Andie and Morgan were right behind. He snatched up the phone from the pink rug beside the bed, where Morgan had dropped it. The dial tone hummed in his ear.

"Does Morgan's line have caller-ID?" asked Andie. She was standing in the doorway.

"No"

"Hit star sixty-nine, then."

Gus had used the memory-call service before. It automatically dialed the number of the last incoming phone call. He punched the buttons and waited.

A young girl answered. "Hello."

"Who is this?"

"Hannah."

Confused, Gus covered the mouthpiece and asked his daughter, "Did your friend Hannah call you this morning?" Morgan nodded slowly.

Gus returned to the phone. "I'm sorry, Hannah. This is Morgan Wheatley's father. We dialed a wrong number." He hung up and gave Morgan a stern look. "I thought you said your mother called."

"She did!"

He appealed to Andie, not sure what to do. Andie sat on the edge of the bed, at eye level with the six-yea
r o
ld. "Are you sure it was your mom who called?" "Yes. It was her. It had to be her."

"This is very important. If she called, your daddy and I want to talk to her."

"She called. I know it was her!"

Gus took her hand gently. "What did she say, sweetie?" "She didn't say anything."

The adults shared a moment of skepticism. "You never heard her voice?" asked Gus.

"No"

"Then how do you know it was Mommy who called?" "The numbers."

"I don't understand. What numbers?" "Nine-five-three-four-eight-eight-nine."

Andie asked, "Is that Beth's cell phone number?" "No. Sweetheart, what are you talking about?"

Morgan picked up the phone and put it to her father'
s e
ar. "Listen." She punched out the numbers. It made a tune. Gus looked at Andie. "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Morgan said, "That's what I'm telling you. Momm
y s
howed me how to do that, long time ago. She called m
e a
nd hit the numbers. Just now. And then she hung up." Gus felt a chill. "Did you ever tell Hannah about thos
e n
umbers? Did she know how to play that tune, too?"

"No way. That was me-and Mommy's secret."

He looked quizzically at Andie. "Why did I get Hannah when I dialed memory call?"

"People can buy devices to beat any of those phone-company services--memory call, caller-ID. We see it all the time with creeps who make obscene calls."

"So, it could have been made from a telephone that was outfitted with one of those electronic gizmos?"

"That would explain how you got Hannah when you dialed star sixty-nine. You would have pulled up the secondto-last call rather than the last call."

"Then it's possible it was Beth."

"It was Mommy. I know it was!" Morgan was so frustrated, she was about to hit him.

Gus was silent, but he sensed Andie had the same exact thought. She sprang from the bed. "I'll get one of our technical agents to see if he can track the call."

He tossed her the phone.

"Let's not use Morgan's anymore. I don't want to screw anything up."

"The kitchen," said Gus, leading the way. He spoke as they hurried down the hall. "If it was Beth who called, why didn't she talk?"

"I can't answer that."

They stopped at the kitchen counter. Fear was in his eyes. "You don't think this was some kind of prank?" "That's what I hope my techies can tell me."

"But if it wasn't a prank--why the numbers?"

"I don't know. Maybe your daughter can help us with that."

"I don't think so. It's more a matter of thinking it through logically. A woman disappears for nearly a week. She's finally able to get to a phone. She's able to dial the numbers. But she doesn't speak. There are only a couple possibilities. Either she doesn't want to speak, or .. ."

"She can't."

The words chilled him. "Can't speak? Meaning what?"

Their eyes met and held. It was as if she were telling him there were any number of possibilities. None of them pretty. "Let's get the technical agents on the trail, all right? Then we can brainstorm."

Gus nodded, then swallowed the lump in his throat. "Okay," he said quietly as she dialed the number.

Andie was on the phone with technical agents when Carla rang the doorbell. In all the confusion Gus had almost forgotten he'd called his sister before Andie's arrival. He'd wanted her there to watch Morgan, just in case the FBI
visit ended up taking all morning or required him to leave the house. Good thing he'd called--though he certainly hadn't anticipated this.

The house seemed chaotic, considering it was just the four of them. Andie was in the kitchen, actually speaking on two phones at once, her cellular and the Wheatleys'. Morgan was continually bopping between her room and Gus's home office, the two free lines. She was sure that staring at the phone would make it ring again, but she couldn't decide which one to watch. Gus trailed after her, letting her burn off the excitement. He gave Carla all the details as they traced the erratic steps of a six-year-old across the house.

Carla asked, "You sure Morgan isn't making this up?" They were standing outside Morgan's bedroom, the door open, keeping an eye on her inside.

"After those shoplifting allegations panned out, I don't have much room to doubt her word anymore."

Morgan hurried past them, then down the hall. Back to Gus's office. Gus and Carla followed at a safe distance behind so that Morgan couldn't overhear.

"Doesn't it scare you that she didn't speak?"

"Of course it does," said Gus.

"I mean, she would have said something. If she could have."

"That's sort of where Agent Henning and I came out." "So . . . why couldn't she?"

They stopped near Gus's office, just off the kitchen. He glanced across the room at Andie on the phone, then looked down, unable to look Carla in the eye. "I have this image in my head."

"Image?"

"I keep seeing Beth on the floor, her hands and feet tied. Crawling to a phone. She knocks it off the hook. Her mouth is gagged, she can't talk. So she pecks out this tun
e o
n the key pad."

"That's brilliant," she said, impressed.

He shot a look. "It's horrifying."

A yelp of excitement drew their attention to the kitchen. Andie hung up the phone and hissed out a loud "Yesssssss," like a tennis pro who'd just served an ace. She shouted, "We pegged the call!"

Gus hurried into the kitchen. "Where?"

"It came from Oregon. A pay phone just across the state line."

"A pay phone?" So much for his image of Beth crawling on the floor.

"Yeah. They're on their way to check it out." She pulled on her overcoat and grabbed her car keys. "I'm headed there myself."

"I'm going with you," said Gus.

"You can't. What if another call comes?"

He agonized for a moment but realized she was right. "What if another one does come? What do I do?"

"We've set up a trap and trace on all three house lines now. If a remotely suspicious call comes on any one of them, keep it going as long as you can."

Gus led her to the foyer and opened the front door. "Call me the minute you hear anything."

"I will. But, Gus, please. Try not to drive yourself crazy with worry."

He watched from the top step as she turned and hurried to her car. Too late, he thought as her car sped away. I'm way beyond worried.

Chapter
Twenty-Nine.

Andie drove alone to the northernmost nub of western Oregon. In these parts, the irregular path of the Columbia River defined the state line, which accounted for the little pocket of Oregon that protruded into southwestern Washington. Her exact destination was near the city of Rainier, forty miles north of Portland on the Oregon side of the river.

Most of the trip was interstate at high speed. She played no radio, no books on cassette. She was alone with her thoughts, mostly about Beth Wheatley. Her mind did wander somewhat. Exit signs for connections to Route 101 reminded her of the trip she and Rick had taken along the coast, Washington to San Francisco, the long and scenic route. She had hoped it would be romantic, but Rick kept brooding over the fact that she had vetoed his preference for nude beaches in Jamaica. In hindsight, she should have seen the early warning signs of a guy who wanted to put his girlfriend on display, as if to show the rest of the world what he was getting. So intent was he on going that it took a threat to settle the matter. She vowed to dissolve copious quantities of Viagra--the miracle age for impotence-
-
into his pina coladas. Rick backed off immediately. Nothing was more uncool than a cheesy-grinned tourist on a nude beach with a permanent erection.

The gray fog thickened as she crossed the bridge over the Columbia River, a far cry from sunny Jamaican beaches. Rain fell, then stopped, then started again as she drove through Rainier to a more remote area outside town. According to her technical agents, the call to Morgan's line had come from a pay phone along the highway. A public rest area, to be exact, just west of Rainier and situated at the foot of a forested preserve. She hadn't mentioned anything to Gus, but a pay phone was the last place she had expected the trace to have led them. With three dead women who looked so much like her, the thought of Beth Wheatley at a pay phone punching out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" just didn't add up.

Unless by some miracle she had escaped.

Rain gathered on the windshield, and the image in her mind was suddenly vivid. A desperate woman leaping from her captor's van as it rounded the corner. The rough pavement ripping at her flesh as she rolled into the parking lot. The mad dash to the pay phone, her attacker in pursuit. Her hands shaking as she frantically punched the buttons. The excitement of the call going through. The frustration of finding she couldn't respond to her own daughter's voice, couldn't speak at all. A gag, possibly. Or a rope around her neck. Her attacker grabbing her, pulling her back toward the van, but she hangs on long enough to bang out a tune her daughter would recognize.

Andie shook off the disturbing image and turned into the rest area.

It was a typical looking highway road stop, a flat roof perched on brown-painted cinder blocks. A bank of three pay phones was in the middle, flanked by men's and women's facilities to the left and right, respectively. The entire building, parking lot, and neighboring curtilage had been marked off as a crime scene with yellow police tape. A forensic team was already at work. Two men were casting a mold for a tire track near a puddle. Another wa
s s
couring the pay phone for fingerprints. Four teams had fanned out in all directions, searching the surrounding area for articles of clothing, footprints, blood, weapons--anything of interest.

Andie parked near a squad car on the opposite side of the highway. She stepped out, shocked for a moment by the cold wind. The tall stand of pines behind the building blocked any view of the river, though it was near enough to feel its damp chill.

Andie cinched up her trench coat, crossed the highway and started toward the shelter. A deputy sheriff stopped her before she could duck under the tape. She identified herself and flashed her credentials. He was expecting her.

"This way," he said, then led her around back the long way, outside the yellow-taped perimeter. The wind was blowing harder. Her nose started to run. She stayed a half step behind him so he wouldn't notice.

"Anybody see anything?" she asked, still walking.

"We got the word out to local news asking people to come forward if they were near the rest area this morning. But I wouldn't get your hopes up."

They stopped at a ridge about fifty meters behind the rest area. The stand of pines was behind them. A steep cliff was at their feet. Thick, gray clouds moved slowly through the valley like the ghost of a glacier.

The deputy offered his binoculars and pointed to an area deep in the valley. "Down there. Through that clearing."

With the naked eye she noticed a team converging near the bank of a winding stream. She trained the binoculars toward a wooded area that had shed its leaves for winter. She peered intently, though by now it was a scene she could have described without looking.

Through the tangle of branches, the ravaged body of yet another nude brunette hung limply from a tree.

For Gus, the minutes passed like hours. Andie had been gone for more than two hours, and he had yet to hear anything. It was a long drive to Rainier, he knew, but he had hoped for more frequent updates. Finally, the phone rang.

Gus started in his chair but didn't answer. It rang again.

Carla snapped, "Answer it."

He was frozen for a moment by the possibility of bad news. He grabbed it on the third ring.

"We found a body," said Andie.

"Oh, my God."

"It's okay. It's not Beth."