The Fourth Victim Read online

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  “Deb seems truly fond of her boss—and had no problem taking me to the office and turning over Chapman’s files. Deb thinks there could be a lot of possible suspects there.”

  “So you’ve got the files?”

  “I’m on my way home with them now.”

  “Great bedtime reading.”

  “Looking at the crates in my backseat, I have a feeling I’m not going to be getting any sleep tonight.”

  Clay knew that feeling all too well.

  Kelly Chapman’s credit cards were not used on Friday. Her Blue Dodge Nitro turned up in Knoxville, Tennessee, Friday night. Clay was at home, in sweats and no shirt, having just padded in from a shower. He was sitting at his kitchen table, poring through electronic phone records, credit card receipts and bank statements when he got the call from the Tennessee state police at around ten.

  Knoxville—five hours away.

  “It was left in a mall parking lot.”

  “Any obvious indicators?” He ran his hand through hair that probably should’ve been cut weeks ago. But that would probably wait weeks more.

  “It’s in good shape. No obvious dents or scratches. It’s clean inside. Maybe too clean.”

  “In what way?”

  “Not so much as a gum wrapper, leaf or spot of dirt on the floor. Nothing personal. Not even in the console.”

  “Her purse wasn’t there? What about the trunk?”

  “No purse. And other than a spare tire and jack, the trunk is clean.”

  “How about writing implements? Any pens or pencils?”

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  Which was the first real indication to Clay—who, during his fifteen years in the business, had seen just about everything—that Ms. Chapman’s disappearance involved foul play.

  “No blood anywhere?”

  “Not that we could see. You want us to take the car in? Have it gone over?”

  Ordinarily, he’d insist it wait until he got there. Sometimes the turn of the wheel was a clue.

  But he was five hours away. Five hours that could make the difference between life and death.

  “Please. But make sure you take pictures first. Inside and out. A lot of them. Too many of them.”

  “Yes, sir,” the trooper replied.

  And Clay rang off, already on his way to get dressed. If he left now, he could be in Knoxville in time to catch a couple hours’ sleep before sunup.

  4

  Day

  December 2010

  I have to keep track of time. That thought reverberated. Over and over. I didn’t want to open my eyes. I couldn’t remember why, but I knew I didn’t. I didn’t want to move, either.

  Something hard was digging into my rib. I tried to adjust my position enough to relieve the pressure and came in full contact with the rocky cement bed upon which I lay.

  And then I remembered. I was in captivity.

  Slowly, so if someone was staring at me they wouldn’t notice, I opened one eye slightly.

  And saw a sliver of light coming in from outside.

  I’d passed at least one night here.

  That realization changed everything. I didn’t have to endure for just a few hours. The police, my friends—they would’ve known I was gone a long time ago and hadn’t been able to find me.

  Carefully, through my lashes, I took in my surroundings, such as they were. As soon as I was able to deter mine that there was no one directly in view, I opened my eyes fully.

  The light wasn’t much. A beacon in the distance? Light at the end of the tunnel?

  Was I in the same place I’d been in the last time I was awake? And the time before that?

  I had no idea.

  It didn’t smell like the bike path, though. There was a sweet odor, easily distinguishable even in the cold. And it was cold.

  My head still hurt, the pain sharp, but my thoughts seemed clearer. I wasn’t as tired.

  Had I been drugged? Hit on the head? Both?

  Was that why I couldn’t stay awake?

  I didn’t know if I’d been out for hours or days. It must have been at least eighteen hours, I figured, based on the fact that I’d gone skating on Friday morning and now it was a different day.

  Okay, so I had to keep track of time. Keep my mind working.

  And I had to move. I was cold. But not as cold as I’d been the day before. Thank God I’d worn my hat under my helmet to go skating. Hats helped stave off hypothermia.

  But where was my helmet?

  Although the pain was excruciating at first, I moved my feet. They were heavy and for a second I panicked, my heart thudding heavily. And then I remembered that I still had my skates on. They’d helped keep me warm, too.

  And I was in some kind of enclosure. A natural one, from what I could tell. A cave, maybe. There were some pretty famous caves about thirteen miles from town. And I remember, when we toured them as kids, they’d told us that the temperature always stayed around fifty-five degrees. No matter what time of year it was. I hoped I was in a cave. I’d be protected from the worst of December’s cold.

  December. I knew the month.

  And I knew one day had passed. So…this was Day Two.

  That recognition felt good. Positive. I was in control of something.

  I was so stiff it hurt to breathe, but I couldn’t afford to worry about pain anymore. Or let it stop me.

  I had to get up. See if I was being watched and what to do about it if I was. I had to get out. Find something to eat and drink. Somehow. I had to pee again.

  And then I could worry about where I was. How I’d come to be there. Who’d brought me. What plans my captors had for me.

  And figure out how I could thwart those plans.

  One thing was becoming abundantly clear—if I was going to live, I’d have to save myself. No one had found me.

  I lifted my head. I could tell that I was alone in my prison. Some kind of cave but not entirely in its natural state. There was cement on the floor. And the opening—indicated by the glimmer of light in the distance—was mostly blocked.

  My shoulders, twisted behind me, throbbed. But my hands had gone numb. I welcomed the lack of pain even as I worried about my circulation. About losing the use of my fingers and toes.

  I tried to sit up and was consumed by a wave of nausea. Waiting, holding myself suspended, I made up my mind that I was not going to lie back down.

  I was not going to die lying down.

  With that thought pushing me, I shifted my weight and shifted again. Several minutes later I was on my butt, leaning against a rock wall.

  At which point I did the only thing I could.

  I started to cry.

  “An Ohio psychologist is missing this morning.”

  The man standing at the old, greasy, two-burner stove frying bacon turned toward the small television set.

  “Kelly Chapman left her office in Chandler, Ohio, to go in-line skating yesterday and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

  The bacon sizzled, cracked, spitting grease over his arm. The man noticed, but didn’t care, his attention focused one hundred percent on the local news.

  “The vehicle she was driving, a 2009 dark blue Dodge Nitro, was found last night here in Knoxville….”

  The man stared at the picture on the screen.

  His whole wasted life, this hole he lived in, the booze, it was all because of her.

  “If anyone has seen this woman, or saw the vehicle yesterday, or knows anything about the whereabouts of Kelly Chapman, please call the number on your screen.”

  He glanced at the number. He wasn’t going to call. He wasn’t stupid.

  “The FBI and Chandler police are offering a ten thousand dollar reward to anyone with information….”

  So she was worth that much. He wasn’t surprised.

  Putting the spraying pan on the back burner, the man grabbed the control that had come with the free box the government had offered the public when the national television signals had gone to digital. He could get twice the channels now.

  Which meant there’d be more news.

  He wanted to hear it all. From every source. Every opinion. Every supposition. He’d stay a step ahead of them. Show every one of those legal eagles just how much power he had.

  He’d show her. No more begging.

  Yeah, he had a plan. His ship was finally coming in.

  But first, he needed to eat. He took a long, gratifying swig of the beer he’d opened as soon as he’d stumbled out of bed.

  A man had to keep his strength up.

  Rubbing the gut protruding from the tails of a flannel shirt he’d found in someone’s trash a couple of years ago—a perfectly good shirt except for the fact that it had been a size too small even then—the man grinned, his blackened and broken teeth a sign of his past.

  A sign that didn’t matter anymore. He was looking forward to the coming days. And a future that was shining bright.

  The SUV gave him nothing. Not one goddamned thing. No fingerprints. No blood. Not even a smudge of dirt.

  Whatever had been there was now gone.

  Clay needed the girl. Maggie. Needed to know if Kelly Chapman was obsessive about keeping her vehicle spotless or if the evidence he was looking at had been tainted—in this case, wiped clean.

  He wasn’t sure the kid was going to help him. She’d seemed unusually calm about the disappearance of her foster parent.

  But sometimes kids in the system learned young not to care too much about anything.

  He understood that. You did what you had to do.

  Unless you chose not to.

  “Jones.” The detective answered his call on the first ring.

  “I need to speak with the girl,” Clay said, not bothering to waste time with pleasantries. If Samantha Jones knew something she would’ve called.

  He’d been on the road most of the night. Asleep in his car for the rest of it. He was no closer to finding his victim. And he wasn’t in a great mood.

  “Yes, sir, one moment. She’s still in bed. I’ll get her.”

  So what if it was before eight on a Saturday morning? The kid had all day to sleep.

  “Hello?” Maggie Winston didn’t sound as though she’d been sleeping.

  “Maggie? This is Agent Thatcher.”

  “I know. Did you find Kelly?”

  The hope in the girl’s voice struck him. In places he didn’t like to feel. Which meant Clay had to adjust his thinking.

  He was oddly glad to know the kid cared.

  Like it mattered to him that this psychologist was important to the people in her life. That she had people who loved her.

  Of course she did. Everyone did. If you looked hard enough.

  “No, not yet, but we’re getting closer.” He gave the rote answer. Even if they never found her, they were one day closer to that conclusion. “I need to ask you some more questions if you don’t mind.”

  “She’s on speakerphone, Agent Thatcher. Go ahead,”

  Detective Jones said.

  “Maggie, when was the last time you were in Ms. Chapman’s car?”

  “Yesterday morning.” The girl’s answer was quick. Certain. Clay nodded, accepting it as truth. “She came by the bus stop after I left the house and gave me a ride to school.”

  “Why didn’t she just take you from home?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she got ready sooner than she thought she would. Or else got a call and had to go in early.”

  “Do you remember anything in particular about the interior of the car?”

  “It’s gray. With leather seats. They have heat controls. I didn’t turn mine on. Kelly turned hers on….”

  He was beginning to like this kid.

  “What about things in the car?” he asked more specifically. “Trash, or maybe a smudge on the carpet?”

  “She keeps it really clean,” Maggie said. “I remember her briefcase. And her purse. She moved them for me to sit down. And there’s the little license-plate luggage tags. She keeps them in the tray on the console. They’re from Michigan. She bought them when we were up there for her work. They have our names on them.”

  “When were you in Michigan?”

  “In October.”

  “And do you know anything about the job she was there to do?”

  “No. Just that she interviewed some guy. But I met the attorney who hired her. We were supposed to stay with her but her office got broken into, so we stayed at a bed and breakfast.”

  The girl wanted to help. That meant a lot in his book.

  “Do you remember the attorney’s name?”

  “Erin Morgan.”

  “Good. That’s good,” he said, scribbling in the pocketsize notebook he never dressed without.

  “Anything else you can tell me about the car?”

  “Just the little beanie dog she keeps on the dash.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Two or three inches tall, I guess. Light beige with a brown spot. Its ears are kind of cockeyed and it has this pathetic expression.”

  The girl had obviously spent some time noticing the stuffed toy.

  “Do you know if the dog had any special significance?”

  “No.”

  “If you think of anything else, have Detective Jones give me a call, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And, Maggie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve helped a lot. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He had to hang up. To check on ten things at once. Continue the search. “Don’t worry. We’re going to find her,” he said instead.

  “I hope so.” The teenager’s voice broke.

  “You can count on it,” he said. And then, shaking his head, clicked off his phone. He’d broken one of his cardinal rules. He never gave his word unless he knew he could keep it.

  5

  JoAnne answered before the phone could ring twice. “Morning, boss.”

  He preferred her not to call him that. Which was why she did it, he was sure. His second-in-command seemed to have made it her life’s calling to annoy him whenever she could.

  “What’ve you got?”

  He’d showered at a truck stop—not the first time he’d done so in the ten years he’d been an agent—and was back in his black, government-issue Taurus, the gray corduroy suit jacket his only concession to the cool December Tennessee morning. He’d decided against a tie, since he was on the road, but had one on the seat beside him if he needed it.

  “Get this. The foster child…” JoAnne started right in. “The girl’s mother brought her to Kelly because she was afraid her daughter was sexually interested in an older man.”

  “The mother who’s in jail for selling her kid to the drug trade?”

  “Yeah. She didn’t have a problem with making money off the kid, but not for sex. She didn’t want the girl ending up like her, pregnant and quitting high school. But that’s not all of it, not by a long shot. Kelly Chapman found out that this girl had never even been kissed, but she fancied herself in love with someone Kelly believed to be in his thirties.”

  Kelly. Not Ms. Chapman. Or “our missing person.” Obviously spending the night with Kelly Chapman’s files had had an effect on JoAnne.

  Staring at the five-by-seven photo taped to his dash, Clay tried to get inside the mind of the woman he was seeking. He’d stuck her picture up there the night before. So he could work as he drove. Or so he’d told himself.

  There was something about those vivid blue eyes that called out to him. Something that was different from the hundreds of other pictures of missing persons he’d studied over the years.

  JoAnne continued with what she’d learned. “Hoping the girl’s crush was just adolescent transference, but afraid it was more than that, Kelly called her friend Samantha Jones to help her find the guy before it was too late.”

  Two determined women looking out for a young woman in trouble. The kind of thing fairy tales were made of. Maggie was one lucky girl.

  “She called Samantha Jones, the detective Maggie’s staying with now,” he said.

  “Right. But they didn’t make it in time.”

  Clay frowned. The young girl he’d just spoken to had been—

  “What does that mean?” he asked abruptly.

  “She had sex with the guy. In a tent outside town. He’d planned the whole scenario.” JoAnne’s tone took on an unusual bitterness. “Get this, the dude brings chocolate like a guy might if he was seducing a woman, but in this case, he brings chocolate cookies with white icing. They were Maggie’s favorites. He brought cookies, Clay. To a seduction. He knew damned well he was having a liaison with a child.”

  “I take it he’s in jail?”

  “Nope. They know who he is, although there’s no evidence to prove it and Maggie isn’t saying. She calls the guy Mac. But she doesn’t say anything else about him. According to Kelly’s notes, Maggie is in trauma-induced denial. Apparently she’s so emotionally fragile that she has to believe in him, regardless of what anyone tells her. She believes he loves her. The alternative, to know she’d been abused in the worst possible way, is too much for her to handle right now. Her conscious mind can’t accept that Mac isn’t who and what he claims to be.”

  Nothing was ever as it seemed.

  “Find out everything you can about this Mac guy.”

  “He’s that lawyer, David Abrams.”

  “You said there was no evidence.”

  “Not admissible evidence.” JoAnne sounded weary. Clay understood. “They know that the man who had sex with Maggie was the one who gave her the drugs. That’s how she met him. And that deputy who was killed, he told Kyle Evans that Abrams was the one who gave Maggie the drugs to deliver. They showed Maggie a picture of Abrams but she’s adamant that he’s not her Mac.”

  “And since the deputy is dead, Kyle’s testimony is only hearsay. I’m guessing the confession wasn’t taped.”

  “Right.”

  “So this lawyer who’s so well liked, well respected and still practicing law in Chandler is a pedophile.”

  “You got it. And he’s also the devoted father of four kids with a fifth on the way. There’s no suggestion of any misconduct, either with his own kids or anyone else. His weakness seems to be specifically Maggie, not young girls in general.”