The Stranger You Know
“Exactly.”
“Our team will be there, too,” Patrick told Tom. “We’ll keep a low profile and let you do your thing.”
“I figured as much.” Tom’s tone was grim. “Sometimes this job really sucks. But it sure as hell makes you want to solve a case.” There was a pause. “Give me your office number. I’ll keep you posted as information turns up.”
Casey complied, giving him not only the office number, but each of their individual cell phone numbers, as well.
As soon as the call was disconnected, she glanced around the table, focusing specifically on Ryan. She knew what was coming.
And it did.
Ryan turned to Marc. “Our surveillance blows theirs out of the water.”
“No question.” Marc finished off his cup of coffee. “Looks like we’ll be treading into that gray area sooner than expected.”
* * *
It was 6:00 p.m. With two hours left before the vigil began, the area was deserted, except for Kendra’s photo and a small circle of flowers surrounding it.
Ryan glanced out the window of the van as he, Marc and Patrick approached the campus. “Tom’s right. This whole thing sucks.”
Marc said nothing, although he didn’t disagree. He’d seen some heinous things in his time. That didn’t make a brutal crime like this any easier to comprehend.
Security was tight, as the FI team had expected it to be. Patrick got out of the van a block away and walked toward the campus grounds. He was wearing business casual clothes and had left his gun at home. He’d been given the necessary law enforcement okay. He’d have no trouble getting in. And he’d look like any professor or father paying his respects.
That left Ryan and Marc to do their own jobs.
The FI van pulled up to the security guard. Ryan reached into his pocket and produced his ID from New York Sound, one of the many corporate aliases Forensic Instincts had created to allow them to conduct surveillance operations without raising suspicion. As expected, New York Sound was on the approved vendor list. Once the guard verified that, he handed Ryan back his ID and nodded.
Ryan paused long enough to gaze around the area on campus where the vigil was about to be held.
“Where’s the closest place for me to park?” he asked.
The guard pointed, uttering a series of lefts and rights, which Ryan memorized. Then he issued a mock salute and pulled slowly onto campus.
Situated where he wanted to be, Ryan turned and nodded at Marc. The two of them climbed out of the van, unloaded the tripod base speakers and positioned them strategically around the area where the vigil would soon commence. Next, Ryan connected the long cables to each speaker and attached the opposite ends to the special jacks protruding from the side of the van. He climbed inside and fired up the equipment.
Marc went from speaker to speaker, waiting to hear Ryan say, “Testing one, two, three,” before he waved to acknowledge that Ryan’s voice was coming through loud and clear. Next, Ryan gave Marc instructions at each speaker about how to position it. “Up five feet, turn left twenty degrees,” he directed the first time, his voice emanating from the elevated speaker. The two of them continued the process until it was done.
To a passerby, it would appear as if Marc was adjusting a sound system. But inside the truck, Ryan was checking the angles of security cameras he’d concealed inside the speakers. Once the process was complete, he’d have a three hundred and sixty degree view of the entire vigil area. The output from each video camera would be recorded, allowing Forensic Instincts to analyze the footage, and use facial recognition software if needed. Casey had instructed Ryan to make the video available to her on the FI server as soon as they returned to the office.
Marc opened the back door of the van and climbed in. The place looked like a mini TV production room.
“Ready?” he asked, glancing around.
Ryan sat back on his heels. “Show time.”
* * *
Kendra might have been a quiet and private girl. But the vigil was packed with students, some of them white with shock, some of them openly weeping. Whether or not Kendra was part of their individual social circles, her murder hit them all hard. She was one of their peers, one of their classmates. Any of them could just as easily have been the girl found in that warehouse. Knowing that, they hugged one another and stood in traumatized solidarity, overcome by the horror of the situation.
Patrick moved among the crowd, subtly but intently studying the vigil’s attendees. No one paid particular attention to him, since there were other people his age, most of them parents who lived locally. They, too, felt a fearful kinship with the other parents—and not only out of grief for Kendra, although that was a huge part of their reason for being there. But they were also well aware that if this psychopath was targeting Columbia students, their own children could be in danger. Kendra’s own parents were, understandably, absent. They were in no condition to be out in public when they were still utterly shattered and in shock.
Marie, Kendra’s closest friend and the last known person to have seen her alive, made a brief but heartbreaking speech. She spoke about Kendra’s kindness, her commitment to her family and friends, and her determination to graduate and make a difference in the world. When no more words would come, she wiped away her tears and bent down to place a bouquet of flowers at the foot of the pedestal holding the photo of Kendra.
After that, students all filed forward, placing everything on the grass from a single flower alongside Marie’s bouquet to Columbia notebooks and T-shirts. The “pizza crowd,” all of whom were among Kendra’s small number of close friends, were huddled together. They each put a yellow rose—Kendra’s favorite flower—on top of the pedestal, and then turned away, tears rolling down their cheeks. Even Robbie was there, squatting to place an empty pizza box near the flowers.
He walked over to Kendra’s friends. “I don’t know what to say,” he told them. “She was a terrific girl. This is a nightmare. I hope the cops find the motherfucker who did this to her and lock him up for life.” His voice got shaky. “The last time I saw her, she was trying to help me. Some car was blocking my delivery truck and I could barely get out. She would have gone up to the driver and blasted him if I let her.”
“She told us about that,” Amy said. “She went on and on about how miserably delivery people are treated.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve gotten used to that.” Robbie swallowed, obviously struggling to make mundane conversation. “I normally just let it roll off my back. But I would’ve been fired if the truck got dented. So I appreciated Kendra’s concern. I’d be screwed without that job. As it is, I just took on a second one. But this new one lets me deliver pizzas by bike.”
“That’s good.” Amy hadn’t really heard him and he knew it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the senseless and brutal crime that had taken away their friend.
The candle-lighting aspect of the vigil got under way. Everyone had been handed a candle when they arrived. Now they all lit them, standing silently and bowing their heads in prayer.
Not far away, a dark sedan was parked. Its driver was scrutinizing the campus through a zoom lens, watching each attendee, one at a time.
Watching and planning.
Chapter Nine
Glen Fisher hadn’t felt this aroused in a long time.
Pacing back and forth in his cell, his erection hardened along with his thoughts. His juices were flowing. Blood was pumping through his veins. Pooling at his groin. The next attack—he could actually feel it. His hands were around her throat. His penis was throbbing. He stared into her eyes as he drove into her body, coming harder and harder as he choked away her life. He ground her into the concrete floor as the last spasm surged through him. He was triumphant. She was violated and dead. It was a power like no other. And the best was yet to be.
In the meantime, he needed release, and he needed it now.
Dropping down on his cot, he threw a blanket over himself and reached for hi
s drawing tablet.
One hand went to his crotch. The other grabbed the red crayon. He began to draw furiously.
Each slash of crimson corresponded to a pulsing surge of his climax as it shuddered through him.
* * *
The next two days were long and tedious as the FI team worked with the police and on their own to identify the sick bastard who’d killed Kendra Mallery and was now threatening to extend his killing spree to Casey.
Having done her part—compiling the two lists Marc had asked for—Casey was going crazy. She’d watched the video of the campus vigil three times, and other than feeling sick to her stomach, she’d seen nothing incriminating. All that it had succeeded in doing was to bring back a flood of painful memories from the past as she relived the vigil she’d attended for Holly. Different victims. Same nightmare. Same sense of helpless frustration.
Casey’s existence was like being under house arrest. She was practically imprisoned in the brownstone, and when she went out, either Patrick or one of his hired bodyguards was glued to her side.
Her confinement only served to intensify the sense of responsibility she felt to solve the Jan Olson case. Jan’s father had called each day, several times a day, to see if there was any news, even a tiny lead, to tell them where his daughter or her body could be found.
Casey couldn’t ignore that. She’d made a commitment to this poor dying man. She intended to fulfill it.
She couldn’t just rely on Claire’s vision of seeing Jan racing terrified through a park, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. That was like looking for a needle in a haystack. There were countless parks in New York City, and that was assuming the attack had taken place here.
Holed up in one of the smaller conference rooms, Casey went through everything they had. She followed up on Brenda’s list, contacting as many people who’d known Jan as possible, particularly her boyfriend, Chris Towers, who now lived in Colorado with his wife and two kids. He was completely taken aback by the subject of Casey’s phone call, but he answered every one of her questions, and his take on Jan was similar to Brenda’s, only from a boyfriend’s point of view. He confirmed that he and Jan were pretty much inseparable, but not sexually active, so pregnancy was out. And he agreed with Brenda that, in the week leading up to her disappearance, Jan had been acting unusually jumpy and nervous. She’d assured him it was just academic stress. But when she’d vanished without a trace, he couldn’t help believing the two were related. He and Brenda had contacted the police, but no sign of Jan materialized. Eventually, they were forced to accept the fact that she’d taken off on her own. Any other theory was too horrific to live with.
“When was the last time you remember seeing Jan alive?” Casey concluded, asking it as a routine question. Frankly, she didn’t count on his answer to shed any light on things. If he and Jan were as inseparable as it seemed, he’d doubtless seen her on the day she’d vanished.
Sure enough, Chris replied, “The afternoon she disappeared. I walked her to work. We made plans to meet up in her dorm room around eleven o’clock that night. She never came back.”
Work.
Abruptly, something clicked in Casey’s mind. Jan had been a waitress at the Lakeside Restaurant at the Boathouse in Central Park. If you coupled that with Claire’s vision—a park with a backdrop of water—you got a strong potential scenario for the scene of the crime.
That was solid enough to act on.
Casey walked through the brownstone and found Claire in the main conference room finishing up a phone call with the police.
“Anything?” she asked.
Disconnecting the call, Claire shook her head. “Nothing yet.”
“Then that frees you up to go with me.”
“Go where?”
“To Central Park. To the restaurant Jan Olson worked in. We’ve been so wrapped up, we didn’t get around to going there and questioning the staff.”
Claire rose slowly from her chair, her mouth set in a firm line. “Number one, you’re not going to Central Park—that’s an open arena for people. Number two, Jan worked there fifteen years ago. Even if we find someone who’s still around from back then, I doubt anyone would remember a college girl who waitressed there that long ago.”
“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.” Casey wasn’t letting this one go. “Take something of Jan’s, something you feel connected to. I’ll announce our outing to the team. I don’t care if they barricade the door. We’re going.”
A half hour and a huge shouting match later, Casey and Claire, together with Dave Brinkman—one of Patrick’s bodyguards—made their trip to Central Park. They walked all over the grounds, Claire tightly clasping Jan’s calendar in the hope of picking up some of her energy and connecting it to their location.
Casey scanned the various areas of the park—the wide-open grassy spaces and the darker wooded sections.
“Could this have been the park you were visualizing when you saw Jan running away?” she prompted Claire, having purposely omitted any mention of the connection between Claire’s vision and their trip to the Boathouse. She wanted anything that came from Claire to be spontaneous.
But now was the time to push it.
“Think,” Casey urged. “Could Jan maybe have left her job and been tracked down and chased through Central Park?”
Claire started. Then awareness dawned in her eyes. She thought for a moment, turning up her palm in an uncertain gesture. “It’s possible. I’m not sensing anything yet.” She continued to walk, her forehead creased in concentration. Casey followed, noticing that, without realizing it, Claire was heading toward the lakeside approach to the Boathouse.
Abruptly, Claire stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the rowboats and gondolas moving across the lake. “The water,” she murmured. “It was in the background when Jan was running. I’d forgotten. And there were butterflies. And birds. Those images are strong now—stronger than they originally were.”
“The area around the Boathouse is known for its bird-watching,” Dave commented. “There’s even a bird registry to record observations.” A corner of his mouth lifted when Casey turned to gaze at him, her brows arched in surprise. “I’m a trivia buff,” he explained. “In fact, I can also verify the butterfly part. The last I recall, twenty-six species of butterflies have been spotted here.”
“Wow.” Casey sent him an admiring look. “And all Patrick mentioned was that you’re a terrific bodyguard.”
He shrugged. “I’m multitalented.”
Claire was lost in her own world. “I’m starting to pick up on the sheer panic I sensed the other day. It’s getting stronger. But it’s still veiled—like there’s a layer of gauze over it. I can’t see through it.”
“Maybe the attack happened farther away,” Casey suggested. “Central Park is huge.”
“True.” Claire pressed her lips together. “I still need more.”
“Then let’s go inside and see if any of the staff remembers her.”
“It’s been fifteen years, Casey.” Claire reiterated her earlier point. “Isn’t that unrealistic?”
“Without a doubt,” Casey concurred. “But that’s why we’re here. And we have to try, especially given the connection you’re sensing.”
Claire couldn’t dispute that one. So she joined Casey and Dave as they went inside the restaurant.
But she was right. Interviewing people, seeking out information from fifteen years ago—it was like operating in a vacuum. Managers had changed, staff had come and gone and the clientele wasn’t even the same as last year, much less fifteen years ago.
The best that Casey, Claire and Dave could do was leave with a printout of longstanding employees. It was a stretch to think that any of those people would remember Jan, much less who she’d been afraid of. But Casey was confident of one thing—that whatever had happened to Jan Olson, it had happened in Central Park.
A very weak lead, but a lead nonetheless—one that required Forensic Instincts’ inves
tigation.
The team wasn’t going to be happy.
Despite their professionalism, their loyalty to Casey superseded all else. And right now, Ryan was scrutinizing the video footage from the vigil, Patrick was grilling everyone at Columbia that Ryan’s research had spit out on the printer and Marc was poring over the two lists Casey had compiled.
The situation was lousy.
And Casey’s nightmares were filled with fear.
* * *
Hutch threw the last of his clothes into an overnight bag, gulped down the rest of his coffee and glanced at his watch.
It was eight-fifteen, pretty late at night to begin a five-hour drive. He didn’t give a damn. If he got on the road in the next few minutes, he’d be in Manhattan a little after one. He’d been working fourteen-hour days since the night Casey had called to say she needed him, just so he could get his piles of work done and get the hell out of Quantico. Yeah, it had been an exhausting stint, but he’d survived on next to no sleep before, and for less important reasons than this.
He was leaving—tonight.
It had taken him two meetings with the head of BAU-4 to agree to give him the days off. He’d accrued the personal time. But it wasn’t that simple. The work wasn’t going away. He’d had to plow through it in order to disappear for a while.
Casey hadn’t pressed him to come. But just the fact that she’d called... That was something she didn’t do. Hutch knew her well. They’d been involved for over a year now. The feelings were there. The words weren’t spoken. It didn’t matter. They both knew what they had. And it was more than enough to propel him to Manhattan.
He’d heard Casey’s tone.
She was scared.
And, in his opinion, she had reason to be.
Hutch zipped up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he scooped up his car keys and headed for the door.
Ten minutes later, he was on the road.