Matter-of-fact but not without sympathy, Quentin said, “Not only is there actual pain and all the traumatic emotions, but it drains you just the way it would if the event had actually happened to you.”
She nodded. “Sometimes I just get a little tired, but other times I seem to need to sleep ten or twelve hours before I feel normal again.”
“And it’s all the senses, isn’t it? You feel what they did, see what they did, smell what they did—everything.”
Again, Maggie nodded, very conscious now of John’s silent attention. He’d told her that Andy had confirmed what she had picked up at the Mitchell house the previous day, but he hadn’t said whether the confirmation made any difference to him. And in the presence of the two agents she was guarding herself, so she had no idea what he was feeling.
Kendra said, “It’s the same when you bond with victims? When they relive what happened to them?”
“More or less. Sometimes their own minds have . . . dulled the sharp edges of the pain, and it isn’t so intense. Other times their emotions nearly overwhelm me, and I can barely concentrate to ask them questions or listen to their answers.” She drew a breath. “Not a lot of fun.”
Deliberately, Quentin asked, “So why do you do it? Why do you put yourself through that kind of ordeal, Maggie?”
“Why do you?” she challenged.
He smiled faintly. “My abilities don’t hurt me, generally speaking. I don’t suffer. But you do. So why do you keep opening yourself up to that kind of suffering?”
Before Maggie could even begin to answer, John’s cell phone rang, and she felt his gaze on her as she muttered not quite under her breath, “Saved by the bell.”
John said hello, then listened for a moment. His face hardly changed expression, but something in his voice warned them when he said, “All right. We’re on our way.”
It was Quentin who asked, “What’s happened?”
“Andy wants us at the station now.” John kept his gaze on Maggie. “Thomas Mitchell just received what appears to be a ransom note from the man who kidnapped his wife.”
CHAPTER TEN
Andy greeted them at his desk but led the way immediately to the conference room, where two more detectives rose to meet them. Or, rather, to meet John; Maggie obviously knew both and murmured hello to Jennifer Seaton and Scott Cowan and then took a seat at the long table while they were being introduced to John.
He wasn’t so preoccupied by meeting new people that he didn’t notice Maggie had isolated herself, choosing a chair between two others that each held large file boxes. When the introductions were over and everybody sat down, he deliberately moved one of the file boxes and sat beside Maggie.
She sent him a quick glance but otherwise kept her gaze fixed on the blank bulletin board placed several feet away from the other side of the table. He didn’t have a clue what she was thinking, but he knew stress when he saw it and he saw it in Maggie. From the moment she’d shown up at the hotel this morning, he’d been absolutely certain that something else had happened, something that had shaken her badly.
Was this it? Had Maggie realized somehow that she’d been wrong in saying Samantha Mitchell was in the hands of the Blindfold Rapist? Or was it something else?
“I have three more detectives on the case full-time,” Andy told them, “but right now they’re out trying to find out if this note is legit. Since the rest of us are here, I thought now would be the time to go over a few things.” He pushed the plastic-bagged piece of paper toward John. “I want to know what you two think about this.”
The note was block-printed on what looked like an ordinary sheet of notepaper torn from a pad, and the message was chillingly simple.
IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE
YOUR WIFE AGAIN IT’LL COST YOU 100K
There were three smears on the paper—two that looked like black fingerprint powder, and one that looked like blood.
“Prints?” John asked.
“Yeah, couple of real clear ones. One of my guys was with Mitchell when he got the note, so it was handled properly. The prints likely belong to whoever sent it. We’re checking the state and federal fingerprint databases. So far, no matches, but we just got started looking.”
John slid the note over to Maggie. “Is he stupid, or just an amateur?”
“Well, that’s part of the problem we’re having with this whole kidnap thing. Mitchell, he’s all ready to pay the so-called ransom, but we’ve got quite a few questions. I’m sure you can guess what they are.”
“Why a kidnapper would have asked for such a ridiculously small sum from somebody like Mitchell,” John said. “Why he would carelessly put his own fingerprints on the note. How somebody that seemingly incompetent could have beaten a first-class security system in order to snatch Samantha Mitchell out of her own house, leaving virtually no evidence behind. How am I doing?”
“Full marks,” Andy said. “That’s pretty much what we thought.”
Maggie pushed the bag away from her and murmured, “But?”
Andy nodded. “But. That is blood on the note, and the type matches Samantha Mitchell’s. We can try for a DNA match, but that’ll take weeks. My hunch is the situation’s going to get resolved long before we’d get the results.”
“How was the note delivered?” John asked.
“Just stuck in his mailbox on top of the regular mail. Nobody saw anyone near the box except for the usual mail carrier, and she swears she didn’t put it there. I’m inclined to believe her, especially since she’s been at her job for fifteen years without so much as an unauthorized sick day.”
John thought about that. “Nobody saw anyone . . . I assume we’re talking about the press? Don’t they still have the house staked out?”
“Yeah. And tried to interview my guys instead of answering the questions, damn them. But the bottom line is, they didn’t see anything unusual. Not especially surprising. With a bunch of them milling around near the end of the driveway—and the mailbox—it wouldn’t have been too hard for somebody with a camera around his neck to wander past the box and pause for a half a minute without being noticed.”
Maggie stirred slightly. “Andy, do you believe Samantha Mitchell was kidnapped and is being held for ransom?”
“Can’t say that I do. Everything we know about her disappearance matches the M.O. of our guy, and if I’m certain of anything, it’s that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about money.”
Jennifer said, “Scott and I agree with Andy. We think the rapist snatched her, and he’s not going to get all helpful and leave us his fingerprints at this late date. So the question is, who sent the note?”
“Somebody who knows the rapist?” John suggested. “Or, hard as it is to believe, somebody who read all the news reports and decided to try to cash in on a disappearance?”
Andy grimaced. “That last is the most likely, we think. Helluva world we live in.”
“What about the blood?” John asked.
Scott shrugged. “The guy could have pricked his own finger and just got lucky with the blood type. I mean, except for the way he left the note without being seen, he isn’t coming across as too bright, is he?”
“There’s another possibility,” Maggie said. She wasn’t looking at any of them but gazing at the bagged note. “The blood could be hers. Whoever sent the note . . . could have found her body.”
Andy looked at her steadily. “You think she’s dead?”
“Yes. I think she’s dead.”
John was also watching her face, and as she spoke he felt a little chill of certainty. Maggie didn’t just think Samantha Mitchell was dead.
She knew it.
Kendra slipped back into the passenger side of the car and said, “Let’s go—before one of those guys back there decides to ask for a closer look at my I.D.” She removed the camera strap from around her neck and returned the camera to its case.
Quentin pulled the car smoothly away from the curb half a block up from the Mitchell house. “That I.D
. is designed to stand up to scrutiny, you know.”
“Even so, no reason to push it.”
“Okay. So, did you get anything useful?”
“The reporters all bought the kidnapping story—at first. But whether because the Blindfold Rapist is better copy or somebody just reasoned it out, now they’re pretty much agreed that it’s probably just an attempt to cash in on the disappearance.”
“Mmm. Any ideas on who might be making that attempt?”
“None they were willing to share with me.”
“You mean your charm had no effect on them?”
“Not so you’d notice.”
“Or your big brown eyes?”
“I suppose they all prefer blue.”
“Or your uniquely flexible mind?”
“That barely impresses you.” Kendra pulled a small black address book from her shoulder bag and began turning the pages. “What we need is someone who knows the disreputable side of Seattle a lot better than we do.”
“You forget—Seattle was my childhood home.”
“I didn’t forget. But you’ve been away from here— what?—twenty years?”
“About that, but I come back for regular visits.”
“Still, I imagine things might have changed around here since your childhood.”
“Sure, which is why I keep in touch with people who have a very firm finger on the pulse of this place. Joey, for instance. Joey is a living testament to the adage that only the good die young. Because if the bad died young, Joey would have dropped in his crib.”
“You think he might have sent that note?”
“No, figuring out and executing a plan of any kind would take Joey longer than a few hours. Give him a few weeks, and he might come up with something, but not a few hours. I think he might know who did come up with the kidnapping idea, though. If anybody would know, it would be Joey.”
“And do you know where we can find him?”
“Give me ten minutes,” Quentin said.
It turned out to be an optimistic estimate, but knowing her partner, Kendra was ready for that. In a distinctly seedy neighborhood, she waited patiently at the end of a long alley Quentin had disappeared into, keeping one eye on their car while standing ready to back him up if need be. For the half hour or so he was gone, she politely refused three invitations for a “date” and not so politely warned off an interested pimp.
When Quentin reappeared abruptly, she said, “You picked this corner deliberately, didn’t you?”
He grinned. “Still a busy place for the trade, huh?”
“Bastard,” she said without heat.
“Well, I knew you could take care of yourself. Think of it as a compliment.”
“Yeah, right.” She eyed him and waited.
“Okay, I’ve got to know,” he said. “What was the top offer?”
“You seriously expect me to tell you what several lonely men offered for my body?”
“Several?”
“Don’t push it, Quentin.”
He grinned again. “Who knows when we might have to go undercover in the trade, and I’d need to know your street worth, that’s all.”
“Go to hell,” she said politely. “Did you or did you not find out where Joey is?”
“I did.”
“Then let’s go.”
Five minutes later, sitting beside him in their car, Kendra said, “Five hundred.”
Astonished, Quentin said, “As much as that? Jeez, either the streets around here have changed since my day, or inflation must be a real factor.”
“Bastard!” she said, this time with considerable heat.
John closed the folder containing the forensics report on the Mitchell house as well as case notes and a photograph of the missing woman, lifted a questioning brow at Maggie, and when she shook her head pushed the file back across the table to Andy. “Thanks for letting me take a look,” he said. “Not that I see anything helpful.”
“That’s the way it always is with the disappearances. Not a damned thing to go on. And not much more when the women are found.”
She knew it wasn’t a pointed reference, but Maggie nevertheless said, “I wish I could give you a sketch of this animal, Andy. But he’s been so careful, none of the victims have been able to remember any helpful details.”
“I know that, Maggie.”
“I should try talking to Ellen Randall again. I wanted to give her a few days to calm down after—”
“After I intruded and messed things up,” John finished. “I really am sorry about that.”
Maggie nodded. “I know. She probably wasn’t ready to talk to me then anyway. And I doubt she’ll be able to give me anything useful. But I have to try. I’ll call her this afternoon, find out if she’ll meet with me, maybe tomorrow.”
“Here?” Andy asked.
“I think I’ll leave it up to her. She might be far more comfortable at home.”
“Well, let me know if you’ll need an interview room.”
“Okay.”
Andy tapped the Mitchell file with one finger. “So that’s where we stand,” he said. “On the Mitchell investigation, at any rate. I’ve got people out trying to find out what they can about this damned note, and I’ve got people looking for Samantha Mitchell—dead or alive. Since there’s not much more we can do in either case, at least for the time being, there’s something else we wanted to discuss with you two.”
John glanced at the two younger detectives, then looked steadily at Andy. “I had a feeling there was.”
“I wasn’t keeping anything back because of orders but because this is . . . pretty far-fetched, John.”
“In what way?”
Andy leaned back and gestured slightly toward the other cops, clearly inviting them to explain.
Jennifer said, “We were sure this guy was picking particular women, but with all the varied descriptions of them and where he grabbed them, nothing pointed to how, to any sort of common denominator. And even though we’re pretty sure he’s been active only for six months or so, we kept hearing from the shrink that his ritual was too well established to be so recent. So Scott and I started wondering if maybe he was getting his ideas from somewhere specific. Like maybe accounts of old, unsolved crimes.”
“I wouldn’t call that far-fetched,” John commented. “In fact, it sounds pretty reasonable.”
“It is reasonable—except for what we found when we started digging through files.”
“Which was?” Maggie asked.
John glanced at her quickly, suddenly aware of another of those odd little certainties; this was something else she knew.
“Which was a little creepy,” Jennifer said. “What we found was a very similar string of rape–murders that took place here in Seattle in 1934. Six women for certain, though possibly eight in all, killed within an eighteen-month period.”
“So he is copying earlier crimes,” John said.
“Here’s the creepy part.” Jennifer rose from the table and went to flip one of the bulletin boards so that they could all see the other side. Under the heading 2001, four photographs were pinned in a vertical row, pictures of Laura Hughes, Christina Walsh, Ellen Randall, and Hollis Templeton. Beside that row and under the heading 1934 was another row, this one containing three sketches and two photos.
“You’ll notice,” Jennifer said, “that the first sketch done in 1934 shows a woman virtually identical to Laura Hughes. The second sketch is pretty amateur and didn’t help them I.D. the victim, but it and the description of her taken together closely match Ellen Randall. The third sketch is backed up by a photograph, and as you can see, this victim resembled Hollis Templeton. We only have a crime-scene photo of the fourth victim, but the description matches Christina Walsh.”
Maggie said, “He’s picking look-alikes.”
Andy said, “I doubt it’s coincidence that these women just happened to be attacked in much the same way as their virtual doubles were almost seventy years ago.”
John said, “So he has access to police files?”
“Maybe. But there’ve been books written about unsolved crimes here in the city, so we can’t be sure he would have had to use police files.”
Jennifer said, “And there’s something else.” She told them about the note found in her car, finishing, “Needless to say, we don’t know who wrote the note, how they got into my locked car, or why they picked me. We also don’t know if he, she, or it was trying to be helpful or is bent on leading us on a really big wild-goose chase.”
“But,” Andy said, “we have to assume the 1894 date could be important, at least until we prove otherwise. Problem is, we’ve had no luck running down any files at all from that year. Not really surprising, since Seattle was only founded a few decades earlier.”
Maggie said, “Maybe it’s . . . some other place. Some other city.”
“Maybe,” Andy said. “But if it is, I don’t see how we have a hope in hell of figuring out where.”
Kendra hadn’t really pictured Joey in her mind, but she was definitely surprised when they ran him to ground in a crowded backstreet poolroom. It was a disreputable place by and large, where the other patrons scrupulously minded their own business when Quentin strolled up behind a hulking redhead who was pocketing his winnings from a game and tapped him on one meaty shoulder.
“Hey, Joey.”
Joey swung around, his fierce expression a neon warning to any sane person.
Quentin, of course, didn’t so much as step back. He just smiled that curiously sweet and wholly deceptive smile of his and added, “How’ve you been?”
Kendra didn’t draw her gun, but she kept a hand near it; she had a lot of faith in her partner’s abilities, but despite Quentin’s height and undoubted strength, Joey was taller and looked as though he could have lifted an all-pro tackle over his head and heaved him across the room.
But it was Joey who backed up a step, a funny little grin twisting his lips. “Oh. Hey, Quentin. Long time no see.”
“Oh, it’s just been a few months,” Quentin said cheerfully. “Still, we have so much to catch up on. What say we step into your office and talk about old times, okay, Joey?”