The Truth Seeker

  Marcus nodded as he opened the passenger door. “They’re showing a picture around now. He was there.”

  “Did anyone see Lisa?”

  “Not that they’ve found.”

  “The truck was left behind. Does anyone know what Christopher was driving?”

  “A blue ’97 Ford.”

  “Can the DMV find tags?”

  “Already called in.”

  Quinn was relieved there was no sign of blood or a struggle in the cab of the truck. Lisa was keeping her wits about her.

  The sun had heated the cab. The crime scene technician had just opened the door of the vehicle and the heat rolled out. Careful not to touch anything that might disturb prints, Quinn lifted out the printout from the mat on the passenger side floorboard, saw Lisa’s clutch purse, and picked it up as well. Lisa couldn’t have realized there was trouble when she initially got into the truck. When had that changed? She wouldn’t have come here of her own free will. And she certainly would not have left here by choice.

  He leaned his head against the metal door frame, sick to his stomach when he found the small black canister still in her purse. He knew she would have moved the pepper spray to her pocket had there been any way she could do so without attracting attention. “Lord, don’t let her get hurt. Please don’t let her take chances that are going to get her hurt.” He was more worried than he knew how to put into words.

  Lisa was now with Christopher.

  He handed the printout to Marcus. “She was looking for evidence that Christopher had been working jobs near where the other women were killed.”

  “Walter knows he can no longer protect his brother.”

  Quinn forced himself to start thinking like the men he was after. Christopher would need to run. And Walter wanted to help him. “They’re three hours ahead of us. Where are they going to go?”

  “Odds would say they’re trying to leave the state,” Marcus agreed, “but which direction? Indiana? Wisconsin? Across to Missouri?”

  Lisa was good at directions, but she was now totally lost. After the sun went down, Christopher had been taking so many turns on so many winding roads that she could no longer even figure out which direction they were going. Somewhere in the heartland of Wisconsin, far enough north that they had not passed by a town in over an hour.

  The shadows of the trees they passed became orderly and evenly spaced. “Don’t miss the turnoff, Christopher.”

  “Would you let me drive?” Christopher snarled back at Walter. He had a hangover and the two brothers had been sniping at each other during the entire drive. Christopher turned left onto a dirt road, and the jarring made Lisa clench her teeth. Wedged between the two brothers, she was getting by far the worst of the ride.

  Christmas trees. Through the pounding headache she finally understood what it was she was seeing. The Wisconsin land was a Christmas tree farm.

  The building that finally appeared in the light was a large equipment barn, metal sided and plain. Christopher pulled around to the side of the building. She could run, disappear into the trees. It was the first time such a moment had appeared, and she wondered if her legs would support her for the effort.

  “Come on, lady.” Christopher hauled her out the driver’s side door, and she yelped at the surprise and the pain as she hit the steering wheel.

  Walter shoved open the side door of the building. It must have been closed up for months—the air was musty, the equipment covered in a fine sheen of dust. The light Walter had turned on was a single bulb by the door. He left the overhead lights off, and the light did not penetrate past all the equipment. Did they own this place?

  “Sit down.”

  Christopher pushed her toward a bale of straw beside what looked like a baler. She was relieved to comply. She was doing her best to read the situation and figure out what was going on with the two brothers. It was obvious Walter was trying to protect his brother, but she wasn’t sure what Grant had done, what Christopher had done, and what Walter had known about.

  “See if there’s gas.”

  Christopher picked up a flashlight from the supply shelf and disappeared toward the rear of the building.

  Walter paced toward the tractor and back, shifting the gun from one hand to the other. He had grown more nervous as the hours passed.

  She wanted to ask him why he was doing this, what he expected to have happen, but decided silence was the best course of valor.

  Christopher had admitted to being the one who was following Quinn, admitted to being the one who left the notes, but his reasons in both cases made sense: He had been bribing Grant and was worried about the investigation. She could see him getting bored watching them and doing something stupid like writing the note just to tweak her tail.

  Walter believed Christopher had been responsible for the fires that had killed Egan and destroyed her home. He was trying to protect his brother but was also trying to protect his own role in Amy’s disappearance.

  Christopher denied setting the fires.

  If Grant had been the one who killed not only Rita but also Amy, then who had killed Marla and the other ladies? She had thought it was Christopher, but if he’d left the hummingbird note not out of knowledge but as a guess . . . now she wasn’t sure anymore. Who had really killed Marla? She had been buried in the same way as Rita; it had to be a common killer. Lisa was too confused to figure out the answers.

  “There’s gas,” Christopher said. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “We need to change vehicles.”

  “I am not driving all night just so we can run out of gas again in the middle of nowhere. You didn’t even think to get cash before you got us into this mess.”

  “It’s not like you gave me much of a choice. They will arrest you on sight.”

  “Yeah, and the three of us traveling together makes us real inconspicuous,” Christopher replied. “Did you really think adding kidnapping to flight would help things out?”

  She was going to have to run. These two men were on a course to implode, and she would be an albatross to be discarded along the way. The fear was making her shake.

  It was late. Quinn, Marcus, Kate, Dave—they would all be looking for her and they wouldn’t stop until they found her. She tried to find comfort in that, but it was hollow comfort. Had they found the truck yet? If they had, would they even be able to get a handle on where to look next?

  And if they did find her while Walter was in this mood . . . The odds of all of them walking away unhurt weren’t good. She had been sure Walter wasn’t the type given to violence, but now . . . She had been so horribly wrong. If only she could get him to calm down and start thinking again. If the brothers did split up, the last thing she wanted was to be leaving with Christopher.

  “They had to go to ground somewhere.”

  “Walter owns the nursery. What else does he own?” Quinn asked, staring at the maps and the dots representing reported sightings, none of them having yet panned out. There was no pattern to them, which might at least suggest a direction of travel.

  “The nursery is it,” Lincoln replied.

  “What about Christopher? Or his uncle? Is there anything still owned by the estate while the will is in probate?” Marcus asked.

  “I’ll get on it,” Emily replied immediately.

  Quinn broke yet another pencil under the pressure of his fingers. “They haven’t used credit cards, they can’t go forever on the cash they had in their pockets, they had to at least buy gas even if they are avoiding a hotel room.”

  “It’s 1 A.M. With two drivers, they could still be on the road somewhere.”

  “But in which direction? We’re at five hundred miles now and it’s enlarging with every passing hour.” Quinn was scared to death at what it meant. If Lisa wasn’t found within the first twenty-four hours, the odds were she would be found dead somewhere.

  “Quinn, look at this.” Kate nearly knocked over Jack as she hurriedly squeezed around him at the table with the maps. “Sorry.
” She shoved aside items on the desk to set down the crumbled printout in front of him. It was the printout Lisa had been studying. “Marla, Vera, Heather,” she said grimly, flipping between pages marked in red. “Nakomi Nurseries worked jobs near them all.”

  “Christopher.”

  Kate shook her head. “Walter.”

  “What?”

  “Not only that, there’s enough evidence in here to prove Christopher was elsewhere.”

  Quinn felt a sense of dread. “Walter.”

  He inwardly shook as the implications of so many threads he had connected incorrectly registered. Multiple murders . . . it was all about control. Christopher didn’t have the personality to try and control his surroundings. He was hot tempered, irresponsible, a drinker. Everything about Walter was about control, about shaping and ordering the world to his vision of it, driving the nursery to his vision of the business, fitting his brother into a mold. The motive didn’t make sense, but the probabilities did. The problem of every investigation was the question of motive, which was answered last, if at all.

  “How did we miss it?” Kate asked, her voice edged with fear.

  “Worse, does Lisa realize it?” Not knowing the truth, Walter was the brother Lisa would most likely trust.

  Twenty-six

  Marcus passed over the night binoculars. “Off to the east of the building about twenty feet.”

  Quinn took them and adjusted the focus. “Thank you, God,” he breathed out the prayer and for the first time felt hope. They’d found the car. “Are they still there?”

  “No windows, but there is a sliver of light under that side door.”

  The property had been in Egan’s wife’s name. The only good thing about the layout of the large stands of trees and expanse of the property was that they could block all exits from the property without giving away their presence. But flushing the brothers from the building without getting Lisa hurt—in a standoff the advantage would clearly lie with those inside the building.

  “Let me try and talk them out, end this peacefully,” Kate whispered.

  Dawn was two hours away. It had been a long night searching. A confrontation after the men left the building—for all its advantages of getting them out into the open—it would also mean they were awake, looking for problems, and tightly controlling Lisa, putting her into the equation. She’d be their protection for getting out, and they would use her as their trump card. It was critical that they take her out of the equation. “No. We have to go in while we have surprise on our side.” They didn’t have time to wait it out.

  “If that fails . . . ”

  “We won’t fail,” Quinn replied.

  “Down on the floor! Now!”

  Lisa jerked awake to a deafening concussion of noise and light so bright it blinded her. Her left wrist twisted painfully as she was yanked backward toward the bathroom door, her right ankle catching on the edge of the mower and the back of her head striking the door frame. She felt the desperation in the man holding her wrist, recognized Walter, and had no way to get traction to pull away from him.

  Christopher had been near the front of the building for the night and Walter the back, neither able to stand being near the other. Men in ghostly black streaming through the blown-open doors had hit a jumble of equipment. If Walter got that door closed to the small cinder block bathroom that smelled of sour water and that spiders called home. . . .

  Her bound hands had lost their circulation. She couldn’t get a grip on the now twisted duct tape that also formed a tether between her and Walter. He hadn’t wanted her to be able to run while he slept, and the loop in the tape scared her to death. It wasn’t neat, her hands were in front of her, but the mere fact Walter had reached for the tape told its own story. The gun Walter held caught the side of her face as he yanked her up and his arm encircled her neck. The move jerked her left arm around at a painful angle, twisted backwards so she couldn’t even grasp his arm to try and get leverage to ease the stranglehold, and nearly broke her right wrist.

  “Freeze!”

  “Back off!”

  Lisa gritted her teeth against the pain, tried to blink against the bright light in her face blinding her, had to go from memory for what was around her, stumbling back as Walter forced her to move. She felt her arm go numb as the nerves screamed.

  “Let her go!”

  Walter was edging around equipment moving backward toward the storage shelves. Was there an exit from the building back here? The pain was screaming and it was hard to think. If only she could fall or trip or somehow get out of the way, then they could stop Walter and this would be over.

  The hold around her neck tightened.

  Glass jars fell to the concrete and shattered around her feet as Walter backed into a shelf. She panicked as the overpowering smell of turpentine swallowed her senses; she tried to twist around but could feel her neck being crushed.

  They shot him.

  She heard it, felt the bullet hit him, and was yanked backward as he fell, his arm locked around her neck. She hit hard at an awkward angle, Walter’s knee in the middle of her back. She heard her neck pop.

  Around her there was a flurry of motion, voices, and hands. She couldn’t respond. She couldn’t breathe.

  The last of her air was escaping and she couldn’t draw another breath. The panic was overwhelming.

  Desperate.

  Panic.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  It was no longer Walter’s arm around her neck blocking her airway.

  “Watch her neck.”

  They didn’t understand, and she was desperate to make them understand, couldn’t seem to move. “Lisa, hold on.”

  Her mouth was open, but her throat was closing. Please, help me!

  “She’s not breathing.”

  “Hold on, Lisa, Stephen’s here. Hold on.”

  “She’s not breathing!” Quinn. Thank you, Quinn. Speak for me.

  Her brother Stephen appeared in her line of vision.

  She could feel the calm descending, taking over the panic. The color was fading from her vision, becoming shades of gray, as her mind starved of oxygen. Andy, oh Andy . . . I’m so sorry you died this way.

  “Get me an airbag and a knife. Move!”

  She was going to die on her brothers. She wasn’t going to be able to tell Quinn she loved him.

  Her dying breath was past, her dying thought . . . she held tight to that final thought. There had to be a Resurrection. Jesus, Son of God, help me.

  Twenty-seven

  “Don’t try to talk.”

  Quinn’s hand was shaking as it brushed down her flyaway hair. She had no voice even if she wanted to whisper. She could hear the whistle of air. Stephen had done a tracheotomy. Was her neck broken?

  She could feel her legs and the tightening of restraints as men worked around her. It was the most blessed feeling she had ever experienced. They had removed her from the warehouse.

  Quinn had never looked so good. The grayness was fading to be replaced with light, with color. The numbness in her hands was giving way to strength.

  Jesus, life is so precious.

  “Shh . . . ” Quinn wiped at her tears, his distress obvious, and she had no way to tell him they were happy tears. She’d learned well from Jennifer; they were flowing. For the first time in her life, they were flowing happy tears.

  She was so relieved to be alive.

  Had Jesus felt like this the first time He had walked from the grave? Life was more powerful than death. She could feel it, the wonder of it, as she curled her toes just to enjoy the sensation of moving. Eternal life. The promise had an incredible meaning having now come so close as to touch it.

  She’d made a mistake, drawing a line in time and dealing with her past by pushing it all away. Faith was a choice. It was a decision. It had taken years to make, but in the end it was simple. Jesus was alive. She knew more about death than anyone should. Now it was time to learn about life—the abundant life Jesus had promised.
Her curiosity was full blown. And Quinn was showing her the steady way it could flourish.

  She wanted to be able to hug the man and convince him to give her a kissing lesson, to swat his arm for being late to find her, to replace his intense worry with a smile. She’d risk the words now, when she could say them. She’d risk I love you and not worry about his reaction. He wouldn’t let her down.

  She blinked as the sky changed colors and realized with surprise that the dawn was grabbing the sky in a moment of time, turning it alive. She had seen it before but had never lain on her back and watched it happen. She’d missed something.

  Jennifer said she liked waking early to watch the sunrise because dawn was the new day Jesus promised. A new day. A new life.

  She understood now why Jennifer was so confident in spite of the circumstances. She was holding on to Jesus. And He was still healing today, bringing life, restoring hope. Jennifer needed a breath of new life and she’d sought the One who could give it. Jennifer had brought a miracle to the O’Malleys by stepping out to believe.

  Sadness suddenly flooded through Lisa as her heart broke. So many years had been lost. I’m sorry, Lord. I got so angry at Kate for bugging me about You when she was just trying to love me. Is she going to forgive me?

  It was getting hard to breathe.

  Lisa tried to rein back the emotions. Now wasn’t the time to give way to the emotions. Not yet. The swamping sensation across her chest was more than just emotional, it was physical. She was losing her ability to breathe.

  Quinn’s face reappeared, swimming across her vision. “Enough.” It was a curt order, and she could hear the fear underneath it. He wiped at her tears. “Calm down, Lisa.”

  Lisa locked her gaze on his. Jesus, he prayed for me in the hospital and the pain eased. I’m the one asking this time.

  Quinn suddenly leaned across her and the world filled with noise and wind. It was a sound she had heard many times in the past. At least she would be awake for this helicopter ride. Quinn leaned back and she got her first glimpse of the red and white markings on the helicopter—they’d called in one of the Chicago trauma teams.