I reach the door, grab the knob. Heavy, metal. Like a fire door. I twist and pull just as I have three times before.
The door doesn’t move.
I pull my gaze up, to where the other doors were latched. But there is no bolt.
At least, not on this side.
How were the doors to the other rooms set up? Locked from the outside. How much do I wanna bet this door is the same? Meaning it opens into the stairwell and is locked inside the stairwell, versus my side of the long, shadowy corridor.
For a second, I can’t take it. I hit the door with my open palm. Kick it with my bare foot. My hand hurts; my toes explode. This door is not wood; it doesn’t even wobble. This door isn’t going anywhere.
Trapped. In a larger venue. For all of my cunning and guile, I haven’t gained us freedom at all. Just access to more blacked-out rooms in our prison.
My eyes sting. But I don’t cry. Instead, I rest my forehead against the fire door. I welcome its coolness against my fevered face.
“I’m not hungry,” I whisper. A lie. My stomach is growling.
“I’m not thirsty.” What did I do with the bottle of water?
“I’m not tired. I’m not in pain.” No, but Stacey is.
“I’m okay.” Then, for good measure: “I am okay. I am okay. I am okay.”
And eventually I’m going to figure this out. I’m going to get out of here. If anything, because the kidnapper’s gotta return eventually, and when he does . . .
Unless our abductor really was the bartender with the amazing pecs. Meaning he was already dead. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
Except, of course, I got here somehow, someway. I don’t care what hurt, confused Stacey thought. I didn’t just walk over from my apartment and lock myself in a blacked-out room. Someone did something. And that someone is going to return.
And it will be much, much worse. Isn’t that what Stacey said?
I pull myself away from the door. I return to Stacey’s form, still sprawled on the floor. I’m not sure what to do, first aid not being my area of expertise. But thinking practically, I do have access to a resource we didn’t have before: light. Meaning, I can get a better look at her wound, then do a better job tending it.
She has fallen near the doorway to my room. I untangle her limbs until she is sprawled flat on her back. Then I snap on the light in my former cell. It’s easier for me to see using the ambient light spilling into the hallway than to move her directly beneath the bulb. I doubt either of our eyes could take it.
She moans as I move around her, working until the light spills across her exposed abdomen.
The moment I look down, I realize how much the dark disguised before. As hard as I’d worked at feeling out each splinter, I’d barely made a dent. The wound is a long gash. Already I can see lines of dark wood embedded beneath her skin, her flesh red at the edges. Furthermore, her belly is distended. I poke it gently. Hard to the touch.
She’s bleeding, I think. On the inside. I’m pretty sure I watched this episode of Grey’s Anatomy. It hadn’t ended well for the victim of the train crash.
And now.
I sit back on my heels. I fist my hands on my thighs. Without a doubt, Stacey Summers requires immediate medical assistance.
And I have no idea how to get us out of here.
Chapter 39
D.D. WAS JUST PACKING UP to go home when her phone rang. She’d already missed dinner with Alex and Jack. If she hustled, she could still make bedtime. So of course, her phone, ringing. On her still terribly crowded, paper-strewn desk. She’d tried—she swore to God she’d done her best—to plow through the piles of reports. But if anything, they seemed to grow before her eyes. Whatever magical nugget of information might be awaiting discovery continued to elude her there.
Phone. Still ringing. According to caller ID, the ME’s office.
D.D. sighed. Set down her messenger bag. Picked up the receiver.
“Don’t you ever go home?” Ben Whitely asked in his gravelly voice.
“Apparently not. Besides, you’re the one calling from the morgue. Who are you to talk?”
“Not the morgue. The lab above the morgue.”
“For most people, that’s close enough.”
“I have information,” Ben announced.
D.D. waited. She’d assumed as much. Ben was hardly the type to call to chat.
“I got a prelim on your body.”
“Kristy Kilker. Mom identified the tattoo.”
“Official results will take a few more days, but I got the sense you were in a hurry on this one.”
“Yes.”
“So, unofficially speaking—”
“Bring it on.”
“COD is a heart attack.”
“What?” D.D. sat down.
“Victim had a congenital heart defect. Most likely, she never even knew she had it. Furthermore, her body showed classic signs of starvation: shriveled stomach, atrophied muscles, and enlargement of the liver and spleen. Odds are, the physical stress brought on by her prolonged malnourishment triggered a significant myocardial event.”
“A heart attack. She died of a heart attack.”
“Unofficially, yes.”
“She wasn’t murdered.”
“There are marks around both wrists consistent with physical restraints. Also signs of antemortem scars down her arms, back of her legs, most likely made with a fine blade, maybe even a scalpel—”
“She was cut.”
“Yes. Not deeply. But . . .”
D.D. didn’t need the ME to say more. Both she and Ben knew some perpetrators liked to play with their food.
“Between that and her level of malnourishment,” Ben continued, “you can make the legal argument the perpetrator’s activities led directly to her death.”
“But he didn’t mean it.” D.D. stopped. That statement sounded stupid even to her. Judging by Ben’s silence, he agreed. “I mean . . .” D.D. had to regroup, gather her thoughts. “Her death wasn’t intended. If she hadn’t had the heart attack . . .”
“Then she might very well still be tied up, starving somewhere,” Ben agreed dryly.
“You don’t understand. We have three more missing girls whose bodies we haven’t found. Meaning if Kristy was never meant to die, maybe they aren’t either. Maybe they are still tied up, starving somewhere. What can you tell me about time of death?”
D.D. sifted quickly through the stacks of files on her deck, looking for Kristy Kilker, college student, who’d worked nights at Hashtag, just up the street from Tonic, before supposedly leaving to study abroad in Italy, except she’d never signed up for the program. When had her mother last heard from her? Five months ago, Phil had said. And yet at the burial site, Ben had already thought the remains were fresher than that.
“I’m going with a six-to-eight-week window.”
“That recent?”
“Am I on record?”
“No.”
“Then I’m still comfortable with the six-to-eight-week window.”
“Okay.” D.D.’s mind was whirling. Kristy had disappeared in June, but most likely had still been alive in September. Which meant . . .
She’d been held somewhere. Clearly. And not at Devon Goulding’s house because they’d torn that place apart.
Meaning there must be a second destination. Someplace large enough to hold multiple victims, given that Natalie, Stacey, and Flora remained missing.
D.D. had been focused on identifying a second person, someone who knew both Goulding and the victims and would’ve been driven to abduct Flora even after Goulding’s death. But given how well that was going, perhaps she should focus instead on finding this second site. After all, how many places could there be in Boston, frequented by Devon Goulding, that were large enough and discreet enough to hide at least four missi
ng girls?
“I’m done,” Ben Whitely said in her ear. “That’s it. All I know for the moment. Now I’m going home, getting some sleep.”
D.D. nodded against the receiver. She hung it up without ever saying good-bye.
She was not going home. She was not getting some sleep.
Instead, she picked the phone back up and summoned the task force.
* * *
“WE HAVE A SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT.” D.D. stood once more at the whiteboard, dry-erase marker in hand. She had yawning detectives crammed around the conference room table, large pizzas sitting in the middle of it; if you were going to make your people work all hours of the day and night, you had to at least keep them fed.
“COD on Kristy Kilker is a heart attack. Most likely triggered by the physical stress of her captivity. Postmortem revealed signs of prolonged starvation as well as torture with a fine blade. Time of death roughly six to eight weeks ago.”
“But she disappeared in June,” Phil said.
“Exactly. Meaning she was held somewhere for at least several months. Which means our other missing persons”—D.D. tapped each name on the board with her marker: Natalie, Stacey, Flora—“could still be alive there as well. We need to revisit our theory of the crime. Not to mention our number of perpetrators.
“Let’s assume, for a moment, Devon Goulding was involved. He has direct ties to three out of four victims, and based on what Stacey Summers’s friends have said, it’s probable he encountered her at Tonic a time or two as well.”
“He’s big enough to be the guy from the abduction tape,” Neil spoke up.
“And he wasn’t working at Tonic the night Stacey Summers disappeared from Birches. Meaning he could very well have been scoping out the scene there,” Carol Manley offered.
“All right.” D.D. tapped the board again. “We have Goulding. Physically large enough to be our attacker-slash-kidnapper. With at least one known assault, given his attack on Flora. And most likely tied to Kristy’s death, given it was the GPS data on his vehicle that led us to her body. Not to mention he has trophies from the first two victims. Put it all together, and I feel it’s safe to say he was involved in the first three abductions.”
Around the table her detectives nodded.
“Which brings us to”—she moved down the timeline she’d already written out on the whiteboard—“Flora Dane. Who disappeared from her highly secure apartment after Goulding was murdered. How? What are we missing?”
“A second kidnapper,” Carol spoke up. “A friend of Goulding’s?” She sounded thoughtful. “Or a follower?”
D.D. nodded. “Killing teams are rare, but they do happen. Husband and wife. Two males. Relatives, nonrelatives, combinations are endless. What is consistent is there’s always one alpha operating with a submissive partner. So, first question, which one is Goulding?”
Phil arched a brow. “Twentysomething male all pumped up on steroids? Goulding’s gotta be the alpha.”
“I don’t think so.” Carol again. They all looked at her in surprise. She merely shrugged. “If Goulding was the alpha, then his death would’ve ended it. Partner would’ve run away, or simply broken down, right? Ambushing Flora in her own apartment, kidnapping her . . . That speaks of confidence. Not to mention foresight, planning, and organization. That’s not submissive behavior. That’s evil mastermind, all the way.”
It truly pained D.D. to say this: “I think she’s right.”
Now all eyes were on her. “There’s inconsistencies with our crimes. Goulding kept trophies of the first two women, but not Stacey Summers. There’s blood in his garage, which implies at one time he brought at least one victim there, but the victims must be held somewhere else. Not to mention, he brought Flora to his garage versus bringing her straight to this second location. I think—and I’m going a bit off the reservation here—that the garage is Goulding’s domain, but the second location isn’t. It belongs to his partner. Meaning, once the girls are there—”
“They aren’t his anymore,” Phil finished for her. “He’s turning them over to someone else. Submissive, handing over to the alpha.”
“Evidence would be nice,” D.D. conceded. “But given that Goulding’s dead . . . I wonder if he picked the first two women on his own. Or maybe just Natalie, with whom he clearly had some kind of relationship, to judge by the number of photos. Maybe that first crime was personal and independent. But it drew someone else’s attention. Someone who could both add to the adventure—Hey, I got the perfect place we can keep them—but then who also started calling the shots. Leading to Goulding’s increasing temper tantrums and his need to snatch Flora and take her to his place first. Because, later, it wouldn’t be about him.”
Around the table, detectives eyed one another. Universal shrug. D.D. couldn’t argue with that. They were detectives, not profilers. And she really had drifted into the land of conjecture.
“Which leads us to—” she began.
“It’s a woman,” Carol interrupted. “The dominant partner. It’s a female. Because there’s no way a roid-raging self-perceived stud like Goulding would take orders from another male. But a woman . . . Older, gorgeous, manipulative, she could play him. Start out acting like she was taking orders from him, except next thing he knows, she’s the one calling the shots. It’s her house they’re using. Which would also trigger his basic hardwiring to submit, a house being a woman’s domain and all.”
D.D. nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking too. The reason we’ve never found Stacey Summers is because everyone’s been looking for the Devon Gouldings of the world. When, in fact, Stacey’s most likely stashed with an ice-cold femme fatale. Someone who lives in a stand-alone residence—can’t be hiding four girls in an apartment building—somewhere in the Boston area—”
“Downtown?” Phil interrupted with a frown.
“Yeah. If the house was out in the country, why dispose of Kristy’s body in the nature center? That kind of disposal was very high risk, and would only be done because they had no other choice. In other words, our perpetrators may have a house suitable for their activities but no land. Hence the field trip to Mattapan.”
“You think the house is in Mattapan?” Phil asked.
“Possible. If I was going to hide four women . . .” D.D. shrugged. “I’d look for a place in a lower-class neighborhood, where so many of the buildings are boarded up, who would notice yet another triple-decker with plywood over the windows? Where my neighbors are few and far between and, better yet, more inclined to be shooting up than looking out for strange happenings. Where the sound of screams isn’t so out of the ordinary.”
“That doesn’t exactly limit the possibilities in Boston,” Neil said dryly.
“According to crime stats, if the victims are white, then the perpetrator is most likely white. So we’re talking a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood.”
More shrugs from around the table. Given Boston’s long history of Irish, Italian, and now Eastern European immigrants, poor white areas of the city were just as easy to come by as those of any other color. Diversity at work. Or just the harsh reality that getting ahead in a strange new city was hard on everyone.
“I don’t think we’re going to magically find the place through geographic profiling,” D.D. said. “I think we need to zero in on any known females in Devon Goulding’s life. Women he’s met on the job, at a gym, hitting the bars at night. Whatever and whoever. To make it even more interesting, it turns out Jacob Ness had a daughter. So if we could tie any of Devon’s known associates back to the asshole who first abducted Flora Dane, that would be a slam dunk.”
Around the table, her detectives eyed her blankly.
“I’m just saying—”
“Jacob Ness had a daughter?” Phil asked.
“FBI recovered DNA from his long-haul truck consistent with a daughter. Unfortunately, that’s all we know.
Literally. A DNA sequence.”
“But she might be in Boston?” Phil again.
“Or Florida, or Georgia, or Brazil for that matter. But given that we’re looking for a female . . . it’s something to bear in mind. If this daughter had a relationship with Jacob, well, here’s at least one woman who’d have some experience with kidnapping and abduction. Not to mention a hatred of Flora Dane. I don’t think we can dismiss all that.”
“But how does that help?” Carol Manley this time.
“I don’t know,” D.D. said honestly. “I think . . . First, let’s compile a list of Devon Goulding’s female associates. We can contact his cellular provider, look at numbers frequently called, texted, et cetera. Then we can run basic backgrounds on likely candidates to see if any of those names match our requirements. We discover that some of these frequently called numbers belong to, say, older beautiful women, maybe even one or two who used to live in the South, and now we’ve got something. Better yet, one of these names has a house secluded enough and big enough to hold multiple kidnapping victims . . . We have our first target.”
Neil raised his hand. “I have a different idea.”
D.D. studied him. “All right, shoot.”
“Goulding’s car’s GPS. We already used it once, looking through his list of frequent destinations for an area best suitable for hiding a body. What if we did that again, except now we look for the address that best matches our list of housing requirements? Getting a list of frequent callers from a cellular company will take at least twenty-four hours, while running backgrounds and following up with known associates will take yet another day. Whereas I can analyze a list of frequent destinations in”—Neil bobbed his head side to side, considering—“a matter of hours.”
Around the table, the task force members perked up. Standing in front, so did D.D.
“Neil,” she ordered, “you and your squad”—she nodded to Phil and Carol—“are in charge of GPS data. The rest, work on compiling names.” She glanced at her watch. It was 10:00 P.M. now. Which was perfect for her own assignment: tracking manager Jocelyne Ethier, an older, definitely less than honest female who knew all the players involved, had access to the nightclub’s security system, and should even now be roaming the floor at Tonic. When looking at female associates, nothing like starting at the top of the list.