The Killing Hour

  This was not the time, he knew. This was not the place. But then he’d spent too much of his life waiting for perfect moments that had never come. And he knew better than most how fleeting opportunity could be. Life gave, but life also took away. He was older, wiser, and he didn’t want any more regrets.

  He went down on his knee, a crush of dirt and pine needles staining his suit. He took hold of Rainie’s hands. She was crying openly now, tears streaming down her face, but she didn’t pull away.

  “Grow old with me, Rainie,” he whispered. “We’ll adopt some children. We’ll cut back on cases, create a home, then do the fashionable thing and write our memoirs. I’ll be terrified. You can help show me the way.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be a good mother!”

  “We’ll learn together.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be a good wife!”

  “Rainie, I just need you to be you. And then I’m the happiest man in the world.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, get up off the dirt.” But she was clasping his hands with both of hers now, and crying harder, and since he wouldn’t get up, she sank down to the ground with him. “We have to talk more.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean about something other than work!”

  “I understand that, too.”

  “And you have to tell me when you’re frightened, Quincy. I can’t stand it when you pull away.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  She sniffed. “I mean, better than okay. I mean yes, I’ll marry you. What the hell. If we can catch a few killers, we oughtta be able to figure out this domestic thing.”

  “You would think so,” Quincy agreed. He pulled her closer, wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He could feel her trembling now and understood for the first time that she was as nervous as he. It gave him strength. You didn’t have to know all the answers. You just had to be brave enough to try.

  “I love you, Rainie,” he whispered in her ear.

  “I love you, too.”

  She gripped him tighter and he kissed all the tears from her face.

  The call came almost an hour later. They had made it back to I-81 and were heading north, seeking a more populated Virginia. They had both turned on their cell phones. No reason to dodge the FBI anymore and Quincy wanted to be ready when Kimberly and Mac had new information.

  The caller wasn’t Kimberly, however. It was Kaplan.

  “I have some news from the name game,” the special agent said.

  “It’s only fair to tell you, we’ve been officially removed from the case,” Quincy replied.

  “Well then, you didn’t hear this from me. But I’ve had my people scouring every contractor with ties to Georgia in the past ten years. Good news, we got a few hits. Bad news, none of them panned out. Better news, then I expanded the search.”

  “Expanded?”

  “I started looking at everyone on the whole damn base. Now we got lots of hits, but I thought there was one you should know about right away. Dr. Ennunzio. The linguist.”

  “He used to live in Georgia?”

  “Worked there. A high-profile string of kidnappings that had him flying in and out of Atlanta for a good three years. Say ’ninety-eight to two thousand. Which would be . . .”

  “The same time the Eco-Killer started up his game. Dammit.” Quincy smacked the wheel. He already had Kaplan on the phone, so he turned to Rainie. “Quick, dial Kimberly! Tell her it’s Ennunzio, and get Nora Ray away from him quick!”

  Kimberly wasn’t sleeping. Sleeping would be the smart thing to do. Recharge while she had a chance. Catch some desperately needed shut-eye. But she didn’t sleep.

  She was tracing lines on Mac’s bronzed shoulder with her index finger. Then she ran her fingers through the light smattering of hair on his chest. She couldn’t get over the feel of him, his skin like warm satin to the touch.

  He snored. She’d learned that right away. He was also unbearably hot and heavy. Twice he’d flung his large frame over, tossing one arm across her chest or over her hip in a highly proprietary manner. She thought she should break him of that habit, while finding it secretly endearing.

  And then she suspected she was experiencing the same downward slide she’d witnessed in other women—they started out strong and independent with firm beliefs on how to manage men, then caved like spun sugar when Tall, Dark, and Handsome crooked his little finger.

  Well, she wasn’t going to cave, she decided. Not totally, anyway. She was going to demand her own side of the bed. Space where she could sprawl comfortably and sleep. Just as soon as she stopped tracing the ripple of his triceps, or the hard line of his jaw . . .

  Now her fingers wandered down to his hip and were rewarded by a growing length against the juncture of her thighs.

  Her phone rang. Her hand stilled. She swore a word nice young women probably weren’t supposed to use in bed. Then she was frantically trying to kick off the tangle of sheets.

  “I fucking hate cell phones,” Mac said clearly.

  “Cheater! You were awake.”

  “Delightfully so. Wanna punish me? I could use a good spanking.”

  “This had better be good,” Kimberly declared, “or I’ll break every microchip in this damn phone.”

  But they already knew it would be urgent. Given the early morning hour, it was probably Ray Lee Chee with news on the fourth victim. They’d had their reprieve. Now, time was up.

  Kimberly flipped open the phone, already expecting the worst, and then was genuinely startled to hear Rainie’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “It’s Ennunzio!” she said without preamble. “Where the hell are you?”

  Kimberly rattled off the name of the motel and the exit number, still in shock.

  “Get him secured,” Rainie was saying. “We’re on our way. And Kimberly—take care of Nora Ray.”

  The phone went click. Mac and Kimberly scrambled for clothes.

  Dark out. Very hot. They pressed against the wall of the motel, working their way down to Ennunzio’s room with weapons drawn and faces tense. They came to Nora Ray’s room first. Kimberly knocked. No answer.

  “Deep sleeper,” Mac murmured.

  “Don’t we both wish.”

  They cut across the parking lot, moving now with anxious speed. Ennunzio’s room was in the other wing of the L-shaped building. Door closed. Lights off. Kimberly pressed her ear against the door and listened. First nothing. Then, the sudden, crashing sound of furniture—or a body—being thrown around the room.

  “Go, go, go!” Kimberly cried.

  Mac heaved up a leg and kicked in the cheap wooden door. It snapped back, caught on the chain. He gave it one more thunderous whack, and the door ricocheted into the wall.

  “Police, freeze!”

  “Nora Ray, where are you?”

  Kimberly and Mac rolled into the room, one taking high, another taking low. In the next instant, Kimberly’s groping fingers snapped on the light.

  In front of them, two people were clearly involved in a struggle. Chairs had been tossed, the bed destroyed, the TV toppled. But it was not Dr. Ennunzio bearing down on a frightened girl. It was Nora Ray who had the special agent, clad in just a pair of boxers, backed into a corner. Now she loomed over him, brandishing a giant, gleaming needle.

  “Nora Ray!” Kimberly said in shock.

  “He killed my sister.”

  “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. I swear to God!” Ennunzio pressed harder against the wall. “I think . . . I think it was my brother.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Wytheville, Virginia

  3:24 A.M.

  Temperature: 94 degrees

  “YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, I DON’T THINK HE’S WELL.”

  “Your brother may have kidnapped and killed over ten women. Being not well is the least of his problems!”

  “I don’t think he meant to hurt them—”

  “Holy shit!” Mac drew up sho
rt. He was looming above Ennunzio, who was now slumped on the edge of his bed. Quincy and Rainie had arrived and guarded the door, while in the right-hand corner, Kimberly kept watch over Nora Ray. Kimberly had taken the girl’s needle away. Hostility in the small room, however, remained sky-high. “You’re the caller!”

  Ennunzio bowed his head.

  “What the hell? You’ve been playing me from the start!”

  “I was not trying to play you. I’ve been trying to help—”

  “You said the caller might be the killer. What was that all about?”

  “I wanted you to take the calls more seriously. Honest to God, I’ve been trying very hard to assist, I just don’t know much myself.”

  “You could’ve given me your brother’s name.”

  “It wouldn’t have done you any good. Frank Ennunzio doesn’t exist. However he’s living now, it’s under an assumed name. Please, you have to understand, I haven’t actually spoken to my brother in over thirty years.”

  That brought them all to attention. Mac frowned, not liking this newest bit of news. He crossed his arms over his chest and started to pace the tiny room.

  “Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Quincy said quietly.

  Ennunzio tiredly nodded his head. “Five years ago, I started work on a case in Atlanta, a kidnapping involving a young doctor’s child. I was called in to analyze notes being delivered to the house. While I was there, two girls from Georgia State University also vanished. I clipped the articles from the newspaper. At the time, I chalked it up to an investigative hunch. I was working a disappearance, here was another disappearance, you never knew. So I started to follow the case of the missing college girls as well. That summer and then the next summer, when two other girls also went missing during a heat wave.

  “By now, I knew the case of the young girls had nothing to do with my own. I was dealing with what turned out to be a string of ransom cases. A very cool young man who worked at one of the more prominent country clubs was using his position to identify and stalk wealthy young families. It took us three years, but we finally identified him, in large part from his ransom notes.

  “The heat-wave kidnappings, however, were an entirely different beast. The UNSUB always struck young, college-aged girls traveling in pairs. He’d leave one body next to a road and the second in some remote location. And he always sent a note to the press. Clock ticking . . . heat kills. I’ve remembered that note for a long, long time. It’s not the sort of thing you forget.”

  Ennunzio’s voice broke off. He stared down at the carpet, lost now in his own thoughts.

  “What did your brother do?” Rainie spoke up quietly. “Tell us about Frank.”

  “Our father was a hard man.”

  “Some fathers are.”

  “He worked in the coal mines, not far from where we were today. It’s an unforgiving life. Backbreaking labor by day. Brutal poverty by night. He was a very angry person.”

  “Angry people often become physical,” Rainie commented.

  Ennunzio finally looked up at her. “Yes. They do.”

  “Did your brother kill your father?”

  “No. The mines got him first. Coal dust built up in my father’s lungs, he started to cough, and then one day we didn’t have to fear him anymore.”

  “Ennunzio, what did your brother do?”

  “He killed our mother,” Ennunzio whispered. “He killed the woman we had spent all of our childhood trying to protect.”

  His voice broke again. He didn’t seem capable of looking at anyone anymore. Instead his shoulders sagged, his head fell forward, and on his lap he began to wring his hands.

  “You have to understand . . . After the funeral, our mother went a little crazy. She started yelling at Frank that he was ungrateful, and next thing we both knew, she went at him with my father’s belt. At first, Frank didn’t do anything. He just lay there until she wore herself out. Until she was so exhausted from hitting him that she couldn’t even lift her own arm. And then he got off the floor. He picked her up. So gently. I remember that clearly. He was only fourteen, but he was already big for his age and my mother was built like a bird. He cradled her in his arms, carried her to her room and laid her down on the bed.

  “He told me to get out of the house. But I couldn’t leave. I stood in the middle of the cabin, while he got down the oil lamps and started pouring the oil around the rooms. I think I knew then what he was going to do. My mother just watched. Lying on the bed, her chest still heaving. She didn’t utter a word. Didn’t even lift her head. He was going to kill her, maybe kill all of us, and I think she was grateful.

  “He covered the cabin in oil. Then he went to our stove and dumped the burning coals onto the floor. The whole house went up with a single whoosh. It was an old wood cabin, dry from age, never burdened by insulation. Maybe the house was grateful, too; it had never been a very happy place. I don’t know. I just remember my brother grabbing my hand. He pulled me through the door. Then we stood outside and watched our house burn. At the last minute, my mother started screaming. I swore I saw her standing right in the middle of those flames, her arms over her head, shrieking to high heaven. But there was nothing anyone could do for her by then. Nothing anyone could do for any one of us.

  “My brother walked me to the road. He told me someone would be by soon. Then he said, ‘Just remember, Davey. Heat kills.’ He disappeared into the woods and I haven’t seen or talked to my brother since. One week later, I was placed with a foster family in Richmond and that was that.

  “When I turned eighteen, I returned to the area briefly. I wanted to visit my parents’ headstone. I found a hole had been gouged into the marker, and inside I found a rolled-up piece of paper that read, ‘Clock ticking . . . planet dying . . . animals weeping . . . rivers screaming. Can’t you hear it? Heat kills.’ I think that summarizes my brother’s last thoughts on the subject.”

  “Everything must die?” Kimberly spoke up grimly.

  “Everything of beauty.” Ennunzio shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it completely. Nature was both our refuge—where we went to escape our father—and our prison—the isolated area where no one could see what was really happening. My brother loved the woods, he hated the woods. He loved our father, he hated our father. And in the end, he loved my mother and he loathed her. For him, I think the lines are all blurred. He hates what he loves and loves what he hates and has himself tangled in a web he’ll never escape.”

  “So he seeks heat,” Quincy murmured, “which purifies.”

  “And uses nature, which both saved him and betrayed him,” Rainie filled in. She turned troubled eyes toward Nora Ray. “And how did you end up in here? I thought you never knew who attacked you and your sister.”

  “Voice,” Nora Ray said. “I remember . . . I recognized his voice. From when the man came walking up to our window and asked if we needed help.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “No.”

  “So the man you heard that night could’ve been Dr. Ennunzio, or it could’ve been his brother, or, in all honesty, it could’ve been anyone who sounds like either of them. Don’t you think you should’ve mentioned this to one of us, before you came charging in with a syringe?”

  Nora Ray stared at Rainie with hard eyes. “She wasn’t your sister.”

  Rainie sighed. “So what are you going to do now, Nora Ray?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you believe Dr. Ennunzio’s story?”

  “Do you?” asked the girl.

  “I’m thinking about it. If we turn you loose, are you going to attack Dr. Ennunzio again?”

  “I don’t know.” Her overbright gaze swung to Ennunzio. “So maybe it was your brother instead of you. You should still be ashamed of yourself! You’re an FBI agent, you’re supposed to be protecting people. Instead, you knew something about a killer and you said nothing.”

  “I had nothing to add, not a name, not a location—”

  “You k
new his past!”

  “I didn’t know his present. All I could do was watch and wait. And I swear, the minute I saw my brother’s note suddenly resurface in a Virginia paper, I mailed a copy to the GBI. I wanted Special Agent McCormack involved. I did everything in my power to get the police’s attention. Surely that must count for something—”

  “Three girls are dead,” Nora Ray spat out. “You tell me how valuable your efforts have been.”

  “If I could’ve been sure . . .” Ennunzio murmured.

  “Coward,” Nora Ray countered savagely and Ennunzio finally shut up.

  Quincy took a deep breath. He regarded Rainie, Mac, and Kimberly. “So where does this leave us?”

  “Still short one killer and still short one victim,” Mac said. “Now we’ve got motive, but that’s only going to help us at trial. Bottom line is that it’s the middle of the night, scary hot, and another girl’s still out there. So cough it up, Ennunzio. He’s your brother. Start thinking like him.”

  The forensic linguist, however, merely shook his head. “I understood some of the clues in the beginning, only because I’ve also spent a lot of time outdoors. But the evidence you’re seeing now—water samples, sediment, pollen. That’s way over my head. You need the experts.”

  “Doesn’t your brother have any favorite places?”

  “We grew up dirt poor in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The only favorite places we knew were the ones we could walk to.”

  “You knew the cave.”

  “Because I used to be into caving. And of all the places Frank’s chosen, that’s been the most local.”

  “So we should look at the Appalachian Mountains, stay in the area,” Rainie spoke up.

  Both Mac and Ennunzio, however, were shaking their heads.

  “My brother’s methodology may be influenced by the past,” Ennunzio told them, “perhaps even triggered by the trauma of heat spells, but the places themselves aren’t tied to our family. I didn’t even know he lived in Georgia.”

  “Ennunzio’s right,” Mac said. “Whatever hang-ups got this guy started, he’s moved beyond them now. He’s sticking to his game plan, and that means diversity. Wherever we are now, the last girl will be the farthest point away.”