“She’s somewhere, right? I mean, you buried her or dumped her or burned her or did whatever it is you do to the bodies. But she’s somewhere. A grave. If you could just tell me where, so I could go to her…I won’t touch anything. I just wanna talk.”
“Jackie…” Sal whispered nervously.
“Are you wearing a wire?” Dinchara’s voice suddenly boomed.
“Wh-wh-what? Don’t be crazy—”
“Are you setting me up? Are you setting me up?”
A hastily indrawn breath, Ginny’s sharp, short cry.
“Jackie!” Sal, over the radio, demanding now.
Kimberly, rising out of her seat, trying to figure out what to do.
“Where the hell is it! Tell me! NOW!”
“Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting me! Let go of my arm. I just wanna talk to my mom. Haven’t you ever been around a pregnant woman before? It’s hormonal. Honest!”
“Where is it, where is it, where is it? Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
“Stop, stop, stop! It hurts. Oh God, let go—”
Kimberly leapt for the door of the van, hand on the door, preparing to slide it open. Just as Ginny started to scream in her ear again, high-pitched and thin, a sudden pounding sound came from the other side of her brain.
“Hey.” Special Agent Sparks’s giddy voice broadcast through the madness. “Sounds like a party. Can anyone join in?” Another high-pitched giggle, the crack of chewing gum. “Hey, mister, nice wheels. You like to go four-wheelin’? How about takin’ me for a ride?”
“Holy mother of God.” Sal looked like he was having a heart attack. He was doubled over in his seat, both hands on his head.
Kimberly wavered next to the door, equally transfixed.
Sparks babbled away: “I mean check this out. I haven’t seen mud like this since I rode my daddy’s John Deere across the chicken farm.”
“Get out.” Dinchara spoke up tersely. “Private party.”
“Now, now, now, mister. It’s a slow night. Can’t blame a girl for trying, ’specially with a fine-looking man. Been a while since I’ve seen a full set of teeth, know what I mean. Hey, honey, are you pregnant?”
“I’m tired,” Ginny intoned. “I think I’d like to go now.”
“Oh, honey, you’d better. Working while you’re pregnant? That’s no way to live.”
“Ah fuck it,” Dinchara said. “I’m tired, too.”
“Now, now, no need to be like that. I mean, if you really wanna rumble, big fella—”
Door creaking open. Sounds of a minor scuffle. Ginny’s startled exclamation. The man’s low curse. “Get the fuck off me!”
“Hey, now, big daddy—”
“I am not your fuckin’ daddy. Get out of my truck!”
“Okay, okay, no need to get testy. I’m just a sucker for leather seats. Reminds me of the pigs on my daddy’s farm—”
“GET OUT!”
“I’m going, I’m going, don’t get your panties in a wad. Men. Give ’em fancy wheels and they think they rule the world.”
Footsteps now. A vehicle door slamming shut. An engine roaring to life.
Sparks, back in the earpiece, her voice clear and concise. “Suspect has pulled out, heading north—”
Her tone got them both moving again. Sal grabbed the radio, describing the vehicle and requesting a traffic stop. Kimberly opened the van’s door, preparing for Ginny and Sparks to scramble in.
She spotted Sparks half a block away, running up the street, pulling Ginny behind her. Ginny’s right cheek bore the red imprint of the man’s hand. Her nose was running, her lashes clumped with tears.
“Who the hell is this?” she screeched immediately upon spotting Kimberly. “Did you send someone to spy on me?”
“More like backup,” Kimberly said briskly.
She helped them both climb in, glancing left, then right. So far, so good. She slid the door shut behind, while Sparks unhanded her charge, then held out her other arm in triumph.
“Brought you a present,” the special agent declared. “Look what fell out of the truck amid all the confusion: I got the man’s boot!”
TWENTY-THREE
“For most species…a husband’s place is ‘in the digestive tract of his wife.’”
FROM “SPIDER WOMAN,”
BY BURKHARD BILGER, New Yorker, MARCH 5, 2007
KIMBERLY DROVE HOME ALL JAZZED UP. THREE A.M., GA 400 was finally empty and she zipped along, humming under her breath, tapping her fingers on the wheel and wishing she drove a Porsche. This was the kind of night it would be great to open the sucker up and watch the speedometer soar.
Instead, she kept her Passat station wagon safely under sixty-five, but that didn’t stop her mind from racing.
Sal would be requesting the creation of a multijurisdictional task force first thing in the morning. Dinchara hadn’t magically confessed to abducting and murdering any of the prostitutes on Sal’s list, but he hadn’t sounded or acted like an innocent man, either. They were onto something, and tonight’s recording would back them up.
Unfortunately, uniformed patrols never came across Dinchara’s vehicle for the requested traffic stop. That didn’t surprise Kimberly overly much. For all of Dinchara’s lowbrow speech, she had an impression of a cold, calculating intelligence. Even on home turf, he’d kept his hat pulled low and obscured his license plate with mud. She had a feeling he’d taken additional precautions with his exit from Sandy Springs.
They still had a BOLO out, however, so hopefully sometime over the next few days someone would spot the vehicle. Plus Sal was going to have Special Agent Sparks and Ginny sit down with a sketch artist and put together a composite drawing they could get into circulation.
By this time next week, hopefully, they’d know Dinchara’s name and vitals. And then the real fun would begin.
She hummed again, “Tainted Love,” and tapped her fingers to the beat.
It occurred to her that she was looking forward to going home. That she wanted to pull into her driveway, bound into her house. She wanted, more than anything in the world, to see her own husband.
That was it. Enough of this nonsense. Minute she got home, she was waking up Mac. They would hash this thing out once and for all. He could move to Savannah on a trial basis, they could find a house somewhere in between, she could explore her options at one of the Bureau’s regional offices. There was a way, there was always a way. They just needed to talk.
Then, she was jumping his bones, because there was nothing like a successful night’s work to make one horny.
Kimberly finally pulled into her driveway. Mac’s truck was gone. Instead, she walked into her living room to discover her father and his wife, Rainie. Quincy sat in the recliner, flipping through the paper. Rainie was curled up on a corner of the sofa, staring at some syndicated sitcom but clearly half asleep. Both roused when she entered the room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Kimberly blurted out.
“Thought we were overdue for a visit,” her father said simply. Quincy always had been impossible to rattle.
And then Kimberly remembered—the last fight with Mac, her late-night phone message. All at once she blushed, feeling needy and overexposed. She should’ve called her father right back, told him to ignore her plea, she was just having a moment. She should’ve…done something.
“Working?” asked Rainie, barely suppressing a yawn. “Anything interesting?”
“No. Well, maybe. What time did you arrive? Have you had anything to eat? Did Mac show you your room? I’m so sorry to keep you up so late.”
“We’re on Oregon time,” her unflappable father assured her, still sitting in the chair, still holding the newspaper. “It’s not so late.”
Rainie gave him a look, muffled another yawn, then said, “We got in shortly after ten. Mac was home, but got called. I’ll confess, we ate all the leftover pizza—”
“We?” Quincy interjected.
“All right, I ate all the pizza. The Jolly Gree
n Giant over here”—she pointed a thumb at Quincy—“made a salad.”
“We have vegetables?” Kimberly asked in surprise.
“Iceberg lettuce, red onions, and tomatoes,” her father supplied, “which I would assume are condiments in this house, but can be turned into a garden salad if one desires.”
“Huh,” Kimberly said.
Rainie finally broke the ice by crossing the room and giving Kimberly a welcoming hug.
“How are you feeling?” Rainie asked.
“Good. Good. All good.”
“The baby?”
“Healthy, growing, kicking.”
“You can feel it move?” Rainie’s voice picked up, sounded momentarily wistful. Late in life, Kimberly’s stepmom had decided she wanted children. She and Quincy had looked into adoption, but it hadn’t gone as planned. They never talked about it, but Kimberly was relatively sure those doors were closed to Rainie now, and the only children in her life were the ones she assisted as an advocate for abused children.
Did Kimberly’s pregnancy make her jealous, awaken old hurts, fresh regrets? Rainie was a former law enforcement officer, well-practiced in schooling her features and holding her tongue. Whatever she was feeling on the inside, it was doubtful it would ever show.
“Wanna touch it?” Kimberly asked.
“Yes.”
She took Rainie’s hand, moved it to her left side, just around the curve. Baby McCormack, engaged in her nightly aerobics, did not disappoint.
“Boy or girl?” Rainie asked. “What do you think?”
Quincy had gotten off the recliner and was standing next to his wife. He’d never ask, so Kimberly took his hand and pressed it against her side. The baby kicked again. Her father flinched, jerked his hand away. Then he smiled.
“Boy!” he said immediately. He placed his hand back, palm flat against her side.
“I would guess boy as well,” Rainie was saying. “Girls are supposed to steal their mother’s beauty; you still look plenty beautiful to me.”
Kimberly nearly blushed. “All right, all right. Give the beautiful mother some air. And a glass of water.”
She headed for the kitchen, fetching a glass of water for herself, a second for Rainie. Quincy was a dedicated coffee drinker, so even though it was three in the morning, she brewed him a pot. They all moved to the kitchen table, a touching family scene except that not one of them had thought to turn on the overhead light. That alone said something about their chosen professions.
“Mac say anything before he bolted?” Kimberly quizzed now.
“Not to wait up.”
Kimberly grunted, chewed on her lower lip, trying to think what might be going on. She didn’t know what Mac was working on these days. They’d talked about her cases, but not his.
“And your night?” her father asked.
“Stakeout,” she supplied. “Guy didn’t magically confess, but he did beat the shit out of our informant, which seems to indicate we’re on the right track.”
Quincy raised a brow in interest. “What kind of case?”
“Serial murder. Prostitutes have been disappearing, including six girls whose driver’s licenses were left on the windshield of a special agent’s car. We think this guy might be good for it.” Kimberly chewed her lower lip again. “Problem is, we haven’t turned up any of the remains. Given the lifestyle, the defense can assert the girls simply moved on. Makes for a very messy case. Though, you know, if we could get the tape admissible, that might work.”
“The tape?” Rainie spoke up.
“Audio recording of one of the missing women being killed. Or at least, it sure as hell sounds like she’s being murdered. Get this—the subject makes each victim choose the next victim. In this case, the woman, Veronica Jones, gave up the name of her daughter, Ginny Jones, who is now our informant.”
Rainie stated the obvious. “But he didn’t kill Ginny Jones.”
“According to her, she talked him out of it. The subject has a thing for spiders. So does Ginny. Given their mutual interest, he let her live—if you call working as a prostitute for the rest of your life, while handing over fifty percent of your earnings, living.”
“He remains in control,” Quincy said.
“Exactly. This dude has a thing for control.”
“Can I hear the tape?” Quincy asked.
“It’s at the office. I can get it tomorrow.”
“How did he ask the woman to choose the next victim?”
“Torture. He said he would end it when she gave him the name of someone she loved.”
Quincy had that look. “Did the victim comply immediately?”
“Actually, she tried to give him a fake name. But when he pressed her, why that name, how did that person matter, she fell apart. You can hear her stress, her disorientation from the pain. It’s difficult to think under those circumstances, let alone lie.”
“So she gave up her own daughter. That would seem to imply all the victims share some kind of connection for him.”
“We’re working on it. Actually, a GBI special agent is working on it. Sal already knows three of the prostitutes were roommates; they disappeared one by one. But certainly, we lack major pieces of the puzzle. There are probably some girls on our list of missing persons who did move to Texas, and others who have also disappeared but we haven’t heard about yet.”
“All from one concentrated geographic area?” Rainie spoke up. “What’s the prostitution scene like in Georgia?”
“Vast and varied. There’s the streetwalkers in the red light districts such as Fulton Industrial Boulevard—mostly African American, mostly into drugs. Then you got the massage parlors in places like Sandy Springs—mostly Asian, mostly sex slaves. Then there’s the club scene, which has a bit of everything, white, Hispanic, black, Asian, drugs, nondrugs. And finally, we got the usual sort of activity around the Air Force base in Marietta—local girls offering a few extra services while tending tables.
“Georgia’s a big state; lots of geographic and socioeconomic diversity. If our subject is hopscotching his way through the underground scene, it’ll take a lot of conversations with various agencies to connect those dots, which is one of the reasons he’s been able to stay under the radar for so long.”
“What else do you know of the UNSUB?” Quincy again.
“Well, having seen him for the first time tonight…Mid thirties.”
“Seasoned. Capable of moving about, taking his time, stalking his target.”
“To judge by the tape, I’d say Veronica Jones was not his first victim. He’s had time to refine his methods. Physically, he’s white, five nine or five ten, maybe hundred and seventy pounds. Not big, but lean, wiry. And outdoorsy—hiking boots, jeans, the SUV.”
“Hunter?”
“In this state, a strong possibility.”
“Loner.”
“Interestingly enough, we don’t think so. The GBI special agent involved has received two envelopes on the windshield of his car. Both contained driver’s licenses from missing hookers. Given that no note or further means of communication were attempted, Sal thinks the packages may have come from someone close to the killer, and not from the killer himself.”
Quincy arched a brow, considering the matter. “Fair enough. Most killers, if they’re going to make contact, will engage in some petty taunting while they’re at it.”
“Exactly. Unfortunately, the envelopes yielded no physical evidence. So we still need to identify and track the killer on our own. Once we know who he is, however, we may be able to identify a spouse or family member who can be of some help to us.”
“Socioeconomics?” Quincy moved along.
“Can’t figure him out. Talks white trash, but can also sound very crisp when he wants. And the SUV is nice—a Limited Edition Toyota FourRunner. Clothes as well; he looks casual with the jeans, the flannel shirt, but they’re nice jeans, nice flannel. Maybe once a redneck, but now a yuppie.”
“He’s upwardly mobile. Likes mate
rial possessions,” Rainie filled in.
“I think so.”
“It’s going to come down to the money.” Rainie was looking at Quincy. “A seasoned killer like that, ten-plus victims. The amount of time and energy he’s putting into it now. Preparing the kill kit, trolling for victims, covering his tracks, hiding the bodies. It’s a full-time job, especially if he stalks them for a while, too.”
“Has to,” Quincy spoke up. “If he’s letting Victim A choose Victim B, then he’ll have to do a lot of reconnaissance about Victim B before he can move.”
“So he’s busy,” Rainie continued. “Working hard at this. Which means he’s probably not gainfully employed anymore and having to turn to other means to fund his lifestyle.”
“Such as pimping prostitutes,” Kimberly murmured drily.
“Yes. Or fraud, burglary, drugs. There was this case a while back of a guy who was arrested by the Treasury Department for forging checks. When they went through the man’s storage unit, they found boxes and boxes of photos of bound and gagged women being sexually assaulted. Turned out, the guy was a classic sexual-sadist predator who’d operated for years up and down the eastern seaboard, abducting, raping, and killing women. Forging checks was simply how he covered his costs.
“Have you heard of an organization called NecroSearch International?” Quincy asked.
Kimberly shook her head.
“They’re often referred to as the Pig People. It’s a nonprofit organization, comprised mostly of retired scientists and cops. I’ve been thinking about joining.”
“Oh boy,” Rainie said drolly.
But Kimberly was regarding her father with interest. “What do they do?”
“Find bodies. They’re most famous for burying pigs in order to research techniques for locating clandestine graves. They’re also the ones who located Michele Wallace’s body in Colorado, nearly twenty years after she first disappeared.”
“Michele Wallace?” Kimberly repeated, doing a quick mental search but coming up empty. “Sorry, don’t know the case.”
“That’s because you’re too young. 1974. Wallace was twenty-five years old, living in Gunnison, Colorado. An experienced hiker, she set out for a weekend in Schofield Park with her German shepherd. Returning to her vehicle, she encountered two men having car troubles and offered them a ride. She was never seen alive again.