He didn’t need to ask who she meant. She was talking about the McGowan woman, and also her neighbor, Rachel Endicott. Tully still wasn’t convinced either woman was missing, let alone taken by Stucky. He didn’t share his doubts with O’Dell, nor did he share with her that he had talked to Detective Manx in Newburgh Heights. With any luck Manx would find it in his stubborn, isolationist pig head to share whatever evidence he recovered from the Endicott house. Though Tully didn’t expect much. Detective Manx had told him the case was nothing more than a bored housewife running off with a telephone repairman.
He hated to think Manx might be right. Tully shook his head. What was it with married women these days? He didn’t like being reminded of Caroline for the second time that morning.
“If you are right about Tess McGowan and the Endicott woman,” Tully said, careful to keep his own doubts aside, “that means Stucky has killed two women and taken two others in a span of only one week. Are you sure Stucky could pull that off?”
“It would be tough but not impossible. He would have had to take Rachel Endicott early last Friday. Then come back to Newburgh Heights, watch Jessica deliver my pizza, lure her to the house on Archer Drive and kill her late Friday evening or early Saturday morning.”
“Doesn’t that seem like a bit much?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “but not for Stucky.”
“Then somehow he finds out that you’d be in KC. Even finds out where you’re staying. Again, he watches you, Delaney and Turner with the waitress—”
“Rita.”
“Right, Rita. That was what, Sunday night?”
“Around midnight…actually early Monday morning. If Delores Heston is correct, Tess showed the house on Archer Drive Wednesday.” She avoided Tully’s eyes. “I know it sounds like a lot, but keep in mind what he’s done in the past.”
She started sorting through the photos again. “It’s never been easy to track. Some of the bodies were found much later, long after they were reported missing. Most of them were so badly decomposed we could only guess at the time of deaths. But the spring before we caught him, we estimated that he killed two women, leaving them in Dumpsters, and that he had taken five others for his collection. That was all in the span of two or three weeks. At least that’s the time frame that the women were first discovered missing. We didn’t find those five bodies until months later, and they were all in one mass grave. The women had been tortured and killed at different intervals. There were signs that he may have even hunted down a couple of them. We found evidence that he may have used a crossbow and arrows.”
Tully recognized the photos. O’Dell had laid out a series of Poloraids that chronicled one victim’s wounds. If the photos hadn’t been marked, it would be difficult to tell that they were all the same woman. This was one of those five victims who had been found in that mass grave. The corpse was one of the rare ones found before decomposition or before animals had ravaged it. It was one of the few that was intact and whole.
“This was Helen Kreski,” O’Dell said without looking up the name. “She was one of the five. Stucky choked and stabbed her repeatedly. Her left nipple had been bitten off. Her right arm and wrist were broken. There was a puncture through her left calf with a broken arrow still intact.” O’Dell’s voice was calm, too calm, as though she had resolved herself to something beyond her control. “We found dirt in her lungs. She was still alive when he buried her.”
“Christ, this is one sick son of a bitch.”
“We need to stop him, Agent Tully. We need to do it before he crawls back into a hole someplace. Before he runs off and hides and starts playing with his new collection.”
“And we’ll do that. We just need to find out where the hell he’s hiding.” He didn’t want to notice that she had used the word stop instead of catch.
He left her side and checked his watch again.
“I need to leave around eleven. I promised my daughter we’d have lunch together.” O’Dell had moved back to the reports they had received from Ganza. She had the fingerprint analysis and was reading it over for the third time. He wondered if she had even heard him. “Hey, why don’t you join us?”
She glanced up, surprised by his invitation.
“I still think the print was left by someone who looked at the house earlier,” he said, referring to the fingerprint report and taking her off the hook if she really didn’t want to accept his invitation.
“He wiped down everything in the bathroom,” she said, “but he missed two clean and whole fingerprints. No, he wanted us to find these. He’s done it before. It was how we finally confirmed who he was.”
He watched her rub her eyes as if the memory brought on a whole new fatigue.
“At that time, we had no name, no idea who The Collector was,” she continued. “Stucky evidently thought we were taking too long to figure it out. I think he left us a print on purpose. It was so blatant, so careless, it had to be on purpose.”
“Well, if this one was on purpose, why bother to clean up the place at all? He never seemed to care before.”
“Maybe he cleaned up because he wanted to use the house again.”
“For McGowan?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. But why bother to leave us a print that doesn’t even belong to him? Just like on the Dumpster behind the pizza place and on the umbrella in Kansas City.”
O’Dell hesitated, stopping her hands from shuffling papers and looking at him as if wondering whether or not to tell him something. “Keith hasn’t been able to find a match for those prints in AFIS. But he says he’s almost certain all three sets of prints belong to the same person.”
“You’re kidding. He knows that for sure? If that’s the case, maybe these murders aren’t Stucky, after all.”
He stared at her, waiting for some kind of reaction. Her face remained impassive, just like her voice when she said, “Jessica’s murder and Rita’s in Kansas City are awfully close together. I know I just said that Stucky could pull it off, but the anal penetration with Jessica is not Stucky’s M.O. Also, she’s much younger than any of his other victims.”
“So what are you saying, O’Dell. You think this one was a copycat?”
“Or an accomplice.”
“What? That’s crazy!”
She buried her eyes in the files again. He could see she was having a difficult time with the theory herself. O’Dell was used to working and brainstorming alone. Suddenly he realized that it probably took a good deal of trust for her to share this idea with him.
“Look, I know you’re serious, but why would Stucky take on an accomplice? You have to admit, that’s out of character for any serial killer.”
In reply, O’Dell pulled out several photocopied pages that looked like magazine and newspaper articles and handed them to Tully.
“Remember Cunningham said he found the name Walker Harding, Stucky’s old business partner, on an airline manifest?”
Tully nodded and began sorting through the articles.
“Some of those go back several years,” she told him.
They were articles from Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, PC World and several other business and trade periodicals. The Forbes article included a picture. Though the grainy black-and-white copy had obliterated most of the men’s features, the two of them could have passed for brothers. Both had dark hair, narrow faces and sharp features. Tully recognized Albert Stucky’s piercing black eyes, which he knew to be void of color despite the poor reproduction. The younger man smiled while Stucky’s face remained stoic and serious.
“I’m guessing this must be the partner?”
“Yes. A couple of the articles mention how much the two men had in common and how competitive they were with each other. However, they seemed to have ended their partnership amicably. I wonder if they might still be in contact with each other. Maybe still in competition with each other, only with a new game.”
“But why now after all these years? If they were to do something li
ke this, why not when Stucky first started his game?”
O’Dell sat down and tucked strands of hair behind her ears. She looked exhausted. As if reading his thoughts, she sipped her Diet Pepsi, which he had noticed was her coffee substitute. This was her third one of the morning.
“Stucky has always been a loner,” she explained. “I haven’t done any research on Harding except for these articles, but for Stucky to have chosen anyone as a business partner is remarkable. I’ve never thought about it before, but perhaps the two men had, and still have, some strong connection, a connection Stucky didn’t realize until recently. Or perhaps there’s some other reason he decided he needed his old friend.”
Tully shook his head. “I think you’re grasping at straws, O’Dell. You know as well as I do that statistically, serial killers don’t take on partners or accomplices.”
“But Stucky is far from fitting any of the statistics. I’m having Keith run a check to see if Harding has ever been fingerprinted. Then we can see if we have a match to the fingerprints being left at the crime scenes.”
Tully looked over the articles, scanning the text until something caught his eye.
“Looks like there’s a slight problem with your theory, O’Dell.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a footnote to this Wall Street Journal article. Stucky and Harding ended their partnership after Harding was diagnosed with some medical problem.”
“Right. I saw that.”
“But did you finish reading it? This part is blurred at the bottom from the copier. Unless Walker Harding found some miracle cure, he can’t be Stucky’s accomplice. It says here he was going blind.”
CHAPTER 49
Maggie waited until Tully left to meet his daughter. Then she began unearthing every scrap of information she could find on Walker Harding. She pounded the computer’s keys, searching the FBI’s files and other Internet sites and directories. The man had virtually disappeared after announcing his ambiguous medical problem almost four years ago. Now she realized Keith Ganza might never find a fingerprint record, either. Perhaps it was simply a gut instinct, but she felt certain Harding was still connected to Stucky, helping him somehow, continuing to work with him.
From what little she had read, she knew Harding had been the brains of their business, a whiz with computers. But Stucky had been the one who had taken all the financial risk, investing a hundred thousand dollars of his own money; money he had joked about winning one weekend in Atlantic City. Maggie couldn’t help noticing that the investment capital and the start-up of the business happened the same year Stucky’s father died in a freak boating accident. Stucky had never been charged though he had been questioned in what looked like a routine investigation, and only because Stucky had been the sole beneficiary of his father’s estate, an estate that made that hundred thousand dollars look like pocket change.
Harding appeared to have been reclusive long before his business venture with Stucky. Maggie could find nothing about his childhood, except that he—like Stucky—had been raised by a single, overbearing father. One directory listed him as a 1985 graduate of MIT, which made him about three years younger than Stucky. The state of Virginia listed no marriage license, driver’s license or property owned by a Walker Harding. She had begun a search of Maryland’s records when Thea Johnson from down the hall knocked on the open conference-room door.
“Agent O’Dell, there’s a phone call for Agent Tully. I know he left for a while, but this sounds important. Do you want to take the call?”
“Sure.” Maggie didn’t hesitate and reached behind her for the phone. “What line?”
“Line five. It’s a detective from Newburgh Heights. I believe he said his name was Manx.”
Immediately, Maggie’s stomach took a dive. She sucked in a deep breath and punched line five.
“Detective Manx, Agent Tully is at lunch. This is his partner, Agent Margaret O’Dell.”
She waited for the name to register. Even after a sigh, there was a pause.
“Agent O’Dell. Barge in on any crime scenes lately?”
“Funny thing, Detective Manx, but here at the FBI we usually don’t wait for engraved invitations.” She didn’t care if he heard the irritation in her voice. If he was calling Tully, he wanted something from them. Besides, what was he going to do? Go tell Cunningham she was mean to him again?
“When’s Tully gonna be back?”
So that was the way he wanted to play.
“Gee, you know, I don’t remember if he told me. He might not be back until Monday.”
She waited out his silence and imagined the scowl on his face. He was probably swiping a frustrated hand over that new buzz hairdo of his.
“Look, Tully talked to me last night about this McGowan woman down here in Newburgh Heights that’s supposedly missing.”
“She is missing, Detective Manx. Seems you have a problem with women disappearing in your jurisdiction. What’s up with that?” She was enjoying this too much. She needed to back off.
“I thought he should know that we checked out her house this morning and found a guy snooping around.”
“What?” Maggie sat up and gripped the phone.
“This guy said he was a friend and was worried about her. He had a screen off a back window and looked like he was getting ready to break in. We brought him in for questioning. Just thought Tully might like to know.”
“You haven’t released him yet, have you?”
“No, the boys are still chatting with him. I think we got him pretty damn scared. First thing, he insisted on calling his fucking lawyer. Makes me think he’s guilty of something.”
“Don’t release him until Agent Tully and I have a chance to talk to him. We’ll be there in about a half hour.”
“Sure, no problem. Lookin’ forward to seeing you again, O’Dell.”
She hung up, grabbed her jacket and was almost out the door before she realized she should probably call Tully. She patted her jacket down until she felt the cellular phone in the pocket. She’d call him from the road. No, of course, this wasn’t a matter of her running off on her own. It wasn’t breaking any of Cunningham’s new rules. She simply didn’t want to ruin Agent Tully’s lunch with his daughter.
That was what she told herself. The fact was, she wanted to check this out on her own. If Manx had Albert Stucky or even Walker Harding, Maggie wanted him all to herself.
CHAPTER 50
As the sun moved overhead and more light seeped down, Tess could see the hellhole for what it was. The skull that stared out from the earth wall was not the only human remains that surrounded them. Other bones glistened, washed white by the rains, protruding at odd angles from the uneven walls and the muddy floor.
At first Tess told herself it was some ancient burial ground, maybe a mass grave from a Civil War battle. Then she found a black underwire bra and a woman’s leather pump with a broken heel sticking out of the ground. Neither looked old enough or deteriorated enough to have been there much longer than weeks, maybe months.
Dirt had been recently thrown into one of the corners. The mound looked fresh despite the rain packing it down. She stared at it, but didn’t dare go near it, staying away as if the pile would crumble and reveal some new horror. If that was at all possible.
The rays of sunshine felt wonderful, though they wouldn’t last long. She managed to gently drag the woman to the center, so she could be warmed directly. Even the wool blanket had begun to dry. Tess stretched it out across some rocks, leaving the woman naked but bathed in sunlight.
Tess was getting used to the rancid smell of the woman. She could stay close without the urge to vomit. The woman had defecated in her corner several times and had accidentally rolled in it. Tess wished she had some water to clean her. The thought reminded her how dry and raw her mouth and throat were. Surely the woman was already in a state of dehydration. Her convulsions had calmed to a mild shiver and her teeth had stopped chattering. Even her breathing seemed to re
turn to normal. Now with the sunlight on her skin, Tess noticed she had closed her eyes, as though finally able to rest. Or had she finally decided to die?
Tess sat on a broken branch and examined the pit again. She knew she could climb out. She had tried twice, reaching the top both times. Each time she peered over the edge, the relief and satisfaction overwhelming her to tears. But each time, she lowered herself back down, carefully easing the pressure on her swollen ankle.
Though she didn’t want to think about the madman, she realized there could be safety in this pit. He must have dumped the woman here, expecting her to die from her wounds and exposure. Eventually, he would return to throw some dirt over her and create yet another mound. When he discovered Tess was gone from the shack, he might not think to look for her down here.
That didn’t mean she wanted to stay. She hated feeling trapped. And this hellhole reminded her too much of the dark storm cellar her aunt and uncle had used as punishment for her. As a child, being buried beneath the ground for an hour was terrifying. One or two days, unimaginable. Even as an adult, she could never remember what she had done to deserve such punishment. Instead, she had readily believed her aunt when she called her an evil child and dragged her down to the damp torture chamber. Each time, Tess had screamed how sorry she was and pleaded for forgiveness.
“No apologies accepted,” her uncle would always say, laughing.
In the dark, Tess would pray over and over for her mother to come and rescue her, remembering her mother’s last words, “I’ll be right back, Tessy.” But she never came back to rescue Tess. She never returned at all. How could her mother leave her with such evil people?
As Tess grew older and stronger, her aunt was no longer a match for her. That’s when her uncle took over. Only, her uncle’s form of punishment came late at night when he let himself into her bedroom. When she tried to lock him out, he removed the door to her room. At first she screamed, knowing her aunt could now hear without the door to muffle the sounds. It didn’t take long for her to realize that her aunt had always heard, had always known. She just didn’t care.