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She looked at the ocean, the roiling waves crashing on the sand, and identified a bit too much.
Recognizing that Taylor was through talking, Baldwin sank back into the deep leather seats and retreated into his own world to check his BlackBerry. She was relieved the interrogation was over. She was still learning how to share with him. She’d been alone long enough to learn true emotional self-reliance, and the fact that she had a soul mate beyond her childhood friends could be disconcerting. She still found herself holding back, not saying everything she felt. Dr. Willig would tell her that wasn’t healthy, but she’d get there. She was going to marry Baldwin, and soon, which meant allowing those last few barriers to be battered. Thankfully, he was a patient man, and knew her well enough to back off when he felt her closing down.
They were quiet for a mile or two, until the car turned into a shell-covered driveway, the entrance to the Nags Head Police Station. The building was as informal as the rest of Nags Head—weathered gray shingles, white trim, a second story as a defense against the inevitable hurricane season flooding. The car came to a halt. Their driver got out and lit a cigarette before silently disappearing around the corner of the building.
A slim man came out the main doors, waving in welcome. He had brown hair and matching eyes, was dressed for the weather in chinos and a battered tan wool sweater.
They exited the vehicle and took the short sidewalk to him. The man smiled up at Taylor in appreciation.
“Good grief, you touch the sky, don’t you?” he said.
She heard Baldwin stifle a laugh. If she had ten cents for every time someone commented on her height…
“I try not to fly too close to the sun. Nice to meet you,” she replied.
They shook hands. “Steve Nadis, I’m the chief here in Nags Head. How ya doing?”
“Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, Metro Nashville Homicide. I’m good. And you?”
“Fine, fine. Got a whole host of strange cops and a few Feds roaming the place, but we’re all good. Come on in, I just made some coffee. Colder than a witch’s teat in a brass bra out here. Snow. This early, too. Strange weather for us. Dr. Baldwin, good to see you again.”
“You, too, Chief.”
They followed him inside the station, which held all the classic cop shop paraphernalia. Taylor felt immediately at home. There was something about being with cops—she never quite trusted people who weren’t in law enforcement. Though she’d come across her fair share of jerks behind the blue wall, for the most part, she only felt like herself around people who had been there, who could relate to her permanent mind-set. It was what made her relationship with Baldwin work so well.
They passed a wooden counter and the office assistant working behind glass, then went through a rabbit warren of hallways until they reached the door that was informally marked “Chief” with a brown-and-white placard.
The comforting scent of roasted coffee beans drifted down the hallway.
Nadis gestured to two chairs facing his desk. “How do you take it, Lieutenant? I know Dr. B here likes his black.”
“Light, please. Lots of cream and sugar.” Taylor wasn’t a huge fan of coffee, it had a tendency to tear up her insides if she wasn’t careful, but she didn’t want to be rude. She was chilled, something warm would help.
Nadis disappeared, whistling, and Taylor smiled at Baldwin. The Nags Head chief was a bit like a cheerful firefly. Fitting for a beach cop. Taylor had noticed there was a certain mentality in some of the more unique law enforcement regions. It took a special personality to live at the beach full-time, and a specific kind of person to govern those free spirits. Her own chief would be an absolute disaster in a laid-back town.
Nadis returned with the two coffees, handed them out, then sat at his desk facing them. The liveliness had disappeared from his face.
“We don’t get a lot of murders out here. I have four good people in my CID, but I knew the SBI was already involved, so we gave them a shout. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Taylor said. “I would have done the same thing if I was in your position. Tell me, do you, they, have any leads?”
“I’m afraid not. Like I told the doc here, there’s a bunch of evidence that’s been collected, and the state boys are running the show now. Your friend’s been through a lot. Good fellow. I can see he’s been a fine cop.”
“He still is. I doubt this will derail Fitz at all.” Her tone was sharper than she intended, and she felt bad when Nadis declined his head in apology.
“Of course he still is. I didn’t mean that. Sorry.”
She shrugged it away. There were more important things to deal with. “How did he come to be here, in Nags Head?”
“We found him yesterday morning, early, wandering on the side of the road in his skivvies. Face was cut up. He couldn’t tell us how he’d gotten there.”
Baldwin interjected, “We assume they dropped him after they killed Susie. When the harbormaster found the boat, she’d been dead at least forty-eight hours, maybe more.”
Jesus.
Nadis rocked back in his chair. “A couple of agents from the west branch of the SBI found his eye earlier in the week, in that trailer near Asheville. It’s not a quick drive, over seven hours. His captor, or captors, would have had plenty of time to get him here. He was probably drugged.”
“Or he’s been here in Nags Head the whole time, on the boat. They found his eye four days ago. I wonder if the suspect just delivered the eye to Asheville to throw us off the trail,” Taylor said.
Nadis looked at her with new appreciation. “Now that you mention it, that does make more sense. Sergeant Fitzgerald was pretty nonsensical when we found him. We took him to the hospital, got him cleaned up. He couldn’t tell us much about what had happened, just his name and his badge number. He was in shock, of course. But we’d seen the alerts, called up to the FBI. Dr. Baldwin got on a plane down here, the SBI coots showed up first thing this morning, and Bob’s your uncle. That’s all we got right now.”
“Why didn’t y’all keep him in the hospital?”
“I figured you’d ask—our hospital is kind of small, and there was a food poisoning outbreak last night. They needed the bed, he was stable, so we brought him here.”
Taylor didn’t realize she was tapping her fingers on the side of her cup until Baldwin set his coffee down on the chief’s desk. “I know Lieutenant Jackson would like to see her sergeant. Can we make that happen?”
“I think that’s a good idea.” Nadis glanced at his watch. “Those SBI folks have been going at him for a couple of hours now. He’s probably ready for a break. But, Lieutenant, I need to warn you. He’s seen a lot the past few days, been through a lot. You may want to—”
“Chief, no offense, but Fitz is like a father to me. I won’t push him. But I would like to see him. If you wouldn’t mind?”
“Okay.” Nadis stood and gestured for them to follow him. The hallway seemed to go on forever, and led to a steel door. Nadis knocked twice as a warning, then inputted his code into a numbered lock, explaining as he did. “This is a secure area, we usually use it to let some of the local yahoos sleep off their buzz. We don’t have a jail, per se, here in the building, just holding cells, so this works for our needs. The corrections facility is a mile down the road.”
The door clicked open, and he led them through. A woman stood on the other side, staring into a window with her arms crossed on her chest. She was about five foot four, trim and athletic, with bushy brown hair tied back from her face. Her black suit was well made, and Taylor could see the bulge of a shoulder holster under her left arm.
She turned and saw the entourage, stepped away and introduced herself.
“You must be the sergeant’s lieutenant. I’m Renee Sansom, SBI. Hey, Dr. Baldwin. My boys are in with your guy right now. You want to see him?”
Taylor shook Sansom’s hand. “Yes, I would.”
“He’s been through a lot,” the woman said simply, then knocked on the window. Taylor knew it was a one-way mirror, acrylic, unbreakable, but for some reason avoided looking into the room. It seemed impolite to stare at him when he couldn’t see her. And with so many warnings on Fitz’s condition, she was starting to worry about him even more.
The door opened and two men stepped out, blue suited, wearing red-and-white striped ties. Two of a kind. They nodded professionally and the second one held the door open for her.
Taylor took a deep breath and entered.
Fitz had shrunk since she’d seen him last. He’d lost weight, his shoulders were hunched together. He seemed to be folded in on himself, protecting the kernel of pain that was driving him. Taylor knew he must be exhausted, and that hurt her as much as his obvious grief.
He turned as she entered. The left side of his face was covered with a large white pressure bandage, the skin of his cheek tinged with the yellow of Betadine, the iodine base discoloring the flesh around the dressing. But his remaining eye, round and dark blue, lit up when he saw her.
“Good to see you, little girl,” he said gruffly, and she heard the tears in his voice.
And then she had her arms around him, holding on for dear life.
Three
Nashville, Tennessee
Colleen Keck typed in the blog title, her fingers moving quickly.
No Clues in the Hunt for a Missing Nashville Teen
She looked it over for errors, saw none. Good. Catchy. She took a sip of her Diet Coke, then started the entry, her fingers flying over the keys.
Nashville is still reeling from the horrific Halloween massacre last week, when eight teenagers were viciously murdered in Green Hills on Halloween afternoon. As the burials begin, more frightening news is leaking out: a seventeen-year-old varsity athlete from Montgomery Bell Academy has gone missing. Peter Schechter, a junior defensive end for the MBA football team and the lacrosse team co-captain, did not make it to a morning practice the day after Halloween and has not been heard from since.
His vehicle, a silver 2006 BMW 5 series, was found Saturday morning in the parking lot of the McDonald’s in West End. His parents, Winifred and Peter Schechter, Sr., report that their son was responsible, hardworking and very settled in his routine. “It is completely out of character for Pete not to check in. He’s religious about it. We’re very close,” said a tearful Mrs. Schechter.
Schechter’s friends confirm that they were downtown, on Lower Broad, attending an eighteen-and-over Halloween night party at the bar Subversion, though no one remembers driving him back to his car. “We just assumed he’d left with someone,” said Brad Sandford, a friend and fellow ballplayer. “We went home without him.”
The police do not believe that Schechter left of his own volition, though they will not release details. He is not answering his cell phone, and no texts have been sent from his number. A source close to the investigation who has asked not to be identified confirms the police suspect foul play. An AMBER Alert is in effect, and a search is being organized. If you know anything about the whereabouts of Peter Schechter, please call 866-555-2010. All tips can be left anonymously.
Humbly submitted,
Felon E
Colleen read through her piece one more time, corrected a comma splice, and published the story. It automatically fed into her Twitter feed; she watched TweetDeck as the message went viral through the community, her hundreds of thousands of followers dutifully spreading the word that a new blog post had been published. She cracked her knuckles and allowed herself a small smile.
Felon E was her baby, her creation, her universe. While the world of true-crime bloggers grew exponentially, with new entrants on the scene almost daily, she was still number one, the top of the heap. Her blog echoed throughout the online world because of her accuracy, her tact and her compassion.
She utilized all the social networks to get the word out, and her fans did the rest. She’d come a long way from the crime beat at The Tennessean, though no one online had any idea who she was. Anonymity allowed her to utilize sources from multiple jurisdictions without complaint. The law enforcement folks she worked with knew they could trust her, that she’d never, ever reveal her sources. Her silence was golden.
She was admired by law enforcement, too. Many departments utilized her blog and announcements to get background out about hopeless or urgent cases, especially AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts, work she was happy to do gratis.
To stay on top of the breaking crime news, she’d carefully cultivated contacts throughout the country, but her bread and butter came from friends in the 911 call centers. Major metropolitan areas, local county networks—she’d made deals with hundreds of folks. Those connections allowed her a jump on the competition. She had video and audio feeds live, an online police scanner running at all times, the Emergency Radio app on her iPhone, and an open policy from her contacts. They knew what calls were worth passing along to her. She accepted tips from the general public, too, but always, always confirmed with two sources before she ran her stories.
After a high-profile bank robber had written in to the blog and asked to surrender, the media had been keeping a close eye on Felon E. There had been requests from every major news outlet for her to appear on their shows to talk about how she could keep on top of the country’s crime, but she refused all interviews. She wasn’t in this for her own glory. She was in it because she wanted to help.
At least that was what she told herself, over and over again.
The blog was raking in the dough. The advertising she sold on the site, and so judiciously monitored, paid more than enough to keep her afloat, enough that she could afford to send her five-year-old son, Flynn, to the pricey Montessori school down the street. It was a luxury she never thought she’d be able to find the money for, and while the bills got paid, there wasn’t too much left for lavish possessions. No matter. Working at home meant no extraneous business expenses: fancy suits and gas and lunches out. No husband—and no desire to date—meant no need for overpriced cosmetics, and she didn’t have to fuss with her hair; the expensive highlights she used to maintain like clockwork every six weeks had grown out, and that money went to pay her grocery bill. It all balanced in the end.
She toggled her mouse and tried not to look at the picture wedged at the back of her desk. It was no use. Shifty as a sneak thief, her eyes slid over the faded photograph in its dented silver frame. A dark-haired man holding a small blue bundle, smiling broadly with paternal pride. He’d been gone a week later, leaving her to manage a newborn and a funeral. She swallowed hard and let her eyes drift away before she could make real contact, before the memories of him overwhelmed her.
Angels and death, missing fathers and harried mothers. The past clashing with the reality of her present.
She’d explained to Flynn time and again that his daddy was with the angels. It just doesn’t register when they’re so young. You can’t miss what you don’t know, and Flynn had never met the smiling young man who’d fathered him. All Flynn really cared about was Colleen paying him attention when he wanted it, and being left alone for “me” time when he desired. His newly independent streak worried her, hurt her fragile feelings when he pushed her away from the door to his room and said, “I need some time for me, Mommy.”
And pizza. He was passionate about pizza. Just like his father.
Flynn’s daddy was an on-the-rise young cop who’d been mowed down in the line of duty. One minute here, the next gone. They said it was instantaneous. That he died bravely. That he never knew what hit him. She’d been at enough crime scenes to know they were lying—gunshots didn’t kill you instantly, you lingered for several minutes while your organs got the message that they were no longer needed and shut down, one by one—but she’d nodded like she understood and hadn’t asked anything more.
She’d held her silence all this time, though his killer hadn’t been caught.
When Tommy died, Colleen was working at the paper, pulling down just about enough to cover the mortgage and little else. Though the foundation his coworkers had set up was flush, that money was earmarked for Flynn’s college fund. The day-to-day expenses of a single-parent family were astronomical, and she quickly realized that even with the hefty insurance settlement, her job at the paper wasn’t going to cut it.
She’d always been a crime buff, that was probably why she married Tommy in the first place. A cop whore, he’d called her, joking and laughing at her over dinner, his dark eyes dancing while he filled her in on his shift. After he died, some of the other brothers in blue had sat in his rightful spot across from her at the rickety kitchen table, relaying stories and keeping her spirits up while she draped a blanket across her body and nursed Flynn.
When her grief allowed her rational mind to surface, she knew she needed to find something more to raise her small family. She was a writer, after all, so she thought about writing a book. It would be fast, easy money; she could break into the market with a flashy true-crime story. Then one of her heroes, Dominick Dunne, died, and the extensive coverage of his career brought another thought to the fore. The idea of a crime blog started to germinate. She liked it. Quick and dirty. Instantaneous feedback, a running record. Like Dunne, she could be a voice for the victims, but she’d be behind the scenes, an angel of sorts. She preferred that no one knew who she was. She didn’t like to sign her real name to her work; she never aspired to fame, or attention. It was better this way. Safer.
Colleen started populating Felon E with stories, announced it was under way on a few true-crime message boards, and it took off like a shot. She was still surprised at how well it was doing; within a year of the launch, she was able to quit her job and dedicate herself to running the blog full-time. She’d underestimated the fervor civilians had toward the intimate, gory details of the crimes they were surrounded by. She had a fascination, but she was a cop’s wife, and a former crime reporter. She’d been caught up in the scene. Her readers were regular folks off the street, but bloodthirsty for all that.
She’d attracted a few nuts and the like over the years, but Tommy had taught her well. She could shoot the guns in the safe with the ease of many hours of practice, had the house wired to an elaborate alarm system. She knew self-defense techniques. She was smart and savvy and capable of disguising her whereabouts with the computer. She’d been a computer science major at MTSU before switching to journalism her junior year. That gave her two important legs up, an edge over other crime bloggers—the ability to code her site with lovely little traps for those trying to sneak in the back door, and the skill to do all her own web work, ensuring that precious anonymity.
So much for memory lane. She really should move that picture of Tommy—every time she looked at it, the whole scenario flooded into her brain. She really should. But she wouldn’t.
Colleen stood and stretched, then slipped into the kitchen, past the cabinet that needed some work—it was practically hanging off its hinges—to the refrigerator with its broken ice machine. She cracked the lid on her fourth Diet Coke of the morning and started thinking of the angle for the next installment of the story. Teenage boys from upscale Nashville neighborhoods didn’t go missing every day. But if she was going to make this story sing, she needed a scoop, something major. Something official.
Settling back at her desk, she set the soda down and opened her internet browser. She tried to post five original stories a day, with attendant follow-ups as they happened, so combing the net and working her sources took the vast majority of her time. The minute one good story was in the can, she was off to the next.
Where was Peter Schechter?
Her message icon was flashing, so she toured through her new email first. She received tons of tips from true-crime buffs across the country, so many that she could barely handle them all. To help her sort through the mass quickly, she’d coded some of her best sources in the major metropolitans so they would stand out. There were three messages blinking red and marked urgent, one each from San Francisco, Boston and New York.
She popped up San Francisco first; it had come in the earliest. All thoughts of a local boy going missing disappeared when she read the message. Her heart began to beat a bit harder. She read it through twice, then closed it and sat back in her chair. Could it be? And was she the only one who had this?
She tried not to get too excited. A diversion was in order; she opened the message from New York.
A buzz began in her ears, the rush of adrenaline sparking through her system, bringing every nerve ending alive. She opened the message from Boston and nearly passed out.
If this was for real, this was huge. This was so huge.
She flew into activity, responding to her three contacts, asking the most relevant questions she could think of. Then she went to her bookshelf, her reference material, her background. Nestled on the left-hand side of the third shelf was a book she’d opened so many times that the edges were frayed and the binding broken. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.
She stroked the cover reverentially, then flipped it open. The book was organized alphabetically by proper name, not the nicknames given to the men and women whose crimes were housed in these hallowed pages.
She had to take this in steps. She debated for a moment, then decided. San Francisco first. She turned to a dog-eared page at the very end, to one of the few killers who was categorized by a nom de plume, one of the all-time majors. The man who remained anonymous after all these years. The man who hadn’t been caught.
She started with the Zodiac.
Four
The Outer Banks, North Carolina
Taylor was only allowed to spend twenty minutes catching up with Fitz before Renee Sansom knocked on the door and told them it was time to transport him to Duke for his afternoon surgery.
Taylor had tried asking questions, but Fitz was surprisingly evasive about the crimes he’d endured. He kept repeating the same lines: “I was drugged, I think.” “I really don’t remember anything.” “All I know is what I told you.” “He said to tell you ‘Let’s play.’” “He said you’d know what that meant.”
She’d expected him to be forthcoming with her, but after ten minutes of trying and failing to get him to open up, hearing him reiterate his apparent memory loss, she stopped. She hoped he wasn’t suffering from full-on PTSD, that he was just overwhelmed by the situation, that he remembered more than he was saying, or would remember when the shock wore off. But that was probably wishful thinking, considering what he’d been through.
She switched tactics. She asked if he wanted to go back to Nashville for the surgery and was surprised to hear he’d rather stick to the plan they had for him, go to Duke and get the surgery there. She wondered if he wanted to stay close to Susie, lying in the morgue.
Pushing the worry and concern from her voice, she filled him in on what had been happening in Nashville. How much his fellow detectives Lincoln Ross and Marcus Wade were looking forward to getting him back to work, about the new member of the Homicide team, Renn McKenzie, and their latest boss, Commander Joan Huston. Fitz seemed to appreciate the distraction. He held her hand tightly through the time they spent together, and Taylor could feel the frisson of fear that coursed through his body on a regular loop. He was scared, and that freaked her out.
The Duke Medical Center Life Flight helicopter landed in the small parking lot in front of the police station. Fitz was loaded in, walking slowly, head down. Taylor and Baldwin waved wildly until the sophisticated chopper was out of sight. Taylor hated like hell not going with him, but promised to be by his side tonight, after he was out of surgery. She and Baldwin would take the Gulfstream up, and as soon as Fitz was cleared, they’d take him home.
The snow was whipping harder now, the storm in full gear. They trooped back inside the station, shivering. The door closed against the blustery day, they made their way to the conference room Nadis had evacuated for their purposes.
