Hunter nodded once. “If he doesn’t get coverage, you call me, do you understand?”
She leaned up, kissed Hunter’s cheek. “Completely.”
Noah stood, his heart unsteady. With Hunter, Eve was unfettered and made Noah realize how much of her guard she maintained with him. But he’d promised to give her time and space. “I’m going to catch an hour sleep. Don’t leave without me.”
Wednesday, February 24, 9:00 a.m.
Noah gave Jack a short nod when they sat down with the rest of the team in Abbott’s office. An hour of sleep had made a little difference. At least he could think again.
They were waiting for Abbott, who was still in a meeting with the brass. Noah didn’t envy his boss a penny of his medium-sized salary at the moment.
There was an awkward silence as they waited. Micki and Olivia looked at him and Jack with concern. Olivia’s partner, Kane, looked as if he realized he’d missed something, but wasn’t going to push it because he trusted his partner to fill him in later. Olivia and Kane had one of the best working relationships of any of Abbott’s staff. Noah envied them.
Ian had been at Rachel’s scene and had worked the rest of the night. He looked like hell. The only one at the table fully rested was Carleton Pierce, but even he frowned as he checked each face around the table.
“What’s happened?” Carleton asked. “And I’m not talking about the investigation.”
“We were too late getting to the victim’s house last night,” Noah said. “She was already dead, by forty minutes.”
Carleton’s brows knit. “Who found her?”
“I did,” Olivia said. “And I missed the killer by ten minutes.”
“I don’t understand. How did you know where to look?”
“We got another tip,” Jack said tightly. “From our CI.”
“He knows, Jack,” Noah said. “Carleton, I know that you went by to see her last night. We were able to figure out which of the test subjects was next, but we got our signals crossed and now Rachel Ward is dead.”
“I see,” Carleton said, glancing at Jack’s stony face. “I wish I didn’t.”
Abbott came in then. “Tell me we have something, people.” He closed the door, his face almost as stony as Jack’s. “At least balm for that ass kicking I just took. Ian?”
“I finished the autopsy. The victim had a blood alcohol of 0.15.”
“Whoa,” Micki said. “That made her damn near pickled. But I’m not surprised. We found a vodka bottle under the seat of her car. She’d drained it dry.”
“The ket blood test isn’t back yet,” Ian said, “but I found no puncture wounds on her neck. I did find the same swelling around her elbows that Christy had, so I’m betting he used a straitjacket again. No defensive wounds on her hands, although there were ligature wounds at her ankles. She was tied to a chair while her feet burned.”
Noah remembered. The smell in the place. Burning flesh. It still made him nauseous.
“He burned her feet?” Carleton said, hushed. “My God.”
“Burns on feet and calves,” Ian said. “Urine came back positive for amphetamines.”
“Did she self-administer,” Abbott asked, “or did he give it to her?”
“There was only one needle mark. I think he gave it to her to counteract the booze.”
“He wanted her alert,” Micki murmured.
“So he could scare her senseless with fire,” Jack said. “I checked her background. Five years ago her ex-husband found she’d been cheating on him, so he followed her to the motel where she met her lover and torched the place. The lover and two bystanders died. Rachel was trapped. She had severe smoke inhalation and almost died herself.”
“That explains the old lung scarring I found,” Ian said. “I wondered.”
“Where is the ex-husband now?” Olivia asked.
“State pen,” Jack said, “serving twenty-five to life. And he’s still there as of this morning. I had the warden himself check the man’s cell.”
“So this victim had a documented fear of fire,” Carleton said. “The killer could have assumed this was her greatest fear.”
“Or he could have these.” Noah put a stack of questionnaires on the table. They’d been delivered that morning. “Filled out when subjects began the study at Marshall.”
“May I?” Carleton reached for the questionnaires. “ ‘What is your greatest fear?’ ‘Why do you think you have this fear?’ Samantha feared being buried alive because…” He flipped to the next page. “Interesting. Her cousins buried her in the sand at the beach as a child and left her there, with a snorkel in her mouth to breathe from.”
“So the killer buried her alive,” Abbott said.
“In commercial-grade potting soil,” Micki said. “Available at any garden store. Oh, and he buried her in the bathtub. I sent a team to the apartment where Samantha lived. It hadn’t been rented out yet. Or, luckily for us, cleaned very well. We found soil under the edge of the grout around the tub and a few particles in the drain trap.”
“What about Martha Brisbane?” Abbott asked.
“Afraid of water,” Carleton said, scanning the page, then his face bent in sympathy. “Oh. Her father drowned. Martha saw it happen. She was five at the time.”
Noah clenched his jaw. “You know, I keep thinking I can’t hate this guy any more, but I keep finding a way. To have read that, then to have used it…”
“He’s a sociopath,” Carleton said simply. “A sadistic sociopath. He gets pleasure from the pain of others. Christy Lewis, phobia of snakes… Just because.” He looked up with a shrug. “That’s what she wrote. ‘Just because.’ ”
“So she didn’t have any kind of traumatic event?” Jack asked.
“Or she didn’t want to share it,” Carleton said. “There may very well not have been one. I see a lot of patients with snake phobias and many can’t tell me why. Some of it is instinctive. Snakes are dangerous and humans have developed a fear of dangerous things. Survival of the fittest and all that.”
“And now Rachel Ward,” Abbott said. “With her fear of fire. Does she mention why?”
“She says she’s afraid of right-wing Republicans, which is a NOYB answer-none of your business. Subjects will use sarcasm when they don’t want to tell you the truth.”
“But,” Olivia said, “he could have googled her and found that out, like Jack did.”
“But it wasn’t that simple,” Jack said with a frown. “Somebody had to dig. I googled her first, and didn’t get anything. I ran a background, saw she’d used a different name five years ago and checked the marriage licenses. I googled her ex to get the story.”
Noah met Jack’s eyes and gave him a “well-done” nod and was relieved at Jack’s brisk nod back. “So,” Noah mused, “our killer understood her right-wing Republican answer was just a ruse and dug deeper. I find that strange.”
“Why?” Abbott asked.
“Exactly,” Noah said. “Why? Why not just accept it at face value and pick somebody else? There are five hundred names on the list. Why Rachel Ward?”
“Maybe because she was so available,” Jack said. “She was online every night.”
“Possibly,” Noah said. “I talked to a few neighbors last night who said she kept to herself, never went out, a real-world introvert. In Shadowland she was a cabaret dancer who’d take home a dozen ‘men’ a night.”
“I don’t get the whole virtual sex thing,” Abbott said with a frown. “Is it common?”
“Not uncommon, according to Eve. Not that she gets it either,” Noah added hastily.
Abbott’s eyes rolled. “If Rachel had a liquor bottle under the seat of her car and a BA of oh-fifteen, he probably met her at a bar. Find out where.”
“Not many bars in town,” Jack muttered sarcastically. “But it’s a start.”
“What about the car I saw last night?” Olivia asked. “The brown Civic.”
“Nothing from the BOLO,” Micki said. “And Girard’s wife’s car was in the garage.”
“I want to know what connection Girard has to this guy,” Noah said. “He’s either faster than a speeding bullet, or Girard has a serious enemy.”
“Who is Girard?” Ian and Carleton asked at the same time.