OSBORN.
Now there is no doubt.
Naturally, work remains to be done. I must learn her home address-unlisted, of course, like any police officer’s. But I anticipate no insuperable difficulty about that. The shooting took place in Newton Division, logically implying that she works out of the Newton station house. Were an inconspicuous individual to watch the station’s parking lot for a day or two, said individual would be sure to see Officer Osborn enter or leave. Then it would be only a question of following her, or of tracing her license plate.
After so many years, to be reunited with Caitlin! I’m all a-quiver. I believe I’ll make her Miss January-she’s certainly attractive enough. She’ll be such a lovely specimen on display. Yes, give her another month or so to breathe the air. Come late January, she’ll breathe no more.
P.S. Today is the winter solstice, turning point of the year. How apropos. Happy Saturnalia to me! Here’s to a rich harvest of a fine young crop.
“Christ,” Walsh said, looking up from the journal. “What the hell do you make of that?”
“It sounds like this creep has been active for a long time,” Cellini said. “And he used to be into kids.”
“And one of those kids was Osborn.” Walsh frowned. “Her ex said she’d been through some painful childhood experience. He didn’t know the details.”
“And now her past has caught up with her. Damn it.” Cellini closed the journal. “The son of a bitch wasn’t even looking for her. It was just a fluke. A sound bite on the news.”
“And now she’s dead,” Walsh whispered.
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Donna. Or yourself. Treat snatched her and killed her, and we let him get away so he can keep on doing it… again and again and again…”
His cell phone chirped. Walsh pulled it from his pocket and stared at it, thinking emptily that this had better be good news.
“You gonna answer that?” Cellini asked.
He clicked the keypad. “Walsh.”
“Morrie, we’ve got something here.” It was Rawls, his voice crackling over a long-distance connection.
Walsh couldn’t imagine what Rawls could have come up with in Baltimore that would be relevant now. “Give it to me,” he said curtly, in no mood to be affable.
“We got to thinking about whoever sent us the e-mail that tipped us off to the Bluebeard site. Decided to trace it. Linked it to an ISP-that’s an Internet service provider-and obtained the identity of the person who owns the account. He lives in LA. He’s somebody you’d better talk to.”
“What’s his name?” Walsh asked, and then suddenly he knew. He knew even before Rawls answered the question. He knew, and he could have killed himself for not seeing it sooner.
“Adam Nolan,” Rawls was saying. “Spelled N-O-L-”
“ God damn it.”
Walsh uttered the profanity so loudly that one of the radio technicians from the communications room leaned into the command center to see if things were okay.
“I gather you don’t need me to spell it,” Rawls said dryly.
“No.” Walsh swallowed hard, ignoring the stares of both Cellini and the technician. “No, I don’t need you to spell it. I’ve met with him. I was in the same room with him three hours ago. He’s her ex-husband, damn it to hell. He set this whole thing up”-he was speaking half into the phone and half to Cellini-“played with us, used Treat for cover. Used a goddamned serial killer as a diversion. That’s why Treat was home tonight, why he didn’t have her. He never had her. Nolan did-and still does, if she’s alive.”
Cellini took out her cell phone and speed-dialed.
“Any idea where Nolan is now?” Rawls asked.
“No, but we’ll find him. We’ll find the son of a bitch.”
“You sound like yourself again, Morrie.”
“Who’d I sound like before?”
“Somebody who’d given up.”
“Fuck no. Not me. I’m on the case, Noah. And if it’s humanly possible, I swear to God I’ll save that woman’s life.”
48
C.J. lay in a shallow ditch, flat against the ground, while headlights swept over her head.
The ditch had been excavated for the purpose of planting hedges. Heaps of dirt rose up on both sides. She had seen the depression in the ground and taken cover there, and now she waited, praying the car would pass by.
The car. Absurd to think of it that way, but on some level she saw the car itself as her enemy, the demon car with its shining halogen eyes and its engine’s guttural purr. Its tires were paws that meant to maul and savage her. Its exhaust was an animal’s panting breath. Its stops and starts, its pivots and reverses, were the maneuvers of a predator on the prowl.
More than once it had come close to grinding her under its wheels. But in the chase she’d had certain advantages over her pursuer. She could take shortcuts a car couldn’t use. She could cut down narrow alleyways, climb over piles of debris, dive into foliage and lose herself in shadows.
Growing up, she had seen hounds chase desert cottontails, and she was the rabbit and the car was the hunter, sniffing out her trail, relentlessly closing in.
She pressed her face to the dirt and waited. Above, near the edge of the ditch, the BMW slowed as if debating where she could have gone.
There were several possible hiding places within view. An unfinished fountain lay across the road in the center of an artificial pond, bone dry. She could have concealed herself there, or behind one of the concrete benches that ringed the pond, or in the ramada on the opposite side. Farther away stood a line of fig trees, newly planted, spindly, bare of leaves but still offering shelter. Behind her lay the start of what appeared to be a bike path or a hiking trail, winding between shelved hillsides landscaped with rocks and wildflowers.
Many places she could have gone. So why had the car stopped alongside the ravine, its engine idling dangerously?
She groped in the dirt and found a rock. A pitiful weapon, but she would use it if she had to. She would not go without a fight.
The car hesitated a moment longer-then backed up with a squeal of tires and shot across an open courtyard, past the pond, into the night.
Gone.
She’d done it. She’d gotten away.
She rose to one knee, then hung her head in exhaustion. She was dirty and bruised; her clothes stuck to her in patches of sweat; her sneakers were thick with clotted mud.
The mud would leave a trail. She kicked her sneakers against the ground until most of the dirt had been knocked loose.
Then she considered what to do.
The car, of course, was not her real adversary. Still, if she could conceal herself someplace where the car couldn’t find her, she was likely to be safe.
All she had to do was enter an office building, leaving no sign of trespassing, and then Adam could circle and recircle the complex for hours without success. Even if he did surmise that she was hidden in one of the buildings, he wouldn’t be able to search them all.
She nodded in approval of her plan and stood up, her legs shaky after the long helter-skelter run. Slowly she climbed out of the ditch, then broke into a weary jog trot, heading down an avenue lined with dark streetlights.
The nearest building was a three-story structure with tiers of windows checkerboarding the unpainted wooden walls. There were panes in the windows, crisscrossed with tape. She pushed upward on one window, but it was locked. To get in, she would have to break the glass.
Adam might notice a broken window. She wondered if she should find another hiding place No time.
The car was coming back. She heard the warning growl of its engine, louder than before.
He must have realized he’d lost her. He was retracing his route.
C.J. ran to the farthest window, partially screened by a sapling held upright by two taut ropes. She snapped off one of its branches and used it to punch through the glass, then brushed shards away from the frame to clear a larger entryway.