“That’s it?”
“Like I said, it was a long time ago.”
Daniels shot Lancaster a look that said they were done. He removed the rental’s keys from his pocket and tossed them to her, knowing that she would want to drive. She pressed the unlock button on the keys, and the rental’s doors popped open.
“Wait.” Rhoden lowered his voice. “We’re obviously not the men you’re looking for. Can’t you show some pity, and let us go?”
“Not happening,” Daniels said.
“But I helped you,” Rhoden said, his voice trembling. “I didn’t have to buy you that cup of soup, or show you compassion, but I did. You were more than just a patient to me, Elizabeth. You were a terrified young woman, and I went out of my way to help you. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Daniels looked ready to explode. “I saw a laptop in your living room. A video of an underage girl having sex with a man was playing on it. Was that your laptop?”
Rhoden nodded. He did not act the least bit ashamed.
“Did you download that video to your laptop?” she asked.
Again, Rhoden nodded.
“Then you’re going to prison,” she said.
“But it’s just a video,” he protested. “It’s not like Jack and I are molesting young girls. We know that’s wrong, so we watch videos to keep our fantasies in check, just like men who watch S&M and bondage videos. Can’t you see the difference?”
“I do see the difference,” she said. “No young girl willingly has sex with a strange man twice her age. She’s either drugged or is being held against her will. She’s a slave and has no say in the matter. If it weren’t for people like you downloading those videos, they wouldn’t exist, and that young girl wouldn’t be exploited. That’s the difference.”
“You’re not going to help me,” Rhoden said, sounding defeated.
“On the contrary. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you never get out of prison. That goes for your friend Jack too.”
“But we’re invalids.”
“Tough shit.”
The monster lurking just below the surface showed its ugly head, and Rhoden lunged at her. Lancaster stepped between them and put him on the sidewalk. Rhoden grabbed his hip and howled in pain.
“You broke my leg,” he said.
“It was nice catching up,” Daniels said.
Chapter 37
Reverse
Every agent of the law wore two faces. There was the face that they wore in public while performing their job, and there was the face they wore in private when no one was looking. Daniels drove out of the Oakland Park neighborhood and headed south to where Lancaster lived. They came to an intersection with a RaceTrac service station on the corner, and she pulled in and parked. Lancaster assumed she was going to use the john or buy a drink, and was surprised when she placed her head on the wheel and shut her eyes.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
He went inside and got two large coffees and an assortment of doughnuts. The store was quiet, and he killed a few minutes chatting with the manager about the flooding and did he think it would end anytime soon? He returned to the car to find Daniels wiping her cheeks with her palms. Both of her eyes were bloodshot. He placed the coffees in the holders on the dash and opened the bag and offered her a doughnut.
“No, thanks, I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Eat one anyway. It’ll make you feel better,” he said.
She chose a chocolate-covered doughnut and took a giant bite out of it. The sweetness brought a tiny smile to her lips, and she washed it down with coffee.
“Do you know how many times this has happened to me?” she asked. “So many that I’ve lost count. Every time I think I’ve found these bastards, the rug gets pulled out from under me. It’s like God’s punishing me, and I have no idea why.”
“It’s eating you alive, isn’t it?” he said.
She finished her doughnut and pulled another out of the bag. “These are delicious.”
“Have you thought about asking for a reassignment? I’m sure your superiors would say yes, considering how long this has been going on.”
“I’ve thought about it plenty of times,” she said. “But then a new envelope of photographs gets dropped on my desk and there are new leads to run down. I’m so immersed in the case that it would be impossible to bring another agent up to speed and expect they’d be able to put all the pieces together. Do you think I’m a bad person?”
“It doesn’t sound like you have enough time in your life to be a bad person.”
“Then why is God doing this to me?”
“God isn’t doing this to you. There’s a lot of evil out there. When it touches people, they get hurt. No one’s immune, not even good people like you.”
His answer seemed to satisfy her. Back on the road, he asked a question that had been bothering him. “The author of The Hanover Killers speculated that a pair of cops might be behind the killings at Dartmouth. Rhoden said the same thing. Is that an angle you checked out?”
“The FBI was all over that,” she said. “The bureau interviewed the Hanover Police Department and the departments from the neighboring towns. The neighboring towns were quickly ruled out. That left the Hanover Police Department, which employed sixty-eight full-time officers at the time of the killings and fourteen part-timers. Each officer worked ten-hour shifts, four days a week, and had to attend roll call before they went on duty. The station supervisor was responsible for keeping track of each officer’s hours and sick days. The officers were responsible for keeping logs that showed when they issued tickets or made arrests. The FBI reviewed everything and determined that there were six officers whose whereabouts weren’t accounted for during the times of the killings and when I was abducted. Two of the officers were female and ruled out. The FBI interviewed the other four officers, and they had airtight alibis.”
“If it wasn’t the local cops, what about guys with military backgrounds or retired cops who lived in Hanover?”
“We checked out as many of those as we could.”
“But you couldn’t check out all of them because there’s no database that contains all of them,” he said. “That’s why you were suspicious of me. It could still be a cop.”
“It could be.”
“You must have a theory as to who these guys are.”
“My theories have all proven false. I’m positive I’ve run across them during my investigation, but I didn’t realize it was them. It eats at me.”
Two blocks from his condo building they hit more flooding. The street hadn’t been flooded when they’d left, and Daniels weighed driving through the water.
“You never know what’s underneath,” he cautioned.
“Spoilsport.”
She threw the rental into reverse and drove backward down the street until she came to an intersection and masterfully turned the vehicle around. Her skill was admirable, and it made him want to enroll in a tactical driving class.
Ten minutes later they were in his condo ready to start over. Earlier, they had separated the list of names of male nurses at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and searched the DMV database to see which ones now lived in Florida, believing that the killers had established residency here. They decided to take a different approach, and run each name against the National Crime Information Center’s database to see which of the nurses on the list had criminal records. Daniels sat on the living room couch, working on her laptop. Lancaster sat across from her, holding the list.
“Ready when you are,” she said.
He read aloud the first name to her. “Ronald Colley.”
He spelled the name to ensure that she entered it into the NCIC’s search engine correctly. Daniels hit “Enter” and tapped her fingers impatiently as she waited.