“Seven-thirty,” Griffin muttered, looking at the clock on her nightstand. He stood and slipped into a T-shirt and shorts and headed out. Vickie found her robe and did the same.
Griffin reached the door first and looked through the peephole. He opened the door right away, just as Vickie came up behind him.
Rocky and Devin were there.
“What’s happened?” Griffin asked them. He didn’t mention the hour.
And he wouldn’t, Vickie thought. He knew that if they were there, it was for a reason.
“Barnes called you and then me,” Rocky said. “They—”
He broke off, staring at Griffin, and frowning.
“What’s on your neck?” he asked Griffin.
“What? Ah!” Griffin reached up and grabbed at the white collar he’d donned for his pose the night before.
Vickie hadn’t thought it was possible for someone so tanned to blush so fiercely.
“Oh,” Rocky said.
“Ohhhh!” Devin said, and laughed.
“Hey!” Griffin protested.
“Don’t tease, it’s all great,” Devin said. She punched Rocky in the arm. “No judgment. Go for it, you guys! Anyway, we’re not here to ruin your sex lives.”
“Well, you’re not doing a bad job!” Griffin said.
“You didn’t ruin anything. We just woke up,” Vickie said. She couldn’t help giggling, and then they were all really laughing, and it felt good—their lives could be far too filled with tension. Yes, it was good, even if a little embarrassing.
“Do we know who the young lady is in the hospital? Our redheaded Jane Doe?” Griffin asked.
“No,” Rocky said, “but they’ve found a match for the blood that was thrown on Vickie.”
“A match? Already? You mean, they have more than O positive...a real match to someone?” Griffin asked.
Rocky nodded. “Helena Matthews, twenty-five. She was reported missing six weeks ago. The police took a DNA sample from her toothbrush during their initial search for her. She left work in Bristol, Rhode Island, to meet up with friends for an annual dinner in Fall River.”
“She never came home,” Devin finished quietly.
6
“All right, there might have been several relevant events in the past,” Griffin said, reading from the file in his hand.
Rocky was driving the Bureau-issued SUV; Griffin was in the back with Vickie, his computer on his lap and a pile of printed files on top of them. Since Rocky and Devin had arrived at Vickie’s door, they’d been in a flurry of activity: packing a few things since they’d stay overnight, and making arrangements.
Griffin had spent more than an hour all told on the phone, first with David Barnes, and then with Jackson Crow and Adam Harrison down in Virginia. Barnes was going to see that Boston was flooded with a likeness of the woman who had claimed to be Audrey Benson, along with a recent picture of Helena Matthews, garnered from her missing-person file.
She was—or had been, Griffin reluctantly thought—beautiful. Her face was serene, heart-shaped and lovely. She’d had warm amber eyes and long honey-blond hair. In her picture, she was smiling.
Agents in the Virginia office would be doing record searches, seeking anything they could find, and, of course, clearing paths for Griffin and the others with other law enforcement agencies.
“First off,” Griffin continued, “Fall River was once alive and prosperous with textile mills. When the mills began to go down, it was just a quiet town. Then, of course, you had the ‘trial of the century,’ that being the trial of Lizzie Borden in 1893, as in ‘Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.’ Except, of course, she was acquitted, and to this day, historians and scholars argue over whether she did or didn’t do it. Me, I think she did. But hey, they were living in Victorian days, so they missed a heck of a lot of evidence, and then, even if they’d had it, they didn’t have the science we do today.”
“In reality, she gave her stepmother nineteen whacks and her father ten or eleven. It was overkill either way, if, in fact, she was guilty. I tend to agree that she was,” Vickie said, looking out the window as they drove.
Griffin smiled. Of course Vickie would know accurate details. She was a walking encyclopedia when it came to the state of Massachusetts.
“You also know about the murders in the 1970s, then, right?” he asked.
“Vickie is probably better than our files!” Devin said, turning to smile at Vickie.
“I know about them, yes—so tragic,” she said. “There was a sudden rise in prostitution in the area. Teenagers, mostly. The first murdered girl was found with her head so beaten and bruised that it was difficult for authorities to make an identification. The second girl was found in the same condition. The third girl, Karen Marsden, had actually come in to the authorities—and then decided against testifying. Only her skull was ever found. At the trial, her ‘ritual’ beheading was graphically described. She had spoken against a man named Carl Drew, and his girlfriend, Robin Murphy, gave testimony against him and others in Marsden’s murder. Anyway, I don’t think it was really a case of Satanism as much as it was a method of manipulation, though the killings are known as Satanic cult murders. Robin Murphy might have been just seventeen, but she knew how to rule the ranks. She used all kinds of manipulation against people—including Satanic rituals out in the forest, and, of course, encouraging and helping in murders to carry out so-called rites.”
She broke off and looked over at Griffin. “The words that people have been using in Boston, written on Alex and other victims, weren’t linked to that group. In fact, what happened with the Drew/Murphy cult was so horrible and so terrifying that the other murder was barely noted. A single body was found by the river that didn’t fit the other murders, and those words—Hell’s afire and Satan rules, etc.—were found in the dirt by the river. The victim was a young woman named Sheena Petrie. The killing was accredited by many to the cult, but it was different. Her throat had been slit. She had recently left her husband, who had an alibi. It was never solved. Oh, and in the other case, both Drew and Murphy were convicted, but Murphy is eligible for patrol now and goes before the board every so often.”
“That’s terrifying,” Devin said. “Though, honestly? The number of really chilling murderers who might be out on parole at any time is damned scary.”
“True,” Griffin murmured. “Today we’re meeting with Robert Merton and Cole Magruder first—the detectives on our current missing-person case of Helena Matthews. Detective Merton is from Bristol, Rhode Island, and Detective Magruder has been working the case from the Fall River side of it. This afternoon, we’re going to see one of the detectives on the 1970s case. Then tonight, we’re meeting with a man named Syd Smith. He was almost drawn in years ago. But more important than that, he was also the one who came upon the writing in the ground—and the body of Sheena Petrie.”
“So, we’re definitely staying in Fall River tonight?” Vickie asked.
“Yep,” Rocky said.
“Where are we staying?” Vickie asked.
“Where are we staying?” Griffin asked. Their sleeping arrangements had been set up by Angela Hawkins, a coagent and Jackson’s wife, back in their Virginia headquarters.
Rocky laughed softly. “The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast. Where else?”
*