“We were never looking to buy a lake house.”
So she’d overheard his conversation with the agent. His mind raced, like busy little ants. What else had she heard? “We don’t need to talk about this now.”
“I think you are.” Her monotone, along with her utter stillness, had the flesh on his arms rising. “I remember that she went to Columbus. I wouldn’t even have blamed you, if it happened after Kelsey disappeared. We take comfort where we can find it. But this was before, wasn’t it? Seven or eight years ago. You were seeing her then.”
“Claire, whatever you’re on has your imagination working overtime.” Weak, but God, not now. He couldn’t have this conversation now. Not when he felt like a stiff wind could flatten him.
“Do you know what else my imagination is telling me?” She placed a hand on the bed beside her. Struggled to sit up. “It’s saying you were with her when I called you to help look for Kelsey. And that you lied when you said you’d driven around for hours afterward, searching. I don’t want to hear you admit it. I don’t think I could handle that.” The shadows under her eyes made them look like huge bruises in her face. “But if it’s true, I hope that’s gutted you every day since. I hope your life’s a misery knowing that when Kelsey needed you most, you were fucking a twenty-two-year-old and too busy to go look for her.”
Her words were daggers, slicing at his biggest regret until it was raw and bleeding. One decision made for all the wrong reasons had resulted in a lifetime of remorse. He was unable to ask for forgiveness. He’d never managed to forgive himself. Instead, he turned and walked through the door. Better to leave the words unsaid. Hopefully the pills would erase this scene from her memory. Then she could go back to being the martyred wife cocooned in anguish, who drifted through the days with only surface awareness of what went on around her. In an ironic twist of nature, this final tragedy had restored to her a measure of insight.
Because Claire had guessed some but not all. Only he knew the enormity of how badly he’d failed his little girl.
Special Agent Mark Foster
November 18
1:30 p.m.
“I’m just saying, I think we need to be careful what details we release, including to the victims’ families.” Sloane didn’t look away from the report she was reading on her laptop.
Mark felt a flicker of irritation. Being a linear thinker, he worked best when he could outline a lead with all the various directions it could take, then fill in the information derived from following each branch. Sloane was a broken record, distracting him from the task.
“You’re not speaking to a rookie.” His tone was testy as he stepped back to study the sheets he’d fastened to the wall of the motel room where he was adding his notes. “There’s a balance to be struck between keeping parents informed and withholding some evidence only for law-enforcement officers. I handle the families. We agreed on that from the start. You deal with the media.”
Her silence sounded like dissent. He glanced at her, saw the disagreement stamped on her face. He decided to ignore it. And her.
He stared hard at the spiderweb of lines and boxes he’d drawn. In one box was Newman’s name. In the other, he’d written Mikkelsen’s. Each line represented discovered connections between the men. Off to the side, he’d written the other two ministers’ names Newman had given them. Jennings and Wills. He hadn’t explored the janitor’s relationship to them yet. They’d spent the last few days going over the evidence from the crime scene, delving into Newman’s background, and juggling the incoming lab reports with their next line of inquiry.
While he preferred outline arrays, Sloane immersed herself in the reports and case files, highlighting info and somehow managing to extract even the most insignificant of facts to be recalled later.
He checked the time. They should have more test results by the end of the day. While there had been a flurry of lab activity since Kelsey’s body had been found, Mark was constantly aware that they weren’t much closer to finding Whitney DeVries. A fact that her father pointed out to him in every conversation they had.
His gaze shifted then, as it often did, to the rows of victims, verified and unverified. There was still that odd catch in his focus when he saw the first one Larsen had sent. But Sloane was right. They all looked enough alike to be related. His glance flicked to the photo of Kelsey Willard. Prettier than the rest, with a vibrancy that was faithfully reflected by the camera’s lens. But the victimology reports had revealed that the likenesses went beyond the physical. The observations from people who’d known them were repetitive. A good girl. A sweet young lady. Never a problem in class. And when it came to Kelsey, Spirited, but a pleaser.
So the victim selection was based on something besides looks. Compliance? Girls less likely to cause trouble for the offender? Mark was veering too close to speculation for his comfort. All the remarks describing the previous victims were also true for Whitney DeVries. He hoped, for the girl’s sake, that she turned out to be less agreeable than the killer had predicted. Because it would take a strong spirit to survive what the TMK had in store for her.
Newman also liked attractive young girls. The images on the man’s computer and the web address was proof of that. But they’d found nothing so far that definitively tied the custodian to Willard’s homicide, although they’d spent plenty of man hours on him. His former landlord had balked at letting them look at the place he used to rent until served with a warrant, which they were still waiting on. But they’d been through the rat hole Newman lived in now. Rental properties were like motel rooms in that they made for crappy evidence gathering. There’d been a mess of latent prints. Alternate light sources had shown a high number of stains behind the latest coat of paint on the walls, on the carpet, and furnishings. A few had even turned out to be bloodstains. There had been DNA galore. Too much. There was no way they could get authorization for testing all of it. Not until they got conclusive evidence that Herb Newman was the offender they were searching for.
It was time to start exploring the man’s links to others who were even loosely linked to the case. It was just a matter of finding the right connection.
“Okay, that’s it,” Sloane said. “I’ve got no properties in the Mikkelsens’ names, or in those of the other two pastors. I’m printing out a list of every parcel owned by the people listed as volunteers, workers, or instructors at the three churches.”
Mark turned to retrieve the results from the printer tray. Three pages. His heart dropped with a thud. “We’ll split these up among the Fenton County law enforcement and our investigators at the London office.” He scanned them. “The ministers listed may not own any real estate. But they all have access to some.”