Cold Truth

7

FBI Special Agent Mitchell Peyton only wanted one thing on this Friday afternoon: an uninterrupted ten-minute block of time in which to finish his lunch.

He scowled as the fifth phone call in a row was put through to him. Okay, I’ll settle for five. He counted to ten, put down the sandwich he’d been about to bite into, and tried to talk himself into not picking up the receiver.

He wished he could make himself not answer, just once.

“Peyton.”

“Mitch, it’s John Mancini. Got a minute?” As always, the boss wasted little time with small talk.

“Sure.”

“Come on down, then.”

Mitch hung up and rewrapped his sandwich-his favorite, roast beef and provolone with horseradish on a crusty whole-wheat roll-in the heavy white butcher’s paper Andre’s Deli used for some of its best work. He put Andre’s latest masterpiece back into the bag it had been delivered in, then opened the bottom drawer of his desk. Not that anyone in his office would walk off with someone else’s sandwich, of course.

Yeah, right.

“Bunch of sharks around here,” Mitch muttered, and dropped the sandwich into the open drawer, then took a long drink from the bottle of water that sat open on his desk before setting out for the elevator.

“He’s expecting you. Try not to let him go on for more than eight to ten minutes. He has a meeting with the director at noon,” Eileen Gibson, longtime secretary to John Mancini, said without looking up from her computer when Mitch entered her office. “The coffee’s fresh. I just made it.”

“Thanks, Eileen.” Biting back the urge to refer to her by the name the field agents called her behind her back-the Little General-Mitch paused long enough to pour a cup. He ignored what he knew coffee would do to his near-empty stomach.

He rapped his knuckles on the inner door, then let himself in.

“Be right with you. Have a seat.” With one hand, John motioned vaguely in the direction of the chairs that stood on the opposite side of the desk from where he sat, and with the other, he finished scribbling whatever note he’d been in the midst of making.

Mitch folded his long legs as he sat on the chair closest to the window and sipped at his coffee.

“Nice job you did, wrapping up the Kingsley case, Mitch.”

“Thanks. I had a lot of help on that one.”

“True. Everyone on that team is to be commended. And will be commended, officially. I’ll be seeing to that in about forty minutes. But I do believe it was your investigative-and computer-skills that put the pieces together. Very impressive.”

“Thanks, John.”

“Actually, you did such a good job, and I’m so impressed, I’m going to ask you to look into something else for me.” John Mancini leaned back in his chair. With his shirtsleeves rolled up and his glasses hanging from his shirt pocket, no one would suspect him to be the head of a special investigative unit that operated within the FBI. “You know who Joshua Landry was?”

“Sure. He’s that true crime writer who was killed last year by one of the three murderers who had hooked up in Pennsylvania and switched hit lists. Sort of a Strangers on a Train meets Ted Bundy and friends, if I recall.”

John nodded. “Close enough. The three met by accident in a holding room in the courthouse and had a little too much unsupervised time alone. They seemed to have made some type of deal to kill for one another-each would knock off three people who had at some point in time pissed off one of the others. None of them ever admitted to it, but it was pretty apparent that an agreement had been reached among them. Anyway, Landry crossed paths with one of them some years ago and had apparently made one hell of an impression. Enough so that he was gunned down in his barn one morning last fall. Shame, really. He was not only a good writer, but a smart investigator. He’d have made a hell of an agent, I always thought.”

Mitch sat quietly, waiting to find out what all this had to do with him.

“One of the things that Landry did that set him apart from other writers in the genre was he’d look into open cases, usually older ones, cold ones. If he solved them, he’d write a book about it. More than once, he’d turned over information or evidence to us or to the local law enforcement agency, which helped lead to an arrest and conviction. He was a pretty sharp guy.”

“Sounds like.” Mitch was still wondering.

“I was there the day he was murdered. Spent some time with his daughter-did I mention he had a daughter?” John looked across the desk.

“No, but I know you’re working up to it.”

John laughed. “We’ve worked together too long, Mitch. I got a call from Regan Landry-that’s the daughter-this morning. She’s been going through her father’s files for the past few weeks, organizing things and what all, thinking about selling his house. I’m not surprised. It’s a beautiful spread he had, but Josh was killed there. Guess that spoiled any really good memories she might have had of the place. Anyway, she tells me she’s going through some boxes and found some notes Josh made about the Bayside Strangler. Remember him?”

“I don’t have to remember him. Every time I turn on the news, I hear about another murder that’s being attributed to a copycat Strangler up there in some Jersey resort town. At least, last time I heard, they were still suspecting it was a copycat.”

“Right. That’s the official word. Well, it seems Regan has some correspondence from the real Strangler that was written to her father years ago, as well as some notes that Josh made that Regan isn’t sure how to interpret. She thinks they may somehow relate to the old case. I’d like you to make a trip up there-Landry’s farm is right outside of Princeton -and look over what she’s got. If something Josh had in his files could help ID the original Strangler, who knows? Maybe it could lead to the killer who’s trying to follow in his footsteps.”

“If she has information about the Bayside Strangler, shouldn’t she be contacting the department investigating these recent killings?”

“She’s called the chief of police up there in Bowers Inlet several times, but he hasn’t called her back. So I’m thinking he’s in over his head, not calling back the writer because, hey, she’s just a writer and what he needs isn’t more publicity but a few leads.”

“That’s a big assumption, John.”

John nodded. “Could be unfair, sure. But I’ve seen the local chief on TV. Looks like he’s really trying to get a handle on things, but my impression is, he’s overwhelmed. He mentioned on the Today Show he has one detective. One detective, and all these bodies. Think about it.”

Mitch did. He didn’t envy the chief of police who had to try to track a serial killer with only a small department and one detective.

“So…?”

“So I’m sending you to go through Josh Landry’s paperwork and see if you can find anything there that might shed some light on the case.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to send an agent to the scene and give them another set of hands and eyes?”

“That’s next on my agenda.” John handed Mitch a business card. “Here’s Regan Landry’s phone number and address. Give her a call and let her know you’ll be stopping by tomorrow. I already told her I’d send someone up, tell her you’re it.”

“Okay.” Mitch took the card and stood. “I should know after a day or so if there’s anything there.”

“Good. I’ll wait to hear from you,” John said. “Oh, and on your way out, tell Eileen to track down Rick Cisco and get him on the line.”

It was nearly ten P.M. by the time Mitch turned off the light in his office and gathered the file containing the information about Josh Landry he’d printed off the Internet. The hall stretched long and quiet before him as he started toward the elevator. Light spilled from the doorway of the office five doors down from his. He rapped his knuckles on the frame and peered inside.

“You almost done?” he asked.

Rick Cisco looked up from his desk, where a ream of paper spilled out from a fat file.

“Just about. You heading out?”

“Yeah. Thought I’d stop at Henry’s for a beer on my way home. Want to join me?”

“I need about ten more minutes.”

“Sure.” Mitch dropped his briefcase on the floor and slid into the lone visitor’s chair.

“I have a few more things I want to print out…” The agent’s focus was on his computer screen. “I’m leaving for New Jersey first thing in the morning and I want to get a handle on this case.”

“Let me guess. You pulled Bayside Strangler duty.”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Mancini intimated earlier he’d be sending someone to work with the police, right before he asked Eileen to track you down.”

“Should be an interesting case.” Rick stood and leaned over his desk to replenish the paper supply in the printer. “I spoke with the chief of police up there today. They really have a mess on their hands. Bodies piling up, no witnesses, no suspects. Very little trace evidence. This guy has been very, very careful, all the way around. He’s left very little behind. No semen, no saliva, no blood.”

“Fingerprints?”

“They’re trying to lift them off the victims’ skin-all the vics were manually strangled-but it’s been tough going. They’re sending the prints on to our lab, see if we can get something usable.” Rick sat down and hit the Print command and watched the first few sheets of paper feed through before turning to Mitch. “Of course, if there are no prints on file that match, it won’t much help us at this point.”

“Well, I’m heading to New Jersey, too, and coincidentally, my assignment is related to yours, though I’m sure it won’t be as interesting. I’m going to be going through the papers of a writer who may have received some correspondence from the Bayside Strangler. The original one. The real one. Whatever we want to call him.”

Mitch filled Rick in on the information he’d gotten from Regan Landry when he’d called her that afternoon.

“So what’s she got in the files that the FBI needs to look at?” Rick asked.

“She says she has a lot of notes that her father had made and some letters from someone claiming to be the Strangler.”

“Why would he have contacted a writer?”

Mitch shrugged. “Who knows? I guess that’s one of the things I’ll find out. Not as exciting as directly working a serial killer case, though.”

“I don’t know about that.” Rick grinned. “Have you seen this Regan Landry?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. She was on one of those morning news shows not too long ago.”

“And…?”

“Short and sweet, good-looking. Interesting face. Lots of long curly blond hair and nicely put together, if I recall. And smart. She came off as being really, really smart.” Rick stood and packed the printed material into the file, which he tucked under his arm.

“Well, we’ll see how smart she is when we start going over her father’s notes.” Mitch followed Rick to the door and snapped off the light. “I’m still thinking you got the best deal, though. I haven’t had a good serial case in a long time.”

“You had that guy in California last year,” Rick reminded him as they headed for the elevator.

“Yeah, but that was an easy one. Something tells me this is going to be a lot more involved.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’ve got two possibilities here. One, he’s the real Strangler. Two, he’s a copycat. If this is the guy who has been around for-what is it, twenty-some years?-he’s good, Rick. He’s really, really good. Where’s he been all this time? You know he’s been up to something-they don’t kill, then stop, then start up again unless something has intervened.”

“Like maybe a prison term.” Rick hit the Down button.

“Maybe. Could be you’ll get a match off those prints there.”

“I’ve already requested that any prints we find be run through NCIC on a priority basis.”

“And if he hasn’t been in prison, where’s he been?” Mitch asked. “And then we have to consider the possibility that this guy is not the real deal.”

“The chief up there in Jersey- Denver ’s his name-seems to be weighing in heavily on the copycat scenario.”

“Either way, you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Mitch said as the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside the car. He hit the button for the lobby. “The original Strangler or someone following in his footsteps, he’s going to be hard to bring down. He’s killed how many now-three? four?-in a short period of time, and no one has a clue as to who he is or what he looks like.”

“And it isn’t going to get easier the more time that passes. According to Denver, every day more people come into town for the summer season.”

“If you’re the killer,” Mitch noted, “that’s good news. The more potential suspects the law has to weed through, the less heat on you.”

“If you’re the killer, it’s great news. The higher the population, the more potential victims get added to the pool. There’s no telling how high the body count could go before we find him.”

The two men stepped off the elevator and signed out at the main desk in the lobby.

“I’ll meet you at Henry’s,” Mitch said as they walked out through the back door to the parking lot. His car was just ten spots off to the left, Rick’s a little farther out in the lot.

Mitch unlocked his driver’s-side door, thinking about the files that awaited him at the Landry farm and the possibility there’d be something that might aid in the search for a killer.

At the same time, Rick was electronically opening his own car, wondering just how high the count would go before the killer was stopped, and how long it would take before he was tracked down.