Last Words

4

Beck walked along the cobbled path that led around the cove to the harbor. The midday sun beat down on the back of his neck and he’d already undone the top two buttons on his shirt. He wished he was off duty, wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans. It was that kind of day.

The phones had not stopped ringing since the increasingly lurid reports of Colleen Preston’s murder began to leak, and things had just gone downhill from there. By Beck’s estimation, over the past twenty-four hours, damn near half the population of St. Dennis had called in to the station asking if a mad killer was on the loose and wondering what Beck was doing to protect them. He didn’t blame anyone for being concerned-yesterday he’d called Vanessa and reminded her to be cautious on her date with Mickey Forbes-but the only thing he could tell anyone at that point was to take sensible precautions, not to go anywhere alone, and call the station if anything or anyone seemed suspicious. What else could he say?

He’d been up most of the night and the night before, unable to sleep, unable to escape the image of Colleen Preston’s sheathed body lying on the wooden porch. The horror of it was still fresh. The echoes of her heartbroken mother’s unceasing sobs still rang in his ears. As surreal as the scene had been, what ate at Beck now was the overwhelming feeling that there was something poised out there, someplace nearby, waiting to strike again. He felt it as surely as he felt the sun beating down on him, and the worst part was that he knew he was helpless to stop it. That sense of apprehension, that feeling that the other shoe would soon drop, made him restless, and the restlessness had driven him to walk.

He’d met with his staff at seven when the shift changed so that he could talk to everyone at the same time. He’d laid out the events of the past few days, describing with as little drama as possible what he’d seen on the porch in Ballard on Sunday night.

“Everyone’s saying that girl from Cameron…” Gus Franklin, his night-shift sergeant, said.

“I don’t want to assume anything, but I don’t like coincidences,” Beck had replied.

“If it’s the same guy, there’s likely to be more,” Garland had stated quietly. When all eyes turned to him, he explained, “We had something in Boston, not like this, not wrapping the women up like this guy did. But women in their twenties, just vanishing like that. It was like the victims just disappeared from their lives, like they’d been erased. They were just…gone. They all turned up in an old warehouse, lined up side by side like dolls across the floor.”

The room had gone silent.

“I can put in a few hours down around the cove,” Hal said. “Just poke around a little. We’re close enough to Cameron that if someone had something they wanted to hide, they might think one of those old buildings down there might make a good hiding place. You got a couple of properties down there, the owners haven’t been around in years. Just sitting on them, waiting for the values to go up. At least, that’s what Ham Forbes is telling me, and he knows real estate better than anyone else in town.”

“You might want to stop at his office later on and see what he knows about the individual properties. Might be worth getting a list of who owns what,” Beck said.

“Couldn’t hurt,” Hal agreed.

“I can stop out around the old boathouse on my way home,” Lisa told them.

“While I’m on patrol this morning, I’ll check out the old church on Christian Street.” Duncan stood in the back of the room. “And there are those abandoned shacks over behind the cemetery. I can make a quick stop.”

“All good suggestions.” Beck nodded. “Just keep your eyes open. And thanks.”

He’d gone from that meeting to one with the mayor and the chair of the town’s public safety committee, both of whom wanted assurance that none of the residents of St. Dennis were in danger from whoever had killed Colleen Preston, and possibly Mandy Kenneher as well. That Beck was in no position to give such assurance did not endear him to two of the more politically powerful members of the community. The fact that Christina Pratt, the mayor, had told Beck all he needed to know about the mentality of St. Dennis’s elected officials. He’d left her office and headed out the door. If ever he’d needed to walk off a pissy attitude, it was then.

Straight ahead was Singer’s Slips, the marina owned and operated by Lisa’s husband, Todd, and next to it, his boatyard and showroom. Hot and thirsty, Beck turned off the path and took the concrete steps down to the showroom.

“Hey, Chief, how’s it going?” Jay Gannon opened the door for Beck.

“Hot.” Beck gratefully stepped into the air-conditioned comfort of the sales area.

“How ’bout a cold one, Chief?” Todd Singer stepped out of his office when he saw his wife’s boss. “Water, soda?”

“Water would be great, thanks.” Beck followed Todd into the small sitting room off to one side of the showroom.

Todd opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of spring water. Tossing one to Beck, he asked, “So what can I show you today? We’ve got a nice special running on some used Whalers. Couple of years old, not too many hours on the motors.”

“When I have time for a boat of my own, you’re the first person I’m coming to see.” Beck sat on the arm of one of the green leather sofas and took a long drink from the bottle. “Unfortunately for both of us, that time hasn’t come yet.”

“Hey, you have to make time. Nothing more relaxing than being out on the bay early on a summer morning. Or at dusk, when the sun’s setting.” Todd grinned. “Nothing like it. I guarantee you’d love it.”

“I do love it,” Beck conceded. “But right now, I’ll have to be content to bum a seat on Hal’s cruiser from time to time.”

“Ah, now there’s a sweet boat.” Todd tilted his bottle in Beck’s direction. “I caught many a tourist eyeing that little darlin’ over the weekend. Lost track of how many people asked about her, if she was for sale.”

“You tell Hal? He might cut her loose if the price is right.”

“Not a chance.” Todd laughed. “I offered to buy that beauty myself, but the price he quoted was three times what she’s really worth. Cagey old bastard. He knows there’s nothing else like her around here.”

“Which is why the Shady Lady will be parked in his slip until someone is dumb enough to pay what he’s asking.” Beck took another drink.

“So if you’re not looking for a boat, what brings you down to the marina?”

“Just walking. Thinking.” He half-smiled. “Worrying.”

“Yeah, Lisa told me the killer who murdered that girl in Ballard might have killed the girl from Cameron as well.” Todd shook his head. “She said the medical examiner’s report came in, says that girl suffocated inside that wrapping. What kind of a sick bastard wraps a girl up and then lets her die like that? What was that stuff he wrapped her in, anyway?”

“Regular clear plastic wrap.”

“Like the stuff you buy in the grocery store?”

“Exactly.”

“Must have taken a lot to wrap her up. Maybe the cops over in Ballard should talk to the local stores and find out if anyone’s bought up lots of that wrap lately.”

“I imagine someone’s done that, although frankly, it’s the same type you can buy anywhere. One or two packages would have been enough. She was thin. It wouldn’t have taken much.”

“So you probably couldn’t trace it. That’s what Lisa said, too.” He played with the cap from his water bottle. “You think that girl from Cameron is dead?”

“She could be.”

“That’s what Lisa thinks, too.”

“Well, let’s not spread that one around. She may still show up alive.” Beck replied, thinking Lisa might be taking a little too much of her job home to share. He’d have to talk to her about that.

“Hey, all these years married to a cop, you don’t have to tell me what to keep to myself.” He made the gesture of zipping his lips shut. “In our house, the rule is, you don’t comment publicly until you’ve seen it on the news.”

“You follow that rule and you’ll be right every time.”

“Todd, phone,” Jay called from across the wide room.

“Chief was there anything…” Todd rose from the chair.

“No, no. Actually, I only stopped in to beg a cold drink and a few minutes of your cool air. I need to start back to the station.”

“Can I have someone drive you?” Todd offered.

“No, but thanks.” Beck rose from the arm of the chair. “Walking’s my therapy. I do most of my best thinking on my feet.”

“You oughta wait for a cooler day.”

“Should have thought of that myself.” Beck finished the water and tossed the empty plastic bottle into the recycling bin. “Thanks for the water.”

“Anytime. Want to take one with you for the road?”

“No, but thanks. I’ll walk back on the shady side of the path.”

“Good seeing you, Beck. Stop in anytime.”

“Will do, Todd. Hey, Jay, take care.” Beck waved and headed toward the door.

Beck did walk back on the shady side of the path, as far as Charles Street, where he crossed the street to stay in the shade as long as he could. His pager went off just as he’d turned onto Kelly’s Point Road. He looked at the number, which was familiar, but since he was only half a block from the station, he waited until he’d returned to his office to return the call.

“This is Chief Beck, St. Dennis PD, returning a call made from this number,” he said when a woman answered.

“Chief, I’ll get Chief Daley for you,” the woman responded. “Can you hold?”

“Yes.”

“Beck.” Warren Daley was on in a flash. “Something’s come up. I’d like you to stop over this afternoon if you could.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I’d rather not go into it on the phone.” Daley told him. “Is four o’clock okay?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good, good. See you then.” Daley hesitated, his voice shaky. “Beck, you’re just not gonna believe this…this damned case just keeps getting worse and worse. Just when you think you’ve seen it all…”

It was three fifty-five when a curious Beck parked behind the one-story wooden-frame building that served as the police department for the village of Ballard. Like St. Dennis, but unlike some of the surrounding towns, Ballard had opted for its own force. Several of the smallest towns, without funds to maintain their own police departments, depended on the state police. Ballard, Cameron, St. Dennis, and Hopkins, another few miles down the road, all had their own departments. And all had cruisers parked in the lot on this Tuesday afternoon. Rich Meyer’s car sat two spots down from Beck’s, and the cruiser from Hopkins apparently had arrived just moments before Beck. He could see Chief Gillespie still seated behind the wheel, talking on his cell phone. Beck delayed getting out of his car until he saw Gillespie’s door open.

“Lew!” Beck called to the other man.

“Hey, Beck.” Lew Gillespie waited at the foot of the dirt path leading to the back of the building until Beck caught up. “I see you received the summons too.”

“Any idea what’s up?”

“None. Warren just called earlier and asked me to please be here. He didn’t want to discuss it on the phone.”

“Yeah, he said that to me, too.” Beck frowned. From the little Chief Daley had said on the phone, Beck had the sinking feeling that something really big was about to play out.

“I see Meyer’s here, too.” Gillespie looked beyond Beck and added, “And there’s Ralston from Sandy Point, just pulling in behind you.”

The two men waited for the newcomer to join them.

“What’s up, gentleman?” Morris Ralston fixed a smile on his face.

“We were just wondering if you knew, Mo,” Gillespie told him.

“No clue.” He shrugged.

“Then let’s go on inside and find out.” Beck gestured toward the building.

“Amen.” Ralston slipped his fingers inside the collar of his starched white uniform shirt and gave it a tug. “Too damned hot out here anyway.”

The small Ballard police station had four rooms on the first floor, and four more in the basement. The three men were directed down the steps to a small conference room, where Warren Daley and Rich Meyer were seated at a round table awaiting the arrival of the others. Daley rose when they entered, and closed the door behind them.

“It’s just us five,” he told them, gesturing for the newcomers to take a seat.

“What’s going on, Warren?” Ralston asked. “Can we assume this has something to do with that case of yours?”

Daley nodded and reached for a pile of manila folders.

“This is Dr. Reilly’s preliminary autopsy report on Colleen Preston. Take a minute and look it over. I want you all to see what’s on the loose out there.” He passed out the folders.

For the next several minutes, the room was silent, save for the occasional sound of paper rustling. Suddenly the normally stoic Ralston growled, “God damn it, he wrapped up that poor girl alive so she’d suffocate inside that plastic hell. Jesus!”

The others made sounds of disgust and disbelief as they read on. When they’d all finished reading and solemnly closed their files, Daley said, “I’ve been a cop all my life. Been in this job thirty-five years. I’ve never had to deal with anything even remotely like this.”

He flipped open his own file and read details randomly, “Multiple insect bites cover the entire body.”

He turned the page. “Signs of repeated rape. Sodomy.”

He turned the page again. “Wrists and ankles bruised and cut showing signs of having been restrained.”

Another turn. “End of tongue severed…”

“Jesus!” Morris Ralston groaned. “She bit off the end of her tongue!”

One last turn. “Cause of death: suffocation.”

Warren Daley closed the file with a pronounced slap and it was clear to everyone in the room that he was close to losing it. His eyes brimmed with tears. “I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like for that beautiful little girl for however long it was that animal had her.”

He wiped away tears with the back of his hand.

“But let me tell you something about Colleen Preston.” He stood. “She did not go easy.”

He walked to the end of the table where he’d left his briefcase and brought it back to his seat.

“She never gave up. Never stopped fighting. That may be the only consolation her family has at this point.”

Curious eyes watched as he removed a tape recorder from his briefcase and set it on the table.

“Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does,” he told them. “Dr. Reilly found this tape inside the wrappings.”

He hit play, then sat in his chair, his elbows on the table, his steepled fingers covering part of his face.

“This is your chance, now, Colleen.” A distorted male voice filled the room. “If there’s anything you want to tell your parents, your brother, your sister, you’ll want to do it now.”

There was some indistinguishable sound in the background.

“That wasn’t nice,” the male voice said. “I’m giving you an opportunity to leave something behind that might comfort your family.”

“Momma, Daddy, I’m sorry,” a raspy voice whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…I never thought he’d…” The voice broke into sobs.

“Is that all? This is your last chance, Colleen. No words of wisdom for your sweet little sister?” The voice taunted.

“Fry in hell, you disgusting degenerate psychopathic pig-” she snarled.

The tape went silent.

For a long time, no one could speak.

Finally, when he found his voice, Beck said, “He’s not done, and he’s no amateur.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” Daley looked around the table, the circles around his haunted eyes deep and dark.

Rich Meyer covered his face with his hands. “If he’s got Mindy Kenneher…if this is what he’s doing to her…”

“The girl from Cameron who went missing a few weeks before Colleen Preston?” Gillespie asked.

Meyer nodded.

“If the same man took her, the odds are that he’s already killed her,” Beck said softly. “She’s already lost, Rich.”

Meyer sat speechless, contemplating the possibility.

“I asked you all here today because I frankly am at a loss,” Daley told them. “We’re all small forces, no reserves, no specialists to speak of. I’m thinking if he hit Cameron, and he hit us here in Ballard, where’s he going to hit next time? Is there anyone here who thinks he won’t strike again?”

“Yeah.” Gillespie nodded. “I think to a man, we’re all thinking the same thing.”

“We have no leads. Nothing. We might have some trace once the county lab reports come back, but that’s not going to be for a while. We couldn’t get any prints from the wrappings, so we’re assuming he was wearing gloves while he wrapped her up. She didn’t have so much as a smudge on her, so the ME thinks she was probably washed down real good to remove any trace before he wrapped her up. The CSIs tell me they got very little from her, but they’re processing what they did find. Gonna be a while before we know if we have anything that will help. Right now, we’re all blind,” Daley told them. “Anyone has any suggestions, I’d sure love to hear them now.”

“How long had Mindy Kenneher been missing before Colleen disappeared?” Beck asked.

“Mindy disappeared on June first,” Rich Meyer told them, then turned to Warren Daley. “The Preston girl?”

“June twenty-six. She disappeared on Tuesday, June twenty-sixth.”

“Three and a half weeks between the two.” Morris Ralston had taken a small notebook from inside his jacket pocket.

“And today is Tuesday, the tenth of July. Just two weeks since Colleen Preston disappeared.” Beck drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Until we’re proven wrong, I think we need to operate on the assumption that we’re dealing with a repeat offender here.”

“Three weeks between the first and second taking,” Gillespie thought aloud. “And he only held the Preston girl for two weeks.”

“Which means he’s probably looking for another victim,” Meyer noted.

“Or maybe he’s already found one,” Ralston said.

“Anyone reported missing that you know of?” Daley asked. Everyone at the table shook their head.

“Which could mean just about anything.” Beck held up one hand and began to count off the possibilities on his fingers. “One, he’s taken someone who hasn’t been reported missing or who’s far enough away that we haven’t heard of it as yet. Two, he could be sated for a while. Three, he could have moved on. Four, he could have stopped-”

“What are the chances of that?” Ralston said.

“Not much,” Beck agreed.

“Five, he could have been run over by a bus and right now is on a slab in the morgue,” Gillespie said, “and six, he could have been picked up on some charge in another state and is now the guest of, oh, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware…”

“Or just about anyplace else,” Meyer said with disgust.

“Okay, we agree, he could be anywhere right now. Any or none of those possibilities could be the right one.” Beck looked around the table at the others, each top man in their respective jurisdictions. At thirty-seven, Beck was the youngest man there. Two were already close to retirement age, another not far behind. “My gut is telling me that he’s still around. I think he’s going to want to watch, to see what Warren does. He’s going to want to watch the press, the papers, and the TV stations. Then I think he’s going to do it again.”

“I hate to say it, but my gut’s telling me the same thing.” Chief Daley nodded.

“So where do we go from here?” Gillespie asked. “You thinking about calling in the county sheriff?”

“God, I don’t want to do that. I swear I do not.” Daley shook his head. “I had three homicide cases I had to work with Jake Madison, and after the last one, I swore I’d never do it again. The man is the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever had to deal with. His ego is as big as the Atlantic, and once you confer with him, he totally takes over. Wouldn’t be so bad if he knew what he was doing, but he’s just a bumblefuck from the word go. I do not want to bring in the county if it means I’ll have to deal with him. As important as this case is, turning it over to him will all but guarantee our killer gets away.”

“There are some really good men over there, Warren,” Lew Gillespie pointed out. “Some fine detectives, and their lab people are top-notch.”

“No argument there, and I’d be the first to say it,” Daley agreed. “But unfortunately, they all take orders from Jake.”

“So what are you proposing to do?” Gillespie asked.

“Well, I thought I’d start with a press conference tomorrow, tell everyone that we’ve had this meeting, and that all the local departments are on the same page. We’re all going to work together to find this killer.” Daley looked from one man to the next. “We all banded together two years ago and we caught that bank robber-”

“ Warren, you know you have my total support, and that the St. Dennis force is behind you one hundred percent,” Beck told him. “But this isn’t the same kind of case.”

“What would you do, if you were me?” Daley asked Beck.

“I’d do what you’re doing, but I’d go one step further,” Beck said. “I’d call the FBI and ask for help. I’d ask for a profiler, first thing, and I’d ask for an agent or two who had experience with serial offenders-”

“Hold up there, Beck,” Lew Gillespie protested. “It’s too early to start throwing around terms like that.”

“I don’t think so, Lew. I think this guy’s killed before. His whole MO is too sophisticated, too well thought out, too well executed. He’s no amateur. I’d bet my life on it.”

“I’ve already told Beck how I feel about this profiler nonsense.” Meyer sat back in his chair. “I think it’s all a waste of time.”

“I think Beck’s got a point,” Morris Ralston told him. “This killer is accomplished, he knows what he’s doing. And even if Mindy Kenneher turned up tomorrow with some story about going to Disney World, even if the Preston woman was the only victim, I don’t think it would hurt us to have an idea of what type of person we’re looking for. Especially if he’s living among us.”

“The FBI thing, I’m going to have to sleep on. But the press conference will be called for ten tomorrow morning,” Daley told them. “I’m inviting you all to attend, if you have a mind to.”

“Might be a good idea.” Meyer nodded. “A show of force. Of solidarity.”

“Make everyone aware there could be a problem, this guy could be out there. Urge everyone to be particularly careful until we catch this killer,” Gillespie added. “Let them know we’re all working together to find him.”

“And if he’s watching, let him know that he’s got to deal with all of us now,” Daley noted. “That every police officer in this part of the bay is looking for him. Send him a message.”

Beck glanced around the table at the concerned faces, and knew they were all thinking the same thing.

Looking for this guy was one thing. Finding him was going to be something else.