The King Tides

Chapter 33 Wheelchair Etiquette

“I want to be straight with you about something,” Daniels said as she pulled into a parking space at Country Walk and silenced the engine. “I had no idea how identical Nicki looked to Cassandra. Had I known, I would never have posted the videos.”

Her voice was riddled with guilt. Lancaster had worked stings as a cop and never liked them. There were often unintended consequences to setting a trap that no one ever saw coming. As he started to get out, she grabbed his wrist.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“I don’t think you’d do anything to hurt your niece,” he said. “But you must have realized that another teenage girl might bear a resemblance to Cassandra. And that by posting those videos, you’d put that girl in harm’s way.”

Her lower lip began to tremble.

“That never occurred to me,” she said.

“I find that hard to accept,” he said.

He was roasting without the AC and tried to get out. She kept holding his wrist.

“Please believe me,” she said.

“But I don’t,” he said. “If you were an ordinary cop, that would be another story. But you’re an FBI agent and you also went to Dartmouth, which is Ivy League. You’ve got to be pretty smart to get into that place. The sting you created had the potential to hurt an innocent girl. You knew that, but you still went full steam ahead.”

A single tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away and took a deep breath.

“All right. I knew there was a risk, and so did my superiors,” she said. “But we took it anyway. We didn’t really have a choice, considering the circumstances.”

“You’ve lost me. What circumstances?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t talk about it.”

“You have my word.”

She reached into the back seat and grabbed her briefcase. Holding it in her lap, she unzipped an inside compartment and removed a large manila envelope with a drawstring, which she spent a moment undoing. From within came a handful of old-fashioned square photographs that was an inch thick. She passed the stack to him, and he thumbed through them. They were a collection of different young women taken before and after their lives were extinguished. In the before photos, the women were clothed and had smiles on their faces and looked either high or drunk. In the after photos, they were naked and tied up, their lifeless faces etched with anguish and pain. Unable to process anymore, he handed the photos back to her.

“That’s beyond horrible,” he said.

“Welcome to my world,” she said.

Dinner no longer sounded appealing. She found a Starbucks, and he went inside and bought two grande cups of Pike Place and brought them out to the car. He placed a handful of sugar packets and artificial sweetener on the seat between them, along with a pastry.

“Only one? Talk about showing a girl a good time,” she said.

“We can split it,” he said.

She leaned against her door and blew the steam off her drink. “I joined the FBI right after I graduated from Dartmouth and worked my way up the ranks. Maybe because of what happened to me in college, I became adept at catching sexual predators. I would stay up all night running them down. My bosses noticed, and in 2012, I was promoted to running the Violent Crimes Against Children/Online Predator Unit. I wasn’t on the job two weeks when the first photographs landed on my desk.”

“The killers sent them to you?”

“They were more clever than that. The victim’s photographs were taken on an old-fashioned camera, and the film was dropped off at a pharmacy to be developed. When the pharmacy processed the film and saw it was of a murder, the local police were contacted. The cops didn’t know what to do with the photos. They didn’t have a body or know the victim’s identity, so the photos were forwarded to the FBI. Since the victim was a young girl, the photos were passed on to me.”

She tore a piece off the pastry and popped it into her mouth.

“You can have all of it,” he said.

“Thanks. The first photos came from a pharmacy in Houston, so I flew in and worked with our office there trying to identify the victim. We eventually matched her to a body that had been found in a field on the side of a highway. She was an illegal Mexican immigrant who left her job at the mall one afternoon and never arrived home. There were no real leads in the case, so I went back to DC.”

“Those were the photos you showed Rusty,” he said.

“Yes. She was the first victim.”

Half the pastry was gone. It seemed to help her relax.

“Six months later, another set of murder photos showed up on my desk,” Daniels said. “Same scenario as before. Taken on an old-fashioned camera and dropped off at a pharmacy to be processed, this time in Atlanta. Again, the cops didn’t know what to do with them, so they were sent to the FBI, and I got them. I flew to Atlanta, and worked with our office there to identify the victim. She was another teenage girl who worked at a mall and never came home. The body was found in a field while I was there. It struck a nerve.”

“The killings in Hanover,” he said.

She nodded. “The Hanover killers also discarded their victims’ bodies in fields. It made me wonder if the murders were connected, so I had a forensics team compare the evidence from the Hanover killings to the killings in Houston and Atlanta. All four of the victims had worked in malls. They’d also been fed a meal before they were killed. There were enough similarities with the cases that forensics concluded the same pair of killers had murdered all four victims.”

“That must have freaked you out,” he said.

“It was very upsetting, to say the least. I went to my bosses and asked them to open an active investigation into the Houston and Atlanta killings. An active investigation means the bureau devotes a portion of its budget to a case, and is required to report its findings to the Justice Department every six months. My request got approved, and I’ve been chasing the killers ever since.”

“How many victims are there?” he asked.

“Fifteen so far. The photos show up like clockwork every six months. They rotate between Houston, Atlanta, and Fort Lauderdale. The killers have a unique calling card. In the before photo, the victim is wearing a gold Saint Jude medal, in the after photo, she’s not. Just when I get ready to shut the investigation down, I have to start it back up.”

“Why would you shut it down?”

“Bureau rules. If there’s no movement in six months, the case is put on the back burner, and the agent handling the case is given a new assignment.”

“Are you telling me that you’ve been working this case continuously since 2012?”

“Afraid so.”

“That’s seven years working one case. You must be frustrated as hell.”

“I am. But I can’t stop. I look at the photographs of these dead girls, and it rips me apart.” She turned her head and stared through the windshield. “I can’t remember the last time I had a decent night’s sleep.”

She fell silent. The pastry was a memory, so he got out of the car and went into the Starbucks and purchased an apple fritter the size of a softball. He brought it to her, and she immediately started picking at it. Sweets were definitely her weakness.

“We caught a break two years ago,” she said. “The photographs were dropped off at a Walgreens pharmacy in Plantation in South Broward. I flew down and interviewed the photo processor who’d been on duty that day. His last name was Daniels, so of course we hit it off. Daniels remembered the guy who’d dropped the film off, and told me that he’d seen the guy at a Fourth of July fireworks celebration on the beach.”

“So our killers live in Fort Lauderdale,” he said.

“At least part of the time. They may also have residences in Houston and Atlanta as well. You want some of this fritter? It’s really tasty.”

He tore off a small piece to be sociable. “Where are we in the rotation?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said that every six months there’s another victim. Are we due for another killing? If the way you ransacked my condo is an indication, I’m guessing we are.”

“Yes, we’re due. The last victim was killed five months and three weeks ago. I should be getting another packet on my desk any day now.”

“From Fort Lauderdale?”

“Correct. It’s next in line. We think the killers kidnap a girl and keep her doped up for a few days. They feed her a last meal, and then it’s lights out.”

“What’s the significance of the last meal?”

“We don’t know. Maybe it’s a way to calm her down.”

He chewed on the fritter and washed it down with his coffee. “If your math is right, these guys are going to kill another girl very soon. Do you have any other leads?”

“No. I’m running blind.” She gave him a weary look. “Can you help me save her?”

The question caught him off guard. Saving people had been his specialty as a SEAL. His pot belly and small stature had made it easy for him to blend in just about anywhere in the world. That had come in handy during hostage rescues.

“I’m happy to try. You want to take a break first? Go for a walk?”

“I’m okay, but thanks for offering,” she said.

“I have a theory about your killers,” he said. “Before I share it with you, I need to ask you a question. How many of the victims worked at malls or in retail centers?”

“All of them.”

“So the victims were around groups of people when they were abducted.”

“Yes. Except for me. I was walking home from a class.”

“You were different.”

“How so?”

“Our killers saw you walking by yourself and decided to be opportunistic and grab you. They put ski masks on, jumped out of their car, and abducted you. It was a rushed job, and they botched it. That’s why you managed to escape.”

“That makes sense. What’s your theory?”

He thought back to the elderly man in the tracksuit pushing the dying woman in the wheelchair, and how every person they’d encountered had avoided them. “Our killers have come up with a unique way to abduct their victims from public places,” he said. “They use a wheelchair. I first thought the wheelchair was for distraction, but there’s another reason. Let me show you how it works.”

He took out his cell phone and pulled up the surveillance video of Nicki’s near abduction at the Galleria mall. Daniels held the phone up to her face and stared at the screen. Her mouth grew taut with rage.

“My brother-in-law saved the day,” she said.

“Yes, he did,” he said. “Nicki was the killers’ next victim. They connected her to the Cassandra videos and decided to abduct her, knowing it would destroy you when the photos of her landed on your desk.”

“How can you know that for certain?”

“I know because of how hard they tried. The abduction at the Galleria mall failed, so they tried to grab her from home and escape in a boat. When that failed, they parked a van across the street and started watching the house. They were on a mission.”

“You may be right. So what’s your theory?”

“I’ll show you. Watch the video again. This time, focus on the people in the mall.”

Daniels watched the surveillance video a second time.

“None of them are paying attention,” she said. “Why do you think that is?”

“It’s the presence of the wheelchair,” he said. “From the time we’re little kids, our parents train us not to stare at people being pushed in wheelchairs, who are either handicapped or sick. It’s considered bad manners, so we avoid making eye contact when we see a person in a wheelchair. That’s our killers’ trick. They approach their victim from behind. One pushes a wheelchair, while the other holds a bottle of chloroform and a rag. They knock their victim out and strap her into the wheelchair, which they push through the crowd while people deliberately avoid looking at them. Outside in the parking lot, they put the victim in their vehicle, and load the wheelchair in the trunk.”

“You’re saying that there are witnesses, but they’re not paying attention.”

“Correct. There were plenty of people present when Nicki was nearly abducted at the Galleria mall, yet none of them helped your brother-in-law. That’s because they were looking the other way. Which leads me to my next theory.”

“Which is what?”

“You’ve been looking for a pair of cops. That makes sense, since the police from the nearby towns didn’t submit to DNA testing during the investigation of the Hanover killers. But what if this wasn’t a pair of cops? What if it was a pair of nurses or paramedics? They would have experience handling a wheelchair and also access to chloroform at the hospital where they worked.”

“Jesus. I never considered that,” Daniels said.

She fell silent. Her fist punched the dashboard.

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” he said. “People in the medical profession rarely commit crimes and hardly come up on law enforcement’s radar. But there are always exceptions. Did the employees at the hospitals in Hanover submit to DNA testing during the investigation?”

“I don’t know. There’s only one hospital near Hanover, and that’s the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, which is three miles from the college.”

“How hard would it be to find out?”

“Not hard at all. I stay in contact with the FBI agent that handled that case. He’s retired now and lives in a community in central Florida called The Villages. Every time I get new information, I share it with him, hoping it might spark a memory.”

“You should call him. I’m willing to bet that the employees at Dartmouth-Hitchcock didn’t submit to DNA testing either.”

“You think our killers are male nurses,” she said.

“Yes, I do,” he said.