The King Tides

Chapter 37 Reverse

Every agent of the law wore two faces. There was the face that they wore in public while performing their job, and there was the face they wore in private when no one was looking. Daniels drove out of the Oakland Park neighborhood and headed south to where Lancaster lived. They came to an intersection with a RaceTrac service station on the corner, and she pulled in and parked. Lancaster assumed she was going to use the john or buy a drink, and was surprised when she placed her head on the wheel and shut her eyes.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

He went inside and got two large coffees and an assortment of doughnuts. The store was quiet, and he killed a few minutes chatting with the manager about the flooding and did he think it would end anytime soon? He returned to the car to find Daniels wiping her cheeks with her palms. Both of her eyes were bloodshot. He placed the coffees in the holders on the dash and opened the bag and offered her a doughnut.

“No, thanks, I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Eat one anyway. It’ll make you feel better,” he said.

She chose a chocolate-covered doughnut and took a giant bite out of it. The sweetness brought a tiny smile to her lips, and she washed it down with coffee.

“Do you know how many times this has happened to me?” she asked. “So many that I’ve lost count. Every time I think I’ve found these bastards, the rug gets pulled out from under me. It’s like God’s punishing me, and I have no idea why.”

“It’s eating you alive, isn’t it?” he said.

She finished her doughnut and pulled another out of the bag. “These are delicious.”

“Have you thought about asking for a reassignment? I’m sure your superiors would say yes, considering how long this has been going on.”

“I’ve thought about it plenty of times,” she said. “But then a new envelope of photographs gets dropped on my desk and there are new leads to run down. I’m so immersed in the case that it would be impossible to bring another agent up to speed and expect they’d be able to put all the pieces together. Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“It doesn’t sound like you have enough time in your life to be a bad person.”

“Then why is God doing this to me?”

“God isn’t doing this to you. There’s a lot of evil out there. When it touches people, they get hurt. No one’s immune, not even good people like you.”

His answer seemed to satisfy her. Back on the road, he asked a question that had been bothering him. “The author of The Hanover Killers speculated that a pair of cops might be behind the killings at Dartmouth. Rhoden said the same thing. Is that an angle you checked out?”

“The FBI was all over that,” she said. “The bureau interviewed the Hanover Police Department and the departments from the neighboring towns. The neighboring towns were quickly ruled out. That left the Hanover Police Department, which employed sixty-eight full-time officers at the time of the killings and fourteen part-timers. Each officer worked ten-hour shifts, four days a week, and had to attend roll call before they went on duty. The station supervisor was responsible for keeping track of each officer’s hours and sick days. The officers were responsible for keeping logs that showed when they issued tickets or made arrests. The FBI reviewed everything and determined that there were six officers whose whereabouts weren’t accounted for during the times of the killings and when I was abducted. Two of the officers were female and ruled out. The FBI interviewed the other four officers, and they had airtight alibis.”

“If it wasn’t the local cops, what about guys with military backgrounds or retired cops who lived in Hanover?”

“We checked out as many of those as we could.”

“But you couldn’t check out all of them because there’s no database that contains all of them,” he said. “That’s why you were suspicious of me. It could still be a cop.”

“It could be.”

“You must have a theory as to who these guys are.”

“My theories have all proven false. I’m positive I’ve run across them during my investigation, but I didn’t realize it was them. It eats at me.”

Two blocks from his condo building they hit more flooding. The street hadn’t been flooded when they’d left, and Daniels weighed driving through the water.

“You never know what’s underneath,” he cautioned.

“Spoilsport.”

She threw the rental into reverse and drove backward down the street until she came to an intersection and masterfully turned the vehicle around. Her skill was admirable, and it made him want to enroll in a tactical driving class.

Ten minutes later they were in his condo ready to start over. Earlier, they had separated the list of names of male nurses at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and searched the DMV database to see which ones now lived in Florida, believing that the killers had established residency here. They decided to take a different approach, and run each name against the National Crime Information Center’s database to see which of the nurses on the list had criminal records. Daniels sat on the living room couch, working on her laptop. Lancaster sat across from her, holding the list.

“Ready when you are,” she said.

He read aloud the first name to her. “Ronald Colley.”

He spelled the name to ensure that she entered it into the NCIC’s search engine correctly. Daniels hit “Enter” and tapped her fingers impatiently as she waited.

“The computer’s running slow tonight. That happens when a lot of agents are running checks at once. Wait, I’ve got a response. Negative. Who’s next?”

“Wayne Heinrich.”

He spelled the name, and she entered it into the search engine.

“What did we do before computers?” she asked.

“We guessed more,” he said.

Heinrich also came up negative. The next twenty names on the list produced the same result. She raised a hand to her mouth and smothered a yawn.

“I need more coffee,” she said. “I’m starting to crash from all the sugar in those doughnuts.”

“Coming right up.”

He fixed another pot in the kitchen. He made it extra strong and filled two mugs. Searching the NCIC database one name at a time was a painstaking process, but he was convinced it would pay off. The Hanover killers had to be nurses for the simple reason that every other suspect had been eliminated. Daniels’s willingness to start over was assurance that she believed he was right. He returned to the living room with the mugs.

“Any luck?” he asked.

She did not reply. Her head was tilted back, and she was snoring. He cleared his throat but did not rouse her. He put the mugs on the coffee table, then gently removed the laptop and also put it on the coffee table. With her eyes still closed, she mumbled thanks, then lay sideways on the couch and slipped into dreamland.

He got a blanket and covered her. It was time to take a break. Before he did, he glanced at the laptop’s screen to see if they’d gotten a hit. Her latest entry had come up negative. He grabbed a mug and went outside. He needed to check in with the troops.

Sometimes late at night when the city was asleep, the light pollution dimmed and the stars came out. Tonight was such an event, and he stood at the railing and beheld the flickering dots in the night sky with his cell phone pressed to his ear, talking to Carlo.

“How are things at the Pearls’?” he asked.

“About the same,” Carlo said.

“You still seeing a lot of strange cars?”

“Yeah. Too much traffic for a residential street. That was some scene at the beach. In the old days, you would have torn that lifeguard’s arm off.”

“I guess I’m getting soft in my old age. How are the Pearls holding up?”

“They’re hunkered down inside watching a movie. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never came outside again.”

“I should probably call and calm them down.”

“Not a bad idea. Later, brother.”

The building had a visitor. Down below, the security gate rose, and a yellow taxi entered the property. It parked by the entrance, and the driver hopped out and removed a suitcase from the trunk and gave it to his female passenger, who paid him. The driver was familiar, having brought many residents home from the nearby airport.

The driver started to leave. The area around the entrance was having new pavers installed, and the driver had to back out in order not to hit any of the equipment. It was a struggle, and he finally got clear and left. Lancaster watched the taillights disappear and realized his skin was tingling. The driver knew how to handle the wheel, yet when it came to driving in reverse, he had struggled, much in the same way most people who drove a car would struggle. Driving in reverse was difficult, unless you were trained to do it.

Daniels had been trained to drive in reverse at the FBI’s training facility in Quantico. She was so skillful that he wanted to learn himself. He’d never seen anyone else drive in reverse that well — with one exception.

Two days ago, two of Nicki’s stalkers had been parked in front of the Pearls’ house in a white van, casing it. When Lancaster had chased them, the van’s driver had gone in reverse down the street and escaped. There were several vehicles parked on either side, yet the van hadn’t scraped a single one.

Based upon their use of a wheelchair at the Galleria mall, he felt certain they were the same pair of monsters who’d terrorized Dartmouth College twenty years ago. And now he knew something else about them. One of the stalkers knew how to expertly drive in reverse. Which could only mean one thing.

He’d been trained.