Fatal Distraction (34 page)

In addition to the victims' vulnerabilities, they had one other thing in common: Ben Fleming, who had known and treated them all.

With queasy certainty, Helen processed the fact that Ben Fleming had killed Mattie Crawford, Eric, Ryan, Todd Dale, and nearly Oliver. She couldn't imagine his motive, but she believed with every ounce of her experience that the forensics would eventually link all of the crimes.

And one thing more: He would kill again.

Trying to betray none of this yet, she turned the question back on Jess: “Why
should
we be looking for Ben Fleming?”

Jess stared at her as if Helen had lost her last ounce of intelligence. “Didn't they tell you? He ran out of the chapel when Vivian Ward's body was discovered and we haven't been able to find him since. That's what took me so long to get back here. I've called his home and his office, but no one picks up. We drove by both places, but no luck. I've collected more data about him since I last talked with Mac, and I want you to have it.”

She inclined her head toward the two officers. “I'm not sure these two agree with me, but I think he may have killed Vivian Ward.”

“Hold on a minute—” Mac said.

“First, we—” Frank began.

Helen interrupted them both. “Jess is right. We need to find Ben Fleming as soon as humanly possible.”

She reached over to the small drawer on the right side of her desk and pulled out the cell phone. “A few minutes ago I noticed Ben had called but I didn't think it was important then.”

She pressed the voice mail retrieval button, then the speaker phone feature. She turned up the volume and allowed all four of them to hear his familiar baritone.

“Helen, it's Ben. I'm so glad to hear that Oliver is well. Jess Kimball told me he'd awakened from his coma. I know you're relieved about that. I wish I could make it over to see him before my flight, but I'm on my way out of town for the holiday. I've had tickets to visit friends in New York City for weeks. I'll return after the New Year and by that time, I hope Oliver will be back to normal. I'll try to call you from New York, but I may not have a chance. Merry Christmas, Helen. I know this is the best possible gift you could have received. Please give my best to Oliver, too.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Thornberry, Florida

Sunday 8:00 p.m.

JESS WAS THE FIRST ONE to speak. “What time did that call come in?”

“Almost four hours ago,” Helen said. She played it twice more. Then she saved it and handed the cell phone to Frank. “There's a lot of background noise. The call came from his personal cell phone,” she said. “See if you can use it to find him. I'll explain in a few minutes.”

They didn't argue. Jess saw Frank and Mac exchange a glance with Helen and wondered what she'd missed.

“I'm on it,” Frank said, rising with the phone and headed into the kitchen.

Jess called out to him. “Wait, Frank, I've heard those sounds before. A lot lately, in fact. It's semi truck tires passing his car alongside the interstate, I swear. Wind gusts, too. He was calling from the road.”

“It's that windy?” Frank asked.

“The radio said gale-force winds tonight and tomorrow. Some kind of cold front headed in from Canada,” Jess replied.

Mac cast her an appraising glance, as if he'd been unsure of her value before now but had decided she might have something to offer after all. Mac looked at his watch. “We might still catch him before he lands in New York and have someone meet him at the gate.”

“He could have flown out of one of the smaller airports,” Helen told Mac. “He has a pilot's license and a plane. It's in a hangar at Vandenberg, I think.”

Mac nodded. “I'll check. But just in case, we'll contact TIA and the regional airports, too. Let me get the team looking for his name on any of the passenger manifests. Maybe we'll get lucky.” He rose from his chair to get started.

Jess said, “Don't the feds have jurisdiction at the airports these days? Can't they help?”

Mac said, “I'm sure they will. Everything's recorded at TIA, but sometimes it's faster to do the leg work than to search all that recorded data. I'll get someone to check the parking lots for his car, too.” He followed Frank out of the room, already voicing instructions to someone on the other end of the phone.

Once they were alone, Jess took another bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. She knew why
she
wanted to find Ben Fleming, but she hadn't expected such support from Helen based on her hunch that Ben was involved in Vivian's death. She'd presented no physical evidence to persuade them because she had none. And the last time she'd talked to Mac, he'd been dismissive of her accusations. Now, both men had rushed off to work on finding Ben Fleming and their change of heart made no sense. And what had convinced Helen?

Helen sat behind her desk, saying nothing, seemingly preoccupied.

“What's going on?” Jess asked. “Why are you so interested in finding Ben Fleming all of a sudden? What do you know that I don't?”

Helen blinked as if startled to find Jess was still in the room. Helen's eyes narrowed and focused on Jess, making her feel guilty of something without knowing what.

“Can I trust you, Jess?”

Nonplussed, Jess's mouth fell open and her mind blanked. She could think of no adequate reply.

“It's an easy question,” Helen said. “Either you intend to keep my confidences or you don't. You're a journalist with a job to do. I'd understand if you said no. But you need to be honest with me. I'm going to hold you to your promises.”

Helen continued to watch Jess's face intently, although what the woman was looking for remained a mystery to Jess. “I . . .” she began, shrugged her shoulders and tried again. “I'm not sure what you want to know.”

“You told Ben Fleming that Oliver was conscious,” Helen said.

“Wait. Did I? As I recall, he came up to me and said something about Oliver's condition having changed. I guess I confirmed it, but either he already knew, or he did some very clever fishing for the info. Which would be just like him.

“But even if I did tell him, was it a secret? Oliver
is
Ben's patient, as Ben loves to remind us all. I thought I was sharing good news. I didn't know then what I know now about Ben Fleming.” Jess paused, searching Helen's eyes.

Helen blinked, but said nothing.

“I'm sorry,” Jess said, meaning it. “I really am. But can we get past this? Can you tell me what you know? My cards are all on the table. I'm on your side.”

“I'll tell you,” said Helen. “But I want Frank and Mac to be here too. They deserve the explanation. For the moment, tell me everything
you
know about Ben Fleming.”

Still wondering what had Helen suspecting Ben Fleming, Jess shrugged. “Back when you first started seeing him, you probably investigated the good doctor. Right?”

“To some degree,” said Helen. “He came highly recommended.”

Jess nodded. “Well, you weren't the only one. When I went to the execution, I learned that he'd been working with Sarah Taylor, the Crawfords, and the Wards as well. He seemed to know them all intimately. All of you trusted him, liked him, relied upon him. He was a common thread in all the cases. He had all this incredible access to you and the other families. And he was there, today, when Vivian Ward died. At her side. So I decided to do some quick digging. Where did he come from? How did he become this trusted, connected guy, and why?”

Helen motioned for her to continue. “And?”

“Like a lot of grief counselors, he's become much higher-profile since 9/11. He's worked with survivors of major disasters, notorious school shootings, the works. Based on all this recent, publicly available information, he looks legit.”

“Right.”

“Then I made a few phone calls. I didn't have a lot of time, but I found out some alarming things. Especially after today.”

“Why today?” Helen asked.

Jess skipped over the facts she'd learned about Ben Fleming's Kansas childhood, the only son of an impoverished, dour couple who operated a mortuary from the first floor of their home and lived in the flat above. His mother died following a long battle with cancer during Ben's junior year of high school. Her obituary described the woman's life's work “delivering selfless comfort to the town's bereaved.” Jess had written obituaries for her first journalism job out of college. She could read between the lines, and it sounded as if Ben's mother had put the bereaved ahead of her son's welfare.

Jess had followed that lead and spoken to one of Ben's teachers who described him as a sweet boy with few friends, teased mercilessly because of where he lived and his parents' work. When he began to work in the mortuary after school, his social situation deteriorated further.

But Mrs. Raines said Ben had compensated by adapting to his life in the mortuary. Death seemed comfortable to him rather than a source of fear, as it was for most children. She said he seemed especially well adjusted, except that he never apologized for any transgression, no matter how significant. He seemed not to comprehend that his actions were occasionally hurtful to the other children.

Most alarming to Jess was his disabled father's death in the fire that consumed their home during Ben's last month of high school. Life and property insurance paid out after the fire left Ben a wealthy orphan. He'd written several chilling scholarly articles in which he explained that his parents' deaths had been a blessing, for them both as well as for him.

Ben's portrait depicted a man
too
comfortable around death and grief. Jess's conclusion: Ben Fleming was a superb grief counselor because he thrived on the death and grief of others.

But how convincing would all this be to Helen Sullivan? When would she motion that she'd had enough biographical speculation, and move on?

Finally, without prelude, Jess said, “He's a killer, Helen. He's killed before. I'm guessing that he killed his father and maybe his mother. I believe he killed Mattie Crawford, and Arnold Ward saw him do it and told Vivian what he saw. I'm sure he killed Vivian today too. He'll kill again. We've got to stop him. We've
got
to.”

Helen glanced up toward Frank as he entered the room. Then she returned her gaze and shocked Jess again when she said, “I believe you, Jess. I think you're absolutely right.”

Jess shook her head, as if she hadn't heard correctly. “You do?”

“Yes. I do.” Helen summoned Mac to join them and issued rapid instructions that Jess suspected neither man was truly obliged to follow but both would do out of respect for Helen.

“Get a warrant and find some known samples of Ben Fleming's hair for a quick comparison to the Crawford hairs and the ones inside the ski-mask, as well as some quality DNA.”

Mac said, “I can handle that.”

She turned to Jess and nodded. “Jess has been to Fleming's office and home within the past two hours and he wasn't there. You'll need to figure out how to get inside both places. Let me know if you have a problem and I'll make the necessary calls.”

“Okay,” Mac said.

Helen turned to Frank next. “Any luck on the flight to New York City?”

He said, “We're working on it. We tried to call the cell number he used to leave the message, but it goes straight to voice mail. That could mean that he's in the air or has left the calling area. It looks like he was listed on one of the passenger manifests. In a few minutes, we should know if he checked in and boarded the plane.”

Helen's thoughts seemed to fire more rapidly than Jess had noticed before. “Okay. If he's gone, we'll all sleep better tonight. Let's confirm whether or not he's left the state and where he went and then we'll figure out what to do about it. Don't scare him off so that he doesn't return to Florida or flees to Canada. I'm not crazy about getting involved in a complicated extradition process.”

She stopped a moment, then said, “I want this bastard caught before he kills again. All of our careers and lives are riding on this.”

The Iron Cowgirl had spoken, and no one felt the need to respond, including Jess.

Helen's next comments were directed at her. “I'm still not sure we can totally trust you to keep what you learn here confidential until we release the information. What I'd like is for you to stay here with us until we get this situation resolved. Will you do that?”

“What about Mike?” Jess asked. “It's Christmas. He should be allowed to be with his family. He doesn't know anything. I haven't told him why I was doing all of this.”

“I'll talk to him. Then I'll decide. I can't force you to stay here. But I'd consider it a personal favor if you would.”

Jess hesitated, thinking about the proposal, when Helen sweetened the pot. “And you'll have more information for your article, of course. Exclusive information you'd never get anywhere else or any other way.”