Stone Maidens (22 page)

She started toward the sheriff’s Bronco, then stopped abruptly when she saw the FBI van pulled in next to the sheriff’s vehicle. Howard hopped out and motioned her over.

She crossed the parking lot quickly. “Has something happened?” she said to her reflection in his mirrored lenses.

Howard nodded toward McFaron. “Sheriff’s dispatcher said he’d probably bring you here for something to eat. I hope it was good.”

“We’re just grabbing takeout before heading back to work, Bruce. What’s up?”

He pulled the aviators down far enough to make eye contact over the frames. “Managing director’s on the line. Asked to speak with you.” He handed her his cell phone.

“Christine?” Thorne’s voice sounded tentative. “Listen, has Howard told you?”

“Told me what?” Prusik ducked behind the Bronco, pressing her free hand against her other ear to block out the clattering engine noise of the truck lot.

“Howard’s connected the police sketch with a farmhand who lives in Weaversville, Indiana. A police photo of David Claremont was a ten-point match. He recently attacked a woman in a local parking lot, and police were called to the scene.”

“What? What kind of attack? What happened to the woman?”

“Oh, she’s fine. Didn’t press charges. She could have, though. There were plenty of witnesses in the parking lot. I don’t know any more than that right now. Anyway, according to the local police in Weaversville, this Claremont has got an old pickup truck, too. Howard said you’ve got a witness in Crosshaven who saw an old truck. Is that right?”

Prusik bit her lip. She’d just spoken to Howard no more than forty-five minutes ago. Had all of this new information really just come to light since then? Unlikely.

“Still there? Christine?”

“Yes, I’m still here, Roger,” she replied, her voice muted. “I’ll check it out right away.”

“I needn’t tell you how delighted Washington is with the turn of events,” Thorne said happily.

You just did, she thought glumly. “I’m sure they are, sir.”

“In fact, delighted doesn’t quite say it, from Washington’s perspective. They’ve appointed Howard logistical lead. Just from the case-management perspective, of course. You’re still lead forensic investigator on these cases. I need you, Christine. You’re vital to the success of the team, to producing a successful outcome.”

Prusik could feel Howard’s eyes burning holes through her back. Surely he was picking up from her body language what she was being told. She stood up straighter.

“You’ll remain in charge of your forensic lab team.” Thorne was repeating himself, filling the void. “And Washington has even nixed sending in an auxiliary unit now that a bona fide suspect’s
surfaced. I trust I can expect your full cooperation in reporting to Bruce?”

“Somehow that doesn’t sound like a question, Roger.”

“Cut the attitude,” he said sternly. “Face it, Christine, you’re a day late and a dollar short. Five months without a suspect—look at it from headquarters’ perspective. You haven’t delivered the goods.” Relenting, he added, “You know I need you working with the lab team. It’s your forte, Christine. You’re still the best. It’s all for the best. We’re moving forward as a team.”

Prusik crouched behind the Bronco, thoroughly humiliated. Giving her the news in this manner—in such a public setting, with the sheriff and Howard and his crew all nearby—was beyond demoralizing. And Thorne hadn’t even bothered to call her on her own cell phone. She swallowed hard.

“Make no mistake, you’re still in charge of the forensic—”

“Reporting to Howard, yes, yes.” A bitter aftertaste filled her mouth. “I heard you the first time, sir. Anything else?”

“OK then.” Thorne’s voice moderated. He’d said his piece. “Good luck at the lineup. It’s scheduled for later today. Talk to Howard about it.”

The sound of Howard yukking it up with his men by the RV snapped her out of it. She walked the phone over to him and returned it. “Congratulations to you, Bruce. Shall I meet up with you in Weaversville at the lineup?”

Howard grinned at her, his sunglasses firmly in place. Her reflection in the mirrored lenses stared back at her.

“Absolutely. And, say, your sheriff can come along, too, if he likes,” Howard said, lifting his chin toward McFaron, who was standing behind Prusik, his hands on his hips. “Scheduled for four o’clock.”

She bit her lip and climbed aboard the Bronco, hastily slamming the door, then glanced McFaron’s way. “Well? Shall we get started?”

The sheriff didn’t have to ask if there had been a transfer of power.

“How far did you say Parker is?”

“About a twenty-minute drive,” McFaron said, accelerating out of Crosshaven. “The North girl’s spotting him like that is pretty damn lucky, don’t you think?”

“We’ll see.” It
was
a good break. And it was something she needed to tell Howard about. She should have said something back there in the parking lot, but she’d still been reeling. And
your
sheriff? Come on, Howard. How juvenile. Prusik shook her head. OK, she’d been juvenile, too.

She gritted her teeth and speed-dialed Howard. “Bruce, we’ve just heard about a possible sighting of the suspect yesterday in a little town called Parker, about twenty minutes from here. I’d like to follow up on that.”

“Sure, Christine. I’ll take care of the flesh-and-blood suspect. You go on over to Parker with the sheriff.” Howard disconnected without waiting for her response.

Prusik closed her eyes and forced her attention to the matter at hand.

Giving in to irresistible impulses was one of the killer’s weaknesses. If the North girl’s sighting was legitimate, it meant that he’d attempted an attack in very close proximity to the Julie Heath crime scene after three previous attacks more widely spread out. Perhaps, rather than planning an attack and lying in wait for a victim, he’d seen an opportunity and tried to grab it. She shook her head, trying to make sense of the emerging inconsistencies. He seemed to prefer desolate places in which to select his victims, so why would he attack someone in a parking lot? And what about Missy Hooper? He had been careful enough that nobody remembered him, but picking up Missy with so many other people around was bold. His Friday encounter with Sarah North—if he was the one who had terrified the young soccer player as she jogged home—was even bolder. Perhaps he was beginning to make mistakes.

“If you don’t mind my saying, you seem distracted,” the sheriff said.

“Sorry. I just was thinking about Sarah North, about the victims.” She forced a smile. “Kind of hard to shake the image of one of his victims once you’ve seen what he does to them.”

Another pause lengthened into the space between them. Finally the sheriff cleared his throat. “You sure made Arlene Greenwald’s day back there at the truck stop, agreeing to come back and address that Brownie troop of hers sometime. You do that kind of thing often, speak to groups of people?”

“Often enough. When I’m speaking to children, it’s usually a pleasure. It makes me happy to show young girls they can be successful in a job usually reserved for men.” She blushed. “If that doesn’t sound too ridiculously self-important.”

“Not at all. That’s why Arlene said she invited you. It makes a lot of sense.”

“When I speak in front of adults, it’s not always as pleasant.” She thought back to the museum opening on April 1. April Fool’s Day, indeed. She had certainly made a fool of herself.

The land grew brighter and then darker as the sun poked in and out of clouds. It was fickle weather and more humid heat was forecast. They passed fields of tall corn tasseled out. Out Christine’s window it looked as if they had just crossed into a third-world country: metal-roofed shacks and mobile homes were set back in the middle of dug-up brown yards scattered with trucks and trash. They passed a small, square white sign for a town called Utopia. Several bullet holes pierced through the u.

“Friendly,” Prusik said, unsmiling.

“Down here signs make good target practice. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Right. They do that in Chicago, too. It means something.” She wished she had her ankle piece—a snub-nosed .38—buckled on now.

“Country boys aren’t like that,” he said. “They don’t mean anything by it. Really.”

They drove in silence for a minute. “It’s pretty here,” she said finally. “I don’t dislike the country. It’s just...the unknown quantities.”

Christine sighed. “Something’s not adding up, Joe. Weaversville is—what?—a hundred miles south of here? And three hundred miles from Chicago, where the first victim was murdered?”

“That’s about right, yes.”

“The first victim that we know of, her body was snagged on a boat’s anchor in Lake Michigan, near Chicago. With the second and third killings, and now this North girl sighting—assuming it bears out—we have strong indications that the killer is expanding his range southward. But a farmhand from southern Indiana who attacked a woman in a public parking lot in plain view of witnesses?” She shook her head. “Without knowing anything about the attack, I can say that it’s not consistent with his normal pattern. And a ten-point match on a hand-drawn sketch, with detail supplied by a boy riding by on his bicycle—it just doesn’t add up. Not in my book, not one bit.”

Christine reflected. Was it her anger and frustration speaking? Her annoyance at Thorne’s giving such credence to a preliminary lead supplied by Bruce Howard? Or her shame at being sent back to the lab to do backup technical support?

The sheriff pondered her points. “You have to admit, Christine, it does sound kind of promising. Claremont could have driven north to start. We can check that out. And the picture matching up is something more than coincidence. Parker is not that far a drive from Weaversville.”

“What I’m trying to say is that my profile of this killer doesn’t mesh with a man who attacks grown women in public places. Don’t be bowled over by this development.”

She looked over at McFaron to gauge his reaction and realized this would probably be the last time she’d be seeing him. There
would be no need for both her
and
Howard to conduct inquiries on the ground here unless things got really out of hand.

“It would mean a lot to me if you could keep an open mind about this,” she said. “I’ve appreciated working with you. Really I have.” Prusik flushed with embarrassment. She felt like she’d bared her soul to him, even though objectively she knew she’d done no such thing.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m in agreement with you,” McFaron said. “It doesn’t sound to me like it’s a sure thing at all, which is why I’m interested to know what Claremont has to do with these cases—if anything.”

Immediately Christine felt lighter, but she could think of nothing more to say than “Good.”

“Christine?” McFaron said after a moment.

“Yes?”

“You were waiting to hear some information about the first victim?”

Christine cleared her throat. “It looks like she had a stone jammed into her esophagus, too. But it was most likely a coarse one, not a museum piece like the others. Even though the theft had already taken place.”

He frowned. “Odd.”

She nodded slowly. “Odd.”

They drove in silence for the next few minutes, each mentally arranging and rearranging the puzzle pieces of the case. As they passed a flock of sheep huddled along the edge of a field, Christine stared. She pointed to a massive coil of a plant that stretched out of sight over the top of a hill.

“What are those large hedges the sheep are grazing next to?”

“Thornbushes. Don’t get near them. They’ll hang you up fierce. I knew a guy who got too close to them while he was riding a tractor. Vicious thorns pulled him clear off. The tractor kept on going, disappeared without him. Had cuts on his arms as deep as
a dog bite. His wife found him there, stuck. It took a chain saw to cut him loose. If those sheep stray into it, they’ll get caught up and die unless the farmer comes in time to cut them free.”

Something clicked in Prusik’s brain. “Is that the same thing as
multiflora
?”

“I believe that’s it. Wicked stuff,” he said, glancing over at her in the passenger seat. “It’s kind of prevalent around here.”

Prusik flipped through the pages of her notebook. “Last week, an expert botanist identified the different seeds we found on Missy Hooper’s clothing. Several came from a
multiflora
thornbush.”

“What other kinds did she find?” the sheriff asked. “You said different seeds?”

“Mallow, a common weed found near barns and farmhouses. The killer may live on a farm.”

“Right,” McFaron agreed. He slowed the truck as they approached a collection of buildings that scattered over a few blocks. P
ARKER
, P
OPULATION
2,037, a peeling signpost read. “We’re here. Now let’s go see what Sarah North has to say.”