Jenna nodded. “When did you arrive at the park?”
“Oh, about five minutes before we flagged you down.” Libby frowned and looked at the children who now sipped their drinks, seemingly uninterested in their conversation. “We’d walked into the park and the kids made the snow angels then they ran off to see the snowman.” She gave a strangled false laugh. “Gave us a fright. It must have been naughty kids playing a trick on everyone.”
Jenna nodded. “See any other vehicles or people in or near the park?”
“Not that I recall. There were vehicles on the road but we came in from the other end of Main, the snowplow went through around eight, so we drove through okay.” Libby smiled at her. “Since the council purchased more snowplows, our end of town is passable earlier than usual.
It means the older kids can get to school on time after a blizzard.”
Needing to get back to the crime scene, Jenna took the notebook Eliza handed her and stood. “It might be best if one of you walks back with me to collect your vehicle. No need to upset the kids again.” She gave the women a meaningful look and stood.
“Yes, I’ll come.” Eliza jumped to her feet and looked at one of the girls. “Wait with Auntie Libby, Mommy will be back with the truck.”
Jenna led the way out into the bitter cold. She could see Wolfe’s van in the parking lot and he’d erected a screen around the victim. Crime scene tape stretched across the entrance to the park and Rowley was walking the perimeter, keeping the sightseers moving. She turned to Eliza. “I thought it would be better to hide the truth from the children.”
“Yes, thanks, we appreciate it.” Eliza fell into step beside her. “How do you cope with murders?”
Jenna shrugged. How could she tell the woman how the faces of the victims haunted her memories and often crept into her nightmares? She glanced at her. “Someone has to get justice for them and right now it’s my job.”
Thirteen
Hours earlier, Ava had woken dry-mouthed and disoriented in total darkness. Distressed, she’d called out but only the echo of her voice replied. It rattled around the room giving her the impression of being inside a large empty space. Where was she? The warm air surrounding her had a strange smell, musty and damp like a sack of potatoes. She had no idea where the man, Preacher, had taken her but he’d obviously planned to kidnap someone. Trust her to be his victim of choice. He’d somehow spiked her drink and she’d fallen into a deep sleep, for how long she had no idea. Afraid to move, she’d crept her fingers around the bed in slow careful movements. What did the stranger want with her? Alarmed, she’d checked her clothes, relieved when everything seemed to be in order. Apart from a blinding headache, and the desperate need to pee, she seemed okay. Time had moved slowly and she’d spent a long uncomfortable night, finally drifting off into an exhausted slumber.
It could’ve been moments or hours later when a bright light woke her. She blinked, looking around the neat room. It had no windows but she noticed steps leading up to a door. So, after he’d drugged her, he’d locked her in his cellar. A damp patch on one wall had discolored the paintwork leaving the unmistakable smell of mold. That was a weakness she could explore—damp made drywall easy to kick through—but first she had more urgent matters. She was about to look for a bathroom when a voice came from a speaker high in the wall.
“Good morning, Delores.” She recognized the voice as Preacher but now it was almost sing-song. “Your breakfast is in the dumbwaiter. There are clean clothes in the closet. The bathroom is the door on the right. If you place your dirty clothes in the dumbwaiter, I’ll return them to you in the morning. I’ve locked the cellar door. You know there’s no escape. Behave and I’ll treat you well.”
Gripping her hands together in an effort to stop trembling, she stared at the speaker. She refused to let him know how much he’d frightened her. “My name is Ava. Why are you keeping me here, Preacher? If you think I’ll willingly become your sex slave, you can think again.”
“I don’t want you for sex, Delores.” Preacher chuckled low in his chest. His voice carried a confident swagger, and his next words made Ava’s skin crawl. “But if I did you couldn’t stop me, could you? Sooner or later, you’ll have to eat and drink something and then… well, I could come down there and do whatever I wanted to you, couldn’t I?”
Fourteen
Snakeskin Gully, Montana
Behavioral analyst and FBI Agent Jo Wells looked over Bobby Kalo’s shoulder to stare at her laptop screen. Kalo, a twenty-year-old Black Hat hacker known online as The Undertaker, had recently joined her team. The FBI had plucked Kalo off the streets at seventeen, after he’d come under investigation for hacking the Pentagon’s mainframe. Following a long period of training they’d assigned him to work with Jo in the wild west out at the Snakeskin Gully field office. “Any luck?”
“Sure, I’ve set up our laptops with a list of links for direct access to the databases, one click is all you need.” Kalo demonstrated. “You click on the link on the main screen and then use the icons.”
Jo stared at the screen. “What about the passwords? Some of the sites are restricted.”
“Ah, you don’t need a password.” Kalo gave her a smirk. “Once you’ve logged into your computer the databases are open to you.”
“That’s a mite dangerous.” Agent Ty Carter pushed up the rim of his Stetson and dropped his boots from the desk. “Anyone can hack into a laptop, it’s child’s play.”
“Not our laptops and phones.” Kalo leaned back in his chair and pulled his shoulder-length fuzzy hair into a band. “It’s kind of the same as I installed in the… ah… never mind.” He grinned. “In simple terms it’s kinda like a virus, if anyone hacks our systems, alarms go off everywhere, a little tracker seeks out the perpetrator, and we get their information but they get wiped out.”
Jo chewed on her bottom lip. “How so?”
“Think of it like the stick of dynamite on Road Runner. If they light the fuse by hacking our stuff then—” Kalo opened his hands wide “—boom!” He stood and sauntered to his desk, took a candy bar from a jar, and dropped into a chair.
“I see.” Jo had the mental image of a computer exploding then disintegrating into a pile of black dust. “Good job.”
She glanced at her flashing email icon and sat down. “Carter, it’s from Jenna. They have a killer freezing and dismembering bodies out of Black Rock Falls.”
“Let me see.” Carter moved a toothpick into the corner of his mouth and pulled his rolling office chair beside her. “Two bodies, both female.” He enlarged the images and stared at the screen. “This killer likes ink. Something about it draws him to these women.”
Jo flicked through Wolfe’s preliminary report and scanned the crime scene photographs. “Yeah, seems so.” She examined the images, trying to squash the shudder of revulsion. “How does he know they have ink? In this weather they’d be bundled up against the cold?”