Allison Brennan - Killing Fear

“Then perhaps we can meet at the bank tomorrow morning?”

“How about now?” He glanced at the clock. Eight at night.

“The bank is closed, and the doors are on a time lock. No one can enter before eight a.m.”

“Eight tomorrow morning. I want everything-every transfer, deposit, withdrawal, safe-deposit boxes, whatever you have.”

“As long as it is specified in the warrant, I’ll give you what you need.”

Will hung up and called Stanton. The D.A. said he’d have the warrant ready.

“Okay, maybe we do have a break,” Will said. “Twelve hours, and perhaps we can figure out exactly where Glenn is hiding.”

“How do you figure that?” Carina asked.

“If the account is paying any bills, maybe a mortgage or property taxes, there’ll be some correlation between the payment and an address or account number,” Will said. “We’re close,” he said. “I feel it.”

Theodore wrote all account numbers in a small notepad, then destroyed the computer.

He could have been comfortable here in San Diego if he wasn’t a wanted man. A spread in France or Switzerland, or perhaps Argentina, would have to do for a time. He had several identities to choose from, but he could no longer trust Sara. As soon as he was settled, he’d create his own identity.

He hadn’t thought that running would hold excitement for him, but he felt that familiar surge of anticipation at the thought of eluding the police. It would eat at William Hooper.

That is if Theodore decided the cop would be more tortured living than dying.

Sara walked into the den and stared at the computer which lay in pieces all over the room. “What did you do?”

“What did you do, Sara?”

He stepped toward her.

She stepped backward. Good, she was scared. She should be.

“I don’t know what you mean, Teddy.”

“My name is Theodore.”

“I-you liked-”

“I humored you when I thought you were helping. Now I find out that you’ve been stealing from me.”

“No! That’s not true. I would never-I love you, Teddy!”

In two long strides he had her by the arms. He shook her, her head flopped back and forth. “You funneled money from my personal account into the law office account, then moved it all over the world. Millions of dollars.”

“So that wherever we go we’ll have money!” she pleaded.

“Or so you could run away without me.”

“No! No, no, that’s not it at all. Listen to me, please.”

“I’m listening.”

She nodded, brown eyes wide and full of fear and hope. “I knew as soon as you escaped that the cops would freeze your account. If all the money was gone, there’d be nothing to freeze, right? And by the time they figured it out, we’d have already transferred the money to other accounts. See? See how smart it was?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth! I swear, I was thinking about you.”

“You were thinking about yourself. That was my money and I told you exactly what to do. You aren’t smart enough to come up with your own ideas. You’re mine, and now I don’t want you.”

He grabbed her hair and held it tight, pulling her up the stairs. She stumbled, screamed, but he didn’t stop. He dragged her by her hair the last ten feet to the master bedroom, kicked her in the kidneys, and slammed the door shut.

“Teddy, please, I only-”

“Shut up!” He kicked her again. “I taught you how to hide money. I gave you access to my accounts. I trusted you, Sara, and you betrayed me.”

“I didn’t-”

He opened the nightstand where he had earlier put a knife-a sharp butcher knife from the kitchen. Without hesitation, he sliced her thigh. It was only a hair deep, but the cut stung. Sara screamed, tried to get up, but Theodore knocked her back down.

He grabbed her and tossed her on the bed. He sat on her, his left hand over her mouth, the knife in his right. She lay paralyzed with fear and he stared into her eyes. She looked back. When she saw her fate in his face, she started fighting.

He slammed the knife into her chest, over and over, a rage he’d never felt quite like this overtaking him. The surge of emotion, of adrenaline, seemed to stop time as he cut her chest open. She stopped fighting almost immediately, but he still sliced her, unable to stop.

Suddenly, he pushed himself off her, the knife still in his hands. The woman who had been Sara Lorenz was almost unrecognizable. He stabbed the knife into the blood-soaked mattress and walked to the bathroom where he showered in hot water.

He felt a million times better when he stepped out. He dressed, passing Sara’s dead body without a glance.

Time to leave the country.

But he’d be back.

“Sooner,” he said out loud, “than you think.”

Jim Gage spent all night reading and rereading the reports of all four crime scenes.

What had gone so wrong seven years ago? The politics of the time were such that lab priorities were directed from on high. And while the district attorney’s office didn’t oversee the crime lab, their priorities were the lab’s priorities. When a case was going to trial, everything else was pushed back so that the lab could focus on the immediate.

Overworked staff, limited resources, politicians directing priorities, everything conspired against him running a perfect lab. But it was still damn good and Jim couldn’t fathom that anyone on his team-people he worked with, socialized with, respected-could kill. Mistakes happened, more often than he wanted to admit, but killing to fix them?

He didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence, the facts, showed that someone other than Theodore Glenn had killed Anna Clark.

But if Robin McKenna was the intended victim, then it was personal and not because some ill, misguided cop or criminalist was trying to right wrongs.

They’d talked around the issue earlier when he, Will, and Agent Vigo first discussed the possibility, but they had a more immediate concern than finding Anna Clark’s killer. Theodore Glenn was still a threat and the major focus of their resources.

But now, at night, with nothing else on his mind, Jim couldn’t help but think about the Anna Clark case and what happened. If Robin was the intended victim, then why?

He made a list of all law enforcement they’d identified, even those who had left the jurisdiction. It only made sense that someone with access to evidence had planted the hair in Anna’s hand. That gave them six suspects. It was a reasonable conjecture, but right there Jim saw holes in the theory. A good defense lawyer would point out that someone else had been convicted, that the M.O. matched perfectly-except for the initials which no one had noticed for seven years. Maybe they’d intentionally connected the slash marks to make it appear they were in the form of initials? Why hadn’t it been brought out at trial?

Jim could play devil’s advocate with the best of them. And the truth was, there was no physical evidence that anyone other than Theodore Glenn had killed Anna. Even if they narrowed the list, without a confession they couldn’t put the killer behind bars.

Something tickled the back of Jim’s mind. It was that page from Anna’s apartment to Will.

Will was supposed to go up to the apartment.

Was he supposed to be the intended victim? Who would want to kill both Robin and Will?

It brought him right back to Theodore Glenn, who had obsessed over the two of them. What if he-but the time line put him in the bar at the time Anna was killed. He couldn’t have made the call.

Jim wasn’t a profiler. He looked at the evidence, and the evidence just wasn’t there. But the beginning of an idea began to take shape. He called Will, his voice mail picked up.