Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. I swear to God!” Ennunzio pressed harder against the wall. “I think… I think it was my brother.”

Wytheville, Virginia

3:24 A . M .

Temperature: 94 degrees

“YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, I DON’T THINK HE’S WELL.”

“Your brother may have kidnapped and killed over ten women. Being not well is the least of his problems!”

“I don’t think he meant to hurt them-”

“Holy shit!” Mac drew up short. He was looming above Ennunzio, who was now slumped on the edge of his bed. Quincy and Rainie had arrived and guarded the door, while in the right-hand corner, Kimberly kept watch over Nora Ray. Kimberly had taken the girl’s needle away. Hostility in the small room, however, remained sky-high. “You’re the caller!”

Ennunzio bowed his head.

“What the hell? You’ve been playing me from the start!”

“I was not trying to play you. I’ve been trying to help-”

“You said the caller might be the killer. What was that all about?”

“I wanted you to take the calls more seriously. Honest to God, I’ve been trying very hard to assist, I just don’t know much myself.”

“You could’ve given me your brother’s name.”

“It wouldn’t have done you any good. Frank Ennunzio doesn’t exist. However he’s living now, it’s under an assumed name. Please, you have to understand, I haven’t actually spoken to my brother in over thirty years.”

That brought them all to attention. Mac frowned, not liking this newest bit of news. He crossed his arms over his chest and started to pace the tiny room.

“Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Quincy said quietly.

Ennunzio tiredly nodded his head. “Five years ago, I started work on a case in Atlanta, a kidnapping involving a young doctor’s child. I was called in to analyze notes being delivered to the house. While I was there, two girls from Georgia State University also vanished. I clipped the articles from the newspaper. At the time, I chalked it up to an investigative hunch. I was working a disappearance, here was another disappearance, you never knew. So I started to follow the case of the missing college girls as well. That summer and then the next summer, when two other girls also went missing during a heat wave.

“By now, I knew the case of the young girls had nothing to do with my own. I was dealing with what turned out to be a string of ransom cases. A very cool young man who worked at one of the more prominent country clubs was using his position to identify and stalk wealthy young families. It took us three years, but we finally identified him, in large part from his ransom notes.

“The heat-wave kidnappings, however, were an entirely different beast. The UNSUB always struck young, college-aged girls traveling in pairs. He’d leave one body next to a road and the second in some remote location. And he always sent a note to the press. Clock ticking… heat kills. I’ve remembered that note for a long, long time. It’s not the sort of thing you forget.”

Ennunzio’s voice broke off. He stared down at the carpet, lost now in his own thoughts.

“What did your brother do?” Rainie spoke up quietly. “Tell us about Frank.”

“Our father was a hard man.”

“Some fathers are.”

“He worked in the coal mines, not far from where we were today. It’s an unforgiving life. Backbreaking labor by day. Brutal poverty by night. He was a very angry person.”

“Angry people often become physical,” Rainie commented.

Ennunzio finally looked up at her. “Yes. They do.”

“Did your brother kill your father?”

“No. The mines got him first. Coal dust built up in my father’s lungs, he started to cough, and then one day we didn’t have to fear him anymore.”

“Ennunzio, what did your brother do ?”

“He killed our mother,” Ennunzio whispered. “He killed the woman we had spent all of our childhood trying to protect.”

His voice broke again. He didn’t seem capable of looking at anyone anymore. Instead his shoulders sagged, his head fell forward, and on his lap he began to wring his hands.

“You have to understand… After the funeral, our mother went a little crazy. She started yelling at Frank that he was ungrateful, and next thing we both knew, she went at him with my father’s belt. At first, Frank didn’t do anything. He just lay there until she wore herself out. Until she was so exhausted from hitting him that she couldn’t even lift her own arm. And then he got off the floor. He picked her up. So gently. I remember that clearly. He was only fourteen, but he was already big for his age and my mother was built like a bird. He cradled her in his arms, carried her to her room and laid her down on the bed.

“He told me to get out of the house. But I couldn’t leave. I stood in the middle of the cabin, while he got down the oil lamps and started pouring the oil around the rooms. I think I knew then what he was going to do. My mother just watched. Lying on the bed, her chest still heaving. She didn’t utter a word. Didn’t even lift her head. He was going to kill her, maybe kill all of us, and I think she was grateful.

“He covered the cabin in oil. Then he went to our stove and dumped the burning coals onto the floor. The whole house went up with a single whoosh. It was an old wood cabin, dry from age, never burdened by insulation. Maybe the house was grateful, too; it had never been a very happy place. I don’t know. I just remember my brother grabbing my hand. He pulled me through the door. Then we stood outside and watched our house burn. At the last minute, my mother started screaming. I swore I saw her standing right in the middle of those flames, her arms over her head, shrieking to high heaven. But there was nothing anyone could do for her by then. Nothing anyone could do for any one of us.

“My brother walked me to the road. He told me someone would be by soon. Then he said, ‘Just remember, Davey. Heat kills.’ He disappeared into the woods and I haven’t seen or talked to my brother since. One week later, I was placed with a foster family in Richmond and that was that.

“When I turned eighteen, I returned to the area briefly. I wanted to visit my parents’ headstone. I found a hole had been gouged into the marker, and inside I found a rolled-up piece of paper that read, ‘Clock ticking… planet dying… animals weeping… rivers screaming. Can’t you hear it? Heat kills.’ I think that summarizes my brother’s last thoughts on the subject.”

“Everything must die?” Kimberly spoke up grimly.

“Everything of beauty.” Ennunzio shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it completely. Nature was both our refuge-where we went to escape our father-and our prison-the isolated area where no one could see what was really happening. My brother loved the woods, he hated the woods. He loved our father, he hated our father. And in the end, he loved my mother and he loathed her. For him, I think the lines are all blurred. He hates what he loves and loves what he hates and has himself tangled in a web he’ll never escape.”

“So he seeks heat,” Quincy murmured, “which purifies.”

“And uses nature, which both saved him and betrayed him,” Rainie filled in. She turned troubled eyes toward Nora Ray. “And how did you end up in here? I thought you never knew who attacked you and your sister.”

“Voice,” Nora Ray said. “I remember… I recognized his voice. From when the man came walking up to our window and asked if we needed help.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No.”

“So the man you heard that night could’ve been Dr. Ennunzio, or it could’ve been his brother, or, in all honesty, it could’ve been anyone who sounds like either of them. Don’t you think you should’ve mentioned this to one of us, before you came charging in with a syringe?”