Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

“I’m assuming he had an insurance policy?”

“Four hundred thousand dollars. He’d recently collected, and all the money was accounted for. He hadn’t sent any of it away.”

“No notes,” James muses. “Dali took care to remain hidden. The current circumstances remain a significant anomaly.”

“Tell me about the next victim.”

“Oregon, four years ago. November twelfth. Two patrolmen were on a coffee break. They came back out to find Kimberly Jensen in a body bag, which had been left in front of their cruiser.”

“Bold,” James says.

“Kimberly had been abducted from a supermarket parking lot—you guessed it—more than seven years earlier. She was thirty-five at the time. Her husband, Andrew, was—surprise—the prime suspect. She’d been having an affair and was seeing a divorce lawyer.”

“I guess he’d collected on life insurance and kept the loot?”

“Greed is a bitch.”

“Kimberly?”

“Inhaled her own saliva and developed pneumonia. She died.”

“What about the husband?”

“Evidence fell from the heavens. Very fortuitous.”

“What?”

“An electronic diary on his computer, filled with seven years of monthly entries, all about Kimberly and how he’d kept her confined. A storage space in his name complete with chains in the floor and Kimberly’s DNA. Things like that.” She smiles. “Andrew killed himself before the cops could pick him up.”

“Starting to see a pattern here with the suicides.”

She shrugs. “Cowards are cowards, the whole day long.”

“No notes left behind, I assume?” James asks.

“Not a one.”

I sigh. “Two for two on Dali staying off the radar. Next?”

“Hillary Weber, forty-five, found by tourists on a side street leading off the Vegas strip three years ago. Hillary had been taken like the others, and the husband, Donald, was in the cross hairs. He’d been in the middle of a contentious divorce and had a very busy little penis.”

“Tell me one or both is still living.”

“I wish I could. Donald crept into the hospital three days after she’d been discovered and finished Hillary off with a pillow. Then he hopped into a car and crossed the border into Mexico. There was no contact until last year.”

“And?”

“They found what was left of Donald in the desert. His eyelids had been cut off and he’d been staked out nude, in the middle of the Mexican summer. There was no sign of the money.”

“So,” James murmurs, “kill yourself or go to jail, but if you run, he finds you.”

“Did Dali plant any evidence?” I ask.

“Doesn’t appear that way, but then, Donald moved very quickly, didn’t he? I suppose he saved Dali the effort. And before you ask—no, Dali didn’t leave behind any clues to his existence that time either.”

“Three for three,” I murmur. “The notes telling us he exists are the first.” I glance at Callie. “Circumstances on these three victims seem to contradict your ‘evolving paradigm’ theory about why he let Heather go with her brain in working order. Somehow, I think death would be a sufficient deterrent for most of these men.”

James shakes his head. “Strange. He’s succeeded so far due to the simple elegance of what he does. Why change it now?”

“You sound like you admire him.” Callie’s tone is disapproving.

“Facts are facts, not admiration. Dali’s brilliance is in the complete simplicity of his plan and his actions.” He counts off on his fingers. “His clients never meet him. He makes them into coconspirators. He offers financial incentive. He limits his contact with the victims, so they can’t describe him even if they did somehow get away. Look at Heather Hollister. He let her go, and she’s unable to provide us with anything truly probative.

“The time element is crucial and also brilliant. A lot changes in seven years. People move, people die. Cops retire, move on, die. By the time the insurance money is collected, who’s likely to be watching? Even in the instances where he’s been forced to punish for nonpayment, it’s low risk, high reward, and, as you said, we can be sure that he lets his existing client base know what’s happened, as insurance against similar actions on their part. Simple. Brilliant. Why change all that?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I agree. “What are we missing?”

“I have no idea. I do have another anomaly, though. I spent time hunting through the Internet, looking for sites that cater to symphorophiliacs. There aren’t many out there, and it took some looking. I didn’t find anything—no still photos, no video footage—from any of the locations where we think he engineered car crashes.”

“Perhaps he pervs in private,” Callie says.

“Maybe,” James allows, “but unusual. A paraphilia like that requires regular fulfillment. Sharing is a way of reliving. Something that unique … it’s odd. How does he feed it?”

“So, no good news, then,” I mutter.

“Not entirely true. I did a search for hotels nearby the crash sites—there was only one in a relevant mile radius. A room was rented there under the name of a Heather Hollister on the night of her abduction.”

A thrill runs through me, picks up speed, then dies and blows away. “Seven years in a hotel room? There’s not going to be any evidence to find. Even if there was, it would be tainted.”

“Still,” James insists, “it continues to confirm the profile. There’s no reason for him to rent that room—and more, to use Heather’s name—except to satisfy a desire.”

“How does that help us?” Callie asks.

“It will help with his prosecution, when we catch him. If his need was that strong, there’s no way he’ll get rid of the evidence. He can’t. Find him, and we’ll find the photographs and video footage too. It’s a fairly unique paraphilia, not something you’d find in the average household. It will tie him to the scene, and thus to Heather Hollister.”

It’s a thin bit of optimism, hardly helpful in the moment, but it’s true nonetheless. As a prosecutor once told me, Catching the guy is only half the battle. Keeping him caught is the other half.

“I have another bit of news,” Callie says. “We found a fingerprint on Dana Hollister’s body bag, on the inside. I ran it through AFIS, and it doesn’t match anyone known to be associated with this case.” She grimaces. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t match anyone else on file either.”

“More strangeness,” James says. “Strange that he’d be that careless, if it’s him.”

He and I stare at each other, more troubled than enlightened by this turn of events.

“Maybe he’s decompensating?” I offer. “That makes no sense.”

“Oh pish. What a bunch of wet blankets you two are,” Callie chides. “Maybe he’s finally grown too big for his britches. Sometimes they get stupid.”

“Maybe,” I agree.

But I don’t think so.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Go on. The words read: Say it. You’ll feel better when you do, I promise. It’s liberating.

I don’t know. Leo-as-Robert-Long types: I just don’t feel right about calling her—or any woman— that.

That’s just programming, brother. The radical feminist movement has conditioned men to be afraid. Let me give you an example. We all know the one word no man is allowed to say to a woman, right?

Cunt. Someone else types: The word of death.

That’s right. Now: Tell me what similar word exists in relation to men?

No one types, the equivalent of dead silence in cyberspace.