Dead Even Page 3

  “I picked them up when I made my own flight arrangements. I figured . . .” Miranda paused and smiled as the waitress approached, paper menus in hand, which she distributed silently.

  “Thanks, Jayne,” Miranda said, noting the waitress’s name tag. “We’ll let you know when we’re ready to order.”

  “Not very friendly, is she?” Mara frowned when the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Oh, I’m sure she has her good points.” Miranda skimmed over the menu.”Anyway, as I was saying, I figured you’d be wanting to go back east. I mean, why waste precious vacation time on a dead lead, when a live one might pop up later on?”

  Mara pondered the logic. It did make sense.

  “Okay, if you’re sure.” Mara turned to Aidan. “You’re sure, right? That it’s the right thing to do? You’re convinced that Julianne is not with Reverend Prescott’s group?”

  “I am absolutely convinced it’s the right thing to do,” he told her, choosing his words carefully. “Miranda wouldn’t have come all this way to turn us in the wrong direction.”

  “Okay.” Mara sighed, shaking her head slowly. “You know, I felt so sure this time—”

  “I know, baby.” Aidan rubbed her shoulders. “Maybe next time.”

  “It’s been maybe next time for seven years now,” she reminded him.

  Aidan looked at Miranda through guilty eyes, and appeared about to say something when Miranda’s phone began to ring.

  “Cahill.”

  “Cahill, it’s John. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I just got out of a meeting and heard your message.” John Mancini, head of a special crimes unit within the FBI, sounded uncharacteristically tense. “Are you still—what was the phrase you used—hoofing it down Route 387?”

  “No, right now I’m sitting in Ye Old Bumfuck Falls Café with Aidan and Mara, about to order lunch. Then, because my car rolled over and played dead about six miles back, I’ll be getting a ride to the airport with them. You might want to have someone pick up the car and return it, by the way. It’s charged to the Bureau.”

  “Mara’s agreed to leave?”

  “Not a problem.” Miranda studied the chipped polish on one of her fingernails.

  “Have you told Shields the truth?”

  “I didn’t have to.” She rested the phone on her shoulder and motioned to Aidan to order her a roast beef sandwich by pointing to the specials board. The sandwich was the only special.

  “Good, good. Well, try not to miss your flight, Cahill. You need to be in Fleming, Pennsylvania, by noon tomorrow.”

  “What’s in Fleming?”

  “An old friend of yours was just released from prison.”

  “Old friend of mine?” She frowned.

  “Archer Lowell. Ring a bell?”

  “Sure. Amanda Crosby’s stalker. What’s he up to?”

  “That’s what you’re going to find out.”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  At precisely the stroke of noon, the little red sports car pulled into the first available parking spot accompanied by a flourish of pebbles kicked up by braking hard on the gravel surface. The driver’s door opened even as the engine shut down, and Miranda Cahill stepped out, pausing to take in the surroundings. The old hotel on the edge of town was just this side of shabby. Paint a few years past its prime. Shutters a wee bit crooked. Even the sign that hung from the wooden post out near the edge of the parking lot—THE FLEMING INN ~ EST. 1741—needed a sprucing up. But in spite of its obvious need of updating, the place did possess a certain charm. There were pumpkins marching along the hand railing at the front steps and clay pots holding an abundance of brightly colored chrysanthemums nestled in a corner of the porch.

  On the whole, it wasn’t bad for a hole-in-the-wall town like Fleming, Pennsylvania, she nodded. Not bad at all.

  She checked the other cars in the lot. As she’d expected, the compact belonging to Bureau profiler Anne Marie McCall was already there. Next to Anne Marie’s car sat a dark blue Passat with D.C. tags. No idea who that belonged to. An SUV with Pennsylvania tags, again, no clue. Five other cars, all with Pennsylvania license plates, were parked at the far side of the lot. Maybe staff, Miranda thought as she slammed the car door and headed up the cobbled walk to the front door, which she found standing open.

  She stepped into an entry that was decorated somewhat prematurely for both Halloween and Thanksgiving, with a cornucopia on a wide sideboard and several more mums in huge pots at the base of a wide staircase, and a wooden bowl filled with candy corn on the receptionist’s desk. Small fabric ghosts and orange pumpkin lights draped the newel post.

  “Hi.” Miranda greeted the middle-aged woman who appeared from the room on her right. “I’m to meet some friends here.”

  “Ms. McCall’s group?” The blonde woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Right this way. Your group is meeting in a small side room so you can have some privacy. Not,” she grinned wryly, “that we’re overcrowded here for lunch today. But Ms. McCall did say that privacy would be appreciated.”

  The woman led Miranda through a large dining room on their right to a smaller room beyond. Only three of the eight chairs that flanked the long refectory table were occupied. A warm fire glowed from a small corner fireplace, and lace curtains hung from the two windows. An oddly genteel place, Miranda mused, for a discussion such as the one they were about to have.

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” she apologized as she removed her jacket. She draped it over the chair next to that of the only other woman in the room and sat down.

  “You’re right on time. We were just sitting here, enjoying the atmosphere before we have to get down to business,” Anne Marie told her. “Besides, we still have one yet to arrive, so let me pour you a cup of this excellent coffee”—she did so as she spoke—“and you can just have a minute or two to relax.”

  “Evan, it’s good to see you again.” Miranda sat and accepted the cup Anne Marie offered her.

  “Always a pleasure.” Evan Crosby, a detective from nearby Avon County with whom Miranda had worked on several cases over the past year, greeted her with a smile.

  “And Jared, I’m guessing you’re the man in charge here today?” Miranda leaned forward to address the man on Evan’s left.

  “Just standing in for John.” Jared Slater sipped at his coffee. “He had a previous commitment. Since Philly is the closest field office, I got the call.”

  “I spoke with John briefly yesterday.” Miranda’s eyes met Evan’s from across the table. “He mentioned that an old friend of ours is no longer a guest of the commonwealth.”

  “Footloose and fancy free, as of Monday.” Evan nodded.

  “How’d he get out so soon?” Miranda frowned.

  “First offense plus good behavior equals a light sentence. Eight months in the county prison, three years probation.”

  “And he is where now?”

  “In a trailer park about four miles from here.”

  “Really?” She mulled this over. “Explains why we’re meeting in beautiful downtown Fleming.”

  “Never could put a thing past you, Cahill.”

  Miranda’s cup froze momentarily midway between her mouth and the saucer. She’d know that voice anywhere.

  Shit.

  “Hello, Will,” she said to the newcomer without looking up. “I wasn’t aware you’d be in on this powwow.”

  “We’ve invited Will to join us because of his computer skills as well as his insightful investigative ability,” Jared explained.

  “My charm, wit, and dashing personality had nothing to do with it.” Will Fletcher took the seat next to Evan, seemingly oblivious to the flash of annoyance that crossed Miranda’s face.

  “Aren’t you lucky to have those computer skills to fall back on,” she murmured.

  “How about if we get Mrs. Duffy back and put in our order for lunch so we can get started.” Jared went off in search of the owner.

  �
�You’re looking well, Cahill.” Will faced Miranda from the opposite side of the table.

  “Thank you.” She chose not to return the compliment, though he did, in fact, look pretty good. He always did. Dark hair, dark eyes. Great body.

  Forget it, she cautioned herself. That game has been played out.

  “I can take your orders if you’re ready.” The blonde woman Miranda met out front had followed Jared back into the narrow room.

  “Let’s make this quick.” Jared trailed after her. “We have a lot to cover today.”

  Orders were hastily placed, glasses of water replenished by a young man wearing a white buttoned-

  down shirt and khakis, and the door separating the small dining room from the larger one was pulled partially closed.

  “Alrighty, then, folks.” Jared removed a folder from the briefcase that rested on the vacant chair next to the one in which he sat. “Time to get down to business. If I recall correctly, everyone here—except for Agent Fletcher and me—has had some contact—direct or indirect—with our subject, Archer Lowell.”

  Anne Marie, Evan, and Miranda all nodded.

  “Archer Lowell, age twenty years, ten months, first child and only son of Lionel and Sissy Lowell. Father left home when the boy was three. Graduated from Fleming Regional High in 2001, ranked three hundred twenty out of three hundred seventy-three students. Worked as a driver for All-County Auctions from June of 2001, until he was arrested for stalking and assaulting Amanda Crosby in 2002.” Jared looked up from the sheet of paper that lay before him on the table. “Your sister, Detective.”

  “Correct.” Evan’s jaw tightened.

  “He entered a plea, accepted a reduced sentence at the strong urging of his lawyer.” Jared folded the sheet of paper neatly in half. “So much for past history.”

  “So what’s he done since he’s been released?” Will asked.

  “Nothing yet. At least, nothing that we know of,” Jared said.

  “It’s what he’s expected to do that’s the problem,” Miranda told him.

  “What’s he expected to do?” Will frowned.

  “Murder three people,” Anne Marie replied.

  “Who is he going to murder?”

  “If we knew that, Will, we wouldn’t be having this meeting,” Jared said, holding up a hand to stop the conversation while the young male waiter returned to serve their lunch.

  “Anyone need anything else?” the waiter asked. Assured that no one did, the young man left the room, and once again closed the door.

  “Somehow I get the feeling that I’m the only person in this room who doesn’t quite know what’s going on.” Will’s gaze went from one face to the next, stopping when he reached Miranda.

  “That must be a first,” she murmured as she picked a slice of tomato from her sandwich.

  Ignoring her, he turned to Jared.

  “How ’bout you bring me up to speed?”

  Jared nodded and finished chewing a mouthful of sandwich.

  “Several months ago, there was a series of murders in Lyndon, a community about thirty-five miles from here. All women whose names were listed in the phone book as Mary Douglas or M. Douglas.”

  “Wait, I heard about this. Mara Douglas, your sister, was the intended victim,” Will addressed Anne Marie.

  “That’s right. That’s how the Bureau became involved in the first place. I called in Aidan Shields from medical leave to work with us.”

  Will turned to Miranda.

  “You called me during that investigation. You wanted information on an old case from Ohio. The victim was Jenny Green. . . .”

  “Proving that the rumors about Will are all true.” Miranda glanced at the others. “He never forgets a damned thing.”

  He continued, “You wanted copies of the statements of a suspect you’d interviewed at the time. He’d been let go.”

  “Right again.” Miranda nodded. “Here’s the story in a nutshell. We had several victims here in eastern Pennsylvania. Evan was the lead detective on these cases because, at the time, he was with the Lyndon Police Department. Something about the crime scenes reminded me of a case I’d worked on about six years earlier. That Ohio case was the first time I’d worked in the field, so everything was memorable. I remembered wanting to reinterview a suspect who’d just flat-out disappeared. I called Will to look up the file, get the name of the suspect for me. Once we had that, and a little information on him, Aidan followed that thread to a man named Curtis Alan Channing.”

  She paused to sip at her water.

  “Channing was a serial killer who’d been a real busy boy over the years. But he’d flown so far under the radar that his prints weren’t even on file anywhere.”

  “If he was under the radar, how do you know he was a serial killer?” Will asked.

  “The Bureau has been running his DNA through the data banks,” Miranda explained. “So far, we’ve had hits on old, unsolved cases in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He was not only busy, he was clever. He could have gone on for years.”

  “Then a few months back, he ran a stop sign in my town.” Evan picked up the story. “The officer who stopped him found an outstanding warrant for another Curtis A. Channing, and over Channing’s protests that they had the wrong man, he was hauled out to the county prison, since the arrest had been made on a Saturday night.” Evan leaned back in his chair. “The following Monday, when the courthouse opened, Channing went before a judge, proved his identity, and was released.”

  “And he then proceeded to murder how many women?” Jared shuffled through the stack of notes he’d made the night before.

  “Three women named Mary Douglas,” Anne spoke softly, “and two other women. My sister, Mara, would have been his sixth victim, if he’d had his way.”

  “Where is he now?” Will asked.

  “In hell, where he belongs,” Anne Marie replied.

  “So what’s this got to do with this Archer Lowell?” Will asked.

  “All of the victims—including his intended victim, Mara Douglas—had a connection to a man named Vincent Giordano. He killed his family in cold blood, and was convicted and sentenced to several life sentences,” Evan told Will. “Sentences he’ll never serve, because the evidence used to convict him was all tainted, all fabricated. They had to let him go.”

  Will whistled long and low. “That had to hurt.”

  “More than you could imagine.” Evan grimaced.

  “How were Channing’s victims connected to Giordano?” Will pushed his plate aside and rested his arms on the table.

  “Mara was the child advocate who recommended that the court terminate Giordano’s parental rights to his sons,” Evan said. “One of the other victims was the judge who ordered that termination; the other was Giordano’s former mother-in-law. The other three Douglas women were killed by mistake. Channing hadn’t done his homework too well at first. He’d been a little sloppy there in the beginning.”

  “So you were able to put Giordano back into prison as Channing’s accomplice?” Will surmised.

  “No. Not only was Giordano still behind bars while the killing was going on, we have not been able to positively establish that the two men ever met. Giordano, of course, swears he never met Channing and has no idea who he is.”

  “I’m confused. I don’t understand what this has to do with this other guy, this Archer Lowell.”

  “Shortly after Giordano was released from the county prison, my sister Amanda’s business partner was found with a bullet through his head.” Evan spoke levelly. “Not long after that, another close friend of Amanda’s was found murdered.”

  “And Lowell, who had been convicted of stalking and assaulting your sister . . .” Will’s fingers began to beat softly upon the table.

  “Was still in prison,” Evan told him.

  “And your sister?” Will asked tentatively.

  “Is alive and well because of Miranda and the local chief of police,” Evan said. “Giordano came after her.”

 
“But what was the connection between your sister’s partner and her friend—the two deceased—and Giordano?” Will accurately followed the sequence.

  “There was none to Giordano,” Evan said, “but they were both people who had pissed off Archer Lowell. Both had given statements to the police about Lowell’s actions; both had made it very clear they were going to testify against him at his trial. Their testimony was the main reason Lowell’s attorney insisted that he accept the plea offered by the D.A.”

  “Strangers on a Train,” Will murmured. “You do mine, I’ll do yours. . . .”

  “Exactly.” Miranda nodded, then added grudgingly, “You figured that out a lot faster than we did.”

  “Channing offed people who had connections to Giordano, Giordano took out people who had connections to Lowell. So if the pattern holds, we could expect Lowell to be going after people who have ties to Channing,” Will said.

  “That’s the way we see it.” Miranda munched a potato chip.

  “So, if we’re correct in assuming that Channing got the names of his victims from Giordano,” Will continued, “and Giordano got the names of his victims from Lowell, we have to figure out whose names Channing gave to Lowell. Who, over the course of his life, pissed off Channing sufficiently that he’d want them dead.”

  “Unfortunately,” Miranda reminded him, “Channing himself is now dead.”

  “Guess we won’t be getting much help from him,” Will muttered.

  “So the question is, who is Lowell going to go after, now that he’s out of prison, and how do we get to them before he does?” Jared stated the obvious.

  “Why don’t we just ask him?”

  Four heads swung in Will’s direction.

  “Why don’t we ask him?” Will repeated.

  “I doubt he’s going to admit that he’s part of a conspiracy to commit murder,” Jared said dryly.

  “One of two things will happen.” Will’s fingers were all now drumming on the table. “He’ll either tell us the truth, or he won’t. Either way, he’ll know that we know. It might be a deterrent, if in fact he was planning something.”

  “Will has a point,” Anne Marie said. “At the very least, he’ll know that someone will be watching him. Of course, he won’t tell the truth. . . .”