Until Dark Page 7

  “I guess I was hoping to lock into a few distinguishing facial features.” Kendra tapped her pencil on the table.

  “You can’t draw what no one has seen.”

  “Well, I keep hoping to find someone who has seen him up close and personal.”

  “Three did,” Lieutenant Barker reminded her. “Part of what we’re trying to do here is to prevent him from getting that close to anyone else again.”

  “All right. But could you not release it publicly until we’ve spoken with the witnesses here? Someone might give us something that can help me refine the sketch.”

  “I’ll check back with you at the end of the day,” Miranda agreed.

  Kendra handed over her sketch. “Can you have some copies made?”

  “I’ll be right back with them.” Barker took the drawing that Kendra had completed the day before and left the room.

  “I take it there’re still no leads?” Miranda asked after the trooper had left the room.

  “Nada.” Adam shook his head. “But he’s sure left his DNA everywhere.”

  “Now why would he do that?” Miranda pondered. “Why would he be so careless about leaving DNA when he’s gone to so much trouble to set up his kills so carefully? From what you’ve told me, Adam, he’s invested a good deal of his time just studying his victims. So why leave behind something that could potentially lead right to his door?”

  “Maybe he’s confident enough to believe we’ll never catch him. If we can’t catch him, we can’t positively match him to the DNA that’s been recovered.”

  “How often does that happen? That a killer like this is never caught?” Kendra looked up at Adam over the notes she’d taken the day before.

  “You would not want to know the answer to that question.” Adam looked grim.

  “Another thing,” Miranda noted, “he’s going to have to dump that van soon and look for something else, if he hasn’t already done so.”

  “The state police are, as we speak, responding to a report of an abandoned van about seven miles from here.” Adam passed on the information he’d been given.

  “Then we can probably expect to hear about another stolen vehicle real soon.”

  “True enough. He’ll need transportation. Unless, of course, he has something hidden away somewhere.” Adam considered the possibilities.

  “Do you think he’s from this area?” Kendra asked.

  “He’d almost have to be. If he’s not, he’s studied it pretty damned thoroughly,” Miranda offered. “You know, killers all have a comfort zone. It’s pretty clear he’s in his here. He’ll stay as long as it’s comfortable for him.”

  “Well, since we haven’t even come close to him, I doubt he’s left the area,” Adam noted. “I’d expect him to stick around and watch, see how we’re doing in terms of the investigation.”

  “And keep an eye on his next victim,” Kendra said softly.

  “Chances are he’s already doing that. We just don’t know where he’ll strike this time.” Adam swiveled slightly in his chair. “I think the sooner we get the word out on this guy, the better off everyone will be. Kendra, if your sketch can give one woman a heads up . . .”

  “Just give me till this afternoon. Just let me speak with the witnesses who claim to have seen him around the park in Walnut Crossing. If there’s nothing new, we’ll hand over the sketch for the six o’clock news.”

  “Fair enough. But I still want Miranda to take this one with her. I think we can trust the sketch to resemble our man closely enough that it might spark some recollection in someone who’s seen him. Maybe one of the victim’s kids or neighbors might recall having seen him hanging around.”

  “Since all three of the victims have been single mothers with kids on sports teams, I’ve asked the locals to give me a list of all those teams, complete with players’ and coaches’ names and phone numbers, so we can start interviewing them.” Adam looked directly at Miranda. “You’re going to be a busy girl.”

  “I’ll have help from the locals, plus we have three more agents on board now,” she told him.

  “And as you identify others who have seen the UNSUB,” Adam told her, referring to the as-yet-unknown subject, “we’ll bring them in to talk with Kendra. Show her sketch and see if they can add anything. Getting his face out there is one of the best ways I can think of to throw him off schedule.”

  “Assuming I can come up with an accurate sketch,” Kendra agreed. “I almost hate to give Miranda the one I did this afternoon. Maybe it could be more accurate . . .”

  “If you need to refine your drawing later, that would be fine. But I think Miranda needs something to work with, and so far, your sketch is all we have. And who knows? Maybe she’ll come back to us later today with some good news.”

  Unfortunately, Miranda’s news hadn’t been all that good. Other than the previously reported sightings at soccer and baseball games, no family member of any victim had noticed a stranger, or strange events, within weeks or days of the abductions. Even the agents who canvassed the ball fields and tracked down teammates of the murder victims’ children had little to add. The ball fields and bleachers were always filled with men the age of the suspect. Many of them were around six feet tall with dark hair and wore baseball caps and dark glasses while watching their kids’ games on a sunny day. So far they had nothing that distinguished this tall, dark-haired man from any other.

  But while most of the witnesses who met with Adam and Kendra had nothing new to add, at the end of the day one resident of Walnut Crossing had proved to be the witness they’d all prayed for.

  An amateur boxer in his youth, Joe Tursky took pride in the fact that he worked out on a daily basis. Early in the morning, on Founder’s Day, Joe had parked his station wagon at the edge of the woods while he and his German shepherd jogged the path that traced along the entire circumference of the park.

  “What time had you arrived, do you recall?” Adam had asked.

  “It was right around eight in the morning. Before the festivities started. I run that park every day with my dog, usually in the afternoon, but with a dog that big, you know, people get nervous, so on days when I know there’s something going on, I try to get out early.”

  “When you arrived at eight, were there other cars in the parking lot?” Adam continued his questioning.

  “Only up in the area toward the square, you know, people setting up for the concerts and that sort of thing, but no one down around the ball fields or the park areas.” The middle-aged Tursky shook his head. “Not when I arrived.”

  “So take us through what happened, what you saw.” Adam rolled his chair back from the table to directly face the witness.

  “Well, Casper and me—that’s my dog, we call him Casper, like the ghost, because he’s a white shepherd—anyway, we did our run along the path and stopped halfway at the spring. There’s a creek there with a natural spring, water’s pure as you can find anywhere. People come with plastic bottles and fill ’em up to take home. Anyway, I stopped there for a drink, and to let Casper drink, too. It was already getting warm. Then, all of a sudden, Casper goes on the alert, you know what I mean?” Joe Tursky turned to face Kendra. “He just went still as a stone, like he was watching something down the path. And then before I knew it, he just took off. Like a shot.”

  “He wasn’t on a lead?” asked Kendra.

  “He had been—you just can’t let a dog like that run free—but I’d dropped the lead while we were drinking. So I took off after him, calling him, but he’s a lot faster than I am, you know what I mean? You try to keep in shape, but . . .” He shrugged.

  “But you caught up with him . . .” Adam gestured for Tursky to continue.

  “Yeah, a minute or two later. He was barking his head off. Had some guy backed up against a tree and Casper was barking like nobody’s business.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, I apologized all over the place—the guy was obviously scared shitless. I grabbed Casper’s leash and t
he guy just took off. White as a sheet, he was, and shaking like a leaf.”

  “Can you describe him?” Kendra opened the file in front of her so that she, but not Joe Tursky, could see the sketch that lay within.

  “Six feet or a little better. Dark hair, curly in the front. Wearing dark jeans, dark shirt, like a polo shirt.” Tursky paused to recall.

  “Had you seen him before?” Adam exchanged a glance with Kendra. So far it sounded like their man.

  “Not before, but I saw him again on the way out of the park. I had Casper on a short lead coming up that last ridge, where all the paths converge, that’s where I saw him. I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me. He jumped near out of his skin when he saw Casper.”

  “Mr. Tursky, does this look anything like the man you saw in the park?” Kendra slid a copy of her drawing across the table.

  Pulling a worn brown eyeglass case out of the inner pocket of the light jacket that lay across the arm of the chair, Tursky put them on and studied the sketch.

  “Yeah, that’s him.” Tursky nodded.

  “Please. It’s very important that you look at the sketch very carefully.” Kendra tapped the image. “What can you add to it? Where does it seem not quite right?”

  Tursky held the drawing up in front of him and stared at it for a long moment.

  “The lips are a little too thin, maybe. I think his bottom lip was fuller. And of course, he wasn’t wearing these glasses, so his eyes . . .”

  “You saw his eyes?” Kendra’s head snapped up.

  “Well, yeah,” Joe Tursky shrugged, “he was lookin’ right at me.”

  “What color, did you notice?” Kendra forced back the rash of questions she was dying to ask, knowing that bombarding the witness with too much all at once could cause him, in the end, to overlook something.

  “Dark. Dark brown. Thick lashes. Thick brows.”

  “Were they close together?”

  “Not really.” Tursky’s own eyebrows knit together as he tried to recall. “Seems they were wide-spaced.”

  “Shape?”

  “Round.” The witness nodded. “Round, wide dark eyes.”

  “Lines around the corners?” Kendra had picked up her sketch pad, the pencil moving across the paper rapidly.

  “No, I don’t think so. But there were some around the mouth, like a crease here.” Tursky drew an imaginary line down the side of his own face, from just to the side of his nose to just past the corner of his mouth.

  “Anything else? Anything else you can remember?” The pencil paused. “Scars, a mole . . . anything that would distinguish his face?”

  “No. No, I don’t remember anything else.” Tursky shook his head. “Oh. One thing I did notice that I thought was odd.”

  “What’s that?”

  “His clothes were wet. Like he’d been swimming in them.”

  “Is there a pool or a pond in the area?”

  “Just a stream down there at the foot of the path.”

  “Mr. Tursky, can you approximate his age?” Kendra asked as Adam added to his notes.

  “Early to mid-twenties.”

  “Are you sure there was nothing distinguished about his face?”

  “No. I’m not one hundred percent certain. I’ll tell ya the truth, the first time I saw him, I was more concerned about getting Casper under control, and the second, I was just surprised to see him. I didn’t look for scars or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Is this the face?” Kendra showed him the sketch.

  “That’s amazing.” Tursky whistled in admiration. “That’s just what he looked like. How can you do that?”

  “You’re the one who did it, Mr. Tursky, by describing the man so accurately.”

  “Mr. Tursky,” Adam spoke up, “you said you were surprised to see him the second time. Why was that? Because you’d thought he’d left the park?”

  “No, because of where he was coming from.”

  “Where was he coming from?”

  “There’s an area that’s off limits, it’s marked off with a chain-link fence. ‘Course, the kids do get down there from time to time to party, so I hear, but it’s a tough way down and a tough way back up again.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Couple of caves. They flood every time it rains, and since the township doesn’t have the manpower to patrol the area, they keep it secured.”

  “Mr. Tursky, can you take us through the park and show us both places where you saw this man?” Adam asked.

  “Sure.” Tursky nodded. “Be glad to.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Adam rose to leave the room to gather the necessary investigators to search the woods for any trace evidence their suspect may have inadvertently left behind.

  “Agent Stark, this is him, isn’t it?” Tursky asked as Adam reached the door. “The man who’s been killing those girls?”

  “We believe it is.”

  “If I’d known that,” Tursky said quietly, “I’d’ve let Casper have at him.”

  “That’s him?” Lieutenant Barker looked over Kendra’s shoulder. “That the son of a bitch we’re looking for?”

  “That’s him.” Kendra handed the state trooper the sketch. “All ready to make his debut on the local six o’clock news. Compliments of our new best friend, Joseph Tursky.”

  “Looks like a cocky bastard, doesn’t he?” Barker studied the drawing. “Cocky and full of himself.”

  “He’d have to be.” Adam walked through the open door. “To do what he does, in the manner in which he does it. He’d have to be damned confident. And bold as brass, as my grandmother would say.”

  “I’ll pass this on to the press. A few of the local stations got wind that the FBI was called in and have had vans hanging around the parking lot all day. Let’s make it worth their while.” The trooper started to excuse himself, sketch in one hand, the other hand smoothing back his hair for the cameras, when he turned back and asked Kendra, “Would you be willing to come out to meet the media with me? Maybe just let me introduce you, show your sketch . . . ?”

  “Sure. Just give me a minute.”

  “I’ll meet you out front,” Barker said as he left the room.

  “What’s next?” Kendra asked Adam.

  “Well, we’re going to be heading out to the park. We’ll meet the evidence team down there. There’s a lot of ground to cover down there, and only a few hours of daylight left.”

  “State, local, and federal investigators, I take it.”

  “As many hands as we can get.”

  Kendra finished packing her folders into her briefcase and closed the cover with a snap of the lock.

  “Kendra, the sketch you did . . . it really is remarkable.”

  “I had good information from a great witness.” She smiled as she picked up her purse and slung the wide strap over her shoulder. “Fortunately for us Mr. Tursky has a good memory. Let’s see what happens once the sketch is made public. Hopefully someone will recognize him and call in, and you’ll find him before he finds another victim.”

  “Nothing’s ever that easy.”

  “Maybe this time you’ll get lucky.”

  She paused, feeling like the guest whose welcome has just worn out. “I think I’ll call for a cab to take me back to the hotel. I know everyone is anxious to get down to the park, and there’s really nothing more for me to do here once the press conference is over.”

  “Why not take my car? I can grab a ride with Barker or Miranda.”

  “I don’t really see any reason for me to stay in Walnut Crossing. My job was to sketch,” she reminded him. “I sketched.”

  Adam stood with his hands on his hips, as if pondering some unexpected bit of news. He hadn’t thought about her leaving just yet.

  “What if we get another good witness?”

  “I don’t know what someone else could add to what Mr. Tursky gave us that would change the sketch. He said there were no distinguishing features. And if something really
important came up, I can always come back, you know.”

  “Yes, but you still have to get home, right? Why not drive my car back to Smith’s Forge and I’ll pick it up on my way back to Virginia?”

  “Then what will you drive while you’re here?”

  “I’m not worried about getting around.”

  “I don’t know if I’m up to such a racy little number.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It might be too much car for me.”

  He studied her stance, the amused expression on her face.

  “I doubt it.” He tossed her the keys. “I seriously doubt it.”

  Chapter

  Six

  Kendra left the highway, opting for the back roads that wound around the hill on which Walnut Crossing was built and led back to the main road on the far side. She wished she’d asked Adam to show her how to put the top down, though she suspected it wouldn’t be all that difficult, since it was automatic and there must be a manual somewhere. But having the windows down and all that lovely country air rushing through was just fine. Especially for someone accustomed to driving a car that had to be coaxed to go over fifty, and had long ago lost its ability to provide heat, air-conditioning, and music. The Audi could chew up her old Subaru and spit it out in less than thirty seconds.

  A green station wagon pulled out of the hotel’s back parking lot as Kendra slowed to pull in. The driver beeped his horn in greeting as he sped past. Kendra waved idly, with little more than a cursory glance in his direction.

  “Guess he’s admiring my wheels,” Kendra said under her breath as she parked as close to the front door as she could.

  “And such nice wheels, they are.” She nodded while she locked the door, then stepped back to admire the saucy car. “Very, very nice. Though sadly not mine. I am tempted. I have to admit.”

  In spite of the grind of the past few days, she felt . . . lighter, might be the best way to describe it, she thought as she got into the elevator and pushed the button for the fifth floor. Could be the car.