tree from both sides and then he could hear shouts as they ordered the man down on the ground. He put the phone to his ear and listened. More laughter echoed in his head and then the voice said, “Did you really think it would be that easy.”
Jaxon could see the officers holding up something black that moved in the breeze. It looked to be a coat, or jacket, on a hanger. One of the maintenance men was walking over to them, gesturing. The laughter grew louder in his ear and then it abruptly stopped.
“The girl is next,” and the line went dead.
Chapter 34
Ellie lay on her bed, bored. Three days cooped up in her house was getting to her. The swim team was on hold, the pool closed, Luke was trapped in his own house, and her mom was being a total bitch. She really didn’t blame her, she just wished her mother could see things through her eyes. All her mother wanted to do was lecture her about how irresponsible she’d been keeping all this to herself. She tried arguing with her that if she hadn’t, her mother might be attending her own daughter’s funeral, but it hadn’t seemed to phase her. She rambled on and on until Ellie couldn’t take it anymore and got up in the middle of one of the speeches and left the room. Her mother yelled at her, but Ellie showed her her back and stomped up to her room. That had been yesterday. Her mother hadn’t talked to her since.
She sat up and went to her desk. Maybe Luke was online and he would tell her he loved her again. Even if he was just typing it into a computer screen it was still pretty epic. She knew they were young and it didn’t matter what other people said, her mother included, she felt what she felt, and no one could take that away from her. Up until last year she hadn’t even known she could feel this way. When Luke held her or stroked her hair, the world and all its stupid crap would disappear and everything else didn’t matter. She only prayed it would last.
Luke wasn’t online so she checked her Facebook page and saw she had a message. It used to be so cool, the messages exciting and fun, but lately the feeling that washed over her when she saw the notification, was panic. What if it was from him? Would there be some awful picture embedded in it? Would he tell her something else she didn’t want to know? She hesitated, the curser hovering over the link. She pressed it.
It was from him. Her heart leapt into her throat and her hand recoiled as if shocked. She didn’t want to open it, didn’t want to see it, yet she couldn’t help herself. She had to know what he wanted. Had to see the horrible picture. Had to know the new lie he needed to tell her. If the fear she felt equaled her sick curiosity, the computer would probably have found its way through her upstairs window, crashing into a million pieces on the ground outside, but her curiosity won and she opened the message.
She sat back, deflated. To her, her father was dead. She had never met the man, never hugged him or felt his rough beard scrape her soft skin as he kissed her goodnight, never felt him pick her up to play or lay her down to sleep. He was a mystery to her. She had only ever seen one picture of him and she had been very little, almost too little to even remember. The picture was old and worn, a Polaroid stuffed in her mother’s drawer under some old coloring books, and the memory of it even more worn than the tattered shot. If someone asked her to describe her father, all she could come up with was tall. Big and tall. He had towered over her mother in the photo.
So why did she feel like her world was crushing her under its weight? If she cared so little about the stranger known to her only as Leonard Worthington, the father she never knew, why did it matter if the killer knew him? Why was she letting this madman push her buttons?
She felt violated. Dirty. Everything about her was unclean. She shivered and rubbed her hands unconsciously on her pants. If he even knew a little bit about the man who fathered her, then he knew intimate things about her that she couldn’t stand thinking. What had her father said to him? What did he show him? Did he have pictures of her or some other mementos she couldn’t even fathom? If Smith knew her father, than he knew her and this terrified her beyond all other things he had done so far.
The psycho knew her.
She suddenly felt very sick. She ran to the bathroom and gave up her lunch.
Chapter 35
Another web cam had been found mounted in a tree at the cemetery and when the FBI contacted the company administering the relay service for the camera, the IP address they gave led Jaxon to an internet cafe in downtown Washington D.C. The security cameras in the cafe gave them very little information despite having the timing down to the second. The killer kept his face hidden the whole time though they got a good indication of his body type. He was big, but it had only confirmed what the kids had told them the night of the attack in The Woods neighborhood. The man knew how to avoid detection.
The remainder of Sally’s funeral service had been a fiasco. Her parents had not appreciated the gravity of the situation and vocalized their disappointment at the outcome in as few words as possible. Most of them starting with the letter ‘F.’
The news crews had had a field day with the coverage and the department looked incompetent. The story had been broadcast on every station for two days. Jaxon watched himself deflate on TV as the black coat, hung on a branch by a gardener, fluttered in the wind, the officer holding it frowning into the camera.
Jaxon was frustrated. The computer program he got from Luke Harrison gave them nothing. They had designated one officer the sole task of monitoring the cell phone’s signal, but the damn thing hadn’t even been turned on since the software had been copied to the IT department’s computers. The phone Smith had called from during the funeral was a new number and they had no way of decoding it. The dead ends were like alleyways with thirty foot walls and Dobermans trapping him inside. He felt like he was clawing his fingertips off trying to scale the massive barriers. He’d give Harrison one more try.
He called Victoria at home first.
“You actually know my number,” she said, without saying hello. “It’s a true miracle. Are you bringing Reverb over?”
He smiled to himself for the first time in three days. “Should I? He’s mean and grouchy, but he might remember you.”
“Thanks. I thought dogs always remembered their owners.”
“He has a drinking problem. He can’t even remember where to pee.”
“Sounds like someone I know.”
“Like owner, like mutt.”
“Uh huh.”
“How is the head?” he asked.
“Sore, but I don’t have the bandage anymore. Looks worse than it feels. It’s got that sick yellow tinge to it old bruises get after a few days. Looks like a bird crapped on my head.”
“Well, I was going to ask you to come with me so your beauty and wonderful personality would offset my anger and bad manners, but maybe the bride of Frankenstein will make things worse.”
She laughed and the sound was good in his ear. “I could throw some sheet or bag over my head.”
“Worse.”
“What’s the plan, anyway?”
“I wanted to see if we could sweet talk the Harrison kid into giving up his hacker.”
“Smith’s cell phone hasn’t been turned on?” she asked.
“No. Not even for a second. He’s moved on to a new one and I doubt he’ll go back. This is a smart asshole.”
