We watch video after video, watching her start drifting away from Travis more often. She sits at a table with a man and listens to him, leaning into him, but occasionally looking over at Travis. It takes a couple of hours, but we finally get to footage of the days leading up to Sarah showing up in Sherwood to masquerade as my neighbor. I can clearly recognize Sarah, but the man is harder to pinpoint. He stays at a back-corner table and keeps his head down. But on one of the last videos, just days before her arrival, Sarah and the man linger after the inmates return to their cells.
I’m watching them stand close together, then walk out of the visitation room together. Just as they step up close enough to the camera for me to finally see his face beneath his hood, my phone alerts in my lap. I pick it up and see a text from Mayfield.
“That train station is currently being renovated, and new structures are being constructed across the street.”
A smile twitches at my lips. I set the phone down and look at the surveillance image again, zeroing in closer on the man’s face and a dark wave of hair curling down his cheek.
“Caught you.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“The visitor's list for the prison lists his name as Anson Combs, but according to Travis Burke, he was known as Fisher. We know from information we got from Greg that Fisher is the title of one of Jonah’s highest-ranking associates in Leviathan. I can only assume it’s the same person. Surveillance footage has him spending a considerable amount of time talking with Sarah Mueller in the months leading up to her coming to Sherwood. If you’ll remember, Sarah used details of important previous cases of mine to damage my reputation. At one point, she used technology to operate my phone remotely and lure me to an old farmhouse where I was chased and fell down an elevator shaft. My assumption was this related to Jake and our final confrontation in his house. But after speaking with him, I realized that detail didn’t exactly add up,” I explain.
“It wasn’t a house,” Sam tells those gathered in the room with us. “It used to be, but it had been converted into a hotel and then abandoned.”
“There was some work being done on it, but the construction had stalled,” I continue. “I realized this was not in reference to Jake, but rather to the two men found murdered in the hotel that was undergoing renovation. The same hotel would later be the site of Doc Murray’s body being dumped. The way Sarah orchestrated each of her stunts was based on the timing of those cases. She chose that particular order based on Doc Murray’s death, which occurred just before I arrived in Feathered Nest to do my undercover assignment.
“The only way she could have known about that was through a trusted member of Leviathan. Those murders were not done as an event of chaos. They were a personal vendetta by Jonah, something he would have only shared with the people closest to him. That means the only way she would have known of that is through Fisher. Through Anson Combs. He has been contracted to work on projects in the Richmond bus station, as well as the train station, where the initial murders on the train occurred. There is surveillance footage of him at the train station. Not getting into any of the trains but showing familiarity with the area.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Bellamy asks.
“He wants attention, so I’m going to give it to him. All along, he’s been playing this game with me. So, what if I lose?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Greg asks.
“What if I lose the game? Throw it completely. It would mean I’m not going to be playing anymore, but it would also give him the satisfaction of knowing he won. He won’t be able to resist either of them. He’ll have to come to me. To encounter me directly for the first time. Up until now, he’s done everything at a distance or through other people. But this will be his last chance to confront me.”
“What do you have in mind?” Dean asks.
“Eric, Sam, and I are going to have a press briefing. We’re going to release a statement that I have solved the string of murders previously attributed to the serial killer known as Catch Me. Through personal evidence and his highly telling suicide, we’ve come to the conclusion that the murderer was Martin Phillips, who used his position as an orderly at the hospital to dangerous advantage. Including my abduction and attempted murder.”
“That should do it,” he notes.
I nod. “We will end the briefing with a quick comment about how I look forward to taking some time off and managing some family business in Florida. He won’t be able to help himself. It’ll be just too much for him to resist. Then we go down to Florida, and I go home for the first time in a long time.”
“I called Christina Ebbots,” Bellamy explains. “She’s finally back in town and was able to give me the exact street address of the house. She says Emma is more than welcome to use it.”
“It turns out Christina’s father Charles Ebbots, aka Grayson, was the head of Spice Enya when he was alive. She found some more of his records. It looks like he was the one who handled planning my mother’s memorial service.”
“Are you ready to do this?” Eric asks.
“Absolutely,” I say. “This ends here.”
It takes a couple of days to get everything put into place, but the preparation is well worth it. The
