“Assistant Director Hooper filled me in on the basics.”
Assistant Director? She didn’t correct the warden. “I need to know if Maggie or Margaret O’Dell has visited Wright in the last two years, or perhaps even before that. Do you have that information?”
“All prisoner visits are logged into the computer. We go back fifteen years electronically. Anything older than that is on hard copy.”
“Going back fifteen years should be fine.”
“I can fax you the list of Wright’s visitors, if you’d like.”
“Thank you.” She gave him her fax number. “Is it possible you could tell me right now if O’Dell was a visitor?”
“Yes, she’s been visiting monthly as far back as we have. She’s listed as next of kin. You know that O’Dell is Ms. Wright’s daughter?”
Though Nora had thought as much, the confirmation still took the wind out of her. “Yes,” she said, her voice low. “When was O’Dell’s last visit?”
“September ninth.”
Less than three weeks ago.
“Thank you. I’ll wait for the fax.”
“Agent Hooper said that this may involve a federal crime?”
“O’Dell is wanted for questioning in an act of domestic terrorism that resulted in a death.” Nora didn’t feel a need to share all the details.
“I’ll flag her name,” he said. “If she shows up to visit her mother, I’ll detain her.”
“I appreciate it. Thanks, Warden.”
She hung up. Duke asked, “And?”
“She’s a regular visitor. Her daughter.” Before she could say anything else, Hooper walked in with a fax. At first, she was amazed at Warden Greene’s speedy response; then she saw the fax wasn’t from Victorville.
“What’s this?”
“A copy of Margaret O’Dell’s adoption records. It was an open adoption; the files aren’t sealed. Under the terms, the adoptees, David O’Dell and April Plummer, agreed to bring the child to visit Lorraine Wright at least one day each month until her eighteenth birthday.”
Nora skimmed through the documents. They confirmed Hooper’s summary. She saw who’d signed the documents. “This isn’t the judge for her trial. He told me she gave the baby up for adoption.”
Duke leaned over and looked at the name. He typed it into his laptop computer. A moment later he said, “Newman is a family court judge.”
“But don’t they talk to each other?”
Hooper said, “Family court would be county. Wright was tried in federal court. They’re not in the same building, and rarely have cause to interact.”
“Why didn’t they tell me? I assumed they wouldn’t let that woman anywhere near a child, after-” Nora cut herself off. The system always tried to keep children with their parents, even criminals. She just didn’t know that twenty years ago.
Duke asked gently, “Nora, what would you have done about it had you known? Tried to get custody? A seventeen-year-old without a high school diploma or job?”
Nora looked at Duke, stunned that he would throw that out at her. It didn’t matter that it was true-she’d never have gotten custody in those circumstances-but it hurt that he’d publicly brought out something she’d told him in private.
“I would have petitioned the court to deny the open adoption,” she said. “Obviously, Lorraine isn’t fit to be an influence on a child. Look at how Maggie turned out.”
“You don’t know that Lorraine-”
“You don’t know her, you didn’t grow up with her.” She jumped up and paced. She was humiliated in front of her boss, embarrassed at her outburst, distraught over what she’d just learned.
Hooper changed the subject. “There’s more. Donovan’s team can’t locate Scott Edwards’s truck. We’re operating under the assumption that O’Dell has possession of it and have put out an APB on both the vehicle and O’Dell.”
He stood and walked to the door. “I’d tell you to take the rest of the day off, but you won’t, so I’ll just admonish you to be alert and let me know if you need additional assistance.”
“I appreciate it,” she said, and meant it.
Hooper walked out, and Duke said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Nora.”
“You used my past against me.”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s not how it sounded.”
He stood and walked across the room to her. “You would have seen the truth if you weren’t so upset. You were lied to, and that hurts. But you couldn’t have changed it then, and you can’t change the past now. All you can do is focus on finding the girl.”
“She’s my sister.” Nora could barely get out the words.
“You want Hooper to assign someone else?”
She shook her head. “He probably should. I’m too close to this.”
“That’s your greatest asset as well as your greatest weakness. You understand how Lorraine thinks, and therefore you understand how Maggie O’Dell thinks. No one else has those instincts. But you can’t think of Maggie O’Dell as your sister. She’s nothing like you.”
“She doesn’t think like Lorraine,” Nora said. “She thinks like her father. Cameron Lovitz. He was a psychopath-methodical and organized.”
Emboldened, getting a sense of Maggie O’Dell, the killer, Nora continued. “She’s different. She likely has his charisma in order to convince people to help her, but she has less control of her temper. She’s both organized and disorganized. She’s ruthless. And it’s all personal.”
Nora paced, putting herself in Maggie’s shoes. What would it be like growing up knowing your mother was in prison for trying to blow up a nuclear reactor? Visiting her every month. Hearing the stories about saving these animals and those trees and stopping a developer from building on a pristine meadow practically single-handed. And the exaggerations …
“Lorraine romanticized everything, exaggerated the good and the bad,” Nora said. “We’d be involved in some demonstration and she’d be pushed by a cop. That night the story turned into she was beaten with a billy club and she was lucky to be alive. Or if she freed research animals, it was fifty and she found homes for all of them, rather than twenty animals she’d released into the wild. All bait for larger predators.”
And Cameron. Nora remembered exactly what Lorraine said on the stand.
A flat-out lie, but Lorraine likely believed it because she wanted to. She was a pathological liar, which had been proven during her trial. What had Lorraine told Maggie about her father? About what they’d done and how they’d lived? What had their mother said about Nora?
“You think that Lorraine convinced Maggie that before the arrest, your family had an idyllic life?”
Nora nodded. “And I stole that life from her. That’s why Maggie wrote that letter highlighting the cases where I was undercover. I had ‘betrayed’ the cause and the good people who’d trusted me. That’s also why Maggie killed her cohorts. Because they betrayed her. They wanted out, and she wouldn’t let them go. Couldn’t. If they didn’t do what she wanted, they deserved to die.”
“And what about Professor Cole?”
“He had turned Anya against her. Anya turned the others. Or at least Chris. Scott Edwards, I’m not so sure. Maybe Maggie felt if she killed the other two she had to kill him as well. Or he did something that irritated her.” She squeezed her temples.
“Headache?” He crossed the room and massaged the sides of her head.
His fingers felt incredible and she relaxed. “I’m out of my area of expertise here. I don’t understand psychopathic killers any more than I understand-” She searched her brain. “-how to launder money. Hooper gave us
