It's Not Over Page 13

  She’d have nightmares about him outsmarting her and getting away with the boy, and even better yet, she’d wake up screaming, and she’d never be able to do police work again because of it…because of him and what he did to her.

  Nothing would please him more.

  He took a satisfying deep breath as he neared the car and pulled out the key from his pocket, then clicked it open. He was almost there, so close he could practically feel it when a door swung open at the end of the garage and what looked like five or six deputies stormed in, yelling to one another.

  “Search every corner, even look into each and every parked car. He can’t escape. We can’t lose him now; we’re so close. He can’t hide from us. Leave no stone unturned, you hear me?”

  He turned around just as they entered, then stopped breathing at the sight of the armed deputies. As he turned back, he spotted a small rusty metal door left ajar in the concrete wall. He sprang for it and pulled it open. It was nothing but an electrical cabinet, but it had just enough space to fit the suitcase. Swiftly, he placed the suitcase inside, throwing the wig on top of it, then corrected his hair so it would look normal. He pressed the door to the small closet shut, then took a few deep breaths to calm himself, just as the deputies came running, their voices loud and frightening.

  He walked out from between two cars and greeted them as they approached him, guns drawn. One of them slowed down, then touched the edge of his hat in a polite greeting.

  “Sir.”

  “Anything?” he asked, praying they wouldn’t hear the trembling of his voice or notice how out of breath he was. “Did they get him?”

  The deputy shook his head. “Not yet, sir, but he can’t have made it far. We’re right on his tail. The hotel is in complete lockdown. No one gets out. It’s only a matter of time, the way I see it.”

  “Good,” he said, nodding, hoping they wouldn’t notice his shaking hands behind his back.

  “Carry on.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get him; don’t you worry.”

  His comment made him smile, but only on the inside. On the outside, he stifled it and looked serious, professional.

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Chapter 45

  THEN:

  “How could you let this happen?”

  His voice was low and seemingly calm for the situation. Roy’s father was standing next to Pamela’s hospital bed, holding her hand in his while she stared at him, breathing rhythmically behind her oxygen mask. She had injured her spinal cord, they said. She would never walk again and would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, whereas Roy had suffered only bruises.

  And worst of all, she had lost the child.

  Roy’s father had flown home immediately, and now he was in the room with her, unable even to look at Roy as he spoke through gritted teeth. The Little Maggot was sleeping in her stroller next to her mother’s bed, completely unaware of anything.

  “I left you in charge of her. I trusted you with her, with the most important person in my life. She was carrying my baby for crying out loud.”

  Roy’s eyes filled, and he opened his lips to speak, but no sound emerged from between them. He looked at the floor, tears spilling down the ridge of his nose.

  “You couldn’t let me be happy, could you? You had to drag me down into the misery with you. It’s what you do, Roy. You drag everyone around you down into the mud with you.”

  Surprised at this, Roy lifted his gaze and finally met his dad’s. “No, Dad…I…”

  Roy’s father lifted his hand in the air to stop him talking. “Don’t you dare call me that. I am not your father anymore. I have no son, do you hear me?”

  “But Dad…it was an accident, don’t you see? I didn’t see the truck. It came out of nowhere.”

  “Who on earth backs right out into a semi-truck, huh?” he said, almost hissing. “How could you miss seeing it?”

  “I didn’t. I swear it wasn’t…”

  “Don’t lie to me. Ever since Pamela and her daughter walked into our lives, you have wanted them gone. Don’t think I haven’t seen it in your eyes. You didn’t want them there; you didn’t want to see me happy. And you’d do anything to destroy that. And now you have. You’ve taken away my child, Roy. My son is dead because of you.”

  Roy stared at his father, unable to speak. Did he seriously think Roy had done this on purpose? That he had deliberately harmed Pamela and killed their child?

  How can he think such a thing of me?

  Realizing this and seeing the resentment in his father’s eyes, Roy stepped back, startled, suddenly wondering if he was right. Had he done this on purpose? He had often fantasized about hurting Pamela and her daughter, and he sure hated all of them, especially that child in her stomach. Had he on some subconscious level desired for them to be hurt? Had he deliberately backed out into the semi-truck?

  Roy shook his head in disbelief. His dad still stared at him with such deep hatred in his eyes; it made Roy’s stomach turn into a huge knot. He backed up toward the door, gasping for air. He kept hearing the sound of the horn as it approached them; he could hear the glass as it shattered, and he could hear Pamela’s scream as she was pushed forward.

  Was his father right about him? Had he wanted this to happen?

  Maybe.

  “I need you to go,” his dad said, not looking at him anymore. “When I get back to the house tonight, I want you to be gone, do you hear me? Go and never come back.”

  Chapter 46

  I was about to lose it completely. We were searching the hotel but yet still found nothing—no sign of the guy or the boy. The techs were working on the body of Elena Lopez, and the area around the elevators was completely blocked off and crawling with people in suits, while I had all of the sheriff’s men out searching every corner of this darn resort. Yet it seemed like he had just sunk into a hole. I had all entrances and doors locked off, so he couldn’t get out, yet no one had found him or the boy yet. How was that even possible?

  Now the deputy in charge came back, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. No sign of him in the garage either. We’re still working on the two top floors, going from room to room. We’ll get him; don’t you worry.”

  I took a deep breath while staring at the techs securing Elena Lopez’s body and taking pictures. Someone was doing a video walk-through of the scene, while another was carefully searching for evidence inside the basket, securing every strand of hair and every towel found in there, putting them in each their own bag for later analysis in the lab. There was lots of DNA on those things. It would make it difficult to distinguish between who could be a person of interest and who wasn’t. I was hoping Elena had fought back and that whatever was found under her nails would lead us to an ID of the killer.

  Brad came up the stairs since the elevator was stopped so they could secure evidence from inside of it as well, dusting for fingerprints on the buttons and looking for anything, hairs or spit.

  He walked toward me.

  “Boy, I leave you alone for a second, and this is what I come home to?”

  I exhaled. “He’s outsmarting us, I am afraid, and now someone is dead because of it. I feel so awful. To think he’s been up there in that room right above us all this time with the boy! I can’t stand the thought.”

  Brad placed a hand on my shoulder. “You can’t beat yourself up like this. It’s not healthy. None of us knew this.”

  I clasped my hands together. “No, but I should have known better. I’m the profiler here; I should know that a guy like him would want to follow the investigation as closely as possible. He likes it; he likes to see us get all frustrated and about to fall apart. He likes to be in control. I still say he messed up with Elena Lopez. It wasn’t planned; he had to kill her to keep her quiet, and that threw him off. My guess is he escaped the room right before we got there. Dang it! I was so close. But at least I am fairly confident that the boy was still alive when he left with him. This gives me hope that he�
�s still alive.”

  Brad nodded pensively. “We’ll get him. If he’s in this hotel somewhere, then we’ll get him.”

  “How did it go in Fischer’s apartment?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just an old geezer’s place with porn magazines in the bathroom and old Chinese food in the fridge.”

  “I’m losing my interest in him,” I said. “His lawyer arrived and is with him in the bedroom, but right now, I don’t have time to question him. If our guy is on the loose inside the resort with the boy, then we might as well conclude it can’t be Fischer. Still, I don’t want to let go of him yet. I’ll let him sweat a little longer. It won’t hurt him.”

  “Do you think it might be Emmeret Schultz? That he has been here all this time?” Brad asked.

  “I don’t know, but I do know this guy likes to toy with us—big time, and this has been planned for a while. The room he was in was booked six months ago online. It was paid for in cash, so no tracing him that way. The phone number and address he left were both fake, of course. And guess what name it was booked under?”

  “What?”

  I scoffed. “Blake Marshall. Like he was taunting us from the beginning. Rubbing it in our faces.”

  Brad whistled. “Wow. This guy sure is something, huh? But that must mean he knew the Marshalls were going to be here at the resort six months ago. How could anyone have possibly known that?”

  I looked up at him, impressed. “You pose a very relevant question there, Agent. It speaks to the theory that we’re dealing with someone close enough to them to know their travel plans.”

  Chapter 47

  After two hours, they finally got a break. The door to the room was opened, and the man with the cigarette dangling from his lip entered. He smiled at Nadja, and she was about to leave when Jessica stopped her.

  “Wait. Don’t leave me.”

  Nadja stopped by the door, then turned to look at her.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” Jessica continued. “Please?”

  “Show her to the bathroom,” the man with the cigarette said. Nadja had told Jessica that the girls called him the Lizard behind his back because he looked like a giant lizard with his oval, bald head, and he had a disgustingly long tongue. Nadja also said he sometimes had sex with the girls, especially those who misbehaved and refused to act in front of the cameras. Jessica had wanted to ask her if he ever had sex with her, but she didn’t dare. Jessica had never had sex with anyone before, but she had seen Dad on top of Mom from time to time when walking in on them, and she had heard them sometimes grunting and moaning after a fight in the bedroom. After seeing what she did, she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to have sex with anyone at all. Mom didn’t seem like she enjoyed it much.

  “Follow me,” Nadja said.

  Jessica walked behind her into the living room, where six or seven more men sat by computer screens, showing girls in very little clothes, acting and dancing to the camera the same way Nadja had shown Jessica. She scanned the room frantically to see if she could spot the man who had brought her to the apartment. She was looking for her backpack. He had taken it when he took her, and it held Dad’s gun inside of it.

  “It’s right behind this door,” Nadja said and stopped by a white door. She leaned closer to Jessica, then whispered: “Don’t stay in there too long, or they’ll send someone in there to get you, and you don’t want that. Girls sometimes hide in the toilet, thinking they can avoid having to work, or sometimes they try to escape through the window, but they get punished for it—big time. Don’t do that. Okay?”

  “O-okay.” Jessica nodded nervously. She had planned to go to the bathroom and maybe see if there was a window she could crawl out of. She pushed the door open and walked inside, then closed it behind her. She wanted to lock it but realized there was no lock or key. She’d just have to yell in case anyone came in.

  Terrified, she sat on the toilet and looked at the small window under the ceiling while she peed. It was too small for her to crawl out of, and she knew they had gone inside an elevator when coming here, so she knew they were up high. Still, she stood on her tippy toes and peeked out once she was done peeing, to see if there was a landing out there to stand on, or maybe even a balcony where she could signal people in the street below. Could she open the window?

  There was a handle, but it didn’t work when she tried.

  Seconds later, someone hammered on the door.

  “You in there. Hurry up!”

  It was the Lizard’s voice. He hammered again, and she rushed to wash her hands, but there was no soap, so she had to do it just with water. Barely had she turned off the faucet when the door slammed open, and he walked in.

  “What is taking you so long? You have work to do.”

  He reached out, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her out. Jessica yelled in pain because he was hurting her arm. She didn’t cry like she did when Dad had jerked her out of her room the very same way on that day when he had yelled at her for not doing the dishes. Dad hadn’t just pulled her arm then; he had let a rain of punches fall upon her. At least the Lizard didn’t do that. He just dragged her through the living room, where she saw something that made her almost shriek with joy. The man who had taken her, the one with the crooked nose, was still there. He was sitting on a couch, phone in his hand and scrolling while smoking a cigarette with the other.

  And right next to him, by his feet, stood her blue backpack.

  Jessica gasped with joy, just as the Lizard threw her back inside the room, then shut the door and locked it from the outside.

  “Now, you dance,” he yelled from the other side. “Or you don’t eat.”

  Chapter 48

  My nails were just about gone. I had bitten them completely down while sitting in the hotel suite, waiting for news. Brad had gone back out to join the search, while I stayed with Mary and Peter. Finding out that we believed the kidnapper—and probably their son—were both still somewhere in the resort hiding had given the couple a small ray of hope. But as the minutes passed, I could tell that especially Peter was getting more and more agitated. His fingers were tapping restlessly on his thighs, and he rose to his feet, then paced the room before sitting down again next to his wife. She placed her hand gently on his thigh, but he didn’t take it in his. Instead, he shook his head in frustration, then looked up at me.

  “Why can’t they just find them?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand that either,” Mary said. “If they’re here somewhere, why can’t anyone find them?”

  That part was getting on my nerves as well. I kept wondering if he could in any way have escaped—if he could have made it out even though all the exits were heavily guarded. I just couldn’t see how that was possible. He had the boy with him; how did he walk past the massive amount of police and feds?

  No, he was still here. I could feel it. I just knew it.

  “Are there really that many places someone can hide with a small boy?” Mary asked, confused, looking first at her husband, then at me. “Why is it taking so long? I can’t stand the waiting.”

  I shrugged. “I wish I could tell you something that would be more reassuring, but I am afraid I can’t. The one thing I can say is that I do know that our agents and deputies are doing everything they can to find them both. They’re being very thorough and will leave no stone unturned. They’re combing through every closet or small hiding place, and that takes time. But if he is here, and the boy with him, they’ll find them. You can trust in that.”

  Mary’s eyes went blank. I could tell she was running out of fuel. There wasn’t much hope left. Her shoulders sagged. I wondered when was the last time she had eaten anything.

  “What if they don’t find them?” she said in almost a whisper. “What if they have already left the resort? What if Cole is…I don’t think I can…I don’t think I’d be able to bear…”

  Finally, Peter’s hand landed on hers. He squeezed it and came to her rescue, pulling her out of the dark hol
e she had crawled into. Their eyes met, and she seemed to light up slightly.

  “Don’t say the rest. You can’t think like that, darling,” he said. “We mustn’t lose the little hope we have. It’s all we have left right now.”

  She bit her lip, looking into her husband’s eyes. “I just wanna go home. I want to get my boy back and then go home. I never wanted to come to Florida, remember? I said I hated the place because…because of what happened… But you said it would be fine, that something like this…”

  He shushed her, and she stopped talking. This wasn’t the time to start placing blame, and she knew it too. It was the easy way to go right now, but it would ruin everything between them.

  Instead, a silence penetrated the room, and it felt unbearable. I decided to fill it.

  “There’s something I have meant to ask you. I don’t know if it is important, but it keeps nagging at me,” I said.

  Mary lifted her gaze. I continued.

  “I know it’s hard to talk about, but it might be important. The twins were drowned by a lake. It was concluded that they had been held underwater and supposedly drowned in that lake, with the risk it contains of being seen by other people because it takes longer than if they were killed first and then put in water as is more common. I can’t stop thinking that this holds some significance to the killer. Sometimes, the way a killer murders someone has a special meaning or refers to something he himself has experienced in life, usually been traumatized by. Does drowning mean anything to you, any relatives, or any close friends? Has anyone close to you had an experience with drowning that might prove to be important?”

  Mary and Peter exchanged a look. I could tell she was thinking about it for a few seconds before she looked back at me.

  “I had a brother,” Mary said. “But that was so many years ago. I hardly think it can be important today…”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” I said, leaning forward, sensing we might be onto something important here. “What happened?”