The Fear Collector Read online

  “Let me help you,” Lisa said, bending down and hooking her hands under his arms. He stood wobbly on one leg, like a flamingo at the zoo. A good wind would knock him over. Lisa handed him his other crutch and picked up the backpack.

  “You must be taking some heavy courses,” she said, instantly feeling embarrassed about the unintended pun. She got a good look at his face. He actually was handsome with dark hair, large brown eyes, and stylish stubble above his upper lip and on the tip of his chin.

  A goatee in the works?

  Lisa grinned, not outwardly, but inside. The cute dork existed after all. She’ll tell Naomi the minute she helped him to his car.

  “Where are you parked?” she said.

  “Over there,” he said. “I’m Ted, by the way.”

  So sure he was about what he was about to do that he didn’t think twice about using his father’s name.

  Lisa glanced over at the burnished orange Honda Element, a boxy mini-SUV that was destined to be the VW bus of the new millennium.

  “Fun car,” she said.

  He shrugged, although with crutches under each arm, shrugging was not that easy an endeavor. “Good for outdoors stuff. If you go hiking and get mud in the car you can literally hose it out.”

  Lisa nodded. “I guess that’s good. You like to hike?”

  “I do. Sometimes I like to drive out to the middle of nowhere, pull off the road, and just find something cool to look at. A lake. A forest. Someplace where no one goes.”

  “I’m Lisa, by the way. What are you taking?” she asked, moving the heavy backpack to her other shoulder

  “Biology. Pre-med,” he said, though it was a lie. Inside his backpack were the A, B, and C volumes of old, outdated encyclopedias from his basement recreation room.

  He was looking even more handsome.

  When they arrived next to his car, he directed her to the passenger side.

  “Can you put my books there?” he asked. “Easier to get to later.”

  She nodded.

  He pushed the electronic door lock button on his key fob and Lisa popped open the door.

  “Did some other good Samaritan take a nap in here?” she said, a little teasingly, as she set the backpack on a seat that had been completely reclined to form a bed.

  He didn’t answer and Lisa turned to look over her shoulder.

  The young man was standing without crutches, framed by a lamp partially blocked by a dying cedar tree. Braided shadows crisscrossed his face like a spider web. He was holding one of the crutches like a Louisville Slugger.

  “What the—” Lisa started to say, but her words were cut short.

  He’d filled the aluminum tube of the crutch with his grandfather’s lead fishing weights, thinking that a little more heft would be helpful when he swung it at his victim’s head.

  Which he did.

  And it was.

  Lisa’s shoulder bag fell into the gutter and her cell phone cartwheeled on the pavement and broke into pieces. The college student offered no final scream. No real sound but the slumping of her body against the doorjamb of the Element.

  In a moment marked by a blur of swift movements and a gasp of air from the victim’s lungs, he had her inside.

  He looked at her through the passenger window, satisfied and excited. He fixed the image in his memory like a photograph that he’d retrieve later. Moments like this were to be savored and relived over and over.

  Lisa Lancaster was so beautiful. Sleeping. Like a doll with a swirl of lovely dark hair and perfect little features. He owned her right then, and a broad and unexpected smile came to his face. Not fear. Not a thumping heart sequestered behind a rib cage. None of that.

  At that moment, the young man understood something about the power of the hunt that had eluded him as he’d planned and stalked his first kill. The rush. The excitement of doing something few dared to do.

  And doing it better than the father he’d admired, though never known. He climbed behind the wheel and turned the key in the car’s ignition. He let out a little laugh at the pun that came to him just then.

  He really was in his element. In every way.

  At ten minutes before midnight, the 911 communications center received an anguished call from the mother of a missing young woman. The operator, Mary-Jo Danforth, thirty-one, took down the information provided and created a file she’d pass along to law enforcement. It was close to break time and Mary-Jo was feeling bored and restless. After she hung up the call, she swiveled her chair to talk to her friend and co-worker, Kirk Aldean.

  A video camera installed for training purposes captured their conversation.

  MARY-JO: Some mother thinks her daughter’s been abducted or something. Didn’t come home from college today.

  KIRK: Probably out whoring around.

  MARY-JO: You said it. I didn’t. I just told her that we usually don’t get involved if someone’s only been gone a few hours. I mean, Jesus, if my old man called every time I was late getting home from shopping . . .

  KIRK: Shopping? So that’s what you call whoring around?

  MARY-JO: You’re such a brat. Anyway, she was crying and saying it wasn’t like her daughter to be so, you know, irresponsible.

  KIRK: Such a ho.

  MARY-JO: You want to have coffee?

  KIRK: You hitting on me, MJ?

  MARY-JO: I guess. Let me finish the report. We can take our break out back.

  She returned to her keyboard and finished her record by typing in the name: LISA LANCASTER.

  CHAPTER 4

  One of the highlights of the lobby of the Tacoma Police Department was without question the Mug Shot Café. Forget the historic placards and the tributes to the fallen officers that filled part of a wall. The espresso shop served up decent lattes and cappuccinos to the men and women of the department that perpetually seemed understaffed—it was appreciated and needed, especially after late-night investigations that turned into early-morning case reviews. The officer who greeted visitors from behind a bulletproof glass enclosure had summoned Grace to come downstairs.

  “Your mother’s here,” he said.

  “Why does this feel like I’m in school again?” she said, trying to make light of it. Her mother had been a frequent visitor to the department. So frequent, in fact, that it had almost cost Grace the job when the department reviewed her application. Her mother wasn’t “crazy,” but she was a little on the annoying side. At least that’s what they said to each other. Inwardly, each of them felt a little different. Grace’s mother was a persistent advocate for her daughter.

  The one who had gone missing before Grace was born.

  “You said you’d call me,” said Sissy O’Hare, a woman who never waited longer than a blink to get to the heart of any matter. She was referring to the bones.

  “Mom, there wasn’t any more to say.” She looked over at a pair of black leather chairs in front of a turn-of-the-century paddy wagon that was part of the department’s mini museum of Tacoma’s law enforcement history. “Let’s sit.”

  “You didn’t tell me that the bones were a woman’s or a girl’s.”

  “I didn’t know what they were. I told you that.”

  “The news says female.”

  “They’ve made a calculated guess. We don’t know what the gender is,” Grace said.

  Sissy pressed her daughter. “Look, you’re here. You know what’s going on. The very least you could do is keep me informed.”

  Grace looked around. She didn’t like the sentence that her mother had just uttered. Her job was to solve crimes, not be a tipster whose purpose was to slake her mother’s insatiable need to know every detail of every case that could possibly help solve the mystery of what had happened to Tricia.

  “Mom, the evidence collected at the beach is in the hands of a very capable lab unit in Olympia. They will let us know what, and if possible, who, those remains belong to. Besides, getting any DNA from those bones will be difficult.”

  Sissy put her hand
on her daughter’s knee. “Then you have to find the rest of her. Was—was there a skull?”

  Grace shook her head. “No. Not that we could find. We’re not sure how the bones got there, Mom. We don’t know for sure if there was a grave above, up on the cliff. We’re still looking.”

  “She had a retainer when she went missing,” Sissy said. “You remember that I told you that.”

  “I remember everything, Mom. And yes, while the retainer could be a helpful clue, the confirmation would come from teeth. The blood and tissue inside the tooth is often well-preserved.”

  The conversation was both strange and strained. The two women in front of the vintage paddy wagon were talking about a daughter Sissy hadn’t seen for decades, and the sister Grace had never known. They were detached from the idea that they needed a dead person’s teeth. It was a conversation they’d had before.

  Later, when they would separate and go about the rest of their day, they’d think about what had driven them to the point of obsession.

  Back in her end cubicle on the second floor, Grace flipped through the stack of reports that had somehow managed to appear in the twenty minutes she’d been downstairs talking to her mother.

  “You doing all right?” Paul Bateman said, setting down a morbidly stained white coffee mug—one that needed a trip home to someone’s dishwasher. Anyone’s.

  She took it anyway. She needed more caffeine. “Yeah. I don’t know what’s worse, my mother or our caseload.”

  “Speaking of caseload—we’re following up on the Lancaster case today.”

  “Of course we are,” Grace said, already scanning the report.

  When Lisa had gone missing just after Samantha Maxwell’s body was found, one of the local radio stations had tried to make something of the coincidence. The on-air hosts ignored the department’s public information officer when he reported that Samantha’s drowning was nothing but a tragic accident and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Lancaster girl.

  “Short-staffed,” Grace said, getting her coat. “Remind me to remind our wonderful sergeant that we can’t do it all. No one could.”

  Across town, a man wallowed in the same beleaguered state. So much to do. So, so little time.

  That afternoon Catherine Lancaster’s haunted brown eyes stared at the lens of a Seattle TV news camera. A pediatric nurse at Tacoma General, Catherine was a tall, lanky woman with angular features and a wide, almost slotted mouth. With dark eyes and light brown bob, she had never been a beauty queen, but those who knew Catherine would only describe her with one word: beautiful. She’d devoted her life to serving others and the irony of what had happened to her wasn’t lost on anyone. Among her friends, Catherine was the first to offer help—and the last to leave when someone needed her. There was no time of day too late to call. No question that could not be asked.

  She was a woman who didn’t deserve the lens of the camera on her. Not then. Not ever.

  “Please,” she said somewhat stiffly, her voice surprisingly strong given her obviously fragile state. Her thin lips trembled as she strung together the words that no mother would ever want to utter: “Help me find my daughter.”

  Catherine was on the news that evening doing what she’d been doing from the first moment Lisa vanished from a parking lot at the Pacific Lutheran University campus. A single mother, she had only one purpose in life at that moment. She wanted to find Lisa. No one but another mother could understand the true torment that comes when a child is missing. That was not to say that fathers didn’t feel true anguish. But while in the world of political correctness no one dared to say so, it was true: It was a million times harder on a mother than a father. It just was. It just is.

  “Look,” she said, tears welling and threatening to roll down the crisp planes of her face, “I know that everyone says their kids are perfect, but Lisa was. She really, really was.”

  The reporter went on to cite Lisa’s achievements, and there were many: basketball letter as a freshman, honor roll every year through high school, leader of a group of students who sought greater understanding for those with handicaps. Lisa was a dream child.

  “She wanted to be a social worker or maybe a counselor for troubled kids. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to be because there were so many things that interested her.”

  The tears finally fell.

  The camera cut away to a wide shot of the campus parking lot, then the reporter, who stood shaking her head slightly.

  “Such a sad story unfolding here in Tacoma. If anyone has any information—saw, heard anything, please contact the Tacoma Police Department.”

  The last image on the screen was a photo of Lisa and a phone number.

  Down in Olympia a few miles south of Tacoma, a man named Dennis Caldwell was watching the Seattle TV news when the image of Lisa Lancaster made him do a double take and reach for the phone. He was almost shaking when the detective handling the case of his daughter’s disappearance answered.

  “Hey, Dennis,” Detective Jonathan Stevens said. “I know you’re calling for an update, but, sorry, nothing new.”

  “No update. I mean, I think I might have an update for you,” Dennis said, his voice quavering.

  “How’s that? Remember something, did you?”

  “No. I just saw something I think you should check out. I saw on KING-5 just now. There’s a missing girl’s case in Tacoma. The girl was abducted from one of those colleges up there. Taken, just like my Kelsey.”

  “I’m sure it might seem that way to you, Dennis,” Detective Stevens said. He was not trying to shut down the anguished father. Although it sounded like he’d been drinking, he wasn’t going to hold that against him. His daughter had been abducted. No one ever gets over that. Never. “We’re still on top of the case.”

  “Like hell you are. You don’t know who took her now any more than you did the day she went missing. You don’t know a thing.”

  “We’re on it,” he said.

  “The girl up in Tacoma looks just like my Kelsey. The same hair. Same features. A beautiful girl. Maybe the guy who took her is the same one who took my little girl. Will you promise to check it out?”

  Jonathan Stevens never failed to check out any lead, no matter how tangential.

  “You hang in there, Dennis,” he said.

  “You catch who abducted her.”

  After the call, Jonathan did a quick computer check and found information about Lisa Lancaster’s disappearance. Lisa did look a lot like Kelsey, that was true. But she was much older. Kelsey Caldwell was seventeen and had been abducted after drama practice—she had been cast as Fiona in Brigadoon. Lisa Lancaster was twenty-four, a college student. He did have to hand it to Dennis Caldwell, drunk or not. He was right. The two girls looked like sisters.

  Jonathan Stevens made a call up to Tacoma. It was more due diligence than anything. The chances of the two cases being connected in any way were slim to none. He just didn’t want to be the cop who didn’t act on a desperate father’s request for justice. He couldn’t live with that at all.

  CHAPTER 5

  Like the others before him, and undoubtedly the many more to follow, he was watching the TV news with a keen interest. His kind liked to be informed. They needed to get the update, the 411. Men like him always needed to know what their work had wrought. It was a thrill to see how someone reacted when his or her little girl was snatched. Most cried. Some like Lisa’s mother, Catherine Lancaster, let tears fall slowly, as they fought for control in front of the camera. Those boohoo-ers, as he called them, were interesting, though kind of predictable.

  Of course you are miserable, you idiot. You should have taught your daughter to be careful. Ever heard of stranger danger? Cry me a goddamn river, you idiot mother!

  He sucked in everything Lisa Lancaster’s mother had been saying, like he would suck the marrow from Lisa’s bones. Hard. Quick. She was a classic boo-hoo-er. And a bit of a bore if you asked him. Which no one ever would, because no one would ever k
now it was he who’d taken her.

  The ones who got his adrenaline pumping were those who showed more anger than fear. They were the ones who jabbed at the camera and threatened to come right out of the TV to throttle the perpetrator.

  “Bring her back or I’ll make you so damn sorry!”

  He smiled. They seemed so angry, so determined. It was almost a joke to him. They’d be the first ones to run from him if they knew he was nearby. All talk. All bravado. He imagined going to a candlelight vigil or a missing persons office to rub shoulders next to the finger-jabber. He’d lean over and whisper.

  “She begged for her life, you know.”

  And when the person spun around, he’d pretend he’d said something else.

  “She’s a survivor, you know.”

  The only thing better than the finger-jab threat of some pissed-off dad was the truly inconsolable mother. The ones who could hardly get a word out of their trembling lips.

  He liked those kinds of mothers. Their words and palpable fear were like a drug. They sparked. They sent a charge of adrenaline, spasms of excitement, through his body. It was as if their pain, their deepest hurt, brought him the greatest joy that he could imagine. Better than sex.

  Almost.

  Sometimes he was so drawn to the mother’s pain that he’d drive by their house. It was a risk, a big one. Risks, however, were part of the game. The one he admired over all the other men who were just like him, had taken more risks than anyone. He’d escaped jail twice. He’d killed more girls than any other—though others were pretenders to the crown. He was the best at what he’d sought to do. A legend.

  At times, he knew that following in the footsteps of a legend was like walking a tightrope in the dark. Yet he had no choice. He never really had.

  Police detective Grace Alexander stood on the front doorstep and let her eyes pierce through the opening in the curtain between the small window and the door frame. The fabric moved and a woman with dark, penciled-on brows and eyes that had obviously cried a thousand tears stood there waiting. The women’s eyes met, and in a flash both knew that what they were about to share was nothing either would have wanted.