Showdown in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law, #3)(59)

Raissa laughed and jumped up from the bed. “I promise to have on fewer clothes later, but first I have to show you what Maryse and I found.”

Zach’s mind immediately shifted from carnal thoughts to the case. No way Raissa was this excited over nothing. “What did you find?”

Raissa grabbed a bunch of papers off the bed and sat at the table, spreading them out in front of her. Zach pulled up a chair next to her, ready for the show. “Maryse and I spent the afternoon going through the FBI files, trying to make a connection among the girls.”

Zach placed his hands over his ears. “I’m not hearing anything about hacking.”

“Wimp.” Raissa said and pulled his hands down. “I wanted to find the common denominator in the abductions. I’ve never believed it was on looks alone. It just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

Zach nodded. He thought there was far more to it than they had been able to discern. “So you found something about the girls?”

“No, their parents.”

“Like what? They lived in different places, had different jobs…No reason their paths would cross.”

Raissa smiled and handed him a stack of papers. “Unless they were all in the military. Check those papers. Three of them were stationed at Myrtle Beach.”

Zach looked down at the first sheet. “Facebook? You’re hinging a kidnapping investigation on Facebook.”

Raissa shrugged. “I wanted to hack the Social Security Administration. Maryse’s way was safer.”

Zach gave a silent prayer of thanks. “And legal. Remember legal?”

Raissa waved a hand in dismissal. “Forget that. Don’t you see—they were all at the same base. The last guy doesn’t have a Facebook account, but what do you want to bet he was stationed there, too?”

“Were they all there at the same time?”

“No, but within the same year, seventeen years ago.”

“And the FBI never caught that before?”

Raissa shook her head. “They wouldn’t have looked that far back initially, and when the lead investigator died, it got shuffled around a bit. There was a lot of terrorist activity going on then and most of the agents were redirected.”

“Then it went cold.”

“Yeah. They probably figured whoever did it was dead or in prison, and the reality is, the predators who don’t return kids alive are a higher priority than the one guy who returns them all seemingly unscathed.”

“So he got conve niently off radar and no one noticed a connection.”

“Until now. And guess who else just happened to be present on the base during that time?”

“Please don’t tell me it was the mayor.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you, but you need to check this bio we pulled off the City of New Orleans Web site. The mayor spent his last year of service as an instructor…”

“…in Myrtle Beach. Shit.”

“Guess who else was there?”

“I’m afraid to ask?”

“Our friend Dr. Spencer.”

Zach ran one hand through his hair. “Did he have that listed on his Facebook page, too?”

Raissa grinned. “No. We called and asked.”





Chapter Sixteen


Zach stared at Raissa, unable to wrap his mind around everything she’d just told him, much less what any of it meant. “You’re sure?”

“Yep. Dr. Spencer is ex-military and did a part-time stint on the base when they were short on medical personnel. A lot of the boys had returned from the Gulf War and needed care. He flew up there two weeks a month for over a year.”

“And the military just gave you this information because you asked?”

“Not me, Maryse. She explained who she was and the project she’s working on—she has government funding, you know—and besides, the officer who worked in records is from New Orleans.”

“So he gave out information over the phone to a stranger because she has government funding and he used to live in New Orleans.”

Raissa nodded. “I was impressed with Maryse, too. She explained that she was considering him for work on her project, as he’s a cancer specialist, but wanted to make sure he was telling the truth about his work with the military, since she has the utmost respect for military personnel and didn’t want him sneaking in the door with a lie. She didn’t ask for details, more like job-reference sort of stuff—what he was there for and when.”

“You think Spencer knew the victims’ parents?”

“I can’t prove anything, but I think it’s far too big a thing to be a coincidence.”

Zach shook his head. “I agree, but what does it tell us?”

Raissa sighed. “I have absolutely no idea. That’s why you found me sitting in bed with stacks of paper—my back hurt from the chair. But I still haven’t made sense of it. It’s all fascinating and can’t possibly be irrelevant, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with anything that fits.”

“This case just keeps getting stranger.”

“And that’s not all.” Raissa told him about the conversation between Sonny and Rico.

“Do you know this Hank?”

“A little. More secondhand than anything else. Apparently he owed the Heberts money and did a few jobs to pay off his debt.”