I See You (Criminal Profiler #2)(35)
Zoe’s gaze locked on Vaughan’s raised brow. Like her, he heard concern usually reserved for loved ones.
Instead of answering the question, she asked, “Who are you to Hadley Foster?”
A hesitation crackled over the line. “We are good friends. Now please tell me what’s going on. Where’s Mark?”
Vaughan shook his head. “We’d rather talk to you in person. We’ll come to you.”
Another pause. Was Dawson in shock, or was he shifting to damage control?
“Yeah. Sure. I’m at my office on Duke Street.” He recited the address of Weidner and Kyle, an accounting firm located on the building’s first floor. The line went dead just as the forensic van rolled up on the scene.
“He’s called her seven times in the last couple of hours,” Zoe said.
“Did he leave messages?” Vaughan asked.
“Two. But her messages seem to be password protected.”
Vaughan walked around the car and paused. “There’s a hell of a scrape on this side.”
She joined him and studied the long white graze. She touched her fingertip to the tail end of it and noticed traces of red paint. The right front tire was also noticeably low.
She looked back toward the corner of the mausoleum and spotted black scrape marks against an aluminum trash can. “The driver came flying around the corner and hit the post and then stopped here. Foster said his daughter was driving. A seventeen-year-old in a highly stressful hostage situation could easily have done this.”
“All assumptions are based on the testimony of a man I don’t trust.”
“That’s a given.”
Her gaze roamed toward rolling green hills dotted with gray headstones. “Have an officer search the entire area. No telling what he’ll find.”
“Right.”
She handed the phone to the forensic tech and then stripped off her bloodstained gloves and discarded them in a crime scene disposal bin by the van. “Let’s see what Mr. Dawson can share with us.”
Nikki drove to Fredericksburg in less than an hour. In the middle of the day, there was light traffic, and she pressed the speed limit, going well over eighty in some spots. It had not been too hard for her to find Becky Mahoney, Larry Prince’s former secretary and lover. There were others who had known the Prince family back in the day, but there was nothing like an old flame to give the inside scoop. If Nikki was lucky, Becky would have some lingering animosity toward Prince and be very willing to talk.
The GPS took her to the south side of the city, down several winding roads undergoing construction, and then into a small neighborhood. She had not called ahead and was not surprised when no one answered the front door. She checked her watch, guessing that it might be hours before Becky Mahoney returned home. That gave her enough time to find a fast-food place. She pulled out of the neighborhood, and two miles down the main road, she spotted several drive-through restaurants. She picked the first and ordered a burger and a Diet Coke. She pulled into a parking space, and as she ate, she opened her file on the Prince case.
Back in the day, she had been sleeping with a cop who had helped her obtain copies of the detectives’ case notes. What she had learned was that Larry Prince had been suspected of bribing state officials in exchange for the big contract he had won shortly before Marsha had vanished. However, there had not been enough evidence to bring charges. Some had whispered that Larry had broken a few key promises to local politicians. One detective had theorized that Marsha’s disappearance was payback for Larry’s disloyalty. It was all hearsay in the newsroom, but nothing could be proven, so no one had aired it. Today, she doubted her former colleagues would be so worried about lawsuits. Hell, at this stage, she was not really worried. As long as she attached alleged or sources said, she could wiggle out of just about anything.
Her stomach knotted, and her appetite vanished. She dropped the half-eaten burger in the bag and took a pull on the drinking straw. She leaned forward and opened the glove box, searching for the packet of cigarettes she always kept there. Technically, she had quit last year, but she had held on to this emergency stash as a kind of safety blanket. Her fingers skimmed over the crumpled packet. She’d thought she had one or two cigarettes left. It was empty.
“Shit.”
She turned up the police scanner she had on the Alexandria Police Department and listened for chatter. Officers were being dispatched to a cemetery. She kept waiting to hear the name Foster. When the cops didn’t say it, she knew something was up.
Glancing at the clock on the dash, she decided it was time to get back to Mahoney’s house and have a chat with her. Afterward, she would haul ass back to the cemetery.
She pulled in front of the house just as a woman parked in the driveway. The woman was older and plumper than she remembered, but there was no missing Becky Mahoney’s tall frame and bleached-blond hair.
Out of her car, she shouldered her backpack and hurried across the residential street. “Becky!”
The woman’s head turned, and the automatic smile dimmed a fraction as Nikki got closer. Her eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”
“We met years ago. I’m Nikki McDonald. I was a reporter for Channel Five in the DC market.”
Becky’s face flushed as she drew back, tightening her grip on her keys and purse strap. “I haven’t been up there in years. And I don’t talk about the time I lived up there.”