Authors: Allison Brennan
It was a joke, at least the last part, but she didn’t smile.
“What?” He kissed her. “Did I say something?”
She shook her head and pulled his lips back to hers. He couldn’t read Lucy the way he read other people, yet her depth and complexity had drawn him in from the beginning.
“Excuse me,” a voice came from the doorway.
Lucy jumped, her body instantly tense, and Sean stood, taking one of Lucy’s hands into his.
Patrick stood in the doorway, a dark cloud over his face. Lucy saw it, and she looked embarrassed.
That angered Sean. He wasn’t angry at Lucy, but he was furious with Patrick for sounding so self-righteous in his tone, for making Lucy uncomfortable. What he and Lucy shared should make her happy, but Patrick was doing everything he could to put a wedge between them, however subtle. Their conversation yesterday had revealed the ugly truth, and if Patrick thought Sean was backing down he was an idiot.
“I have the preliminary background checks done on Trey Danielson and his family, and the server host information from the
Party Girl
website.”
“Anything interesting?” Sean asked. Lucy tried to extract her hand, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“Danielson is an only child. His father is a high-ranking consultant for the Congressional House Committee on Appropriations. His mother works for the Library of Congress. They’ve been married for twenty-six years. Danielson has an older brother, career Army, deployed in Afghanistan, rank first lieutenant. Twenty-four years, went through the ROTC program at University of Virginia. Nothing pops on any of them, but with the dad’s position I need to be cautious so I don’t trip any invisible wires the FBI might have on him. So far I haven’t found anything on the kids, either, at least in official records. Trey has a 2005 Ford Ranger registered in his name. I sent you the license, make, and model.”
Patrick continued. “As far as the server that hosts the
Party Girl
site, it’s routed through several different servers, but I traced it to New York City. There’s a duplicate site in Europe.”
“New York?” Yet another connection. “Do you have an address?”
“Just the provider, but that means nothing. It’s just an office. I don’t know where the servers are, and the site itself has full privacy protections, using the provider as the contact and address.”
“That’s all I need,” Sean said. “Once I know the host I can track down who pays the bills.”
“Don’t you dare hack into the database,” Patrick said.
Sean didn’t like Patrick’s tone. “I have no intention of hacking into any place. I have plenty of legal ways to get the information we need, especially since Lucy and I are going to New York in the morning.”
Patrick looked at Lucy, then said to Sean, “You’re bringing my sister? I’m your partner.”
Sean realized he’d handled this poorly, but Patrick had overstepped with the hacking comment.
“Kirsten is a teenager who may need help when we find her. We don’t know what’s been going on with her, but she’s more apt to trust Lucy than a strange man.”
“Sounds good,” Patrick said sarcastically.
“What’s your problem?”
“I thought we were equal partners. But if you’re calling the shots, fine. I’ll hold down the fort here.”
Lucy stood. “It’s not like that, Patrick.”
“It’s not like what?”
“Hold it,” Sean said. He needed to defuse the situation. “You want to go to New York, go right ahead, but Lucy is the one who figured out that Kirsten and Jessica Bell—the 917 number she had been calling for several months and the last call she made—are both on the
Party Girl
site. She understands how these things work better than either of us. And Kirsten is in serious trouble.”
“Then you should bring in the police.”
“I will, when we have more than a cryptic message to go on. What can the police do?”
“Put out a BOLO? Talk to their informants? Work the case?”
“For a teenager who has been branded a habitual runaway?” Sean shook his head. “When I have something to turn over, I will. I’m not a maverick.”
“Really?”
Lucy said, “Patrick, I think that Kirsten got into something she can’t get out of, and she’s confused and scared and doesn’t have anyone to turn to. When we find her, we’ll have the answers. And get her the necessary help. She’s only seventeen. I doubt she considered the repercussions of what she was doing on the
Party Girl
site.”
“It was pretty clear from the photographs,” he snapped.
“You think that because she made a bad decision she deserves what she gets?” Sean asked.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
Patrick didn’t answer, but he looked torn. Sean wasn’t about to cut him any slack, however.
“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Lucy asked Sean.
“Early. I’d fly, but in this weather it’s probably best we drive.” He looked at Patrick. “Unless you want to go.”
Patrick shook his head.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” Sean told Lucy. “I should take you home now; it’s getting late.”
Lucy nodded. “Thanks, but I’d like Patrick to drive me.” She gave Sean a look that he thought held something secret, but he couldn’t figure it out. “Okay, Patrick?”
Her big brother shrugged. “I’ll get my keys.” He left.
“Luce, what’s wrong? Did I do or say something—”
She cut Sean off. “No, of course not.” She kissed him. It was a peck, nothing more, as if she were afraid Patrick would walk in again. “I want to talk to my brother, and it’s better if it’s just him and me.”
Sean frowned and grabbed her hands. “Why are you so tense when Patrick is around?”
“I’m not.”
“You act like he caught us doing something wrong.”
“No, I just feel funny—he hasn’t really come around to us seeing each other.”
“And what if he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
She kissed him again, and this time Sean didn’t let her back off. He held the back of her head, and kissed her long enough for her to feel it all the way home. “We’re going on vacation,” he said. “You, me, no one else.” They’d been planning to go after she’d recuperated from the attack five weeks ago, but then she’d needed to prepare for her FBI interview, and he knew she’d be too preoccupied waiting for the results to enjoy a long weekend away. Now? As soon as they found Kirsten, he was taking her away.
She smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Three or four days, time to be together without any work, without stress, and without her overprotective brother.
Patrick pulled into the narrow driveway behind Dillon’s Lexus but kept the engine running. The heat had just started to warm the car when they reached the Kincaid house.
“You wanted to talk?” he asked.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy asked from the passenger seat.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She shook her head. “Right. Nothing. You obviously don’t like me being involved with Sean. But he’s your friend and partner. You trust him. You like him.”
“In business, yes.” Patrick glared at her. “Not sleeping with my sister.”
“Okay, just get over it; you’re acting silly.” Lucy was trying to make the conversation light because she couldn’t bear for Patrick not to approve.
That
sounded silly, too—she’d never sought his approval for any previous boyfriend, but with Sean it was different because of the complexity of their personal and business lives. “You should be happy that I’m involved with someone you like and respect.”
“And you should respect my feelings and trust me.”
Lucy really didn’t understand why Patrick was being so negative about Sean. She pushed. “Patrick, you need to trust
me
. I’m twenty-five, I can pick my own boyfriends. Sean has been wonderful for me. He’s teaching me how to have fun, something I’ve missed for a long time. He makes me
laugh
. If you’re worried that if things fall apart it’ll impact you and your business, don’t. I’m mature enough to know that relationships don’t always succeed.”
“Why do you care what I think anyway?”
“Because you’re my brother and I love you.”
Patrick rubbed his eyes. “Luce, I’m sorry I’ve been a wet blanket. I don’t want to be.” He looked at her with the love and kindness she’d always associated with him. “Your happiness means more to me than anything. But I know Sean. Business? He’s honestly the smartest person I know. He’s a lot smarter than he acts sometimes, truly brilliant, and not just with computers. Also, he really cares about people, and he never gives up. He has a lot going for him.
“But with women,” Patrick continued, his tone going from admiring to disdainful, “time and again, he’s been shallow and self-indulgent. He has a past I’m sure he hasn’t shared with you, and I don’t think you’re going to like it very much. He doesn’t stick, not in relationships. He doesn’t even see it in himself. In the short time I’ve known him, he’s had dozens of girlfriends. Models and actresses and trust-fund bimbos. Most of them as self-indulgent as he is. He grew tired of them, because that’s the way he is. You deserve someone who will love you, who will stick by you, forever. In good times and bad, that kind of commitment.
You
need to come first.”
Lucy didn’t like this conversation, and almost regretted having started it, but at least she knew exactly where Patrick stood. “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think you know Sean as well as you think.”
“Maybe
you
don’t.”
“Just let me work my way through this. Sean isn’t perfect, and neither am I. But you need to have faith in me, even if I make a mistake. No matter what happens, I’ll be okay.”
He shrugged. “I can’t change the way I feel. I’m sure you’ll be fine—you always seem to bounce back. I’ve always supported your decisions because I understood them, but you need to be honest with yourself. Your decisions about men have never been good, and I don’t see them changing now.”
Nothing Patrick could have said would have stunned Lucy more. She got out of the car, stepping into the rain, and walked to the front door without looking back.
Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe he was talking about her ex-boyfriend Cody, or the one disaster of a relationship in college. Not what happened nearly seven years ago when she was eighteen.
She pushed it aside and walked through the door. Patrick couldn’t have been thinking about what had happened with Adam Scott, or how she’d been foolish and stupid.
Dillon and Kate were in the family room watching a movie. She called out to them that she was setting the alarm, then went straight upstairs, not wanting to talk to anyone.
Patrick wasn’t thinking about her ill-fated online chats with the man she thought was college student Trevor Conrad. She’d never rid herself of the guilt she still harbored over her stupidity back then. She’d thought she was so smart, so safe. She had been anything but. Maybe it was that lack of common sense that had kept her out of the FBI.
“No, he didn’t mean that.” Lucy pushed it from her mind.
But Patrick’s other words came back.
He grew tired of them, because that’s the way he is
.
She’d believed Sean when he’d told her that he liked her because she wasn’t like his other girlfriends, but maybe it was just a novelty. Maybe he’d grow tired of her—she was certainly not the fun and exciting, drop-everything-let’s-go-to-Hawaii type. He’d been talking about going away with her for the weekend practically since they met—and he was getting irritated that they hadn’t yet done it, she could tell.
She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. She’d told him she wanted to go slow, take things one day at a time. Could she really blame him if he decided she was too boring and serious for him?
Tears stung her eyes as if he’d already dumped her.
She cared about Sean so much … she couldn’t change that even if she wanted to. She was surprised at how close they’d gotten so quickly. Maybe Patrick had a point that she needed to take a step back emotionally.
If she could.
ELEVEN
Suzanne drove nearly two hours to meet Jill Reeves, the roommate of the first Cinderella Strangler victim.
Jill, who’d been a freshman, dropped out of college after the murder of her roommate and moved back home to Hamden, Connecticut, outside of New Haven. Suzanne had read Vic Panetta’s notes from his interview of her, and while Suzanne didn’t think that the senior detective had missed anything, it didn’t hurt to have another sit-down. Because of the long drive, she called Reeves’s mother first to confirm that her daughter would be home.
She called Panetta as she was waiting for a pool car at FBI headquarters. “I’m leaving in two minutes for Hamden. Sure you don’t want to come?”
“Knock yourself out, kid. I have another case I’m in the middle of. Should be able to wrap it up today. Plus, I have a stack of paperwork I want to finish before sundown. I’ll let you know if I learn anything from our lab.”
“Maybe we should work on a more effective deterrent to homicide:
Save a tree, don’t murder anyone.
”
She hung up and maneuvered her way through Manhattan traffic. She’d left at the tail end of the morning commute, and once she was off the island, highway traffic moved at a steady clip.
Jill Reeves and Alanna Andrews had been best friends growing up; they’d even gone to Columbia together. Two months after they got there, Alanna was murdered. Jill, heartbroken, dropped out at the end of the semester and went home. Suzanne, normally suspicious, had wondered if Panetta had followed up with the girl—until there was a second murder, there had been no reason to believe that a serial killer was responsible for Alanna’s death. In fact, he had—he’d even driven to Hamden for Alanna’s funeral and talked to her parents, trying to assess whether someone from her hometown had taken advantage of her relocation to kill her. But the facts stayed the same; Alanna had disappeared from a party that the two girls had attended. Jill had gotten drunk and went home with a guy, believing that Alanna was fine—or Jill had been too drunk to care. The next morning, her roommate didn’t show up and didn’t answer her cell phone. Jill called the police.
This fall would mark Suzanne’s ten-year anniversary with the FBI. She’d seen a lot of crap on the Violent Crimes Squad, and knew that there were always some cases that were never solved. She didn’t want this to be one of them.
Hamden was a sleepy and quaint town; small, but still bigger than the teeny Louisiana town Suzanne had grown up in before moving to Baton Rouge as a teenager. The Reeveses lived in a well-maintained and renovated older house near the downtown area. It was kind of cute, but after living in New York for nearly ten years, Suzanne would go crazy in a town this small.
Mrs. Reeves answered almost as soon as Suzanne knocked. “I saw you drive up. Jill is in the living room.”
“Lovely home,” Suzanne said.
“Thank you.” Mrs. Reeves beamed as she closed the door. “It’s been in my family for more than a hundred years. My husband and I are trying to bring it back to its original glory.”
“You’re doing a terrific job.”
Jill Reeves sat on an antique couch, her back rigid.
“Honey, this is the FBI agent who called. Suzanne Madden.”
“Madeaux,” Suzanne corrected.
Mrs. Reeves frowned, then said, “Madeaux. French?”
“Cajun.” She smiled at Jill. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”
Mrs. Reeves said, “We’re still in shock. Alanna was always such a good girl. I don’t know what possessed her to go to such a party.”
Suzanne looked at Jill. She didn’t say anything.
Suzanne said, “Most college students go to a party or two. It’s part of the experience.”
Mrs. Reeves sat down. “Not Jill. She knows the dangers.”
Right
. Suzanne wasn’t going to get anything out of Jill with the mother in the room. “Mrs. Reeves, would you mind stepping out? I need to speak to Jill in private.”
She frowned. “But shouldn’t I be here to protect her rights? She already told me everything, anyway.”
Hardly
. “Jill isn’t a suspect; she’s not in any trouble. I just want to ask her some follow-up questions.”
“Then why can’t I stay? I’m worried about her. She doesn’t want to go back to college.”
“Mom,” Jill said with an exasperated sigh, “just leave, okay?”
Mrs. Reeves pursed her lips, rose from the chair, and left. Suzanne crossed the room and closed the double doors.
“Thanks for not saying anything,” Jill said to Suzanne.
“You lied to your parents, even after your best friend was killed?” Suzanne wasn’t going to coddle the young woman. She sat in the chair across from Jill.
“You don’t understand,” Jill said.
“Try me.”
She shrugged. “It’s not important anymore. It’s just—my parents are older. They’re old enough to be
your
parents,” she said as if Suzanne were ancient. “They were forty when they adopted me. They don’t get
anything
. I could tell them I was going to a rave and they’d say, ‘Oh, that sounds like fun!’ ” She shook her head.
“Okay, let’s get one thing straight between us. Don’t lie to me. If I find out you’re lying to me about anything, I’ll send your parents a copy of the police report.”
“You can’t do that!”
“It’s public record. I can and will do it.” She took out her copy of the report to reiterate her point. “I’m assuming you were honest with Detective Panetta.”
She nodded. “I didn’t lie to my parents, either. They just assumed I didn’t go to the party—they didn’t even ask me—I just didn’t correct them. I’m not doing any of that stuff; that’s why I left college. It was getting out of hand, and I don’t want to be that person anymore. I was just accepted to a small college in Pennsylvania for the fall, but I haven’t told them yet.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I just don’t know what I want anymore.”
“Hey, I understand that.” Until she’d been recruited by the FBI while at Boston College, Suzanne didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. She didn’t even declare her major until junior year because she kept changing her mind.
“I haven’t done any drugs or drinking since, I swear to God. If I hadn’t been so wasted when Alanna was killed, maybe I would have noticed she wasn’t around. Maybe I could have stopped her from going off with the wrong guy. I don’t know.” Tears filled her eyes and she looked down at her hands. “We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I still want to call her every night before bed, like I used to. I often pick up the phone and then remember she’s dead.”
Suzanne reached out and squeezed her hand. “If you can help me, maybe I can find Alanna’s killer and put him in prison. That’s justice. It’s why I’m a cop.”
Jill nodded. “I promise, the entire truth. But—” She hesitated.
“No buts, Jill. The truth.”
She nodded.
“Have you heard about the other murders?”
Jill nodded, wiping a stray tear from her face. “The news. The Cinderella Strangler. That’s him, right?”
“Yes. There are four victims now. He targets the types of parties where you and Alanna went on October thirtieth. We don’t know how he picks his victims. Three of the victims were college students—Alanna; Heather Garcia, who was a junior at NYU; and the most recent victim, Jessica Bell, a sophomore at Columbia. Did you know Jessica Bell?”
Jill shook her head. “The name isn’t familiar. But I left after a few months. It’s a big school.”
“That’s okay.” Suzanne looked at her notes and Panetta’s report. “You told Detective Panetta that this was the first party of this type that you’d gone to. Is that correct?”
Jill looked sheepish. “Well, no, but that’s not what he asked. He asked if Alanna or I had gone to any other underground parties since arriving at Columbia. I didn’t lie—it was the first we’d been to since we started college.”
“But you understood the question, obviously.”
“Yes. But … I didn’t want him to think that we were sluts or anything. Even though …” She hesitated.
“You need to tell me the truth or more girls are going to die. You understand that, right? Four murders—that’s well past the textbook criteria for a serial killer. I need to figure out how and why he’s targeting these victims, because that will lead us to him.” She knew that, as the first victim, Alanna had the highest chance of having a personal connection to the killer. Serial killers rarely begin by killing random strangers. The first victim was usually personal, or had a personal significance to the killer.
But Jill didn’t need to know that, not yet.
Suzanne said, “Something happened that night with Alanna that set him off. Something that maybe you saw or heard without recognizing its importance. First—how many of these types of parties have you been to in your lifetime?”
“That was my second, I swear. The first time we were seniors in high school. But Alanna had been to a bunch of them.”
“Here in Hamden?”
“No. We took the train to the city. It was harder for me to disappear for the weekend, but Alanna’s parents didn’t really care what she did as long as her grades were good. That first time, I convinced my parents that I was somewhere else, and had a million excuses ready if they checked up on me. Alanna had talked about how much fun they were, and begged me to go with her.”
“Was that party similar to the one you went to this past October?”
“I—” She looked down again, her face reddening. “I had broken up with my boyfriend when I went to that first party. I was so angry—I just wanted to find a guy and have sex, as if that would have punished Gary or something. I’d smoked pot a couple times before, but I’d never done real drugs—I was so wired. It was like my mind and my body were two different things. It just got out of hand. I didn’t want to do it again, but after a while I think I just pushed aside the bad parts and remembered the great music and the fun stuff, so when Alanna told me about the Haunted House, it sounded okay.”
“How did she hear about it?”
“Alanna knew about all of them. She wanted to get her grades on solid ground so her parents wouldn’t pull her from college, so she worked hard for the first two months. But after she aced her midterms, she said she needed to go wild.”
“What about the party when you were a senior?”
“Alanna went to stay with her cousin in New York for a month the summer before our senior year. She told me all about it—I was shocked. I guess I was a little more sheltered back then. Alanna was like a trendsetter, always the first to try new things.”
“Before you went, what did she tell you it was going to be like?”
“Just that there would be a live band and lots of dancing and drinking—” She hesitated.
“Tell me, Jill.”
“She said when she went to the party in New York, she’d had sex with three different guys. Didn’t even know their names. It stunned me—I mean, she’d lost her virginity before me, I don’t know why I was so surprised, except that, well, I was. She said it was empowering.”
Suzanne made a note. Maybe Alanna had other secrets she hadn’t shared with Jill. Her cousin in New York might know more, especially if that’s where Alanna’s partying lifestyle began.
“Back to the party in October, the Haunted House. Alanna heard about the party, you went with her, and according to your statement, the last time you saw her was when she was dancing around one a.m.?”
Jill nodded. “I don’t know the exact time, but we didn’t even get there until after eleven. I didn’t want to do any drugs, but I made a mistake and drank something I shouldn’t have and felt all weirded out. When I found Alanna, I told her I was sick, but she said she was having fun and didn’t want to leave. She gave me a pill. I don’t know what it was, but it did make me feel a little better.
“The rest of the night was a bit foggy,” Jill continued. “I hooked up with this guy—I don’t even know his name.” Tears started again. “I can’t believe I did that, just anonymous sex, and I didn’t know him. We went back to his apartment and did things I barely remember. I felt sick for days, but Alanna was dead.”
“Was there anyone at these parties who you knew? By name?”
“Not really—I mean, I might have known names that night, but I don’t remember.”
“What about someone who Alanna talked about who you didn’t know?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone Alanna mentioned as inviting her to the parties?”
She shook her head.
“What about her cousin?”
“Whitney.”
“Whitney Andrews?”
“I don’t know, she has a different last name. I only met her a couple times.”
Suzanne made note and asked, “What about a boyfriend? You’d told the detective that Alanna wasn’t seeing anyone specific. Was that true?”
“She didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“What about someone who showed her more interest than she wanted?”
“Alanna liked it when guys flirted with her. I know it makes it sound like she was a slut, and maybe she was kind of, but you didn’t know her, and I don’t want people thinking bad things about her.”
“I don’t think anything bad about Alanna or any of the other victims. My job is to find out who killed her and put him in prison for the rest of his life. Who Alanna was or what she did is not important to me beyond relevance in this case. What about an ex-boyfriend?”
“She had one guy in high school, Zach Correli, who was a year older than us. He went to college in Maine. When they broke up, I don’t think she was heartbroken, and neither was he.”
But it was something Suzanne needed to look into. If Correli wasn’t in New York when Alanna was killed, it should be easy to prove.
“One more thing,” Suzanne said. “Did Alanna have a job? Someplace where she might have met someone you didn’t? Maybe volunteer work, or part-time. Detective Panetta didn’t have anything listed except that she was a full-time student.”
“She didn’t have a job while in college. I worked part-time on campus for my scholarship. Her parents had a college fund for her. She’s never really been broke.”
“Last thing. This might be a little hard, but I’d like to show you the pictures of the other three victims, to see if you know them.”
She showed the photos to Jill one by one. There was no recognition until she saw Jessica Bell. “She looks familiar. She’s dead?”