Chapter 13
Derek had known that they wouldn’t get
any information by going through legal channels there in Macon. At
least, not yet. The detectives in charge of the case had remained
tight-lipped, as had the emergency personnel involved. He and
Maleah had separated and moved through the crowd as discreetly as
possible, both showing a casual interest in what was happening.
Downtown Macon on a Friday afternoon buzzed with activity and the
entire block swarmed with curiosity seekers. The police had sealed
off the building and rounded up all the occupants for questioning.
The one person Derek would love to talk to—the secretary
interviewee—would be detained, questioned, and cautioned not to
speak to the press.
Thirty minutes after they had parted
company and circulated through the on-lookers, Derek and Maleah
reconnected at the end of the block.
“Anything?” Maleah asked.
Derek shook his head. “Not much. I
heard the name Wyman Scudder more than once. It seems to be the
consensus that the victim was the newest renter in the building, a
lawyer named Scudder.”
“I tried speaking to the policemen in
charge of crowd control, but that got me nowhere.”
“They won’t bring the secretary out the
front way,” Derek said. “Which means they’ll take her out a back
exit and possibly escort her to the police station or at the very
least walk her to wherever she parked her car.”
“Even if we knew the location of that
exit, we have no idea when they’ll bring her out. And it’s not as
if they’re going to let us get anywhere near her.”
“You’re right, but we could get a good
look at her and I could snap her photo with my phone.”
“I don’t think we should go the
let’s-play-secret-agent route,” Maleah told him. “But I assume you
weren’t serious. I think our best course of action is to call
Sanders and let the agency contact the Macon Police Department and
see what information they’re willing to share.”
Derek grinned. “Ah, gee whiz, Mom, you
won’t let me have any fun.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Let’s
get out of here. You can call Sanders while I drive.”
“Why don’t we find a downtown hotel,
check in and then go out for dinner while Sanders is working Powell
Agency magic to get us the info we need about Scudder’s
death?”
Why not? She
knew her easy acquiesce to his suggestion would surprise Derek, but
in this instance she agreed with him.
“I’m okay with going out to dinner and
possibly staying overnight.” Zigzagging through the slow-moving
traffic, they crossed the street together, Maleah a few steps ahead
of Derek. “When you talk to Sanders, be sure to ask him about any
updates on Cindy Di Blasi and Albert Durham.”
“Yes, ma’am. Glad you thought of
it.”
“Bite me.” Maleah snapped out the
words.
Not slowing her pace as they left the
bedlam behind them and walked up the block, she cut him a sideways
glance. “We need to know for sure that Scudder was murdered, that
he didn’t have a heart attack or anything.”
“Your gut instinct has to be telling
you that he was murdered. I’d say what we really need to know is
how he was murdered and if the police have any
suspects.”
Maleah led Derek to her SUV. “You think
the Copycat Carver killed him?”
“Don’t you?” Derek asked as he sat down
in the passenger seat.
Maleah slid into the driver’s seat,
inserted the key into the ignition and started the SUV. “Probably.
Apparently Scudder knew too much and could ID the copycat, so he
had become a liability.”
“Of course being murdered eliminates
Scudder as a suspect. So, at least for the time being, that leaves
Cindy and Durham as our only leads.”
“I think there’s a good chance that
Durham is our copycat.”
“I think you could be right,” Derek
said.
As she eased the Equinox into traffic,
Maleah cast a quick glance in Derek’s direction. “If we’re right,
then he’ll go after Cindy next, won’t he?”
“More than likely. And if Durham isn’t
our guy, then he and Cindy probably know who he is and that puts
them both in danger.”
“What we should be concentrating on is
finding Cindy and Durham. If Sanders has any leads on either of
them, I say we head out tonight. There’s no point in our staying on
here in Macon, is there?”
“Nothing except a decent meal and a
good night’s sleep.”
“Call Sanders now,” Maleah said.
“There’s no point in checking into a hotel until we know for sure
whether we’ll be staying or moving on tonight. I’ll drive around
for a few minutes while you call him.”
Derek put a call through to Sanders’s
private number, used only by Powell agents. It was no surprise when
Barbara Jean answered.
“We’re in Macon,” Derek said. “We just
left a crime scene on Third Street. We’re relatively certain that
Wyman Scudder has been murdered. We need the agency to find out the
particulars ASAP.”
“I’ll let Sanders know immediately and
we’ll get back to you with that info once we have it,” Barbara Jean
said.
“Anything on Cindy or Durham? If the
copycat killed Scudder—”
“We believe we located Cindy. Her real
name is Cindy Dobbins. She worked as a stripper for a while when
she was younger. That’s when she started using the name Di Blasi.
She’s been arrested half a dozen times in the past few years.
Solicitation. Drug possession. Public intoxication,” Barbara Jean
said. “Check your e-mail. I sent you a complete report about half
an hour ago, along with several arrest photos. Cindy’s thirty-five.
She looks fifty.”
“Do you have a last known
address?”
“We do, but she’s not there. Hasn’t
been there in three weeks. We sent a local Atlanta contact to check
it out.”
“Do we know where Cindy was from
originally?”
“Sure do. She was born and raised in a
little wideplace-in-the-road town just over the Georgia state line,
outside of Augusta. A placed called Apple Orchard, South Carolina.
She’s got a sister who still lives there.”
“Maybe our little bird went home to
roost,” Derek said.
“The sister lives on Lancaster Road,
number fourteen twenty. Her name is Jeri Paulk.”
“Thanks, Barbara Jean. I’ll fill Maleah
in.” He was pretty sure they would be heading straight to Apple
Orchard, South Carolina. “By the way, anything else on
Durham?”
“Durham owns three homes, a house in
Tennessee, a condo in Aspen, and an apartment in New York City. But
according to our investigation, he rents out all three. From what
his agent told us, apparently he travels a great deal. The last
time he checked in with her, he was in Virginia doing some Civil
War research, but they haven’t been in contact for nearly two
weeks. It seems Durham doesn’t own a cell phone.”
“Doesn’t this guy have any family or
close friends?”
“He’s a widower. No children. We’re
digging deeper to see if we can come up with relatives. According
to his agent, the guy is a loner. He has dozens of acquaintances,
but no bosom buddies.”
“Got any recent photos of
him?”
“Book jacket photo,” Barbara Jean said.
“I can send you a copy of that.”
“What about his age? His background?
Any military service?”
“Durham is sixty-three. No military
background. The guy is an academic. He’s got half a dozen degrees.
Actually, he’s Dr. Albert Durham.”
“Doesn’t sound like the type who’d get
involved with a serial killer.”
“Or become a copycat killer,” Barbara
Jean said.
After his conversation with Barbara
Jean, Derek relayed all the information to Maleah. And just as he’d
thought, she didn’t hesitate to tell them they were going straight
to Apple Orchard this evening. Checking online, Derek quickly found
out that the small South Carolina town was a
two-hour-and-forty-minute drive from downtown Macon.
“Let’s at least stop for fast food on
the way,” Derek suggested.
She groaned. “You’d think you could
skip a meal every once in a while.”
“Drive-through will be
fine.”
She didn’t reply.
Maleah headed the SUV north and
continued in that direction on the interstate.
Poppy Chappelle had no idea she was
being watched. Otherwise, he doubted the teenager would have
removed her bikini top while she sunbathed in what she believed to
be the privacy of her grandmother’s backyard. No doubt, she and her
cousins had spent the afternoon frolicking in the pool, but Court
and Anne Lee Dandridge had left over an hour ago, only moments
after he arrived. Poppy was now enjoying the late afternoon
sunshine all alone while she stretched languidly on a padded chaise
lounge.
It would be so easy to kill her. The
grandmother probably hadn’t come outside all day. He suspected the
old woman took afternoon naps and avoided the June heat by staying
indoors. The housekeeper had backed the late-model Mercedes from
the garage fifteen minutes ago and headed toward downtown
Savannah.
A brick fence flanked the back
courtyard on either side and connected to an eight-foot-high iron
fence that ran across the back of the property. Towering crape
myrtles heavy-laden with buds just beginning to burst open lined
the fencerow. Although neatly maintained, an assortment of trees,
shrubs, and flowers grew in profusion and partially obscured the
view. He stood less than thirty feet from Saxon Chappelle’s young
niece, just beyond the unlocked back gate. He had parked his rental
car blocks away, wore a ball cap and dark sunglasses, and had
tossed his hand up and spoken to neighbors down the street as he
passed by. If they remembered him, it was doubtful they could give
anyone an even halfway accurate description of him. After all, he
was just an average-looking white guy. His ability to appear quite
generic had always given him an advantage.
He didn’t especially like the idea of
killing a sixteen-year-old, but she wouldn’t be the first. In order
to get the message across, he needed for the victim’s death to
matter. He supposed he could have chosen Saxon Chappelle’s mother
or his sister or the nephew or even the other niece, but his
employer had seen Poppy’s unusual given name as a sign, like a
beacon glowing in the dark. She was the one.
Standing at the gate, he watched the
rise and fall of Poppy’s small, perky breasts. Her tiny rosebud
pink nipples puckered as a warm breeze swept over her naked skin.
He reached out and quietly lifted the latch. His pulse raced as the
pre-kill adrenaline rush swept through his body, but it was only
the first stage of the incredible high yet to come at the moment of
the actual kill.
The urge to kill her now almost
overwhelmed him.
But years of experience had taught him
how to control his urges.
Wait. Now is not the
right time. This is only a preliminary scouting
trip.
“Poppy, what the devil are you doing?”
a female voice demanded.
He dropped his hand away from the gate
and took several careful steps backward while he searched for the
source of the voice. An old woman, straight and tall, her white
hair gleaming in the sunlight, came through the French doors that
led into a back room of the two-story house.
Poppy reached down and grabbed her
bikini top off the patio floor and hurriedly slipped it on before
she got up and faced her grandmother. “I was
sunbathing.”
“In the nude?” the old woman
asked.
“I wasn’t nude. Besides, I’m all alone
out here.”
“In my day, a proper young
lady—”
“Please, don’t preach to me,” Poppy
said as she walked toward her grandmother. “I get enough of that
from Mom.”
Mrs. Chappelle sighed and shook her
head, but when Poppy approached her, she opened her arms to give
the girl a hug. “Your father was always testing my patience. He had
a mind of his own and so do you. I can’t tell you how much you
remind me of him.” She grasped Poppy’s chin. “You’re a Chappelle
through and through. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Well, come on inside and have a glass
of the fresh lemonade Heloise made before she left to go shopping.”
Mrs. Chappelle took hold of her granddaughter’s hand. “I do so love
these weeks you spend with me every summer.”
“So do I, Grandmother.”
He waited until Poppy disappeared
inside the house before he latched the gate and turned to leave. As
he walked away, the excitement coursing through his body began to
fade ever so gradually, allowing his heartbeat to return to normal
by the time he reached his car. He had checked out of the hotel in
downtown Macon several hours ago and driven straight to Savannah
without stopping. Two hours and fifty minutes. He had been careful
to drive at the speed limit. The last thing he needed was to be
stopped by the highway patrol.
Despite the desire to kill Poppy right
then and there, he had not acted on impulse. He hadn’t planned to
kill Poppy today. In keeping to the Carver’s timeline, he knew that
the body should never be found before morning. There was no hurry,
of course. He could come back tonight or tomorrow night or even the
night after that, and kill her before dawn. When the moment was
right, he would act. He would slit her throat, remove the small
triangular pieces of flesh, and leave her body floating in her
grandmother’s pool.
You don’t have to be
satisfied with only one kill today, he told himself as he
slid behind the wheel of his rental car. Humming softly, a favorite
tune from childhood, he drove down the street and within minutes
left Ardsley Park.
They traveled east on I-20, went
through Augusta and exited off US 25 North going toward Newberry,
but they left the main highway after less than fifteen miles. Derek
had spent most of the trip reading aloud the reports that Barbara
Jean had sent via e-mail attachments and they had discussed the
information. A strong wind had blown in from the south, rocking the
SUV and forecasting an oncoming storm. Keeping control of the
Equinox, Maleah followed the road signs that led them straight to
Apple Orchard, an unincorporated town in Edgefield County. Maleah
had traveled around the U.S. and definitely throughout the South
enough to recognize the signs of a dying small town. Apparently,
the only remaining business was the mini-mart / gas station up
ahead. To her left, the rusted hull of an old cotton gin near the
railroad tracks rose into the eerily golden twilight sky like the
giant carcass of an ancient beast. On the opposite side of the
road, a centuries-old clapboard church stood vacant. Half the
windows were broken and one of the double front doors, hanging
precariously by a single hinge, thumped rhythmically in the
wind.
They hadn’t met a single vehicle in the
past five minutes and she didn’t see even one human being
anywhere.
Derek hummed the theme from the old
Twilight Zone TV show.
“Will you shut up,” Maleah snapped at
him as she slowed the SUV and turned off into the mini-mart parking
lot. “Apparently there are very few street signs around here. We’ll
probably have to go in and ask directions.”
“Actually, there are very few streets
around here.” Derek grinned.
Did he always have to have a smartass
comeback? Okay, she knew that wasn’t true. She was tired,
frustrated, and hungry, but she shouldn’t take it out on Derek. And
yes, if she had driven through a fast-food place on the way here
from Macon, as he had suggested, she wouldn’t be
hungry.
Talk about cutting off
your nose to spite your face.
Why was she having so much difficulty
accepting the fact that she didn’t have to fight Derek for control?
He was her partner, a co-worker she had learned to respect, and a
man she was beginning to actually like. He deserved better from
her.
Derek cleared his throat. “Want me to
go in and ask directions or would you prefer to do
it?”
“Why don’t we both go in,” Maleah
replied. “I need to use the bathroom and I wouldn’t mind picking up
something to eat. Maybe a pack of crackers and a Dr
Pepper.”
She halfway expected him to mention his
earlier suggestion about fast food, but he didn’t. Instead, he got
out, came around to her side of the SUV and walked alongside her
toward the mini-mart. In the early days of their working
relationship, he had acted like a real gentleman, but after she’d
bitten his head off a few times, he had backed off. Occasionally,
he still did little things like opening a door for her, and she had
stopped reprimanding him for his good manners. She appreciated that
a lot of men still treated a lady like a lady, but with Derek, she
had seen it as condescension. But she had been wrong. So wrong.
Derek didn’t look down on her for being female or consider her a
member of the weaker sex.
When they entered the Apple Orchard
mini-mart, Maleah noted that the place was all but deserted. Odd,
considering this was a Friday night. But then, the population might
top out at less than a hundred people. Maleah spotted the bathroom
and made a beeline in that direction while Derek meandered along at
the back of the store where the giant coolers were
located.
A few minutes later when Maleah and
Derek approached the checkout, the young, bubble gum smacking clerk
eyed them suspiciously. “Can I help you folks?”
“We’re from out of town.” Derek grinned
at the girl, whose chin-length, dark brown hair was streaked with
purple highlights. “We’re looking for someone. We have her address
and were hoping you could help us out with
directions.”
The plump, pug-faced clerk sported a
shiny gold nose ring and a band of script tattoos circled each
bicep revealed by her skimpy yellow tank top. A row of belly fat
protruded between the end of the top and the waistband of her
low-riding jeans. “Who you folks looking for?”
Derek smiled. Few women could resist
his charm. “We’re looking for my girlfriend’s cousin.” He glanced
at Maleah to indicate she was the girlfriend. “Blondie hasn’t seen
her cousin since they were kids, but since we were on our way up to
Columbia, another cousin suggested we look her up.”
The girl smiled when Derek leaned over
the counter and looked right at her. “You know a woman named Jeri
Paulk? That’s my girlfriend’s cousin.” Not taking his eyes off the
clerk, he called to Maleah, who had gone in search of a canned
cola. “Honey, what’s that address your cousin Barbara Jean gave you
for Jeri?”
“I know where Jeri lives,” the girl
said. “It ain’t half a mile from here.” She practically drooled
while licking her lips, all the while looking as if she could
swallow Derek whole.
Maleah scanned the refrigerated coolers
across the back of the store, searching for a Dr Pepper while
listening to the girl.
“Y’all remember passing an old church
right before you got here?”
“Yes,” Derek replied.
“Just go back and turn off on the road
by the church. Jeri lives down the road a piece. You can’t miss it.
She painted the place bright blue last year. I told her that I’d
bet the astronauts could see her place from outer
space.”
“Sure do thank you for your help,”
Derek said. “Honey, you got our colas and crackers?”
Maleah removed two canned Dr Peppers
from the giant coolers and then grabbed a couple of packs of peanut
butter and crackers off the shelves on her way back to the checkout
counter.
After laying her items down, she said,
“Yeah, thanks for helping us out. I sure am looking forward to
seeing Jeri again after all these years.”
“Sure, no problem.” The girl rang up
their order.
Maleah waited for Derek to pay for the
items, then picked them up and headed out of the store. Halfway to
the SUV, she handed him one of the colas and a pack of
crackers.
“Thanks.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “That was a
lot easier than I thought it would be. You practically had that
girl eating out of your hand.”
Derek chuckled. “What can I say, the
ladies like me.”
She punched him in the arm playfully
and they both laughed.
They sat in the mini-mart parking lot
long enough to devour the crackers and finish off part of their
canned colas. Maleah started the SUV and went back the way they had
come into Apple Orchard. She turned at the old church and headed
down the narrow paved road that twisted and turned, carrying them
farther and farther away from civilization. It was past sunset and
darkness was fast approaching. Without lights along the road,
Maleah had to rely totally on the Equinox’s headlights to guide
them. Just as Miss Purple-streaked-hair had told them, the bright
blue house came into view less than half a mile from the mini-mart.
Even in the encroaching gloom of nightfall, the small wooden house
was visible. An older model Chevy truck and a late model Ford
Mustang were parked in the gravel drive. Maleah pulled in behind
the Mustang.
“So, what do we say to Jeri Paulk? Do
we tell her why we’re looking for her sister Cindy or do we make up
some lie like we did back at the mini-mart?” Maleah
asked.
“I suggest we play it by ear,” Derek
told her. “Let’s see what kind of reception we get. If you’re
agreeable, let me take the lead and you just follow along with
whatever I say. Can you do that?”
“Of course, I can.”
They got out of the SUV and walked
toward the porch. As they drew closer Maleah noticed the broken
recliner, the vinyl ripped and the padding showing through, sitting
beside two metal lawn chairs on the right side of the porch.
Suddenly a dog reared his head up off the floor on the other side
of the porch and barked. Maleah jumped. Derek cursed.
The dog kept barking, but didn’t move
toward them. The porch light came on and the front door flew open.
A bear of a man wearing overalls and no shirt and carrying a
shotgun in his meaty hand stood in the doorway. Behind his massive
frame, a TV screen flashed and the sound of recorded laughter
drifted outside.
“Get the hell off my property,” the man
yelled. “I know why you’re here and you ain’t
welcome.”
Maleah opened her mouth to respond, but
before she could utter the first word, the man aimed the shotgun
and pulled the trigger, sending a blast of buckshot in their
direction.
Derek shoved Maleah out of the line of
fire, tossed her onto the ground and came down over her. Eye to eye
with her, his heavy weight a protective shield, Derek said, “Maybe
we should have called first.”