Chill Factor (27 page)

"And that he was attracted to her."

"What we don't know is whether or not the attraction was
mutual,"
Begley said. "Maybe they've been seeing each other since last summer.
As the ex, Dutch Burton wouldn't necessarily know about it."

"Correct."

"On the other hand…" Begley began.

"If Ms. Martin was
not
attracted to
Tierney, and if he is
Blue…"

"Yeah." Begley sighed. "He wouldn't like being rebuffed." He
lapsed
into a glum silence for several minutes, then thumped his fist against
his thigh with aggravation. "Son of a bitch! This just doesn't gel,
Hoot. According to Ritt, and Wes Hamer agreed, women are naturally
attracted to Tierney. So tell me why he would kidnap them. Huh, Hoot?
Any ideas?"

Although Begley was impatiently waiting for an answer, Hoot
carefully thought it through first. "When I was in law
school—"

"Speaking of that," Begley interrupted. "I learned only a
short
while ago that you had a law degree. Why didn't you become a lawyer?"

"I wanted to be an FBI agent," he said without hesitation.
"For as
long as I can remember, that's all I ever wanted to be." His ambition
had been ridiculed by the tough guys in school. Even his parents had
suggested that he have an alternative in mind should his first choice
of career not pan out. He hadn't let the skepticism of others dissuade
him.

"The problem was, well, sir, I didn't serve in the military. I
had
no police training. To look at me, you wouldn't immediately think that
I would be a suitable candidate for the best criminal investigation
agency in the world. I don't fit the image most people have of a
federal agent. I was afraid the bureau wouldn't accept me unless and
until I distinguished myself in some other way. I figured a law degree
would help, and obviously it did."

He glanced at Begley, who had been handpicked by the bureau
because
of his outstanding military service record, leadership qualities,
and—most important—his set of brass balls. Their
qualifications were so
disparate it was laughable.

Begley was assessing him thoughtfully, although not harshly.
Hoot
thought that maybe, hopefully, he had passed muster in Begley's
estimation. That was no small thing. In fact, it was huge. It was the
big bang of approval ratings.

"You asked me why Tierney takes women, sir. I was about to
give you
a correlation that may apply. From my first semester in law school, a
classmate and I were in a dead heat to be top of our class. He looked
like a young John Kennedy. Athletic. Charismatic. Dated a
Sports
Illustrated
swimsuit model. In addition to all those
attributes,
he was brilliant. Positively brilliant.

"But he cheated. Rampantly. In just about every class, through
every
year of law school, he cribbed on every assignment and test. He wound
up with a grade point a fraction higher than mine and graduated in the
number one spot."

"He was never caught?"

"No, sir."

"That must have been difficult for you to stomach."

"Not really, sir. He probably would have outscored me anyway.
The
point is, he didn't need to cheat."

"So why did he?"

"Law school didn't present a challenge. Cheating and getting
away
with it did."

Up ahead, Wes Hamer's taillights blinked on once, twice, three
times. Hoot took that as a signal that he would need to brake soon. He
let up on the accelerator. Beyond Hamer the sanding truck's brake
lights came on, and with them, the right turn signal. Gently Hoot
applied his brakes so he could slow down gradually.

Begley seemed oblivious to anything beyond the windshield. He
was
ruminating on Tierney's motivation. "So here we have another
overachiever who's run out of challenges. He's taking them to see if he
can. But why these women? Why not—"

Suddenly he unbuckled his seat belt and turned toward the
backseat,
making Hoot awfully nervous. Reaching between the seats, Begley picked
up the five file jackets containing the countless bureau forms and
investigative information that Hoot had compiled for each missing
persons case. Facing forward again, Begley stacked the files in his
lap. Hoot breathed easier when he was buckled back into his seat.

"Last night, as I was wading through these files, I kept
thinking I
was reading the same story time and again," Begley said. "I just now
figured out why."

"I'm not following, sir." Hoot took the sedan into a careful
turn.
By following Hamer at a safe distance, he was able to roll to a stop,
coming short of ramming into Hamer's rear end when he braked. Ahead of
Hamer, the sanding truck was laboring to get traction on the incline
that rose sharply just beyond the turn.

Begley slapped his palm on the top file. The abrupt noise
startled
Hoot enough to make him jump. "These women had something in common,
Hoot."

"No one working the-cases has found a common thread among the
victims, sir. Not a place of employment, body type,
back-ground—"

"Neediness."

Not sure he'd heard correctly, Hoot risked turning his head to
look
at Begley. "Sir?"

"They were all needy in one way or another. Millicent, we
know, was
anorexic, which is symptomatic of emotional and self-image problems,
right?"

"That's my understanding."

Begley took them in descending order. "Before her was Carolyn
Maddox. Single mother, working long hours to support her diabetic
child. Laureen Elliott." He opened her file and scanned the contents.
"Ahh. Five feet three inches tall, two hundred forty pounds. She was
overweight. I'll bet if we investigate her, we'll learn that her weight
had been a lifetime problem, that she'd been on every fad diet ever
invented.

"She was a nurse. Working in the medical profession, she was
constantly reminded of the health risks associated with obesity. Maybe
pressure had been placed on her to lose weight or lose her job."

"I see where you're going with this, sir."

"Betsy Calhoun's husband died of pancreatic cancer six months
prior
to her disappearance. They'd been married twenty-seven years. She was a
homemaker. What does all that indicate to you, Hoot?"

"Uh…"

"Depression."

"Of course."

"Betsy Calhoun was married immediately after high school. She
never
worked outside the home. Her husband handled all their personal
business. She probably never even signed a check until after he died.
Suddenly she's having to fend for herself, and besides that, she's lost
the love of her life, her reason for living."

Begley was so wound up that Hoot didn't have the heart to
point out
this was all conjecture. Conjecture based on sound logic, but still
conjecture that wasn't substantiated and would never hold up in a
courtroom.

"This is key, Hoot," Begley continued. "He hasn't taken a
woman
who's secure in her career, who's in a solid romantic relationship,
physically fit, or emotionally stable. Before they disappeared, all
these women were dodging the slings and arrows, so to speak.

"One's depressed, one's obese, one's working her fingers to
the bone
trying to make ends meet and keep her kid semihealthy, and one binges
on junk food and makes herself puke. Then," he said with a dramatic
flair, "enter our perp. Gentle and understanding, compassionate and
kind, and looking like fucking Prince Charming to boot."

Warming to the theory, Hoot said, "He befriends them, wins
their
confidence and trust."

"Gives them his broad shoulders to cry on and holds them in
his
strong, tanned arms."

"His m.o. is to help needy women."

"Not just help, Hoot,
rescue
. Deliver.
Looking the way he
does, being the rugged adventurer he is, he could get all the sex he
wants, whenever he feels the urge. That may be a component, a fringe
benefit, but what gets his pole up is being their savior."

Then a thought occurred to Hoot that toppled the whole
hypothesis.
"We forgot Torrie Lambert. The first. She was a beautiful girl.
Straight A student. Popular with her classmates. No major hang-ups or
problems.

"Besides," Hoot continued, "Blue didn't seek her out. He
stumbled
across her when she left the group of hikers. He didn't know she was
going to be wandering alone in the woods that day. She was taken
because she was available, not because she was needy."

Frowning, Begley opened her file and began flipping through
the
contents. "What about the men in that group of hikers?"

"Present and accounted for the whole time she was missing.
They were
questioned at length. No one left the group except Torrie."

"Why did she?"

"In interviews, Mrs. Lambert, Torrie's mother, admitted that
they'd
had a row that morning. Nothing serious. Typical teenage angst and
attitude. I would guess she resented being on vacation with her
parents."

"That's precisely where Mrs. Begley and I are with our
fifteen-year-old. We're an embarrassment. She's mortified if we
acknowledge her in public." He brooded on that a moment before
continuing. "So Blue happens upon Torrie, who's in a pissy,
fifteen-year-old mood. He chats with her, sympathizes, takes her side
against her mother, says he remembers what a pain in the ass parents
can be…"

"And she's his."

"In a New York minute," Begley said with finality. "Eventually
she'll start to feel uneasy with him and try to return to her parents.
He asks her, why would you want to go back to them when I'm the friend
you need? Creeped out by now, she tries to get away. He loses his
temper. She dies under his hands.

"Maybe it wasn't his intention to kill her," Begley continued.
"Maybe things got out of hand and he didn't realize until too late that
she was no longer breathing. But all the same, whether he raped her or
not, he got off on it."

He closed his eyes as though following the actions and thought
processes of the perpetrator. "Later, when he isn't captured, and no
one's even looking at him as a suspect, he realizes how easy it was.

Now he's got a taste for it. Dominance is the ultimate ego
trip. The
quintessential rush is taking someone's fate into your own hands,
controlling her destiny.

"While he's off ice climbing or some damn fool thing, he
realizes
it's just not as thrilling as it used to be. The adrenaline isn't
pumping as it once did. He starts thinking about the high he derived
horn
killing that girl, and suddenly he's got a hard-on to do it again.

"He decides to return to Cleary and see what kind of aid he
might
render to some other needy female, see if he can recapture that
particular exhilaration. He comes back here because the risk of capture
is slim to none. He thinks the cops are hillbillies, not nearly as
smart as he is. There are lots of places to hide, acres of wilderness
in which to stash corpses. He likes it here. It's the perfect place for
his latest thrill-seeking pastime."

By the time Begley concluded the imaginary scenario, he
sounded
angry. His eyes sprang open. "Why aren't we moving?" Wiping the foggy
windshield with his coat sleeve, he asked, "What the fuck's taking so
long?"

Inside the cab of the sanding truck, Dutch was rapidly losing
patience. "You can do better than this, Cal."

"I could if you'd stop yelling at me." Hawkins sounded close
to
tears. "You're making me nervous. How do you expect me to drive when
you're cussing me out with every breath? Forget what I said about your
old lady, about if she wanted to be rescued. Didn't mean to make you
mad. I was just asking."

"Lilly is my business."

Hawkins mumbled something under his breath that Sounded like
"Not
anymore, she ain't," but Dutch didn't address it because, factually,
Hawkins was right. Besides, they were approaching the road's second
hairpin curve, the one that they'd been unsuccessful navigating last
night. He wanted Hawkins to give the switchback his undivided attention.

He downshifted, and as he did, Dutch noticed that the man's
hands
were shaking. Maybe he should have allowed Hawkins one pull on a bottle
of whiskey. From his own heavy drinking days, he knew that sometimes
even a small hit could make all the difference between having the
shakes and a steadier hand. But it was too late now. Hawkins went into
the turn.

Or tried.

The front wheels followed the command of the steering wheel.
They
turned to the right. The truck didn't. It continued going straight,
heading unerringly for the drop-off, which Dutch knew was at least
eighty feet.

"Turn it!"

"I'm trying!"

As the treetops loomed large in the windshield, Hawkins
screamed and
reflexively stamped the clutch and brake pedals, then let go of the
steering wheel and crossed his forearms in front of his face.

Dutch was helpless to stop the momentum of the skid. The plow
on the
grille struck the guardrail, which crumpled and gave way to several
tons of momentum. The front wheels went over the edge and seemed to
hang there for several seconds before the rig tipped downward.

Dutch remembered the movie
Duel
, where
during the
climactic scene, an eighteen-wheeler went off a highway and plunged
down a mountainside. The sequence had been filmed in slow motion. That
was what this was like for him—watching and experiencing
their
inexorable descent in agonizingly slow motion.

Vision was a blur. Everything ran together. But the sounds had
a
stark clarity. The windshield shattering. Boulders knocking against the
underside of the chassis. Breaking branches. Tearing metal. Hawkins's
terrified screams. His own animalistic roar of disbelief and defeat.

Actually, the trees probably saved their lives by slowing them
down.
Had the slope not been so heavily forested, their plunge would have
been swifter and therefore deadly. After what seemed like an eternity,
the rig came up against an immovable object with brain-rattling force.
Inertia propelled them forward, although they went no further. The
truck surrendered and came to a shuddering standstill.