“And no one hears or sees anything?” she asked, incredulously. “Odds are Hadley and Skylar are already dead.”
“I want to disagree, but I think you are right.”
“The facts point that way the longer the search continues.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tuesday, August 13, 10:00 a.m.
Alexandria, Virginia
Three Hours after the 911 Call
The clock was ticking. And it was not lost on Zoe that the longer this search lasted, the less the chance that they would find either victim alive.
Vaughan maneuvered up King Street, a bustling central artery in Alexandria. Seconds later, they spotted the twin brick pillars of the cemetery entrance. He pulled through the gates, following the narrow road up a hill, past old tombstones, toward the flash of police lights.
Vaughan drove around the back side of a stone mausoleum, where two marked cars were nosed in toward the ring of yellow crime scene tape that established a generous perimeter around the late-model black Lexus.
The devil was in the details, as Uncle Jimmy used to say when he painted one of his masterpieces. Brush strokes, paint sources, even the type of canvas could betray his masterpieces as fakes.
The vehicle’s glistening, polished exterior and the deep-black wheels suggested a recent cleaning. It was not surprising a man like Foster kept a clean car. He was an accountant in a prestigious firm, and he was paid to monitor the smallest details. He wanted his car to reflect that.
Zoe pulled on gloves as she approached the car’s back passenger door, which was now open. The rusty scent of blood and leather heated in the morning sun drew her gaze toward the dark stains that puddled and ran over the back seat onto the custom floor mat. The buzz of a phone emanated from inside the car.
“Sounds like it’s coming from the trunk,” she said.
“It’s rung several times in the last ten minutes,” a uniformed officer said. “We’re leaving it for forensic.”
Vaughan tugged on his gloves, carefully opened the front door, and popped the trunk latch. Saving lives trumped preserving evidence, and he could not wait on the off chance Skylar or Hadley was alive and locked in the trunk.
A chill snaked down Zoe’s spine as she braced for what they could find. Vaughan’s grim expression mirrored her own sentiments. Silent, they walked to the back of the car, and he carefully opened the lid.
A ripple of tension passed over them both.
Both stood silent, staring in the trunk for a beat. No bodies—only an emergency roadside kit and an opened suitcase that was filled with Foster’s clothes.
The one-two punch of relief and disappointment hit Zoe. “Why transfer them to another vehicle and risk discovery? If Foster’s timeline is accurate, the assailant would have been transferring the women at the peak of the morning commute. A highly risky move, unless it wasn’t originally part of the plan.”
Vaughan looked back at the mausoleum, searching for security cameras. “There have to be cameras here. I’ll have the uniforms check it out.”
She angled around the trunk, back toward the rear seat. “Again, if Foster is telling the truth, and the blood in the room is his wife’s, this must be hers as well. If Hadley Foster hasn’t bled out, it won’t be long,” she said.
Vaughan turned to the officer. “Double-check with the area hospitals, and see if a woman matching Hadley Foster’s description has been dropped off.”
“Sure, Detective.” The officer reached for his phone, dialing as he turned and stepped away.
The phone stopped ringing and started up again. Zoe searched the trunk, feeling along the interior until her fingers brushed the phone.
Gripping it by the edge, she faced Vaughan as he opened a plastic evidence bag. She studied the display and the name Roger Dawson. The call went to voicemail along with eight other missed calls.
Vaughan scribbled down the name and phone number. “Wonder what Roger Dawson wants?”
She hit callback and then speakerphone; then she said, “Let’s find out.”
On the second ring, a man said in a rush of exasperation, “Hadley, where have you been?”
“Mr. Dawson, this is FBI special agent Zoe Spencer, and I’m with Alexandria Police Department detective William Vaughan. Have you been trying to reach Hadley Foster?”
There was a pause on the other end before Dawson replied, “Yes. Is something wrong?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine, Mr. Dawson,” Zoe said. “Hadley appears to be missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?” Dawson challenged.
“Exactly that, sir,” she said. “There was a disturbance at the Foster home this morning, and Mrs. Foster and her daughter, Skylar, are missing.”
“Where the hell is Mark?” Dawson demanded.
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.