When All The Girls Have Gone(25)

"The metaphysical thing?"

"She was always looking for enlightenment. We moved around a lot-going from one guru type to another. Trust me, there are an astonishing number of con artists out there posing as gurus and cult leaders. And an even greater number of people like my mom who desperately want to believe the pitch."

"Yes, I know. It's very sad."

"The year I was ten, we ended up on a commune run by Zane. One of his followers had provided some land, an old ranch located just outside a small town on the California coast. There were several buildings on the grounds. The women lived in one of them. The men in another. And the kids were all required to sleep in an old barn."

"What about Zane?"

"He took over the original ranch house. And every night he sent for one of the women. It was supposed to be an honor for the chosen wife of the night."

"How ghastly."

"Like most cult leaders, Zane was focused on two things-money and power. But Zane was young-in his midtwenties-and he was also a very modern kind of cult leader. He took his business model online. The adults in the commune brought in the cash in a variety of different ways. They surrendered all of their worldly possessions, including money and stocks and properties, when they joined the group. After that, they continued to have to pay their way-mostly by operating a variety of online cons devised by Zane."

"What about the children?"

"We were required to do most of the physical labor around the ranch, but mostly we were groomed to work the online scams. I will admit that we liked that part. It was like playing real live video games. You won, you made some money."

"But you didn't get to keep the money."

"Of course not. It all went into Zane's offshore account."

"What happened?"

"The sex factor kicked in. Historically that's usually what destroys a cult from the inside. Eventually some of the men got pissed off because their wives and girlfriends were sleeping with Quinton Zane. Several of the women got upset because they weren't allowed to refuse Zane for fear of being tossed out of the compound. For those who had children, it would have meant losing access to their kids."

"Who were locked up every night so that their parents couldn't decide to take them and leave," Charlotte said. "In other words, they were hostages."

"Right. Predictably, the situation at the compound deteriorated. Looking back, I'm sure the cult was about to fall apart. Zane must have known that. He didn't want to deal with the fallout and he didn't want to risk losing all the money he had stashed offshore. One night he set off several explosions designed to destroy the compound, all the computers and the evidence of the scam. It's unclear whether he meant to kill a lot of people in the process or if the fires just got out of control."

"You and the other children were trapped in that barn?" Charlotte asked, horrified.

"Yes. And we would have died there if Chief Anson Salinas hadn't crashed his vehicle through the front of the barn, shoved eight terrified children into his SUV and reversed like hell out of that damn inferno."

"I've got cold chills just listening to you tell the story. He saved you and the others. What an incredible thing to do."

Max smiled faintly. "Especially when you consider that everyone outside was warning him that the entire structure was about to collapse."

Charlotte hesitated. "What about your mother?"

Max turned his attention back to the fire. "She and several other women didn't make it out of their quarters. Zane had locked them in for the night, as well."   





 

Without a word Charlotte put out her hand and touched his bare arm.

For a moment he let himself absorb the warmth and tenderness of her touch.

"What happened to Zane?" she asked after a while.

"In the chaos and confusion of the fire, he got away."

"Was he ever caught?"

Max met her eyes. "No. But a few months later a man matching his description, and carrying identification that was the same as one of the identities Zane was known to have used, rented a yacht at a marina near L.A. He took the boat out alone. There was a fire on board. The boat sank. Zane's body was never recovered. Officially he is presumed dead. But my brothers and I don't buy that version of the story. We've been searching for him ever since."

"Your brothers? They were there at the compound?"

"Of the eight kids in the barn that night, three of us lost our mothers in the fire. None of us had any other family, at least no other family that was willing to come forward and take responsibility for us. We were headed for the foster care system. Anson Salinas came to the rescue again. He took us in. Got himself licensed as a foster parent. Raised us. So, yes, I've got a couple of brothers, Cabot Sutter and Jack Lancaster."

Charlotte gave him a searching look. "And you've got a father, too, from the sound of it."

Max smiled. "Oh, yeah. I definitely have a dad."

"So what went wrong on your last job with the profiling agency?"

"Everything. My colleagues, my friends and my wife were all convinced that I was obsessed. Maybe paranoid. Maybe flat-out crazy."

"Why?"

"Because, for a while, at least, I was convinced that Quinton Zane had somehow come back from the grave."





CHAPTER 27




It was the haunted look in Max's eyes that chilled Charlotte to the very core of her being.

"We knew we were dealing with a serial arsonist," Max said. "He targeted lonely people he identified at online dating sites. He made them believe that they were connecting with their soul mates. Sooner or later he suggested that they meet."

"And then he killed them?"

"Yes. The pattern seemed straightforward. He had sex with his victims, murdered them in a location where he felt safe and then dumped the bodies. He always tried to destroy the evidence by setting a fire. Sometimes he torched the victim's car. Sometimes he set fire to the house where the victim lived. Sometimes he left the body in a trash bin and poured accelerant on the contents. Sometimes he used an old, abandoned building. But there was always fire."

Charlotte studied Max's grim face. "Did you catch him?"

"We put together a special team. We created a fake online identity that matched the profiles of the victims the killer targeted online. When the killer went for the bait, Beth, one of the women on the team, posed as the date. But something went wrong. Turned out the killer was onto her almost from the start. Beth was wired and we were tracking her, but the bastard found the devices. He destroyed them."

"What happened?"

"My only hope was that he hadn't killed her. I figured he might want to keep her alive for a while because he wanted to taunt those of us who were looking for him. I took another look at the pattern."

"What pattern?"

"The bodies were found in different locations, but when I looked hard I could see that those locations formed a pattern. And at the heart of that pattern was an old, abandoned hospital. I wondered if he was using it as the killing ground. I tried to convince the team that it was worth a look. But there was a new guy who was supposed to be some kind of wonder boy. He was always carrying on about his algorithms and his computer models. He was sure that the perp was using another location as his base. The cops focused on it. In the end I went out to the hospital on my own."

"No backup?"

"I was afraid that if the killer saw cops, he would kill Beth-assuming he hadn't done so already. I pulled up a floor plan of the hospital and discovered that there was an underground tunnel that connected two of the wings and the morgue. I took a chance and went in that way."

"The tunnel was open?"

"Yes. The electricity was off, of course. Every hallway, every closet, every storage compartment was a potential trap. I found Beth in an old operating theater. She was bound and gagged. I freed her and we started to leave. But the killer was watching. And waiting. I got off a shot-managed to hit him in the thigh. He was bleeding out, but he had splashed accelerant around the floor. He ignited the fire just as Beth and I emerged from the operating theater."   





 

"You were trapped in what must have been your worst nightmare-a building burning down around you."

"Yeah, that pretty much describes the experience." Max's forehead was damp with sweat. He used the end of the comforter to swipe off the perspiration. He never took his eyes off the flames on the hearth. "Beth and I got out because I had studied the hospital's floor plan. We made it to the emergency stairs and out through the morgue tunnel."

"Thank heavens. So the killer died in the blaze?"

Max finally looked away from the fire. "Yes."

"Was it Quinton Zane?"

"No." He exhaled slowly. "There were a couple of other casualties, as well-my career and my marriage."

"Why? You saved Beth. You got the bad guy. You were a hero."

"No, I just got damn lucky. But I wasn't asked to resign because of what happened at the old hospital. It was because of what happened afterward."

"What?"

"I became obsessed with the case. There's no other word for it. I couldn't let go of it."

"Because you weren't positive the killer was dead?"