When All The Girls Have Gone(44)

She followed Madison out of the restaurant, stumbling a little over the front step.

Madison took her elbow to steady her. "You okay?"

"Yes." Jocelyn took a deep breath. "I'm just tired."

"No wonder, given what you've been through. Where's your car?"

"Parked it a little ways from here. Wanted to make sure you weren't followed."

"No one followed me. Trust me, I kept an eye on my rearview mirror all the way from Seattle."

Jocelyn realized she was feeling oddly numb. "I need to sit down, Madison."

"Here you go." Madison opened the back door of her sedan and eased Jocelyn into the seat. "I'll drive you to where you parked your car."

Jocelyn tried-and failed-to focus. A shock of understanding cleared her brain for a few seconds.

"Bitch," she whispered. "You drugged me. The coffee."

"Stop fighting it and go to sleep, Jocelyn."

"Am I going to wake up?" Jocelyn asked. She was acutely aware of the fact that she was slurring her words.

"Of course you're going to wake up. But first you need to sleep. Why don't you lie down?"

Madison accompanied the suggestion with a slight shove. Jocelyn collapsed onto her side. For a few seconds she stared, bemused, at the back of the front seat, trying to understand how she could have been so stupid.

I always thought that Charlotte was the naïve one, the one who was too trusting.

So much had gone wrong. She could only hope that the unknown Max Cutler would be able to take care of Charlotte.

Sorry, little sister. I screwed up.





CHAPTER 53




Max leaned back in his chair and examined his notes. He and Charlotte and Anson had divided up the remaining names on the list. Then they had cranked up their laptops and gone to work, tracking down each and every man.

They had gathered in his office to do the painstaking work. It made for a crowd because it was a small space and there were only three chairs-his desk chair and the two intended for clients. The door was open to the small reception room, which was empty due to the fact that there was no receptionist.

Charlotte had made no comment when he had opened the door and ushered her into the office a couple of hours earlier, but he was very conscious that it, like his only remaining vehicle, was not very impressive.

The potted plant in the corner had been left behind by the previous tenant. It did not look like it was going to survive much longer. The furniture was rented and looked it. The walls were bare and the small bookcase was empty.

Reed Stephens was right, he thought, he needed to hire a receptionist. Okay, he needed a more upscale office to go with the receptionist. And he needed money to pay for both. He had to bring in more corporate work.

But first he had to find the needle in the haystack-one man on a list of three hundred who looked like a viable suspect for three rapes and two murders.

The work was time-consuming, but it wasn't tricky-just old-fashioned investigative work, the kind that old-school journalists and cops did. The college yearbooks were available online and they made for excellent starting points. There was a wealth of data on each individual. Alumni bulletins and the published lists of those who had donated to the Loring College endowment fund had provided a trove of additional data.

They had filled in the gaps with social media and the powerful online search engines. In virtually every case they had current addresses and Google street views of the homes of the individuals. After all, it wasn't like any of the three hundred men was trying to hide.   





 

As he had told Charlotte, if you looked hard enough, you could find anyone.

"Looks like these men all have a few things in common," he said. "They were all attending Loring College the year that Jocelyn was there. And they are all still living in western Washington."

Charlotte looked up from her notes. "She probably considered the locations of their current residences important because the three rapes and the two murders all took place on this side of the Cascades."

"Several of the men on that list have an address here in Seattle or nearby," Anson said. "A lot are over on the Eastside-Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah, Kirkland. A few never left Loring."

"Most are married with families," Charlotte added. She tapped her pen against her notebook. "About twenty percent are divorced and many are remarried. Careerwise the men on the list are all over the place-engineers, tech guys, sales reps, counselors, architects-you name it. One's a fitness trainer with his own studio. Some went on to law school and three are doctors."

Max got to his feet and went to stand at the small window. The view was the brick wall of the building on the other side of the alley. He really needed a more impressive office, he thought.

"All the reports of the three rapes and the two murders that Louise Flint and Jocelyn collected and marked on their maps had a few things in common," he said. "Drugs were involved in every instance. And each of the victims fit a profile that matches Jocelyn's profile as it was a little over a decade ago. Same age. Same blond hair. Very attractive young women."

"Not quite the same profile," Anson said. His eyes tightened at the corners. "None of them were in college."

Max turned around. "You're right. They weren't in school; but they were all employed, which means that, most days of the week, they had a regular routine."

Charlotte looked at him. "A predictable routine."

"What kinds of jobs?" Anson asked.

Max went back to the desk to check his notes. "Of the three rape victims, one worked the front desk at a hotel. One was a cocktail waitress. One worked at a hospital. They all worked evening shifts."

"So they were all vulnerable at night," Anson said. "What about the two women who supposedly OD'd?"

"I can answer that," Charlotte said. "One was a receptionist at an urgent care medical clinic. The other was a librarian."

"Again, both worked evenings," Max added. "They went home around nine o'clock."

"So, all of the victims had a few things in common, even if the men on Jocelyn's list of suspects don't have much in common," Charlotte said.

"The more you know about the victim, the more you know about the perp," Anson said.

"Okay," Charlotte said, "based on the information we've got about the victims, what do we know about the killer?"

"In each case the assailant was familiar with the terrain," Max said. "He chose his sites with care. And yet those locations are, literally, all over the map. How does one bad guy become so intimately familiar with so many different places?"

"He spends a fair amount of time in each place," Anson suggested.

"Doing recon and selecting his targets," Max added. "He's not in a rush. He has plenty of time to get familiar with the terrain and yet no one notices him."

"Like a wolf with a territory," Charlotte said.

Max felt the familiar ping of knowing.

"Or a sales rep," he said softly.

Anson whistled tunelessly. "Sales rep. Damn. Max is right. A sales rep has a legitimate excuse for getting to know a territory very well. He stays in the same hotels. Eats in the same restaurants. Drives the same routes. What's more, most sales territories, especially those here on the West Coast, are big. Plenty of room to hunt."

"There are several sales reps on Jocelyn's list," Charlotte said. "All kinds."

"I think we can weed out most of them if we consider the one other factor that is common to all the murders and each of the three rapes," Max said. "Drugs."

"Drugs are widely available everywhere these days," Anson grumbled.

"True, but these drugs seem to be fairly exotic-not stuff that's common on the street. Anyone on our list with access to that kind of designer drug?"

Charlotte grabbed her notes. The name leaped out at her as if written in hellfire.

"Trey Greenslade," she said. "He graduated from Loring College a year after Jocelyn left. And based on the lists of major donors, the Greenslade family practically owns Loring College. He went to work in the family business-Loring-Greenslade Biotech. He's been with the company ever since. In fact, he recently inherited it. He worked as a sales rep for several years, but a year ago he was made vice president."   





 

"He's had a lifetime to become familiar with a wide variety of drugs, and his connection with Loring-Greenslade would provide him with a perfect cover," Max said. "As a pharmaceutical rep, he would have a reason to travel all over the state calling on doctors. And as a vice president, he still has an excuse to go out into the field to entertain accounts."

"Feels like a real possibility," Anson mused.

"Yes, it does," Max said.

Charlotte looked up. "You do realize we have absolutely no proof that he's the killer. I would point out that the Greenslade family controls a pharmaceutical firm that employs a huge percentage of the town of Loring. It also controls just about everything else that goes on in that town, or at least it did a decade ago. I doubt if much has changed."

"That means the family would definitely have had the clout and resources to shut down an investigation," Max said.

"We need to send a message to Jocelyn and hope that she is checking her e-mail," Charlotte said. "We've got to warn her."