What Have You Done Page 21

  The officer thought about the proposition. He flipped through his paper, then finally looked up. “Your boss a prick?” he asked with a smirk.

  Liam smiled in return. “Aren’t they all?”

  A buzzer sounded, unlocking the door from the foyer to the inside of the station. “First door on your left at the bottom of the stairs. Hurry up.”

  Liam rushed through the door, down the small corridor, and through a second door that led him downstairs. It was dark in the basement, and his fingers fumbled for a light switch.

  The file room was nothing more than an oversized closet. Metal storage shelves were screwed against the wall with cardboard boxes filling each one. The boxes appeared to be in chronological order, which was helpful because all Liam had was the date from the hospital visit. He had no idea which officer originally took the report.

  He worked quickly, pulling down anything that marked the date of Kerri’s hospital visit. He was locked inside a police station, one floor down from the nearest exit. The BOLO had to have been spreading across the state. Each passing minute made him more vulnerable. All the Lakewood police needed was an email bulletin alerting them of the situation, and it was over. His hands moved as fast as they could.

  The third box he checked that matched his month was marked “Snyder.” He flipped through until he found the date he was looking for and slowed down. Officer Snyder had been busy that day, but what was in the file was not unmanageable. Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, backup on a parking ticket argument, bar fight, another bar fight. All typical calls during the summer season at the shore. He stopped when he saw the report from Kimball Medical Center and pulled it from the box.

  It was a domestic violence offense. According to Kerri’s account, she had been at a local motel with her boyfriend when they’d gotten into an argument. The argument had intensified until other guests began calling the front desk to complain. When the manager had knocked on Kerri’s hotel door, she’d opened it and begun screaming for help, stating the boyfriend had attacked her and punched her in the face and hurt her wrist. She said he was trying to kill her. The manager took Kerri to his office, and they called the police. Officer Snyder had taken the boyfriend into custody, and an ambulance had taken Kerri to the hospital. Liam scanned the document to see the named assailant.

  Sean Dwyer.

  How many people know about you and Kerri and what happened with Mom?

  There was a note stapled to the report, handwritten by someone. He guessed Officer Snyder. Charges dropped. Assailant released (on the job).

  It appeared Kerri had dropped the charges as soon as she was discharged from the hospital. Perhaps she’d panicked when she’d said he was trying to kill her, but with the witnesses and the call to 911, the police had to follow through. In the privacy of her own thoughts, when things calmed down, she must have decided to drop everything, and they’d both hidden what had happened that night. But why was she at the shore with him in the first place? She’d never mentioned it. Neither had Sean. How was Sean involved in all of this?

  Liam took Kiki’s photograph out of his pocket and studied it. The hooded man could’ve been Sean. The figure was the right height and build, but it also could’ve been a lot of people. Sean was average in height and weight, but seeing this new evidence of the arrest made the picture a little clearer.

  He copied the record and made his way back up to the main floor, listening to see if he could hear anyone. The officer behind the desk hardly looked up from what he was reading to wave goodbye. When Liam got outside, he walked without knowing exactly where he was going. He just had to keep moving. Thoughts and emotions overcame him like a tidal wave.

  He stopped when he saw the cell phone store across the street. An idea occurred to him. He jogged through the intersection and walked inside. Like the police station, it was empty but for one salesman behind the counter.

  “Hey there. What can I do for you?”

  Liam dug into his pocket and came away with Kerri’s phone. “Yeah, my wife dropped this in the toilet. Any way you can bring it back to life for me?”

  The salesman took the phone, opened the back, examined it, and then nodded. “No problem. You just need a new battery. Everything else seems okay. They make these things pretty watertight these days. I got a battery right here.”

  “You mind if I plug it in real quick when you’re done? I have to make a call. It’s important.”

  The salesman replaced the battery and handed over a spare charger. “That’ll be seven dollars, ninety-five cents.”

  Liam handed him the cash.

  “Got an outlet by the door if you want some privacy.”

  “Thanks.”

  Liam took his change and made his way over to the front door. He plugged one end of the charger into the phone and the other into the outlet. He had no idea if anyone had thought to shut off Kerri’s phone, but he knew he couldn’t use his. He watched as it came to life.

  “You got Wi-Fi in here?”

  The salesman nodded. “Wouldn’t be much of a cell shop without it.”

  “Okay,” Liam whispered to himself. “Let’s see what we can see.”

  50

  The department was in chaos as they hunted for Liam. Don stepped on the gas and listened to the engine of his new Mustang respond accordingly. His peripheral world passed by in a blur. He gripped the leather steering wheel and concentrated on the road ahead. Kelly Drive opened up to two lanes coming into the city, and with most of the traffic heading in the opposite direction, he tested the car to see how fast it could go. The road bent and twisted, following the path of the Schuylkill River. He wove in and out of each lane, increasing pressure on the accelerator, feeling the tires hug the pavement. His body shifted in the bucket seat. Sometimes driving helped to put things in perspective.

  Don had purchased the car at the auction house the summer before. It was a midnight-blue GT with white racing stripes running from hood to trunk. A failed investment banker had it repossessed by the city after he’d gotten laid off, and Don had called in a favor with the dealer, paying what the banker owed in cash before it had a chance to see the auction floor. It was his. All his. Sure, it was a midlife crisis purchase, and of course Joyce teased him about being a cliché, but he didn’t care. He loved it. This was his toy, and when he took it out, he liked to play.

  The latest trip to Doylestown had been another unexpected visit. Just after the helicopter had lost Liam on the banks of the Delaware River, he’d gotten a call from his mother. She was feeling ill, complaining of dizziness and nausea. Adena had already gone home for the day and wasn’t due back until eight the following morning. She didn’t want to be alone and refused to call the evening nurse because they didn’t have the same relationship that she had with Adena. Don had pleaded with her to call the front desk, but she had stood her ground. When she’d begun to cry, he knew he had to go. What else could he do? So he’d told her he’d clear it with his team and come up. The relief in her voice came immediately, and that made him feel a little better.

  When he arrived at her condo, he helped her do her stretches, fixed her pain medication, and gave her some tea to chase it with. When the symptoms subsided, he fixed a plate of eggs for dinner, and they talked about nothing in particular. After she ate, he helped check her blood and gave her the two white pills for her diabetes. It wasn’t long before she was feeling like herself again, and he was able to leave with a kiss and a promise to visit over the weekend.

  The Mustang sped around the bend. He could see the tip of the museum on the other side of the hill. There was no music playing on the stereo. Only the roar of the engine and the whining of the tires. He thought about Liam and the investigation as he drove into the city. Something wasn’t sitting right with him. How could a person whose profession it was to uncover crime scene evidence leave his own fingerprints at two separate crime scenes? How could he be so reckless? Sean had theorized that perhaps it was Liam’s way of crying out for help, but if tha
t was the case, why would Liam order an NCIC search, knowing there were other victims out there to find? At the beginning of all this, Liam had been certain he was being framed. Don was beginning to think that perhaps he was right.

  The road turned again, bringing him past Boathouse Row, closer to the museum. He could see the back of it now, the classic architecture, the pillars, the stone stairs leading up the rear, the scaffolding Liam had escaped down earlier that morning. His phone rang, and he hit the Bluetooth button on his steering wheel.

  “Carpenter.”

  “Hey, Detective, it’s Rocco. I’m done with the encryption. All solved.”

  “Excellent. That was pretty fast.”

  “I’m pretty good.”

  “Is this the part where you show off by explaining all the ways you got into the system, purposely using words and phrases you know I won’t understand in order to make yourself look smarter?”

  “Nope. Found the back door to the system. Got in. Done.”

  “I love it.”

  “If you bring the flash drive back, I’ll load everything onto it so you have one source with everything you need.”

  Don pulled onto Benjamin Franklin Parkway. “I’ll be there in a few.”

  “Cool.”

  The phone disconnected, and he looked out his window as the Philadelphia skyline swallowed him. Despite all the chaos surrounding the department, there was a thread of truth somewhere. He just had to find it, follow it, and let it lead him to the big picture. All cases were solved in this manner. Liam’s case would be no different.

  51

  Don was pretty sure Rocco was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. As before, he followed the hacker inside the cramped space and stood by the rows of mainframes and towers, next to the laptops that lined his desk.

  Rocco sat down in front of the desk. “You got the drive?”

  Don fished the flash drive out of his pocket and handed it over. “Be honest with me—did you look at the content after you bypassed the encryption?”

  “I told you I would. I’m a hacker, Detective. That’s what I do. That’s all I do. My sole purpose in life is to break into systems that are thought to be impenetrable. Within the confines of whatever it is I break into, there is information being held that is supposed to be kept from the general population. This is my pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.”

  “So you looked at everything?”

  “Of course I looked at everything.”

  Rocco plugged the flash drive into the laptop and started typing. The computer screen flashed once and then changed. Don leaned in so he could see better. Kerri had saved PDF copies of almost fifty photographs. Some looked as if they’d been taken out in public but from a distance. The others looked as if they’d been taken while she was hiding. He could see the corners of the buildings she’d hidden behind and the branches of trees and shrubs she’d taken pictures from. The subjects—a man and a woman—were kissing, holding hands, smiling, caught in an embrace. They were the same two people in all of the pictures.

  Sean and Vanessa.

  On the bottom of each photograph, Kerri had written in dates, times, and locations.

  “She’d been tracking them for over a year,” Don mumbled.

  “Yup. Who’s the girl? Who’s your partner touching that he shouldn’t be touching?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Ah, so you do know who she is. Nice.”

  “Shut up.”

  Rocco minimized the file with the photos and clicked on the second file that had been encrypted. Six different screenshots appeared, each one showing a black-and-green map of the Northeast. A red line followed a path to a harbor. Each red line originated from Penn’s Landing.

  “These are maritime GPS mapping trips,” Rocco explained. “That red line there is the path a boat took to and from the destination.”

  “Yeah, I see. Can you tell specifically which boat it is?”

  “Only the slip it launched from. Looks like it was Penn’s Landing Marina, slip 28.”

  Slip 28 was where Sean’s boat was kept.

  Don fell back against the mainframe towers. Sean and Vanessa had been having an affair, and Kerri knew. Now Kerri was dead.

  “Hey, you okay?” Rocco asked. “You don’t look too good. Is this worse than you thought?”

  “I’m fine,” Don replied. He cleared his throat and straightened himself. “Give me the drive and erase your copy. Trust me, this is for your own good. You know how to erase something permanently from the system. I suggest you do it. I’m not fooling around.”

  “Yeah, sure. No problem.”

  “You don’t talk about this to anyone.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyone.”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  The small apartment was suddenly stifling. Don took the drive and left quickly. Rocco said something to him as he was leaving, but he didn’t hear it. His mind was elsewhere.

  Sean and Vanessa.

  When he was back out on the street, Don walked half a block to his car. He climbed in, started it, and pulled out into traffic, heading toward Old City. He had no idea someone had been parked three spots away and had been watching him the entire time.

  52

  It was pushing nine o’clock, and Jane was still in the lab loading data into a computer when Don walked in.

  “You got a sec?” he asked.

  Jane turned away from her screen. “Of course. What’s up?”

  He dropped a small sandwich bag onto the table. “I need this analyzed against the material found in Kerri Miller’s fingernails.”

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I can’t say. Not yet.” Don closed the door so no one could hear them. “And for the time being, I need this kept between us. There’s a good chance I’m wrong, and I don’t want things blowing up before I get the results back.”

  Jane nodded. “Understood. I can have them back to you first thing tomorrow morning. It’s not hard to analyze.”

  Don saw a file sitting on the edge of Jane’s desk marked “Miller Case: Other Victims.” “What’s that?” he asked.

  “You’d already left when I briefed the lieutenant and the others. We found additional victims through an off-line NCIC search. I’m just uploading the info into the database so we all have the same information.”

  “More vics?”

  Jane handed him the file. “Yup. Caught one down in Wilmington that matched the Miller girl, so we spun out the search radius and found more in Boston, Mamaroneck, Nantucket, Bridgeport, and Baltimore. Pretty much the same MO.”

  Don read through each report, his mind churning as he went. The women were abducted, then found the next day. Strangled. Hair cut off. But the cities. They were the same cities from Kerri’s file.

  “Theory is Liam was building up to the Miller girl. Another possible theory is these killings are of a serial nature.”

  “Liam’s no serial killer.”

  “I wish I had your conviction, but after these past few days, I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Whose idea was the NCIC?” Don asked.

  “Liam’s,” Jane replied. “And yes, it is strange that he would order a search if he knew there was a chance we’d come across these girls. I’ve been struggling with that all day.”

  “Can I borrow this file for a second? I’ll bring it right back.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Don hurried from Jane’s office and ran down the hall. He hopped down one flight of stairs and burst through the door to the Homicide Division. Most of the unit was deserted, with the extra manpower either on the street looking for Liam or in the control room doing the same. He walked to his desk and sat down in front of his computer. The laptop came to life, and he plugged in the flash drive Rocco had given him. As the file was downloading onto the screen, Don opened Jane’s file. O
ne by one, he matched the discoveries of the other victims with the maritime GPS coordinates Kerri had tracked. Wilmington, Boston, Mamaroneck, Nantucket, Bridgeport, Baltimore. Every trip Sean took on his boat was a direct match to a victim.

  “This can’t be.”

  It was all right there. The ruse. The betrayal. The lies. It was Sean. Kerri had been killed because she’d discovered too much about Sean, Vanessa, and the other women he’d killed. Sean was the killer. It all fell into place now. Liam wouldn’t be foolish enough to leave his own prints behind a murder scene. But if Sean was framing his brother, the prints would be the evidence they’d need for a conviction. Sean was making Liam run because he was controlling how these crimes were unfolding. Sean was a killer, and Kerri had discovered his secret. For that, she’d paid with her life in a most gruesome way.

  In the solitude of the Homicide Division, Don rose from his seat, took Jane’s file over to the scanner, and began copying everything she had into a PDF. Nothing was what it seemed anymore. Everything had suddenly changed.

  53

  The pounding on the door resonated through the tiny apartment. He could hear footsteps approaching. “I’m coming!” a voice shouted from inside. “Damn, man, hang on a sec.” The deadbolt turned, the chain lock unfastened, and the door opened. “Oh, hey,” Rocco said, his voice catching in his throat just a bit. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Dude, it’s late.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I guess so. But you gotta make it quick. I’m bingeing on American Horror Story. Been watching nonstop since yesterday. Completely addicted.”

  Sean stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He’d been in Rocco’s apartment several times before. Rocco flopped down in the chair by his desk. His computers were still running. It was only a question of what they were running, and Sean really didn’t care.