Dad.” Holly stood in the doorway of the den where her father and grandfather were busy yelling at the television.
“Wait a minute—where’s the call for spearing?” Ethan was yelling at the referee in the black-and-white striped shirt who skated across the television screen. “That was spearing, for cripe’s sake!”
“Dad!” Holly tapped him on the shoulder. “You have a telephone call.”
“Who’d call in the middle of a hockey game?” he muttered.
“Genna Snow.”
“Oh.” Ethan rose quickly, the game forgotten, and walked briskly into the hallway and picked up the receiver.
“This is Ethan,” he said.
“Genna Snow here. I was actually looking for Leah. I’m hoping she’s still there.”
“Yes. I think she’s upstairs,” Ethan told her, not really sure where Leah had disappeared to. “Would you like me to run up and get her?”
“No, I can tell you what’s going on and you can relay the message, if you would.”
“Dad …” Holly whispered.
“Not now, Hol. Go ahead, Genna. What’s going on?”
“Well, we have a much more complete picture of Briggs. The agents searching his house found boxes filled with letters from Raymond Lambert. Briggs apparently saved them all. They go back several years. We’ve been able to piece together a portrait of Briggs that is anything but pretty, I’m afraid. I thought that you folks should know what we’re dealing with here.”
“Go on.”
“For starters—and remember, we’re having to infer some of this because all we have are Lambert’s responses to what we’re assuming Briggs told him. Briggs was a real fan of Lambert’s. In the first letter, Lambert thanks Briggs for contacting him and sharing with him. It looks like Briggs wrote to Lambert with details of a murder he’d committed, details that he wanted to share with Lambert.”
“How could he do that? Wouldn’t the prison guards who read the incoming mail have swooped down on something like that?”
“The letters merely substituted words. All of Lambert’s letters comment on the details of the ‘dates’ with ‘girlfriends’ that Briggs shared with him. ‘Dates’ were obviously killings, ‘girlfriends’ were the victims. He had different euphemisms to describe the various things he did to them, but I’ll spare you the specifics. But he did refer to some of his ‘dates’ by first name and the letters are dated. We’ve already started to contact local police departments across his old driving route to see if any of the names and dates match up with missing women from these areas. We’re betting they will. Several bits of information that are significant to the present situation have surfaced, however.” Genna cleared her throat. “Lambert makes reference to something that Briggs had told him about a ‘date’ he’d had with a young woman outside of Meadville, Pennsylvania, in late May of nineteen ninety-three. Something about her made Briggs extremely angry, because Lambert says he knows how it feels to be deprived of his game, that once, he too had ‘taken his date home’ earlier than he’d planned because something had happened to ruin the mood.”
“Oh, man,” Ethan muttered.
“And it seems our man Briggs has a fondness for brown-eyed women.”
“What?”
“Briggs only went after women with brown eyes. One of Lambert’s letters made a reference to it.”
“Leah told me that when she met with Lambert, he asked her about her sister’s eyes. Apparently, when Briggs first saw Melissa, he thought she had brown eyes. Because of the contact lenses.”
“The fatal choice Lambert spoke of to Leah.”
“Why? Why brown eyes?”
“Let me share with you what we learned from the neighbors.” Genna paused, then began, as if reading from notes, “Briggs was married very briefly some years ago. His wife, Dolores, was openly carrying on with another man while Briggs was on the road. Briggs caught them together in the house. The wife bragged at the local bar about how she had taunted him, about how she offered to let him watch, so he could learn how a real man made love to a woman. She and her boyfriend left town pretty quickly after that. At least, that’s what Briggs told everyone, that they’d run off to New Mexico together.”
“You think he might have killed them?” Ethan asked. “And could one event like that be enough to cause someone to murder over and over again?”
“I spoke with one of our profilers. He thinks that the wife could possibly have been Briggs’s first victim, but the act of killing her did not satisfy his rage. So he has to keep killing her over and over. Mind you, this is speculation. Sometimes we never learn what sets these guys off, Ethan. Most of the time, in fact, we never do find out what goes on inside their heads. It’s more likely that something happened to him when he was very young, at the hands of a woman—probably his mother, because that’s who it usually is—that unbalanced him. Somehow, through the years, he’d managed to keep his emotions in check. The incident with his wife may have just unleashed something that had been lurking beneath the surface for a long time. The only way we’ll ever really know for certain is if we catch him, and if he chooses to talk to us. Many of them don’t. But one thing we do know for a fact is that his wife had brown eyes.”
“How do you know that?”
“They found an old driver’s license of hers when they searched the house.”
“Didn’t anyone question that these two people just disappeared?”
“All the neighbors said that they really thought that they’d run away together. Neither the wife nor the boyfriend were from the town originally, so I guess no one knew either of them well enough to care to track them down. And maybe they did leave the state, Ethan. Maybe he’s killing these other women as substitutes, because he couldn’t get to her—he didn’t kill her then and he can’t find her now. We are, however, trying to trace them in New Mexico. If they’re there, we’re hoping to find them.”
There was silence on the line.
“I’m afraid there’s more,” Genna said softly. “After Lambert saw Leah on Newsline, he wrote to Briggs, telling him that he had thought of a way that he, Lambert, could help Briggs get his hands on something that he needed. That Briggs wouldn’t have to worry about his job anymore—he’d apparently been having problems with a new supervisor—and that Briggs should telephone him upon receipt of the letter and they’d talk about it.”
Ethan could hear papers shuffling on the other end of the line.
“Lambert later told Briggs all about Leah’s visit to the prison. How pretty she was. How she had the prettiest big brown eyes he’d ever seen—”
“That son of a bitch,” Ethan cursed.
“And that he’d found the perfect way to make Leah pay for that ‘date that he’d had to cut short.’ Lambert told Briggs that a friend had come to see him, someone who could help him, that he’d given this friend both Briggs’s post-office box number and his phone number. That Briggs would be hearing from this friend soon.”
“Friend? What friend? You mean there are two of them?”
“I don’t know, Ethan. All he said was that Briggs would be hearing from the friend. That was the last letter. The same one in which Lambert tells Briggs that he was expecting the first half of what had been promised to him and that he’d already arranged to have it sent to the post-office box.”
“Has anyone spoken to Lambert’s lawyer about this?”
“Yes. We’ve learned that Lambert notified the attorney that he’d be receiving money via wire and instructed him to send the full amount, less the attorney’s handling fee, to Briggs’s post office box in cash in a padded envelope.”
“Where did the attorney think the money was coming from?”
“He said that Lambert told him that it was part of his grandmother’s estate, and he was her only living relative so it was coming to him. He said he was passing it on to an old friend who had fallen on hard times. All obviously lies.”
“Leah canceled the transfer after Lambert’s death—”
“That’s right. And chances are Briggs is none too happy about being cheated out of his windfall. Ethan, I think maybe it’s time to bring Leah in to a safe house. I’ve already arranged it. John Mancini is on his way up there to pick her up.”
“You know, all along, I really thought she’d be safer here than she’d be anyplace else. Now I’m not so sure. I’ll go upstairs and get her right away and we’ll …” Ethan said. Noticing Holly’s hand signals, he put his hand over the receiver and said, “What, Holly? This is an important call and—”
“Dad, Leah’s not upstairs.”
“She’s not? Where is she?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you. She took a rowboat out onto the lake.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe an hour or so.”
“Leah’s out boating, Genna. I’ll run down and find her. What time do you think Mancini will get here?”
“Probably within the next half hour,” Genna said, at the same time that Holly said, “He’s already here.”
“Who is already here?” Ethan asked.
“The FBI agent. I saw him down by the boathouse. When I was coming back to the barn to put the goats in. There was a man going down toward the lake, and I asked him if he was with the FBI and he said he was.” Holly sipped at her can of soda. “And he said not to worry. He’d take care of everything. And then he asked if I knew where Leah was.”
“What did you tell him?” Ethan stood on legs that suddenly had no feeling.
“I told him that Leah was down on the lake, that she’d gone row—” Holly stopped, her father’s face having gone ashen. “Dad, what’s the matter?”
“What did he look like?”
“He was real tall and thin and had a beard. A short beard. Kinda blond. Why?”
“That doesn’t sound like John Mancini,” Ethan said. “Genna, did you hear—?”
“Yes, and you’re right. That wasn’t John. I’ll get him on his car phone and tell him to get there as quickly as he can. In the meantime—”
“In the meantime, I’m going for Leah.” Ethan hung up the phone, pushing past Holly as he fled to the stairwell.
Taking the steps two at a time, Ethan rushed down the hall to Leah’s room. He pushed open the door and went to the windows, leaning forward until his forehead was resting on the glass. From where he stood, he could see the lake—and the lone rowboat adrift from the mooring that had not been secured, the oar floating several feet from the bow. His frantic eyes scanned the stark landscape, searching for a spot of red.
And then he found it, halfway up the old logging road on the opposite side of the lake, moving slowly up the hill. The red sweatshirt Leah had borrowed from him earlier in the day. Ethan ran to his room for his binoculars, then back to Leah’s window and trained them on the red speck. With shaking hands, he adjusted the focus and cursed his frustration, his anger, his despair.
Billy Briggs had Leah and, like some evil beast of prey, was dragging her to his lair, the white pickup truck that sat at the top of the hill. It was hardly noticeable against the last vestiges of snow that had yet to melt.
Ethan ran back down the steps and into the den, grabbing ammunition and the Colt from the gun cabinet.
“You and Dieter stay inside,” Ethan said as he brushed past his daughter. “Help Grampa lock all the doors and the windows. Dad, call the state police. And no one goes out, hear me? And no one gets in until I come back. I don’t care if he says he’s from the FBI or the state police. Until you see my face—or John Mancini’s, Dad, you remember what he looks like?—you don’t open the door for anyone.”
Ethan ran from the front of the house, down the path toward the clearing where he’d parked the Jeep the night before. He hopped in and started the engine. He would approach the old logging road by driving straight up the hill on this side, then make his way to the other by going through the woods on foot. With luck, he’d get there before Briggs reached his pickup truck.
The Jeep slipped and slid up the side of the hill where no vehicle had gone in months. There was no real road here, and the surface was slick with mud. Ethan was unaware that he was sweating until it rolled from his face in large droplets that he brushed away with the back of his hand.
“Shit!” he exclaimed when he’d gotten three-quarters of the way from the crest of the hill.
A fallen tree blocked his path. There was nothing he could do but to run the rest of the way. Ethan jumped out of the car and, leaving the door open, ran for the trees that separated one side of the hill from the other. The woods were dense and filled with fallen branches that he had to dodge or jump over. Here were vestiges of the last winter storms and twice, in his haste, he slipped on the icy remains. By the time he reached the old logging road, he was out of breath, and almost, he thought as he crouched behind a large tree, almost out of time.
But not quite.
Briggs was ten feet away from the white pickup truck, carrying Leah over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Ethan leaned against the tree and slid the .38 from his pocket. He opened the cylinder latch and dropped the bullets in, one by one, until all six chambers had been filled. He’d have to wait until Briggs put Leah down before he could take a shot. Ethan snapped the cylinder shut and quietly made his way closer, slipping from behind one tree to the next, until he was almost parallel to the pickup. There he crouched, and he waited.
Briggs was dragging Leah now, her heels making soft furrows in the snow, her form lifeless as a ragdoll. Rivers of fear shot through Ethan with devastating force as the thought occurred to him for the first time that Leah might already be dead. He stood next to the tree, raised the .38, and locked his sight on Billy Briggs.
The minute Briggs laid Leah on the ground, Ethan squeezed the trigger. He stood to watch as Briggs staggered, then fell in a heap next to his truck.
The crows exploded from the trees overhead as the bullet blasted forth and Ethan began to run. He set the .38 on the ground as he picked Leah up cautiously, looking to see if she had been hurt, if there was a sign of blood.
None but that which was oozing from the front of Billy Briggs’s shirt.
Ethan sought and found her pulse, and thanked God that he’d gotten to her before Briggs had a chance to do anything other than render her unconscious. He ripped the tape from her mouth and began to untie her hands.
“Leah! Leah!” Ethan called her name, over and over. “Leah, can you hear me, sweetheart?”
“Ummmmm,” escaped through her lips.
“Leah, can you hear me?”
“Yes.” Her head lolled to one side.
“Are you all right?” Ethan asked anxiously, his heart in his mouth.
“I think so.” She tried to sit up. “I’m so glad to see you. Both of you.”
“Both of who?”
“Both of you. I think I’m seeing double.” She blinked, then looked behind him. She raised her hand to the back of her head, then flinched. “Ouch!”
Ethan tilted her head forward and gently parted the hair at the back of her head.
“You’re going to have quite a lump back there. Let’s get you down to the lodge and get some ice on your head. Can you stand?”
“With a little help,” she told him, and he helped her up from the ground.
Once on her feet, she peered around him and said, “That’s Briggs—”
“Yes, sweetheart, I believe it is.”
“He crept up on me while I was tying up the boat. That’s the last thing I remember. I couldn’t wait to get back to the lodge to tell you that I’d seen a moose. I rowed over to the dock and was tying up the rowboat, and then I was hit from behind.”
“Leah, you’ll never know how scared I was,” Ethan told her as he helped her to her feet. “I couldn’t even think about what he might do to you. All I could think of was getting here in time.”
“And you did,” she said simply. “You saved me, and God only knows how many other women after me that he might have …”
The force came from nowhere, hitting Ethan square in the back and sending him propelling forward into the remnants of snow. A shocked Leah was thrown to the side as Briggs attacked with a fallen branch that he used as a spear.
Ethan staggered to his knees, shaking his head to clear it from the blow, then struggled to stand, circling slightly to buy precious seconds. When Briggs attacked the second time, Ethan was ready for him, wrestling him to the ground and pinning him there with the branch until Briggs, summoning up all his strength, pushed the branch and Ethan off and over to one side. They wrestled and they punched and they rolled in the snow and in the mud, the blood dripping from Briggs’s shoulder marking their passage across the hillside.
Leah scrambled in the snow, searching for the Colt. She had seen it somewhere, somewhere around the truck where Ethan had placed it when he picked her up. Where … where … ? She circled the area where they’d stood and caught the glint of sunlight off the barrel, there, right next to the back tire. With desperate hands, she grabbed it, raised it, sighted it, but could not get a clean shot.
The two men were rolling down the side of the hill, almost indistinguishable in their frenzied pas de deux. Leah moved to her right, trying to position herself so that the sun would be at her back, raised the gun again, and waited for her shot. And as she waited, the thought occurred to her that, if she hit her target, she could lose her last chance of ever finding out where her sister’s body had lain, forgotten, all these years.
Briggs pushed Ethan back with a kick to the chest, then raised the tree branch over his head.
Never raise the gun unless you intend to use it.
Never aim unless you intend to pull the trigger.
Lock on to the sight, then squeeze smoothly …
“Oh!” she exclaimed, the blast startling her, some voice inside reminding her that she’d done it right if she was surprised that the gun had gone off.
She watched the branch drop from Briggs’s hands, watched Briggs himself drop into the dirty snow. Leah held the gun out in front of her and walked to within five feet of where he lay.
“I shot him,” she said as if very surprised. “Is he dead?”
Ethan raised himself onto his knees and, completely out of breath, managed to reach the fallen Briggs and checked for a pulse.
“Yes. He’s dead.” Ethan looked up at her.
Wide-eyed, Leah looked down and said, “Ethan, I killed him.”
“Yes. Yes, you did.” Ethan pulled himself up and took the gun from her hands.
“Good,” she said. “Good.”
And then she began to cry.
Ethan was still holding her, rocking her silently, when John Mancini appeared at the crest of the hill. Walking slowly toward them, he stopped at the motionless body and looked at Ethan and observed, “You got him.”
“She did,” Ethan said softly.
Mancini knelt beside the body and patted the pockets of the dead man’s jacket. From an inside pocket, he withdrew a cell phone. Standing, he hit the last number dialed button and stared at the number that flashed on the small digital readout. He held the number up for Ethan to see.
“Do you recognize this number?” Mancini asked.
Ethan stared at the phone, then nodded.
“Yes,” he told the agent, holding Leah just a little tighter, wondering how they would tell her. “Yes, I know the number.”