Winter Black Box Set 3 Read online

  12

  A week after Winter and Noah had gifted Dan Nguyen with a bag of chocolate croissants and a mocha latte, Winter held the exact same order in her hands as she approached a couple young women seated on a park bench.

  Though the shade of a number of large trees was plentiful, the walking trail and handful of other features throughout the grassy space had seen better days. Then again, the girls were only a few blocks away from their usual place of business. Winter was in an area that some referred to as “the wrong side of the tracks.”

  One of the two, a petite blonde with large blue eyes, glanced over as Winter approached.

  During the Augusto Lopez investigation, the girl had met up with Winter and Levi Brandt—an agent from the Victim Services Division—at a diner. Though she’d introduced herself as Alice, both Winter and Levi had known that wasn’t her real name.

  Since then, Winter had learned that Alice’s real name was Elenore Alice Thompson. She’d always thought that Elenore sounded too old-fashioned and highbrow for her liking, so she preferred to go by Alice.

  When Winter thought back to the explanation, the first hint of a smile touched her face.

  “I know, I know,” Alice had said, waving a hand. “It makes me sound like I should be sitting here in a blue and white dress with a Cheshire cat on my lap, doesn’t it?”

  Despite the grim nature of their investigation, Winter couldn’t help but chuckle at the memory of Alice’s tone.

  The prostitute was smart, witty, and had a great sense of humor. In all honesty, she reminded Winter of Autumn.

  And like Autumn, Alice had been dealt one bad hand after another in her short life.

  Where Autumn’s father had shoved her headfirst into a coffee table and nearly killed her, all Alice’s injuries were invisible. And though Autumn wound up in a foster home run by two kind people who had adopted her at thirteen, Alice’s only option to escape her abusive, drug addicted parents had been to run away.

  Like so many other runaway teens, Alice had resorted to prostitution to cover her basic expenses.

  Pushing aside the cloud of thoughts, Winter raised a hand to wave to Alice and her friend. As the young women glanced over, Winter held up the two lattes and the bag of pastries. Alice’s friend tucked a piece of ebony hair behind her ear and smiled.

  Levi Brandt and Bree Stafford both had a great deal of experience talking to young women like Alice and her friend. One of the first tricks Winter learned from Levi was to be personable and offer token gestures like food or coffee. It was one thing for her to reassure the girls that she wasn’t there to arrest them, but it was another for her to offer them chocolate croissants and a latte as proof that she was there in peace.

  Alice’s fair face brightened as Winter closed the distance. “Hi, Agent Black. You didn’t have to bring us coffee. You’re so nice.”

  Winter shrugged and passed a latte to each of the girls. “It’s the least I can do.”

  The day before, Winter and Noah had swung by the shadier part of the block to ask Alice if she’d noticed anything peculiar during the timeframe when Dakota Ronsfeldt and the other victims had disappeared.

  Alice couldn’t recall any details, but she said one of her friends might have a better idea. That friend wasn’t comfortable speaking to a law enforcement agent on the street where they worked, so they’d agreed to meet up the following day.

  Though Noah had parked nearby, Alice had advised Winter that her friend was skittish around men who were, as Alice had said, built like a brick shithouse.

  As Winter extended a hand to the dark-haired girl, she offered her a warm smile. “You must be Katya. I’m Special Agent Winter Black with the FBI. You can call me Winter, though.”

  Despite the flicker of nervousness in her green eyes, Katya managed a smile as she accepted the handshake. “Okay, Winter. It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for the coffee, and for the donuts.”

  With a grin, Alice held up a finger. “Not donuts. Chocolate croissants.”

  Her trepidation vanished as Katya glanced to the paper bag. “Even better. Wow, thank you.”

  Winter waved a dismissive hand, a mannerism she’d picked up from Autumn. “It’s no problem. I’ve just got a few questions for you about one of the girls you might’ve been friends with.”

  As Winter reached into her pocket for a photo of Dakota, Katya nodded and sipped at her coffee. There was an undeniable anxiety that lurked just beneath Katya’s curious eyes—an anxiety that insisted if Winter took one step in the wrong direction, she would close up like a bank vault.

  During the Lopez case, Winter had witnessed just such an occurrence when the Richmond PD had arrested a potential witness named Gina Traeger. If they hadn’t cuffed her and brought her in for a minor solicitation charge, they might have found Augusto Lopez weeks earlier.

  Though Alice was happy to cooperate with emissaries of the FBI, most of the women in her circle harbored a great deal of mistrust for law enforcement agents.

  There were a handful of Richmond City police officers who came around Katya and Alice’s area of business to make sure the girls were safe, but otherwise, most of the working girls trusted cops about as far as they could throw them. Based on Katya and Alice’s petite frames, that wasn’t far.

  Winter kept her expression carefully neutral as she handed the photo of Dakota to Katya. “Do you know her?”

  A shadow darkened Katya’s bright eyes as she nodded. “Yes. That’s Dakota. Did…did something happen to her?”

  Swallowing past the bitter taste in her mouth, Winter accepted the photo as Katya handed it back to her. “Yes, we think something happened to her. When’s the last time you saw her?”

  Katya brushed some more hair from her face. “Maybe…something like three weeks ago? She was from a small town in Maine, and I just hoped that she had gone back home.”

  “Can you think back to the last time you might have seen her? Was there anything unusual that happened, any strange men you might’ve seen?” Winter made sure her tone was confident but gentle.

  Fixing her green eyes on the coffee cup, Katya pursed her lips as they lapsed into silence. A light breeze drifted by, carrying with it the faint scent of fall. Seasonal changes in Virginia weren’t as dramatic as those farther inland, such as in Chicago or Minneapolis, but Winter still looked forward to the shift.

  “Oh.” Katya’s attention snapped back up to Winter and Alice. “I remember. The last night I saw her, I think it was about three weeks ago, but it’s hard to be sure exactly when it was. But I can remember what happened.”

  Winter retrieved a little notepad from the inside pocket of her jacket before she nodded to bid Katya to continue.

  “It was night, but it wasn’t that late. The sun hadn’t been down for very long. Then, I remember this car pulling up. It was a nice car. And well, it’s not really weird for us to see nice cars, but they still stick out, you know?” Katya fidgeted with the cardboard sleeve of her cup.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Winter offered her another gentle smile. “What happened next?”

  “Well, I thought about it, about going to the man in that car, I mean. But I just…like I said, it’s not unusual for us to see nice cars, but for some reason, I just didn’t like the look of that one. I-I should have said something to Dakota.”

  Clasping her friend’s shoulder with one hand, Alice shook her head. “No, don’t say that. You know even if you did, it wouldn’t have changed Dakota’s mind. That girl’s too headstrong for her own good.”

  A slight smile flickered over Katya’s face as she nodded. “Yeah. But, still. I saw it, and I just sort of pretended I was busy with something else so the driver wouldn’t notice me. He wasn’t there for very long before Dakota went up to him, and then she got in the passenger side and they left. That was the last time I saw her.”

  “Can you tell me a little more about the car?” Winter glanced up from her notes just as Katya nodded again.

  “Yeah. I’m not much of a car person, but it was a nice one. A Mercedes, I think. Black, four doors. Looked new, and it was clean. It had rained that day, but the car still looked spotless. I’d seen it around before a couple times.”

  Winter jotted down a series of scribbles that looked approximately like the words black Mercedes and four-door. “Did you see the driver?”

  Shaking her head, Katya turned her eyes back to her coffee cup. “I didn’t really get much of a look at him. It was already dark, and the windows were tinted. He was white, with a short beard and dark hair. Other than that, I’m not really sure.”

  As she wrote out the description, Winter tried to make the woman feel good about what she’d shared. “This is really helpful. Thank you, Katya. Here,” Winter pulled out a white business card, “Alice already has one of my cards, but I’ll give you one too. If you need anything, even if it’s not related to this case, just give me a call. Even if there’s just some creep bothering you, or something like that. Let me know, and I’ll do what I can to help out, okay?”

  When Katya smiled this time, the expression didn’t seem so strained. “Okay. Thank you, Agent Black. It was nice to meet you. If I remember anything else, I’ll make sure I call you.”

  Winter returned the smile as she rose to stand. “Thank you, ladies. Enjoy the croissants.”

  Heaving a sigh, Winter slumped down in the passenger seat of the nondescript sedan.

  Midafternoon sunlight glinted off Noah’s aviators as he glanced at her. “I take it that didn’t go very well?”

  As she fastened her seatbelt, Winter shook her head. “No, it went well, actually. Alice’s friend remembered seeing Dakota get into a black Mercedes on the last night she saw her. She said she’d seen the car a couple times before, and the driver was a white
male with a beard and dark hair.”

  Noah tapped a finger against the steering wheel before he turned the key over in the ignition. “Well, that’s more than we had.

  Winter barely managed to swallow a groan. “Exactly. It doesn’t seem like much, but that’s the frustrating part. We’ve talked to the families of every single victim we identified, and none of them had any idea that they were missing. The only reason there were even missing persons reports was because the other working girls and the cops that come to check on them reported them missing. How do you neglect your children that much as a parent?”

  As he spread his hands, Noah flashed her a hapless look. “You’re preaching to the choir, darlin’. I don’t know. If you wanted a real answer, you could probably ask Autumn.”

  With a long inhalation of air, Winter leaned her head against the seat. “I miss Autumn. I feel like I haven’t seen her in a month. She’s been busy with testimony for the Lopez case. It kind of sucks that her first court appearance is one of the biggest trials in Virginia in the last decade. I don’t even know if Kent Strickland’s trial will be bigger news than the Lopez trial.”

  Chuckling, Noah shifted the car into gear. “Vigilantes sure do have a way of attracting the attention of the masses. Probably won’t be long before Lopez has a book deal. He’s going to be living the good life, or at least as good a life as he can behind bars.”

  Winter’s laugh sounded closer to a snort. “For him, I’m sure it’ll be pretty good since some of the guards are probably in his fan club. Anyway, you called Dan while I was talking to Alice and Katya, right?”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  “Anything useful?”

  “Nothing. He hasn’t seen any Jane Does that match the descriptions of our missing girls. He even went back farther than the time they were reported missing, and he still didn’t find anything.”

  Winter pressed a button to roll down her window. “So, whoever our killer is, he’s making sure that none of these women’s bodies are found. Hopefully, he isn’t dissolving them in a fifty-five-gallon drum.”

  Noah slapped his hand on the steering wheel and laughed so loud it made her jump.

  “What?”

  Still smiling, Noah glanced to her and then back to the road. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at that. That’s just literally, word for word what Dan said.”

  “You know, I don’t know a lot about my dad’s side of the family. Maybe Dan and I are cousins.” Winter offered him an exaggerated shrug.

  “Could be. He’s from Iowa, though. He didn’t move to Virginia until after he joined the Navy and started working on his undergrad.”

  Winter drew her brows together. “Do you have a copy of Dan’s CV or something?”

  Noah tapped his ear. “It’s called listening, darlin’. When Dan talks about himself, I listen.”

  “Oh my god,” Winter muttered. In spite of her unimpressed tone, a smile crept to her face. “Okay, okay. Seriously, where are we with our voyeuristic stalker turned murderer?”

  He tapped the steering wheel as they neared a red light, a mannerism she often noticed when he was thinking. “We were able to set up a rough timeline for each disappearance. Based on everything we’ve heard from the working girls and the victims’ families, they haven’t been seen since they disappeared. But their bodies haven’t shown up in the morgue, either.”

  Winter nodded. “So, it’s possible that they’re not dead, but it seems unlikely considering how long ago the first vic disappeared. She went missing close to a year ago, right?”

  “Right. Little more than a year ago.”

  “And then the exact same MO for the other four victims, until he escalated and recorded himself killing the most recent one. We’ve got IDs for all of them now, but the only one whose disappearance anyone remembers was Dakota.” She glanced down to the little notepad. “Black Mercedes, new, with four doors. It was raining that day, but Katya said the car was spotless. White male driver with a beard and dark hair.”

  Noah offered her a thoughtful glance. “Well, good work, darlin’. You just found more information about this case than any of us have in the last week.”

  This time, Winter was unable to suppress her groan.

  The most information they’d obtained so far was next to nothing.

  Somewhere in Richmond, a psychopath in a Mercedes was abducting women and murdering them, but they had no idea who he was.

  13

  With one more quick wave to Ryan O’Connelly, Bobby Weyrick tapped the screen of his phone to dial Sun’s number. She’d sent him a text a few minutes earlier to say good night, and he had decided to step outside the room to call her. Since she was assigned to keep an eye on Ryan during the day, she and Bobby had only seen one another during their shift changes over the last week.

  Regardless of the sudden distance, or perhaps because of it, she had let go of the palpable ire that had simmered in the air after the briefing at the beginning of the investigation.

  In the last week, Bobby had learned that Sun wasn’t keen on Winter Black, but she still respected the younger woman. She had succumbed to an irrational bout of jealousy after Bobby and Winter had spent a few days wrapping up their previous case in Baltimore.

  If he was honest, Bobby was impressed with the way Sun had dealt with the situation.

  “Look,” she had said. “Just because I don’t like her doesn’t mean you guys won’t get along. And just because I don’t like her doesn’t mean that you can’t be friends with her. I’m sorry I was such a bitch about it.”

  A week later, thinking of the heartfelt words still brought a smile to his face.

  Just as he dropped to sit in a cushioned chair across the hall from a vending machine, there was a click on the other end of the line as Sun picked up.

  “Hey,” she greeted. “How’s babysitting duty going?”

  “It’s fine. I can’t really complain. Ryan’s a nice guy, and he’s funny. Plus, we like the same TV shows. I could do a lot worse for a protection assignment. Actually, I’ve done a lot worse. You didn’t have to deal with Eric Dalton when we were keeping him at the safehouse so the Russian mob couldn’t get to him. That guy never laughed at any of my stupid jokes.”

  Sun laughed, a light, melodic sound he never thought he’d get tired of hearing. “His loss, then. I love your stupid jokes.”

  His smile widened. “You know, we’ve been watching out for Ryan for over a week, and I still haven’t asked you about the Presley case. I remember it, but I was working with the counterterrorism people on a terrorist threat at the time, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. Which apparently is a shame because that investigation sounds like it was wild.”

  “It was. Heidi Presley was a lunatic. But she was smart, so she was like a Ted Kaczynski lunatic. Honestly, that’s probably the best person to compare her to. Incredibly high IQ, rejection of social norms, complete lack of basic empathy. She was the female Ted Kaczynski in the flesh.”

  He leaned back in the cushioned chair. “Damn. It took the bureau decades to catch the Unabomber.”

  “Well, Presley didn’t reject technology like Kaczynski did, and that’s how we got her in the end. The tech guys in Cyber Crimes cracked open her laptop and found her entire master plan all lined up, including the collar bomb she’d made for Ryan. Don’t get me wrong, she was a really good hacker, but she didn’t have access to the resources that the FBI does.”

  Bobby nodded to himself. “Good thing, then. I like Ryan. It’d suck if he was dead.”

  Though he expected at least a slight chuckle, Sun sighed instead. “Yeah, I liked him too. Honestly, I think everyone did. He’s a charming SOB, no doubt about that. But that’s part of his persona, you know? It’s how he gets into all these high and mighty social circles so he can steal from people. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s how he managed to get enough time alone to slip out from underneath the noses of the cops in Erie.”

  Even though Bobby had always known Ryan’s history, he slumped down in his chair at Sun’s assessment.

  She was right.

  He knew she was right. Ryan O’Connelly had made a life for himself by using his charisma to con his way to luxury. In fact, his trade was precisely what had landed him at the bureau’s front door in the first place.