Two Years Ago
The missing woman's car was found on a steamy Friday afternoon, several miles from the donut shop where she'd been carjacked the previous weekend. As the investigative team moved in, Aidan McConnell, who'd provided the tip that had led the authorities to this deserted, backwoods spot, had only one burning question: Was she inside?
I guess we're all about to find out.
Staying behind, he watched the scene unfold from a clearing beside a thick tangle of moss-laden, live oak trees. Several members of the Savannah P.D. advanced, encircling the banged-up, dusty vehicle, which stood about fifty yards deeper in the woods. Even from here, a strong sense of foreboding—the unmistakable aura of death—had him on alert. An unnatural silence descended, as if the very birds in the air had been silenced by the darkness of this place, the tension of this moment.
Then a detective popped the trunk. He stiffened…staggered back. A few others leaned forward to peer inside. And one, a young-looking, uniformed street cop, turned and puked on the ground near the back tire.
Aidan's breath escaped in a whoosh. Which was when he realized he'd been holding it.
Confirmation. It wasn't just the car. They'd found the victim, too.
Well, they'd found her body, anyway. The rest of her—the faithful daughter, the good-natured friend, whatever had made twenty-year old Maggie Wilshire unique and special and human—was long gone.
The scene remained frozen for a long moment, a necessary pause for the horror to sink in. Then all the first responders burst into frenzied activity. One got on a radio, another began staking up a perimeter of bright yellow, too-cheerful-a-color crime scene tape, a third chewed-out the pale-faced rookie who'd gotten sick. And soon it was just another crime scene. The mystery of Maggie Wilshire's disappearance was solved, even if her murder investigation had only just begun.
What an ignominious ending to the week-long drama that had captured the attention of the entire city of Savannah. The media hadn't been tipped-off, the police had kept this hush-hush. Other than Aidan, there were no other onlookers. A ramshackle ruin that had once sold boiled peanuts and bait to passing fishermen was the only structure within a half-mile. And the only residents of this muck-laden, swampy backwoods hell were the mosquitoes, palmetto bugs and perhaps a few lumbering gators.
The human predators who'd committed this crime were long gone.
Within minutes, another half-dozen official vehicles had ringed the site, and twice that many officers of the law. Every once in a while, somebody—a tech, the patrolman who'd gotten sick, one of the detectives—would cast a suspicious look in his direction.
Aidan took no offense. He'd grown used to it.
He made no attempt to move closer; not that they'd let him. No way would they give some defense attorney any wiggle room in the future. He knew how they thought—if he got too close, he could later claim evidence of his presence at the scene had been left there this morning, long after the crime.
Not that there was any, of course. He'd never been here, never seen this place, other than in his mind. And he definitely hadn't killed poor Maggie Wilshire. He was just the guy who knew what had happened to the missing woman, knew roughly where to find her. The one who had directed the authorities to this old abandoned rut of a road in some back woods not far off the Intracoastal Waterway.
All of which would make any cop worth a damn eye him with suspicion. Even though most knew him, some by reputation, some from his work on previous cases.
"So how'd you know?"
Aidan barely glanced at the unmarked car that had just pulled up beside him to idle in the small clearing. A familiar detective sat behind the wheel.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me," the other man said, his tone less skeptical than it had been this morning when Aidan had walked into a downtown precinct, claiming he had knowledge of the college student whose disappearance had dominated the local news all week.
Aidan finally met the other man's even stare, seeing interest beneath the natural belligerence worn like body armor around every cop he'd ever known. He could try to come up with some kind of technical explanation, or else a more mystical one.
Instead, however, he simply offered Detective Gabe Cooper the truth. "The Beach Boys."
Cooper lifted a skeptical brow. "So Brian Wilson called you up and told you where to find her?"
Patient, Aidan explained. "The song Fun, Fun, Fun kept playing in my head. Has been for the past two days. I couldn't shut it out. Could hardly hear anything else."
The detective shook his head, still not getting it. So Aidan nodded toward the crime scene...and the Candy Apple Red, 1967 T-bird sitting right in the middle of it. Maggie Wilshire's restored classic car had reportedly been a high school graduation gift from her parents. Now it was her tomb.
Understanding washed over the other man's face. "Daddy didn't take her T-bird away," he murmured, "and I seriously doubt her last day on this earth was fun."
No, it hadn't been. It had been horrific. Aidan knew that, he'd mentally tapped into the remnants of Maggie Wilshire's final hours of life. The tiny bit of sensory input he'd gotten had been enough to convince him she'd died in agony, and in terror. "The song—the line about the car—was just the clue that helped me figure out who I'd been having other impressions about. The T-bird was mentioned in every news report."
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