Variable Onset Read online

  Lincoln slid his glasses on and picked up the bag with the single sheet of paper, peering at the handwritten note. It was a diagnosis, identical in form to the ones found at each place Dr. Fear’s previous victims disappeared from, except this one wasn’t for a victim. It detailed someone who feared they’d never be noticed, who feared their own crimes wouldn’t be memorable enough, who needed to steal someone else’s MO for notoriety.

  A copycat.

  The diagnosis—fear of anonymity—was signed by Dr. Fear, in a script Lincoln could verify as certainly as any Bureau handwriting expert. He’d examined the previous diagnoses more than enough times to recognize the sharp, slanted script with the heavy pen-points at the beginning and end of each string of letters.

  “They’re disavowing the copycat,” Lincoln said.

  Oliver nodded. “That’s what it reads like.”

  “You think that’s from the real Dr. Fear?” the DC SAC asked.

  Lincoln tapped the signature line. “That’s their sig, no doubt, and the form of diagnosis and sentence structure match.”

  “Information about the diagnoses was out there in the press,” the chief of police said. “Anyone could copy those.”

  “The existence of the diagnoses was released, the details of the paper they were written on were not.” Lincoln held the bag aloft so that the overhead lights would illuminate the watermark on the linen paper. A marker of sorts like on the back of the Duke Law photo they’d analyzed in class today. “This is custom paper. Each small batch is stamped and numbered. Dr. Fear’s last diagnosis, from twelve years ago, was written on paper from Letter Elegant, Batch 301.”

  Lincoln rotated so the SAC could see the paper’s watermark clearly. “Letter Elegant, Batch 302,” the older man said. “Fuck.”

  “The notes at the other two scenes this week?” Lincoln asked.

  “Same,” Beverley said. “Which is why, until that letter arrived, we were proceeding under the assumption that this was Dr. Fear.”

  “If this is a copycat, they know about the paper too.” Lincoln tossed the evidence bag on the table. “Fuck.”

  Oliver curled a hand over Lincoln’s arm again. “This is why I told Bev you had to be on the case. Officially.”

  Lincoln covered Oliver’s hand with his. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get Ruby and Chase back.”

  “I’m glad you said that.” Beverley slid a travel envelope across the table. “You’re on the next flight to Roanoke.”

  “Roanoke? Why?” As soon as he asked the question, Lincoln recalled the other evidence bag on the table. “Wait!” He snatched it up and flipped it over to examine the sender address on the shipping envelope. Roanoke, Virginia. “What’s this address? A residence, a mail center, an office store?”

  “None of the above, according to cyber. Spoofed address, with the label printed online from an untraceable account.”

  Fuck. “Then why do we think the note actually originated in Roanoke?”

  “Because tracking does show it being retrieved from a drop-box there.”

  But that wasn’t enough. “Just because the letter came from Roanoke doesn’t mean that’s where Dr. Fear is. All their victims were taken from and found in the DC Metro area. It’s more likely they drove out to Roanoke to drop off the letter. There’s no reason to think they live there.”

  “In Apex, actually,” Beverley said. “Roanoke is the closest major city.”

  “Apex? As in the home of the Mountaineers, last year’s NCAA Division III basketball champions?” And in the hunt this year too. So what if he watched too much SportsCenter?

  “That’s the one,” Beverley said. “We’ve already got an agent on the ground there.”

  Lincoln’s brows raced north. “But you just received the letter this morning?”

  “He was pursuing a separate matter and came across a lead on this one. He has some expertise in forensic genealogy.”

  No holding back that eye roll. Between television shows, true crime podcasts, and all the press that came with the Golden State Killer collar, everyone thought they were an expert now.

  “Lincoln,” Oliver gently chided.

  “What?”

  Oliver chuckled, and Lincoln was glad for that, even if it was at his expense. “It’s a casual interest, compared to yours,” Oliver said. “But enough he found a connection to Apex. And taken together with the note...”

  “You’re the expert, Agent Monroe,” Beverley said. “We would like you to go to Apex and assist our field agent there.”

  “But the task force is here.” A situation room full of agents, a lab full of everything he could possibly need, and a file cabinet full of his research on Dr. Fear.

  “The senator’s daughter is missing, and we haven’t caught any breaks.” Beverley pushed the note toward him. “Until this.”

  “This may not be one either.” He was sure the note was from Dr. Fear, and he was ninety percent sure the killer had driven out to Roanoke to mail the letter there and throw them off course. Until this letter, there had been no evidence to the contrary.

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Oliver said softly. “You know how much Ruby hates the water. I can’t imagine her drowning.” He swallowed hard, struggling to clear his throat and start again. “Whether it’s a copycat or Dr. Fear who has them, if past pattern dictates, we have forty hours left to find them. You are the best person in the Bureau to help us. I need you to do what I couldn’t.”

  How was he supposed to say no to that? “Fine,” he conceded, with one caveat. “But I’m driving. It’ll be faster than dealing with the airports. And I don’t do puddle jumpers.”

  Another watery chuckle from Oliver, a smidge of relief underlying the misery. Lincoln would take that. Pissy house cat for the win.

  * * *

  “Are you sure you want to drive?” Gabby’s voice crackled out of the phone speaker. The connection was shit but not so bad she couldn’t add her two cents from whatever embassy she was in this week. “It’s January.”

  Before Lincoln could counter his ex-wife, their daughter added her two cents as well. “January in the Blue Ridge Mountains.” More like three cents, a whole shiny nickel’s worth of grief for him.

  He reemerged from his closet, winter boots in hand, rescued from beneath a pile of yellowing sheet music. He glared across the room at Elena, who sat at his desk behind his laptop. “I’ll be fine,” he told the crown of her head, a frequent recipient of his discourse these days, her attention always on some piece of tech in her hands. At least today it was at his request. His assistant back at Quantico was scanning and uploading his Dr. Fear research as fast as she could, and as soon as each file hit the shared server, Elena downloaded it and made it accessible on his laptop.

  “You’re from Los Angeles, L,” Gabby said, and he redirected his glare at the phone on the corner of the desk. “Snow is a foreign concept.”

  He shoved the boots into his suitcase and zipped it up with more force than the poor underused thing deserved. “I’m taking the Wrangler. It’s four-wheel drive.”

  “Doesn’t mean you know how to go in snow,” Elena commented.

  Lincoln considered throwing a pillow at her, but he didn’t want to interrupt her techno-speed-demon groove. “And you do?”

  “Mom lived in the Alps for a while.”

  “You visited twice,” Gabby said. “You’re no more a natural at it than L.”

  Lincoln chuckled. Mother and daughter sassing each other was one of his favorite things. His laughter died, though, when Gabby swung the conversation back to him.

  “You should at least wait until morning,” Gabby said.

  “It’s four here. Apex is only three-and-a-half hours away. I’ll be fine.” He didn’t have time to waste, not with Ruby and Chase missing, the clock ticking, and his partner already on the scene.

  “Ms. Par
ker, they’re ready for you,” someone said in German on the other end of the line.

  “Dankeschön,” Gabby returned, then said to them, “Gotta go, babes. L, shoot me a text when you get to Apex. Elena, behave for Katrina.”

  “Love you, Mom,” Elena said between mouse clicks.

  “Ditto,” Lincoln replied. “And will do.” At her scoff, he added an on-our-daughter’s-head promise that earned him the warm, uninhibited laughter he’d fallen for decades ago. It wasn’t the same kind of love anymore, but the sound still filled his chest with joy and made him look fondly on their daughter. “ETA for Trina?” he asked Elena, once Gabby had hung up.

  “I’m old enough to stay by myself.”

  “For a few hours, yes. For an indeterminate number of days, no. Plus, you’ve got your second tournament of the season in Baltimore this weekend. How you gonna get there?”

  “Metro. Train.”

  World of no. “Where’s Trina?”

  Elena flicked her eyes at him, then to the phone. She tapped at the screen left-handed while her right one continued to manipulate the laptop mouse. “She’s almost here, and you forgot your toiletry kit.”

  “Fuck!” He scurried back to the bathroom and grabbed it off the vanity. It wasn’t like he never traveled. Elena often had this or that sporting event, this or that quiz bowl competition, but he never needed more than a duffel and toothbrush for those trips. And they were always on the schedule, well in advance. He thrived on planning, not so much on uprooting his life. That was Gabby’s deal, not his.

  “Do you even remember how to be a field agent?” Elena asked.

  He returned her earlier scowl.

  “What?” she said, a finger yanking at one of her red-dyed ringlet curls. “When’s the last time you were in the field?”

  “Before you were born.” No sense hiding the truth; she knew that much. When Gabby’s maternity leave was over, then her local stint with State was up, and she was transferred to The Hague, Lincoln had happily stayed home on dad duty. He had likewise happily traded in his awkward field duty years in which he’d fumbled at interviewing subjects, fumbled at partnerships, fumbled at the whole Special Agent gig, for the lecture hall, the lab, and a nice townhome in Dumfries with his daughter.

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  He made one last trip to his closet, removed his service weapon from the safe, and tucked it and two clips of ammunition into the gun case he broke out once a year when he had to carry his firearm into Quantico for his annual range re-certification.

  “When’s the last time you fired that thing?” Elena asked.

  He laid the hard-sided case atop his suitcase and glanced up. He cut off his flippant “Range Day” answer at seeing the worry on his daughter’s face—lines creasing her light brown forehead, dark brows pinched over narrowed honey-colored eyes, her top teeth digging into her bottom lip. It wasn’t an expression he saw often there—he’d worked damn hard to make sure of that—and now he’d gone and put it there.

  “Hey,” he said, gentling his voice as he crossed the room and knelt beside her. “I’ll be fine, and I’ll have a partner.” Who was surely better at all the field agent stuff than him. Hopefully his new partner would still have Lincoln’s back once Lincoln made clear he was the expert on all things genealogy. “It’s a little college town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. How much trouble can I get into?”

  Despite her still serious expression, Elena began humming, and after a few notes, Lincoln recognized the theme song from Deliverance.

  Hands over his face, he groaned dramatically. “Fuck me, where did I go so wrong?”

  “Would you like a list?”

  “Shut it.” He stood and ruffled her springy dyed coils. “Seriously, I’m going undercover as Apex U’s new librarian. The town is smaller than Chapel Hill. I can’t get into that much trouble, and I’ll have backup.”

  “Who’s your partner?”

  “Don’t know yet.” He hadn’t asked. Beverley had gotten drawn into jurisdictional infighting, and Lincoln had fled the battle, more concerned with how he was going to access all his Dr. Fear research from afar.

  “You done there?” he said, as he reached behind her to grab his Martin off the corner guitar stand. He couldn’t go more than a few days without playing a tune, and he didn’t want to resort to playing spoons.

  “That’s the last one done,” Elena replied with a victorious click.

  “Thanks, sweetie.” He gave her a sideways hug before hauling his guitar case out from under the bed and tucking the acoustic inside. “And I promise, I’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a sexy partner...the two of you in the mountains...snowed in...”

  “How many hours of Hallmark movies did you watch over Christmas break?”

  He feared the answer and was saved from it by two sharp raps on the front door. Their visitor didn’t wait to be let in, using her key and throwing open the door with a booming, “Yo, Monroes!”

  His sister Katrina at her loudest, and with impeccable timing in this instance.

  Except Elena wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet. “I want pictures.” She looked and sounded so much like her mother that Lincoln had to laugh.

  He dropped a kiss on her crown. “I want pictures too, when you win that tourney.”

  She beamed up at him. “Count on it.”

  Chapter Two

  Lincoln was just on the other side of Charlottesville when fat flakes began to fall from the sky. The snow wasn’t sticking to the road, but it was enough to cause a Southern-fueled panic, traffic slowing to a crawl on the interstate. By the time he reached the exit for Apex, it was almost ten and his three-and-a-half-hour trip was closing in on six. He slowed further and flipped on his high beams as he drove the unfamiliar road into town. It was dark and deserted, just him and a couple of deer on the winding two-lane road. The lack of students he understood. They would return later this weekend, the new semester starting Monday. But where were the rest of the townsfolk on a Friday night? Had the snow chased them all inside? Was everyone asleep already?

  He had begun to worry that either the GPS had led him astray or this was indeed the Deliverance nightmare of Elena’s teasing when finally civilization appeared, street lights aglow on Main Street ahead. He reached the top of the hill and what greeted him was more than mere civilization. It was a winter wonderland.

  At the first stoplight, a cluster of retail storefronts were decked out with Welcome Back, Students and Welcome, Winter displays. Warm light tumbled through the plate glass windows of cozy-looking restaurants, and more of the same stretched down the intersecting street. A giant mansion across the intersection was likewise decorated for winter.

  Halfway down Main Street, at the next light, four statues on either side of the road marked the entrances to two massive quads. Winter-bare trees dotted the twin lawns, and flickering lampposts lit the shoveled paths that bisected the snow-dusted grass. Campus buildings, Gothic in style, hemmed in each of the quads, the light gray stone, pitched slate roofs, and stained-glass windows reflecting the lamps, moonlight, and snow, giving it all a surreal snow globe quality.

  At the last stoplight, the road forked in three directions. Signs in blue and gold, Apex’s school colors, pointed left for the sports complex, ahead for the student dorms, and right for Town Hall. The GPS directed Lincoln right, and he recalled from his quick overview of town maps that Apex’s residential district lay north of campus, past the cluster of government buildings and secondary commercial district, down the hill toward Lake Sardis.

  The light turned green, and Lincoln followed the suggested route. Civilization dimmed once more, the government buildings empty, the strip mall dark but for the grocery store and movie theater on either end, and the sprinkling of other commercial ventures along the way closed. That da
mn Deliverance song flitted through his head again. Where the fuck was everyone? He’d spent summers in Chapel Hill, most of his holidays too. He was used to the college town downshift when half the population went missing, but this felt more like a post-apocalyptic wipeout.

  Or, Lincoln thought, as he finally came upon the residential area, everyone really had been chased inside by the snow. Numerous houses were lit, smoke billowed from chimneys, and cars passed on the other side of the road as he wound deeper into Sardis Woods, one of several neighborhoods around the lake with Sardis in their name. Because creativity was apparently in short supply in a town anchored by a university. As he drew closer to his destination, the cars parked at the curb seemed to multiply. In a neighborhood like this, with its stately homes, uniform mailboxes, and pristine yards, there was surely a tyrannical homeowners association that wouldn’t tolerate this sort of chaos.

  Unless there was a party for said neighborhood—”You have reached your destination,” the GPS announced—at the house where Lincoln was supposed to be staying.

  He double-checked the address on the GPS against the numbers on the mailbox against the address in the email from Beverley. They all matched. The GPS had not lied, and neither had his eyes. This was the right house, but everything about it was wrong. All the ground-floor lights in the two-story brick colonial were blazing, a Welcome, Winter banner like the ones in town hung between the columns on either side of the front steps, and inside, visible through the big bay windows, people mingled and danced with champagne glasses in their hands.

  A lot of people.

  What the actual fuck? Was this where most of the town was? At a party at the new home of “Professor Lincoln Polk”? Without Professor Polk in attendance? Not that Lincoln wanted to be attending—that much peopling was the last thing he ever wanted, especially tonight after the drive from hell—but a party without the host? And this was clearly not a parents-are-away situation. Those weren’t teenagers inside, and his teenager was back in Dumfries. So what the hell was going on here? And where the hell was he supposed to park?