Until Dark by Mariah Stewart

Author:Mariah Stewart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Murder - Investigation, Government investigators, General, Romance, United States - Officials and employees, Mystery fiction, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Serial murderers, Espionage
ISBN: 9780345447401
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2003-12-02T23:16:45+00:00

Chapter

Fourteen

Kendra suspected that Adam knew exactly why they’d been called back, why someone felt the meeting couldn’t wait until the morning. Her suspicions were confirmed when, after arriving at the state police barracks, Lieutenant Barker greeted her with, “As Miranda told Adam on the phone, we’re hoping you can shed some light on this situation.”

“Ahhh, Lieutenant, I haven’t discussed the phone conversation with Kendra.”

She turned and looked up at Adam, frowning. “You knew what this meeting was about, and yet we drove all the way down here without you saying a word about it?”

“I thought it would be better if everyone was here to go over everything that’s come up.”

“What has ‘come up’?” Kendra asked pointedly. “And what does it have to do with me?”

“I think I should probably start this thing rolling,” Miranda Cahill said almost apologetically as she came into the room. “And please don’t be angry with Adam. I asked him not to tell you what we’d found. I thought it would be better to show you.”

Miranda opened her brown leather briefcase and nodded to Lieutenant Barker. “If you’d get the door, please? We can’t be sure who might be sneaking around, trying to get information.”

“Why all the secrecy?” Kendra did little to hide her annoyance.

“Kendra, if you’d sit here, next to me.” Miranda gestured to the chair to her left. “There are some things I need to show you.”

With some reluctance, Kendra sat down.

“Adam told me about the crosses that the killer began to put around the necks of his victims after you appeared on television at a news conference wearing a gold cross quite visibly around your neck.” Miranda spread photographs across the conference table. “Here’s a still shot of you, Kendra, from that video. And shots of his next victims. See the gold crosses?”

“Yes, I saw them before, and Adam and I discussed the fact that possibly the killer had started doing that to get my attention, though I can’t imagine why he—”

“Oh, but he was trying to get your attention long before that,” Miranda stopped her.

“What are you talking about?” Kendra’s voice dropped slightly and her eyes narrowed.

From the briefcase, Miranda lifted a second folder.

“Adam asked me to go back over those first murders to see if there was anything we hadn’t noticed previously. Anything at all, but particularly, anything that the women might have had in common, something they’d been wearing or had in their possession that was identical to the others. And what we found,” Miranda said as she removed a series of photographs from the folder, placing them upon the table as if dealing cards, “what we found, was that all of the women had little tiny plastic tortoiseshell hair clips.”

Kendra leaned forward to look at the photos that were being spread before her.

“Now, it wasn’t apparent at first, because the coroner had removed the clips from Amy Tilden’s hair and placed them in the evidence box. Kathleen Garvey and Karen Meyer, however, still had the clips in place. They’re so tiny, so seemingly unimportant, that they really didn’t make much of an impression on anyone.

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