46. Petals
FORTY-SIX
Petals
CJ
“You’ve seen him, too?” CJ’s interest perked up. Jenny hadn’t been with him and Mac at the hospital. “Where?”
“Damn, I don’t know.” She played with her long braids and pursed her lips. “Recently, though.”
“Shit.” Another coincidence? “I need to know where you saw him.”
“I’m thinking.” Jenny lifted her hands in the air. “Stop pestering, or it’ll never come to me.”
Gripping Melissa’s phone, he couldn’t help hitting the replay button. The video’s poor resolution and low lighting made it difficult to ascertain details. There was the flapping of something white and a man with black shoes.
He pressed the pause button, backed up the recording, and started it forward again. Immediately after the flapping fabric, a blur of red fluttered.
He waved Jenny over. “Look at this.” He queued the video and slowed down the rate to watch frame by frame. A blur of red materialized on the screen.
His heart thumped. Seeing Melissa’s kidnapping play out in front of him had him in anguish. This was all his fault.
Jenny pointed at the flash of red. “Back it up.”
He shoved the phone in her hand and got to his knees, looking at the carpet, under the couch, and even under the bed. He crawled all over the room.
“What are you looking for?”
“I think it was a rose petal.” But there were no signs of roses in the room, not even the lingering perfume of them.
Mac wandered into the hotel room. “What are you doing?”
“CJ found something in the video.”
“It’s not much,” CJ said with a pained sigh.
The couch groaned under the weight of Mac’s massive frame. Mac and Jenny pressed their heads together as she showed him the part of the video under question.
“CJ thinks it’s a rose,” Jenny said.
“It was. Hundreds of red roses!” A lilting voice proclaimed.
Framed by the doorway, a walking cliché struck a pose. From her platinum locks to her double-D’s, the striking beauty screamed college cheerleader, every man’s wet dream brought to life. Still, it was the holster strapped to her hip with the sweet .45 revolver tucked into it, which snatched his attention and garnered CJ’s respect.
“Good to see you, Charlie. What did you find out?”
Her smile sported signature dimples and perfectly straight, white teeth. She rocked back and buried her hands in the back pockets of her hip-hugging jeans. Charlie was walking male kryptonite and a wiseass too.
They had confirmation now, and he had too many coincidences lining up. His gut churned, and his mind picked at the pieces of how Melissa and Henrietta Jones might be connected.
“Security didn’t want to share, but I sweet-talked them into giving me access to their tapes. Wanna see?” Charlie winked. “The guy who took your girl was delivering roses.”
He had a good idea who that might have been. Fuck! Where was Scott Patterson in all this mess? Not for a minute did he believe Scott didn’t have his fingers embroiled in Melissa’s disappearance.
They needed to find a connection.
“I need to know who Scott Patterson communicated with while in prison.” If the man with the roses and Patterson knew each other, they were running out of time.
“On it.” Jenny tapped her phone.
Two men filled the doorway behind Charlie. The tall, muscular man standing to Charlie’s left had a scar on his cheek. Brett Parmly frowned. “We got confirmation on the roses from the cleaning staff.”
Jon Knutt was similar in build to CJ, tall and broad, sported deep-set, penetrating eyes. Jon stepped around Charlie and stretched out his hand. “Sorry, your leave got fucked up.”
“Same here,” he replied.
“Hope we can help.” Brett extended his hand, completing the meet-and-greet.
“Nice to have the team together again.” He couldn’t ask for a better team.
“Tell me what you found,” CJ demanded.
Jon leaned against the doorframe, kicking one heel over the other foot. “Cleaning lady said a man came by with an impressive display of roses, stopped here, chatted with the guest in this room, wheeled the cart inside, and then wheeled it out a few minutes later. Took the freight elevator down to the loading dock.”
“The fucker cleaned up after himself.” CJ scrubbed his jaw. There wasn’t a trace of a rose in the room.
At least they hadn’t been tulips. Scott Patterson had an obsession with tulips.
Charlie nodded. “Video footage confirms. A guy with a cart and a boatload of red roses came to this floor and left not fifteen minutes later. He was in and out.”
Fucker hid Melissa in the cart and shoved the roses in there with her. His fists clenched.
“You have a picture of his face?” He didn’t need a picture, he knew who took Melissa, but he needed confirmation. Adrenaline surged through his veins and raced around until it gathered in his heart and slammed against his chest.
With a photo of his face and the plates off his van, they wouldn’t have to wait for a database match to figure out where he lived. The girls had provided that bit of information. CJ felt a thousand times better, knowing the kidnapper had made such a juvenile mistake.
Charlie looked down. “Only a partial on his face. He knew where all the cameras were located and shielded his face from the lens. There’s footage in the loading dock with a cart, but same problem. No clear shot of his face.”
That was okay. With the sketches, CJ didn’t need a clear shot. It wasn’t enough for a warrant, but he and his team didn’t necessarily bother with warrants.
“What about plates?”
“Obscured,” she said. “He probably muddied them up for the job.”
“One of the cleaning ladies got a good look at him,” Brett said.
CJ grabbed Anna’s and Angela’s sketches off the couch. “Have her look at these. I need a positive ID.”
Charlie glanced at the sketches. “Odd. Looks like a Jekyll and Hyde rendition of the same man.”
Mac peered over Charlie’s shoulder. “That guy was in the bar.”
Jenny snatched the sketches.
“Holy fuck! I knew he looked familiar. He helped that old lady, the one that tripped.”
“This might be the guy from the security tapes,” Charlie added, “but I need to see the footage again.”
CJ’s blood chilled. “I know him.” Had the fucker lifted his phone? Because he was sure as shit didn’t see it in the hotel room. He wasn’t one to leave things lying around and assumed he’d been careless when his phone had gone missing. Is that how the man had gained access to the room?
“The hospital,” Mac said. He thumped CJ in the arm. “We saw him at the hospital, too.” Mac had a great memory.
“Melissa knew him. He delivered flowers to her at the hospital. She may have even trusted him enough to open the door.” Even more so if the guy had lifted CJ’s phone and had been using it to reassure her.
Fuck!
“We need to trace my phone’s location.” It was possible the man still had it.
Jekyll and Hyde was a good description of the two images provided by Angela and Anna. “He looked at my…” Poor Angela was too young, too embarrassed to say what she wanted to say, but old enough for the blossom of youth to change her body and wise enough to know a man looking at her chest was wrong.
Melissa had taken the flower arrangement…He’d shoved a hand wrapped in bloody bandages toward her. “It’s Pierce. Pierce Channing.”
CJ ground his teeth, and his stomach knotted with the memory. “The fucker’s name is Pierce Channing.” He turned to Charlie. “Please, tell me the van at the docks was a white florist’s van, black windows, with a big scratch down the left side?”
Charlie’s jaw gaped. “How did you know?”
Jenny thumbed her phone to life. “I’ll find an address.”
“Don’t bother.” He headed for the door, pitching his words over his shoulder as he raced out the hall. “I know where the bastard lives.” He cut his gaze to Mac. “Fuck it all to hell. Not only have we found Melissa, we may have just found the man who took Henrietta Jones.”