CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Darnell was rarely frustrated. His personality was not the sort to give into impatience.
In his experience, impatience led to mistakes, and mistakes led to failure.
Evidence would arrive when it arrived, and so long as everyone was doing the best they could, they should be satisfied with the results.
That philosophy held no water here. This woman had killed four people in as many days, and was, in all likelihood, hunting a fifth. They didn’t have time for evidence to arrive when it arrived.
They also didn’t have a choice.
As Darnell paced the lobby of the field office where he’d served for the past fourteen years, the first time he’d engaged in that restless activity, he could feel tendrils of fear creeping into his frustration, trying to turn it into panic, asking questions that he couldn’t answer, challenging conclusions he’d already accepted.
What if Nora Avery wasn’t their killer? What if someone else had taken this crusade upon themselves?
What if Cox had researched the case and dictated every step of the action, making it appear that Nora was out for revenge when it was really just one of his disciples acting on his twisted form of religious devotion?
What if they’d missed some clue that would tell them exactly where to go?
What if the intended victim wasn’t the 911 caller at all but someone completely different?
Darnell’s experience allowed him to ignore these questions, but his emotions refused to comply. He could only walk back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, nose pointed at the ground, waiting, like Marcus and Kate, for the one little thread they needed to pull.
When his phone finally rang, he snatched it from his pocket with so much force that he tore the seam of his pants. He didn’t care.
“Yes?”
“Special Agent Okoye?” a jovial male voice asked.
Even that little bit of procedure frustrated him. Goddamn, they didn’t have time. “This is he.”
“I have the records you wanted. You’re looking at 115 Paul Revere Boulevard, right?”
“Yes. I need the unit number to which the landline I provided was assigned.”
“Yep. Got it. Looks like you’re looking for unit 316. Third-floor, one-bed—”
“Thank you.”
Darnell was rarely rude, but he just didn’t have time to chitchat. He looked up, gratified to see Kate and Marcus already there, their full attention fixed on him. They knew how to focus on their jobs. “Unit 316.” “Outstanding,” Marcus said. “Next step is to look up residency records.”
“They already said they didn’t have those,” Kate reminded him.
“The property managers don’t, but someone will have a record somewhere,” Marcus said.
He tapped and swiped rapidly on his cell phone as he spoke.
“I’m going to do a full records sweep looking for any record addressed to 115 Paul Revere Boulevard number 316, Philadelphia, during the year 1991.
If there’s a single surviving record of any kind, we’ll have the occupant’s name. ”
“Good thinking,” Darnell replied. “How long will it take?”
Marcus chuckled. “Well, that’s always a crapshoot. Sometimes it takes a few hours, and sometimes—” His phone beeped. He grinned. “And sometimes, you get lucky.”
He showed Kate and Darnell the phone. A tax record popped up, revealing the residents of Unit 316 as Carter and Iris Doyle.
Darnell pumped his fist, another uncharacteristic display. A lot of firsts for him on this case. “Outstanding. Now we can look them up and determine their current address.”
“Yep,” Marcus agreed, already doing so. “Thank God for invasion of privacy.”
Kate gave him a fishy look, but she was smiling, too. This was exactly what they needed. Just a little bit of luck.
“Okay,” Marcus said. “I have Carter Doyle listed as deceased in November of ’22, and… Got it! Iris Doyle, 3424 Hampton Court.”
“That’s in Queen Village,” Darnell said. “We’ll call Philadelphia PD on the way and get officers on scene.”
He checked his phone and cursed. How had time flown that fast? It was nearly eleven-thirty. “Let’s get moving ahead of them. I’m worried about the lateness of the hour.”
“Yeah, me too,” Kate agreed, “but let’s keep our heads up. We know where to go now. We can get ahead of Nora and stop her before she kills Iris.”
She delivered that in an upbeat voice, but Darnell could hear the anxiety in her voice. They’d walked through a maze to get the answer they needed, and answer that their killer might already have. They were counting on their hard work beating Nora’s belief that she was in control of the situation.
Nothing Nora had done so far suggested she was taking her time.
The drive to Queen Village was another exercise in frustration.
The snowfall had left fresh powder on top of patch ice.
Darnell’s SUV was equipped with snow tires and four-wheel-drive, but that only made the vehicle drivable.
In these conditions, fast wasn’t an option.
Three times, the truck slid, and Darnell had to feather the throttle and fight with the steering wheel to keep them on course.
Other drivers weren’t so lucky. Halfway to the village, they came to the scene of an accident.
A semi-truck—on the road for God only knows what reason in this weather—had lost control and crashed into a streetlight.
The light had fallen, and the short had taken out all of the streetlights on the block.
A line of vehicles eight deep blocked all lanes of traffic.
Darnell cursed softly and turned down a side street.
“We’ll loop up to Ravenscourt and then come around the backside of Tarant Street,” he said, knowing the out-of-towners would have no idea what he was talking about but needing to say it aloud to keep his energy level under control.
“It’ll add two minutes to the drive. No big deal. Any luck reaching Iris?”
Marcus shook his head. His face was pasty white. “No. I’ve left two messages.”
“Leave another. She’s probably not answering a number she doesn’t recognize, but maybe repeated voicemails will get her to check.”
If she was even awake at this hour. According to Iris’s DOT records, she was seventy-four years old now. Darnell had never met a seventy-four-year-old in his life who stayed up past ten o’clock.
They turned north on Ravenscourt, and Darnell’s heart sank. Another accident, this one an overturned vehicle that had crashed into an embankment, bounced off, and taken out a panel truck. Fire and rescue had blocked traffic in all four directions while they tried to address the situation.
Why the goddamned hell were commercial vehicles out in this goddamned weather? Why was anyone out?
Recognizing the irrationality of his thoughts didn’t help him control them. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel and jumped out of the vehicle. “Stay here,” he told the other two.
The police officer responding to the scene frowned at Darnell. “Sir, this is an active crime scene.”
Darnell blinked. “What? Crime scene?”
The officer glanced at his FBI ID badge, clipped to the outside of his jacket. His expression softened. “DUI. Guy in the Hyundai’s at twice the legal limit, or I’m a rooster. He lost control and jumped a curb. Spun out, flipped over, and blue-shelled the panel truck.”
“What? Blue-shelled?”
“Oh,” the officer chuckled. “It’s a Mario Kart reference.
The blue shell is the one that knocks you out.
You’ll be in first place, a clear path to victory ahead of you, and the next thing you know, you’re spinning out of control, blinking, then respawning at the back of the pack.
It’s shitty, but who wants an easy way to win, right? ”
I do. I very much want an easy way to win. “Can you clear a path for me, please? I’m responding to a very urgent situation.” He frowned. “Did you not receive a call about Iris Doyle?”
“I did. I didn’t respond because I was already here.”
“I’m responding. So are several of your officers. Her life is in danger, and I need to get through.”
The officer hissed, baring his teeth in that godawful fake look of pain people used when they were trying to soften bad news.
“Well… I don’t know what to tell you, man.
This is the weakest storm I’ve ever seen, but it came at a bad time.
That half-melt earlier in the day turned into a freeze the moment the cold front came in.
We’ve got powder over ice all over the city.
There are nine accidents in Queen Village alone.
I know people are trying, but frankly a might-be death gets shuffled below actual death.
This accident isn’t fatal, but four of the others are. ”
A chill that had nothing to do with the cold front formed in Darnell’s spine. “No one can get through.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Can I get through? Please? You could just move the paramedic vans, and I’ll slip through.”
“Not my call, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Well, whose call is it?” Darnell snapped.
“Mine.”
The stern voice belonged to an equally stern-looking fire crew chief. He nodded at Darnell, not angry but firm and hard as a stone wall. “I’m not moving my vehicles, sir.”
“You understand there’s a life at risk.”
“There are three lives at risk here,” the crew chief replied.
“Two in the Hyundai and one in the panel truck. All three have spinal injuries, and the panel truck driver is bleeding from his head. We need to hurry, which we can’t do because of the damage to the vehicles, the weather, and the injuries.
So, we have less than zero time to let you through. ”
Darnell looked through the accident. He could almost see Hampton Court. Two blocks north and four east. Once more, they were near the center of the maze only to run into a wall. “Sir, we’re pursuing a serial killer. We have good evidence to believe that she intends to kill a woman tonight.”
The crew chief lifted his hands and let them drop.
“I have good evidence that three people are a few minutes away from being declared dead on the side of the road. It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I know that you have a job to do, too, and I know that it’s an important job, but so is mine. ”
Darnell pushed his lower lip out and frowned, a petulant expression he hadn’t worn since the eighth grade when his parents told him he couldn’t go to a party thrown by a college sophomore.
“I’m sorry,” the crew chief said, his tone gentler than before. “I really am. It’s just the way it is.”
Darnell’s lips thinned. His face hardened. “I understand,” he told the crew chief.
Then he ran through the scene, ignoring the calls of the police officer and the crew chief behind him. He avoided the clusters of people around the overturned Hyundai and the panel truck, but he didn’t stop, not even when he was past the scene.
His phone buzzed. Marcus. He answered and said, “Take the car. Find a way to get to the house. As soon as you find it, tell the police you’ve found it and get them to come with you.”
“What are you doing?” Marcus demanded.
“The roads are blocked everywhere, and PD says they can’t get through. I don’t accept that, but we don’t have time to just run around. I’m going to Iris Doyle’s apartment. Get there as soon as you can.”
“Darnell, don’t do this. Damn it, the last thing we’re supposed to do is go off by ourselves.”
Darnell smiled briefly. “I think I understand now why you still do.”
Marcus didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, his tone was resigned. “We’ll get through as soon as we can. Stay alert, Darnell.”
“I will.”
So, saying, Darnell hung up and continued his sprint to fulfill his responsibility to the threatened life that no one else could reach.