She jumped to her feet and left everything as she found it. She grabbed her purse and a jacket and ran for her car. A heavy mist was falling, and she quickly got the door open on the old car and slid in.
Inserting the key in the ignition, she vowed to get rid of the Mustang too. How many times had she gotten wet while trying to unlock the door with the key? Too many to count. She’d buy something with remote entry.
She backed out of the drive, waving at her neighbor across the street, who was coming out to get her mail. Beatrice was a very nice older woman but kind of a busybody. If something was going on in the neighborhood, she was the first to know about it and share it with everyone she could waylay at the community mailbox on the corner.
Malone left Beatrice in her rearview and focused on her driving. It hadn’t rained for days, and the roads in the winding hillside community would be slick. Despite the desire to get downtown and see Ian, she was extra careful, braking slowly at curves and stop signs. She soon climbed to the main road and turned toward the city. She accelerated, and the steering wheel began to shake under her hands.
She flashed back to her conversation with Freddie Peck, and her pulse shot up. He described what her father might feel before he crashed. Peck had called it the death wobble.
Was that what was happening? The death wobble? Had someone tampered with her car too? The same person who’d killed her parents?
Ian’s phone vibrated in his pocket, but he would hold off answering until he and Londyn figured out what to do with the closet lined with photos, newspaper articles, and a map.
Londyn’s eyes were narrowed, pain and disbelief fighting to gain purchase in her expression. Ian didn’t blame her. The newspaper clippings told of six murdered women who’d been sexually assaulted, and the map linked them all to locations within a mile of where the Flagg family had lived at the time. Listed next to each woman was the date they’d been murdered, pictures of the Flaggs’s houses, and the date that the Flagg family had moved on to their next home. They’d left within a week of the murders of all six women over the course of thirty years.
Also posted were pictures of their current home and the one Flagg Sr. had under construction. In the photo, large equipment surrounded the half-built home on one of the hills in west Portland. Photos of Flagg Sr. from around the dates of the murder were posted too.
“Why hadn’t Junior reported his dad before another woman was killed?”
“Do you think Junior put this here?” Londyn asked. “Or did his father keep it as some sort of a shrine and Junior just discovered it?”
“If his dad did, he risked Junior finding it. And I don’t think Flagg Sr. would post his own photos.” Ian moved closer to read about the death of Sarah Anderson. He pointed at the picture. “This murder occurred when they lived in the Rices’ house.”
“Flip up the newspaper,” she said. “There’s something else there.”
He lifted it, revealing another newspaper story about the Rices’ accident and their obituaries. He glanced back at Londyn. “Maybe they found out about Sarah’s murder, and the killer took them out.”
“Sounds like a possibility, but how?”
He shook his head. “Are we in agreement that this information points to Flagg Sr. as a killer? A serial killer?”
She stared at the wall. “Could be Karen but the sexual assault rules her out so there’s no other conclusion. Problem is, we don’t have any actual proof.”
“When I think about his behavior in our interviews,” Ian said, “I can see him fitting sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies.”
“Yeah. He’s charming, but his ego puts you off once you talk to him a bit.”
“And he didn’t seem to have any feelings about losing his son or wife. And no empathy for his son being short. He was more concerned with his property, his wealth.”
“He would fall under the “successful” psychopath type. They have a tendency to perform premeditated crimes with calculated risk, which these murders seem to fit.”
“We need to get forensics in here. And with this now being a potential serial killer investigation, we need to call Reed to bring the FBI in.” Ian’s mind raced with the possibilities and consequences of their discovery.
Malone! She was in the house her parents lived in. Was she in danger?
His heart nearly stopped pumping. He had to find out. He grabbed his phone to call her. Saw a voicemail from her. It had been almost an hour since her call.
He pressed the icon for her voicemail and put her on speaker.
“What are you doing?” she cried in the message, terror riding through her tone. “I need you.”
His heart sank, and he pressed her phone number. It rang and rang. “Answer. Come on, answer, Malone. Please. Please.”
His phone rang. It was an unknown number, but it could be about Malone. “Ian Blair.”
“Hi, Detective, it’s Beatrice Paulson. Malone’s neighbor.”
“Is this about Malone? Is she with you?”
