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Unlike his nephew, Glen Fisher didn’t sleep much that night. There was too much to do.
He waited until almost four in the morning before visiting the Brooklyn warehouse he’d so carefully chosen. The padlock on the outside door was tightly locked. He unlocked it with a key and went inside. Everything was in order. He’d set up a couple of chairs, a video camera and his tools of the trade. How many of those he used was up to Casey Woods.
He’d made sure the chairs were padded. He and Jack were going to be here for quite a while, and they might as well be comfortable.
The whole setup was ready.
Glen sat down and linked his hands behind his head. It felt damned good to be in control again. He was running things, issuing the orders. He’d told Jack and Suzanne to pack lightly. Anything they needed, they could replace once they reached Dubai. Their new identities were in place. Their flight out of the U.S. was scheduled to leave JFK at 6:00 p.m. the night after next. That would give him and Jack more than enough time to flush out Casey Woods, do what they needed to do and take off.
Considering how deep her loyalties ran, she’d get here the instant she knew how high the stakes were. The quicker she showed up, the less torture Claire Hedgleigh would endure.
It was a no-brainer.
Rising, Glen gave the place one last look. Then he left.
He’d be back soon enough.
* * *
Ryan was bored with the waiting game.
It had been a good fifteen hours since the last phone call between Fisher and his wife. Since then, nothing.
He had some time to kill, so Ryan decided to dig around in Glen Fisher’s past, curious about what made the psycho tick.
It sucked that there were no computer files dating back thirty years. Ryan would have enjoyed hacking into Fisher’s school records, to find out what sort of kid he’d been—visibly off or charismatically controlling. Psychopaths came in many forms, as Hutch had taught him. They didn’t automatically become serial killers. They were born with certain personality traits, and those traits were influenced by the way they were raised, their early childhood experiences and their particular psychological profiles.
What Ryan did know was that Fisher was highly intelligent, arrogant, consumed with his own self-importance. That couldn’t have played well once he hit secondary school.
For the hell of it, Ryan starting digging around in newspaper archives, looking for criminal incidents involving kids in Fisher’s middle school and high school during the years he’d attended. It didn’t take long for him to hit the mother lode.
The first article on the scandal was hidden on page three of the local paper. The second and third articles weren’t so discreet. They were splashed across the front pages of metro New York newspapers, as well as being highlighted in two or three gossip rags.
It was at Fisher’s middle school, the year he was in seventh grade. Evidently, a twenty-eight-year-old female math teacher had initiated sexual relationships with several of her students, all of whom were minors. Ryan studied the reports, trying to find the names of the students. But, as he suspected, they were being withheld to protect the poor kids, who were probably already so messed up they were living on psychiatrists’ couches. What Ryan did find was the name of the math teacher. Colleen McCoy.
He fed her information into Google.
Some of the same articles he’d already read came up, but there were others, as well, that went into more detail as they discussed Ms. McCoy’s dismissal from her job and the pending criminal charges being brought aga
inst her.
It seemed the teacher had seduced at least three of her students behind the gymnasium during after-school hours. One of them eventually had the balls to tape the encounter, and then go to the guidance office with the facts. That had set everything in motion and resulted, ultimately, in the full discovery of Ms. McCoy’s sexual deviance when it came to her victims.
Could Glen Fisher have been one of those victims?
Ryan leaned forward, his eyes narrowed as he read. The woman was clearly a sicko. But the details of her perversions were no longer what Ryan was looking for.
He skipped over the newspaper pieces. That wasn’t where he’d find what he wanted. He went straight to the tabloids.
Bingo. A color photo of Colleen McCoy, being led away in handcuffs. Ryan zoomed in and enlarged the photo so he could scrutinize the teacher.
Pretty. Petite. Redheaded.
Just like Fisher’s victims.
Ryan leaned back in his chair, continuing to stare at the photo as he processed this new piece of information.
It might end up being an extraneous factoid.
