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“I haven’t. I’ll call them next, but they’re going to want to verify that I have a legitimate need for the info, and I can’t take that time right now. The situation is urgent. I can’t say why, but if you can help me get to that information more quickly, it would help me find the person who killed Gemma.”
Izzie paused again. “Her laptop is still here. I have no idea if her password is the same as I remember it, but I’ll try to get in and see if I can find anything.”
“Thank you so much, Izzie,” Faith replied. “I’ll stay on the line.”
“You might just want to wait for my call,” Izzie replied. “I just plugged the laptop in, and it’s dead. I’ll need to charge it for a little while before I can start it. It’s an older model, and it won’t boot up unless it has at least ten percent battery.”
Faith cursed silently and said, “All right. Please call back as soon as you find something.”
“I will. Thank you, Special Agent.”
Don’t thank me yet,Faith thought.
While she waited, she let the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. If Holland was the murderer, then he chose the locations because he knew where they were and knew that they were abandoned but not yet slated for demolition or in use by anyone else. He would also know which structures were sturdy enough to deny a victim a chance of escape.
Now, why those victims? He knew them, obviously, but he knew a lot of people. Why did he pick these particular people to kill? A former high school teacher, a former employee, a former neighbor, and a former therapist.
The only common thread was that they were all once in his life in some capacity, and now they weren’t.
Faith’s phone rang. Izzie.
“I just remembered that Gemma kept a lot of her files in a cloud storage databank. I guessed her password and got lucky. I just found all of her patient files. Do you want me to send them to you?”
“No, just give me the website to the cloud storage bank and the login information. Stay on the line. I might need you to give me a security code.”
Izzie provided the information, and then the code. Faith thanked her and hung up, then logged in and searched for William Holden's name. His file popped up, showing that he had been Montgomery's patient for two years, with their last session taking place three years ago.
She opened it and skimmed the file. It told her everything she needed to know. William Holden had severe social anxiety disorder. Because of this, he had no friends. His family lived far away. The only person he spoke of lovingly was a grandfather, Martin, who had died when he was very young. He complained of loneliness, lack of a sense of belonging and showed signs of possible episodic dissociation from reality. He complained that he had written a high school teacher regularly, but the teacher only responded a few times before cutting contact. His neighbor and best friend (according to Holland) moved away for "no reason."
Due to his desperation for a human connection, he formed an unhealthy attachment to Dr. Montgomery, eventually resulting in her decision to let him go as a patient and recommend him to another psychiatrist. According to Dr. Montgomery, he took the news very badly, crying and claiming that she was abandoning him.
It all made sense now. He was killing people who abandoned him. A high school teacher who stopped writing him back, a neighbor who moved away, a therapist who stopped treating him, and a former employee who left for another company.
She left the conference room and headed for the interrogation room. Michael was finishing the last bite of a sub sandwich. He saw Faith’s eyes and knew immediately that she had found something.
The door flew open before Faith could say anything. “All right!” a shrill voice called loudly, “fun’s over. No more harassing my client without a warrant. Mr. Polczieski, let’s go. If they want to talk to you, they can follow due process.”
“No need,” Faith said, turning to the short, slightly built woman in thick-rimmed glasses who had announced Klaus’s freedom. “He’s no longer a suspect.”
Klaus and the lawyer blinked in surprise. The lawyer recovered quickly. “Well, um… good.”
“So I'm free to go," Klaus asked.
“Yep,” Faith said, gesturing for Turk. The dog stood and trotted over to her. “Michael, let’s go. Have a nice day, Klaus.”
The three agents left the stunned Klaus and his lawyer and the equally stunned—and somewhat irritated—officer who had followed Klaus’s lawyer into the room. When they were out of earshot, Faith gave Michael a brief rundown on Holland.
His eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be damned. Location was key, after all."
“I’ll gloat later,” Faith promised. “Right now, we have a killer to catch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
William grunted as he dragged Shirley into the hangar. The tall, domed building was at one time a hangar for a crop duster plane, but like most of the old Holland buildings, it had been abandoned decades ago when a mini dust bowl had sunk the area into a years-long famine. Now it existed as nothing more than a hollow shell, just like William.
Except the hangar had purpose once. Holland never did. To those around him, he was just there. Like a blade of grass or a piece of furniture.
Or an old building that no one ever went inside anymore.
