Fisher was interested.
“I could arrange it.” Daniel wasn’t sure how, but he’d make it happen. Close the place down, fill it with cops, let Fisher eat his damn pie. “If you tell me where the bodies are.”
Most of Fisher’s kills—at least the ones they actually knew about, because Daniel was convinced he hadn’t confessed to them all, if he could even remember them all—had taken place in an area between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert known as the Inland Empire, thus his nickname. He was caught because one of his victims had escaped. The targeted victim had been a petite young blond woman named Gabby Sutton, who now appeared to have a normal life, at least from a casual bystander’s perspective. Life goes on. For some. If you weren’t murdered.
Fisher chewed his gum, not looking professorial anymore. “Not tell you,” he said. “Show you.”
Daniel hoped the hammering of his heart couldn’t be seen through his shirt. So close. “That’s possible,” he said slowly. He didn’t want to appear too eager.
“But I have stipulations.”
This was where things tended to fall apart. Franco’s theory was that Fisher just wanted company and he never planned to share the body locations. Not really a surprise. Things got lonely in prison. And now Daniel had promised him a ride down the freeway. There was a good chance Fisher would string this along until he died, leading Daniel to one false grave after another.
“Before you tell me no,” Fisher continued, “let me make it clear that I would never be able to find the locations on a map. I have to physically go there. In a car. And even at that, I can’t promise we’ll find them all.”
Day trips. A death-row tactic not unlike visits to medical clinics. Daniel didn’t blink. “Can you give me a general location?”
“The Mojave Desert.”
A big place, stretching from Los Angeles County all the way to Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. Over forty-seven thousand square miles. If they went, they’d most likely drive around and not find anything. Fisher would say he couldn’t remember, and they’d take him back to prison. Somewhere along the way he’d say he needed to go to the bathroom, and he’d try to escape.
“I can arrange it,” Daniel said.
“One more thing.” Fisher reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small plastic packet. Daniel recognized it as the kind of insert that used to come with billfolds, almost obsolete now that everybody had smartphones. It was a reminder that time had stopped for Fisher.
Fisher unfolded it and placed it on the table between them. Photos, five in all, had been slipped into the sleeves. Daniel leaned closer.
The images were discolored and faded, with edges curled and soft from hours spent in Fisher’s hands. They were all of the same person, a child with straight auburn hair, bangs, and a sweet, innocent face from another era.
Fisher tapped the table next to the photos and pushed them even closer to Daniel. “I want my daughter to be there.”
Daniel’s heart sank. He was not in the business of family counseling. “Not a big deal.” He managed to keep any sign of tension out of his voice.
“It might be. She won’t talk to me.”
“When did you last see or hear from her?”
“When they arrested me thirty years ago.”
Hope fell hard. Ben Fisher was not only trying to manipulate his daughter, he was using Daniel to facilitate it. “I’ve heard she isn’t in the best of health,” Daniel said cautiously.
Most detectives knew Reni Fisher’s story. She’d joined the FBI and had lived out east for a while. She was so good at profiling she’d guest lectured at Quantico. But two or three years back, there had been rumors of a breakdown. She’d quit the FBI or had taken a leave of absence, and hadn’t been heard from since. An agent would know how to hide. And even if Daniel could track her down, she probably wouldn’t want anything to do with this. He understood.
Daniel offered Fisher something else. “We can come up with more perks so she doesn’t have to be involved. I’m not sure she’ll cooperate even if I could find her.”
“Kids can wear you down. They beg and beg, and you finally give in.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She used to beg to come with me. On our little family adventures. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Reni, or we don’t have a deal.”
He seemed to be saying Reni Fisher had been the reason for the murders. That was unlikely given her age at the time, but Fisher wasn’t the only person to have proposed that theory. It popped up from time to time on online crime boards. Still, as far as Daniel was concerned, Reni was the real victim here. When she was a child, her father had used her as bait to lure young women to their deaths.
CHAPTER 3
The Mojave Desert didn’t appeal to everybody. In fact, it didn’t appeal to most people, which was why Reni Fisher liked it. But it wasn’t the only reason. The desert had been a part of her life as long as she could remember. Long before she’d become an FBI agent.
She’d moved away, to cities out east, but now she was back, and she wondered how she could have possibly forgotten her love of the place. On her good days, the scent of desert flowers and creosote bush was all the therapy she needed. On her bad, it was still a steadfast reminder that the landscape had been a comfort yesterday and would be again tomorrow.
Sometimes she couldn’t help but feel she’d been a terrible friend, abandoning a place that had meant so much to her at one time. And yet the desert didn’t seem to care about her thoughtlessness. It remained the same, continuing to turn sunrises orange and sunsets red. It continued to sit quietly under fast-moving clouds and thunderstorms while allowing the wind to carry its sand away, lifting the grains high, taking them far beyond the desert. It had never waited for her to return, but it had always been there.
It was spring now, one of the best times of the year in Reni’s opinion, fall being a close second. Summer, on the other hand, could be unforgivingly hot, especially during monsoon season when the humidity kicked in, making the swamp coolers unusable. People would pull curtains tight and huddle inside until the sun and temperatures dropped.
Many of the outsiders who ended up in the high desert came because their souls were wounded and they wanted to start over or hide or forget or pretend the past had never happened. Reni Fisher could claim all those things and more. But the desert could only do so much. And often the people seeking comfort left after a while, going back to where they’d come from, a little healed, or a little more damaged by solace unfulfilled. Others stayed, claiming they were home and would never leave. Reni fell into the latter category.
Her place was located twenty miles from Joshua Tree and a couple hours east of Los Angeles, but much further in the sense of geology, weather, traffic, and life in general. Going from city to desert dwelling was like taking a trip from the earth to the moon.
It wasn’t easy to find. The dirt road was rutted and climbed steadily to an elevation that bothered some but not others. Her small cabin was situated on a steep rise that afforded a view of Goat Mountain in the distance and a flat basin below. On a clear day, Reni liked to think she could see all the way to Nevada. Maybe she could.