Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [11]
“Wait, I heard about this. Mara Douglas, your sister, was the intended victim,” Will addressed Anne Marie.
“That’s right. That’s how the Bureau became involved in the first place. I called in Aidan Shields from medical leave to work with us.”
Will turned to Miranda.
“You called me during that investigation. You wanted information on an old case from Ohio. The victim was Jenny Green. . . .”
“Proving that the rumors about Will are all true.” Miranda glanced at the others. “He never forgets a damned thing.”
He continued, “You wanted copies of the statements of a suspect you’d interviewed at the time. He’d been let go.”
“Right again.” Miranda nodded. “Here’s the story in a nutshell. We had several victims here in eastern Pennsylvania. Evan was the lead detective on these cases because, at the time, he was with the Lyndon Police Department. Something about the crime scenes reminded me of a case I’d worked on about six years earlier. That Ohio case was the first time I’d worked in the field, so everything was memorable. I remembered wanting to reinterview a suspect who’d just flat-out disappeared. I called Will to look up the file, get the name of the suspect for me. Once we had that, and a little information on him, Aidan followed that thread to a man named Curtis Alan Channing.”
She paused to sip at her water.
“Channing was a serial killer who’d been a real busy boy over the years. But he’d flown so far under the radar that his prints weren’t even on file anywhere.”
“If he was under the radar, how do you know he was a serial killer?” Will asked.
“The Bureau has been running his DNA through the data banks,” Miranda explained. “So far, we’ve had hits on old, unsolved cases in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He was not only busy, he was clever. He could have gone on for years.”
“Then a few months back, he ran a stop sign in my town.” Evan picked up the story. “The officer who stopped him found an outstanding warrant for another Curtis A. Channing, and over Channing’s protests that they had the wrong man, he was hauled out to the county prison, since the arrest had been made on a Saturday night.” Evan leaned back in his chair. “The following Monday, when the courthouse opened, Channing went before a judge, proved his identity, and was released.”
“And he then proceeded to murder how many women?” Jared shuffled through the stack of notes he’d made the night before.
“Three women named Mary Douglas,” Anne spoke softly, “and two other women. My sister, Mara, would have been his sixth victim, if he’d had his way.”
“Where is he now?” Will asked.
“In hell, where he belongs,” Anne Marie replied.
“So what’s this got to do with this Archer Lowell?” Will asked.
“All of the victims—including his intended victim, Mara Douglas—had a connection to a man named Vincent Giordano. He killed his family in cold blood, and was convicted and sentenced to several life sentences,” Evan told Will. “Sentences he’ll never serve, because the evidence used to convict him was all tainted, all fabricated. They had to let him go.”
Will whistled long and low. “That had to hurt.”
“More than you could imagine.” Evan grimaced.
“How were Channing’s victims connected to Giordano?” Will pushed his plate aside and rested his arms on the table.
“Mara was the child advocate who recommended that the court terminate Giordano’s parental rights to his sons,” Evan said. “One of the other victims was the judge who ordered that termination; the other was Giordano’s former mother-in-law. The other three Douglas women were killed by mistake. Channing hadn’t done his homework too well at first. He’d been a little sloppy there in the beginning.”
“So you were able to put Giordano back into prison as Channing’s accomplice?” Will surmised.
“No. Not only was Giordano still behind bars while the killing was going on, we have not been able to positively establish that the two men ever met. Giordano, of course, swears he never met Channing and has no idea who