Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [149]
“Deep sleeper,” Mac murmured.
“Don’t we both wish.”
They cut across the parking lot, moving now with anxious speed. Ennunzio’s room was in the other wing of the L-shaped building. Door closed. Lights off. Kimberly pressed her ear against the door and listened. First nothing. Then, the sudden, crashing sound of furniture—or a body—being thrown around the room.
“Go, go, go!” Kimberly cried.
Mac heaved up a leg and kicked in the cheap wooden door. It snapped back, caught on the chain. He gave it one more thunderous whack, and the door ricocheted into the wall.
“Police, freeze!”
“Nora Ray, where are you?”
Kimberly and Mac rolled into the room, one taking high, another taking low. In the next instant, Kimberly’s groping fingers snapped on the light.
In front of them, two people were clearly involved in a struggle. Chairs had been tossed, the bed destroyed, the TV toppled. But it was not Dr. Ennunzio bearing down on a frightened girl. It was Nora Ray who had the special agent, clad in just a pair of boxers, backed into a corner. Now she loomed over him, brandishing a giant, gleaming needle.
“Nora Ray!” Kimberly said in shock.
“He killed my sister.”
“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. I swear to God!” Ennunzio pressed harder against the wall. “I think . . . I think it was my brother.”
CHAPTER 44
Wytheville, Virginia
3:24 A.M.
Temperature: 94 degrees
“YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, I DON’T THINK HE’S WELL.”
“Your brother may have kidnapped and killed over ten women. Being not well is the least of his problems!”
“I don’t think he meant to hurt them—”
“Holy shit!” Mac drew up short. He was looming above Ennunzio, who was now slumped on the edge of his bed. Quincy and Rainie had arrived and guarded the door, while in the right-hand corner, Kimberly kept watch over Nora Ray. Kimberly had taken the girl’s needle away. Hostility in the small room, however, remained sky-high. “You’re the caller!”
Ennunzio bowed his head.
“What the hell? You’ve been playing me from the start!”
“I was not trying to play you. I’ve been trying to help—”
“You said the caller might be the killer. What was that all about?”
“I wanted you to take the calls more seriously. Honest to God, I’ve been trying very hard to assist, I just don’t know much myself.”
“You could’ve given me your brother’s name.”
“It wouldn’t have done you any good. Frank Ennunzio doesn’t exist. However he’s living now, it’s under an assumed name. Please, you have to understand, I haven’t actually spoken to my brother in over thirty years.”
That brought them all to attention. Mac frowned, not liking this newest bit of news. He crossed his arms over his chest and started to pace the tiny room.
“Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Quincy said quietly.
Ennunzio tiredly nodded his head. “Five years ago, I started work on a case in Atlanta, a kidnapping involving a young doctor’s child. I was called in to analyze notes being delivered to the house. While I was there, two girls from Georgia State University also vanished. I clipped the articles from the newspaper. At the time, I chalked it up to an investigative hunch. I was working a disappearance, here was another disappearance, you never knew. So I started to follow the case of the missing college girls as well. That summer and then the next summer, when two other girls also went missing during a heat wave.
“By now, I knew the case of the young girls had nothing to do with my own. I was dealing with what turned out to be a string of ransom cases. A very cool young man who worked at one of the more prominent country clubs was using his position to identify and stalk wealthy young families. It took us three years, but we finally identified him, in large part from his ransom notes.
“The heat-wave kidnappings, however, were an entirely different beast. The UNSUB always struck young, college-aged girls traveling in pairs. He’d leave one body next to a road and the second in some remote location. And he always sent a note to the press. Clock ticking . . . heat kills. I