Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [57]
“Let me give you a hand with that,” said a gentle voice from behind.
She turned to offer her grateful thanks, but the word never had a chance to pass her lips.
She collapsed like a balloon with an air leak, right into his arms.
He merely turned around and dropped her neatly into the back of the wagon, where he quickly bound her wrists and ankles with the rope that had already been measured and cut for that purpose, and taped her mouth. He threw a blanket over her unconscious form, tossed the stun gun into the cargo area next to sweet Joanne, and whistled on his way to the driver’s side door. He ducked into the car to avoid being seen by the boy who, completely unaware of what had just transpired, walked leisurely in the direction of the snack hut.
“Mom?” He heard the boy’s confused call as he drove away. “Mom?”
Joanne Jacobson was found seventeen hours later, sprawled in a field not far from the tracks of the Strasburg Railroad, a popular tourist attraction outside of Lancaster. A group of Amish children, taking a shortcut through a cornfield on their way to school, had found the body and gone running off in different directions in terror at the sight of the young nearly naked “English” woman, at the same time obliterating any other footprints that might have been present. The father of the group, once summoned, alerted the authorities. Within an hour, the fields were overrun with police officers, state troopers, and FBI agents. It was unclear to Amos Stolzfus, the man in whose field the body lay, just who, exactly, was in charge.
Adam Stark stood near the body and stared, taking in the scene and mentally comparing it to the scenes where the other women had been found. What was the same? What was different?
This place was more secluded than the others had been. In the past, the killer had dumped his victims in prominent places, places where they’d be found sooner rather than later. But he’d taken no time to arrange them, pose them, as some killers might do. He’d merely dropped them off, and they landed as they fell, as had this one, as if they were no longer important, no longer held his interest. Adam knelt down next to the body and stared into lifeless eyes that sat in a face too swollen for him to know if she’d been pretty or not. He guessed that she had been. All of the other victims were.
The sunlight glittered off the gold cross that hung around her neck and the flies buzzed around her, as if claiming their rights. He hoped that the crime scene technicians were quick in gathering their evidence. He hated when bodies had to remain in the sun for too long. It seemed disrespectful not to move them to shelter, to not take them away from the heat and the beetles and the flies.
“He’s getting really bold,” Adam said to no one in particular. “He took that woman literally from under the noses of about seventy-five people, including her own son.”
“He’s getting quicker, too,” a uniformed officer responded in passing. “We’ve already found the car.”
“Wiped down, of course.” Adam nodded.
“Of course. From stem to stern. Wiped down, washed off. Not a print to be found anywhere except for those from the guys in the car wash. I’m guessing he had a sheet or something under her to eliminate trace evidence.”
“Description from the car wash?” Adam asked.
“White male, six feet one, baseball cap over longish brown hair.”
“Another disguise.”
“Sure. Why not? Look how successful he’s been, changing his appearance. Changes his cars.” The officer shook his head. “The owner of this last car didn’t even know the car had been stolen, that’s how quickly this guy works. Steals the car, steals the woman, does his thing, dumps the woman, dumps the car, and poof! He disappears into thin air and leaves nothing behind.”
“Nothing but another dead woman.” His hands on his hips, Adam watched the crime scene investigators move in, then jammed his hands into his pockets and walked