Designated Target - Chapter 11

Susan Marsh lived in the suburbs of Jersey City, not far from Ronald Reagan High School. She was younger than Mrs. Beacham , in her late sixties, and lived in a nicer area of town than Mrs. Beacham did. The suburbs were old, with most of the houses going back to the fifties, but they had yards and the occasional family walking down the sidewalk instead of fenced-in yards full of junk.

Where Mrs. Beacham had been spry for her age, Mrs. Marsh looked like she’d traveled every mile of her sixty-eight years the hard way, wearing ragged house shoes and a faded housecoat, her short hair unwashed and stringy, a cigarette hanging limply from her lips.

“Mrs. Marsh?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m John Taylor, with the FBI,” Taylor said, holding up his credentials. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”

“She’s not dead then?” Mrs. Marsh said, taking a long drag on her cigarette and blowing out the smoke.

“I don’t think so. Can I come in and talk to you about her?”

The woman shrugged and stepped back, allowing Taylor inside. Everything in the home felt worn and old. The couches were in a floral pattern that might have been nice thirty years before, but now were moth-eaten and browned from dirt and age.

“When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

“November tenth, nineteen ninety-seven.”

“You remember it to the day?”

It wasn’t unusual for parents to remember the day their child disappeared, but this wasn’t a usual family. In his searches into Chelsea Marsh’s history, one of the things that stood out to him was the lack of any kind of missing persons report. She might not have been a minor, but that wouldn’t stop most families from filing something if their kid disappeared. The local police might not do anything about it, but there should have been a filing of some sort, even one not followed up on.

“Sure. That was the morning after Frank crashed the car. I had to take a bus to work for almost a year after that idiot got tanked and ran into the street light out front. He couldn’t get to work, so he lost his job and we damn near lost the house ’cause of it. It’s when all the troubles started.”

“Was something said that night that might have caused her to leave?”

“She and Frank got into it like they normally did when he was drinking, but nothing other than that. I just assumed she’d gotten pregnant or moved in with her drug dealers, or something like that.”

“She did drugs often?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Did she and her father get into fights often?”

“Stepfather.”

“Okay, did she and her stepfather get into fights often?”

“I guess. Frank would get drunk and she’d mouth off and he’d have a go at her. Course, she never learned her lesson about it.”

“Where is Frank now?”

“Dead. Car accident in oh-two. Surprised it took him that long, driving around drunk as a skunk all the time.”

Taylor’s first thought was that there was a good chance the accident wasn’t actually an accident, but something bothered him about Chelsea killing her stepfather. He didn’t put it past her and making it look like an accident was certainly in her wheelhouse, but he couldn’t see her waiting so long to do it.

One of the things consistent in all of Taylor’s readings was that, while there were some environmental factors to how sociopathy and psychopathy presented themselves, it wasn’t something you just got. Chelsea would have been born a psychopath, which made the idea that her stepfather could beat her for years without any kind of retaliation from her difficult to believe.

“There wasn’t any kind of retaliation from her when he went at her? She didn’t try to get back at him? Maybe hurt him afterward?”

“No. She barely even reacted to it. Sometimes, I kind of got the feeling she liked it. We’d all be eating dinner quietly, no one arguing, and out of nowhere she starts poking at him, trying to get him to react, which wasn’t that hard. She knew right where to hit him to get a reaction, too.”

“You never tried to intervene?”

“No,” she said, looking away, seeming embarrassed for the first time during the interview.

“You didn’t want to help her? She was your daughter, and you let her stepfather beat on her?”

“If I stepped in, he’d just beat on me too, besides …” she said, and then stopped, reconsidering.

“Besides what?”

“It kept her in check. Sometimes, when Frank was away working, which wasn’t often, she’d get bored. And when she got bored, she’d get mean.”

“You were afraid of her?”

“Hell yes. She had this look sometimes … did you know we had to stop having pets? Over the years we had a couple of cats and dogs, and they all died or disappeared. There was always a reason for it, but I swear I got the feeling it was really Chelsea. She never cried when our pet would go missing, or accidentally eat something it shouldn’t, or get hit by a car. Sometimes, I swear it seemed she even kind of smiled when we told her. Eventually I stopped having any animals in the house. Neighbors’ pets sometimes ended up dead, though.”

That, at least, was in Taylor’s reading about psychopaths. Animal mutilation was one of the key signs of the onset of psychopathic tendencies. It was how these budding killers worked out their first impulses and learned that they liked killing. It was curious how she managed to end up a professional killer rather than a serial killer. All of Taylor’s research on her suggested she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t kill someone unless she was getting paid for it.

That was a lot more controlled than any psychopath Taylor had read about. He’d been prepared for there to be something else, something that might have suggested how she turned out so different from the people who end up in true crime books, but everything he was hearing was practically textbook serial killer; early animal mutilations, lack of empathy, cross-wired emotions, and domestic abuse and neglect.

It was curious she ended up how she did.

“What about her biological father? Is he still around? Do you think she’d have any reason to contact him?”

“No idea who her biological father is. I … I wasn’t very picky when I was younger. I was working in a club, dancing, and sometimes I’d go out afterward with one of the customers. I saw a lot of men back then, so it’s hard to narrow it down. Besides, even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to contact him. It’s not like I ever learned their names.”

“And you’re sure you haven’t heard from her since she ran away?”

“Nope. I didn’t even know if she was alive or dead until you asked about her.”

“Okay. Well, thanks for your time,” Taylor said, excusing himself.

Taylor made his way out to the street where he’d parked the SUV he’d borrowed from the local offices, trying to figure out his next move. Whitaker was continuing the database searches for her, but Taylor didn’t hold out much hope.

Chelsea was a ghost and her mother had been his last real shot at tracking her down. Now that he knew her real name, he didn’t have much else to go on. She was clearly living under an assumed identity, but short of the woman calling him up and telling him the name she was currently going by, there was no chance of finding her. Unlike her real identity, which she couldn’t avoid being connected to, her fabricated one could be literally anyone. Knowing what she looked like helped, but there wasn’t a database of photographs of all dark-haired women living in Jersey City he could run it against. If she hadn’t been arrested under this new identity, there wasn’t much he could do short of looking up every woman living in Jersey City in nineteen ninety-seven.

He was out of leads, and it was frustrating. Pulling open the car door, he slid into the driver’s seat of the vehicle, which is when he heard it. A noticeable click, separate from other sounds he’d expect to hear when getting into a car. It was foreign enough that he froze, trying to work out if he really heard something or not, when a new noise started. This one was significantly louder and impossible to miss. A steady beeping sound. Taylor froze in place.

The beeping was too regular and odd to be part of the car and, considering who he was looking for and her actions since disappearing as Chelsea Marsh, Taylor’s first thought was a car bomb. He hadn’t started the engine and he’d heard the click the moment he’d sat down, which meant pressure plate. It was probably set to blow if pressure let off the plate, which meant he couldn’t get out of the car, or even shift around very much.

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out his phone to call for the bomb squad when it suddenly rang. His nerves were high enough, thanks to the thought of sitting on top of a bunch of explosives, that he almost jumped when it did. Taking a few slow, steady breaths to calm himself, Taylor answered.

“Do I have your attention now?” Chelsea’s voice said.

“You do, Chelsea,” Taylor said.

“That’s not my name,” she said, heat in her voice.

“Then what should I call you?”

“You shouldn’t call me anything. I told you to stop poking around into my past, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you’re sitting on a pound and a half of C4.”

“So why am I not dead?”

“Because killing you would just bring more of your people down here. I could give a shit how much you bother that woman, but I don’t need to be looking over my shoulder. This is your last warning. Stop looking into my past. Stop talking to people related to me. Stop trying to find me.”

“You know I can’t do that,” Taylor said.

“The next time, you won’t hear it before the bomb goes off and you’re not going to see me coming. Keep going and you’re a dead man.”

“I’ve been a dead man before,” Taylor said. “If you think this is going to chase me off, you’re going to have to step up your game.”

“We’ll see,” she said, and hung up.

Taylor sat still, trying not to shift around too much, thinking. He had the feeling he could probably get out of the vehicle without the device going off, but just in case he was reading the situation wrong, he decided to wait for the bomb squad.

While he waited he went over their two conversations again and again. She’d been pretty clear each time what she wanted and what would happen if he didn’t back down, but Taylor was quickly coming to the conclusion that what she was saying and what she actually wanted were two different things. If he was right, it gave him options that he didn’t have before. It also brought up more questions about everything that had happened since he’d first headed out to California to look into her past.

He’d more or less made up his mind about what he was going to do next when the bomb squad showed up. Taylor always found civilian bomb squads interesting. The bomb techs he’d met in the army were about the most cavalier he’d ever met, they were the go out in a blaze of glory guys, while the ones working for local police and the FBI were about as high-strung as he’d ever seen. He had the feeling that, if he poked them wrong, they might break in half under the pressure. These guys were no different, taking their time to examine the device they found under the seat every which way they could before starting to defuse it.

They tried to put an armored blanket behind Taylor and over his lap, but he pushed it away. If the bomb did go off, he was sitting right on top of it, and neither would do anything to keep him alive.

“Damn,” the bomb tech said.

While not something Taylor would normally want to hear a guy defusing a bomb he was sitting on say, there was something in the way he said.

“What?” Taylor asked.

“This thing isn’t set to go off. I won’t know till we can take it apart, but it looks like they disconnected the device from the explosive and connected it to a cheap sound plate instead.”

That confirmed Taylor’s suspicions, at least.

“So it’s safe to get out, then?” Taylor asked

“Sure,” the guy said, stepping out of Taylor’s way.

As soon as Taylor was out of the vehicle, the bomb tech was leaning back in, going over the device. While the tech did his thing, Taylor made his way to the three agents who’d come out with the techs.

“We need to get the device back to the lab. I need you guys to take it apart and dust every internal piece for fingerprints. She’s smart enough to know we’re going to do that once we figured out the bomb wasn’t set to go off but do it anyway. Also have this car taken back to wherever you guys have your auto techs and have them give it a once over. If you find anything that shouldn’t be there, like a GPS tracker that isn’t one of ours, pull it, have it taken apart and all the inner workings dusted for fingerprints too. If it looks homemade, pull any serial number you can find and see where it came from. I’m betting most of the stuff we’ll find will be off-the-shelf stuff that’s too common to trace, but try it anyway. Also, work on tracing the C4.”

“Odds are that it’s off the black market, right? Electronics parts are one thing, but there’s no legal source for C4, so it’s either stolen or foreign, and either way there won’t be much to track.”

“If it’s stolen, we can at least find out where it was stolen from. Yeah, she probably bought it off of someone who bought it off of the person who stole it, but we need to work up a chain of custody on anything she may have touched.”

“Okay,” the guy said, sounding unconvinced, which Taylor didn’t really care about as long as the work got done.

“And I could use a ride back to the office and another car.”

Taylor’s next call wasn’t one he wanted to make, but he knew it would be worse if he didn’t.

“There was a bomb in your car?” Whitaker asked as soon as she picked up.

He wasn’t surprised she’d heard about it already. She had contacts all over the Bureau and enough people knew they were partners and married to tell her if something like this had happened. It’s why he knew he needed to call her, because she was going to find out one way or another, and she’d be more pissed if he’d avoided her to get out of the argument.

“It wasn’t rigged to go off. It was a warning, not an attempt to kill me.”

“This is the second time she’s warned you. I know you think you’re invincible and never want to back down, but she’s already shot one agent and she’s dangerous. She’s clearly watching your movements, which puts a target right on your back. You should back off and hand this case over to someone else.”

“No. I’m close to getting at her. I can’t hand it over now. And my staying doesn’t have anything to do with thinking I’m invincible. I’ve been shot and blown up more times than probably anyone you’ve met, so I’ve got no illusions. I’m staying on her, because I don’t think she’s actually trying to kill me.”

“What part of her saying she was going to kill you if you don’t stop and shooting Robles suggest she’s just playing around? What, because she’s a woman you think maybe she doesn’t have it in her to kill a cop?”

“No, I don’t think that. I have no doubt she’d kill me if she thought she needed to, and probably sleep well afterward. She wants me to stop looking into her past, which is why she’s making all these threats and being dramatic, but I don’t think she can kill me. At least not now. I think she’s hoping I’ll lead her back to Finley. I know she’s been following me and she’s always just a hair’s breadth behind me, so she has to be tracking me somehow.”

“She didn’t get onto you until you went out to California and you only went out there to start looking into her past. Maybe she’s tracking you because she’s worried you’ll figure out who she is?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. You said it yourself, she has no problem killing a cop, even a fake one like me. If she was actually worried about me finding out who she was, she would have taken me out already. She’s had plenty of opportunities. Hell, if that bomb had been hooked up, I would be a dead man. Her planting a bomb to scare me makes absolutely no sense, unless it’s because she can’t kill me. I didn’t tell anyone else where I’ve stashed Finley, and even if she figures it out, she won’t be able to get at him, not unless she gets me to pull myself off the case and hand it off to someone else with different contacts. No, I’m betting she can’t afford to kill me.”

“That’s a big bet. If you’re wrong, you’re dead.”

“I know, but I don’t think I’m wrong. Not this time.”

“Okay, so what’s your plan?”

“Right now, it’s to try to backtrack the device she left in my car and see if I can find anything unique or trackable. She’s good, but everyone screws up. I’m just hoping she used a part that I can trace and get some kind of current ID on her, because she’s completely dumped the one she was born with.”

“You found out who she is? No wonder she’s threatening to kill you if you don’t back down. You’ve got her.”

“I found out who she was. She ran away from home at eighteen and her identity disappeared with her. She was still in the area several years later, living with Mrs. Beacham, but she paid for everything in cash and pre-paid cards in a time when stores didn’t keep track of that kind of thing. Thank God Internet Crimes was recording IP addresses. Without the IP address and Mrs. Beacham still being on the ball, there’d be no record at all that she was ever here.”

“How does an eighteen-year-old run away from home and build a fake identity good enough to live off of for the next twenty years all by herself?”

“That’s a damn fine question. Stuff wasn’t as computerized back then as it is now, but still, it would have taken specific know-how. That would be a good question to ask her, if we ever find her in a situation that doesn’t involve her looking at me through a scoped rifle.”

“So her old ID is a dead end?”

“Yeah. I’ve been pretty lucky so far, so all I can do is hold out hope that it continues and something pops from the bomb.”

“Just be careful. There will be a point where she decides the job she’s being paid to do isn’t worth having you dig into her life like this.”

“I’ll try. Could you call LA and have them take the car I was using apart and look for any kind of tracking device? I left the vehicle in the Bureau lot and got a ride to the airport. She would have had to stay on me, instead of waiting to break into the lot to retrieve whatever she had on the car to track me, so I’m hoping it’s still there.”

“That’s assuming she’s put something on the car. She could have cloned your phone or put something on you personally.”

“Maybe, but Joe got onto me last week about using outdated equipment, and forced me to switch out to an encrypted phone, remember? If she’s cracked the Bureau’s encryption, you guys need to seriously think about your security.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I know, but we still need to check the car.”

“I’ll make the call. Just be careful.”

“I will.”