“I’m Nikki McDonald, a reporter, not a cop,” she said. “I’m Mr. Foster’s chance to talk directly to the world. I can help him.”

Floorboards shifted, and then the footsteps moved away from the door.

“Don’t go. Let me help.”

The footsteps grew faint and then silent. She dug one of her cards out of her purse and shoved it in the doorjamb.

As she turned from the doorway and descended the stairs, her phone chimed with a text. She fished out the phone and read it. Hadley deserved it.

Did Marsha deserve it?

Seconds passed, and then, No. But it was still fun killing her.

Let me interview you.

You don’t want to get too close to me.

I’m not afraid. That wasn’t true, but this story was getting too big to let fear get in the way.

You should be.

 

He calls himself Mr. Fix It. And that’s true. He’s a marvel in an odd sort of way. Daddy would flip if he knew he’d asked me out. And that I said yes.

Marsha, August 2001

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Wednesday, August 14, 11:00 a.m.

Alexandria, Virginia

Twenty-Eight Hours after the 911 Call

“What else do we know about Hadley’s past?” Zoe asked. She and Vaughan had returned to the police station and were huddled by Hughes’s desk. “In the surveillance tape taken outside the hardware store, Hadley had the look of a woman who had seen a ghost.”

Hughes reached for a folder in one of the stacks and opened it on a pile of other folders. She rummaged through a few pages. “She and her parents moved to Alexandria when she was five. She and her sister grew up in this area and attended the local public school. She was a solid A/B student and was squeaky clean until she got a speeding ticket when she was seventeen. It should have been a straightforward ticket, but her boyfriend, who was with her at the time, got an attitude with the cop. The officer ended up arresting them both. Her father got her off, but he left the boyfriend in jail.”

“Are we talking about Mark?” Vaughan asked.

“No. According to police records, the boyfriend’s name was Jason Dalton.”

“Jason Dalton?” Zoe asked. “A Jason Dalton worked for Prince Paving. He knew Marsha and Hadley.”

Vaughan rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s the one who vanished before Marsha did.”

“Yes. Do you have a better picture of Jason Dalton?” Zoe asked.

Hughes pulled up his mug shot on her computer. Jason Dalton stared at the camera. Thick blond hair brushed his collar and fell over the tops of blue eyes that lit up with a grin that looked more mischievous than daunting. He had the look of a young Matthew McConaughey or Bradley Cooper. He was also the man who had confronted Hadley at the hardware store.

Zoe studied the contours of the man’s face and the tilt of his head. His look would have been very charming to a girl or woman. Hadn’t there also been a guy in the shop who’d dated both sisters? “Hadley and Mark married a month after Marsha Prince went missing. When was Skylar born?”

Hughes sifted through her papers. “Seven months after her parents married.”

“Skylar would have been conceived about the time of the arrest?” Zoe said.

Hughes nodded. “That’s correct.”

“Jason figures out he and Hadley had a daughter and reaches out to Skylar,” Vaughan suggested.

“That’s assuming the two had a romantic relationship,” Hughes said.

Zoe pulled up a picture of Skylar on her phone and held it up next to Jason’s. There were striking similarities in the eyes and around the mouth. “The messages to Skylar that Bud read off to us were from a Mr. Fix It. Could Jason be our Mr. Fix It?” Zoe asked.

“Hughes, tell me you know where Jason Dalton is living now,” Vaughan said.

Hughes grinned. “You’re going to owe me dinner.”

“I’ll even toss in drinks,” Vaughan said.

“Jason Dalton was brought up on assault charges down in Florida in 2007 and ended up doing ten years in prison. He moved back to the area last year and currently lives in Arlington and works at Danville Auto Repair.”

“So he would have been in the area when Hadley and Skylar won the fitness competition in the spring. He could easily have seen the mention in the local paper,” Vaughan said. “And Jason Dalton sees her.”

Hughes scribbled down the address on a sticky note and handed it to Vaughan. “Home and work addresses. Be careful. The guy had a reputation in prison for being tied to several killings, but nothing stuck.”

“Maybe he got tired of just texting with Skylar,” Vaughan said. “Maybe he got tired of watching another man raise his kid.”

“Now you need to ask me about Skylar’s credit card receipts,” Hughes said.

“Fire away,” Vaughan said.

“Around April of this year, she started taking Uber over to Arlington and buying a late dinner in a little Italian place one block from where Jason Dalton works.”

“Skylar has been having a late dinner with him?” Zoe asked.

“Two entrées were on the receipts,” Hughes said.

“Jason snaps, puts on a mask, and enters the Foster house. Knifes Mark and takes mother and daughter,” Vaughan said.

“If he stabbed Hadley, why take her with him?” Hughes asked.

“Maybe Skylar was upset, and he took Hadley along to keep her calm,” Zoe said.

“Hadley dies, he dumps the body, and he vanishes with his kid.” Vaughan flicked his finger over the edge of the Post-it Note. “We need to get over to that mechanic’s shop and see if Mr. Dalton is there.”

Zoe stepped out of the cubicle. “Let’s go.”

 

Twenty-five minutes later, Vaughan parked across the street from Danville Auto Repair, where Jason Dalton worked. The double-bay mechanic’s shop looked like it dated back to the sixties. There were at least a dozen cars parked in the lot, and both lifts in the bays sported late-model luxury cars.

The whir of a pneumatic drill buzzed as they pushed through the glass front door and approached the counter with several work orders and keys set on it. Behind it hung a collection of papers and receipts, all overlapping what looked like a swimsuit calendar from 1990.

Vaughan knocked on the counter and, when no one appeared, moved around the counter toward a door. He knocked again and was rewarded with a gruff, “Be right out!”

Vaughan stepped back, his hands at his sides, but his fingers tensed as if he was mentally assessing the potential dangers. She was doing the same. Every cop who came into a new environment needed to be on their game and aware that just their presence alone could trigger serious trouble. And given Jason Dalton’s prison record and his confrontation with Hadley in July, there was no telling what could happen.

Vaughan always scored well on his department’s firearm qualifications. He had heard Spencer could hold her own with the best of them. But today, he did not want to find out who could put the bad guy down first. Skylar had to be found, and dead suspects did not talk.

The door opened, and a tall birdlike man in his midfifties with muscled arms built by a life of turning a wrench came around the corner. His slicked-back hair was unusually dark, almost gun-barrel blue. His name tag read Bob.