Shadow Play

by Iris Johansen

  “Neither was Patsy Danver.”

  “Another one?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Same town. Seven months later. Eight years old. Car accident with her father, brakes failed, and they went off the side of a cliff.”

  “Good God.”

  He nodded. “But every one could be an accident.”

  “Yes, and none of them bear the signs of the usual serial killer. Most of those killers are into power and the attacks are close-up and personal. Except for possibly the first child, he wouldn’t have even touched those little girls.”

  “And there was no indication of abuse even with her.” He paused. “If it was Walsh, he only wanted them dead and was willing to give up any personal satisfaction to make the kills safe and appear unconnected and go virtually unnoticed.”

  “Then why did he want them dead? What did they have in common?”

  “They were all little girls. Eight years of age. They all had type O blood. They all had dark hair, green or hazel eyes.” He bent over the computer. “And one other similarity. I’ll pull up the school photos for you. It’s only slight but enough so that even I noticed…”

  The three photos were suddenly before Eve, staring out of the screen at her. Smiling at her with all the vitality and adorable beauty of children. Dark-haired, green eyes …

  She inhaled sharply. “Dear God, they all look a little like Jenny.”

  Joe nodded. “Only a little. The same arched brows, but the cheekbones aren’t that pronounced. Still, they all bear a faint resemblance to that reconstruction I saw on your worktable that morning.”

  “So he killed them all because they looked like Jenny?” She lifted her shaking hand to her temple. “Not only the same type, but an actual resemblance?”

  “It’s a possibility. But we can’t rule out that it could be a family resemblance and that tie could be significant. Providing we accept the premise that these seemingly accidental deaths were murders committed by Walsh.”

  “I’m close to accepting it.” She shuddered. “Though the idea of his going through those photos and picking out three innocent children just because they reminded him of one of his former victims is totally macabre.”

  “Maybe more than three.”

  Her gaze flew to his face. “What?”

  “I didn’t have time to go any deeper into the search yet,” he said quietly. “It appears he might have confined his killing to this area of California, but how do we know that he limited his hunting ground to these few towns?”

  “We don’t.”

  “There were lots of little girls.”

  She felt sick.

  Joe nodded. “Then we’d better find out what we have to deal with.” He dropped down in the chair again. “We know what we’re looking for now. Let me get to work. It may take a few hours.”

  And he wasn’t suggesting that she help him. He was trying to protect her from being pulled any deeper into this horror.

  But it was her horror, too.

  And so was the terrible anger that was beginning to flare within her.

  “Maybe not if we do it together.” She pulled out a chair and logged into the computer. “Eight years old. Accidental death. Right?”

  LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA

  Everything about these mountains was knife-sharp, Walsh thought.

  Pale blue skies, sharp wind whipping the rental car almost off the curves as he drove up the road.

  He knew these mountains. He had been sent to hunt down an escaped target in the next valley. That was a long time ago, but he remembered that day with pleasure.

  As he would remember this day with pleasure.

  That little bitch, Jenny, had not really been at that campfire in the woods that night. It had only been a hallucination.

  But everything up here was sharp and clear, and he felt in control as he had told Salazar.

  I’m going to destroy you once and for all, bitch.

  Try and stop me.

  He was at the top of the mountain, and he pulled over to the side of the road with a screech of tires. The wind tore at his hair as he jumped out of the car and went around to the trunk. He grabbed the FedEx box and stuffed it in his knapsack, trying not to look at it.

  Not that he believed that skull meant anything but what it was. Proof that he had triumphed and crushed that defiant girl who had fought him and stared at him with those eyes that seemed to see right through him.

  Because the dead did not return once he’d killed them.

  As Eve Duncan would soon learn.

  He moved to the edge of the cliff and gazed down at the glacier lake that was Tahoe. Blue and cold and over a thousand feet deep. The man he’d been hired to find and punish was still down there beneath those waters. He’d had difficulty getting that weighted body down the cliff to where he’d managed to push him into the lake. But he’d regarded it as a challenge, and he’d needed to prove himself after Jenny.

  No one was ever going to find that body.

  So why not just hurl that skull from the cliff? He could weight it and then—

  “No.”

  He stiffened. He would not believe it was her.

  “You can’t destroy it. I won’t let you.”

  He could feel her staring at him. He would not look over his shoulder; he kept his eyes on the water below.

  His hands were suddenly burning as they had that night when he’d held the skull over the flames.

  “That’s all you know,” he muttered as he started down the narrow trail toward the cliff edge. “I’ll do what I want, bitch.”

  She wasn’t real.

  It was his imagination.

  When he killed, they stayed dead.

  “Walsh.”

  “I don’t hear you.” He looked straight ahead and smiled recklessly down at the ice-cold waters below. “But you can come along if you like and watch the show. It may not be what you expect…”

  * * *

  “We’ve got to stop, Eve.” Joe’s gaze was raking her face. “You’re pale as a ghost. We’ll come back to it later.”

  “Just give me a few minutes,” she said wearily as she leaned back in her chair. She felt as if she had been beaten. All those eager faces in the photos. All those smiles and expressions of hope and wonder.

  All those deaths.

  “We’ll come back to it,” Joe repeated firmly. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get some air.”

  She nodded jerkily and let him lead her out of the precinct. The sun was going down, but the air was clean, fresh, and still possessed a lingering warmth that felt comforting against her face. She needed that comfort.

  “You should have stopped when I asked an hour ago.” Joe was leading her across the street toward the park. “I should have made you stop.”

  “He didn’t stop,” she said numbly. “He just went from town to town and killed and killed again.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And nobody knew. How many were there, Joe?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re always sure about things like that. How many?”

  “Twelve.” He pushed her down on the bench. “If there were no real accidents in the mix.”

  “I doubt it. They all looked like…” She drew a shaky breath. “I don’t understand it. What kind of satisfaction did he even get out of it? Some of those boat and automobile accidents were completely without visual or physical contact. If there was any power rush for him, it was definitely remote.”

  “Then we look for a different motive than pure pleasure. We’ve been looking at Walsh as a child predator. What if he’s not?”

  “I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple, trying to banish the ugliness of the past hours. “Okay, why did he target those little girls? The first half a dozen or so we located were the same age as Jenny. Then, as time passed, the ages escalated as well. Nine. Ten … Maybe he was bored with the younger children. Same color eyes and hair.” She stopped. “Blood type was the same as all the
other children. O. What about Jenny?” She grabbed her phone and dialed Nalchek. “Nalchek, what was Jenny’s blood type?”

  “Just a minute, and I’ll check it.” He came back on the line. “B negative. Is it important?”

  “Maybe not. I’m not certain.”

  “You sounded urgent. Is there something I should know?”

  Yes, he should probably be told about those children, but she wasn’t up to it at the moment. “It’s not urgent. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hung up and looked at Joe. “That’s one thing that wasn’t the same. B negative.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Not thinking, grabbing for something to hold on to. Okay, that was one thing different. Though it may not have any significance.” She gazed at the fountain. Only hours before, she had sat here with Bonnie and tried to make sense of Jenny and her own connection with her. Now she knew there was no sense to the violence that had rocked the world and destroyed that little girl. But there might be reasons, and they had to find them, so they could find Walsh. “So many deaths. What a monster he must be.” Her hand clenched her phone. “And we haven’t even scratched the surface. Who knows how high the body count is going to rise.” She straightened on the bench. “We should go back. We’ve been following his trail through all these small towns in northern California watching him decimate and destroy with a kind of morbid fascination. It’s time we accepted what he’s doing and pull away and try to stop him from doing it again.” She moistened her lips. “Jenny said when he was thinking about the girl he was targeting, he was excited because she was ‘the one’ at last. I didn’t realize what that could mean, but I’m beginning to see now. She was supposed to live in Carmel. But we looked at Carmel records and didn’t find any photos of anyone resembling Jenny. Maybe Jenny was wrong.”

  “You believe he was going to try to arrange another ‘accident’ in Carmel or wherever?”

  “It may not have to seem like an accident. How do we know? He might be planning to allow himself a sudden explosion of pleasure. Maybe this girl is the finale he’s been working toward.” She repeated, “‘She’s the one,’ remember.”

  “How could I forget?” He helped her to her feet. “Okay, we’ll skip to a few towns near Carmel and go looking for little girls who meet the same criteria as the ones we’ve located.” He paused. “But, as you noticed, the ages changed with the dates of the kills. The last one in Silicon Valley was last September and she was ten years old. We should probably be looking for a ten- or eleven-year-old.”

  Eve nodded. “We’ll check for both.” She started for the gates. “And what did he mean, ‘She’s the one’? I’m beginning to have a terrible feeling that I have an idea about—” Her cell phone rang, and she glanced down at it impatiently.

  No ID.

  But it could be someone from Nalchek’s office.

  She answered it. “Eve Duncan.”

  “You’re very interfering, you know. You’ve caused me a good deal of trouble. I don’t like the idea of having to deal with you twice.”

  She went rigid. She knew that voice. She pressed the speaker. “And you think killing an innocent FedEx driver is just trouble?”

  Joe’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward.

  “Ah, you remember me? I thought you might. You’re very sharp.”

  “Why shouldn’t I remember you? You didn’t even try to disguise your voice when you were pretending to be that dispatcher, Walsh.”

  Silence. “Walsh? Now I wonder where you got hold of that name.”

  “Perhaps you’re not as clever as you thought you were. Joe is a very competent law-enforcement officer and terrific at searching databases. Why would you think that you might not have managed to let something slip along your very ugly career?”

  “Because I’m not that careless.”

  “But you do compartmentalize, and you evidently felt very comfortable with the Walsh identity. Was it because you were so adept at fading in and out when you were taking all those children’s lives?”

  Silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you want me to reel off the names and numbers of your kills? It started with little Donna Prahern in Sacramento, didn’t it? No accident. None of them were accidents.”

  “Why, I have no idea of what you’re accusing me.” He paused. “And I have no intention of listening to your raving about crimes that have nothing to do with me. That’s not why I called.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “I’m very irritated that you interfered with me. You had no right. I believe you have to be punished. You should have hung up on Nalchek when he phoned, begging you to help him.”

  “It’s what I do. Identify and then find a way to put monsters like you in a prison or gas chamber.” Her tone hardened. “And I’ll do that, Walsh. No one deserves it more.”

  “So dedicated,” he said softly. “Do I detect a touch of possessiveness? Let’s put it to the test. You were very bitter when I took the reconstruction of that sweet little girl, weren’t you? How badly do you want her back?”

  She didn’t answer for an instant. “Are you offering?”

  “I might be. How much do you want her?”

  “Money?”

  “Now I’m sure you know that’s not in the cards. You’d have to earn her.”

  “And for all I know, you’ve already destroyed my reconstruction.”

  “True.” He added, “But as it happens, I haven’t gotten around to it yet. You still might have a chance. Why don’t you come and get her?”

  “When you’ve just said you want to punish me? I know what that means to you.”

  “Yes, but you left your cozy little cottage and came out to the Golden State to try to retrieve that skull. That tells me what it means to you.”

  “What it means is what it will always mean. A way to catch the filth who was coward enough to kill a little girl and hide her body in the ground.”

  “Are you trying to make me angry?” His voice was amused. “There’s nothing cowardly about killing in any form. Society totally rejects the idea of murder, they even seek to put to death those who have the courage to go their own way in spite of their stupid rules. To be clever and skilled enough to take a life and walk away a free man makes me far more remarkable than you and that detective, who are trying to find and punish me.”

  “You actually believe that?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the act of killing is only a challenge no matter who the victim? A helpless child, an old man?”

  “You sound so revolted. As you say, it’s the challenge of the kill itself. I do appreciate the ending of a young life because it’s regarded with such horror. But just the act itself immediately puts me in the crosshairs of do-gooders like you and Nalchek. If I make a mistake, you could bring me down. It’s me against the system.” He paused. “But I much prefer that it be me against you and Joe Quinn. So much more interesting. So why don’t you come and see if you can take this reconstruction away from me?”

  She looked at Joe, then said, “A trap, Walsh?”

  “A challenge, Eve.” He chuckled. “I’ll e-mail you the location where you can find the skull, and you can take a look and see if you want to attempt trying to bring her home. Isn’t that the phrase that you use? I read a magazine interview with you about your sculpting process. I was quite touched.” His voice suddenly lost all hint of humor. “But now that you mention traps, if you try to load the dice against me and bring on police or FBI reinforcements, you will not only not see the skull to judge whether you wish to take your chances, but you’ll see your fine reconstruction destroyed before your eyes. It’s just between you, that fine lover of yours, and me. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that you’re trying to set us up.”

  “Then meet the challenge and try to win the prize.” He hung up.

  Eve drew a shaky breath as she turned to Joe. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a compl
ete sociopath, and he wants you dead,” he said harshly.

  She nodded. “Jenny said that he meant to kill me, but he didn’t have time after he stole the skull.” She grimaced. “It’s clear he didn’t like my chasing after him.”

  “On the contrary, I think he did like it. Now he doesn’t have to go back to the lake to finish you off. He thinks he can do it here.”

  Her e-mail pinged, and she looked down at the phone. “That’s probably the location.”

  “The trap, you mean,” Joe said. “Give me your phone and let me handle it.”

  “Joe.”

  “He wants to kill you.”

  “It’s a chance to get the reconstruction.” She looked at him. “It may be a chance to get Walsh. We have to get him, Joe. It’s not only Jenny. I sat there all afternoon and read all those case files about those murdered children and their families.”

  “Too much risk.”

  “I can work around it.”

  “Good God, you’re going to do it.”

  “I’m going to try. I’m not going to do anything suicidal. As soon as I can, I’ll notify Nalchek and try to bring him up there to trap Walsh. But I’m going to see if I have any way I can retrieve that skull. If I can’t, I’ll see if I can learn anything, do anything to bring me closer to catching Walsh before he kills again.”

  He met her gaze for a long moment, then glanced at her phone. “Pull up the damn e-mail.”

  She pushed the e-mail access. “It has to be Walsh. It’s a map.” She scanned it and handed it to Joe. “Somewhere near Tahoe. No X marked the spot. He’s probably going to contact us later.”

  “When he’s sure you’re going to meet his challenge,” Joe said bitterly.

  “I can’t do anything else, Joe,” she said.

  “Do you think I don’t realize that?” he asked as he took her elbow and led her toward the car. “I was sitting right there beside you today. Do you believe I wasn’t sick to my stomach? I wanted to kill the son of a bitch by the time I jerked you away from that computer.” He opened the car door for her. “So I’ll take you to Walsh. I’ll try to keep you safe while you get that reconstruction. But if there’s a choice between getting the skull or taking out Walsh, it will be Walsh. I won’t care if you can’t bring Jenny home.” He slammed the door and strode around to the driver’s seat. “She’ll have to be satisfied with my sending her killer straight to hell.”