Killing Fear pb-1

by Allison Brennan

  She felt trapped like a bug caught in a spider’s web, waiting, waiting, waiting for the spider to cross the web and swallow her, kicking and screaming. Devour her alive…

  Then she looked at Will and drew in his strength. This was a man she could count on.

  A man who’d also thought the worst of her.

  But he’d always been there when she really needed him.

  Except that one time.

  “Ms. McKenna,” Hans Vigo said, “let’s sit down.”

  She nodded and sat on the couch. Will sat next to her, his leg touching hers. Mario put a bottle of tequila on the coffee table with a glass, but she didn’t touch it. She was surprisingly calm.

  Vigo sat on the love seat across from them, leaning forward. He put a letter on the table, obviously a photocopy, turned it so she could read it.

  The letter looked exactly like the letter she received from Glenn. Except it was addressed to “William.”

  She looked at Will, panic rising. “What happened?”

  “He delivered a package to me as well.”

  She read the letter to Will, hands shaking. She read it twice, three times. The only time you were really scared was when you thought Robin was dead.

  I will kill her.

  I may leave for a while. Or not.

  Hans said, “He’s trying to scare you both. Threatening Will with your death, threatening you with Will’s death.”

  “Why?” she asked, her voice a squeak. She cleared her throat. “Dammit, why? Why does he care? Will and I are long in the past. It’s over and-” she stopped. What was she saying? She glanced around the room. Two cops and Mario, discreetly trying not to look at her.

  Oh, God, what was she doing?

  “Robin,” Will said quietly. “Robin, look at me.”

  She did, lips trembling. She took a deep breath, calmer.

  “I told Hans about us. He’s heard the conversation you recorded.”

  “It’s not about me,” she whispered, closing her eyes, knowing she was lying as the words came out.

  “Robin, don’t.”

  She breathed deeply. “God, Will, they died because of me.”

  “They died because of him.”

  She shook her head. “You heard him. On the phone. Th-the letter. I-why? If only-”

  “Stop!” He squeezed her hands. “Robin, stop it. Glenn is a sociopath. He enjoys hurting you. Emotionally torturing you. He wants you to feel guilty. It’s part of his game, to make you so scared you’ll do something stupid. You’re anything but stupid, Robin.”

  “Why me?” She glanced from Will to the FBI agent. “Why me? You’re a criminal profiler, why does he want to hurt me? I never did anything to him.”

  Hans answered. “You didn’t jump when he said jump. You didn’t do what he expected you to do. Somehow, you saw him for exactly who he is. That both scared him and excited him. He may have thought that initially he’d found a soul mate, someone as cold and calculating as he is. Later, he realized you simply didn’t like him; perhaps acted superior to him. That angered him, because he’s used to getting what he wants. Manipulating people. His parents. His sister. At work, friends, colleagues. But he couldn’t get to you. You didn’t react to him.”

  “So it is my fault!”

  “No!” Will exclaimed. “Dammit, Robin, if you think anyone other than Theodore Glenn is to blame, you’re letting him win.”

  “He knows where I live. Why didn’t he kill me earlier?”

  “He couldn’t get to you. You hired security, you have an alarm system, and we had cops out front,” Will said. “It would have been suicide for him, and he doesn’t want to die without-” He cut himself off.

  “Without what?”

  “Finishing everything he started.”

  “Exactly,” Hans said, “and that may be his Achilles’ heel.”

  “Pardon me?” Will asked.

  “He’s not going to be reckless, which actually plays into our favor,” Hans said.

  “Why send the letters?” Robin asked. “Why try to scare me?”

  “Because he wants you to act recklessly.”

  “He’s watching me,” Robin said. She glanced at Will, almost embarrassed to tell him, but said nonetheless, “He wrote to me from prison.”

  Will was furious. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you file a complaint?”

  “I burned all the letters,” she said. “After the first one, I knew they were from him. He wanted to keep me scared so I didn’t read them.” She glanced down. “But I had nightmares after every letter arrived.”

  “He sent them here?” Hans asked.

  “No, to the club. It’s no secret that I own it, he could have found the address online.”

  “But this letter”-Hans held it up-“was delivered here.”

  She nodded. “But there’s no postal mark on it. No stamp. He brought it by, put it in my mailbox.”

  “Shit,” Will muttered.

  Hans said, “I think it’s clear that you both are the primary target of this killer-you and Will. The way I see it, we have two options. Either you can go into federal protection, or you can help catch him.”

  “No,” Will said. “Robin isn’t going to be bait.”

  “Let’s go back to the beginning.”

  “Read the transcripts.”

  “I have. Several times.”

  “So you know that Theodore Glenn stalked the women he killed. Manipulated them. Seduced them. Then he killed them.”

  “Except for possibly Anna,” Hans said.

  Robin jumped up. “Oh, please! Don’t tell me that Trinity convinced you that Glenn didn’t kill Anna? I can’t believe you’re listening to a woman who’s helping a killer. An escaped convict who killed two cops.” She looked to Will, feeling betrayed all over again when he avoided eye contact.

  He also thinks Glenn is innocent.

  “Who else wants you dead?” Trinity had asked her.

  “Ms. McKenna,” Hans said, “I haven’t spoken with Trinity Lange yet. I simply read the report. But you said yourself that Anna Clark didn’t have a sexual relationship with Glenn.”

  “She didn’t.” Robin sat down again, away from Will. She was acting like a jack-in-the-box. She’d better get herself under control or they’d think she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. She wanted to touch Will, for support, but she had a hard time accepting that he thought Anna’s murder was unsolved.

  “You’re one hundred percent certain of that.”

  She hesitated. Was she? After seven years, nothing seemed like what it had been. “Anna was a lesbian. I’m almost positive she wouldn’t have slept with any man, and if she did it wouldn’t have been Glenn. She didn’t like him.”

  “I agree,” Agent Vigo said. “And, for the record, you didn’t have a relationship with Glenn either.”

  “No,” she answered through clenched teeth. “Why is it all you cop-types think that just because I was a stripper I slept around?” She glanced at Will, confused and trapped. She rubbed her head. Damn, she didn’t want to remember how she’d felt all those years ago. All she wanted was to remember how good it was to be held by Will, how happy she’d been when she was with him. How he showed genuine appreciation for her paintings. Like he knew she’d go right to the top in the art world, with a confidence and assurance that she didn’t have about her own work.

  Vigo said, “I’m just verifying the facts. It’s natural that, based on the M.O., the police would believe either you or Anna had been involved with Glenn. But knowing what we know now, I think Glenn’s behavior proves he has unfinished business with you.” He glanced at Will, who nodded. Had they talked about this before, or were they just on the same wavelength? Robin rubbed her temple harder.

  “Which leaves two possibilities,” Will said. “First, let’s go on the assumption that Anna wasn’t supposed to be in town.”

  “Will-you-” She felt like Alice down the rabbit hole, nothing she saw or heard familiar or comfortable.

&nb
sp; “Ms. McKenna, I’ve reviewed all the files in this matter and witness testimony states that she was supposed to be in Big Bear,” Hans said. “In your statement you said you didn’t expect her to be home that night.”

  “I didn’t. I just don’t know why she came back early, or why she didn’t call me.”

  “Who else might she have called?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe RJ, though I doubt it. She would have more likely called me.”

  “Would she have called you on your cell phone? At the bar?”

  “I didn’t have a cell phone then. That was seven years ago. She probably would have called the bar, or maybe left a message on the answering machine. Unless…” She shook her head.

  “What?”

  “She knew about Will and me. Maybe she thought I was at his place.” Robin hated that her private life was being exposed for all to see.

  Hans said, “Glenn killed people you were close to in order to hurt you, to watch how you reacted. He didn’t take pleasure in killing his victims. He took pleasure in watching you suffer. You heard that when he called you. He wanted to make sure you understood that.”

  “Oh God. Oh God.”

  Will moved to sit right next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

  Will said, “I never asked you, Robin. Where were you when you found out about Bethany’s murder? The testimony states that RJ told you.”

  She nodded. “He called me over after my dance, said Bethany hadn’t shown up and he sent one of the boys-one of the bouncers-to her apartment to check on her. RJ could be a total ass wipe, but he cared about our safety. And there she was…” Her breath caught.

  “So you were at RJ’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Theodore Glenn there that night?”

  Robin paled. “He came backstage and asked if everything was okay. I was in shock, I think. Brandi burst into tears and told him about Bethany. He hugged her. God, he hugged her and stroked her hair and told her everything would be okay.” She slammed her fist on the table in front of her. He’d held Brandi, but he’d been looking right at Robin with those eerie blue eyes. She didn’t think anything about it then, and even after everything, that moment in time had been buried. Until now. “That bastard!”

  Hans and Will exchanged looks.

  “What?” she demanded. “I deserve to know what’s going on, don’t I? Will?”

  She jumped up. Paced. She wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to go.

  Will stood and grabbed her hands, forced her to look at him. She blinked back the tears. “It is not your fault, Robin. Glenn is a sociopath. If he didn’t fixate on you, he would have fixated on someone else. What we have to deal with now are the facts.”

  “All right.” She sat back down, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  Will remained standing. She bit back her fear, her face a mask of calmness when Will knew she was petrified. She thought she was weak? He didn’t know many civilians who could keep it together in the face of an evil like Theodore Glenn. It was so hard not to touch Robin, but right now they needed information.

  “The night Anna died, there was a message on my cell phone,” Will began. “It was a page from your apartment.”

  Robin’s brows furrowed, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I thought it was you calling. I didn’t call back because I was only a few minutes away, so I came by. I was going to go up to the apartment, but I saw the bar lights still on and I remembered that you had been working that night.”

  Hans asked, “Did you think it was odd that she paged you with her home number?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t really think anything about it, or if I did it was that she must have accidentally put in her home number, or thought she’d be home in a few minutes. I don’t know, I really don’t remember what I thought at the time. But I went into RJ’s, and that’s where I found Robin.”

  “Anna was murdered at about the time that Will arrived at the bar,” Hans said. “Give or take fifteen minutes. She may have been dead when he got the page, or she may have been killed after he arrived at the bar.”

  “Theodore told Trinity that he was watching us in the bar. He could have killed her, then came down and watched-” Robin stopped, her face pale.

  “I know this is hard for you, Robin,” Will said. “But it’s important that you think back to that night and try to remember everything that happened.”

  “I gave my statement seven years ago,” she said.

  Hans nodded. “In your statement you said you closed up the bar, walked across the street to your apartment, and found Anna dead in the living room.”

  “That’s true.”

  Will sat next to Robin. “I made a huge mistake seven years ago. When you didn’t put in your statement that we had been together in the bar, I should have. I should have said something.”

  “That’s not relevant to anything,” she said.

  “No, except it wasn’t the complete truth. I omitted the truth.”

  “Had you been totally honest, would that have saved Anna?”

  “No,” Will said.

  Hans spoke up. “What we know for certain is that Glenn was in the bar during the same time you and Will were in the bar. When could he have gotten in?”

  “I thought you were watching him,” Robin said. “After Jessica-”

  Will nodded. “We were. I had a patrol on him. He slipped out, again. He lived in a beach house. We had someone on each entrance. What we didn’t have covered were his upstairs windows. He could have climbed onto the roof, then scrambled down. He has experience rock climbing; scaling a house would be nothing to him.”

  “In the trial you said something about that,” Robin said. “That impressions had been found on the north side of the house or something.”

  “Exactly, that was our theory. And it gave reasonable doubt that he was in the house all night. No one saw him there, no one spoke to him. And even though we had men on the house, the evidence that he’d scaled down from the roof, out of sight, proved he could have left undetected.”

  Hans said, “Robin, how long were you alone in the bar?”

  “It was a weeknight, we closed at midnight, locked the door.” She paused. “There were three regulars still there, but they just finished their drinks and chatted while RJ and I cleaned up.”

  “Who let them out?”

  “I don’t remember. It could have been either of us. Probably RJ.”

  “Why wasn’t RJ there when Will arrived?”

  “He was tired. He had heart problems and was on medication. He’d been talking about selling out. In fact, he later sold to me. After Brandi was killed RJ lost his drive. He was already old, but he suddenly got older. I told him to go home, I would stock up and finish. He didn’t want to, but-I promised him I’d be okay. He left about one. Will came in shortly after that.”

  “Did you see Theodore Glenn at all that night?”

  She shook her head. “RJ banned him. He wasn’t allowed on the property.”

  “Could he have snuck in?”

  “I don’t see how. We had a bouncer, and-” She paused. “The bouncer left after the last dance. That’s eleven on weeknights.”

  “So there was an hour when he could have snuck in,” Will said. An hour where Glenn could have killed Robin.

  “I don’t see-” She swallowed. “Yeah, he would have known our routine. But-I don’t see where he’d have been.”

  “What about in the dressing room?” Will said. “If the shows were over, would there have been any reason for you or RJ to go back there?”

  Slowly, Robin shook her head. “The last two girls left at eleven thirty that night. Together. Safety in numbers and all that.”

  “Why did you let RJ leave you there alone?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I never seriously thought Theodore would hurt me. He was targeting women who slept with him. I never did. I didn’t feel he was a personal threat to me. I was scared, but not that kind
of scared. I don’t know!”

  “When did you turn on the alarm?” Hans asked.

  “When I left.”

  “So he left before that,” Hans said.

  “I–I guess. It was on motion detectors, so if someone were inside the alarm would have gone off.”

  “Could he have had the code?”

  “I doubt it,” Robin said. “RJ changed it monthly and every time an employee left.”

  Will said, “We checked the logs per routine and it was untouched after Robin locked up at one fifty-two that morning.”

  “See?” Robin said. “He saw Will and me, then went over to kill Anna.”

  “But everyone thought Anna was out of town,” Will said. “You said so yourself-she told everyone at the club.”

  “Then-he went there to kill me and she was there.” Robin swallowed.

  “I don’t think so,” Hans said. “Whoever killed Anna had time to restrain her, cut her, and position her body.” He paused. “After reviewing the crime scene, the killer must have spent at least fifteen minutes there, and that’s rushing it. If Glenn killed her before midnight-before he could have slipped into the club-the time of death would be completely different. And while time of death is not wholly accurate, when we have the body that quickly we can narrow it down better. If he killed her after watching you and Will-the time of death would have proven that. As it was, death was fixed at between one and one thirty a.m. Will received the page at twelve fifty-five. He told me he arrived at the club at one-oh-five or so. You both left at one fifty. Since Glenn knows information about that time period, he couldn’t have killed Anna. He wouldn’t have had enough time. Not considering what was done to the body.”

  Hans looked from Will to Robin. “The million dollar question is, who called Will from your apartment? Anna-or her killer?”

  Will squeezed Robin’s hands. “I see where you’re coming from, Hans. I can’t believe I overlooked that back then.”

  “You didn’t. You assumed Robin called you.”

  “But I didn’t ask her. If I had, we could have figured this out seven years ago.”

  “But the conclusion would have been the same,” Hans reminded him. “The evidence points to Glenn.”

  “Could Anna have called me?” Will asked, almost to himself. “If she was scared or heard something, why wouldn’t she have called 911?”