by Bush, Nancy
“Really? Excuse me, Detective, but how can that be, given the other still-unsolved major case, the Zuma Software Massacre? Is that an ongoing, full-scale investigation, too?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have the manpower for both? We all know there have been major slashes to government budgets and that includes law enforcement as well. Can you guarantee our safety? I mean, seriously?”
Watching, September almost wanted to cover her face and look between her fingers. She glanced away and heard herself say officiously, “Laurelton PD, in conjunction with Winslow County Sheriff’s Department and the Portland PD, has qualified personnel working hard on both cases. We—”
“But has progress been made anywhere?”
“Yes, of course.”
“On Zuma, or the Do Unto Others killer?”
“Both,” she said. “I’m sure you understand we can’t reveal details that would jeopardize—”
“What about Dr. Frank Navarone?” Pauline suddenly asked, and now September glanced back to the TV. Seeing herself blink in surprise at the unexpected question, she narrowed her eyes on Pauline’s image, but her mind started traveling down avenues that had seemed like dead ends once, but now opened up to new possibilities. Pauline had brought up Frank Navarone who was Glenda Tripp’s uncle and shortly thereafter Glenda Tripp was murdered by, it certainly looked like, the Do Unto Others killer.
The killer had seen September in this interview.
Pauline looked impatient, but finally September said, “Dr. Navarone is a person of interest.”
“In which case?” Pauline pounced.
“The Zuma Software shootings,” September was forced to admit.
And that was it for September. Pauline turned back to the camera for a close-up where she finished, “It may be just as Detective Rafferty suggests, that the police are doing everything they can”—her tone suggested otherwise—“but can we trust our lives to an undermanned, overworked local police force? There’s a killer out there. Likely more than one. Take care and lock your doors. . . .”
September fast-forwarded to the end of the recording, but she didn’t erase it just yet.
She’d been with the Laurelton PD for almost five months now. Sheila Dempsey had been killed around the time September was hired, but in Winslow County. Emmy Decatur’s body was found in the Laurelton city limits, and then September had given the interview to Channel Seven. The next morning Glenda Tripp’s body was discovered in her apartment.
And then the Do Unto Others message on her second grade artwork had arrived.
September stood up and stared across the room, out the window of her living room toward the backside of the building and the street. But she wasn’t seeing anything, her mind was picking at possibilities.
What was it about her that interested the killer? Was he someone from her past, maybe seeking to even some old score she was unaware of? Or, was he someone who’d seen her on the news, and then found her artwork somehow? That didn’t make any sense. Or, was it that he knew where her artwork was, and then when he saw her on the news, he was suddenly driven to send her the message? That maybe she happened to cross his path after he’d started his deadly mission? But then he still would have had to know the artwork was hers.
“He knows me,” she decided. “He has to.”
I need to find my stuff.
Tomorrow. Whether her father was home or not, she was going to attack the attic and basement.
The killer sat on the concrete floor, cross-legged and naked, his arms straight in front of him, his eyes closed. The blinds were drawn so if the bitch next door came snooping around she wouldn’t be able to see in. New blinds, because the old ones had been bent and saggy and offered holes—windows—into his world.
New blinds because that was his outer self’s current job: installer for Mel’s Window Coverings and he ordered some for himself and haggled with Mel about the discount.
New blinds because the cords used to manipulate the slats had been lying there when he first needed them . . . with Sheila.
He inhaled and held his breath. For years . . . half his life . . . he’d kept the beast hidden inside himself and had managed to evade capture over his first human kills. He’d lived in pure fear, expecting the authorities to find him, but they never did. He’d fed the beast’s need with an ample supply of pornography and sudden spurts of nighttime hunting for small, stray animals. And it had worked. He’d burned to prove them all wrong . . . the doctors . . . the medical staff . . . all the fuckers who’d passed judgment on him and labeled him a deviant. He’d been determined to fight the beast that was his inner self and he’d succeeded for years.
But the beast never slept, always wanted to prowl.
And then he’d read the article. . . .
Nine . . . the beast will have you. Soon . . . soon.
Outside he heard a noise. The bitch was coming toward his home!
But then he heard other sounds, the slamming of a car door, an engine roaring to life. He heard the crunch of gravel beneath the tires and wondered if she was backing all the way down the long drive. He hoped to hell there was nothing behind her because the bitch was half-blind.
All this land around him—all this isolation except for her.
He wished her dead, but not yet . . . he couldn’t afford anyone sniffing around the area, asking too many questions. He needed nothing to give him away, now that the hunt was on.
Opening his eyes, he got to his feet and walked to the DVR, reversing to September’s interview. He’d been recording the news since Sheila’s death, combing the programs for anything about either of the women he’d left for Nine to find. And then suddenly there she was! Talking on camera with that woman reporter. Talking about Navarone!
It had sent him into a frenzy, seeing her so clearly. September . . . Nine . . . the beast had sprung loose and he’d driven frantically to the Laurelton station. He couldn’t wait!
But then he’d gotten a leash on the beast and managed to pull the curtain down over his inner self. His brain cooled a bit and he knew he would be foolish to take September then. More planning was needed . . . more surrogates. . . but that mention of Navarone . . .
He hadn’t intended to take Glenda, but the beast needed to be fed and knew exactly where Glenda would be, her favorite bar, The Lariat; the slut just couldn’t resist dancing. But when he got there, too many people were hanging around the parking lot. He couldn’t chance anyone seeing him with her. So, he waited till she left the bar and then he followed her home. Easy for him to catch up to her by her car, easy for him to invite himself in, even though she’d been slightly skittish, but a little drunk, too. The beast knew her. Glenda Navarone Tripp. And she knew him. They’d screwed back in the day, screwed everywhere they could think of. She’d been particularly hot and nasty on her uncle’s examining table, saying what a sick psycho he was and how she was only pretending to like him. He didn’t care. He was just fuckin’ horny and she had the right body, the dark hair. She’d been into it, too. Couldn’t get enough. But in the end she’d dismissed him. Had even had the balls to tell him that she was worried about him. He was too obsessive, too intense. He wanted to show her the beast then, but he’d restrained himself. She drifted away, but he never forgot. Never forgot . . .
And she had a body like Nine’s.
Now, rewatching September in the interview he grabbed his cock and brought himself to a climax before he could stop himself. As soon as he realized what he’d done he shoved his hands in his hair and pulled hard, threw back his head and howled in rage. No. No! Had to save it. For the surrogates . . . for the whores, if necessary. . . and for September . . .
The last time he’d allowed himself the pleasure was with Glenda. He’d taken his hunting knife, the cord, and a plastic baggie. As soon as he was inside her apartment, he’d backed her against the wall. With a pulse beating in his head and September’s blue eyes imprinted on his retinas, he’d slammed into Glenda while she fought the hand co
vering her mouth. They wrestled a bit; she tried to bite and scratch, but he knew her game. He flung her down and she lay on her back, spent. Just like the others. Then he’d wrapped the cord around her neck and watched her try to beg for her life, but each time she spoke he cut off her words until finally there was utter silence.
He didn’t like to kill them with the cord. He wanted the knife. The knife was the instrument that sang when he cut them.
It would be different with September, but for Glenda it had been what needed to be done to service the beast. He watched her eyes dim and grow glassy. He had to fight the urge to take her one more time but he’d purposely only brought one condom. He had to be careful. When he was finished he put the used condom in the baggie and yanked up her red blouse, exposed her black bra, and started to cut. But then the neighbors came back to their apartment, shouting and screaming. Through the thin walls he heard a huge, brawling fight break out, loud enough to be heard outside.
He couldn’t stay. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t risk it. In a cold fury he had to sneak away quickly.
Unsatisfactory.
Now, he watched September’s interview in its entirety again. He reset the recording and watched it again. And again. Played it nine times, watching September Rafferty talk about the killer, acting like she knew him.
But she didn’t know him . . . not like she thought she did.
His gaze lifted reverently from the television to the picture on the wall above it. An underwater seascape collage of sea anemones, some clinging to rocks. Some floating, one with its center opening to him . . . beautiful. . . vibrant . . .
In his mind’s eye he saw her lying down in the field, opening to him.
She wouldn’t be able to dismiss him again.
Nine . . .
Getting up, he walked to the locked door at the back of the room, which led to a stairway and his special room. He took a key from around his neck and unsnapped the hasp, pulling open the door. There was a cot inside and a shelf above it with a box. Ignoring the cot, he pulled down the box and reverently lifted the lid, which was only locked when he brought his prey back from the hunt and tied them to the cot. He hadn’t been able to do that with Glenda, hadn’t been able to later take her outside to the fields, and he could feel the pulse of the beast starting to thrum with need inside him.
Inside the box, the red-brown tress of hair was delicate within its tiny plastic bag. He touched it gently. The other items nestled in the box he would only touch with gloves, but his eye ran over them. Her things . . . drawings and chewed Crayolas and the All About Me book. Pictures of her childhood. A bounty that he’d discovered after much searching.
He’d waited so long . . . had fretted during long nights that it might never happen . . . had sometimes managed to forget for a while.
But now he knew they would be together. He knew where she worked and he knew where she lived.
Soon, very soon. She would be his last . . . and they would spend eternity together. But not yet. The hunt was on. The beast was in his prime.
There was much more to do before he allowed her to catch him.
Nine . . .
Chapter 3
September grabbed an iced coffee on her way to work the next day. The air was already hot and felt heavy with humidity at seven in the morning. Oregon rarely had serious humidity but since the beginning of the month the heat had been oppressive.
She seriously thought about going through the back door, the one the department used to bring in those under arrest. It was generally asked that all personnel come through the front along with the general public, but that meant passing Guy, who wouldn’t know how to ease up on protocol if it clobbered him over the head, and he was such an overall pain in the ass “ruleser” that she felt like flouting authority and just going for it. Let someone call her out, if they saw her.
But she was also fairly new at the job and didn’t have the power or clout to thumb her nose at the rules, like Auggie did. Whenever Auggie passed Guy he simply pointed at him, a silent, “Don’t mess with me, asshole,” that caused Guy much distress as he was a little afraid of Auggie who, since he spent much of his time working undercover, wasn’t as regular as some of the other detectives and uniforms and Guy couldn’t decide how to deal with him.
Gretchen Sandler also gave Guy the evil eye, and though he tended to sputter at her blatant disregard of protocol, she rarely deigned to so much as show her badge. Her theory was, Guy knew who she was, so why did she always have to prove it? Since the time she’d told him that they hadn’t perfected cloning people, as far as she knew, and therefore he could assume she was the real Detective Sandler, Guy had tried harder to leave her alone, though it was against everything he believed in.
For September, it was a different story, so she now walked up to Guy and flipped out her badge, receiving his nod of approval before she passed through the door into the inner sanctum of the station, glad to find the squad room empty as she sat down at her desk. It was beastly hot. She suspected the air conditioning was on the fritz again.
They had compiled one massive murder book on the Do Unto Others case, and now she pulled it from her drawer where she’d stashed it yesterday. The locked file cabinets against the wall were where most documents in current use could be found, but the detectives all had a tendency to put the files of the cases they were working on in their own desks.
September had told Auggie she and Gretchen were reworking the information they’d gathered on Do Unto Others, and today she planned to go through the murder book and find names of people to reinterview. Maybe some of them could recall things now that had escaped them during the initial interviews.
She glanced at Glenda Tripp’s information, looking down at the solemn-faced young woman. Her mother, Angela Navarone, had come down from Seattle to identify and collect the body post-autopsy, and now she’d returned home with her daughter’s remains. Glenda’s uncle was in jail awaiting trial; he’d been unable to post bail from what September had heard.
Glenda had worked as a teacher’s aide at a nearby elementary school; not Sunset, but their rival Twin Oaks. Everyone at Twin Oaks whom September and Gretchen had interviewed had expressed shock and dismay, but no one knew Glenda very well and her employment seemed to be a dead end as far as learning more about her personal life went. None of her apartment neighbors knew her well, either, although one of them, the one who’d found her door open and had called 911, was pretty sure she was a regular at a local cowboy bar called The Lariat that featured country-western music and line-dancing. When September and Gretchen went to The Lariat and showed Glenda’s picture around, the bartenders remembered her, but everyone said she was fairly serious and reserved and, once again, no one knew her very well there, either.
“A helluva dancer,” the bartender named Nick said. “Always on the beat, but she stayed back, y’know, even though people urged her to get up front so they could follow. Didn’t suit her, though.”
“Ever see her with anyone? A man?” Sandler had asked him and the other employees, but their collective answers consisted of shrugs and head wagging.
Glenda Navarone Tripp liked to stay under the radar.
So, how was Glenda picked? September wondered now. Proximity? Had she fallen into the path of the killer and possessed the same body type and general hair color as the other two victims? Is that all it was? Or, was it something to do with her uncle, the once notable Dr. Frank Navarone who had lost his medical license owing to unorthodox methodology that had cost a patient’s life, or so the yet-to-be-proven story went? Pauline Kirby had mentioned Navarone in the interview with September, and then Glenda Tripp was killed. Was she that connection? September herself?
She wished there was someone else to ask, but they’d bled dry every source they could think of when it came to Glenda Tripp. No one knew her. No one cared. Nothing.
September’s gaze slid over Emmy Decatur’s picture, and she grimaced as she recalled having to deal with the girl’s parents. It h
ad been a sad, uncomfortable scene when Sandler had asked them to identify the body. Emmy had been reported missing by her roommate, Nadine Wilkerson, who worked with Emmy at The Indoor Beach, a puce-colored tanning salon in a strip mall. Nadine had been the one who first raised the alarm that Emmy was missing, and when September and Sandler met Nadine at her apartment and went through Emmy’s belongings, she said she and Emmy occasionally went to a local pub, Gulliver’s, one that September had been to a couple of times. Gulliver’s sported a suit of armor at the door and medieval weaponry displayed on the paneled walls, but its big attraction was Thursday Ladies Night—or more accurately, Wenches’ Night, where the women were served dollar beers and, if they felt like dressing the part with a full skirt and peasant blouse, the lower cut the better—they might even get their beer for free. Emmy’d apparently had a thing for one of the servers, a guy named Mark who wouldn’t give her the time of day. September and Gretchen had chased him down at Gulliver’s and really put the questions to him, but he wasn’t all that smart, and he was one of those “workout” guys who didn’t have time for much of anything else. He just didn’t seem to possess the imagination to commit the murders, so he’d disappeared into the background although they were keeping tabs on him.
The first victim, Sheila Dempsey, was the one they knew the least about. She’d been found outside the city limits and so, apart from hearing it on the news, the Laurelton police had little to do with the investigation, at least in the beginning. After the discovery of Emmy Decatur’s body, September had interviewed the county deputy assigned to the case and he’d subsequently e-mailed her a list of people he’d talked to about Sheila, which September had run off her printer. She was scowling at it when Gretchen plopped down in the “perp” chair next to her desk and leaned an elbow onto the papers on its top.
“Anything new?” she asked.
“I keep thinking we need to learn more about Sheila Dempsey. Reinterview the people listed in Deputy Dalton’s report.”
