She struggled violently. Her purse fell, its contents spilling onto the ground. Remembering a safety tip she’d once heard, she forced herself to let her legs collapse, leaving her entire body weight in his hands.
The move took him off guard, and he dropped her with a grunt. Amber landed on her knees, hard on the blacktop. She thought about the keys, but instead lunged for her phone. “I’m calling the cops!”
He stared down at her, not appearing the least bit concerned. Swinging his hand, he slapped the phone out of her fingers as easily as he would have shooed away a bug.
That was when she saw what was in his other hand. And fear turned to terror.
“They won’t get here in time.”
6
Winnie Freed hadn’t been home the previous evening.
Stacey had been prepared to break the news, as gently as possible, to Lisa’s mother, but when she and Dean had arrived there, the small house had been empty. A neighbor had told them Winnie was working evenings through the weekend at the hotel. And Stan, who’d recently taken a second job to make ends meet, was pulling the night shift all the way over in Leesburg.
She hadn’t known whether to be disappointed or relieved. Never having been the type to put off an unpleasant task, since the stressing over it was often worse than the doing, she was probably more the former.
Dean hadn’t been happy, either. In fact, she’d sensed his frustration was even greater than her own. Learning why, when he’d told her this sick psycho killer was setting up his next crime, she understood.
She’d considered notifying Winnie at work. Since the woman had been away from town all day, however, she couldn’t have heard any rumors yet. And she didn’t expect Winnie to be able to help much with the case. Meeting with Lisa’s mother would be more about comforting the woman in her grief than getting any real information that could help them, so she’d decided to wait until morning.
Spending the rest of the evening in her office with Dean and his two coworkers, Special Agents Stokes and Mulrooney, she’d given them everything she had on the case. She liked Jackie Stokes. They’d hit it off right away, possibly because they both knew what it was like to be a woman in a male-dominated field.
Kyle Mulrooney took a little getting used to. He was mouthy and he swaggered. But there was something about the twinkle in his eye and his genuine grin that enabled her to see past the blustery exterior. He might have been keeping up a series of running jokes in her office last night, when she’d briefed the three agents on everything she knew about the people in Lisa’s life, but he also hadn’t missed a single detail.
One of the most interesting things Mulrooney had pointed out was that Lisa was unlike the other victims in one way: They had been normal working women, students, all from good backgrounds, leading average lives. Lisa, however, had been one of society’s throwaways. Nearly everyone had given her up as no good, destined only for a bad end, though most people had figured she was headed for jail rather than a cold, vicious death.
Stacey included, to her eternal regret
The realization had kept her awake for hours after she’d fallen into bed, exhausted but unable to shut her brain down. Her mind was awash with the case, the possibility that someone here in Hope Valley might have murdered eight people.
When she’d finally thrust those thoughts away, late in the night, Dean Taggert had taken up residence in her head and done his little number on her, too.
“Not gonna go there today,” she reminded herself as she got into her car at seven a.m. Saturday. She had made a mental deal with herself before finally succumbing to sheer fatigue the night before. She’d remain all business with Taggert until he made it clear he was interested in more than that.
Stacey was no old-fashioned, the-guy-has-to-make-the-first-move kind of woman, but the stakes were too high for her to do anything else. She was out of her depth, unsure how to proceed. If exploring the unexpected attraction between them was okay on his part despite his job, this case, and his obviously screwed-up personal life, it’d be okay with her. But she couldn’t make that decision for him.
“So for once, let a man take the lead,” she muttered as she backed out of her driveway. Even though she already hated the very thought of it. She’d called the shots in every relationship she’d ever had. And maybe that’s why you haven’t had very many.
Ignoring the little voice in her head, she took off, heading not downtown, but toward the road leading out of Hope Valley. Though she had plans to meet the FBI agents at her office at eight thirty, she had a stop to make first. There weren’t many people she could talk to about this case; not many who’d even be able to comprehend it, much less treat it with the absolute secrecy that it demanded.
She could, however, think of one.
“Hi, Dad,” she said when he answered his front door about ten minutes later. Normally, since she had a key, she would have let herself in. Peeking into the window of the closed garage, however, and seeing Connie’s car parked inside, she hadn’t done it.
Let them think they were fooling the town. They both deserved a little happiness in their not-so-secret affair.
The look on his face-concern instead of embarrassment at potentially being caught with an overnight girlfriend-confirmed that he already knew what was going on. “Figured you’d be showing up soon.”
An early riser all his life, Ed Rhodes had never gotten used to the habit of being a layabed, as he called it. He was already dressed, in long khaki shorts and a tropical shirt. Stacey hid a smile; Connie had obviously picked out this ensemble.
“Come here and give your old man a hug.” Reaching out, he enfolded her in his arms and drew her against his solid chest. Stacey closed her eyes, hugged him, and let herself be his daughter for a moment.
But as soon as he released her, she went back to being his successor as sheriff. “Got some time to talk?”
“Coffee’s on. I’ll grab us some and meet you back here.”
Nodding, she walked across the porch, hearing the familiar creaks of the old wooden planks, once a bright white, now faded to gray, with chips of paint peeling up at the corners. Tim had lived here for the first year after he’d come back from overseas, and had promised to do all kinds of needed repairs. As was so often his habit lately, her brother had done nothing but stay to himself, vacillating between bouts of anger and sorrow, lashing out at anyone who even tried to help him.
Now Tim had his own small place, and their father was once again alone, but he’d never leave. Her family had lived here for fifty years, starting with her grandparents. And though she sometimes worried about Dad being outside of town, two miles from the closest neighbor, she couldn’t imagine him ever living anywhere else.
Dropping her elbows onto the railing, she stared at the thick woods, the lake, and the old red barn in the distance. Then, hearing the scratch of nails on the steps, she realized she had company. “Hey, girl,” she murmured with a smile. “Out getting into trouble?”
She bent to scratch the tired old mutt who had shown up on her father’s porch a few winters ago and never quite left. Her dad had originally called his unexpected pet Tramp, because of the dog’s wandering tendencies. Then he’d realized she was a Lady. But she still wandered.
“Don’t be mad at Connie for telling me,” her father said as he joined her at the railing. She hadn’t even heard him come back out.
“I figured she would.”
“She’s not a blabber; it didn’t go anywhere beyond me.”
“I know.” Accepting the cup he offered her, she sat in one of the wicker rockers by the door, waiting for him to sit beside her. The dog curled up at her father’s feet, resting her head right on top of his leather loafers.
“So what did she tell you?” Honestly, Stacey wasn’t sure what Connie knew, whether she’d been listening through keyholes or just making a lot of assumptions.
“That the FBI is here looking for Lisa Zimmerman’s body.” Her father’s big, competent hands, gnarled with the rheumato
id arthritis that had forced him to retire before he was ready, tightened on the armrests of his chair. “That there’s some kind of movie of her being killed, and you had to watch it.”
Listening at keyholes. Thank God the video had been a silent one.
She sipped her coffee, trying to decide how much she could share. Her father was no random bystander; he’d been sheriff of this town for more than twenty years and had lived in it for more than sixty. She trusted him like she trusted no other person on earth.
Most important, he knew every person in the county. And while he’d probably have as much trouble as she did imagining that one of them could be a serial killer, having another set of eyes evaluating possible suspects could be very helpful.
“This is going to be hard to hear,” she warned. “I know you were friendly with Lisa Zimmerman’s father.”
He nodded once, indicating he was prepared for what she had to say.
So she told him. How Lisa had died, where, and when. Everything the FBI had on that case. Respecting Dean and his team, she made a point to avoid discussing specifics on other murders, expanding only on the facts that affected Hope Valley.
That was enough for any normal person to digest, anyway. She saw no need to describe how those seven other women had suffered. Hearing the details last night had been enough to make her physically ill again.
By the time she was finished, her big, blustery father had grown pale and glassy-eyed. “Lord almighty.”
“Yeah.”
“That poor little thing. This will crush her mother.”
“I know.”
He fell silent, thinking about it, slowly stretching and massaging his pained knuckles by long force of habit. Finally, his gaze focused somewhere on the woods beyond the house, he murmured, “Do you think they’re right? That somebody from around here killed her and those other women?”
She did. Mentally, she had accepted that as a likelihood. But damn, did it hurt to admit it out loud, especially to someone who loved this town so very much. She couldn’t lie to him, though; never had been able to. So she nodded. “I do.”
He closed his eyes, a low, small shudder rolling through him. The cup shook in his hand, and Stacey reached for it, worried his poor, tortured fingers would lose their grip on it and spill hot coffee all over his lap.
But he waved her away, lowering the cup to a small table himself. “I’m all right. Just… not something I ever thought I’d hear about Hope Valley.”
“Me, either.”
“I investigated a murder once, you know. More’n twenty years ago. And damned if it didn’t involve two good old boys who’d had a fight out at Dick’s one Saturday night.” He shook his head ruefully. “I can’t help thinking lightning shoulda struck and burned that place clear to the ground by now, with all the trouble it’s been.”
She hadn’t known that, but wasn’t surprised at her father’s sentiments regarding the rowdy tavern. It had been the bane of many of her weekends since taking office, and many of his before her.
“Have you got anybody in mind? One of Lisa’s no-good boyfriends? I heard she was dating some ex-con biker.”
“He’d been in a Georgia jail for a few months when she disappeared,” she said, already having looked at that angle as soon as Winnie had reported Lisa missing.
“I suppose, if there are other cases you’re not telling me about, that it’s got to be somebody who can go out of town without much notice.”
“Possibly, though I think all the other murders were within a few hours’ drive of here.” The Reaper had been able to do his dirty work in a single night, in most cases.
“Still, that many overnights, wouldn’t be easy for a family man to be gone nights, unless he had a reason to be. Night job, or one that required travel.”
“True.”
“I think there are a lot of marriages around here that had some ups and downs because of that girl, so it could be a married man. But I bet you’re looking for a single fella. Somebody who hasn’t had much luck with women.”
Stacey’s brow rose. “Maybe you should go to work for the FBI as a profiler.”
He shrugged. “Common sense. If he’s as vicious as you say he is toward women, he obviously hates them.” Frowning darkly, he mumbled, “That Warren Lee, somebody sure dropped him in a whole barrel full of crazy somewhere along the line.”
“But he hates everybody, not just women. When he goes…”
“He’ll go postal,” he said, finishing her sentence.
“He did act strangely yesterday, though,” she mused, more to herself than to him.
“Stranger than usual?”
“Good point.”
Her father fell silent for a few moments, gazing toward the lawn. Then, in a low voice, he said, “That stepfather of hers is a mean son of a bitch.”
Stacey concurred, but she’d rarely heard her dad use foul language and always made a point of cleaning up her own around him. “Did you ever think, ever wonder…”
“If he abused her? Hell, yes, I wondered. Something made that girl change right after he moved into her mama’s house.”
“I sometimes see bruises on Winnie’s arms,” Stacey admitted. “Whenever I ask her about them she says they’re from work.”
He sneered. “Yeah, those laundry carts have big fists on ’em, don’t they?”
Deep in thought, she whispered, “I never saw bruises on Lisa. But maybe the abuse was different.”
Dad’s hands clenched into fists, though it must have pained him terribly. “I asked her once when she was a teenager.”
Stunned, Stacey felt her mouth fall open. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. You were with the VSP when the worst of it happened. She went so wild, and I had to haul her in for dealing. When she begged me to let her off, saying she was pregnant and desperate, I flat out asked her if Stan was the father.”
“Oh, my God,” Stacey mumbled, never having heard this part of the story.
“She denied it. Told me if I went to Winnie about it, she’d run away forever.”
Which just made it more likely.
“I knew by the look in her eyes that she wasn’t lying about the pregnancy, but I guess she miscarried, or went out of town and took care of it. Never saw her have any baby. She was probably, oh, fifteen at the time.”
The story stunned her and broke her heart all over again for Lisa. By the time Stacey had come back to Hope Valley, she’d simply accepted the girl as the town tramp and druggie, not even recognizing her. If she hadn’t left, if she’d moved back after college, might she have been able to do something? Lisa had looked up to her once, had treated her like a big sister. If she’d been around, could she have helped her escape the nightmare her life had become?
A nightmare that might have included sexual molestation by her stepfather?
She couldn’t even bear to think about it, that poor little girl slowly turning into the helpless, desperate young woman she’d become, so hungry for escape and for love that she sought them both from any man who’d show her a little attention.
The dark thoughts churned in her mind; her stomach clenched and heaved. And in the darkest corner of her brain the images anchored and took root. Bloody images.
“Could he have wanted to shut her up?” she whispered. “Or maybe she was older, strong enough to turn him down, and he snapped?” Had that sent the man on the path of savagery the Reaper had let loose upon the world?
Her father said nothing, continuing to rock, slowly, absorbing the possibility just as Stacey was. Finally, though, he mumbled, “It’s a damn tragedy. I can’t imagine how different things might have turned out if her daddy hadn’t died in that accident.”
Stacey didn’t even want to think about how Lisa’s world had blown to bits with her father’s death and her mother’s remarriage to a complete bastard, one in a long line of mean men, if the stories about the Freeds were true. Lisa’s life might have been very different, indeed.
“I know.” Re
aching over, she took her dad’s hand as gently as possible, thinking not for the first time how lucky she and her brother were. Her life might have gotten just as screwed up as poor Lisa’s had he made some different choices. Lord, when she thought about how Tim and Randy used to scheme to get their widowed father together with Randy’s widowed mother… She shuddered at the very thought of having grown up with that wicked witch of a stepmother. But her father obviously had much better taste. He’d steered well clear of Alice Covey, and all the other divorcees and widows who’d set their eyes on the handsome widower, devoting himself just to her and to Tim.
Which was one reason she was so happy he’d finally reached out and grabbed some personal happiness with Connie.
Thinking about her brother, she said, “Tim came to see me the other day.”
His mouth turned down at the corners. “I heard.”
Oh, she’d just bet. She doubted the news had come from Connie, who tried to avoid upsetting Dad as much as possible. Her brother had most likely come out here screaming at the injustice that his bitch of a sister wouldn’t help him out in his time of need. As if she and everyone else hadn’t been doing exactly that since the day he’d come home two years ago, injured and so messed up in the head that she barely recognized him.
“Dad, he’ll never help himself if we keep bailing him out. He doesn’t need his family to keep rescuing him, or his buddy to keep dragging him into trouble.”
“Randy’s been there for him.”
“I know. But a friend who encourages him in his anger and resentment, who takes him illegally out-of-season hunting, or drinking seven nights a week, is not what he needs right now. He needs to get back over to the vet hospital and talk to that shrink. He shouldn’t have stopped going after only a couple of months.”
He met her stare evenly. “I know you’re right. Logically, I know that.” His free hand dropped over hers, covering it. “But he’s my boy. I look at him and I see those scars and I think about what he’s been through and…” He didn’t ask her. Didn’t make the request out loud. But he made it just the same, with his pained eyes.
Fade To Black Page 11
