I Can See You

by Karen Rose

  “No need. It was just a very bad time.”

  “Well, I think we can approach this from a different direction. Buckland’s researched Eve’s past. Let’s assume he ran across Winters’s threat while he was reading up in the online archives of some paper. Did Winters give any interviews before he died?”

  “Probably,” David gritted. “Asshole liked to hear himself talk.”

  Noah searched for prison interviews. Luckily there weren’t that many, as Winters had not survived long behind bars. Justice, he thought fiercely. I hope it hurt. A lot.

  “Here’s one,” Noah said. It was a transcript of a live interview in which Winters described his assaults in detail, including the “cars with strange men” comment. He read to himself, sparing Hunter the memory. Noah’s head pounded as he read Winters’s boasts about Eve. His jaw clenched hard, his fists harder. I hope to God it hurt a hell of a lot.

  “It wouldn’t have taken Buckland long to find it,” he finally said. He remembered the look in Eve’s eyes, the utter shock. The fear. And the shame. “That he’d use it to rattle Eve says quite a lot.”

  Hunter slid another omelet on his plate. “So what are you going to do about him?”

  Noah forced his clenched fists to relax so he could pick up a fork. “I sent out a BOLO last night when I found he’d tampered with her gun. Today, Eve will file her complaint, and when I catch him, he’ll wish he’d never seen a newspaper.”

  Hunter nodded once. “Sweet.”

  “What’s sweet?” They turned to find Eve standing in the doorway. Her short hair stood in wet spikes. She’d been crying, hard. Hunter took a step toward her, but she held up one hand to fend him off. “Not now. Please. What’s sweet?”

  Noah closed the interview and lowered the lid of Hunter’s laptop. “Just that you’ll file your complaint and we’ll put Buckland in a cage where he belongs.”

  “I’ll drive you to the police station,” Hunter said. “Sit. You need to eat. Webster needs to sleep. If you both don’t start taking care of yourselves, you’re going to get sick.”

  Unbelievably, the side of her mouth lifted in a smile. “David takes care of people when he’s stressed out,” she said to Noah and Hunter bristled. She sat, careful not to touch either of them as she did so. “I’m sitting and I’ll eat. But I’ll drive myself to the police station.” Again she raised her hand as both he and Hunter opened their mouths to protest. “You can follow me if you want, but once I’ve filed that report, I’m going to school, where I’ll be surrounded by people. I have my Abnormal seminar at ten. If I’m not expelled by the time all of this is over, I don’t want to be behind.”

  Hunter turned his glare from Eve to Noah. “You’re going to let her?”

  Her face was cool and calm. But her dark eyes churned with emotion and he knew she needed at least this vestige of control. “I can’t stop her,” he said to Hunter, “but we’ll all watch her. And I’m taking your gun as evidence,” he said to Eve.

  “It’s okay. I have another. I have several others.”

  “Of course you do,” Noah murmured. “It’s a survivor thing. I get it. Promise you’ll park out in the open and you’ll stay around people.”

  She nodded. “I promise.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Hunter snarled and turned back to the counter, slicing green peppers with frustrated vengeance. “If you’re going to be stupid, at least take my truck.”

  “Why?” Eve asked, still too calm.

  “Buckland will be looking for you in your Mazda. Besides, your car needs a tune-up and it’ll give me something else to do while I worry about somebody else killing you.”

  She rose, placed her hand on Hunter’s arm and his frantic chopping stilled. “I know you worry because you love me. And I know better than anyone that I am not invincible. But if I cower here, then he wins and I lose. I promise I will be careful. I will call you every hour and if I see Buckland, I’ll call 911 so fast. But I can’t hide. Not even for you.”

  Hunter’s shoulders sagged and Noah cleared his throat. “I’ll follow her in and she can park in the police garage. If he follows her, we’ll grab him.”

  “And when she leaves?”

  “I’ll find a way to get coverage.”

  Hunter nodded once. “If he doesn’t get coverage, you call me, do you understand?”

  She leaned up, kissed Hunter’s cheek. “Completely.”

  Noah stood, his heart unsteady. With Hunter, Eve was unfettered and made Noah realize how much of her guard she maintained with him. But he’d promised to give her time and space. “I’m going to catch an hour sleep. Don’t leave without me.”

  Wednesday, February 24, 9:00 a.m.

  Noah gave Jack a short nod when they sat down with the rest of the team in Abbott’s office. An hour of sleep had made a little difference. At least he could think again.

  They were waiting for Abbott, who was still in a meeting with the brass. Noah didn’t envy his boss a penny of his medium-sized salary at the moment.

  There was an awkward silence as they waited. Micki and Olivia looked at him and Jack with concern. Olivia’s partner, Kane, looked as if he realized he’d missed something, but wasn’t going to push it because he trusted his partner to fill him in later. Olivia and Kane had one of the best working relationships of any of Abbott’s staff. Noah envied them.

  Ian had been at Rachel’s scene and had worked the rest of the night. He looked like hell. The only one at the table fully rested was Carleton Pierce, but even he frowned as he checked each face around the table.

  “What’s happened?” Carleton asked. “And I’m not talking about the investigation.”

  “We were too late getting to the victim’s house last night,” Noah said. “She was already dead, by forty minutes.”

  Carleton’s brows knit. “Who found her?”

  “I did,” Olivia said. “And I missed the killer by ten minutes.”

  “I don’t understand. How did you know where to look?”

  “We got another tip,” Jack said tightly. “From our CI.”

  “He knows, Jack,” Noah said. “Carleton, I know that you went by to see her last night. We were able to figure out which of the test subjects was next, but we got our signals crossed and now Rachel Ward is dead.”

  “I see,” Carleton said, glancing at Jack’s stony face. “I wish I didn’t.”

  Abbott came in then. “Tell me we have something, people.” He closed the door, his face almost as stony as Jack’s. “At least balm for that ass kicking I just took. Ian?”

  “I finished the autopsy. The victim had a blood alcohol of 0.15.”

  “Whoa,” Micki said. “That made her damn near pickled. But I’m not surprised. We found a vodka bottle under the seat of her car. She’d drained it dry.”

  “The ket blood test isn’t back yet,” Ian said, “but I found no puncture wounds on her neck. I did find the same swelling around her elbows that Christy had, so I’m betting he used a straitjacket again. No defensive wounds on her hands, although there were ligature wounds at her ankles. She was tied to a chair while her feet burned.”

  Noah remembered. The smell in the place. Burning flesh. It still made him nauseous.

  “He burned her feet?” Carleton said, hushed. “My God.”

  “Burns on feet and calves,” Ian said. “Urine came back positive for amphetamines.”

  “Did she self-administer,” Abbott asked, “or did he give it to her?”

  “There was only one needle mark. I think he gave it to her to counteract the booze.”

  “He wanted her alert,” Micki murmured.

  “So he could scare her senseless with fire,” Jack said. “I checked her background. Five years ago her ex-husband found she’d been cheating on him, so he followed her to the motel where she met her lover and torched the place. The lover and two bystanders died. Rachel was trapped. She had severe smoke inhalation and almost died herself.”

  “That explains the old lung scarring I found,” Ia
n said. “I wondered.”

  “Where is the ex-husband now?” Olivia asked.

  “State pen,” Jack said, “serving twenty-five to life. And he’s still there as of this morning. I had the warden himself check the man’s cell.”

  “So this victim had a documented fear of fire,” Carleton said. “The killer could have assumed this was her greatest fear.”

  “Or he could have these.” Noah put a stack of questionnaires on the table. They’d been delivered that morning. “Filled out when subjects began the study at Marshall.”

  “May I?” Carleton reached for the questionnaires. “ ‘What is your greatest fear?’ ‘Why do you think you have this fear?’ Samantha feared being buried alive because…” He flipped to the next page. “Interesting. Her cousins buried her in the sand at the beach as a child and left her there, with a snorkel in her mouth to breathe from.”

  “So the killer buried her alive,” Abbott said.

  “In commercial-grade potting soil,” Micki said. “Available at any garden store. Oh, and he buried her in the bathtub. I sent a team to the apartment where Samantha lived. It hadn’t been rented out yet. Or, luckily for us, cleaned very well. We found soil under the edge of the grout around the tub and a few particles in the drain trap.”

  “What about Martha Brisbane?” Abbott asked.

  “Afraid of water,” Carleton said, scanning the page, then his face bent in sympathy. “Oh. Her father drowned. Martha saw it happen. She was five at the time.”

  Noah clenched his jaw. “You know, I keep thinking I can’t hate this guy any more, but I keep finding a way. To have read that, then to have used it…”

  “He’s a sociopath,” Carleton said simply. “A sadistic sociopath. He gets pleasure from the pain of others. Christy Lewis, phobia of snakes… Just because.” He looked up with a shrug. “That’s what she wrote. ‘Just because.’ ”

  “So she didn’t have any kind of traumatic event?” Jack asked.

  “Or she didn’t want to share it,” Carleton said. “There may very well not have been one. I see a lot of patients with snake phobias and many can’t tell me why. Some of it is instinctive. Snakes are dangerous and humans have developed a fear of dangerous things. Survival of the fittest and all that.”

  “And now Rachel Ward,” Abbott said. “With her fear of fire. Does she mention why?”

  “She says she’s afraid of right-wing Republicans, which is a NOYB answer—none of your business. Subjects will use sarcasm when they don’t want to tell you the truth.”

  “But,” Olivia said, “he could have googled her and found that out, like Jack did.”

  “But it wasn’t that simple,” Jack said with a frown. “Somebody had to dig. I googled her first, and didn’t get anything. I ran a background, saw she’d used a different name five years ago and checked the marriage licenses. I googled her ex to get the story.”

  Noah met Jack’s eyes and gave him a “well-done” nod and was relieved at Jack’s brisk nod back. “So,” Noah mused, “our killer understood her right-wing Republican answer was just a ruse and dug deeper. I find that strange.”

  “Why?” Abbott asked.

  “Exactly,” Noah said. “Why? Why not just accept it at face value and pick somebody else? There are five hundred names on the list. Why Rachel Ward?”

  “Maybe because she was so available,” Jack said. “She was online every night.”

  “Possibly,” Noah said. “I talked to a few neighbors last night who said she kept to herself, never went out, a real-world introvert. In Shadowland she was a cabaret dancer who’d take home a dozen ‘men’ a night.”

  “I don’t get the whole virtual sex thing,” Abbott said with a frown. “Is it common?”

  “Not uncommon, according to Eve. Not that she gets it either,” Noah added hastily.

  Abbott’s eyes rolled. “If Rachel had a liquor bottle under the seat of her car and a BA of oh-fifteen, he probably met her at a bar. Find out where.”

  “Not many bars in town,” Jack muttered sarcastically. “But it’s a start.”

  “What about the car I saw last night?” Olivia asked. “The brown Civic.”

  “Nothing from the BOLO,” Micki said. “And Girard’s wife’s car was in the garage.”

  “I want to know what connection Girard has to this guy,” Noah said. “He’s either faster than a speeding bullet, or Girard has a serious enemy.”

  “Who is Girard?” Ian and Carleton asked at the same time.

  “Axel Girard is the owner of the car that followed Christy home,” Jack said flatly.

  “His wife owns the plate I saw leaving Rachel’s neighborhood,” Olivia added.

  “He’s also an optometrist,” Abbott said. “And a model citizen.”

  “Every victim’s eyes have been glued open,” Ian said. “Being an optometrist can’t be a coincidence. I assume he has an alibi or you would have arrested him already.”

  “He had a so-so alibi for Christy, but he had a hell of an alibi for Rachel,” Noah said dryly. “As in two of our guys sitting in an unmarked car a few houses down, all night long.”

  “That is a hell of an alibi,” Carleton said. “Any chance he sneaked out?”

  “Possibly”—Noah shrugged—“but the timeline doesn’t work unless he drove a hundred-twenty the whole way home.”

  “So where is Girard now?” Carleton asked.

  “I had him brought in,” Noah said, “more for his own protection than anything else. If anything else happened, I’d know exactly where he was. But I let him go this morning. We still have a car watching his house.”

  “Chat with Dr. Girard,” Abbott said. “Find out why a killer has such a hard-on for him. There has to be a connection. This guy has been too damn meticulous. If nothing else, I want to know if there’s any way Girard had access to that list. What else?”

  “Dr. Donner and Jeremy Lyons,” Jack said. “We need their whereabouts. Right now they have the most access to study files.”

  “You haven’t talked to them yet?” Olivia asked, surprised.

  “We couldn’t find Donner,” Noah said. “He never showed up after morning classes. I met Lyons in the Deli with Eve, but when Jack and I went back to the university, he was gone, too. Then we caught wind of Axel Girard and spun our wheels for hours on him.”

  “Go back today and get their alibis for Christy, Rachel, and Martha,” Abbott said. “What about your panty pervert? Taylor Kobrecki.”

  “We checked with his pals,” Kane said, speaking for the first time. “He’s in the wind.”

  “His LUDs show calls from Bozeman, Montana,” Olivia said, “as recently as this morning. If he’s with his cell, he couldn’t have killed Rachel. We put Bozeman on alert.”

  Kane shrugged. “But it wouldn’t be the first time a perp had someone else take his cell out of area to establish an alibi.”

  “I’d be surprised if he was that clever,” Carleton said. “I checked him out. High school graduate, but barely. Special needs classes, no organization. He doesn’t have the acuity to form a plan like this. I think your resources would be best used elsewhere.”

  “Agreed,” Abbott said. “Anything else?”

  “Maybe,” Noah said. “Usage logs from the study show another participant who went from heavy play time to nothing, overnight. Her name was Amy Millhouse.”

  Jack looked perturbed. “Was?”

  “Yes. She committed suicide three weeks ago.”

  “We checked all the suicide reports,” Jack said. “Nothing looked like these scenes.”

  “I know, that’s why I said ‘maybe.’ We should check it out.”

  Abbott gave Noah a pensive look. “Do it. Then find Donner and Lyons. Check out everyone who knew about that damn list. Olivia, Kane, find out where Rachel met him last night. Somebody has seen this guy. Meet back here at five. Web, you stay.”

  “I just found out about Amy,” Noah said when everyone left. “I should have told you.”

  Abbott leaned b
ack and studied him. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Eve called me this morning, after I’d talked to Girard in holding. She was showing me the graphs and Millhouse’s obit when she got a text, we think from Kurt Buckland. It was a quote from the guy who assaulted her back in Chicago. She was shaken up.”

  “I guess so. And?”

  “And this Buckland’s been trying to pressure her to give him details on this case.” He told him about Buckland’s visit to Sal’s and the photos of him and Trina.

  Abbott listened, frowning. “I’ll get somebody on it. You focus on this case. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And next time, tell your partner about potential new victims before the group.”

  Noah bristled, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Wednesday, February 24, 9:10 a.m.

  After Winters, Eve found the shower the place to cry when people were around. The water covered the sobs and minimized eye swelling. She’d taken a lot of showers then.

  Very clean, she’d been. Very clean she was now as she sat in a chair at the police department, waiting to file a complaint against Buckland. His text had shaken her badly.

  “I’m Officer Michaels,” the policeman said with a kind smile. “I’ve seen you at Sal’s.”

  “Bud Lite,” she said, forcing a smile of her own.

  “Gotta watch that waistline,” he quipped, then sobered. “What happened last night?”

  Eve told him, watching his brow crease as she related the details. “And this morning he texted me. Detective Webster has already started a trace.” She frowned at Michaels’s expression of disbelief. “You don’t believe me.”

  “No, that’s not it at all. I’m just stunned. I know Kurt and this doesn’t sound like him.”

  Eve tugged at her sleeve, exposing the bruise that had faded a little during the night. “He did this. And another cop, Jeff Betz, saw the whole thing.”

  “Of course I believe you. I just never would have guessed it of Looey.”

  Eve sat back, her own brow creased now. “Looey?”

  “Yeah. That’s what some of the guys call Kurt. Don’t ask me why. Before my time.”