“And once you’re at the car?” Savannah continued.
“Look in the back floorboard before you even open the door, and make sure that sonofabitch isn’t waiting for you,” said Denise, the previously prim and proper librarian.
Savannah smiled. “You’re darned right. And once you’re inside the car?”
“Lock the doors right away,” Margie supplied. “And don’t waste any time getting going.”
“I think you’ve got it! Use what you’ve learned . . . not just now but all the time. Be careful and be safe until we meet again. And, in spite of all this, try to enjoy the holidays.”
As Savannah watched her vigilant students file out to their cars, employing all of her suggestions, she should have felt good. At least, they were better informed, less likely to fall prey to the predator.
But she didn’t feel good.
And she wasn’t sure why.
Tammy walked up to Savannah and slid her arm through hers. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t know.”
Savannah didn’t take her eyes off the lot, watching each woman as, one by one, they got into their cars and pulled away. Finally, the last one drove off, leaving only half-a-dozen empty cars in the lot.
“I’ve just got a creepy feeling,” she said, searching the shadows.
“How creepy?”
“Very.”
“Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Maybe.”
She walked Tammy to her car, and Tammy waited until Savannah was inside her Camaro before the two women drove away from the lot together.
“Maybe Tammy’s right; maybe it’s nothing,” Savannah whispered to the empty darkness around her as she headed home.
But inside, deep in her psyche, where Savannah stored things like feminine intuition and gut-level instincts, she knew damned well . . . it wasn’t nothing. It was something. She just didn’t know what or who.
He had been sitting in one of the “empty” cars in the library parking lot, watching the women exit the building. Slouched low in the seat, his window rolled down a crack, he had been able to hear some of what had been said.
Their comments amused him. Their caution was so misplaced.
Because he had changed his m.o.
So what if the average criminal followed the same pattern, crime after crime, until he was caught? He wasn’t your average criminal. Not by a long shot.
He was smart—at least in his own, not-particularly-humble opinion. He was flexible. He knew when it was time to shift some things around. No problem.
The end result would be the same. He’d still wind up in an orange grove with the woman of his choice. And then . . . party, party!
This time he had chosen a bit more carefully. He watched his quarry as she stood and chatted with the others, unaware that he was watching, unaware of the role he would play in her life very soon.
Yes, this time he intended to do a number of things differently.
He would study his victim more thoroughly. He would stalk her a little longer, savoring the hunt. And when the time came, he would fulfill some of his darkest fantasies, dreams that, until now, had only been in his mind. But he would bring them into reality. Live every moment in the flesh.
This time, he was going to rape her, beat her, hurt her, as he had before.
But this time, she was going to die. The ultimate fantasy fulfilled.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” he whispered, as he watched her drive away, out of sight, but only for the moment. He didn’t care where she was going now; he knew exactly where to find her when he wanted her. This time he had really done his homework.
“That’s right, baby, twenty-four hours . . .” he repeated, then added, “. . . more or less.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
December 12—7:04 P.M.
Charlene Yardley had drifted off to sleep long ago, but Savannah continued to sit in the chair beside her hospital bed, reading from the worn fairy-tale book she had brought from home. Although Savannah’s own mother had spent more evenings carousing in honky-tonks than reading to her children, Savannah had gone to sleep many nights with the sound of her Granny Reid’s gentle voice in her ears.
Although child psychiatrists might have objected to Granny scaring her granddaughter witless with tales of cannibalistic witches, cross-dressing wolves, and cinder girls whose only ambition was to charm a prince into supporting them for the rest of their happily-ever-after lives, such tales were part of a Southern girl’s upbringing.
Savannah betted on the fact that Charlene Yardley’s mom had read her to sleep with such stories, and the tears in Charlene’s eyes had proven she was right.
Once, half an hour ago, Savannah had slipped out to make a phone call to Dirk. They had already spent the afternoon together, going over the victims’ files. But when she had told him she was at the hospital and had something new, he had said he would be over as soon as possible. She had decided to wait until he arrived to discuss her latest finding with him.
He didn’t disappoint her. Five minutes later, he stuck his head into the room and seeing the sleeping Charlene, tiptoed over to the side of the bed.
“Thanks for coming,” Savannah whispered, laying the book aside. “I couldn’t wait to show you this.”
“Yeah, I wanna see it,” he replied. “But you may wanna show me and then get the hell outta here.”
“Why?”
“The captain was standing by my desk when you called. When I hung up, he wanted to know what you had told me. I described the bruise, like you did, and he got all interested . . . said he was gonna drop by himself to look at it.”
“Since when does Bloss take an interest in the details of a case?”
He shrugged. “Mostly when it’ll irk your butt.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
Charlene stirred and moaned slightly. They waited until she was completely still and her breathing was slow and even before Savannah nudged Dirk closer to the bed.
“Have you got your penlight?” she asked.
He pulled the small flashlight from his pocket and handed it to her.
Flipping on the small switch, she leaned over the sleeping Charlene. Shielding half of the light with her hand to keep it out of the woman’s eyes, Savannah directed the beam on the lower part of Charlene’s right cheek.
“Take a look at that,” she said, “just above her jawbone.”
He leaned close and squinted, then he quirked one eyebrow. “I’ll be damned. You’re right,” he said. “Did you ask her about it?”
“Yeah. She has no idea how it got there.”
“Hmmm . . .”
Charlene stirred again, and Savannah snapped off the flashlight. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s talk outside.”
She gave Dirk back his light, scooped up her storybook, and followed him out of the room.
They walked down the hall several yards, to get out of earshot of the formidable Officer Morton O’Leary and a couple of nearby nurses who were chatting over some patient charts.
“You were right,” he said again. “That’s one helluva patriotic bruise. A star—distinctive as can be—and some stripes. How the heck do you suppose she got that?”
“Yeah, what are you talking about, a star?” said a nasal, twangy voice behind them that set Savannah’s teeth on edge. She turned to see Captain Bloss, who had just rounded the corner, coming from the elevator bank. Apparently, he had overheard Dirk’s comment; he was all ears—except for his bulbous, varicose-veined nose and little piggy eyes.
“The victim has a very distinctive bruise on her cheek,” Savannah said, swallowing her distaste and resisting the overwhelming urge she had every time she saw the cursed man to spit in his eye. Granny Reid would not have been proud.
“It looks like a . . . star?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Dirk interjected. “A five-pointed star with some long, spaced out stripes beside it.”
“That’s pretty weird.” Bloss sniffed loudly and wiped his
nose with the back of his hand. Deliberately, he turned away from Savannah to face Dirk. “What do you make of it, Coulter?”
Dirk shrugged. “Don’t know. I just saw it. Like you said, it’s weird.”
Savannah decided to talk, whether she was being addressed or not. “I think the rapist slapped her, wearing a ring with a prominent star on it. The stripes are where his fingers struck her. Some of our other victims were sure he was right-handed. If he was facing her when he backhanded her, the marks would be on the right side of her face. That’s where they are.”
Bloss studied her thoughtfully for a long moment, then gave her a sarcastic smile that made him, if possible, even less attractive. Her palms itched to slap the look off his face.
“Well, well,” he said, “too bad you’re not still on the force, Reid. You’re quite the little Sherlock Holmes.”
“And you, Bloss, may shove it . . . sideways . . . with barbed wire wrapped around it,” she said, as coolly as though she were delivering a stock market report. Turning to Dirk, she said just as casually, “You know where I am if you need me.”
“Thanks, Van,” he said. “I never would have noticed that bruise and it could be important. I owe ya.”
She knew he was saying all that because Bloss was standing there. Dirk never missed a chance to make her look good in front of the stupid brass who had fired her. And he had never forgiven Bloss for breaking up their partnership. God bless him.
“You bet you owe me, big boy,” she said in her best Mae West impression. “An extra large pizza, and this time I get toppings and a six-pack to wash it down with. Bloss here’s buyin’.”
As she sauntered away, she could feel Bloss’s eyes boring into her backside. Gran would have been proud. She’d put him in his place and hadn’t even spit between his eyes. Gran had done her job well; Savannah was a true Southern belle, a lady through and through.
Well . . . except for that part about telling him to shove barbed wire up his rear end. Sideways.
7:12 P.M.
As he crouched in the oleander bushes beside her garage, he decided that the rear floorboards of cars hadn’t been all that uncomfortable by comparison. At least, there hadn’t been ants in those cars, and they hadn’t smelled like tomcat piss.
He’d been here for more than half an hour, and his patience was wearing thin.
She should have been home ten minutes ago . . . at the latest. Where the hell was she, anyway? He’d make her pay for holding him up like this.
And it wasn’t just the discomfort or the inconvenience. He had studied the household and knew the comings and goings. If she didn’t get here soon, there would be a greater risk of intervention by a third or fourth party.
On the other hand, the added risk made it all the juicier. Danger, and its accompanying adrenaline rush, had been his favorite narcotic for quite some time. A lot of people fantasized about rape, he surmised. But few had the courage to actually act out those fantasies.
That was what set him apart from the others. They were just dreamers; he was a doer.
He figured he wasn’t any worse than anyone else. Others fantasized, he performed. That didn’t make him bad, just ballsy . . . and a lot smarter than the average Joe, because he got away with it.
Only time would tell if he could get away with murder, too.
7:17 P.M.
As Margie Bloss drove her new BMW Roadster down Harrington Boulevard, heading for home, she briefly entertained the fantasy of turning the car north and just driving, driving, driving, until she hit San Francisco.
She had never been to San Francisco, but she had seen the postcards. And, from what she’d heard, she was pretty sure she’d like it.
Anywhere was better than her dad’s house. Mostly because he was in it. Sometimes.
If there was one thing Margie Bloss hated—and she hated a lot of things about her parents—it was coming home to an empty house. And in her sixteen years, she had come home to find her house empty far more often than she had been greeted by a parent at the front door.
For a few years, she and her mom had lived next door to her best friend, Meg. Megan’s mom was one of those stay-at-home types who baked cookies from scratch and sewed all the kids’ Halloween costumes . . . stuff like that. She had been in the kitchen, dishing up hot chocolate chippers from the oven when Meg and Margie had come home from school every afternoon. And she had let Margie hang out at their house until her mom got home from work . . . even if it was pretty late . . . and it often was.
But then, Meg’s mom could afford to stay at home; she was still married to Meg’s father. He hadn’t fooled around with other women and got his butt kicked out of the house, like Margie’s crummy dad.
A few weeks ago, Margie’s mom had married Crummy Husband Number Three. Numero Tres and Margie had hated each other on sight, when Mom dragged him home from the bar that first night, and their relationship only deteriorated from there. Days before the wedding, he said, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to support some punk with pink hair and a ring through her nose. The kid cleans up her act, or she’s out!”
So, Margie did the only thing she could under the circumstances . . . she dyed her hair orange and green, and got her tongue pierced, too.
He had kicked her out. And Mom had let him.
To hell with them both, she decided.
Worse yet, they had shipped her off to her dad’s. Talk about going from bad to worse. Oh, sure, he had bought her the Roadster, and it was a pretty cool car.
But it didn’t make up for years of coming home to an empty house and waiting, hour after hour, for your parent to arrive . . . a parent who, if honest, would admit wishing that you weren’t living there.
As she pulled into the driveway and pushed the button on the remote garage-door opener, she didn’t know whether to hope her dad’s car would be inside or not. Her dad . . . or being alone . . . what a lousy choice.
He was gone.
Okay, fine. She’d blast out his stereo and smoke a joint right in the living room. He wouldn’t smell it when he did come home; he’d been smoking cigarettes for so long that his nose didn’t work.
Maybe she’d shoot up some heroin, too, just to irk him, and invite some boys over for an orgy.
Except that Margie didn’t do that sort of thing. No hard stuff. She might smoke some pot once in a blue moon. She might drink a little and let a boyfriend feel her up if she really, really liked him. She might yell at her folks to get what she wanted from time to time, but Margie liked to think that, basically, she was a lot better kid than they gave her credit for being.
She had friends who were a lot worse.
As she pulled her Roadster into the dark garage, she was careful not to hit the trash cans on her right or the water heater on the left. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, the car was pretty special to her, and she wanted to keep the paint and body perfect for as long as she could.
When he had given it to her, her dad had made some smart-mouth remark about how she would probably wreck it the first month. She would show him how wrong he was . . . how responsible she had become since she had turned sixteen. It was time the old man realized, she wasn’t a kid anymore.
Making sure the car was securely in Park, she cut the key and grabbed her purse from the seat beside her. Just as she was opening the door, she thought of what Savannah had said about being careful when you got in and out of your vehicle. Savannah was pretty cool; Margie wished she had a mom or at least a big sister like Savannah to talk to, to do things with. That would be—
The rest of the thought vanished the instant she saw him, a man-shaped shadow, slipping beneath the garage door just before it slid closed.
He was inside! With her! And the door was closed!
It’s your dad, her mind whispered frantically. And she tried with all her might to believe it.
He forgot his keys or something. Yeah, that’s it.
But that wasn’t it.
And he wasn’t her father.
Through the garage’s one small window, the streetlamp shone in, just enough for her to see the snowy, curly beard, the silly hat with the white fur trim.
She opened her mouth to scream, but the cry froze there, choking her, and all that came out was a strangled, gagging sound.
“Don’t!” he said as he moved closer to her. “Don’t scream, don’t say anything, just do exactly what I say. Because if you don’t, I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”
Margie nodded as a wave of pure terror washed over her, icy cold, from head to toe. When the jolt of adrenaline hit her knees they nearly buckled beneath her.
“I said, ‘Do you understand?’ ” he repeated. His voice had a harsh, cruel tone to it. “Answer me, or I’ll kill you right here and now.”
“Yes.” She gulped and nodded her head vigorously. “I understand you.”
And she did. She understood him much better than he probably realized.
Margie wasn’t a stupid girl. She had lied and been lied to many times before, and she was streetwise enough to recognize manipulation when she heard it.
And she knew deep in her gut—just as she had known that this intruder wasn’t her father the instant he had entered the garage—whether she did as she was told or not, this guy intended to hurt her.
Then he was going to kill her.
CHAPTER NINE
7:42 P.M.
“Tammy, I can’t believe you did all this. Bless your little pea-pickin’ heart.” Savannah gave her assistant a hug as she surveyed her “child-proof” guest bedroom, stripped to the bare minimum in anticipation of the arrival of the twins from Hades. “You put away the china knickknacks,” she said, “and my porcelain doll and the antique satin pillows . . .”
“And your nasty books that were stashed under the nightstand,” Tammy added with a smug grin.
“You mean, my ladies’ erotica?”
“That’s what I said . . . your smut.”
Savannah put on an indignant face and crossed her arms over her abundant chest. “I’ll have you know, Miss Tammy Smartie Pants Hart, that some of that is considered classic literature.”
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