by Karen Rose
Lennie’s mouth tightened. “What will the ME swear to?” “That she’s dead.”
Lennie’s lip twitched. Once. Through all the horror, they had to find ways to lighten the stress. Humor normally sufficed, as long as they kept it to themselves. But the humor was a trapping, a cover that just hid the horror for a moment or two. Then it was there again, staring them in the face.
Steven sighed and opened the folder. “Kent also found what looks like a new tattoo on the Rush girl’s scalp. Whoever killed her shaved her bald and left his mark on her.”
Lennie bent down and squinted at the picture. “What is it?” “Not enough left to say. Kent’s investigating. Whoever shaved her head didn’t do it there in the clearing or if he did, he’s one meticulous sonofabitch. We picked at the grass with tweezers for two days and didn’t find a single hair. Nothing,” Steven added irritably.
It was Lennie’s turn to sigh. “Well, now you’ve got another place to look.”
Steven straightened in his chair. “What are you talking about, Lennie?”
Lennie pulled a folded sheet from his pocket. “We got a call from Sheriff Braden over in Pineville. His sister went in to wake his sixteen-year-old niece for school this morning and—”
Dread settled in the pit of Steven’s stomach. Two of them. Two meant the “s” word. Serial killer. “And the girl was gone,” he said woodenly.
“Bed slept in, no evidence of forced entry, window left unlocked.”
“Could be unrelated,” Steven said.
Lennie nodded soberly. “Pray they are. This one’s yours. I have to ask if you can handle it.”
Irritation bubbled and Steven let just a little of it show. “Of course I can, Lennie. I wish you’d just leave it the hell alone.”
Lennie shook his head. “I can’t, you know that. I don’t want one of my lead agents cracking in the middle of what could turn out to be a high-profile serial murder case. I also don’t want you to have to go through another case where children are stolen out of their beds.”
Like Nicky had been, six months before when a wife-beating, murdering cop took his littlest boy hostage to make Steven back down. Nicky was returned, physically unharmed, in large part due to the heroics of the cop’s abused wife, but his baby had not been the same. Gone was his infectious laughter, the way he’d hugged them for no reason at all. Nicky had allowed no hugs since that day six months ago. He hadn’t slept in his own bed, either, and he hadn’t slept through the night.
Steven knew this because he sure as hell hadn’t slept through the night either.
Lennie broke into his thoughts. “Steven, can you handle this or not?”
Steven looked at the picture of the mutilated body of Lorraine Rush and thought about the newest girl, missing from her bed. These girls deserved justice, above all else. He looked up at Lennie, his smile a mere baring of teeth. “Yes, Lennie. I can handle it.”
Lennie handed him the report, concern still evident in his eyes. “Her name is Samantha Eggleston. Her parents are waiting for your call.”
Thursday, September 29, 11:00 P.M.
Thunder rolled off to the east. Or was it west? It really didn’t matter, he thought, scratching the back of his neck with the flat of the blade. With his very sharp blade. He grinned to himself. One slip would be the end of him. He glanced down at the ground and raised a brow thoughtfully. One slip would be the end of her, too. But never stop with just one slip. Not when he’d gone to so much trouble. Every movement must be planned. And savored. He rolled up his left sleeve, then transferred the blade from one gloved hand to the other and methodically rolled up the right while she watched, her blue eyes wide and terrified.
Terrified was good. Just looking at her lying there tied, and scared—and nude—made his skin tingle with anticipation. She was completely under his control.
It was like . . . electricity. Pure electricity. And he’d made it. He’d created it. What a rush.
Rush. As in Lorraine Rush. No pun intended. Lorraine had been a good practice run. A good way to return to the game after so long on the sidelines. He’d forgotten just how damn good it felt.
This new one, she hadn’t made a sound yet. Well, she was wearing a thick strip of duct tape over her mouth to be perfectly fair. But he’d take the tape off eventually and she would. She’d try not to. She’d bite her lip and cry. But in the end she’d scream her head off. They always did. And it wouldn’t make one lousy bit of difference. That was one good thing about Hicksville. There were places you could go and scream bloody murder and nobody would ever hear a single word.
Another roll of thunder rattled the dry ground under his feet and this time he looked up to the night sky, totally annoyed. It could actually rain. How irritating was that? “The best laid plans,” he muttered, then had to grin as he punned once again. Laid. That was the operative word. One of ’em anyway. Then the wind changed and his grin faded. Of all the sonofabitch nights to rain.
He crossed his arms over his chest, holding the ten-inch blade out to one side, and frowned. He could just get it over with, but that seemed anticlimactic. He’d planned for quite a while to bag this little doll. She’d been so unsure. “I just don’t know,” she’d whispered into the phone, trying not to wake her parents and sound breathy at the same time. In his mind he mocked her maidenly refusals. If her parents only knew their little darling was a real little slut, meeting a stranger after they’d gone to sleep. No brainiac here. They’d raised a slut and an idiot.
He closed his eyes and brought the image of another to mind. He could see her face in his mind. So incredibly beautiful, so . . . pure. He’d have her someday. Soon. But until then...He looked down at the huddled form at his feet. Until then, this one would have to do.
Thunder rolled again. He needed to make up his mind. Either hurry up and finish before the rain closed in or pack her up and store her until the storm passed through. Either way he was taking a chance being out here in the rain. A hard rain would leave the ground soft. Soft ground left footprints and tire prints and cops were pretty good about tracking those kind of clues these days. Damn forensics. No matter. He was as smart as they were. Smarter.
Hell, a baboon was smarter than the cops. If he’d waited until the cops had discovered little Lorraine’s body on their own, there wouldn’t have been enough left of it to identify.
And he wanted little Lorraine’s body identified. He wanted everyone to know. To fear.
Fear me. Your daughters aren’t safe even in their own beds. Fear me.
He’d wait, he decided. He’d rushed the last one and it was over too fast. Like an amusement park ride you stand in line for two hours to ride and the damn ride only lasts three and a half minutes. He’d gone longer than three and a half minutes with the last one, for sure. But it was still over too fast. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. It had been his only mistake, he thought, rushing the grand finale. Everything else he’d done to perfection. Not a single thread of evidence left behind. No surprise there. He was thinking much more clearly now.
Carefully he sheathed his blade and slipped it under the front seat of his car, popping the trunk latch on his way back to where she lay, eyes still wide with terror.
“C’mon, sugar,” he drawled, scooping her up and tossing her over his shoulder. “Let’s go for a ride.” He dropped her in the trunk with a loud thud, then patted her bare butt fondly. She whimpered and he nodded. “Don’t worry, we’ll come back tomorrow. Until then, sit tight and entertain yourself. You could think about me,” he suggested brightly. “You do know who I am.” She shook her newly bald head hard, denying the inevitable, and he laughed. “Oh, come on, Samantha. You have to know who I am. Don’t you watch the news?” He leaned a little closer and whispered, “Don’t you have a good imagination?”
Her eyes shut tight, she pulled her nude body into a fetal position, shaking like a leaf. Two tears seeped from her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
He nodded again and slammed down the trunk. �
�Good girl. I guess you do.”
THREE
Friday, September 30, 12:30 P.M.
TWENTY-SEVEN DOWN, THREE TO GO. And Brad Thatcher’s would be one of the three.
You’re a coward, Jenna Marshall told herself. Afraid of a sheet of paper. Actually five sheets of paper stapled precisely in the upper left corner. Times the three students whose tests she’d yet to grade. She stared hard at the purple folder containing the ungraded organic chemistry tests.
You’re a coward and a procrastinator, she told herself, then sighed quietly. She looked across the scarred old table that dominated the faculty lounge, a wall of haphazardly stacked folders meeting her eye. Casey Ryan was back there somewhere, behind the folders, busily grading the junior English class’s thoughtful analyses of Dostoyevsky. Jenna shuddered. Poor kids. Not only did they have to read Crime and Punishment, but they had to write a theme on it, too. She rolled her eyes.
Get to work, Jen. Stop procrastinating and grade Brad’s test. She picked up her red pen, stared hard at the purple folder, thought about Brad Thatcher and the test he’d more than likely failed, then desperately looked around for anything else to do. The only other occupant of the faculty lounge was Lucas Bondioli, guidance counselor by day, pro golfer in his dreams. Lucas was intensely focused on sinking a putt into an overturned plastic cup. Lucas tended to become very unhappy when his putting was disturbed so Jenna turned her attention back to Casey.
Casey’s hand appeared over the top of the leaning stacks of folders and grabbed another theme paper, sending the stack swaying. Standing, Jenna grabbed the closest stack to avert certain disaster.
“Don’t even think about it,” Casey snapped, not even looking up from her grading.
“Dammit!” Lucas bit out.
“Just put them back and nobody gets hurt,” Casey continued, as if Lucas hadn’t spoken.
Jenna looked up in time to see Lucas’s putt go wide, winced, meekly put Casey’s folders back, and sat down. “Sorry, Lucas.”
“It’s okay,” Lucas responded glumly. “I wasn’t going to make it anyway.”
“What about me?” Casey demanded from behind the wall of folders.
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Jenna shot back. “I was just trying to bring some order into chaos.” She waved her hand at Casey’s leaning stacks. “You are a disorderly person.”
“And you are a procrastinator,” Lucas said mildly, sitting down next to Jenna.
Casey’s hand appeared to grab another theme. “Why are you procrastinating, Jen? That’s not like you.”
Lucas slid down in his chair. “Because she doesn’t want to grade Brad Thatcher’s chemistry test, because she knows he probably failed it, and she knows contacting his father about his sudden personality changes is the right thing to do, but she’s scared to call any more parents because Rudy Lutz’s father cussed her out on Wednesday”—he drew a deep breath— “for failing Rudy in remedial science and getting him suspended from the football team,” he finished. And exhaled.
Jenna looked at him in annoyed admiration. “How do you do that?”
Lucas grinned. “I have a wife and four daughters. If I don’t talk fast, I’d never get anything out.”
Casey’s chair scraped against the tile floor and her blond head poked up from behind the paper wall. Five feet tall on her tiptoes, she was only visible from the chin up. “Brad Thatcher failed his chemistry test?” Her brows scrunched, making her look like a profoundly perplexed disembodied elf. “Are we talking about the Brad Thatcher, Wonderboy?”
Jenna looked down at the purple folder, sobering. “Yes, only he’s not the same Brad. Not anymore. He got a D on his last test. I’m afraid to grade this one.”
“Jenna.” Lucas shook his head, taking on the quiet, thoughtful persona that made him a wonderful mentor to new teachers like herself. “Just do it. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
So Jenna grasped her red pen firmly, opened the purple folder, and found Brad’s test at the bottom of the thin pile. Her heart sank as she marked an “x” next to every question, feeling hopelessness mount with each one. Brad had been her most promising student. Bright, articulate, a veritable shoo-in for a prestigious scholarship sponsored by a group of Raleigh companies. He’d all but thrown that opportunity away. One more test like this and he’d fail her class, jeopardizing his chances at admission to the top colleges he’d chosen. And she had no idea why. With another sigh she wrote F on the first page, top and center. She looked up to find Lucas and Casey quietly waiting.
“I didn’t think I’d ever put an F on anything Brad Thatcher did,” Jenna said, putting down her pen. “What’s happened to him, Lucas?”
Lucas picked up Brad’s test and flipped through the pages, her concern mirrored in his dark eyes. “I don’t know, Jen. Sometimes kids have problems with girlfriends. Sometimes their problems are at home. But you’re right. I never would have expected Brad to change like this.”
“You think he’s into drugs?” Casey asked soberly, voicing their collective fear.
“We all know it can happen to kids from good homes,” Jenna answered, slipping Brad’s test back into the purple folder. “I guess I need to call his father, but I’m not looking forward to it, not after breaking the news to Rudy Lutz’s dad that his son flunked his last test and is on the bench until he pulls up his grade.”
Casey came around the table and half sat against the edge closest to Jenna’s chair. “Mr. Lutz let you have it, huh?”
Jenna felt her gut churn just remembering. “I learned some new words during that phone call.” She managed a weak grin. “It was certainly educational. I just feel so helpless with Brad, watching him throw his life away like this. There’s got to be something I can do.”
Casey’s eyes narrowed. Quick as a flash her small hand shot out and grabbed Jenna’s chin. “There is. You call his parents, offer your support, then you step back, Jen. You aren’t the savior of the world. He’s not one of your pound puppies you can save from the needle. He’s a high school senior with enough brains to make his own choices. There’s nothing you can do to force him to make the right ones. That’s just a cold reality of life. Understand?”
Casey had always assumed the role of Jenna’s protector, ever since their college days at Duke. It was really quite comical as Jenna towered over Casey’s petite frame. Mutt and Jeff they’d been called in college and it was a fair description. Jenna tall and dark, Casey small and blond. Casey, the perennial cheerleader and social butterfly; Jenna, much more quiet and reserved. Now, pushing thirty, Casey still played the mama tiger to perfection. Jenna had long since given up trying to dissuade her from it. “Yes, ma’am. You can let go now.”
Casey let go, still eyeing her uncertainly. “Let me know how the talk goes with his parents.”
Jenna found her list of students’ parent or guardian contacts. “Brad only has a father.”
“His mother died about four years ago,” Lucas offered. “Car wreck.”
Casey pushed her mouth into a thoughtful frown. “That alone’s enough to impact a kid on top of what he went through last spring with his brother getting kidnapped and all. Look, I need to go. My fourth period’s doing Macbeth and I need to set up the cauldron.” She made her way to the faculty lounge door, then turned suddenly, her expression intense. “Don’t let her get too involved in Brad Thatcher’s problems, Lucas. She has a control problem, you know.”
Lucas’s lips twitched. “I know,” he said soberly. “I won’t, Casey.”
When the door closed, Jenna rolled her eyes. “I have a control problem?”
“Yes, you do,” Lucas said affably. “So does she. Are you sure you’re not related?”
“Positive. Casey’s mother didn’t eat her own young.” Jenna turned her focus back to the parent contact information. “Brad’s dad works for the State Bureau of Investigation. I bet contacting him is going to be difficult.”
“Probably.”
“He’ll probably say he�
��s not available, that he doesn’t have time.”
“Possibly.”
Jenna glared over at him. He just stared back, smiling. “You are maddening, Lucas.”
“Marianne’s told me that every day for twenty-five years.” Jenna crossed her arms over her chest and sucked in one side of her cheek. “You know, as a mentor you really suck. Obi Wan told Luke Skywalker what to do.”
Lucas’s salt-and-pepper mustache quivered. “Listen to the Force,” he said in a deep voice, then raised a challenging brow. “So what will you do, young Jedi?”
Jenna sighed. “I’m going to call his father,” she answered irritably. “Then if his dad yells at me like Rudy Lutz’s father did, I’ll come and cry on your shoulder.”
Lucas stood up and patted her head. “My box of Kleenex has your name on it.”
It actually did. Dr. Jenna Marshall, Ph.D., written across the box in Lucas’s even hand. She smiled, a little sadly. Marianne was lucky to have shared her lifetime with such a kind man.
Her smile faded as inevitably her mind wandered. If only she and Adam had been lucky enough . . . But they hadn’t been. She sat still, trying to remember the days when Adam was healthy, instead remembering those last days of his life she wished she could forget. She stiffened her back and shook her head, as if the memories could be shaken loose that way. Hardly.
She made herself stand up. She only had a few more minutes left on her lunch break and she needed to call Brad Thatcher’s father. Today. Before Brad slipped even further away.
Friday, September 30, 2:45 P.M.
Two of them, Steven thought as he watched Kent Thompson comb the grass inside the twenty-square-foot area they’d cordoned off with bright yellow tape.
A second young girl stolen. A second family crushed. They’d caught a break in the case of Samantha Eggleston’s disappearance, thanks to a four-year-old Lab named Pal, his eighty-year-old owner, and Sheriff Braden who’d secured the crime scene and called the SBI posthaste. Steven watched Kent search the ground once again on his hands and knees, this time wearing a contraption over his head that made him look half welder and half German spy, complete with monocle. In Kent’s hands were tweezers and carefully labeled plastic evidence bags. Harry Grimes canvassed the outer perimeter next to the woods, just as carefully. No one wanted any evidence lost. They might not get another chance to catch their prey.
