She'll Never Know

by Hunter Morgan

  "I didn't know. He called. I met him at the diner. Sheesh, Mom." Ashley glanced at Claire, then out the window again. "Why don't you just lock me up in prison now and get it over with."

  She eyed her daughter. "Don't think I haven't contemplated that."

  They didn't say any more until Claire pulled up in Stewart's Lawn and Garden gravel parking lot. "Your grandfather will pick you up after work."

  The slam of the car door was the only response Claire received. "Have a nice day," she called cheerfully. Then under her breath, "And thanks again for another day's worth of gray hairs."

  * * *

  The Bloodsucker sat alone in the dark in the barn on the end of the picnic table bench and breathed deeply. He was trying to find his center. Trying to calm his pounding heart. With his eyes closed, he could still see Anne seated in the chair in front of him. He could hear her whimper. Smell her blood, wet, cloying. It seemed like there had been a lot of blood; he was getting better. It was a good thing the barn was so old, that it had a dirt floor that had been covered in sawdust on and off for years. Sawdust was so easy to rake up. To burn in the old trash barrel out back. It was so easy to replace without drawing any suspicion.

  He opened his eyes. He used to be afraid of the dark. Afraid of this barn. He absently rubbed his forearm through the long sleeves of his chambray shirt.

  He wasn't afraid anymore. No need to be. The nightmares of Granny coming into his room were just the bad dreams of a little boy who was now all grown up. A little boy gone forever. A little boy who could never be hurt again.

  He listened to the flutter of wings and the coo of pigeons nesting high in the rafters above him. This barn comforted him, now. It offered him strength.

  It gave him a place to hide. To hide with the women he brought here. To get a chance to talk alone with them, uninterrupted.

  He closed his eyes again and thought about Anne. He tried to conjure up the feeling he had when she'd been here with him. It had been so wonderful. Exciting.

  Scary. Like riding a roller coaster. But those feelings were fading, fading faster than before. The power, the blood, it was so sweet, yet the feeling so fleeting.

  That was why he had come here tonight. To prepare. To be sure everything was ready. He rose from the bench and lifted the clean kitchen towel from the tray. Without gloves he didn't dare touch the neatly folded white hand towel, the stack of gauze or the gleaming handle of the scalpel set out on the sterile blue pad. That didn't mean he couldn't look. Couldn't fantasize...

  The Bloodsucker trembled in the glory of the moment as images of Anne were replaced with those of the stranger. He'd seen her again today. Beautiful. Aloof.

  He wanted her. Had to have her. Already, in his mind, the plan was forming. He opened his eyes, carefully covering the tray. Patience and planning, he reminded himself. Success was all about patience and planning.

  Chapter 10

  On the front porch, Jillian kicked off her sandy flip flops and let herself into the cottage. Just inside the door, she dropped her canvas beach bag and made a beeline for the living room windows. Despite the hour, just after eight in the evening, the little house was stifling.

  She gave the first window a shove; it groaned and slowly rose upward, rewarding her with a rush of much cooler night air. She pushed the faded cotton drapes aside and opened the next window. Right now, she didn't care if a serial killer or the mysterious man from her past came in the window and killed her. In this heat, she'd die anyway.

  Jillian backtracked and closed and locked the front door, her one concession to any madmen who might be in her life. There was probably no need to leave the door open for him. If he was going to get her, the very least she could make him do was climb through a window.

  In the kitchen, she leaned over the sink and opened the window. She breathed in the sweet aroma of a fallen magnolia blossom that she had found behind the cottage the day before and stuck in a glass of water. The magnolia tree was actually on her neighbor's property, but she knew they wouldn't mind. Mr. and Mrs. Collins had both stopped by the first week she was there and had been very friendly. They always waved to her whenever they saw her getting into her car or elsewhere in town.

  Jillian brushed her fingertips across the delicate white blossom, thinking it looked too beautiful to be real. She groaned, realizing that any movement of her arms now brought stinging pain. She'd used suntan lotion, but she could tell she had still burned.

  She went back to her bedroom, pushed open the faded blue drapes, and opened the window before going into the bathroom for a shower. After dawdling under the heavenly cool water until her sunburned skin began to prune, she reluctantly stepped out of the old tub. She patted her smarting skin gingerly and pulled a flimsy white nightgown she'd just bought over her head. She had liked it because it reminded her of the old-fashioned nightgowns women used to wear, white with little blue, green, and yellow flowers. It was thin and pretty transparent, but what did she care? She wasn't wearing it to work.

  After towel-drying her hair, Jillian wandered back down the hall to find something for dinner. Her first thought was that a bag of microwave popcorn and a cold beer would be great. She really missed the new microwave she'd bought just before her life fell apart. Small, stainless steel door, high powered enough to nuke any dinner selection in less than three minutes.

  She smiled to herself. This was beginning to happen more often now. Flashes of her past were coming to her; sometimes it was feelings rather than specific memories, but they were no less real or important. She didn't actually remember buying the microwave, not from where or from whom, but she knew she'd had one and sensed that, in time, she would remember such details along with all the other puzzle pieces in her life.

  Instead of microwave popcorn, since she had no microwave, Jillian settled for a ham sandwich and that cold beer. As she padded barefoot toward the couch to enjoy her dinner with her book, her new nightgown fluttering at her knees, she halted. Suddenly, she had the strangest sensation of doing this very thing before.

  The hair rose on her neck beneath her damp hair. She felt dizzy and disoriented as she recalled the cold, wet feeling of a drink in her right hand, the flowered plate with a sandwich in her left. Only before it had been lemonade and peanut-butter-and-jelly. And the nightgown. She knew the sensation of cool, airy cotton against her sunburned knees.

  Still dizzy, she looked down at the ancient linoleum floor and stared at her bare feet. For a split second, they were much smaller. A child's bare feet.

  Jillian didn't breathe. She had been here before as a child. She knew this cottage. The dishes. The linoleum.

  Someone called her name. It was only a whisper on the cool, salty breeze that fluttered the old chintz curtains, but she heard it and turned her head to look down the hall.

  No one was there, of course. And she didn't hear the actual name that was spoken; at least it didn't register in her mind. But she knew someone had called her. It was her own name she heard in her head.

  Then, as quickly as the moment was upon Jillian, it was gone. The earth seemed to spin once again on its axis at a reasonable pace, and she came back to reality.

  She exhaled loudly. "Wow," she muttered. "Freaky." It was one of Ty's words.

  She walked slowly to the couch, set the beer bottle and plate on the coffee table littered with old magazines Millie had given her, and sat down. She studied the fluttering curtains on the far side of the living room. She looked at the faded carpet, the walls, with their faded paint and small cracks in the plastering, hoping for another glimpse of what she knew must be her past.

  "Come on, come on," she breathed, concentrating on the objects that seemed so familiar.

  But nothing else came to her. Once again she was only a Jane Doe. Jillian Deere.

  She ate her sandwich and sipped her beer, listening to the silence of the house and the rhythmic sounds of the ocean that filtered through the open windows.

  In the last couple of days, she had vacillated
, not knowing if she really wanted to find her past. Ty's suggestion of just moving forward, becoming a new person, was tempting, yet she felt as if there was some reason she had to go back.

  The word justice floated in her head, and she lowered her gaze to the floor again. A feeling of shame overcame her, though she could put no specific event to the feeling, no recollection. All she knew was that she had done something terrible. The thought even crossed her mind that maybe she had deserved to be shot. What if she had a robbed a bank or something? It didn't really fit into the bedroom scene she continually dreamed, but who knew?

  She put her dirty plate in the sink and leaned over to rinse out the beer bottle before she put it into a paper bag she would take to the recycling center when it was full. A sound on the front porch caught her attention, and she glanced toward the front door.

  In an instant, her heart was pounding. Her mouth was dry. She shut off the noisy faucet, but didn't move from the sink. She stared at the door. She could have sworn she heard the white glass knob rattle.

  Ty?

  No, it couldn't be. He was out celebrating his parents' anniversary. Besides, she had gone to the hardware store and had a copy of the key made for him. He could let himself in; there was no need to rattle the doorknob.

  She waited for what seemed an eternity.

  Ty had suggested she should get a cell phone. He said he worried about her here alone at night. She had made light of his concern, saying Mr. and Mrs. Collins were barely a scream away. What she hadn't told him was that they had noisy room air conditioners in their closed windows and that they would never hear her.

  Jillian slowly stood up from where she had leaned on the sink. She stared at the curtains and wondered if that was a shadow she saw coming from the porch, or just her imagination.

  For the first time today, she wished she had taken Ty up on his offer to be his date at the anniversary party. Right now, she could be at some nice restaurant eating a piece of key lime cheesecake and pretending to not know that his mother disapproved of her.

  She darted suddenly for the window, slammed it down, twisted the lock, and shut the other just as quickly. She ran across the cool linoleum and closed the window of the sink. Leaving the lights on, she hurried down the hallway and closed the bedroom window.

  The house was locked up tightly now. No one could get in easily.

  She dropped onto the bed. It would get hot inside soon, and all she had was the one box fan she had bought at the Big Mart. She stared at the fan near the bed. She'd never get any sleep, as hot as it got in here.

  Like she was going to be able to sleep now, anyway.

  * * *

  Claire sat at her desk methodically running her finger down the list of personal effects found in Patti's denim purse, left with her body. This was the third time she had read through it, and she knew there was nothing there. Nothing there that could lead her to a killer. Half a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a wallet with a driver's license, a blood bank card, and seven dollars and forty-eight cents in it. A pack of matches from Calloway's Bar. No fingerprints that weren't her own; she had a record for shoplifting and had been printed.

  Claire contemplated the matchbook for a moment. The local bar and restaurant was where Patti's ex worked, but it was also the bar all the locals hung out in. And they did have cool matchbooks. Claire didn't even smoke, and she knew there were a couple of Calloway's matchbooks in her junk drawer in her kitchen. Other items in Patti's purse was girly stuff: pink lip gloss, aspirin, tampons, blue nail polish. A couple of receipts from stores in town, but nothing that indicated who she had hitched a ride home with the night she died.

  Claire set the sheet of paper aside and glanced at April's personal effects list. She'd had nothing on her, poor thing. She'd walked out of the rented condo that night to cool off and take her mother-in-law's dog for a walk after a family fight. No identification, no money, not even a roll of breath mints.

  Phoebe Matthews. She'd had a purse too. The killer had also slipped hers over her shoulder before dumping her near a dumpster at a construction site. He obviously didn't want anyone to think he was a thief. Conscientious son of a bitch, wasn't he?

  Phoebe's list of stuff was more interesting than Patti's. She had a cell phone, turned off. Claire suspected Phoebe had been talking to her twin sister when the killer had picked her up. He had thoughtfully turned it off to save her battery. There were no fingerprints on the phone, of course, because of the latex gloves the ME said he wore. Along with the usual stuff like a wallet and make-up and pens, Phoebe also had a joint, three "lubricated for her pleasure" condoms, a pair of dice, and a page ripped from a magazine advertising for mail order brides in Alaska. Interesting, but none of the stuff was a lead in any particular direction or toward any suspect on Claire's index cards.

  Claire glanced away, then looked at Patti's list again, realizing something had caught her eye. A pen from Waterfront Realty.

  She dropped the list on her desk and scrambled through a pile of manila envelopes with photographs from each crime scene. Also included were photographs of each victim's personal effects. She located the one with Phoebe's name on it at last and jerked the 8 1/2 by 11 inch photos of her dead body out. At the very bottom of the pile was the photograph she was looking for.

  There was the pen! The photograph had been taken by one of her detectives. Some items had spilled from Phoebe's handbag and they were included in body shot. It wasn't as high a quality as she would have liked, but there was definitely writing on the pen. She squinted. Still couldn't read it.

  She jerked open the middle drawer of her desk and ran her hand over the paper clips, rubber bands, spare pens and pencils. She found a school photograph of Ashley from two years ago, numerous pizza coupons, and a toothbrush, but no magnifying glass.

  Claire left the photo on her desk and hurried out of her office and down the hall. She found her gum-popping assistant, sitting at her desk in the glass office in the front of the building. Jewel was painting her nails.

  Claire punched in the security number that would allow her through the fishbowl door.

  "Sorry, things are a little slow today," Jewel said, quickly screwing the top on her glitter nail polish.

  "Do you have a magnifying glass?"

  Jewel got up, carefully keeping her hands in the air, fingers spread so as not to smudge her nails. "What? No."

  "I need a magnifying glass. I know we have one somewhere," Claire said impatiently. "I thought it was in my desk, but it's not."

  Jewel snapped her fingers together, then checked her polish job for damage. "Check the break room," she told Claire. "Somebody had a splinter in his hand the other day."

  Claire hurried out of the office.

  "You have a splinter, boss?"Jewel called after her.

  Claire pushed through the swinging door that led into the break room. It smelled of burnt coffee, stale pastries, and men. She really needed to get some women on the force.

  Beside an empty pizza box on the small kitchenette countertop, she spotted the magnifying glass. "Gotcha!"

  Back in her office, Claire slammed her door and dropped into her chair. She pulled the photograph beneath the magnifying glass, gripped the handle, and looked closer.

  "I'll be damned," she whispered, dropping the cheap plastic magnifying glass.

  Seth Watkins, the pen read. There was no mistaking it. His name, the realty company's phone number, and his personal cell number. Seth was always passing those pens out. A pen in Phoebe's possession meant it was very likely she had had contact with him recently.

  Claire jotted his cell number on a clean yellow legal pad and wrote his name above it in big bold letters, followed by a question mark.

  Could Seth Watkins be a serial killer? He didn't strike her as the killer type. Maybe he was a little too pushy sometimes, a little too slick. But a killer?

  Of course, if you'd ask her two days ago if she thought he could be capable of recording women peeing in a pubic restaurant and
then playing the tape for others' enjoyment, she wouldn't have thought that of him either.

  She sat back in her chair and glanced at the phone. She hesitated, then dialed the number she had dialed hundreds of times in her previous life as Kurt Gallagher's lover.

  "Captain Gallagher," he barked into the phone, picking up his extension on the first ring.

  She almost wished she hadn't called. Where was her confidence in herself? If Watkins might be her man, why did she need Kurt to confirm her suspicions?

  "Hello?"

  "Kurt, it's Claire."

  "One little, two little, three little bodies, four little—"

  "Shut up and listen to me."

  "Sorry, that wasn't funny," he said, reasonably contrite.

  "No, it wasn't. I think I've got a serious lead."

  "Good thing. Word upstate is that there's talk of a task force convening to take care of Albany Beach's little serial killer problem. People are beginning to worry the tourists will stay away from our beaches. State needs the revenue."

  "Perfect," she groaned. "I wondered what had held them back this long."

  "Same old, same old. Money for overtime. Manpower."

  Claire closed her eyes for a moment. This could mean the end of her short-lived career as the police chief of Albany Beach. She could wind up working for some chicken plant as the security officer keeping the county's chickens safe from animal activists bent on setting the oppressed free. But she couldn't think about that right now.

  "I've got a serious lead," she repeated, "on a guy I kind of liked to begin with. But I need you to think this through with me. Help me steer clear of meaningless crap."

  "You want me to cut out of here early? Come to your office?"

  She checked the clock on her wall. It was her father's retirement clock given to him by the city; he'd loaned it to her when she'd been hired for his position. "No, not here. How about my place? I'll throw some steaks on the grill. We can go over notes."

  "And have some reindeer games, just for old times?" Kurt teased in an admittedly sexy voice.