by Jo Robertson
Slater explained these facts to his team as they assembled fifty yards from where Special Enforcements had set up a perimeter. The mayor, feeling the combined pressure of numerous influential parents, persuaded the Sheriff to pull out all the stops. This was the second disaster in as many weeks and no one wanted the kids traumatized more.
Slater got a full appreciation of Myers’ skills as a psychiatrist and negotiator at the scene. Her profile of teenage offenders who used armed violence in the high school setting was invaluable. Clearly she knew her stuff. She spoke in low, calm tones to the teenagers over the bullhorn, eventually getting them to give up their hostages and walk out of the building without their weapons.
Evidently Myers was more than a pretty face.
No one got hurt and everybody except the masked intruders was happy with the outcome. Within four hours of the dispatcher’s call – a record time in Slater’s mind – the gunmen were unmasked, unarmed, and arrested. Without their hardware and camouflage, they were no more than scrawny teenagers, sniveling for their mothers.
Afterward, when Slater’s team was off-duty and still high on adrenalin, they celebrated their success at Rusty’s, the out-of-the-way cop’s bar and restaurant off Highway 49. The owner, whose name was actually Joe Spadini—his wife was Rusty—greeted the team with free beers and the best seats in the restaurant.
Slater figured they all could use the break.
After they’d ordered from the limited menu, Bauer began a scene-by-scene recount of the day’s takedown. Others interrupted at intervals with details and gallows humor. Even though a maniac had recently committed a horrible murder in their county, today was a success.
Chalk up one for the good guys, Slater thought, observing Myers at the end of the table where she sat with flushed cheeks. Not all business and secrets now, he reflected, leaning back and watching the play of emotions run across her face. As she glanced his way, he felt a jolt across the scarred table.
The unmistakable current that sparked between them – elemental and almost primitive – tempted him before he forced his common sense to take over. Kate Myers was under his command and she was outright lying to him. He intended to find out why. Right now he could be objective about her, but if he allowed it, he suspected she was a woman who could breach the wall he’d built around himself and break his heart.
As he watched Myers drinking and smiling with the team members, Sanderson looming beside her, Bauer on her other side, it seemed to Slater that all week had led to this single moment when he felt that attraction. The only question was would they act on it? An emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time tightened his stomach muscles.
By the early hours of Friday morning, everyone had left and Rusty’s was deserted except for Myers and Slater. Spadini mopped up the bar and lined the liquor bottles beneath the mirrored splashboard.
“It looks like we’ve closed down the bar.” Myers grinned at him in the dimly lighted room.
“Let’s get out of here,” he growled.
Slater wasn’t much of a drinker, but he knew both of them were tipsy. He called a cab, intending to drop her off and go home to nurse the massive headache he felt coming on.
His first mistake was walking Myers to the door of her downstairs unit on Cirby Way, a duplex so newly built that the lawn consisted of hard, packed dirt. His second mistake was noticing how appealing she looked standing there backlit by the yellow glow from the porch light. His third was fixing his eyes on her mouth.
Her hair fell in messy tangles from the tight knot she’d worn at the start of the day. Dampness at her forehead and temples curled into small golden wisps. He lifted his fingers to brush aside the damp strands, and she surprised him by covering his hand with her own. Her fingers twined in pale contrast around his dark skin. He stared at her face as she pressed the cool tips of her fingers across the calluses of his palms.
One second stretched into a long minute until the cab driver honked and yelled from his window. “Hey buddy, meter’s running.”
Myer’s eyes, huge dark pools in the dim light, never faltered. She wet her lips, but he couldn’t decide if the movement was nervousness or invitation.
His heart pounded like a randy teenager’s until the clearer side of his brain brought him to earth again. “Kate, I have to leave.”
It was the first time he’d called her anything but “Doc” or “Myers,” and a warning clanged in his brain. Keep it impersonal, professional, he reminded himself. No woman was worth destroying a second career like Julie had destroyed the first one.
Trouble was, he was a starving man. He’d been with other women in the last few years. Hell, he was no monk, but he’d kept everything casual. He wasn’t ready to trust a woman he’d known less than a week. A woman who kept secrets from him—who still kept secrets—about a vicious murder, couldn’t be trusted at all. “God, Kate,” he whispered against all common sense.
A smile hovered in her eyes while he touched his mouth to her lips, using his tongue to spread them. She twined her arms round his torso and ran her hands up the muscles of his back. He trailed kisses down her neck and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, fingering the white lace that edged her bra, knuckling the smooth curve of her breast.
At the very moment he felt her succumb, felt her melt into him, invite him into the secrets of her body, he pulled back. “Myers,” he groaned, holding her at arms’ distance and shaking his head. “I’ve got to go.”
She jerked her eyes open, panting softly, looking embarrassed and frustrated.
“It’s late and we’re both a little drunk,” he muttered.
She nodded, breathless. “Right, and tomorrow’s a work day. Goodnight, Slater.” She turned quickly and entered the apartment before he could say another word.
The distance back to the cab was slow and tortured. Shit, he’d made a blunder of that, but something about Kate Myers got him tied up in knots.
Chapter Fourteen
Where the hell was she?
The watcher checked the time again. He’d seen other kids trail out of the gymnasium one by one, but the girl wasn’t among them. He shifted in the driver’s seat to ease his cramped legs. The school bell had rung fifteen minutes ago and he took a risk by parking too long near the spanking new high school.
You never knew when someone might notice you even though he’d deliberately created his persona like a poster child for the ordinary, an artist brushing the canvas with mediocrity. He’d never stand out in a crowd.
It was ironic, or ironical as his grandfather used to say, that he’d been so noticeable during his youth, but now he simply faded into the background. A portrait of a middle-aged man, slight and sandy-haired.
His anonymity protected his identity. Most people looked at him and saw a very plain person. Or looked through him and saw nothing at all.
Nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all.
He froze in his seat, stared out into the gray afternoon sky like a deer in headlights, while a flash of memory clouded his mind.
A girl. No, two girls, maybe three of them, glancing his way. Him, thirteen and awkward, ready to lift a hand in greeting. And then their eyes, sliding off, around, through him as they brushed carelessly past.
The perfect little bitches pretended he didn’t exist. He was nothing, a zero, a cipher. Later, it was worse. They’d stared at him with merciless eyes and tight, hard smiles, and he knew that his very existence was grotesque to them.
He began to understand what was so different about his body that caused Frances Daridour and Hilary Gates and Paige Turner to cover their pretty pink mouths with their pink-polished fingernails. And giggle when they heard the squeaky voice that deepened like a fog horn without warning. Stare at the light shadow of hair over his upper lip. Gawk at his freakish body, at his rounded chest and narrow hips and that thing that wasn’t supposed to be down there, but kept poking out of the folds beneath his belly button.
He grabbed the steering wheel in a death grip.
Don’t remember, don’t think about it. Don’t remember, he repeated quietly, hardly breathing, his lips barely moving.
Finally his pulse slowed and his heart stopped drumming.
It didn’t matter anymore. Now the girls never looked away from him. They didn’t dare. Their eyes followed him with a kind of awe, sprung from terror and dreadful anticipation. Now they knew him. By the time he was finished with them, they screamed how extraordinary he was.
More girls trailed down the front steps of the school and walked off in pairs or threesomes, but he didn’t see the girl he wanted. At first, he’d avoided this particular school because he knew rich parents watched their kids much better than poor ones. It was a fact of life whether bleeding-heart sociologists admitted it or not. Rich kids were smarter too and harder to stalk.
That’s why he hadn’t started with them. He’d stuck with the ones whose comings and goings weren’t noticed, the ones nobody cared about – runaways, bottom-feeders, those at the lowest rung on the social scale. They’d been fun at first because they were easy to catch.
Not anymore.
He yearned for someone like the farm girl, the beautiful, innocent blonde. For a long time, he imagined she’d be the one, the only one, the perfect one.
Then she’d died.
He realized she wasn’t perfect at all.
Since then he’d found that in the end, rich or poor, the girls were all the same, crying and begging. Asking the same questions of him over and over, like he was their God.
Why is this happening? What do you want? What did I do?
It’s what you didn’t do, you silly bitch, he’d sometimes scream. He didn’t like losing control and yelling at them. It ruined the whole experience. Silence was much more powerful than shouting.
The other girls hadn’t been perfect either.
His gloved fingers drummed a staccato beat on the steering wheel. Where was the stupid girl? He didn’t think he could wait much longer. She’d better come soon. He needed her to come. If she put him in danger by making him hang around here too long, it’d be worse for her.
She had no idea how bad he could make it.
Where was she? Where was she?
The mantra chanted in his head, and he pressed his hands to his ears to cover the sound. But it thrummed on, steady, relentless. Some section of his brain told him it was too soon after the last time. Too soon, but the experience hadn’t gone the way he wanted, and now the need to hunt was urgent.
Too soon. He mouthed the words silently. Too soon, too dangerous.
But he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stop.
Didn’t want to stop.
He wrapped his arms around his middle and began rocking in rhythmic motions behind the wheel. When he became aware of what he was doing, he quit and mopped at the sweat that soaked through the rim of his baseball cap and ran in rivulets down his cheeks.
He’d have to give up if she didn’t show soon. He didn’t like to give up. It was admitting defeat. Grandfather said that defeat would not be tolerated. It pissed off the old man.
The girl should know it pissed off the watcher too.
He crossed one leg over the other and jiggled it to the fast tempo that echoed in his head.
Chapter Fifteen
Slater woke at five the next morning, restless and frustrated. Like a horny teenager, he thought, and quickly grabbed his running gear and took off around the park. Every slap of his gym shoes on the asphalt of the running path around Ralston Park echoed the same criticism.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Getting involved with Myers was just plain idiotic. Not that he’d actually gotten involved. Hell, they hadn’t gone beyond an innocent kiss.
But not from lack of desire. He’d wanted to kiss Kate Myers on every inch of her body. Kiss her until that cool façade melted into unbearable heat. He was captivated, that’s what, smitten with a healthy dose of lust, no need to let Myers wrap him around her little finger.
She sensed it too, that trembling heat between them, vibrating like a tuning fork. Get a grip, Slater. He laughed aloud, shook his head at his foolishness, and kept his eyes on the horizon. The sun rose in the east in a startling array of pinks and purples, the trees outlined black against the sky.
Turning at the edge of the park, he jaunted back to where he’d started and glanced at his wristwatch. Six fifteen. Time for a quick shower and shave.
When he finally parked his truck in the reserved spot, he saw that Myers had beaten him again this morning. He grimaced wryly. Apparently she couldn’t sleep either.
#
Before she’d left L.A., Kate had identified two homicides in other states that matched her initial profile of the killer. One connection was an unsolved murder in Hopewell, Virginia, in the nineties, in which a nineteen-year-old woman was abducted and strangled. Another case two years later in Fayetteville, North Carolina, involved a sixteen-year-old girl who also was abducted and stabbed repeatedly in the chest and groin. Both women sustained multiple bruises, but showed no clear evidence of rape.
The similarities of gender, age, and battery connected them, but the method used to kill each girl was different. The North Carolina girl wasn’t sexually assaulted, but evidence of recent sexual intercourse was found with the Virginia woman. No physical evidence.
Both crimes were committed near the eastern seaboard of the United States, far from Idaho and California, but that didn’t deter Kate. Some serial killers traveled around to avoid detection, and she believed her killer lived a transient life, moving from one place to another to hide his crimes.
But why would he return to Bigler County if he’d murdered Mary Stuckey here? It didn’t make sense. On the other hand, she realized that the minds of serial killers weren’t always lucid, especially when they were accelerating. What appeared clear in their twisted logic seemed irrational to the people who studied them.
Kate felt a twinge of uncertainty. The Stuckey case had been shoved under the carpet, closed, and forgotten, but what if she were wrong? Maybe the Stuckey homicide didn’t belong to her killer. Maybe she was reaching for any slim thread she could find.
Definitely time to fill Slater in. Her brain was muddled with details and facts that may or may not be pertinent to the case. She needed a fresh look. Used to flying solo, she’d relied only on herself all these years, but Slater had sharp investigative instincts and she respected his judgment. She was too damned independent for her own good, she thought.
It all came down to trust. She wasn’t positive she could trust everyone in the Bigler County Sheriff’s Office, but she decided to take a chance on Slater.
When Kate heard the doors swing open, she knew it was Slater. The sound of his footsteps reminded her of last night and the glint of the porch light off his closed face, the dangerous bristle of his unshaved jaw.
Her body tightened low in her belly. She’d wanted him to kiss her, had known he would and anticipated the delicious, forbidden thought. And then he’d left.
At least one of them had some common sense.
Better to get this over with, she thought, rising from her chair. She walked to the squad room door, effectively blocking Slater’s way to the open bullpen. “Got a minute?”
Slater furrowed his brows grumpily. “Now? Before coffee?”
“It’s important. Why don’t you grab a cup and join me in my office?”
He eyed her warily, but moved toward the coffee urn and poured himself black coffee, then lifted another cup inquiringly. When she nodded, he poured a cup for her, adding just the right amount of sugar and cream. Should she be flattered that he remembered how she drank it?
Slater sat in the guest chair, stretched his long legs on the worn linoleum flooring, and blew on his coffee, waiting for her to speak. Kate watched his long fingers gripping the cup and wrestled with dangerous images.
Why didn’t they just sleep together and get it out of their systems?
Closing the door behind her, she took her seat behind the desk an
d fiddled with several manila folders on the blotter. “I need to tell you something.”
When Slater narrowed his eyes and dropped them to linger on her mouth, she added hurriedly, “Not what you’re thinking.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“Nothing about last night.”
“I wasn’t thinking about last night.”
Embarrassed, she stumbled on, “Right, nothing happened last night.”
“Nothing,” Slater agreed, but something in the expression on his face suggested otherwise.
“It’s about the case. There’s something else I haven’t told you.”
Slater’s face went still, his whole body alert. She sensed the unleashed anger behind his words although his face remained calm. “Myers, I swear to God, if you lied to me – ”
“No, no, I didn’t lie. Not really. I just – I omitted some of the information.”
“Spit it out. Fast,” he ordered, as she watched, fascinated with the tiny muscles clenching in his jaw.
“Okay, okay.” She took a deep breath and hurried out the information. “There are more than the Stuckey and Johnston cases. At least, I think so.”
She jumped up from her desk and paced around the small room, tension propelling her. “Several years ago, I created a software program that analyzed data from as many state and local databases as I could get and correlated them with CODIS. I set broad parameters, so a lot of the hits were worthless. I got two hits I wasn’t sure about, one in Virginia, one in North Carolina. The program tagged the Stuckey case, but until it also flagged the Johnston case, it didn’t seem significant.” She lifted one shoulder in a defensive gesture. “Now I think they’re all related.”
Slater rose and advanced toward her, scowling, looking like he’d consume her alive.
No danger in that, she thought, getting control of her initial panic. She’d been through fire and back again. Slater’s wrath was just a little flame, hardly worth a fire extinguisher.
