The Watcher (The Bigler County Romantic Thriller Series)

by Jo Robertson

  She asked herself what her sister would do. Katie was spunky and brave. Katie always knew the answers, how to tackle a problem and solve it, no matter how enormous.

  She twisted her neck to look at her hands. They were tied together with a leather strap and then hooked onto the head-board of the bed. Her legs ached too, and when she looked down, she started crying softly because she didn’t know what fearless thing Katie would do to get out of this situation.

  Because she didn’t have any clothes on.

  Kate gripped Slater’s arm and dug her nails into his skin.

  “Ouch, what the – ? Kate? What’s wrong?”

  Wake up, she told herself, wake up. This is only a horrible nightmare. It’s not real. She wanted to be back in her own warm bed that was piled high with the quilts her mother had made. Wanted to be sharing the room with her sister and whispering in the night about Tommy Sanders asking Kate to the prom. Trying to be quiet so their parents wouldn’t hear.

  Wake up!

  Kate watched herself as if she were standing in the cabin beside the bed and lying on the dirty mattress at the same time. She knew it was a dream, but she couldn’t force her Kate-eyes to open, couldn’t make her Kate-mind wake up.

  Her cheeks were wet against the pillowcase, and in the dream, Kate saw the girl crying, but she couldn’t claw her way out of the horrible nightmare.

  A shadow loomed over her, and she felt the first sharp sting of pain. She looked down in shock to see a bright red line dabbling across her chest, little dots of scarlet popping up one by one between her breasts.

  Kate tried to see the form that hovered over her dream-self, but the sharp blade terrified her. She couldn’t breathe as she watched herself struggling on the bed, scrabbling to get away from the awful descent of the deadly knife.

  She squeezed her eyes tight. Please, please, let me wake up, don’t let this be happening. Let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Please, please. Don’t hurt me, I won’t tell.

  I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise.

  The figure smiled a terrible twist of thin, cruel lips and bent to whisper in her ear, but the Kate standing nearby couldn’t hear what he was saying to the girl on the bed. His pale skin stretched over wiry muscles and sinews that bulged beneath the surface. Veins popped from his arms and neck, and goose bumps rose on his naked body.

  Below his waist hung a grotesque stubble of flesh that rose from a thatch of coarse-looking hair. For all its diminutive size, it was like a snarling, hideous animal.

  He giggled, and the sound was breaking glass and the scrape of fingernails on a chalk board. He’s enjoying himself, the dreaming Kate realized. He wants her – me – to suffer. He enjoys hearing her – me – plead and beg.

  He’s insane.

  Kate stretched her arms toward the mass of trembling muscles writhing on the bed. She wanted to throw herself between the monster with the knife and the helpless girl the monster hovered over.

  The girl’s tightly-closed eyes flung open. The lashes were spiked with wetness, and the violet color of her irises darkened to the purple of concord grapes. She stared at the blood flowing down her arms and legs, across her hips, and between her thighs. Her pupils constricted to tiny pinpricks as she took in the madman’s nakedness.

  She started screaming.

  “Kate, what’s wrong?”

  She bolted upright, gasping for breath, holding back a scream that threatened to erupt like a projectile from her throat. She struggled to suck in huge gulps of air.

  “Kate, Kate, wake up. Shush, it’s all right. I’m here, don’t worry.” Slater’s big body wrapped around her. “I’ve got you now. Everything’s okay, it’s okay.”

  He held her and kissed her, rocking her like a baby until the scream at the back of her throat and mind slowly subsided.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The watcher walked a circular path around the large, high-ceiling room. Tattered and dusty curtains fell from the windows, casting gloomy shadows except where tiny slivers of light pushed through. Round and round, back and forth, Smith paced. He folded his wiry arms around his waist and flapped them against his sides like a wounded bird. Sweat dripped from his forehead and soaked his dingy tank top. His bare feet padded on the scarred wooden floor.

  When he first arrived in California four months ago, he’d immediately contacted his Uncle Mark, who’d lived here all his life. Smith needed help remembering the location of the family home, just inside the county line in the tiny town of New Haven. Neither of the men had been up there in nearly twenty years.

  Smith hadn’t contacted his grandmother in years, so he’d been shocked to learn he’d inherited the old house where he’d spent most of his childhood. Moving there meant putting down roots, but he wasn’t disappointed by the news. He saw unlimited possibilities for residing in the run-down family homestead.

  First, the house was practically in ruins and looked deserted, and the nearest neighbors lived at least a mile down a narrow, two-lane county road. The house sat on a twenty-acre tract of land that hadn’t been grabbed up by speculators. Access was gained only by a rutted and narrow dirt road, much of which was overgrown with weeds.

  Second, ten feet below the ground level his grandfather had built a bunker, traversing the length of the main floor, and lined with one-foot thick, sound-proofed cement walls. Grandfather had predicted that the bunker-basement would provide shelter when the Russians aimed nuclear bombs at the west coast. No one was uncertain about this probability in the 1950’s, least of all Grandfather.

  Smith had hated his grandfather, but he had to admit that the old man knew how to fortify a bunker. The room was divided into three sections accessed by wooden stairs leading from the kitchen at the rear of the house.

  One section of the room contained the food supply. Shelves lined three of the walls, the fourth opening into the main living area. Canned foods were stacked row upon row on six-foot shelves. Fresh water containers lay flush against one wall. Grandfather had thought of everything from food and water to medical supplies, soap, and hygiene products. Blankets and extra clothing were stashed in a corner of the main room.

  The largest room, the middle section, was the living area and contained a wireless radio, an emergency generator, and several cots and folding chairs, as well as oil lamps, oil, and matches for lighting without electricity. Magazines and books, mainly hunting magazines and soft-core porn, filled a bookcase on the south side of the room.

  The section that intrigued Smith most, however, was the third one, originally designed for dressing the game that his grandfather shot and killed – deer, rabbit, pheasant, occasionally an elk, if he was lucky. Grandfather didn’t worry about hunting off-season. Out here in the boon docks, no one ever checked a license.

  The dressing room contained two large utility basins, several hoses, and a drainage area in the center of the floor. The toilet and a make-shift shower were behind a room divider in the corner. His grandfather said that shit and blood were smells that belonged together.

  The minute Smith set eyes on the underground bunker, he understood its potential use for his particular interests.

  Though polite, Uncle Mark had shown little affection for his nephew by marriage, not when he’d first come to live there, and certainly not now. Nevertheless, his uncle had driven Smith up through the foothills and over the dam, then wound up the narrow, two-lane county road for ten miles or so until he finally turned onto the dirt road that led to the house. It would’ve been impossible for Smith to find the place on his own, even though he’d lived there for a dozen years.

  After realizing the ideal set-up of the house, Smith was glad he hadn’t given his uncle a tour. In fact, Uncle Mark said he’d only been up there once in all these years, and had never set foot inside the house at all. Smith got the idea that his uncle, his grandfather’s brother-in-law by marriage, knew next to nothing about their side of the family. Mark had seen Grandfather only once or twice in town when he was getting su
pplies. And his uncle seemed more than willing to leave Smith to himself up in the northern California foothills.

  Only Smith fully knew about the unique structure of the house, an isolated refuge where he could hunker down for a while. He moved in on August 21, a sweltering day even in the forests at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

  His plotting had begun immediately.

  The watcher now continued his pacing of the room, bare feet slapping with each step on the wooden floor, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides to a tempo only he could hear. He muttered and stopped, then continued until he’d reached the far end of the room. Making a quick about-face, he resumed his urgent movement toward the other side.

  The room was empty except for the dark curtains, a battered and torn armchair, and an old upright piano which stood in one cobwebbed corner. Smith paused in his movements to stare at the instrument, looming in the shadows like a giant bird of prey. When he was a child, he’d practiced every day, sitting on the bench, his feet dangling because his legs were too short to reach the pedals. His grandmother stood behind him. One hand gripped his shoulder, squeezed in time to the antiquated metronome on the bench beside him. With each misplayed note, Grandmother dug her fingers deep into his shoulder until bruises erupted the next morning on the pale skin.

  Smith jerked to a halt and shook his head back and forth.

  He knew what the profilers would say was happening to him. The so-called experts called it accelerating. That meant he wasn’t getting enough of a thrill from his hunting. Things had gone badly since he came here, true. This was the one place he should’ve avoided. What did they say?

  Dogs don’t shit where they eat?

  That’s what he’d done, and he knew better. Never take someone near your safe house. It was a mistake, a big mistake, to come back to his childhood home. He should’ve stayed around Chicago, so much easier there, lots of girls running around loose, druggies and whores, no one watching them, no one caring what they did or when, all hours of the night. Easy to snatch them there, no one even noticed they were missing, hardly made the papers.

  The roaring in his head was the clash of a thousand cymbals, and the thumping in his chest was bass drums gone wild.

  The recent failed attempt had emasculated him, he thought crazily, leaving him agitated and restless. Damn little bitch had finally left the park surrounded by half a dozen classmates. He’d trailed behind her as she walked with her friends, but in the end he’d given up. She’d never been alone. It was too dangerous.

  He sank to his knees, rolled over on his side, and curled into a fetal position, rocking back and forth, arms clutching his shins, moaning softly. What should he do now?

  The urge was strong in him and he knew he had to find relief soon. What if he lost control, out there, at work, around other people? He shuddered uncontrollably. Unimaginable. But it was getting harder to be calm around them. Harder and harder to go to work and keep an innocuous smile pasted on his face.

  He hated maintaining the pretense.

  He despised the witchy-bitchy-eyed women.

  When he’d first gotten the mail clerk job, that little slut Denise had started flirting with him, staring with wide, calculating eyes. As if he’d be interested in a tramp like her.

  It’d serve the stupid cow right if he took her to the basement room.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Slater had run on almost no sleep all day while every little detail went wrong. He’d postponed the incident conference once because he had a hard time contacting the Sheriff.

  Damn Marconi! Where had he gone?

  They’d lost forward momentum on the case and taken a hit from the newspapers and television coverage. Both murdered girls resided within the county, and the media was keeping the public awareness and fear level high. Calling the unknown suspect the Bigler County Butcher was only one example. The name disgusted Slater, and he wondered how the family could face the morning papers that described in grisly detail the murders of their daughters. The community closed ranks on their children and held tight reins on their activities.

  Not only was the department’s lack of success reflected in the bad press, but the detectives and deputies were frustrated and discouraged. They’d finished their checks on new arrivals to Placer Hills and were spreading the investigation to the outlying areas of the county.

  Suspicion in a homicide always fell first on family members, then friends and acquaintances, but when checked thoroughly, all alibis were solid for those who were closest to the two victims. The findings disappointed Slater, but didn’t surprise him. The parents might have been careless about monitoring their children’s whereabouts, but they weren’t suspects.

  He took advantage of the relatively quiet afternoon to review the murder books on the two cases. The teams investigating and interviewing the family members, neighbors, and friends had no major or follow-up leads. Slater had pulled Bauer off the interview schedule to continue investigating the death of Mary Stuckey. There had to be someone connected to the woman who could shed light on the events of her death in 1989. He’d gotten the teams started on the hospital records, plus two more working the new residents list.

  Kate worked alone in her cubicle, tracking down possible leads from surgery centers across the nation. She was looking for an explanation for the time gap in killings between 2004 and the 2008 murder in Bishop, California.

  Slater tried to reach old contacts in various state labs to link further cases to their UNSUB, but he wasn’t having much luck. Bauer had located a relative of Mary Stuckey, an older sister. He had a scheduled interview this afternoon with Mary’s sister Angela Holster, who now lived in Galt, south of Sacramento.

  With increasing certainty, Slater believed in Kate’s theory about the killer, thought their best clues would come from the past, from the events surrounding Mary Stuckey and what happened to her in New Haven. The tricky thing was he couldn’t move full speed ahead in that direction without clearing his actions through the Sheriff.

  Marconi would expect him to follow the regular leads and not go off on what he’d certainly call a half-assed idea. Even though the man had been increasingly scarce during the media blitz surrounding the case. That wasn’t unusual. Marconi was notorious for avoiding conflict when dealing with the press. The best Slater could do at this point was direct the teams toward the leads that he, Bauer, and Kate had discovered during their all-night brainstorming.

  #

  Kate pushed thoughts of Slater out of her mind and worked assiduously in her office most of the day. She and Slater arrived at and left the courthouse in separate vehicles. By tacit agreement they showed no sign of being anything more than colleagues during work hours. Both of them wanted to be discreet until – until she wasn’t sure what.

  This was brand-new territory for her.

  After all, Slater was her direct superior and automatically off limits. She wasn’t sure that even Bauer knew about their relationship, although she’d discovered that he hid an astute mind behind an “aw, shucks” demeanor.

  And of course, she would be leaving eventually, returning to L.A. There was that.

  The investigation plodded slowly along, and sometimes it felt like they were simply waiting for another death to occur. For the monster to kidnap and torture another teenage girl.

  After the long day ended, Kate was eager to put the worries of the case aside for a few hours and soak in a hot tub before Slater came over. She’d bought a new nightgown to wear instead of her usual oversized tee-shirt and panties. She knew Slater liked the shirt and panties—he claimed easy access—but tonight she wanted to feel more feminine.

  It’d been three days since they’d first slept together. However intense, that was short in a relationship. Were they simply two people swept away by passion and good sex?

  Terrific sex, she had to admit with a smile.

  Was that all it was? In spite of their physical intimacy, she hardly knew Ben Slater. When she’d first met hi
m in Marconi’s office, she’d known instinctively to avoid him, and then she’d capitulated like a third-world dictator. She laughed aloud in the small bathroom and sank under the bubbles.

  When the doorbell rang at a little before seven o’clock, she wrapped a terrycloth robe around her nightgown and pulled the door open a crack, leaving the chain engaged. If it was Slater, he was early.

  “Hey big guy, you’re earl – ” she began, but the words froze on her lips.

  A tall, wiry man stood at her front door, his finger poised to ring the bell again. He was middle-aged, with light brown hair and a long, thin nose over pale lips. His ears stuck out slightly from beneath his short haircut. His hands were disproportionately large in contrast to the rest of him, Kate noticed, as he placed one large paw on the door to hold it open.

  Instinct said to get rid of the man as quickly as possible. “Do I know you?”

  If he were surprised at her rudeness, his face failed to register it. He continued to stare at her with unblinking eyes.

  “What do you want?” she pressed, moving to shut the door. His hand held it ajar with little effort and she felt a tiny thrill of fear run through her.

  “I wonder if you’d be interested in supporting my daughter’s school,” he said at last, waving a form in her face. “They’re raising money for new band uniforms.”

  “Sorry, I don’t think so. I have to go now.”

  The man reluctantly moved his hand from the door. She shut it, quickly fastening the deadbolt, and leaning back against the frame. What a strange man with his vacant stare and immobile face! Her heart raced and her breath came in short, tense puffs. She put a hand to her chest, telling herself she was being foolish. He was just a parent helping out his daughter. Parents did that, didn’t they?