The Watcher (The Bigler County Romantic Thriller Series)

by Jo Robertson

She hoped she was correct, that Mary Stuckey had been his first victim.

  Joseph’s face took on a look of suspicion, quickly followed by astonished horror, a little boy caught in a naughty act. “How do you know about Mary?”

  “I know everything now. Mary was first, but you wanted me. Isn’t that right? You wanted me first.”

  “M-M-ary was – was wrong,” he stuttered. “S-she was supposed to show me things, teach me how to be a man so no one would ever laugh at me again.” He paused and looked dazedly around the room. “She didn’t do a very good job. She shouldn’t have been stupid enough to laugh at me.”

  “Mary’s death was an accident,” she soothed.

  He nodded in agitation, “Yes, an accident. She wasn’t even supposed to be the one. It was her fault. She made a big mistake, a huge boner. Ha, ha, get it? Boner?” He stared at Kate with wide eyes, the pupils uneven slits of black. “You were supposed to be the one, the first and the last.”

  “I wanted to be, Joey, truly I did. I wanted to be the very best for you, the one and only.”

  Uncertainty flashed across the man’s features. His body relaxed, and the hand holding the knife loosened its grip. “How?”

  “I would’ve liked the way you are. I wouldn’t have giggled or made fun. Special people appreciate other special people.”

  Kate was winging it. She had no idea if her strategy would work or not, but damn it all, she was a psychiatrist. She should be able to fly by her instincts. Or was it the seat of her pants? Hysteria bubbled up her throat again.

  “What do you mean – special?”

  She sucked in a deep breath. Steady now, Kate, you can do this. Do it for Kassie, for all the girls. For Slater.

  “Just special,” she answered nonchalantly. “Come here, Joey. Come closer and I’ll show you.”

  He surprised Kate with his obedience. His hand relaxed and the knife clattered to the floor as he leaned over her. Kate was grateful anew that he’d put on pants before he returned. She wasn’t sure she could face his physical anomaly and say what she was going to. The psychiatrist in her might feel sorry for Joseph, but the sister part of her, the human part, knew he was a rabid dog that needed to be put down quickly. There was no curing this animal.

  Joseph’s face was inches away.

  “If you untie me,” she whispered, letting her breath trail across his mouth, “I’ll show you.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Mouthy Ray Borem from Special Enforcements rushed down from the upstairs checks. “He’s not here. The Doc neither,” he said, looking Slater straight in the eye. “No traces of her or the Sheriff. What you wanna do?”

  Slater stood in the center of a large, crude-floored room, arms akimbo as he made a complete circle. A dusty upright piano abutted the far wall of the room, looking like something out of a horror movie. He half expected the Phantom to appear, lift his coattails, and sit down on the piano bench to play some macabre tune.

  Against all rational thought Slater knew Joseph McClelland was here. He was positive of it. Kate was here too. He felt her, for Christ’s sake, as though the beating of her heart echoed within the walls of his own chest. He wouldn’t leave until he found her.

  “Search again,” he ordered. “Rotate the teams, so no one searches the same area the second time around.”

  When Borem hesitated, Slater roared, “Do it!”

  At Slater’s command each team cleared the house and outlying buildings three more times. Two and a half hours after they’d stormed the house, they’d found nothing. Not a trace or clue that Marconi or Kate had ever been in this house. The crime scene unit had lifted dozens of prints and sent them to the lab. They could do nothing more.

  Slater sat in the corner of the first-floor room, leaning against the wall, his clothes disheveled, his hands filthy from the years of accumulated grime that coated the house’s interior. He stared at the revolver he gripped in his right hand, at the dust on the knees of his trousers, at the slight tremor in his left hand.

  Where had McClelland put her? Them? If Marconi wasn’t working with his nephew, then the Sheriff was undoubtedly dead. With plenty of time for the body to be disposed of.

  But there hadn’t been enough time with Kate. If the killer was accelerating, how long would he take with her? It’d already been nearly thirty hours. Was she now dead? Had the madman committed his vile work on her and already discarded the body? He felt impotent in the face of such evil.

  God, where was she?

  He’d been running on adrenaline the last thirty hours, with no time to think logically. Now he pondered the logistics. How had the killer gotten to Kate? Had he somehow recognized her around town, a fortuitous accident? Or had he been stalking her for years, waiting to make his move against her? Had he known she was hunting him all along? Impossible.

  The senselessness of it all drove him crazy. Think, Slater, think. Figuring situations out was what he did best. Now, when he needed a cold, rational mind the most, his brain ground like a frozen gear shift. Think!

  If McClelland hadn’t brought her to this isolated place, where else would he have taken her? The answer seemed clear: nowhere. He’d stayed in this area. Had risked exposure and capture to remain here during his last two kills. He wouldn’t have left now.

  That’s why Kate had to be here.

  What was it she’d said? The killer liked to hear his victims scream. The filthy bastard would want to make Kate scream, too. He’d take her to some desolate spot where no one could hear her.

  Slater stared wildly at the heavy curtains covering the long windows, looked around the dismal room. This was the most god-forsaken place he’d ever seen. His gut told him Kate was here. He’d cling to that hope.

  “Bauer,” he called to his partner. “Get someone to drive back to Placer Hills and check the county records. I want the blueprints for this house. Also, see if anyone applied for a permit for additions or any kind of restructuring to the original building.”

  Even the usually sleazy Ray Borem was sympathetic. “Slater, man, give it up, the Doc’s not here.”

  “Shut up, Borem,” Matt said quietly. “Ben, it’s almost three in the morning. Nothing’s gonna be open for another five or six hours.”

  “We don’t have six hours. Get on it, Matt,” Slater ordered. “I don’t give a shit if you have to wake up the whole records department.”

  Maybe he wouldn’t find Kate here, but it wouldn’t be because he hadn’t ripped up every board and stone in the goddamn place. He was relying on his instincts, and they told him she was here.

  They just couldn’t see her.

  Momentary panic gripped him. If they couldn’t see her or hear her, did that mean she was already dead?

  #

  Joseph suppressed the hope that flared briefly at the girl’s words. She’d show him, she said. She swore she would. Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye. He began to giggle and quickly shoved it down, down into his chest. Breathe. Take control. Be a man.

  He wanted to believe the girl-woman. She’d been with the cop-man, so maybe she wasn’t lying. She looked like an angel, but acted experienced and spoke like a whore. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the girl-woman could do the things she promised.

  But Mary had promised too, a voice muttered in his head. Mary had teased and cavorted, and gotten him so worked up that he thought he’d burst. Mary had the same knowing look in her eyes and enticed him until he’d agreed to go with her to the lake. To swim in the water in their underwear, rub her large, soft breasts with the pink aureoles against his bare chest.

  Then she’d laughed.

  Stared right at him when he’d finally shed his shorts, her eyes wide with surprise as she said she’d never seen anything like that, pointing to his groin.

  Her words rang in his ears.

  Look, honey, I can do a lot of things, but I can’t make a mountain out of a molehill.

  She must’ve found that hilarious because her red lips smiled widel
y, and her laughing eyes raked him as he covered himself with his large hands. Then she’d turned away to pick up her clothes. And he’d pounced on her.

  She hadn’t laughed then.

  “Joey,” the purple-eyed witch-bitch cajoled. “Untie me,” she whispered again, her words soft and sweet, her mouth pink and enticing. He stared at her breasts again, following the rise and fall of the smooth mounds. They weren’t as large as Mary’s, but they looked soft and firm. He pushed the blanket lower and then finally swept it to the floor. She was only a little frightening now, and very beautiful.

  Even if she was a grown-up woman.

  Mesmerized, he watched her wet her lips with her pretty little tongue, saw it dart out between perfect white teeth. Her arms were pulled tightly above her head, thrusting her breasts upward, and her legs were stretched apart. He could see the bindings chafing the tender flesh of her wrists and ankles.

  He unloosened one wrist, waited to see if he could trust her. Would she strike out at him again as she’d done earlier with fists like tiny pistons? She didn’t move a muscle, just lay there staring at him with that piercing gaze. Her smile never wavered. Her eyes never faltered. Her purple eyes looked honest and trusting, like they had on that long-ago day in Idaho.

  He reached for the other wrist.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Bauer returned in record time with the copies of the original blueprints and permits for the New Haven house. Luckily, he’d found a planning commissioner on the first try, and putting a good deal of pressure on him, finally convinced the man to open up the office at city hall and pull the data.

  Even so, time was slipping away from them. Slater held his wrist watch up to the light of his flashlight. It was already after four in the morning. He felt as though he stood at a crossroads, that from this moment on, he’d forever consider himself a very blessed man. Or one damned to eternal grief. Each action he took brought him closer to Kate, or further away.

  By the time Bauer arrived at the New Haven house, Slater had sent most of the teams back to the precinct and put Sanderson in charge there, communicating with him by two-way radio. Even the feds had pulled out all but two of their men. Their theory was that McClelland had fled and could be anywhere between New Haven and the Mexico border.

  That left five of them at the site – Slater, Bauer, Randolph, and two Special Enforcement members, Borem and Speckling – plus the two federal agents. Seven in all. They’d searched the old house and its outlying buildings twice more with no luck.

  Spreading the blueprints out on the worn Formica of the kitchen counter, Slater and Bauer hunched over the lines and figures that represented the original floor plan. There was nothing that they hadn’t figured out from their searches.

  The permits, however, were another thing. A John Howard McClelland, whose wife Maggie lived in the property after her husband’s death, and from whom Joseph McClelland inherited the property, had applied for permits to make several additions to the property.

  The one that interested them was a 1959 application to dig out an underground nuclear bomb shelter beneath the house. The permit actually stated it that way: underground nuclear bomb shelter.

  Underground. Those old shelters they built during the Cold War – weren’t they made to withstand a nuclear blast? Wouldn’t they be secure and soundproof? That’d be the only way Kate couldn’t hear them trudge through the house during the last several hours. Why the killer hadn’t heard them if he was here.

  And it’s why they wouldn’t hear Kate’s screams.

  The blueprint showed a proposed access to the basement through the kitchen. What the hell? They hadn’t found anything in the kitchen that led underground, that led anywhere at all.

  “Okay,” Slater said, “let’s do it one more time. We’re looking for an entry to a room below the house, probably off the kitchen, but maybe elsewhere if they changed their minds before construction.”

  “Man, the house don’t even look like it has a lower level,” Borem argued. “Lotsa times people apply for permits and don’t do nothin’ with them. If this guy built a basement, where’s the windows? Where’s the air vents? I’m telling you, there ain’t nothing here.”

  “We’ve searched a dozen times already, Slater,” Speckling added. “If there’s a way in from the kitchen, we couldn’t find it.”

  “The access might veer beneath the kitchen,” Bauer suggested, “or it might’ve been changed. Building inspectors weren’t so careful back then, were they?”

  “Borem, Speckling, and Randolph,” Slater said, “take the bedroom and living room. See if there’s a hidden access, a wall panel that opens or something in the floor that leads under the house. Bauer and I’ll check the kitchen.”

  When Borem and Speckling hesitated, Slater glared at them and commanded, “Dammit, just do it. Cover every square inch of the ground floor.”

  Less than a half hour later, Slater and Bauer found the access door in the kitchen, hidden partially beneath the refrigerator and a large, hooked rug which covered most of the alcove. On the rug sat a worn kitchen table set originally painted green, but now chipped and peeling.

  They lifted the table and shoved aside the four chairs surrounding it. Then they eased the refrigerator from the wall by rocking the sides back and forth until the rug was completely freed and they could raise one edge.

  Rather than being a doorway, as Slater had anticipated, the access was a hatched entry with a lift-up, brass ring.

  “This is it,” he said, pointing to the hatch.

  “You think they know we’re here?” Bauer asked.

  “If Kate had heard us, she’d be screaming her head off.”

  “Unless – ”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Slater snapped. “We have to assume all three of them are down there, and that McClelland didn’t hear us because we haven’t heard him. We proceed with caution and the assumption that Kate’s still alive. First, we get Kate and the Sheriff. Then we get this animal.”

  Bauer fetched the other men while Slater and Randolph waited. Everyone knew silence was critical from now on. “In the vault” they called it, using a term from an old Seinfeld episode. Meaning dead silence. Once they raised the hatch, they had to assume their sounds could be heard below.

  Slater assigned one federal agent to the inside of the front door, the other to the back. Speckling and Randolph to guard the outside perimeter in case there was another egress from the shelter and the perp tried to escape through it.

  He gripped the heavy brass ring. They had no way of knowing what lay beneath the house. The opening could be booby-trapped, it could send a signal to warn the killer immediately that his burrow had been breached, or it could simply be empty.

  No, Slater was certain Kate was there – dead or alive.

  “Should we call for backup?” Borem whispered.

  “No time. You stay here and guard the hatch. Bauer and I’ll go down.”

  He carefully raised the hatch and placed a finger over his lips. They knew the signal. Slater motioned he’d descend first, then Bauer.

  A flight of sturdy wooden steps wound farther down than Slater would’ve imagined, down into a cavernous darkness. There was no indication from the outside that a whole world existed below this house in the rich soil of northern California.

  Slater held his breath and groped the wooden railing. He couldn’t see more than a few feet below him. Dust clung to the steps and railing. God, don’t let one of them sneeze. He descended backwards ladder-style, glancing over his shoulder and finally seeing a tiny pinpoint of light below.

  They dropped into the lair of the monster Caliban.

  Chapter Forty-six

  The first distant shuffle was so faint Kate thought she was mistaken. However, as Joseph reached to unloosen her other wrist, he paused abruptly, his face as alert as a bloodhound on the scent of a fox. Had he heard it too?

  When the second noise repeated on the heels of the first, she knew she wasn’t deluding hersel
f. She’d heard a stealthy disruption to the unearthly quiet surrounding them. She coughed loudly and scrutinized Joseph for an indication he understood what the sound meant.

  He stared at her intently.

  “I’m thirsty,” she whispered.

  “Do you want some water?”

  “No, no.” She didn’t want his attention diverted. She lowered her voice, forcing him to move closer. “I want something else.”

  Dear God, she pleaded silently, let it be help. Let it be Slater. Don’t let Joseph hear. Keep him distracted.

  She listened for the muffled noise again, prayed she’d hear it once more, needed to hear it to reassure herself. To verify that Slater was here and coming to rescue her, even though she knew a third sound would certainly alert the monster.

  From a deep, primal place within her, Kate summoned the courage to say what she needed to. “Would you like to touch me, Joseph? I’d like to touch you.” Her skin crawled with the thought of his hands on her. Of her touching his hideous body.

  He caressed her cheek, and she forced herself to lie still. A flinch or cringe would betray her. Her free arm lay lifeless at her side, numb and tingling. Now that her hand was unfettered, he’d expect her to touch him.

  “You’re very pretty,” Joseph said, trailing a finger down her neck and across the top of her breast. “I never saw anyone so beautiful.”

  “You think I’m pretty?”

  “Your eyes are like my mother’s.”

  Buy time for Slater. Please let the sound be Slater coming to save her. Don’t let her die without telling him she was sorry, that she forgave him, that she thought she might even love him. She needed to forgive him, have him forgive her.

  Her heart thundered in her chest. “You can kiss me if you like, Joseph. You can touch me.”

  “Okay, I want to – but I don’t know if I can – you know – do the thing.” His voice was a mixture of self-pity and loneliness, the sound of every rejected teenager she’d ever known. “If I try, you’ll laugh at me like the others.”