The Last Victim

by Karen Robards

  “I must have caught my foot on something.” She tried really, really hard to sound rueful. “It happened so fast, it’s hard to be sure.”

  “No harm done.” He grinned as he watched her drop a spoonful of corn pudding onto her plate. “You seem to have had your share of bad luck since we met: you’ve tossed your cookies twice, lost your plate to a bowl of banana pudding, and Kaminsky tells me you fell down hard enough that it made you scream in the shower last night.”

  “Did she tell you how she came to my rescue?” It was an effort, but Charlie managed to keep her tone light as she finished restocking her plate.

  “She might have said something about it.”

  Better to turn the conversation away from her own misadventures, Charlie thought as she led the way back to their table, than let him start really thinking about them and possibly realize the whole series of disasters had started when a certain convict had died under her ministrations. Kaminsky made a useful red herring.

  “So, is Kaminsky married?” Charlie asked.

  “No. None of us are.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “We work too much. We travel too much. At least two of us are hard to get along with.” That crooked smile appeared again. “And no, I’m not telling you which two.”

  Charlie laughed, which helped to ease some of the tension that had her shooting wary looks at every moving shadow. Chill, she warned herself fiercely as they reached the table and sat down. If Garland’s here, he’ll show himself again soon enough, and then you’re just going to have to deal. In the meantime, there’s no point in making the others think there’s something wrong with you.

  “We were beginning to wonder if you two got lost,” Crane greeted them a little too heartily.

  “I dropped my plate and had to start over.”

  Charlie, at least, had become immediately aware that Kaminsky and Crane had broken off an argument upon her and Bartoli’s arrival. Stabbing a fork into her pulled pork and lifting it to her mouth, Kaminsky was still glowering.

  “This place seems to attract an older crowd than Bayley Evans and her friends.” Bartoli sounded thoughtful. He was looking around as he ate. “It’s expensive, too. Not the kind of place you’d expect a group of teenage girls to want to hang out.”

  “Maybe they came with their families,” Crane suggested.

  Bartoli shook his head. “According to her friends, they came in a group. Six of them. I just assumed the venue was the attraction, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Excuse me.” Kaminsky summoned their waiter with a slightly raised voice and a smile. When he reached them and looked at her inquiringly, she continued, “My teenage niece was here last Friday night and said she had a wild time. This doesn’t look like the kind of gathering she’d call a wild time. Was something special happening last week?”

  The waiter smiled. He had introduced himself as Keith, Charlie remembered, as in Hi, I’m Keith, and I’ll be your waiter tonight. Keith was a cute blond guy in his early twenties, maybe a college student. Young enough to have plenty in common with a pack of teenage girls, Charlie thought. Old enough that they’d probably thought he was cool. Or hot. Or whatever teenage girls thought about cute guys these days.

  “Kornucopia played last Friday night,” Keith said with enthusiasm. The blank looks around the table must have told him they didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, because he added, “They’re a boy band, real popular with the high school girls. They drew a big crowd, so management will probably do it again. Only we couldn’t serve alcohol, you know, because of the age thing, so I don’t know how much profit they made. If they didn’t make a lot of profit, I guess it might’ve been a one-off.”

  “Tell me about them. How many guys are in the band? And how old are they?” Kaminsky asked.

  “Um … four guys. Hank Jones, Axel Gundren, Ben Teague, and Travis Fitzpatrick. I don’t know how old they are exactly. Like, twenty-five, twenty-six, most of them.”

  “Are they a local band? Or regional? ’Cause I’ve never heard of them; but then, I’m not from here.” Kaminsky’s tone stayed light.

  “Mostly they play around this area. I guess you could call them regional.”

  “You seem to know quite a bit about them. You a fan?” Bartoli tried to mask the sudden keen interest in his eyes with a friendly smile, but Charlie saw it.

  “When they play, the girls show up.” Keith shrugged. “What’s not to like?”

  Kaminsky laughed, and thanked him as another table beckoned and he hurried off.

  Crane said, “Now, there’s a lead.”

  Kaminsky looked around the table with a superior smirk. “Sometimes all you got to do is ask.”

  “A band.” Bartoli’s eyes gleamed. “Good work, Kaminsky. When we’re done here, pull together information on them.”

  “You thinking maybe they’ve played somewhere near where the other two families were attacked?” Crane asked.

  Bartoli shrugged. “Won’t know until we check it out.”

  “It won’t be the band members,” Kaminsky asserted. “They’re too young. At least, according to Dr. Phil here.”

  Charlie shot her a withering look, but refused to engage.

  “They’re only too young if this is actually the Boardwalk Killer,” Charlie said. “If it’s a copycat, the mid-twenties would fit the statistics.”

  “You don’t think our guy’s the Boardwalk Killer, do you?” Bartoli asked curiously.

  Charlie met his eyes. The truth was, she didn’t want to think it was the Boardwalk Killer. The idea that the predator who had stalked her nightmares for years was back, that he was nearby, that he was once again slaughtering families and preying on innocents, and might at any moment discover her presence and turn his sights on her was terrifying enough to make her blood run cold. But there were other, research-based reasons why it was unlikely to be him, and it was to these she clung.

  “He would be too old now,” she said. “It’s very rare to find a serial killer older than forty. And there’s the time gap: where has he been for fifteen years?”

  “Both are good points,” Bartoli said. “But I think we would be foolish to discount the possibility.”

  “It doesn’t have to be the band members themselves. It could be someone connected with them,” Crane mused. “If the band’s traveling around, they’ll have people working with them, won’t they? Maybe we’re looking for a roadie, or someone like that.”

  “I’ll check out everybody connected with the band, too,” Kaminsky promised. “How big an entourage could they have?”

  Charlie told her, “Look for someone with a history of sex offenses against underage females at any time over the last ten years. A poor relationship with his parents. Hypochondria or other attention-seeking maladies. Probably someone working with him will have noticed that he can’t take criticism, so you could ask about that.”

  They had all finished eating by that time.

  “I’ll just give them all a questionnaire to fill out, shall I?” Kaminsky responded caustically. “Let’s see, I can start with, How much do you hate your mommy and daddy? Then, how about, Do you get sick a lot?”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “You want to find this guy? Those traits are markers. Think of them as the equivalent of a trail of bread crumbs leading to a particular destination, which in this case is the killer.”

  Kaminsky hooted. “Oh, wow, now we’re Hansel and Gretel.”

  “A background check should do it, coupled with a few interviews,” Bartoli said to Kaminsky before Charlie could reply. “Just keep it as low profile as you can. We don’t want to spook this guy. And remember, we’re all on the same team here.”

  Kaminsky made a face. “Yeah, I know.” She shot Charlie a look. “Bread crumbs. I got it.”

  “You up to a dance, Dr. Stone?” Bartoli asked. Charlie’s gaze shifted from Kaminsky to him, and her eyes must have given away her surprise, because he smiled. “Don’t look so shocked. I wan
t to get this crowd on video. Kaminsky’s going to walk around recording us dancing from one angle, Crane from another, and between them we should be able to get a picture of almost everybody who’s here, including the staff, without alerting anyone to what we’re really after. Then we can take the video back with us and go over every frame.” He looked from Crane to Kaminsky. “Any questions?”

  Crane shook his head. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Should work,” Kaminsky agreed.

  “You brought cameras?” Charlie hadn’t seen any such equipment.

  “iPhones,” Kaminsky replied impatiently. Then Bartoli was on his feet pulling back Charlie’s chair for her. See, he’s a gentleman, too. Relationship material if I ever saw it. She stood up, and when he held out his hand she placed hers in it. His grip was warm and strong, and he held her hand firmly as he pulled her after him toward the dance floor. Strictly business, she knew, but it felt personal.

  She liked holding his hand, she discovered.

  I should definitely pursue this.

  “Aren’t they such a cute couple?” Kaminsky trilled behind her. Charlie knew that the comment was part of their cover, that Kaminsky had her phone out and was filming as she followed them, that it was all in service of the urgent cause of finding Bayley Evans, but still she cringed inwardly. With what felt like all eyes on her, she felt slightly uncomfortable and way too conspicuous. “Won’t Aunt Bessie be excited when we show this to her? Are you getting them, Buzz?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Apparently Crane was enthusiastically filming, too.

  Charlie felt about as relaxed as a taxpayer undergoing an audit. She wasn’t used to being in the spotlight. In fact, she had spent years deliberately avoiding it. Add to that a degree of shyness about her newly minted possible attraction to Bartoli, and her near certainty that Garland was there somewhere, and the very last thing she wanted was to be the object of attention.

  But there didn’t seem a whole lot she could do about it.

  A moment later they were stepping onto the dance floor. There were maybe a dozen couples on it, gliding around the smooth wooden surface to the torchy strains of “We’ve Got Tonight.” People stood around the edge of the dance floor, sipping colorful cocktails and chatting in groups and watching. Tightly packed tables ringed the area: more watchers. The band, the buffet line, the layers of tables on the terraces, and even a nearby parking lot that, from the looks of the vehicles in it, was reserved for the use of service trucks, were within view. Kaminsky and Crane should be able to capture almost everything going on outside with their cameras. Of course, it was dark now, but the moon hanging just above the horizon was as round and full as a glow-in-the-dark tennis ball, and between it and the garden lighting and the tiki torches, visibility wasn’t really a problem.

  “I warn you: I’m not much of a dancer.” Bartoli smiled at her as he pulled her into his arms.

  “Me neither.” Smiling back at him, Charlie settled a hand on his wide shoulder, and found herself appreciating with a kind of half-amused irony the fact that what her hand was resting on was a suit jacket. What you want is a man who goes to work every day wearing a suit, she could almost hear her mother (who had never—that Charlie knew—taken her own advice) saying. Not that she meant to be influenced (ever) by her mother; but still, she would be the first to acknowledge that stability was a good thing in a man.

  “Last time I danced like this was at my wedding,” Bartoli said.

  Charlie stumbled a little. Her eyes flew to his face. “I thought you weren’t married.”

  He steadied her. This wasn’t the plaster-yourself-against-the-guy-and-sway kind of dancing that she remembered from high school. This was more formal, with a few inches of space between them and one of his hands holding hers while the other rested on the small of her back. During medical school and her residency, she had attended enough formal events, including enough of her classmates’ weddings, that she was familiar with the steps. Still, she had to dredge them up from deep in her memory, and pay attention, or Ms. Klutz came back. She’d been doing her best not to reinforce the too-clumsy-to-live image that the incident with the banana pudding had probably permanently solidified in his mind, but his announcement had caught her by surprise.

  “I’m divorced. Married my college sweetheart when we graduated. It lasted a little over a year.”

  “I see. Was it a bloodbath that had you swearing off women for the rest of your life?” She was trying for light, but maybe that came off as a little flirty. For whatever reason, his hand tightened on hers.

  “Not at all.” There it was: the same sort of awareness of her in his eyes that she was experiencing for him. A preliminary, maybe-this-could-go-somewhere kind of thing. “It was all over a long time ago. We were just too young.”

  “So who’s the special woman in your life now?” That was subtle. Well, maybe not, but before she made up her mind whether to explore a potential romantic connection with him further, she needed to know certain essential facts.

  “There isn’t one.” He smiled at her, and Charlie was once again struck by how good-looking he was. “What about you?”

  “You two! Look this way and smile,” Kaminsky called before Charlie could reply. A little startled, glancing around, Charlie discovered that she and Bartoli had danced about a quarter of the way around the floor, which had brought them within close range of Kaminsky. She was smiling and waving—and filming—from the sidelines. Charlie suddenly wondered if any of what she’d been thinking about Bartoli had registered in her face, and if so, if it had been caught on film.

  Just considering the possibility made her go warm with embarrassment.

  “Kaminsky and Crane are having way too much fun filming us.” Bartoli’s tone was rueful. She got the feeling that he knew exactly what she was thinking, which didn’t help. “Tomorrow, I guarantee you, when we’re taking this thing apart, they’ll have even more fun with the play-by-play.”

  With her gaze still on Kaminsky, Charlie made a face. “Let’s hope we get something usable out of it.”

  “I’m hoping we might.” There was a note in his voice—something warm and almost humorous—that drew her eyes to his face. “But we don’t want to talk shop right now. Too many ears.”

  “I—” she began, meaning to finish with something like couldn’t agree more. But instead of Bartoli’s lean, dark features, the face she found herself looking up into as she spoke was the sex-on-the-hoof gorgeousness that was Garland.

  The smile he gave her as their eyes connected chilled her blood. “New boyfriend, Doc?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Of course she couldn’t acknowledge that he was there.

  Charlie just remembered that in the nick of time and snapped her teeth shut on the startled squeak on its way out.

  Luckily, shock rendered her incapable of jumping, because she definitely would have jumped.

  Go away crowded against her lips, but she swallowed it with Herculean effort.

  No glaring allowed, either.

  Garland had insinuated himself between her and Bartoli, so that it was Garland she was dancing with, Garland who was holding her hand, Garland who was looking down into her face, she realized with a galvanizing sense of panic. Her hand now rested on Garland’s wide, white T-shirted shoulder. His powerful arm curved around her waist. She could feel him there, against her, his essence as tangible as an electric field. Her skin prickled as if lightning was about to strike in her vicinity. Her vital functions—her heart rate, her breathing—sped up.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Garland’s eyes mocked her. She had forgotten how tall he was, or maybe she hadn’t really gotten the full effect before because this was the closest she had ever been to him. She had to look way up.

  How did you get back? But she dared not say anything out loud.

  “So much for voodoo, huh, Doc? I’m still here. Tough luck for you that your woo-woo stuff didn’t work.”

  She almost jerked herself out of hi
s arms, only she remembered at the last minute that they weren’t his arms, but Bartoli’s. It was Bartoli she was dancing with, Bartoli who was speaking to her, Bartoli who was waiting for her reply.

  Oh, God, she could actually see Bartoli again, because suddenly Garland wasn’t altogether solid anymore, but she couldn’t hear him over the agitated roaring in her ears. What was he saying to her?

  “Lover boy wants to know if there’s anyone special in your life.” Garland could hear Bartoli, apparently, and passed the message on with an undertone of malicious enjoyment.

  “No,” Charlie replied out loud, concentrating on the reassuringly solid features of the real, live man behind the phantom. The man she was actually dancing with and talking to.

  “What, you’re not going to tell him about me?” Garland’s eyes swept her face. His hold on her tightened so that she could feel the power in the arm around her, feel the rock-solid muscularity of the body she was suddenly pressed tightly against. “Don’t tell me you’re a love cheat, Doc.”

  Go fuck yourself. But she managed not to say that out loud.

  “I’d rather fuck you,” Garland said.

  She must have looked shocked, or horrified, or something pretty transparently wigged out, as much at Garland’s apparent ability to read her thoughts as at his words themselves, because he laughed.

  “I’ll be around.”

  Then he shimmered and was gone.

  Just like that.

  The sense of being tightly held against a muscular male body was gone, too. There was space between her and Bartoli again.

  Had there ever not been?

  Charlie’s heart pounded like a hammer.

  Garland was many things (most of them unprintable) but corporeal he definitely was not. No way should she have been able to feel him.

  On the other hand, no way should he have been able to come back from wherever she’d sent him, either.