Silent Guardian

by Mallory Kane

  But she'd found out last night that she wasn't the boss of her feelings. She'd told herself she knew what she was doing. But she hadn't. She'd failed to watch her step and she'd fallen. Hard.

  When he'd held her, when he'd kissed her and made love to her, she'd been convinced she was the only thing in his world. She'd felt loved, cherished. For that moment out of time he'd been the center of her universe and she'd thought she had been the center of his.

  The sad thing was, she probably had been. For that one brief moment she'd been the focus of his whole attention.

  And all of Archer's attention was an amazing thing. He'd watched her, listened to her, learned everything about her body. He'd coaxed her to heights of erotic pleasure she'd never known existed. He'd made love to every inch of her. He'd made her feel loved, even cherished. And definitely the only person in his world.

  Now, though, the moment had passed and, in true Archer fashion, he was focused on the only thing that really meant anything to him: catching the man who'd taken his wife away from him.

  Resa swallowed against the lump in her throat as he pulled into the police-station parking lot and jumped out of the car. She scrambled after him, catching up to him at the door.

  "Stop it, Archer," she snapped. "You can afford the three seconds it takes for me to get out of the car."

  He glared at her. "Wait for me in the squad room."

  She grabbed his wrist. "Archer, you dragged me down here. The least you can do is let me be involved. I want to see the map. I want to hear the connections. I want to know why he chose my sister and not me. You can't have it both ways. I'm either part of this investigation or I go back home."

  She didn't think his dark stare could get any darker. He pushed the door open with more than necessary force.

  "Is that a threat? Because believe it or not, I'm not intimidated."

  "No. I just—"

  "Then if you want to stay here, keep quiet," he growled. "Because if you don't, Clint will kick you out. And if he doesn't, I will."

  She nodded and suppressed the childish urge to stick out her tongue at him as he stepped back to let her enter first.

  Old wooden desks were crowded together, facing this way and that. Four people were working. They all looked up. Two men raised their hands in a brief wave at Archer. The others went back to their paperwork.

  Archer acknowledged the men with a nod as he crossed the room in two long strides and headed down a short hall.

  She followed him through a door labeled Interrogation.

  Detective Banes was writing on a green chalkboard. Two men in street clothes sat at a scarred table, studying the board and the city map hanging beside it.

  "So there's the list of the attacks in chronological order," Banes said, glancing their way as they entered. "And over here on the map are the locations. Each pin represents the scene of an attack."

  "You can take my wife's attack out of the equation."

  Banes frowned at Archer.

  "It's not part of the pattern." He went to the board and picked up the eraser. "Every single attack has taken place in early June or late December, indicating an organization that borders on obsession."

  Resa got a glimpse of the notation—Natalie Archer, February, before he wiped it out and tossed the eraser down.

  Banes set down the chalk and dusted his hands. His frown was still in place. He wasn't happy that Archer had walked in and taken over.

  "What's the deal with June and December?" One of the seated men asked.

  "Geoff, this is Detective Ed Thornton. You know Bill Mangum."

  "Thornton. You took my position, right?"

  "Yes, sir. I'm sorry about—"

  Archer waved his hand. "You asked why June and December. That's one of the things we haven't been able to isolate. They're exactly six months apart, but if there's some significance to that, I can't see it."

  Resa looked at the dates. "School," she said softly.

  Archer's gaze snapped to her. "What?"

  "Grade schools, high schools, even colleges let out in late May or early June. And two weeks at Christmas. Maybe he's a teacher."

  Archer's eyebrows rose and he nodded. "Or has children himself." He wrote Teacher? and under it Children? "What else could the dates indicate?"

  Thornton's cell phone rang. He answered it and spoke briefly, then stood. "Come on, Mangum. We've got a robbery with injuries."

  The two men headed for the door. Thornton turned back. "Detective Archer, it was good to meet you."

  Archer nodded.

  As soon as the detectives were gone, Banes rounded on him. "What the hell are you doing? If you're thinking about coming back on the job, you can't. You took disability retirement."

  Archer's jaw twitched. "Oh yeah, I remember now," he said sarcastically, holding his right hand up like a mock gun. "Can't shoot anymore. Come on, Clint. Call me a consultant or a busybody. I don't care. I need to solve this case."

  Banes looked at him for a couple of seconds, then nodded. "You know as much about him as anybody here. Have at it. I've got a meeting downtown in fifteen minutes. I'm already late. I hope they'll agree to give us some help out here. Suit yourself. But don't forget you're unofficial. Don't be ordering my staff around."

  "Clint, what about the victim? Do you have her statement yet? Or the physical evidence?"

  "Her statement's being transcribed. Basically it's the same story as all the others. No sign of a break-in. Threw a dark cloth over her face, raped her, made her lie down in the bed and tucked the sheets tight around her. Then he left the same way he came in. We probably won't have the analysis of the physical evidence for a couple of days."

  "Did she see him?"

  Banes sighed. "She's got a little boy, so she has night-lights everywhere, even in her bedroom. She saw his face, but it was pretty dark. We're going to put her with a forensic artist as soon as she's able, but I doubt she has enough for him to go on. She says he didn't have any distinguishing features."

  He turned to Resa. "You want some coffee? Let me show you where the break room is. There are magazines. Even a couch you can take a nap on."

  She shook her head. "I'll stay here. I want to see all the evidence."

  She felt Archer's frown but she ignored him.

  "I should be back in about an hour or so." Banes left, leaving Archer and Resa alone. Archer shot her a venom-laced glance, then turned back to the chalkboard.

  "Good catch on the dates," he said grudgingly.

  She moved closer to the map that was displayed beside the chalkboard. "My mother taught middle school. I remember how her schedule was."

  "What about your sister? How's she doing?"

  Resa sighed and shrugged. "Mom says she's still not eating, but she has agreed to make an appointment with a therapist." She looked at the positions of pins on the map.

  "That's good. Make sure she goes."

  She noticed the sad note in his voice. Had his wife refused to go to therapy? If she had, would she have gotten better? Would it have saved her life?

  Archer looked at the city map. Then he reached over and pulled out a pin.

  Resa saw the muscle in his jaw twitch. "Your house?"

  He nodded. "Keeping her attack in the equation just muddies the waters."

  Resa looked back at the map. For the first time she noticed the circle drawn with a red permanent marker. Half of the pushpins were inside the circle.

  "What's the red circle?"

  "Most serial offenders commit their crimes in an area that radiates outward from their home—or sometimes their place of work. They build in what we call a buffer zone around their safe place—their home or business." He tapped the map. "See this blue circle inside the red one? That's his buffer zone. The theory is that once you've mapped the locations of his crimes, his home will be located within that blue circle."

  "How did you know where to put the red circle?"

  "We drew the circle around the tightest cluster of the six attacks. But as
you see, the rest are scattered. His victims are literally all over the map."

  "Are all the attacks in your precinct?"

  He stepped closer to her to point. "Nope. See this jagged line? That represents our precinct. But the first two rapes were, so we caught the case."

  "So if he were a teacher, these locations would be closer together and his home or school should be somewhere around here." She pointed to the center of the circle.

  He stepped over closer to her. "It's never quite that precise, but that's the theory."

  She thought about her job. "In my work I have to go to my clients. They don't come to me. What if his job takes him to people's homes?"

  "Like a plumber or a repairman or a yard man? We thought of that. But there are literally thousands of people in jobs like that. We still have nothing to go on to narrow the field of possible suspects."

  Resa inhaled the faint citrus scent that she would always associate with Archer's dark eyes, his heat and his fierce, gentle lovemaking.

  With him this close, she couldn't ignore his magnetism or the tension between them.

  Last night he'd been a tender, attentive lover. But this morning it was obvious that he regretted what he'd done. He'd shut down.

  Whatever he'd felt in the soft darkness of the night, it had been an aberration, a temporary weakness. She saw the truth in his eyes. He would never let his guard down again.

  She went around the other side of the table and sat down. She needed more than a couple of feet of wood between them, but it helped—a little.

  "What solid evidence do you have?" she asked.

  "Why are you exposing yourself to all this? You're just going to end up upset and feeling more and more helpless and angry about what happened to your sister." He paused. "Trust me."

  "Because that monster is after me. I feel frustrated and guilty that he got to my sister when I was supposed to be protecting her. But I won't make that mistake again. I am not like Celia or your other victims. F m prepared to fight—"

  His head jerked slightly, as if he were dodging her words.

  His wife. "I'm sorry," she exclaimed. "I didn't mean—"

  "Forget it," he growled. "I've already told you about the fingerprints. Two partials. One from the bedroom window in my condo and the other from your note."

  He turned to the chalk board and wrote Evidence then underneath that Fingerprints. Then beneath that he wrote Eyewitness Statement.

  That was her. "For all the good my description was."

  "You gave us a good sense of his physical type— white male, around five feet eight inches, wiry build. If this latest victim can give us even a vague description of his features or his hair, maybe we can get one step closer to catching him."

  He put down the chalk and massaged his right palm with his left thumb. Then he picked the chalk up again and wrote the attributes as he listed them. "Piercing eyes. Wearing what looked like a dark jumpsuit or coverall, a black hooded jacket and white running shoes."

  "What about the physical evidence?"

  "The guy is not dumb. He doesn't leave anything behind. He probably—well—leaves his clothes on. We have a couple of unidentified hairs, the pieces of fabric he wraps around their heads and the locks of victims' hair he's left at each scene. But there's nothing to compare them with."

  "The fabric? I saw the piece that he'd—covered Celia's face with, but what about the others?"

  "They all appear to come from the same length of cloth. Judging by the material, it's probably a curtain he's torn apart. The torn edges fit together. I wouldn't be surprised if we find torn pieces ready and waiting in his car when we catch up to him."

  "What about DNA?"

  Archer laughed and shook his head. "It's almost impossible for an ordinary town investigating an ordinary crime to get DNA results back."

  "An ordinary crime?" Resa's voice cracked on the word ordinary.

  He nodded grimly. "Sad as it sounds, Nashville and a local crime like this are so far down the priority list... We sent a hair sample found at the second crime scene. It took eleven months to get it back, and we have nothing to check it against."

  "But you've profiled him, right?"

  "What do you do, watch cop shows all day?"

  She lifted her chin. "I watch some. But everybody knows about profiling."

  "Not so many know that serial offenders can devolve or escalate. When that happens all bets are off." He propped a hip on the edge of the table and massaged his hand again.

  "But, yes, we do have a profile. Our perp is probably in his late thirties or early forties, married with kids. Highly intelligent, almost obsessively organized, which means he most likely holds down a good job. He has the skills to get into the victim's homes without having to break in. Usually through a window. He could be a carpenter, a construction worker or even a window installer." He wiped his face and continued.

  "The victims all have several things in common, too. They're blond and slender, and in their mid-to-late twenties. This tells us his choices are not random. But we haven't found anything beyond their looks that's common to all of them."

  "Nothing? How can there be nothing?" She heard the anger and disbelief in her voice. A monster had destroyed her sister's life and the lives of the other victims, and he wasn't going to be caught.

  Archer leaned across the desk until his face was just inches from hers. "Because this is real life, sweetheart, not a TV show."

  Chapter Nine

  Archer saw the surprise and hurt on her face. He straightened, feeling like a jerk. "Look—nobody wants this guy more than I do. But TV shows are misleading. Real life cases don't unfold in logical order."

  Her mouth tightened and her eyes closed briefly. When she opened them, he could see dampness gleaming in the corners. "I know that." She dropped her gaze to her clasped hands. "I just want this monster. I want him to pay for all the lives he's destroyed."

  "Hearing all this is upsetting you. You need to rest. You didn't get much sleep last night." Ah, hell. He couldn't open his mouth without sticking his foot in it.

  Immediately, his brain clicked through an erotic slide show of images from the night before. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to cleanse his brain of the evocative pictures. Resa above him. Beneath him. Her hair draped like a silken veil across his flesh. Her mouth, her lips, her sleek, supple body.

  "Come on," he growled. "I'm taking you to the break room. You can get some coffee, maybe lie down. I'll let the guys know you'll be in there."

  "No." She sat up straight. "I have to do this. I have to know that I did everything I could."

  "You've done a lot. Leave it to the professionals, now."

  Resa shook her head. "A lot is not enough. I told you, I won't sit back and let someone else fight my battles. I owe it to Celia. I promised her I'd take care of her."

  Archer set his jaw. He looked as if he wanted to take her hand and lead her to the break room like a child. She could imagine him pointing his finger at a chair. Stay put and try not to get into trouble.

  She met his gaze without wavering.

  "The smart thing for you to do—the safe thing—is to let the police do their job. You want the Lock Rapist. So do we all, but it's the police who can get him."

  "I don't see you sitting back and letting them do their job."

  Archer massaged his palm. "That's different."

  "Right." She sat back and crossed her arms and lifted her chin. "How does he choose his victims?"

  'The detectives have gathered every bit of information they could find about the victims—where they work, where they buy groceries, their gym, their hairdresser—every place they frequented, and there still aren't enough cross-matches to connect them. We know his victims aren't picked at random. His attacks are too well planned. There's a common thread out there. We just haven't found it yet."

  Resa looked at him, considering the few things that did connect all the victims. "Archer, did he leave a lock of hair this time?"

  "S
ure. Just like every other time." He propped his hip on the edge of the table and flexed his fingers. She was sure he didn't realize that he did it when he was thinking.

  "But if he stays true to his profile, this hair would be Celia's, right? My sister?"

  "That's right. Where are you going with this?"

  "I'm not sure, but can I see it?"

  "You want to see the hair sample? Why?"

  "Because it's my sister's hair."

  He angled his head and considered her. His eyes slid past hers to study her jaw, the angle of her chin, her crossed arms. She felt as if he was measuring her capabilities. Involuntarily she straightened her back even more.

  He looked down at his hand. Finally he spoke. "I'll have to check. If the lab techs are finished with it. And if Clint will okay it—then maybe. I don't have the pull I used to have." His mouth turned up in a wry smile, but his voice sounded bitter.

  He called Clint, and within a few minutes one of the detectives brought him the evidence bag with a lock of honey-colored hair in it.

  "May I see it?" she asked. "I mean, hold it?"

  "You can hold the bag. But don't break the seal. I have no authority to reseal it, and you'll break the chain of evidence. Remember, this may be one of the only pieces of evidence we have to connect him to the victims. We can't afford to screw up even one tiny point of evidence." He handed it to her.

  Holding the lock of hair the rapist had cut and carried away with him the night he'd attacked her sister made Resa's stomach churn with revulsion.

  She took it over to the window behind the chalkboard and opened the blinds. It was Celia's hair. She recognized the shade and the fine texture. Gritting her teeth, she did her best to push away the memory of her sister the way she'd found her that night, curled up in a fetal position, whimpering and shivering.

  "Oh, Celia," she whispered. "I should have been there."

  She turned the bag over and looked at the hair from the other side. She had no idea what she was looking for. But it had felt vitally important that she see her sister's lock of hair. That she hold it.