by Joanna Wayne
“Among others.”
“What others?”
“The mayor for one. He doesn’t like his supporters and major contributors harassed. The governor for another. His brother is an orthopedic surgeon on staff at MG. And Nicole Dalton Lancaster is his god-child.”
“Always politicians,” Corky said. “They think they’re above the law. Guess that’s why they’re the biggest crooks of all.”
“But not murderers.”
“That’s debatable,” Dallas said.
The chief wiped the back of his hand across his brow, picking up a few drops of perspiration. “Look, guys, I know a juicy affair between a murdered nurse and a doctor makes good bedtime reading for you two, but we’re looking for a serial killer here. A stripper, a schoolteacher, a jockey and a nurse. Tell me how that cast ties into Mercy General.”
“It doesn’t,” Dallas admitted. “But we have zero leads on the first three murders. We haven’t found any link between the three victims yet.”
“Yet.” The chief waited while the word sank in. “That’s the operative word here. So you need to be out combing the bushes for that link. If you find it and it takes you to Mercy General, then you can crawl all over the hospital, prowl and slink like cockroaches in a dirty kitchen, sucking up every bit of garbage you can find. Until then, you need to quit badgering the staff, especially the physicians.”
“Meaning you want us to lay off Jim Castle and Malcomb Lancaster?”
“That’s what I like about you, Dallas. I only have to hit you over the head with the obvious once. Bottom line is you have zero grounds to get a court ruling saying Jim Castle has to have DNA testing. You don’t have anything concrete on the guy.”
“I can tell you—”
The chief put up his hand to stop Dallas’s argument as the profiler appeared at the door. “I know all about the reliability quotient of your hunches, Dallas. Wrap them in evidence and I’ll look at them.”
DALLAS’S FIRST IMPRESSION of Darlene Andrews when he’d met her three weeks ago was that she was too young and far too pretty to know the criminal mind the way he needed her to know the mind of Fastidious Freddie. It took just a few hours of going over the details of the crimes with her and tramping around the crime scene areas to convince him that being a blond bombshell was not a detriment to her job performance. Today they’d find out just how good she was.
She started out by going over the basics of the murders, including the killer’s MO. Then she moved to the part he and Corky had been waiting on, the insight as to what kind of guy they were looking for, hopefully more than they’d come up with themselves.
“This is what I have,” she said, spreading her notes in front of her, “all of it based on a number of indicators, some clearer than others. I think we’re looking for a white male, probably in his mid-to late-thirties, possibly younger, though not much younger. He’s likely nice-looking and a smooth operator, someone who can charm women into going with him to some deserted spot where he injects them with the drugs. He wouldn’t have to be particularly large, as there’s no physical struggle involved.”
“But he does have to be strong enough to move their body after he kills them,” Corky said.
“Good point. We also know that he’s obsessed with cleanliness. That could indicate he came from a home where the parents—especially the mother—were obsessive. Or it could mean just the opposite. He may have come from parents who were total slobs, to the extent that he was embarrassed to have any of his friends around while he was growing up. It may be the reason why he thinks he had few friends, and he may discount his own shortcomings.”
“Would he be likely to have close friends now?” Dallas asked.
“I doubt he’s truly close to anyone, though he may go through the motions. He appears to be driven by anger, especially toward women, which would explain the torture. This may stem from having been betrayed by a woman or being mistreated by his mother. It’s likely he never married.”
Dallas scribbled down a few notes of his own, then let his pen drop to the tablet. “Do you think he could operate in a professional setting?”
“I think it’s not only possible but likely. He’s very smart and very controlled. He’s also very knowledgeable.”
“Could he be a doctor?” Corky asked.
“Yes, or a surgeon. He’s very precise with his incisions. And he knows about DNA, uses it to foul up the investigation and confuse the evidence.”
“You talk about control,” Dallas said, “but what about moments where he slips out of control. What’s his rage factor?”
“I’d say it’s high if we’re talking about quick bursts of anger at people or situations that don’t follow his plans. He’ll likely recover quickly, though, at least outwardly.”
“Do you think the murders are connected with these bursts of rage?” the chief asked. “Do you think he just blows up and kills someone before he can get it all back under control?”
Dallas shook his head. “The murders are too well planned,” he said, answering for her. “All except the last one.” He turned back to Darlene. “What’s your take on how Karen Tucker’s murder fits into all of this?”
“If the man who killed Karen Tucker is the same man who killed the other three victims, then it indicates either a sharp downward plunge in his mental and emotional state or that something other than his usual sick urges prompted that murder.”
“I tend to go with the latter,” Dallas said. “Any insights into what made this professional man with a career suddenly take up serial killing?”
“Something happened to him to trigger resentment or perhaps rage that had been buried inside him for a long time. Or maybe he’d just reached the pinnacle of accomplishment he’d been driving toward and found it wasn’t enough. In any case, there’s a good chance that the man killed at least once before. He may have relived the way he did it many times in his mind, each time improving until he formulated his current MO, a plan that he believes makes him invincible.”
“And those sick poses he places the victims in after they’re dead. How do you explain those?” Corky asked.
“I’d say it dehumanizes them for him and also gives him an image to take with him that probably sticks in his mind and gives him immense satisfaction, kind of like the souvenir most serial killers take.”
“Or perhaps he snaps photos of them that he takes with him,” Dallas said, “his own personal porno collection.”
“If you’re serious, we should hit every film developing spot in the city,” Bailey said.
“Probably a waste of time,” Darlene argued. “The man’s too smart for that. He’d use a Polaroid.”
Dallas leaned in, sickening thoughts roaring through his mind. “Or else he’d develop them himself.”
“Right.” Darlene gathered her notes, obviously through with the more formal part of the presentation. “Remember, profiling is a valuable tool, but not an exact science. Some of what I’ve given you may be dead-on, but some may miss the mark entirely.”
“Maybe,” the chief said, “but your percentage of being on target is phenomenal.”
“I do my best.”
Dallas tried to listen to the conversation and kudos, but his mind had already taken off on its own tangled tangent. The profile wasn’t a perfect fit for Malcomb Lancaster, but it was too close for comfort.
Damn. What were the odds that the woman who haunted Dallas’s heart and soul was married to the deranged killer who consumed his mind?
“What about you, Dallas?”
He looked up. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to respond. “I’m sorry. I guess I was getting ahead of the game.”
“Darlene says she doubts seriously that our serial killer was involved romantically with Karen Tucker. How do you feel about that?”
“I’m not ready to rule it out.”
“Based on the evidence,” the chief asked, “or on a hunch?”
“Both. We don’t know how this particular kille
r chooses his victims. He may have had some kind of romantic involvement with all of them, or at least some kind of attraction.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Darlene said. “And I’d never underestimate the power of a good cop’s instincts.”
“If this man were married,” Dallas asked, unable to push the rush of terrifying possibilities from his mind, “what kinds of things might his wife notice?”
“Control issues. The need for order.”
“And sudden bursts of rage?”
“Most definitely.”
Dallas stayed in his chair, but the meeting was over for him. Anxiety burned inside him as the images of the crime scene stalked his brain—horrible, sickening pictures in living color. Until the faces on the bodies faded out all he saw was a pair of eyes staring back at him.
The eyes that had haunted a thousand dreams and hundreds of sleepless nights. Nicole’s eyes.
“Are you all right, partner?” Corky asked. “’Cause you sure don’t look it.”
“Yeah, fine, but I’ve got to take care of some business that can’t wait.” Dallas stood and walked out, not knowing or caring if the others understood. He didn’t stop at his office on his way to the car. A phone call wouldn’t do this time.
He was paying a call on Nicole to tell her the unthinkable. The man she’d vowed to love forever just might be a serial killer, the worst the state had ever seen. Dallas had to convince her to get out of that house. Now.
Before she became the next victim of the madman who’d claimed her for his own.
Chapter Ten
Nicole sat in the middle of the floor in the dark-paneled library, amidst a collection of photo albums she’d rescued from a dusty old chest in the attic. Dealing with the multitude of decisions she faced concerning her marriage had put her in a nostalgic mood, made her want to slide back to a time when her world had not been hurtling down collision alley.
Outside, the afternoon sun beat down on the pool, turning the blue water to shimmering white. It reminded her of the costume she’d worn in her first dance recital. She must have been six, almost seven at the time. Her mom had been pregnant with Ronnie. Stomach extended so that she had no lap, she’d sat in the rocker in the living room with yards of tulle cascading to the floor, sewing on what Nicole had thought at the time were royal jewels like fairy princesses wore.
Looking back, she knew that her mother must have been battling the cancer even then, but to Nicole it had been a magical time of love and hugs and pirouettes. A year later she’d stood at the grave site, holding her dad’s hand while he placed flowers on a gray slab of concrete that had her mother’s name printed on it in the same kind of letters she practiced in her wide-lined school tablet.
He’d wiped tears from his eyes. Nicole hadn’t cried that day, nor the day after, nor the day after that. It had been a full month later when she’d woke up in the middle of the night with a stomachache. She’d called out for her mother, and that’s when the truth had finally seeped into her consciousness that her mother would never be there again.
The photo album fell from her hands and Nicole closed her eyes, drifting back to that warm place with tutus and her mother’s hugs. But when she opened her eyes, the warmth vanished and the chill set back in.
It had been a week since she’d heard from Dallas. A week since the news of Karen Tucker’s death had shaken the foundations of her already unstable world. A week of recriminations and analyzing, of finally accepting the undeniable fact that she was married to a manipulative, deceitful stranger. She told herself it could have happened to anyone, but that didn’t keep her from feeling like a naive fool.
Her meeting with her attorney had amounted to a major downer, an itemized inventory of circuitous hurtles she’d have to jump over and mazes she’d have to crawl through. If she and Malcomb had signed a premarital agreement, a divorce would have been much less complicated, he’d told her. But the option had never crossed her mind. She’d been convinced at the time that promising “till death do us part” would be more than a rhetorical tradition.
She doubted their marriage could be salvaged after all the lies and deceptions, but she wanted no feelings of doubt to crawl into bed and rob her of sleep when she asked Malcomb for a divorce. To circumvent that, she had an appointment scheduled with a marriage counselor. It was an attempt, and if it helped, she’d ask Malcomb to go with her the next time. But she wasn’t fooling herself. At this point, it would take a miracle to recover the trust.
And if that weren’t enough, Dallas had tiptoed into the clouded corners of her mind. Late at night, when she lay awake beside Malcomb, feeling alone and bewildered, the old longings returned with such force that she’d climbed out of bed on more than one occasion, stayed awake for hours reading without having a clue what the novel was about.
The feelings for Dallas frightened her as much as her crumbling marriage. Dallas was not the answer to her problems and he had no part in her future. He was the past, over and done with, the way he’d wanted it. It would be a heartbreaking mistake to look to him simply because she so desperately needed something or someone to hold on to now.
Most important, she refused to let Dallas influence her decisions about her marriage. It wouldn’t be fair to him, Malcomb, or her. Remembered passion might seem incredibly sweet and devastatingly enticing when she was faced with the failure of her marriage and the serious loss of self-esteem, but it was delusive, and could be monumentally destructive.
Stretching her legs in front of her, she picked up the next album and blew off a layer of dust, watching the particles dance in a beam of sunlight before she turned her attention to the snapshots. The photographs on the first page were of her, Ronnie and her father, clowning around at a Saints’ game. She remembered the weekend the photographs were taken.
She’d been seventeen, Ronnie ten. It was his first trip to New Orleans. She’d been afraid the excitement would be too much for her brother, but their father was certain Ronnie could handle it. Gerald Dalton had been right.
Ronnie had cheered until he was hoarse, followed every play with the same intensity he did while watching his favorite team play on television. Their father had taken him to several more games after that, even wrangled permission on more than one occasion to take Ronnie right into the locker room to personally congratulate his idols. Whatever her father wanted, he usually got. Bigger than life. Another reason his sudden and unexpected death had hit her so hard.
Nicole touched her fingers to the photograph, let them slide across her father’s face. Gerald Dalton. To his constituents, he’d been a knight on a white horse slaying dragons on their behalf. To his enemies he’d been the unrelenting foe, using his charisma to charm the voters and the media, and his political prowess to overcome every obstacle they hurled in his path. To Nicole and Ronnie, he’d just been Dad.
Enough of memories, she decided, and time for action. Her father had regrouped after the loss of a spouse he’d been very much in love with. Nicole herself could surely survive this.
Gathering the albums in her arms, she marched to the kitchen and dropped them on the table to be repacked and carted back to the attic. The doorbell chimed. Drying her hands on a tea towel, she walked to the front door reluctantly. No one but Janice ever stopped by unexpectedly, and she had no desire to see her today. But it wasn’t Janice’s face she saw through the beveled glass in the door. It was Dallas’s.
Her pulse quickened as anxiety and a traitorous thread of anticipation fluttered in her stomach. She opened the door. “Hello, Dallas. I would say it’s nice to see you, but I’m guessing this is not a social call.”
“Not exactly.” His voice was strained, and he made no attempt at a smile.
She dreaded what was coming next, but asked anyway. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk. Is this a good time?”
“Not if the subject is Karen’s murder. There is no good time for that.”
“I’m sorry, Nicole. I really am.” He looked pas
t her. “Is Malcomb home?”
“No, I’m not expecting him for another couple of hours.”
“Good. It’s you I want to talk to, and it would be easier to say what I have to say if you’d invite me inside.”
Easy for him. Difficult for her. She already felt so damn vulnerable, as if pieces of her were missing, leaving holes the size of the Grand Canyon in her soul.
“I’ve told you everything I know, Dallas. If you want to know more about Malcomb and his relationship with the murdered nurse, you’ll have to go to him. You probably have more chance of getting the truth out of him than I do, anyway.” The bitterness spilled out before she could stop it, and she hated that it had come to this. Dallas didn’t seem to notice. He just kept staring at her.
“I don’t have questions, Nicole. I have information. I really need to discuss some issues with you.”
She stood aside while he entered, then led the way to the library, where she’d been pouring over the albums minutes before. The room was the same, but it seemed different with Dallas in it. There was an awareness that existed between them, a closeness that was more than attraction, less than passion, though she didn’t doubt that given half a chance the passion would explode in dizzying force.
She sat in the flowered chair by the window. Dallas took the one facing it, scooting the oversize hassock out of the way with his foot and leaning in close. Tension was rife between them, and all of a sudden she realized it was more than memories that fired the air with frightening power. It had to do with Dallas. Something was horribly wrong.
Her hands grew clammy, and she rubbed them against the fabric of her skirt as her mind jumped from one possibility to another. “You have new evidence about Karen’s murder, don’t you?” she said, settling on the most obvious conclusion.
“Not exactly.”
But something had changed, something that Dallas dreaded putting into words. It didn’t take a big stretch of her reasoning powers to fill in the blanks. “You think Malcomb killed Karen.”
