A Woman Worth Waiting For

by Meredith Webber

  ‘And get off on it every time,’ the young doctor said bitterly. ‘Then one day he’ll have a heart attack and expect people like us to save his life.’

  He touched the young woman’s hair then stalked away, his actions suggesting he’d had to leave before his anger had got the better of him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘I CAN’T believe we lost her,’ Ginny muttered. She was in the doctors’ office, slumped in a chair, one elbow propped on the desk and her head resting on her hand.

  ‘She was probably too far gone even before she was brought in,’ Max reminded her, sorry for the young woman who’d died, but feeling more of Ginny’s despair and pain. ‘You said yourself the damage to the neck was likely to have started organ shutdown.’

  ‘But she was still alive,’ Ginny protested, as if the woman’s failure to survive had been her fault and hers alone.

  ‘You did all you could.’

  He wanted to touch her, to hold her in his arms and comfort her, but he doubted whether he had even the rights of an old friend where Ginny was concerned, so all he could use were words.

  ‘You have to remember that as well as the physical assault on her, there’s always the possibility of shock and fear leading to sudden loss of consciousness and death.’

  ‘Vasovagal syncope? Isn’t that what it’s called?’ She looked up at him, her expression of defeat lightened by a spark of interest.

  ‘That’s the one. People dying of shock,’ Max confirmed. ‘It seems so unlikely, but research suggests it’s how voodoo works. Most primitive tribes had some form of it, some way to lay a spell on an enemy. And generally the enemy succumbed.’

  ‘Well, no one cast a spell on that young woman,’ Ginny muttered. ‘Someone strangled her, and then she died.’

  ‘But not immediately,’ Max reminded her. ‘Something happened so that he didn’t finish off the job.’

  ‘The young couple arrived,’ Ginny said. ‘I was talking to the ambulancemen who brought her in. The two attendants hung around for a while, probably waiting for good news. Apparently the young people saw a dark car drive off, so maybe the killer heard their car approaching. He could have panicked, leapt into his car and taken off without bothering to check if she was still alive. The only good thing is that it should rule out a medical person as the serial killer—most nurses and doctors would know if their victim was alive or dead.’

  ‘Even if the person were deeply unconscious?’ Max asked.

  Ginny pondered it.

  ‘The young woman was in a deeply comatose state when she was brought in. Certainly anyone feeling for a pulse in her wrist could have missed it. Though, come to think of it, would any murderer check a pulse?’

  Max smiled at Ginny’s question, pleased she seemed less shaken now, though sadness for the woman still lurked in her eyes.

  ‘You know, I doubt if any researcher has ever asked a serial killer how he knows his victim is dead. Whether or not he feels for a pulse.’

  ‘But a doctor or nurse would do it automatically,’ Ginny told him. ‘In fact, even ward staff who see doctors and nurses do it all the time would probably do it as well.’

  ‘Every time? Even in a highly charged emotional state?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she admitted, ‘but this one is still different. He’s hurrying for some reason, maybe getting panicky, so he doesn’t feel for a pulse before leaving her.’

  She glanced up at Max.

  ‘Am I being sexist, labelling whoever it is as a he?’

  ‘It’s far more likely to be a male,’ Max agreed. ‘Serial killings involving a woman perpetrator have generally involved a man as well. Two people working together, with the women luring the victims into the trap.’

  Max saw Ginny’s shudder and immediately regretted mentioning traps. Or was it the thought of a woman’s involvement that had repelled her? He thought back to what they’d been discussing, and used it to turn the conversation.

  ‘Getting back to pulse-taking. Is there some reason you want medically knowledgeable people excluded?’

  ‘Of course there is,’ Ginny replied, so forcibly that Max guessed she appreciated the conversational switch. ‘A hospital is like a small town. Because one of the victims was a member of the close hospital community, everyone feels uneasy. And no one wants the guilty person to be someone they know.’

  ‘It’s always someone someone knows,’ Max reminded her.

  ‘I know,’ she said, with such sadness that Max felt his heart ache for her unhappiness.

  ‘Are you free to go home now?’ he asked, thinking she needed to get away from the hospital. ‘Who’s handling the official side of things?’

  ‘Brad was the doctor on duty—he’s got everything under control. They won’t do the post-mortem till tomorrow. Someone will have to be called in. Ellison’s not big enough for a full forensic pathology department so a couple of the local GPs are appointed as government medical Officers, and are rostered to do autopsy work. Though with the fourth autopsy in such a short time, I don’t know who would want to make themselves available.’

  She looked up at Max then repeated her own words. ‘Such a short time! Are there specific time intervals for serial killers? Do they work to a timetable? I can’t remember the dates and details, but it’s only two weeks since Isobel was killed. If the intervals are getting shorter…’ The fear Max could see in her eyes tightened her voice.

  ‘Can we talk about it somewhere less public?’ he asked, nodding to where two nurses were holding a conversation right outside the window.

  ‘Of course! Let’s get out of here.’ Ginny stood up and moved towards the door but, though anxious to escape the hospital, she knew there was no way she’d sleep. Neither was she certain she could handle solitude right now.

  And short of waking Sarah, the only person on offer as company was Max.

  Excitement and apprehension were staking equal claims in her dithering mind, but fear for whoever might be the killer’s next victim overcame both. Discussing the young woman’s death with Max might help her remember something useful—maybe something to do with Isobel that had, until now, seemed irrelevant.

  ‘Would you like to come back to my place? We shouldn’t be drinking coffee at this hour, but I can offer a cool drink, or cocoa if you’d like it.’

  Max reached out for the doorhandle, opening the door for her.

  Which meant she had to pass in front of him to get out. Close to him.

  Too close.

  She forgot about time intervals between killings as she fought the sensations prickling beneath her skin.

  The reawakening of physical attraction made her feel raw and vulnerable, and the fact that it was Max provoking the response was even more unsettling.

  He’d hurt her once. Not physically, but emotionally. And though she knew that the memories of physical pain diminished over the years, it seemed the memories of emotional pain retained their ability to wound—no matter how much time elapsed.

  She strode away but Max was close behind, close enough for all the nerve-endings in her back to be unnecessarily aware to his presence.

  They crossed the road, each enveloped in separate thoughts, and walked towards the hospital accommodation.

  ‘We’ve got more company in the flats. Your building is becoming popular, Ginny.’

  Max pointed towards the light he’d noticed earlier, shining from behind the curtains in the fourth flat, but Ginny was studying the red BMW parked in the fourth space across the drive.

  ‘That’s Paul Markham’s car. Perhaps some relative of Isobel’s has come to visit and he’s taken the flat for him or her. No, that couldn’t be. He’s got a huge house, with lovely landscaped grounds, further along the river. There’d be room for any number of visiting relations.’

  ‘It might be someone he knows, someone on staff, and he’s helping him or her shift in,’ Max suggested.

  ‘Late to be shifting—it’s close to midnight!’ Ginny said, peering towards the lighted windows.
‘I wonder if he’d like a drink of something.’

  ‘Nothing worse than people interrupting when you’re trying to get settled,’ Max suggested, and Ginny smiled to herself. If she hadn’t known better—known that if Max had really loved her he wouldn’t have rejected her as he had—she’d have thought he wanted to be alone with her. It didn’t make sense, but lack of sense didn’t stop a warm feeling washing through her chest.

  ‘You could come to my flat if you like,’ Max was saying. ‘I can’t offer cocoa but if I grab a carton of supplies out of the car, I know there’s decent coffee and some Guide biscuits a friend’s daughter pressed on me.’

  Male or female friend? Ginny wondered, then scolded herself for the thought.

  Get a grip, woman! she ordered herself, adding, to Max, ‘My place—I’ve frozen chocolate cake, which beats Guide biscuits any day. I’ll do a fast defrost thing in the microwave and we can indulge to our hearts’ content.’

  ‘Is your heart content?’

  The teasing question, whispered close to her ear as she unlocked her door, made her spin around. She looked into Max’s eyes and what she saw there trapped the air in her lungs.

  A young woman died tonight, she reminded herself, using the image of the bruises on the woman’s neck to turn her mind from Max the man to Max the scientist.

  ‘I want to talk about serial killers,’ she reminded him. ‘Because of the time—the intervals getting shorter. The next victim might be only days away from death. It’s important, Max.’

  ‘I know it is,’ he said, and his voice told her he meant it, though as she poured drinks and defrosted two slices of cake, she wondered where talking of other things might have led.

  ‘You mentioned two weeks—that’s since Isobel’s death?’ he asked, when they were settled in the living room, nursing refilled glasses of ginger beer while the remnants of the chocolate cake lay, a crumbly mess, on a plate in the middle of the table.

  ‘Exactly two weeks,’ Ginny told him.

  ‘I don’t have facts and figures in my head, but two weeks is a relatively short time-span early on in a killer’s career.’

  ‘Early in a killer’s career?’ Ginny faltered. ‘Four people dead and it’s just a start? And you call killing a career?’

  Max read the fear in her words and hastened to undo his mistake—or at least soften the implications of what he’d said.

  ‘We have to call it something,’ he told her, speaking gently. ‘I’m sorry I put it so callously, but the only way the police or those connected with such cases can handle things is to depersonalise them. So we use ordinary words, and forget how they might shock outsiders.’

  A teasing smile from Ginny told him he’d succeeded in lightening her mood.

  ‘Ah, so I’m an outsider now, am I? Back to the “having to shoot me if you tell me” scenario?’

  He responded with a smile of his own, because he’d never been able to resist answering her smiles, then realised he’d totally lost track of whatever conversation they’d been having.

  Time intervals!

  ‘Generally speaking, the intervals between killings are longer in the beginning then become shorter as the killer begins to feel safe—or perhaps all-powerful.’

  ‘Or needs to escalate his excitement—needs the thrill more often,’ Ginny suggested, the smile gone and her voice strained, as if the thought of thrill-killing was both mystifying and abhorrent. ‘Are they regular? I mean, do some killers have a monthly habit, some a six-weekly one?’

  Max considered his reply carefully, in the end opting for information that might or might not satisfy his listener.

  ‘It depends on the individual. Most serial killers fall into one of two broad categories. Actually, the categories can apply to other criminals as well. For ease of distinguishing between them, they’re classed as either organised and disorganised.’

  Ginny was looking puzzled, but less tense now.

  ‘Organised killers, as the word suggests, are neater—leave a crime scene less disturbed, or more carefully cleaned up. They are usually more prepared. For them, part of the excitement is in the planning. Although for the first crime they might use whatever’s to hand, for future crimes they take whatever they might need. Organised serial rapists have what’s called a “rape kit”, something with which to subdue their victims, the means of immobilising them. If they kill, they carry the means to kill.’

  He saw Ginny’s shiver and reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Serial rape and murder are rare crimes, Ginny,’ he reminded her.

  She touched his hand with her fingers, as if to say thank you, but didn’t shy away from the subject.

  ‘And disorganised criminals? What about them?’

  ‘They use whatever’s handy. Subdue the victim with part of their clothing, strangle them with a scarf or pantihose. The crimes are more opportunistic so the time intervals vary greatly. They also leave the crime scene more of a mess. Organised killers tend to choose their victims more carefully, often watching their prey for some time, learning their routines. Afterwards, they tend to hide the bodies—often they’re never found.’

  ‘So, does the fact that these bodies were found point to a disorganised killer?’ Ginny asked.

  ‘Nothing’s ever so cut and dried,’ Max told her, forcing himself to concentrate on the conversation, which required care, rather than on Ginny’s legs, which she’d now curled beneath her as she’d sat back in the armchair. ‘The police are assuming the bodies were “hidden” in the sense that they were left in out-of-the-way places and covered. The killer, if he wasn’t familiar with the area, might have thought they were well hidden.’

  ‘But in every case it was in an area courting couples frequent,’ Ginny pointed out. ‘Which meant they were found fairly quickly. Wasn’t there an American serial killer who preyed on courting couples?’

  ‘Son of Sam,’ Max responded. ‘He’d sometimes kill both the man and the woman, or sometimes just take the woman.’

  ‘We’re drifting away from time intervals,’ Ginny reminded him. ‘If the two weeks is a pattern, then some other poor young woman has only two weeks to live. What do you suggest—all long-haired girls cut their hair, dye it a different colour? You’re supposed to be considering the victims and we don’t even know who this young woman is! How can you—anyone—save the next one?’

  Ginny sounded so upset Max wanted to go to her and take her in his arms, but… Hell! There were so many reasons why not, he couldn’t begin to enumerate them.

  ‘The earlier intervals weren’t two weeks,’ he said, ‘though the time between attacks has grown shorter. The close shave tonight might make him lengthen the intervals again,’ he said, hoping the suggestion would provide some reassurance.

  ‘Or make him stop?’

  Max knew serial killers were unlikely to stop, though fear of being caught could make them shift their scene of operation. However, Ginny was unlikely to be comforted by that knowledge.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said.

  Silence fell between them—a silence made uneasy by memories of the past. Knowing he should go, Max leaned forward and picked up the plates.

  ‘I’ll wash these for you,’ he offered.

  ‘Leave them in the kitchen. I’ll do them,’ Ginny told him, untangling her legs and standing up as well. ‘Now Sarah’s arrived to share the work, I can have a sleep-in tomorrow.’

  He carried the plates into the kitchen and stacked them on the bench, but when the simple task was completed the silence remained, and he left the kitchen area for the living room where Ginny now stood by the window, looking out into the night. He knew he should go, but couldn’t leave. There was so much he wanted to say but, although the words flashed and tumbled in his head, he couldn’t sort them into order.

  He walked towards her and she turned to face him, her back against the window now. As if moving to some unseen director’s instructions, he reached out and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, b
efore sliding them up to frame her face.

  ‘Ginny!’

  He breathed her name in the huskiest of whispers, afraid that if he spoke more loudly the tension in the air might crack them both apart.

  She said nothing, but the green eyes looking into his were luminous with expectation. Wary, too.

  The wariness reminded him he’d hurt her once before.

  ‘May I kiss you?’ He felt the words, hoarse with six-year-long frustration and a load of new doubts, rumble out from between his lips.

  ‘You’re asking, Max?’

  ‘I’m asking, Ginny.’

  His voice sounded better, quieter and less desperate, this time.

  She studied him, and he let her look, knowing she’d see new lines on his forehead, around his lips and fanning out from his eyes. And a gauntness in his cheeks, which the last few years had rendered ineradicable.

  ‘I guess so,’ she said at last, so quietly he might have imagined the words—though not the expression of mingled apprehension and excitement in her eyes.

  He bent and kissed her lips, a tentative preliminary brush of his mouth against hers, a tender, feather-soft touch that hurt his heart and scattered to the winds whatever composure he’d managed to dredge up.

  ‘Oh, Ginny,’ he murmured, gathering her close, holding her gently—overwhelmed by the depth of his emotion for this infinitely precious woman he’d walked away from all those years ago.

  As the kiss deepened he sensed a shift in her reaction from acceptance to something that tasted like enjoyment—a gentle quiescence—but she wasn’t kissing him back.

  He lifted his head, still holding her, breathing hard to calm the tumult in his body.

  ‘Nothing’s changed—well, not for me,’ he said, the tightness in his throat making the words gruff. ‘I only have to look at you to feel my body stir, while kissing you, even holding you like this, reduces me to a pitiable collection of sensory receptors all trembling with desire.’

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead, and stepped away. Then grinned weakly at her and added, ‘Now tell me it no longer works that way for you and send me home, Dr Willis. Put me out of my misery right now. I can’t believe I’m behaving so pathetically. Though maybe you have this effect on all the men you’ve ever kissed, and have truckloads of past suitors reduced to useless puddles of ectoplasm by your smile.’