“Christ,” Hollis muttered. She studied the photo of Shirley Arledge and unconsciously shook her head. This was not the woman she had seen at the crime-scene pool.
Marc added, “Jordan just called in and said they’ve found a basket with some garden tools on a brick pathway behind the house. Evidence she’d been working out there, but nothing to indicate a struggle or any kind of violence. Teresa’s on her way out there, but I’m betting we won’t have any forensics to speak of.”
“How was the cat?” Dani asked. “Hungry or not?”
“Not, but it doesn’t tell us much; they have one of those dry-food dispensers that hold enough kibble for at least a week, as a convenience, and her habit was to fill it up every Monday.”
Dani started to speak, then thought better of it.
“What?” Marc asked, apparently picking up on undercurrents.
Or simply reading her expression, the probability of which Dani found more than a little unsettling.
“I’m not a cop,” she said.
“So? Dani, you’re here for what you bring to the table, and that includes any relevant dreams, thoughts, speculation, or hunches and intuition. Let’s hear it.”
“Okay. I hope to God I’m wrong, but let’s assume that Shirley Arledge is or will be the third victim of the serial killer here in Venture.”
“Possibly the fourth,” Hollis said, and explained what she had seen at the crime scene the previous day.
“You’re sure this isn’t the woman you saw?” Marc asked, indicating the photograph.
Hollis shook her head and went to pin the photo on the bulletin board beside those of Becky Huntley and Karen Norvell. “I’m positive. I don’t know who she is or why nobody’s reported her missing—yet—but it’s a safe bet she’s a victim of our killer.”
“Shorty’s at the crime scene with the pool-maintenance people,” Marc said. “Jordan rousted everybody first thing this morning; whatever you saw must have spooked him.”
“Or I did,” she said ruefully. “I’m told it’s a bit unnerving to watch a medium trying to communicate with a spirit.”
“Well, we’ll know in the next few hours if there’s any real evidence in that pool.” Marc looked at Dani. “You were saying, if Shirley is a victim…?”
“Then maybe we know now what the killer’s been doing all these weeks. Maybe he came straight here, to Venture, already had or found his safe place, and got it ready. And then started selecting his victims.”
“Hunting,” Paris said. “But not one at a time, more like a…group of potential targets. He had a pretty good I.D. on all of them before he moved on the first one.”
“It makes sense,” Dani said. “Just like in Boston, these women were grabbed as they went about their lives, and in each case the timing was perfect; they were outside, unprotected, with no witnesses. He never had to break down a door or even shatter a window to get at them.”
Hollis said, “No way to chalk that up to chance. Not the three times here, and sure as hell not the dozen times in Boston.”
“But in Boston he didn’t have the time between victims to do much hunting, and there sure as hell hasn’t been much more here,” Marc objected—but then nodded. “Of course. The X factor: Is he or isn’t he psychic. That’s what tipped off Bishop, wasn’t it? The hunter was moving too fast to spend much time searching for his prey between attacks, yet there each victim was. Perfect time, perfect place, perfect opportunity. Exactly when and where he wanted them, when and where he expected them to be. Almost like magic.”
“Or like he knew,” Dani said.
Hollis was nodding. “The more-traditional profilers insisted that the killer had likely selected most if not all of his targets early on, that he knew their habits and routines long before he got his hands on them. And that makes sense, up to a point, but it conveniently ignores the several instances where the victim was alone and vulnerable—and in a situation not a normal part of her routine—when she was taken. Once, maybe, the killer got lucky. Not more than once.”
Paris closed a folder and pushed it away from her with a slight grimace, which Dani knew the others would probably read as distaste rather than what it was: the response to a pounding headache. “And then there’s Annie LeMott,” she said. “If I’m reading the files right, even the traditional profilers agreed that the killer wasn’t interested in the limelight and would not have grabbed Annie if he had known who she was.”
Marc offered another objection. “But wouldn’t he have known? If he was psychic, if that was how he was hunting his prey?”
“You’d think.” Hollis was scowling at no one in particular. “Damn, no wonder Bishop’s still trying to get a handle on this guy.”
Dani rubbed the back of her neck in a vain attempt to soothe the stiffness there but forced herself to stop when she realized Marc was watching her. “Look, one doesn’t necessarily negate the other. Think about it this way: If he isn’t psychic and did have to spend time studying and hunting each victim, we have several instances where he couldn’t possibly have known in advance where his prey would be, because the women were somehow outside their normal routine. If, on the other hand, we assume he was so lucky because he’s psychic and hunted them that way, then the only victim who doesn’t really make sense is Annie LeMott. Who she was made her a dangerous victim, and if he was psychic he should have known that.”
“Maybe he couldn’t read her,” Paris suggested. “Even the strongest psychic isn’t a hundred percent.”
“As far as we know, that’s true,” Hollis said. “Plus, some people have shields, either naturally or because they needed at some point in their lives to protect themselves, and even the strongest psychics we know of can’t get through walls like that.”
Paris nodded. “Exactly. So even if he is psychic, and if he does have more bells and whistles than we do, we can’t know for sure that he doesn’t have some of the same limits. In fact, he must have, given that he’s at least nominally human. So he’s out trolling, he already has eleven notches on his belt, and if I remember correctly, there was nearly a week between the eleventh victim and Annie. Right?”
Hollis nodded. “Right. Boston was jumpy as hell, and very few women ventured out alone.”
“So he hasn’t been lucky in that sense. If there’s plenty of prey but none of it’s vulnerable, unprotected, alone, then this hunter doesn’t come out of the dark. And he really, really needs to feed.”
Dani said, “I know the animal metaphor fits, but—”
“Sorry. Anyway, he’s out hu—trolling and crosses paths with Annie completely by chance.” Paris frowned. “Does anybody know what she was doing out alone?”
Nodding again, Hollis said, “She and a friend went to a movie, together. Rode together, sat together in the theater, were careful not to be alone, just as they had been warned to be. Went back to the apartment building where they both lived, together. Approximately a half hour later, a neighbor saw Annie about to take her trash out. That’s the last anyone saw of her.”
Paris shook her head a little, jolted from the mental exercise of trying to solve a puzzle by the reminder of a young life snuffed out. “Man, you do everything right and then get tripped up by something utterly ordinary.”
“Such is life,” Hollis noted. “Or fate or destiny, if you believe in that. Because not only did Annie spend those few precious minutes about ten yards from the safety of the door of her apartment building, but she just happened to be exactly the killer’s type, he just happened to be close enough, and for whatever reason he couldn’t know or guess that by grabbing her he was making his first real mistake.”
14
AT THIS RATE,” Gabriel said with a sigh, “we’re gonna be here a long, long time.”
We can’t be here a long time. You said it yourself: Strangers will stand out here. Especially once they know about the victims.
“Yeah, the sheriff’s done a good job of keeping his people quiet this long, I have to say.” Gabriel studied h
is map for a moment, then squinted into the distance. “That old textile mill is right in the middle of a neighborhood. No way can I get close in daylight.”
My turn tonight, then.
“Right.” He put a small check mark beside that particular circled area on his map. “Just about every backyard I see has a dog, so be careful.”
Dogs love me.
“They make a lot of noise when you’re around. I’m just saying that if you’re going to do a little breaking and entering in the dead of night, best not to rouse the neighborhood watch. Okay?”
Yes, Gabriel.
“The meekness does not become you. It’s also a rotten lie,” he said, moving the map slightly and leaning closer to the Jeep’s hood to get a better look. He frowned, then bent to get a laptop out of his backpack and opened it up on top of the map. “You know, this is sort of a weird little place.”
Why do you say that? I mean, aside from the obvious serial-killer thing, it seems a perfectly normal small town to me.
“With an awful lot of churches.”
Small towns in the South usually do have a lot of churches.
“Uh-huh. With names like Church of the Everlasting Sin?”
You’re kidding.
“No.”
Hmmm. Maybe that’s just the Baptist version of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows, something like that.
“I don’t think so.”
Why not?
He typed rapidly, having no problem carrying on a conversation at the same time. “Every Baptist church I’ve ever seen has been nice, with polished pews and thick carpet and lots of flowers, and even stained glass. I don’t think the Church of the Everlasting Sin is going to have any of that.”
Because?
“Because,” Gabriel said, “according to this most recent map, the church is presently housed in what used to be an old grain-storage facility, and according to the database we’re still compiling on the town, the pastor of the Church of the Everlasting Sin, one Reverend Jedidiah Butler, has locked horns with the town council for the last couple of months. He insists on holding services in the place as it is, and the town wants him to either rehab or rebuild.”
Never bet against a town. Unless you have God on your side.
“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure this guy does.” Gabriel scowled down at the laptop’s screen. “Fifteen years ago, the cops were dogging him out in California. And it wasn’t for staging a protest for freedom of religion.”
Don’t tell me.
“Yep. Seems the good pastor was suspected of killing his wife.”
Last night was…strange,” Dani said, keeping her voice low as she watched people in special protective gear working carefully in and around the roped-off pool.
“Tell me about it,” Paris said. “My head is still killing me. Hollis?”
“Yeah, me too.” Hollis was frowning. “Is my memory off, or did I hear another voice in there with ours?”
Paris said, “Hard to tell with all the screaming.”
“You’re clairvoyant and didn’t pick it up?”
Paris hesitated, looking at Dani. “Well…”
“It was there.” Dani looked at the other two women and managed a smile. “Yeah, same voice. His. I’ve been thinking about that. That…junction of hallways in the dream walk? A bit like the center of a web.”
“Another trap,” Hollis said.
Dani nodded. “I think about all those women in Boston, the women here—it’s like he lays his trap and waits for them to walk into it.”
“That’s what you feel the symbolism means?” Hollis asked.
“I don’t know what I feel, except…that something’s missing. Something important.”
Marc joined them in time to hear what Dani said, but instead of commenting on that, he looked at them one by one and said, “So, is somebody going to tell me what happened last night with the three of you? I can’t say for sure about Hollis, but I’ve never known either Dani or Paris to drink enough to be hungover the next day—and that’s what you all look like.”
“I’d love to work up some righteous indignation,” Paris told him, “but I see them, and I saw me in the mirror this morning, and I couldn’t agree more.”
“It was a dream walk,” Dani said briefly.
“All three of you?”
Dani refused to look at him. “Yes. We thought there was a chance we might find out something.”
“Did you?”
It was Hollis who replied, “Another symbolic trap, this one filled with endless hallways and screams. And maybe the voice Dani heard before.”
“It was him,” Dani said. “But just saying my name, right at the end, before we all came out.”
“I don’t like that,” Hollis said. “I haven’t been psychic my whole life, but it doesn’t take an expert to know that an evil voice in your mind is not a good thing.”
“Maybe I’m just nuts,” Dani suggested, not entirely kidding.
Before anyone could respond to that, Shorty joined them to say, “Good news, bad news, and weird news. Good news is, we don’t have a body in the pool, the drains, or any of the equipment.”
“The bad news?” Marc asked.
“Bad news is, what we do have is more of what we found here on Wednesday. Body parts, mostly unidentifiable by sight. We won’t know for sure until lab results are in, but I’m guessing there isn’t a new victim here.”
“And the weird news?” Hollis asked.
Shorty held up a clear plastic bag, and they could all see the silver bracelet it contained. “The weird news is that we have another piece of jewelry, and this one has a name on it. Only the name doesn’t seem to belong to any of our victims or to anybody reported missing—as far as I know, anyway.”
“What’s the name?”
“Audrey.”
Marc took the bag and studied the contents for a moment, then passed it on to Dani. “Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Any of the rest of you?”
Dani looked at the delicate bracelet, the name of its presumed owner spelled out in pretty, flowing letters. She had never been especially sensitive to objects, and this one told her nothing. “Sorry, I’m drawing a blank.” She passed it on to Paris.
And knew immediately that Paris felt something. But her twin merely turned the bagged bracelet in her hands for a moment, then handed it off to Hollis with a shrug.
Dani didn’t comment. She waited for Hollis to return the bag to Marc with a shrug of her own and watched him give it back to Shorty.
“Maybe it’ll mean something to the lab,” Marc said. “Thanks, Shorty.” He watched his technician return to the roped-off area around the pool, adding, “Paris, what did you pick up?”
“I’m not so sure I like that you can read me so well,” she told him with a frown.
“I’m not reading you. I’m reading Dani—so to speak.” He looked at her. “You went tense as soon as Paris touched the bag.”
Dani met his gaze briefly, then asked her sister, “What did you pick up?”
Still frowning, Paris said, “My abilities seem to be changing too. Instead of a feeling that amounts to little more than a hunch, I saw something this time. I got a weird little flash image of a guy buying flowers. Roses. I think it was at that shop up near the old railroad depot.”
“Could you recognize him if you saw him again?” Hollis asked.
“No, I didn’t see enough of him. Just his hands reaching for the flowers, and a glimpse of an older lady behind the counter, smiling at him.”
“Let’s go,” Marc said.
It wasn’t until they were about halfway to their destination that Hollis spoke from the backseat.
“Look for her in the water. Maybe it’s as simple as that. A bracelet with a woman’s name on it.”
“I just hope the name gets us somewhere,” Marc said. “Preferably before we find the murdered remains of Shirley Arledge.”
He really wanted it to be the same, and it almost was.
Almost.
B
ut the drug he was trying worked only to a point, and after that she really didn’t want to cooperate.
She was a screamer. He hated it when she screamed. It was the quiet sobs, the soft, ladylike pleas, that he expected from Audrey.
He finally resorted to taping her mouth again. It was an imperfect solution, and he was conscious of annoyance with that.
“Audrey, you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be,” he told her.
She moaned, and her wet eyes begged him.
He enjoyed that for a moment, smiling down at her.
She was ready. Her short hair covering her small, well-shaped head was a rich, dark brown, and the pencil had darkened her eyebrows nicely—though he made a mental note to use the hair color on them next time. He had shaved away the ugly yellow pubic hair and the hair on her legs and armpits as well.
Now to get her thoroughly clean.
He got a bucket filled with hot soapy water. He used the brush first, scrubbing her from her feet to her throat. He used the sink sprayer, with its special long hose, to rinse her body. And even though she was pink and glowing, he used a second bucket of hot soapy water and a soft sponge to wash her down a second time.
He rinsed her again, taking care to shift her as much as possible so that the soapy and then the clear water flowed underneath to reach the places his brush and sponge hadn’t.
He used two big, soft bath sheets to dry her, taking special care in all the crevices and underneath her. In the process, the table itself was dried, of course, so when he was finally done he used the controls to bring it back to horizontal. Then he used the programmed setting to lower the foot end of the table just a bit.
He stood between her feet and made sure she was looking at him with her wet brown eyes, and began unbuttoning his shirt.
She made a high-pitched mewling sound, and the muscles along her inner thighs twitched in sudden spasms.
“I’m already very clean,” he told her. “Because I always am. But I’ll rinse myself off first, just so you can be certain nothing dirty is going to touch you, Audrey.”