Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (13 page)

They all expected him to fix Michelle’s problem. For Rachel’s sake, he wanted to try, but how the hell would he find the time when an active murder investigation demanded all his attention and he also had an out-of-jurisdiction detective to keep tabs on?

That was the least of his worries, though. A lot of Rachel’s past remained a mystery to him, but he was afraid that having her sister around would stir up memories and feelings Rachel couldn’t handle. She loved Michelle, but in Tom’s opinion she was better off when she kept her distance.

They left farmland behind, drove past houses set closer together, and turned onto Mountainview’s two-lane Main Street. Rachel pulled into the parking lot outside the animal hospital and waved to Tom. He drove on toward the Sheriff’s Department headquarters, where Dr. Gretchen Lauter would go over the Shelley Beecher autopsy results with him and Detective Fagan.

***

“I feel like a child who can’t be left alone,” Michelle said as she and Rachel walked into the vet clinic. She carried her laptop computer in a blue nylon bag. “But I won’t be underfoot, I promise. I have plenty of work to do on a paper I’m writing. I’ll sit in your office and stay out of the way.”

“It’s not a problem.” Rachel wanted Michelle where she could see her and be sure she was safe. After the call the night before, they had proof this madness wasn’t a product of Michelle’s imagination. If the stalker knew where she was, he might follow her. Maybe he had a job that tied him down during the week so he couldn’t take off anytime he liked, but if not, they had to be prepared to deal with him in Mason County.

The two young women at the front desk broke off their conversation and turned openly inquisitive gazes on Michelle when she came through the door with Rachel. Rachel introduced her sister to Shannon, the plump, rosy-cheeked receptionist, and Holly Turner, a beautiful olive-skinned girl with long black hair who worked as an assistant.

“Oh, my goodness,” Holly exclaimed, giving Michelle her megawatt smile. “It’s so great to meet you.”

“I’m happy to meet you too, Holly.” Michelle’s smile seemed genuine despite the tension that haunted her eyes. “Rachel’s told me so much about you.”

Holly beamed. She wasn’t one of those people who would respond with a self-deprecating remark about hoping it wasn’t all bad. She would be flattered that Rachel liked her enough to tell Michelle about her.

“Michelle’s going to do some work on her computer in my office while I’m seeing patients,” Rachel said.

“Can we do anything for you?” Shannon asked Michelle. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“I’ll get it,” Holly offered. “How do you like it?”

“Oh, I don’t want to be any trouble—”

“Sure, if you wouldn’t mind,” Rachel told Holly. “A little cream, no sugar. Bring it to her in my office.”

“Okay!” Holly said, and spun away to hurry down the hall to the staff lounge.

Now to get Michelle settled so Rachel’s own work day could begin.

In her office, Rachel pulled on her white lab coat while Michelle set her laptop on the desk and turned it on. Holly brought the coffee, asked Michelle to taste it and make sure it had just the right amount of cream in it. She obviously wanted to hang around and talk to Michelle, but she left when Rachel reminded her to get out the acupuncture tools for an arthritic German shepherd that had the day’s first appointment.

“I don’t suppose you have a wireless Internet connection in the building, do you?” Michelle’s hands trembled as they hovered over the keyboard, waiting for the machine to boot up. “One of the other partners in the practice is taking my patients while I’m gone, and I’d like to stay in touch. I hate doing e-mail on my telephone’s little screen.”

“Believe it or not, we do have wi-fi. Your browser ought to pick it up.” Rachel pulled her stethoscope from her lab coat pocket and hung it around her neck.

“Oh, there it is. I’ve got it.” Michelle glanced up from the computer, amused. “You named your office’s wireless network after Tom’s bulldog?”

Rachel shrugged. “Why not? Well, I’d better get to work. Let me know if you need—” She broke off when she saw the stricken look on her sister’s face. “Mish? What is it?”

Michelle shrank away from the computer, her gaze locked on the screen, color draining from her face. “He never sent me e-mail before,” she whispered.

“What? Let me see.” Rachel stepped behind Michelle and read over her shoulder.

You don’t belong in the country with a bunch of fucking sheep! You belong with me, my beautiful Michelle. I’ll show you what it’s like to make love to a real man. I’ll hold you in my arms soon, and I’ll never let you go. Never never never never let you go.

“My god,” Rachel said. This was a outright threat, worse than anything Michelle had reported before.

“I don’t want this garbage on my computer.” Michelle reached for the keyboard.

“No!” Rachel caught Michelle’s hand. “Don’t delete it. Tom has to see it.”

“He won’t be able to find out who sent it. Look.” Michelle pointed a shaking finger at the
From
line. The sender’s address was given as
[email protected].
“It’s one of those free accounts, and every bit of information on it is probably fake.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Rachel drew a deep breath and laid her hands on Michelle’s shoulders. “Tom will want to see it anyway. Leave it. I know it’s hard, but try to forget it’s there and focus on writing your paper.”

Twisting in the chair, Michelle looked up at Rachel. “Is Tom right? Did I bring this on myself? Did I make somebody angry, did I—”

“Tom never said you brought this on yourself. Don’t you dare blame yourself. For god’s sake, Michelle, you’re a psychologist. This guy is a textbook nut case, and he seems to have a split personality. One day he’s calling you a bitch and the next he sounds like he’s in love with you. You know better than anybody does that he’s living out his own crazy fantasies.”

“But I don’t work with people like this,” Michelle said. “I don’t treat psychotic patients, and I’ve never known anybody who would do such a thing.”

“But you know, in your head, that it has no real connection to you. It’s his problem. You just happened to attract his attention for some reason and he’s attached all his fantasies to you. Your rational mind knows that, and you have to make yourself believe it in your heart.”
Why do I have to explain this to a trained therapist?
Fear seemed to have stripped Michelle of her professional expertise and made her incapable of applying her knowledge to her own life.

Michelle’s cell phone buzzed. They stared at her purse, lying on the desk next to the laptop.

“It might be somebody from my office,” Michelle said, but she made no move to retrieve the phone.

Rachel grabbed the purse and dug out the phone. The display told her the caller’s number was blocked. Michelle didn’t try to stop her when she pressed the button to answer.

“Did you get my message, sweetheart?” the whispery voice asked. “Did you—”

“Shut up and listen to me, you pervert,” Rachel said. “If you don’t leave my sister alone, you’re going to end up in prison. You’re not a real man, you’re a freak and a coward who gets his kicks by sneaking around and trying to scare women. No woman would want slime like you anywhere near her. You’re disgusting, you’re a sick little boy playing nasty games.”

She paused, gulped a breath, waited.

Silence.

“What’s the matter?” Rachel’s heart pounded against her ribs. “Have you run out of things to say?”

His voice was quiet, cold, flat. “Be careful, Rachel. Don’t get in my way.”

The connection went dead.

“Rachel?” Michelle gripped her arm. “What did he say?”

“Nothing worth repeating.” Rachel dropped the phone back into the purse. How could they stop the stalker if they had no idea who he was or why he was doing this? If Michelle had angered someone without realizing it, how could they track down her tormentor before he harmed her? “I have to get to work. Will you be all right in here?”

“Sure, I’ll be okay,” Michelle said, brushing her hair off her cheeks and forcing a smile. “Go see your patients. You don’t have to babysit me.”

“I’ll only be a few feet away if you need me.” Rachel turned to leave, but something caught her eye and made her freeze with a hand on the doorknob.

Three framed documents hung on the wall next to the door. Copies of her college degree, her doctorate from Cornell, her certification in veterinary internal medicine. They hung side by side as always, but all three frames were upside down.

“Is something wrong?” Michelle asked, a note of alarm in her voice.

“No, no.” Rachel stepped in front of the framed certificates, and before her sister could get a good look she set them right again. She fought to keep her voice casual. “These things are always shifting a little bit. I think it’s the motion of the air when the door’s opened and closed that causes it.”

“I’ve seen that happen too. It’s annoying.”

Michelle bought the simple explanation, but Rachel knew she have would panicked if she’d seen the frames wildly askew.

The creep had followed Michelle to Mason County, and he’d done it quickly. He had been in Rachel’s office during the night. And she’d just royally pissed him off. He was going to turn their lives upside down, like the frames on the wall.

Chapter Twelve

Tom yanked the cord to close the conference room blinds, blocking the reporters’ view from the parking lot outside. Twice as many were out there today. A news crew from a Washington, DC, television station had parked their truck so close to the building that they could aim a camera directly into the room if they had the nerve. And Tom was sure they did.

He motioned Detective Fagan into the chair next to his and tried to ignore Dennis Murray’s scowl across the conference room table. Brandon Connolly, beside Dennis, eyed the out-of-town detective with open fascination, as if he were an exotic creature in their midst.

With more formality than he would employ if no guest were present, Tom said, “Dr. Lauter has the preliminary autopsy report from Roanoke for us. Dr. Lauter?”

Gretchen, at the head of the table, handed off a folder of photos to Tom. “There’s nothing new in the pictures, but I thought Detective Fagan would want to see them.”

Tom flipped the folder open and, with Fagan leaning close to share the view, looked through them as Gretchen spoke.

“The pathologist confirms that Shelley Beecher has been dead for several weeks,” Gretchen said, “possibly since the day she disappeared. He believes the body was tightly wrapped from the beginning, and stored somewhere cool. In fact, he sees indications that the body was frozen for at least part of that time.”

“Oh, man,” Dennis muttered.

“The jargon’s all in the report,” Gretchen went on, “but that’s what it amounts to. The apparent cause of death was strangulation. Her neck bears the mark of a thick, semi-flexible ligature one inch wide, a leather belt or something similar.”

“Anything under her fingernails?” Fagan asked.

“Sorry, no,” Gretchen said. “No skin scrapings, no evidence of any kind. Her hands were completely clean, and so was her clothing. So clean, in fact—This is speculation on my part, but I’m inclined to believe her hands were washed and her clothes were brushed or even vacuumed to remove trace evidence such as fibers or hairs.”

“Shit,” Fagan said. “People watch too damned much television. They know exactly how to clean up after themselves, if they’ve got the time and the presence of mind.”

“This killer obviously had both,” Tom said. “He wasn’t in a hurry and he stayed calm. And he had a place picked out to hide her body. That’s not typical for a crime of passion—an angry boyfriend, say. This was planned.”

“I’ve thought from the start,” Fagan said, “that the killer is someone who knew her schedule. He picked the perfect time and place to snatch her without being seen. We haven’t found a single witness who saw or heard a thing. I don’t have any doubt she was abducted in Fairfax County, and she was probably killed there.”

“But we’re still left with the question of why she was dumped here,” Tom said. “The more I think about it, the more I believe the killer, or killers, put her in a place where she would be found right away.”

Fagan frowned. “Why would anybody expect her to be found right away? That spot’s pretty rugged. How many people go down into that ravine in an average week?”

“None,” Tom said, “but we’re not talking about an average week. Civic groups and high school kids do the road cleanup every year. This year’s schedule’s been posted in stores, on utility poles, all over the place, so anybody who wanted to help out could contact a group leader to volunteer. It wasn’t hard to find out a cleanup crew would be in that ravine on Saturday.”

“A crew led by the county’s chief deputy and acting sheriff,” Dennis pointed out.

“Hey, that’s right,” Brandon said. “You think the killer wanted you to find her, Captain?”

Fagan shook his head, a dismissive little smile on his face.

“You think that’s far-fetched?” Tom asked him. “You’d rather believe in pure coincidence?”