Last Words (10 page)

“The woman we think this might be…she’d only been missing for a week. Could that be possible, that she’d deteriorate so much in so short a time?” Beck asked.

“Wrapped up the way she was, in this heat…and if she’d been left in a place that was closed up so that the temperature went over one hundred for days on end, yeah, she could have turned soupy pretty quickly.” She looked at Mia again and said, “Sorry.”

Mia shrugged.

“How long have you been with the FBI, Agent Shields?” the ME asked.

“Almost nine years.”

“Then I guess you’ve seen pretty much everything,” Vivian said.

“I have now,” Mia replied.

“I feel the same way,” Viv assured her. “Bastard who did this—”

“Enjoyed every minute of it,” Mia murmured.

“Yes. He probably did.” Vivian drew a hand through her hair. “How do you find him? How do you stop him?”

“We get to know him through his work,” Mia stated matter-of-factly. “We let him lead us to him. If we pay close attention to what he’s already told us about himself, sooner or later, he’ll lead us right to his door.”

“Do you really believe that?” the doctor asked.

“Absolutely,” Mia assured her.

“What has he told you about himself so far?”

“Well, there’s the control thing.” Mia looked at Beck. “We’ve already talked about that. How he likes to be in control of the entire situation, probably from the first moment he picks out his victim. If her flesh hadn’t decomposed, I’d expect to see signs of restraints, bruises or marks on her wrists, her ankles. He would have had her every move under control.”

“The first victim, the Preston woman, she did have those marks,” Beck recalled.

Mia nodded. “For however long he’d had her, she would have been restrained except for those times he either wanted sex or wanted to reward her.”

“If you’re a good girl, I’ll untie you for a while,” Beck said.

“Exactly. And he’s a neat freak, efficient. He kills his victims in a way that lets him maintain maximum control and watch every last excruciating breath she takes, while it also eliminates any messy cleanup on his part.” Mia crossed her arms over her chest. “No fuss, no muss, no nasty smell, as long as she’s all wrapped up. He could keep them for months, for years, even, and they’d remain nice and tidy. A bit mushy inside the plastic, but nothing he’d have to deal with.”

“Don’t you wonder how a soul gets that twisted?” the doctor asked.

“All the time,” Mia said simply.

“I mean, what makes someone want to do something like this?”

“The mayor’s pretty adamant that we ask the FBI for a profiler,” Beck spoke up. “That’s what she wanted to talk to me about when she called me out of the meeting this morning. Are you going to be insulted if we do that?”

“No. As I told you earlier, I’ve had a lot of training, but standing here, looking at what he did to this woman, I’m thinking you’re going to need to explore the why in order to find the who. And we’ll need someone with more experience than I have to help figure out why. I have pretty good instincts, but I’m not a psychologist. And frankly, I think that’s what you need here.”

“Do you want to make the call, or should I?” Beck asked.

“I’ll do it. I’ll call my boss. We have several really good people, but there’s someone I’d like to request.”

“The sooner, the better,” Beck told her.

“While I do that,” Mia said, “if you could get the audiotape you found with the body to Beck, and give us a sample of hair we can get DNA from, we’ll be pretty much finished here. Unless Beck has something else in mind?”

“No, just the tape and the samples.”

“I’ll get both right now,” The ME told him.

Mia called her office and spoke for several minutes. When she was finished, she told Beck, “My boss has agreed to check into the availability of the person I’ve requested. At the very least, we’ll have someone by tomorrow.”

“Great.” He held up the evidence bag with the tape in it. “Too bad we won’t have this ready by then, but the other tape will be available.”

Dr. Reilly approached with another small bag, which she handed to Mia.

“Hair. You’ll let me know if it matches?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good.” She turned back to the gurney that held the body. “We want to be able to send her home as soon as we can. I hate to see them stay here for too long. It just doesn’t seem right.”

“We’ll do our best,” Beck promised. “And I’ll let you know as soon as we have a positive ID.”

“Thanks.” She smiled wanly and turned her back, and prepared to return her charge to the cold drawer where she’d been kept.

10

“Here’s the copy of the file I promised you.” Beck handed the fat brown envelope to Mia. “There’s a copy of the tape that was found with Colleen Preston, copies of the photos of both victims, and copies of the statements. Everything you asked for.”

“Thanks. I’ll read it over tonight, bring myself up to speed.”

“Good.” He nodded.

“So.” She stood and hoisted the heavy file. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Right.” Beck nodded again.

“Any particular time?”

“We start early, so whenever you get here, someone will be here.”

“Okay, then. See you tomorrow.” She started toward the door, then stopped and dug into her pocket. “Here,” she said, “here’s one of my cards. In case something comes up and you need to get in touch with me.”

“Good idea.” He took a card from the supply on his desk and held it out to her. “Here’s mine. In case you have a flash of inspiration while you’re reading the file.”

Mia slipped it into her wallet. “Thanks.”

“I’ll see you in the morning then.”

She gave a small wave and left his office. Her heels clicked on the tiled hall and he heard her say something to Garland in passing. The heavy front door slammed shut and the sound echoed across the lobby. The municipal offices closed at five. It was now almost seven, and everyone had gone home. Everyone except the police.

Beck stretched to get the kinks out, and decided to take a walk into town to get some dinner. The rumbles from the direction of his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten all day. He could grab a quick bite at Lola’s up there on Charles Street and be back at his office by eight for the meeting with the town council. Everyone was stirred up—not that he blamed them—but making wild assumptions like some of the ones he’d heard that day would only serve to make the residents panic. No need for that. The situation was serious, he wasn’t going to downplay that. But they’d approach it in a professional manner and they’d catch this bastard, sooner or later.

It was the later that had Beck and everyone else in town nervous.

When he reached the corner of Charles and Kelly’s Point, he glanced across the street and saw movement in Vanessa’s shop. He crossed when the traffic moved on and pushed open the door to Bling, where he saw his sister waiting on a pair of customers. Vanessa looked up and smiled broadly when she saw him.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she told him.

“No hurry.”

He wandered around the shop, poking at this item and that, all the time wondering why women bothered with such things as beaded handbags with rows and rows of fringe hanging down in uneven strands, or necklaces made out of small pieces of colored stones that wound around and around the wearer’s neck.

“Make a good weapon,” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” Vanessa called to him from the cash register. “Are you talking to me?”

“No. Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

When he heard the bell over the door jingle, he walked to the front counter.

“Boy, you’d think with all the buzz about St. Dennis on the news people would be staying away in flocks,” she told him as he approached. “But it looks as if this is going to be another busy weekend.”

“Well, it could be one of several things. Either they haven’t heard about the killer—”

“They have. No one’s talking about anything else.”

“Then maybe they figure if he’s going to strike again, it’s not going to happen to them, or else they’re a little excited about being here, tempting fate.”

He turned and looked out the window. “Maybe they’re thinking, it might even be someone right here in town. Maybe someone I passed on the street today. The guy who gave me change at the drugstore, or the guy who waited on me at lunch. Or maybe the guy who—”

“Stop it, Beck. That’s creepy.”

“This guy’s a creep, Ness. He could be anyone. If he’s here in St. Dennis, chances are he’s someone we know.”

“Don’t say things like that.” Vanessa visibly shivered. “I don’t know anyone who could do such terrible things.”

“Ah, but that’s the point,” Beck told her. “This guy doesn’t have the mark of the devil on his forehead. Shit, if he did, we’d have a lot easier time finding him. He looks just like anyone else. He fits in, and maybe has for a long time.”

“If he’s been here for a long time, why hasn’t he killed people around here sooner?”

“We don’t know that he hasn’t. We don’t know that every girl who comes to the Eastern Shore in the summer has made it home. We don’t know that he hasn’t been traveling around and killing somewhere else. The truth is, we don’t know jack-shit about this guy.”

He paused, thinking about what Mia’d said earlier.

“Except that maybe he has a thing about being in control of women.”

“Sounds like my ex-husband,” Vanessa said. “Come to think of it, it sounds like just about every guy I’ve met since I was fourteen.”

“Don’t joke about it.”

“Who’s joking?”

The bell on the door rang and a middle-aged woman poked her head inside the shop.

“Are you closed?” she asked.

“I’m open till nine,” Vanessa said brightly. “Come on in.”

Beck slapped a hand lightly on the glass counter. “I’ll be running over to Lola’s for dinner, then back up to the department for a meeting at eight. If I’m out by nine, I’ll stop by and see you home.”

“Not necessary,” she told him. “I’m grabbing a bite to eat with Rocky after I close up.”

“Rocky Simon who owns the art gallery two doors down?”

“Uh huh. He just got some really nice stained glass in and he said I could stop over and be the first to take a look.”

“Is that sort of like ‘Come on over and I’ll show you my etchings’?”

Vanessa rolled her eyes and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Rocky is gay, Beck, and even if he weren’t, he’s like, my best friend.”

Beck frowned. “Rocky Simon is gay?”

Vanessa rolled her eyes again and walked to the back of her shop to tend to her customers.

The man sitting at the table next to the front window of Lola’s Café watched as the chief of police went into Bling and closed the door behind him. From where he sat, he could see the counter where the cash register stood—he knew precisely where, because he’d been inside on several occasions—and he watched Vanessa moving behind it as she completed a sale for the two women who had just left the shop and now stood on the sidewalk. Debating where to go next, he figured. A little more shopping, or maybe a little dinner. Maybe just ice cream; maybe a stroll down to the docks and a plate heaped with crabs and a cold beer.

They turned and walked several storefronts down to Bookends and went inside.

Excellent choice, he told them silently. The new mysteries were put out today. He’d been in there himself around five, and chatted with Barbara, the owner, about the latest blockbuster thriller. He’d ended up buying the book—“A really scary serial-killer book,” Barbara told him as she’d handed a copy to him right out of the box—and they’d discussed the likelihood of there being a real serial killer right here in St. Dennis.

Barbara was adamant in denying that such evil could invade their town. “He has to be from someplace else,” she’d told him. “No one in St. Dennis is that depraved, that cruel…”

He’d agreed solemnly that surely the killer was from out of town. Perhaps Cameron, he’d suggested with concern, or maybe Baltimore. Maybe one of the summer people.

“That’s what we were thinking,” she told him. “Nita Perry and I had lunch today down at the Captain’s, and Rexana was saying that she’s watching everyone who comes and goes through their place. She and Walt get real busy on the weekends—let’s face it, it’s the crabs that bring so many people down here to the Chesapeake in the first place—but she’s keeping an eye on things. Watching for someone suspicious looking, you know?”

He’d nodded, but couldn’t help adding, “I don’t think you can really tell by looking at someone if they’re a killer or not, though, Barb.”

“That’s pretty much what Nita said. She said one time—this was years ago, when she had her first antique shop, back in Virginia—she had a guy come in and buy a couple of Oriental rugs. Before she could have them delivered, she found out he’d shot his next-door neighbor right through the head because the guy’s dog kept peeing on his wife’s roses and she’d been bitching about it day and night.”

“I wonder why he didn’t just shoot his wife.”

Barbara had looked momentarily shocked, then slapped his arm playfully and said, “Oh, you!”

He watched Beck exit the shop and walk directly across the street. He waved and greeted the chief when he came through the door into Lola’s and made some idle chitchat before the waiter interrupted by bringing him his check. He was still chatting with Beck as he took several bills from his wallet and placed them on the table, then stood to leave. They exchanged a few more friendly words, then he left, waving good-bye to the owner and leaving the chief of police to his dinner.

He walked outside and stretched, glancing over at Bling.
Now there was a fancy piece.
He smiled to himself. The thought of playing house with the chief’s sister was unbearably tempting.

Might be prudent to wait to see how Beck handles things these next few days, see how good he is. Him and that pretty little FBI agent.
Talk about a fancy piece.
He shook his head, remembering how her hips had swayed as she’d walked in those high heels across Charles Street earlier in the day. Oh, yeah, that back porch had a real pretty swing, as his grandfather used to say.

Right now, though, there was the matter of that little cutie from over in Cameron to deal with.

She’d been a real firecracker, hadn’t she?
he thought fondly as he poked at one of his eye teeth with a wooden toothpick he’d grabbed on the way out of Lola’s.

Well, all good things must come to an end.

He waved to a pedestrian across the street as he walked around the corner to his car, where several rolls of plastic wrap and an eight-pack of audiotapes were tucked into the trunk of his car.

He took his time, enjoying the peace of a perfect summer night.