The Last Time I Saw Her (30 page)

“This is bullshit,” Foster snarled. “Total bullshit.”

Charlie shook her head. “I
know
what you did, Detective Foster. When you needed someone to pin your girlfriend's murder on, you decided that the easiest thing to do was make it another Southern Slasher murder. After all, it had worked beautifully for you before. Did Candace Hartnell reject you before Michael Garland picked her up in that bar? Yes, I'm sure she did. You were probably right there to see her leave with him.”

Foster was starting to sweat. “You're pulling all of this out of your ass.
You weren't there.
”

Charlie smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. “Somehow you knew Michael Garland. You had it in for Michael Garland. You watched Michael Garland walk out of that bar with the woman who'd rejected you and you got angry. Then you came up with a way to make them both pay. Were you starting to feel the heat for the murders of the six women you'd killed previously? I think you were. I think you were worried that you'd left something behind, a hair, some saliva, something, although as a cop you knew how investigations were conducted and were very careful. But you were afraid you'd made a mistake and someone would figure it out, so you took what you must have seen as a golden opportunity to pin the blame on someone else and followed Michael Garland and Candace Hartnell back to her house. You waited outside until he'd left, and then you killed her. Did you call in a report of a possible drunk driver and have Michael Garland stopped after he'd left her house?” The look on Foster's face answered that. “Yes, you did. Very smart. And thorough. You're very thorough, aren't you, Detective Foster? So thorough that you took some of the DNA Michael Garland had left behind—it wouldn't have taken much—and salted those previous cases, your previous victims, which logged evidence you had access to because you were a detective. Then you made the supposed discovery that Michael Garland was the Southern Slasher and you got to play the hero.” At the thought of what Michael had suffered because of this man, Charlie felt a ferocious anger flood her veins. It was all she could do to keep her voice even as she continued, “Did you enjoy testifying at his trial, Detective Foster? I bet you did.”

“You can't prove any of this.” Foster's voice was a croak. He was looking at her like he was afraid. Charlie was fiercely glad. He deserved to be afraid.

She said, “The police and the FBI can. Now that they have the road map, it'll be easy. Where you went wrong was killing your girlfriend, Detective Foster. You would have gotten away with the rest of it. But you're arrogant. You think you're smarter than everyone else. You should have just sat tight and hoped that the police investigating your girlfriend's death couldn't find enough evidence to tie it to you. But instead you came up with another brilliant plan, hired Rick Hughes as your defense attorney—probably the very next day. You salted the scene of your girlfriend's murder with something like a few hairs, anything containing DNA, that you either obtained from Hughes or you had saved from Michael Garland, and you waited for police to make the connection. Or, no, you didn't wait, did you? You're a doer, not a waiter. You told somebody, probably a cop buddy of yours, that your girlfriend's murder reminded you of the Southern Slasher killings you investigated back in Mariposa, and wondered out loud if maybe the real killer was still on the loose and out to get you, and the word got around. The only thing that was worrying you was that, having discovered how much he looked like Michael Garland, the convicted Southern Slasher, Hughes had decided to check him out.” Charlie remembered the sense of evil she had felt the evening she had seen Hughes's Shelby parked across the street from her house, the evening she'd seen that brief, shimmery image of Michael in the neighbor's yard, realized that the evil must have been emanating from Foster who'd been nearby, too, and with that everything else, the rest of what Foster had done, fell into place. “You followed Hughes here to Big Stone Gap because you were afraid that he would realize he was being set up. When you saw him having dinner with me, coming home with me, you followed us and waited outside my house for him to leave.” She shot a quick glance at Michael, noticed for the first time that he was wearing khakis and a blue shirt instead of the black pants and gray shirt he'd had on the previous night, and concluded that he had, indeed, left her asleep in bed to go back to the Pioneer Inn and change clothes. “When he left, and my house guest left, too—”

She slanted an inquiring look at Tam, who said in a squeaky voice, “I had an errand to run. I was gone for about an hour and a half. I just got back when you started to scream.”

Charlie nodded and continued addressing Foster. “When I was alone, you broke into my house and tried to kill me, the woman you assumed Hughes had just slept with and had just left his DNA all over. That would have sealed the deal, wouldn't it? That would have made everyone think that Rick Hughes was the real Southern Slasher all along, and, while a regrettable mistake had been made in convicting Michael Garland, it was understandable because they were identical twins, and anyway the right twin would be captured and convicted now. You would have proved how much smarter than the authorities you are once again, and you would have gotten away with one more murder.”

“You son of a bitch,” Michael said slowly. She could feel the burning heat of his anger, and put a calming hand on the powerful leg beside her. He glanced down at her, and then she could feel him gaining control, reining his emotions in.

“That's crazy, all of it. You can't prove any of that,” Foster said again. His voice was hoarse, his eyes were bright with fear and hatred as he looked at her, and if his face got any redder it would burst into flame. “Who the hell
are
you?”

Charlie knew that she was right in almost every detail. She would have known it even if he hadn't been looking at her like that because analyzing how serial killers thought and behaved was what she had dedicated her life to, but everything from his expression to his body language left her in no doubt that the scenario she had just described was close to the truth.

“I'm Dr. Charlotte Stone,” she said, her eyes holding his. “Stopping serial killers is what I do.”

“Wow,” Tam said, nudging Charlie. “I thought I was the psychic here.”

Charlie took a deep breath. Breaking eye contact with Foster, she glanced at Tam. “I study patterns of behavior. Everything he did fit a pattern. No psychic ability involved.”

“Not one word of that fairy tale you spewed is going to be admissible in court.” Foster seemed to be trying to get himself under control. His voice was stronger. Charlie knew how his mind worked: he still thought he was smarter than everyone else, and he would figure a way out. “It's all rampant speculation on your part. All of it.”

Charlie shook her head. “The knife isn't speculation. Neither is the fact that you just tried to kill me. As for the rest, well, we'll see, won't we? It certainly gives investigators a good place to start.”

Michael was frowning as he stared at Foster. “I'm as sure as it's possible to be that I never laid eyes on this guy before he pulled me out of that cell at the Mariposa police station. Why would he have it in for me? And where the hell did he get that watch?”

“I don't know, but it'll come out in the investigation,” Charlie said. A commotion below announced a whole herd of new arrivals seconds before a man yelled, “Police!”

“I must've left the front door open,” Michael muttered, while Tam yelled back, “We're upstairs.”

As multiple sets of feet pounded up the stairs toward them, Tam jumped up, ran over, and grabbed Foster's arm.

Eyes widening, Tam stood stock still. Charlie, Michael, and, yes, Foster, too, were so surprised that all they could do was stare at her.

“I had to know for sure,” Tam said, letting go and retreating to stand by Charlie, who with Michael's help was getting to her feet. Charlie understood—Tam had been reading Foster. She nodded and pulled her blue bathrobe closer around her as what seemed like half the Big Stone Gap police force burst into the room. While explanations were being given and Foster was Mirandized and handcuffed, Tam told Charlie quietly, “It's all true. He's the Southern Slasher. I felt so much evil in him, so much hate! He killed his girlfriend and all those other women”—she looked at Michael, who stood beside Charlie, and directed her next remarks to him—“and he hated you because you were the only one of—twenty-four, that's the number I got, twenty-four—the only one of twenty-four who undertook the mission in which his brother was killed who got back to this country alive. His brother never made it home from Afghanistan. The watch—Foster inherited the watch from him. Foster was wearing it the night he killed Candace, and he left it behind on purpose, in her bed, to incriminate you, because he knew you had an identical one. He hid your watch, which was intake material, when you were arrested. Only—I don't think the watches were totally identical. Something—something was different. The watch Foster left belonged to his younger brother, Dean Foster, who was killed during that twenty-four-man mission with you. Foster thought it was unfair that…He hated watching you go on with your life while his brother was dead.”

Later, when Foster had been taken away and Charlie's wound had been treated and bandaged and she'd gotten dressed and told her story what felt like a hundred times, she was walking through the entry hall with Tony, Lena, and Buzz, who were on their way to the door. The three FBI agents were headed for the police station to conduct the first formal interview with Foster.

Charlie had just a moment of relative privacy with Tony, who bent his head toward her and asked quietly, “You doing okay with that guy?”

She had no trouble identifying “that guy” as Michael.

Nodding, she said, “We're fine. I'll let you know if anything changes.”

“You do that,” he said, and she knew that he meant for more than just information purposes.

Then Lena and Buzz caught up.

“That was a close call,” Tony said to Charlie, totally professional now. “Too close. You need a home security system. Pronto.”

“You attract serial killers like a dog does fleas.” Lena sounded almost gleeful. “We can just cart you around the country with us and watch the arrest count pile up.”

Charlie shook her head. “After this, I'm sticking to research. And I might write a book.”

“Not that we don't appreciate the help, but that's probably a good idea,” Tony said.

“If Foster had managed to kill you, his plan might very well have worked,” Lena told Charlie. “At the very least, it would have taken the focus off him as a suspect in his girlfriend's murder.”

“I hate thinking about that guy who got wrongly convicted as the Southern Slasher,” Buzz said, grimacing. “Somebody dropped the ball on that one, and now there's no putting it right: the guy's dead.”

Lena shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that.”

Buzz frowned at her. “You know what, you've got more of a heart than you let on.”

“Let's go, people.” With a quelling look at the two of them, Tony opened the door. Cold air swirled in. Outside, the world was the washed-out gray of a new dawn. To Charlie, Tony added, “I'll call you later,” and walked out the door. Lena and Buzz followed. As they headed across the porch Charlie heard Buzz say to Lena, quietly so that Tony wouldn't overhear, “That heart you try so hard to hide is one of the things I love about you, you know.”

Lena shot him a look that should have fried his eyeballs. “Stop it,” she hissed. “I told you: We are not going there.”

Buzz grinned at her, but Charlie missed the rest of the exchange as they went down the steps.

Charlie was still smiling at the idea that maybe Buzz was making headway after all when Tam called to her from the kitchen, where she and Michael were waiting.

“Cherie, come here.” There was a sharpness to Tam's tone that made Charlie hurry back to them.

The first thing she saw as she stepped inside the room was that Michael was holding on to the back of one of the kitchen stools. He seemed unsteady on his feet. His face was absolutely white.

“What's wrong?” she gasped, rushing to his side, sliding a supporting arm around his back. Tam was beside him, too, looking at him with fear in her face.

It was Tam's expression that sent the first quiver of terror through Charlie's system.

“It's time.” Michael sounded as if he was having trouble getting the words out. He was breathing hard, leaning on the kitchen stool like he needed its support to stay upright.

“Time for what?” Charlie asked as cold tendrils of foreboding started to wrap themselves around her heart.

The look Michael shot her was his answer. Then he said, “You know I'd give you forever, but I don't have it to give.”

He's losing Hughes's body,
Charlie thought, trying to get a handle on her rising panic.
That's all this is.

“We'll figure something out,” Charlie told him, doing her best to sound reassuring even though her heart was suddenly pounding. “Until we do, you'll hang out with me as a spirit just like you did before.”

Charlie wasn't looking at Tam, but she heard Tam suck in a breath. She knew Tam: that indrawn breath couldn't mean anything good.

Michael gave a slight shake of his head. “I'm talking Spookville. I can feel myself getting pulled back in. You know I might not be able to get out. I may never be able to get out.” He let go of the kitchen stool with one hand and hooked an arm around her, pulling her into an embrace.

“You can. You will. Oh, God, try to fight it.” Charlie wrapped her arms around him, looking up into his hard, handsome face with alarm. The black seemed to be fading from his eyes. He was shaking, and he felt cold.