The Watcher (14 page)

He grabbed the steering wheel in a death grip.
Don’t remember, don’t think about it.
Don’t remember, he repeated quietly, hardly breathing, his lips barely moving.

Finally his pulse slowed and his heart stopped drumming.

It didn’t matter anymore.
Now
the girls never looked away from him. They didn’t dare. Their eyes followed him with a kind of awe, sprung from terror and dreadful anticipation.
Now
they knew him. By the time he was finished with them, they
screamed
how extraordinary he was.

More girls trailed down the front steps of the school and walked off in pairs or threesomes, but he didn’t see the girl he wanted. At first, he’d avoided this particular school because he knew rich parents watched their kids much better than poor ones. It was a fact of life whether bleeding-heart sociologists admitted it or not. Rich kids were smarter too and harder to stalk.

That’s why he hadn’t started with them. He’d stuck with the ones whose comings and goings weren’t noticed, the ones nobody cared about – runaways, bottom-feeders, those at the lowest rung on the social scale. They’d been fun at first because they were easy to catch.

Not anymore.

He yearned for someone like the farm girl, the beautiful, innocent blonde. For a long time, he imagined she’d be the one, the only one, the perfect one.

Then she’d died.

He realized she wasn’t perfect at all.

Since then he’d found that in the end, rich or poor, the girls were all the same, crying and begging. Asking the same questions of him over and over, like he was their God.

Why is this happening? What do you want? What did I do?

It’s what you
didn’t
do, you silly bitch, he’d sometimes scream. He didn’t like losing control and yelling at them. It ruined the whole experience. Silence was much more powerful than shouting.

The other girls hadn’t been perfect either.

His gloved fingers drummed a staccato beat on the steering wheel. Where was the stupid girl? He didn’t think he could wait much longer. She’d better come soon. He
needed
her to come. If she put him in danger by making him hang around here too long, it’d be worse for her.

She had no idea how bad he could make it.

Where was she? Where was she?

The mantra chanted in his head, and he pressed his hands to his ears to cover the sound. But it thrummed on, steady, relentless. Some section of his brain told him it was too soon after the last time. Too soon, but the experience hadn’t gone the way he wanted, and now the need to hunt was urgent.

Too soon.
He mouthed the words silently.
Too soon, too dangerous.

But he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stop.

Didn’t
want
to stop.

He wrapped his arms around his middle and began rocking in rhythmic motions behind the wheel. When he became aware of what he was doing, he quit and mopped at the sweat that soaked through the rim of his baseball cap and ran in rivulets down his cheeks.

He’d have to give up if she didn’t show soon. He didn’t like to give up. It was admitting defeat. Grandfather said that defeat
would not
be tolerated. It pissed off the old man.

The girl should know it pissed off the watcher too.

He crossed one leg over the other and jiggled it to the fast tempo that echoed in his head.

Chapter Fifteen

Slater woke at five the next morning, restless and frustrated. Like a horny teenager, he thought, and quickly grabbed his running gear and took off around the park. Every slap of his gym shoes on the asphalt of the running path around Ralston Park echoed the same criticism.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Getting involved with Myers was just plain idiotic. Not that he’d actually gotten involved. Hell, they hadn’t gone beyond an innocent kiss.

But not from lack of desire. He’d wanted to kiss Kate Myers on every inch of her body. Kiss her until that cool façade melted into unbearable heat. He was captivated, that’s what, smitten with a healthy dose of lust, no need to let Myers wrap him around her little finger.

She sensed it too, that trembling heat between them, vibrating like a tuning fork.
Get a grip, Slater.
He laughed aloud, shook his head at his foolishness, and kept his eyes on the horizon. The sun rose in the east in a startling array of pinks and purples, the trees outlined black against the sky.

Turning at the edge of the park, he jaunted back to where he’d started and glanced at his wristwatch. Six fifteen. Time for a quick shower and shave.

When he finally parked his truck in the reserved spot, he saw that Myers had beaten him again this morning. He grimaced wryly. Apparently she couldn’t sleep either.

#

Before she’d left L.A., Kate had identified two homicides in other states that matched her initial profile of the killer. One connection was an unsolved murder in Hopewell, Virginia, in the nineties, in which a nineteen-year-old woman was abducted and strangled. Another case two years later in Fayetteville, North Carolina, involved a sixteen-year-old girl who also was abducted and stabbed repeatedly in the chest and groin. Both women sustained multiple bruises, but showed no clear evidence of rape.

The similarities of gender, age, and battery connected them, but the
method
used to kill each girl was different. The North Carolina girl wasn’t sexually assaulted, but evidence of recent sexual intercourse was found with the Virginia woman. No physical evidence.

Both crimes were committed near the eastern seaboard of the United States, far from Idaho and California, but that didn’t deter Kate. Some serial killers traveled around to avoid detection, and she believed her killer lived a transient life, moving from one place to another to hide his crimes.

But why would he return to Bigler County if he’d murdered Mary Stuckey here? It didn’t make sense. On the other hand, she realized that the minds of serial killers weren’t always lucid, especially when they were accelerating. What appeared clear in their twisted logic seemed irrational to the people who studied them.

Kate felt a twinge of uncertainty. The Stuckey case had been shoved under the carpet, closed, and forgotten, but what if she were wrong? Maybe the Stuckey homicide didn’t belong to her killer. Maybe she was reaching for any slim thread she could find.

Definitely time to fill Slater in. Her brain was muddled with details and facts that may or may not be pertinent to the case. She needed a fresh look. Used to flying solo, she’d relied only on herself all these years, but Slater had sharp investigative instincts and she respected his judgment. She was too damned independent for her own good, she thought.

It all came down to trust. She wasn’t positive she could trust everyone in the Bigler County Sheriff’s Office, but she decided to take a chance on Slater.

When Kate heard the doors swing open, she knew it was Slater. The sound of his footsteps reminded her of last night and the glint of the porch light off his closed face, the dangerous bristle of his unshaved jaw.

Her body tightened low in her belly. She’d wanted him to kiss her, had known he would and anticipated the delicious, forbidden thought. And then he’d left.

At least one of them had some common sense.

Better to get this over with, she thought, rising from her chair. She walked to the squad room door, effectively blocking Slater’s way to the open bullpen. “Got a minute?”

Slater furrowed his brows grumpily. “Now? Before coffee?”

“It’s important. Why don’t you grab a cup and join me in my office?”

He eyed her warily, but moved toward the coffee urn and poured himself black coffee, then lifted another cup inquiringly. When she nodded, he poured a cup for her, adding just the right amount of sugar and cream. Should she be flattered that he remembered how she drank it?

Slater sat in the guest chair, stretched his long legs on the worn linoleum flooring, and blew on his coffee, waiting for her to speak. Kate watched his long fingers gripping the cup and wrestled with dangerous images.

Why didn’t they just sleep together and get it out of their systems?

Closing the door behind her, she took her seat behind the desk and fiddled with several manila folders on the blotter. “I need to tell you something.”

When Slater narrowed his eyes and dropped them to linger on her mouth, she added hurriedly, “Not what you’re thinking.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Nothing about last night.”

“I wasn’t thinking about last night.”

Embarrassed, she stumbled on, “Right, nothing happened last night.”

“Nothing,” Slater agreed, but something in the expression on his face suggested otherwise.

“It’s about the case. There’s something else I haven’t told you.”

Slater’s face went still, his whole body alert. She sensed the unleashed anger behind his words although his face remained calm. “Myers, I swear to God, if you lied to me – ”

“No, no, I didn’t lie. Not really. I just – I omitted some of the information.”

“Spit it out. Fast,” he ordered, as she watched, fascinated with the tiny muscles clenching in his jaw.

“Okay, okay.” She took a deep breath and hurried out the information. “There are more than the Stuckey and Johnston cases. At least, I think so.”

She jumped up from her desk and paced around the small room, tension propelling her. “Several years ago, I created a software program that analyzed data from as many state and local databases as I could get and correlated them with CODIS. I set broad parameters, so a lot of the hits were worthless. I got two hits I wasn’t sure about, one in Virginia, one in North Carolina. The program tagged the Stuckey case, but until it also flagged the Johnston case, it didn’t seem significant.” She lifted one shoulder in a defensive gesture. “Now I think they’re all related.”

Slater rose and advanced toward her, scowling, looking like he’d consume her alive.

No danger in that, she thought, getting control of her initial panic. She’d been through fire and back again. Slater’s wrath was just a little flame, hardly worth a fire extinguisher.

She flinched anyway.

“Are you telling me,” he ground out, “there’re four crimes that have enough similarities for you to think they’re connected to a single killer?”

“Yes,” she muttered.
Five,
she thought. The fifth one in Preston, Idaho, that she could never forget.

“Look, Slater, I’m sorry.”

“Damn it, Kate. Four?”

“I should’ve told you right away.”

“Damn straight you should’ve told me. Your half-assed lies and secrets could’ve hurt the investigation.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Yeah, well sometimes sorry isn’t good enough.” Slater gave her a hard look before he stomped out of the office.

Kate stared at his back as he grabbed his jacket and headed out of the building. Great, now he’d never trust her. And she didn’t blame him at all.

#

Apparently deep in thought, Myers didn’t hear Slater until he gently closed her office door behind him. Her face flushed when she came out of her reverie to see him standing there and her mouth made a perfect round oh, but no sound emerged.

“Close your mouth, Doc. You’ll catch flies.”

She promptly clamped her jaws together. “Are you through being mad?”

He glanced over his shoulder to the near-empty squad room, noted the watery Pepsi on her desk near the stacks of files and papers. “I’m still pissed as all hell.” He shook his head in exasperation. “What were you thinking, Myers?” He held his hands up to ward off an answer. “No, never mind. You
weren’t
thinking. That’s obvious. Explain everything to me.” He jabbed his fore-finger at her. “And no equivocation this time.”

“I promise,” she said in humble meekness.

Slater rolled his eyes and moved the chair around her desk, scooting up to her right side. “Okay, let’s put this behind us for now. Bring me up to snuff. No time to lose.” He watched relief flit across her face as she expelled a breath.

“I began the investigation seven years ago,” she began. “No help from local authorities because they didn’t see any similarities. Now that two murders were committed here, I think we’ll find the connection.”

An hour later Slater understood the enormity of the situation.
If
Myers was right,
if
the same person killed Jennifer and Mary as well as the Virginia and North Carolina girls, damn it, they had a serial killer on their hands.

“Okay, what’s the link?” Slater asked. “What’s the common factor that ties the murders together?”

“I’ve been wracking my brain all morning.”

A sudden thought jiggled the back of Slater’s mind. “Maybe the key’s not with the victims, but in the
locations
where the murders occurred.”

Kate was already turning toward her computer. “Where should I start?”