The Watcher (21 page)

Smith fingered the pictures, the postcards, and stroked himself through his trousers, but tonight this activity didn’t make him feel better. He replaced the contents of the box and snapped off the flashlight.

When he reached the steps of the house, bile rose hard in his throat, and he vomited over the porch railing.

#

Every time Slater called the Fresno branch of the FBI, he got a recorded message. Finally he dialed the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, Virginia. Even accounting for the three-hour time difference, and knowing it’d be hard to get someone on a Sunday, Slater was disappointed. In spite of his law enforcement credentials, getting the numbers to any FBI services was like gaining access to the Pentagon.

When he finally got through to someone besides an automaton, an officious-sounding woman announced that the Bureau didn’t respond to local law enforcement calls. All requests for FBI assistance came through various state offices. California’s division of the FBI was housed in Fresno, California. She knew he’d understand the proper procedure and she’d be happy to give him the number.

Slater explained that he knew the drill, but he
really
needed to contact someone before Monday. He tried to explain the situation, and when the woman merely repeated her memorized monologue, he erupted in frustration.

“Look, lady, I don’t give a shit about your
protocol.
We’ve got a serial killer running rampant in our town, and if the friggin’ Eff-Bee-Eye isn’t interested, then we ‘local law enforcement’ will proceed on our own.”

Bauer had returned by then, and although he hadn’t been completely briefed, lent his support by chiming in. “That’s telling them.”

Slater paused to calm himself and glanced at Kate’s and Bauer’s amused expressions. He made a “duh” sign by slapping his forehead with the heel of his hand and was rewarded with grins. In a measured voice, he continued speaking to the woman on the other end of the line.

“Now why don’t you pass my message on to your supervisor, and if he decides he’d like a piece of the action, fine. If he thinks it’s important enough, maybe he can get through to the Fresno Branch. If not, we’ll solve the damn case without your people.”

Slater slammed the phone down on its cradle. “Shit, what do they pay those people to do?”

“Never mind,” Kate said. “I’ve already made inroads by pinpointing several unsolved murder cases that look like promising connections.”

She checked her watch. “Why don’t we take this stuff back to my apartment and work on it? Maybe three heads will be better than one.”

“Or better than the entire Bureau,” Slater grumbled.

Bauer agreed, but was clearly confused.

“We’ll work up a profile from this new information,” Kate said confidently. “We’ll get this guy ourselves.”

“That’s the attitude, Nancy Drew,” Slater said. He watched her figure as she walked toward her office to get her coat and purse. He liked the hopeful cadence in her voice and the buoyancy in her walk. Her optimism made him believe they could do this.

First thing Monday, he’d get teams going on the medical records search.

#

Since the day the watcher had seen the purple-eyed woman, he hadn’t gone to work.

At first, he’d thought his imagination was playing tricks on him. Around four o’clock, he pulled off the freeway at the first Placer Hills exit on his way home from work. He needed cold medication, and he was low on gas, afraid he wouldn’t make it up the windy road to the house. It wouldn’t do to call attention to himself by breaking down on the side of the freeway and having a highway patrolman check him out.

He needed to keep a low profile.

The woman had walked out of the Easy Stop Market while he pumped gas. Normally he didn’t pay attention to grown women. They met his glances with challenging looks, their eyes small and hard in their artificial faces. They smiled with bright red lips, with confidence that made him aware of his inadequacy. Their uncensored stares sent a rush of blood coursing to his head and dark thoughts to his mind. Smith felt controlled by their terrible craftiness.

It was different with the girls. With them,
he
was in charge.
He
controlled the encounters.

As the woman opened the door to a sporty yellow car, she’d glanced over her shoulder, and he looked directly into her face. He nearly dropped the gas nozzle. As it was, he topped off, and gasoline flooded over the gas tank opening, drizzling down the car’s fender and splashing on his trousers.

She was older now, at least fifteen years older, and faint lines feathered from her eyes. But it was the girl. He’d swear it was
the girl
. The teenage girl now grown up. He trembled violently.

But how could that be?

She had the same yellow hair, long to the middle of her back, although it seemed thicker and darker than he remembered. Her cheekbones were high and in the brief meeting of their eyes, he saw the same deep violet shade he remembered. It was a color he’d looked for in other girls, but never found.

A tiny frown burrowed between the woman’s brows, and suddenly he was certain. He remembered that frown when she’d bumped into him all those years ago in front of the Cavalier Store. And the color of the eyes didn’t lie.

But how, for God’s sake? That girl was dead!

When he replaced the nozzle on the gas pump, his hand shook uncontrollably.
No, it wasn’t possible. Was it?

The woman showed no recognition as she drove past him. He memorized the license plate, 2HYM748, repeating it over and over until he’d paid for his gas and gotten back in his car, 2HYM748. He carefully wrote the number on a small scrap of paper in his pocket. 2HYM748.

Distracted, he nearly ran off the road traveling the narrow lanes up to the foothills. He turned off at the dirt road that led to his grandparents’ house. Even though the rooms were dark and gloomy as he entered, he only turned on the single bulb of the entry light. He sank into the one piece of furniture he’d dragged from the shed, an overstuffed armchair. He stared at the dark, closed drapes while he tried to figure out what seeing this ghost from the past meant. Finally he dozed fitfully.

He’d had the dream for years. He was chased by a dark protoplasmic blob of matter that rolled over and over like a giant amoeba, while he raced, his short legs losing ground with every second. He glanced over his shoulder, hearing the squishing, slurping sound of the blob. Sweat broke out on his body and rolled down his legs, making the soles of his feet slippery. He tripped and the jelly-like mass rolled over him, slowly crushing the breath out of him.

Gasping for breath, he awakened with a start.

The recurring dream was born, he knew, from the stories of the “Commies” his grandfather hated so much. Spun from the late night tales of the “Reds” and what they’d do to the freedom of red-blooded Americans if they invaded the U. S. of A. His grandfather’s rabid belief in those conspiracies had prompted the building of the secret basement room.

The Slaughtering Room.

By the next day, Smith had worked himself into a fevered pitch. Lying in bed in his underwear, sweating clammily in spite of the winter cold, he convinced himself he was too distraught to work and called in sick. He pushed his mattress-bed against the wall of the attic and sprawled on the dingy sheet, smelling the stink of his body rise up to confirm his illness. Alternately staring up at the rafters and dozing fitfully, he forced himself to formulate an answer and a plan, something that would bring order to his life again.

Only one theory made sense. The purple-eyed girl
wasn’t
dead. Somehow she’d survived that night in the cabin. He’d been callow and inexperienced in the beginning, had gotten more efficient since the Idaho girl. She’d been a sloppy experience, and one he’d often wished he could do over again.

Do again, do right.
Now he could.

Fate had delivered her into his hands.

Now he understood why his last two hunts had been failures. The first girl died after he’d had her only three days, leaving him unsatisfied. By the time he chose the second girl, he’d been in such a pitch of frenzy that he’d botched the whole thing. He’d spent less than twenty-four hours with her and hadn’t followed the rules.

Smith’s heart rate accelerated, thumping like a bat’s wings in the cave of his chest as blind panic ripped through him. He gulped air into his lungs and fought to quell the terror that threatened to overcome him.

Calm down, calm down. Never mind, he’d fix this. Make it right. They hadn’t once come close to catching him. He was too smart for them. He hadn’t gone to regular school and college like those FBI experts, the profilers, but he was smarter than all of them. They tried to categorize him with their little charts and graphs. Qualify and quantify him like a product merchandized for the public. Imply that he was average. Ordinary. That he followed a course he couldn’t control. They had no idea what he was like. Their inferior minds could never understand.

The stupid asses didn’t know him at all.

He’d fix this.

Smith felt the deep breaths slowly relaxing him as he drew cool air into his lungs and slowly exhaled. Smug bastards thought they could track him down, catch him, put him in a damn cage where they’d poke and probe him, test and question him. Try to figure out how he was put together. What made him the way he was.

Just like those girls in high school. Those stupid bitches, the ones who’d made his life a living hell. The ones he wanted to grab and hurt. Smash and carve. Cut tiny and then larger and larger pieces off their perfectly smooth and tight young bodies.

He hissed like a striking snake.
Just like they’d cut off pieces of him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Let’s go over what we’ve got,” Slater said as the three of them sat around the small kitchen table in Kate’s apartment. They’d brought Bauer up to date and their notes were now spread over the table, spilling onto the tiled counter of the kitchen. “Myers, you go first.”

Kate picked up her notes. “First, we know he’s a highly organized serial killer because he’s evaded capture for many years. That takes planning.”

“And he’s managed to escape profiling,” Bauer said.

“Because he’s mobile
and
he’s targeted cities with minimal law enforcement resources,” Slater added.

“Second,” Kate continued, “he’s changing his M.O. If my sister was his – his second victim, he was sloppy about – ” She paused and drew a deep breath. “I think the perpetrator didn’t kill Kassie in the way he fantasized about. He was rushed, or maybe he was scared. His later efforts were more polished. I think he was sexually inexperienced with the earlier ones.”

“A teenager or young adult?” Bauer suggested.

Slater stood and moved toward the wall by the kitchen counter where they’d tacked a large map of the United States. Colored push pins indicated the cities and towns where murders with common elements had been committed, possibly by their unknown subject. As far as they could determine, all cases were currently unsolved.

He referred to his notes containing the compiled list of open murder cases, at the same time pointing to the various sites with similarities to the Johnston murder. “We’ve now pinpointed thirteen murders over a period of about twenty years, including the Stuckey death in 1989, then Kassie in 1993.

“After her murder, there was the Virginia murder in 1995, followed by the 1997 North Carolina murder. Myers identified both of these murders during her original search.”

“That’s a two-year gap,” Bauer commented.

“There could be other murders in between that we don’t know about,” Slater said.

“He was refining his craft,” Kate said without a trace of irony in her voice, “getting better and better at what he enjoys most.”

Slater searched for the strain in her voice, but he thought she was holding up well. Although this analysis of her sister’s murder must be grueling, her face revealed little of the grief she’d shown last night. She was tougher than he’d given her credit for.

He indicated another push pin on the map. “The next murders we think are linked to the UNSUB occurred near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in a small town called Clayton, and then outside Waco, Texas, in McGowen. They occurred in 1998 and 1999.”

“Only a year between these two,” Bauer observed, “but there were four victims from 1995 until 1999. Does that sound right?”

“It’s a moderate cooling-off period,” Kate said. “The time length is probably correct. It’s interesting, though, that the next eight killings all occur approximately six months apart, from 2000 through 2004.”

“He was feeling cocky,” Slater guessed.

“Yes, and superior. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch.” Kate moved toward the counter, poured a glass of water, and examined the map. “A break in the pattern occurs next. If the killings are the work of our perpetrator, there’s a hiatus from 2004 until 2008. Four years is a long time for this kind of killer to wait.”

“If he was on a roll, why would he stop?” Bauer asked. “And then bam, bam. Two here in Bigler County.”

“Maybe the bodies between 2004 and 2008 haven’t been uncovered yet,” Slater suggested, “or he’s been in jail. Some states don’t have mandatory DNA profiling for their inmates like California does.”