Chasing Evil (Circle of Evil) (11 page)

He cocked a brow at her. “I gave him ten more minutes. The guy shut down in two. You’d better head next door.” He nodded toward the exit. “See if Muller has anything important to tell us, or if we’re spinning our wheels here.”

Nonplussed, Sophia looked at Chief Boelin. There was a reason neither Cam nor Jenna had led the interview instead of Goldman. Inter-agency cooperation went so far, but the agents were out of their jurisdiction. And that included the civilian consultant connected with their case.

The man fixed her with a look. “I remember reading about you getting Emmett Sanderson to give up the location of his last victim.”

Six years ago Emmett Sanderson had been on death row in a federal prison for the kidnap, torture and homicide of thirty young boys. All but one of the bodies had been recovered when she interviewed him. The man had had nothing to lose and no reason to talk to her. But after days of harrowing interviews he’d finally given her the details the Detroit police and the victim’s parents needed to hear.

She doubted Carl Muller’s information, if he even had any to share, was nearly as compelling as Emmett Sanderson’s. One of the officers had already verified his story that he’d been at work by six PM yesterday.

He came nowhere close to fitting the profile she’d developed of their serial offender. Although experience had taught her that peeping Toms could escalate to more violent sexual behavior, this man didn’t have the mental ability to craft the extortion part of the offender’s MO.

But the photo he’d taken of Courtney Van Wheton a couple months ago was damning. And if the woman were the latest victim of the offender they were seeking, time for Van Wheton was rapidly running out.

Without another word, Sophia headed to the interview room’s door.

He yawned mightily, toed open his bedroom door and shuffled in, naked and dripping. He swiped the towel over his newly shaved head, tried not to miss the recent loss of his normally thick hair. He wasn’t balding prematurely like some his age. It seemed a shame to shave it along with the rest of his body hair. But care had to be taken, especially before a night spent breaking in his newest possession. It was hard to say if he enjoyed the fucking or the beatings the most, but if he was unhappy with the take, he usually started out with punishment, to show the bitch what a disappointment she was.

Because in the end, all women disappointed.

But when the money was good, he popped a couple blue pills and spent the night training his new whore in all the ways she’d need to learn to please him.

Last night the take had been excellent. Fifty thousand. He stood there for a moment and basked in the thoughts of what he would do with that money, one hand going up to rub at his smooth rippled chest. So the sex had been enthusiastic and the bitch had been used hard and well.

He picked up the remote to turn on the TV. Shit, as much time as she spent jogging, she should’ve thanked him for the workout he’d given her. Would give her again, after he got some sleep and hit the gym later.

He dropped onto the bed, swallowing a yawn. Watched a clip on ESPN then flipped to the news, ready to turn the TV off. Until the female news anchor caught his eye.

Propping his head up with a second pillow, he paused to listen, his mind only half on the morning update. He wondered idly how hard it’d be to get at the pretty Hispanic anchor that was trying to look so serious and professional. Her name was public, and once he had a name he could get an address. Wasn’t a security system in the world that could keep him out, either. Before he’d hit on the big time scores he’d made his living on B and Es. And if he’d happened to case a house with a decent-looking woman living in it…well the rapes had been a bonus.

He squinted at the news anchor, half considering it. She looked like she’d love taking it up the ass. His new possession might not have loved it last night, but she’d taken it plenty.

His cock twitched at the memory, so he reached down to stroke it. Only to freeze in the next moment when the TV bitch said, “And now for the latest on the macabre investigation into the bodies found in local small town cemeteries in the area, we bring a press conference held this afternoon with Special Agent in Charge Maria Gonzalez.”

He sat up, scowling at the screen. The familiar rage was there, just bubbling beneath the surface. Those bodies never should have been found. Never! It’d been a fucking mistake and mistakes weren’t to be tolerated. He’d learned that much from his old man, the fucking bastard.

The screen filled with a piñata-faced bitch that blabbed on for a minute without really saying anything. Something in him eased. The state cops didn’t have a fucking clue about what was going on. How could they? They had some dead bodies. They couldn’t know who the bitches were, or who they’d been before he’d gotten done with them. The graves being discovered was a royal fuck up, but the bodies could have been buried with a map and a full set of directions and the fucking cops would still be scratching their asses and going on TV to sniff their fingers.

He cackled, a surprisingly high-pitched sound coming from the big muscled hairless body. The rage settled back inside his chest where it simmered until the next provocation.

“The agency is working with noted forensic psychologist Dr. Sophia Channing, who has put together a preliminary profile on the offender in this case.” A still photo was splashed across the screen as piñata-face started reading. He studied the picture. Good-looking bitch with excellent tits. She’d look even better naked, with his jizz sprayed across her tits and face. And then she’d still be a helluva lot better looking than that sour old bitch doing the talking.

“…a violent, sadistic offender, one likely emotionally stunted in his early teens….”

What the fuck? He frowned, straightening up in bed, reaching for the volume on the remote.

“The offender was probably the victim of a violent sexual assault in his childhood…

“…feelings of helplessness and misplaced aggression…”

“…compensating for his own inadequacies…”

“…may use performance-enhancing drugs to mask a lack of sexual prowess…”

“No-o!” he howled, hurling the remote to smash squarely in the middle of the flat screen. But the bitch kept talking.

“…over-developed sense of self evolving into a god-complex…”

The raging beast had awakened, and it was calling for blood. Channing’s blood. “Fucking whore, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you,” he screamed. Leaping from the bed he grabbed the table lamp and heaved it to smash the TV. Followed it with the drawer of the bedside table. Then hurtled the table itself at the wall and shattered the screen, bringing blessed silence, finally.

But the words repeated in his head, set fire to the gasoline soaked rage inside him.

…
emotionally stunted
…

…
helpless
…

…
lack of sexual prowess…

He continued his destruction of the bedroom, tipping over furniture, smashing everything in his path. And when he finished, chest heaving, a dull dark red wash across his vision, one name was stamped on his mind like a searing brand on cool flesh.

Dr. Sophia Channing
.

Chapter 6

“You’re a diehard liberal. Why am I not surprised? You’re lucky your big bleeding heart doesn’t splash on the sidewalk in front of you when you walk.”

They’d returned an hour ago from dinner out followed by a movie. It had been amazing enough that they’d settled on one they’d both wanted to see. Agreement on their opinions of it afterwards was probably too much to ask.

“Because I happen to have empathy for the character who made some bad choices?” Sophia drew a card and fit it in her hand. “I’m just saying none of us is perfect. It’s human nature to make mistakes. So it behooves us to have some sympathy for those who are trying to rectify their bad choices from the past.” She laid her cards down, just a bit smugly. “Gin.”

“You must think…what?” He shot her a narrowed gaze and reached over to rifle through the hand she’d laid. “Funny that sympathy you mention has been absent since we’ve been playing cards. I’m beginning to think I’ve been sandbagged.”

She smiled sedately, scooping up the cards to shuffle them. If sandbagging was the appropriate term for letting him believe at the beginning that she’d be an easy mark…he had her dead to rights. But it was Cam who’d altered her suggestion of cards to playing Strip Gin. And if she’d failed to lay down her winning hands at the beginning, and kicked off first one sandal and then the other when she’d allowed him to win the hands…well, men were simple creatures at times. And the one sitting across from her had proven amazingly easy to distract.

“You won the first two hands,” she reminded him, shuffling expertly. From his sharp look she immediately realized her mistake. She’d gone to great lengths to be deliberately clumsy in her previous attempts to ready the cards.

“Yeah, and then you won the next six. But to show I’m not a sore loser—even in the face of growing certainty that you’re a shark…” He stood lazily and unbuckled his jeans. Stripped them down his lean muscled thighs. Kicked them aside.

Sophia swallowed hard. Perhaps she’d miscalculated. It had been hard enough to keep her mind and her gaze off his bare chest. But now he stood nonchalantly before her wearing nothing but his navy boxer briefs. And what he did for the garment put the male underwear models to shame.

It took effort to tear her gaze away from the sight he presented to deal the cards. But she lacked the willpower required to ban the X-rated thoughts currently occupying her mind. Frantically, she searched for something, anything to divert her focus from the hard-bodied male sitting across from her.

“You call me liberal, but I happen to know you’re not as hard-hearted as you’d have me believe.” With hands that trembled a bit, she set down the pile and picked up her hand, fanning out the cards. “Twice now I’ve seen you approach a homeless person and hand them something.” She moved her cards around to start her runs and sets and reached for a card from the center pile.

Cam looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t giving them money, if that’s what you think. Most of these people have addictions of one kind or another. I’m not about to help support that.”

She discarded and looked at him curiously. Was proud that she managed to keep her gaze on his face. Mostly. She barely noticed at all the way his bicep rippled in the simple act of reaching for a card. “What was it then?” She’d wondered at the time if it were a business card with the name of a local shelter imprinted on it. Or a bus pass to help them move around the city more easily.

He discarded. “It was just a card directing them to Sanford’s. Your turn here. Unless you’re ready to forfeit, in which case, you’ve got some clothes to shed.”

She rolled her eyes. “In your dreams.” Sophia took her turn but didn’t let him divert her from her earlier question. “Sanford’s. That’s a restaurant, isn’t it?”

“More like a diner.” He reached for his bottled water. Brought it to his lips and drank. She watched, mesmerized as a drop of condensation dripped to his chest. Rolled ever so slowly down the muscled planes. He set the bottle down and reached for a card. “It’s no big deal. I have a tab there. Anyone who comes in with a card gets a free meal and I pay at the end of the month. Doesn’t make me a soft touch. It’s not like I’m loaning them my car.”

His words softened something inside her. No, the man definitely wasn’t a soft touch. He couldn’t do the job he did, see the things he’d seen and not attain a certain level of cynicism. But he wasn’t jaded. Not even after living nearly two years undercover. And his act of caring warmed her.

There was more, much more to Cam Prescott than she’d suspected, even after working with him peripherally for years. He was irreverent, insightful, smart…and too damn sexy for his own good. Or for her peace of mind.

“Take it off.”

Her attention bounced back to the game. “I beg your pardon?”

Those devastatingly attractive masculine creases beside his mouth deepened. “Gin. And remember the rules established at the beginning of the game. Jewelry doesn’t count.”

Rules
he’d
established, she recalled. But Sophia laid down her cards without comment. Both hands went to the V of her blouse. Slipped the first button through its hole. Then the second. But when her gaze caught his, her fingers faltered.

All traces of humor had vanished from his expression. The heat in his eyes turned them golden. And the look there—the
wanting—
was heady enough to steady her hands. Her pace remained slow. Teasingly so.

When had a man ever looked at her with that sort of desire? No one had ever made her feel so feminine. So powerfully female. Only Cam. The newness made it frightening. And overwhelmingly seductive.

Another button slipped free. Her fingers toyed with the last one. Drawing the moment out. His gaze was intimately intent. And when the button was loosened at last…when the rose-colored top was pushed off her shoulders to fall unnoticed to the ground she saw his hands flex once. Then he was shoving out of his chair and rounding the counter to pull her close.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” he muttered against her lips. His kiss was hard, ravenous.

When he scooped her up in his arms to stride to the bedroom, she managed to tear her mouth away long enough to murmur, “Thank God.”

# # # #

“Did you mean what you said in the park?” Carl Muller leaned toward her, his pale blue gaze not quite meeting hers. “That you help people like me?”

“Yes, I have treated people who have urges like yours, Mr. Muller. May I call you Carl?” His head jerked in assent. “The next time you go before a judge you need to insist that your lawyer request a treatment program. One where you’ll learn to channel your urges in socially acceptable ways.” If this man was a low-threat offender, as Sophia suspected, he’d likely had a hit-and-miss encounter with counselors.

Muller did look up then, a flicker of disappointment in his expression. “You won’t help me yourself?”

“I don’t live around here, Carl,” Sophia said gently. “My practice is three hours away. I do have contacts in the Cities, though. Some of them offer sessions on a sliding fee scale, or even pro bono. Would you like me to contact someone on your behalf?” “Someone nice?”

“Definitely someone nice.” She leaned forward, lowered her voice confidingly. “I’ll do that, because I do want to help you, Carl. Just like I know you want to help me.”

He tensed. “I can’t help you. I told that detective before. I don’t know the woman he was talking about.”

Sophia nodded. “I’m still hoping you can help me. You see, I don’t think you were the one who kidnapped that woman.”

His attention bounced to her. “That other guy did. He was rude, too. And mean. Saying those things about me. He doesn’t understand. No one does. I have different needs. That doesn’t make me a bad person.”

She was fairly certain what his needs made him but kept her voice reassuring. “Of course it doesn’t. The judge wasn’t very understanding either, was he?”

He plucked at a hangnail. Shook his head.

“The reason you were there today doesn’t matter to me. I’ll bet you go to a park everyday. You have a right to go to public places, right? Your tax dollars pay for them.”

He nodded slowly. “They take lots of taxes out of my check. I have a job at a garage on Seventieth Street. Just sweeping up and stocking shelves for now, but I’m hoping to work my way into their detailing department. I’d be good at that.”

“I’m sure you would be.” She sent him a warm smile. “Everyone needs to set goals. Sometimes we need assistance to achieve them, though. Is anyone in your life helping you with yours?”

“My probation officer helped me get the job. He’s not very nice, but he’s not as mean as that detective.” Carl plucked at his shirt nervously. “And my mom. She thinks I’d be good at detailing, too. I clean her car every Saturday.”

“That’s good. Everyone needs a little help, don’t they? Do you like to help people, Carl?”

Muller’s shoulders jerked up and down. “I don’t know. I guess.”

Hardly a promising response, but he hadn’t shut down yet. Sophia opened up the file folder Detective Goldman had left on the table and picked up Van Wheton’s picture. “Do you want to know what my goal is?” She set the photo on the table and slid it toward him. “I’d like to find this lady. I want to take her home to her two daughters. They don’t have anyone else. Their dad died a few years ago. My goal is to help them see their mom alive again.”

His eyes flicked over the picture. Away. Guilt, Sophia interpreted, but for what? Had he attempted to follow Van Wheton home at one point? The gated community she lived in would have stopped him. Or did he know more about the events of the woman’s abduction than he was letting on?

“I can’t help you.”

“Oh.” Sophia’s voice was crestfallen. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I don’t know whom else to ask. You probably know some of those parks as well as anyone does.”

“Like the back of my hand,” he assured her. “I know where all the trails go and stuff. Some get more crowded than others. I like them best.”

“This woman ran in one of the parks nearly every day. Did you see her often?”

“Sometimes.” He shook his head a little, and then pushed back the lank of hair the action had dislodged. “I never talked to her or anything.”

“Maybe you noticed her talking to someone else.”

He thought a minute. “No. No, I don’t remember that. I think someone might have wanted to talk to her, but I never saw him do it.”

Interest flared. Sophia carefully kept it from her voice. “A man? You saw a man with her in one of the parks?”

“Not with her.” Muller bit at the cuticle on his left hand. “He’d just watch her. I saw him a couple times. He’d come to the park she was at and when she left he’d leave, too.”

“But he didn’t talk to her.”

Shaking his head vigorously, Carl said, “Not when I was there. But I only saw this woman a few times. And the guy…three times, I think. Two other times before Monday.”

“You are being very helpful, Carl.” Sophia beamed a smile she wasn’t feeling in his direction. Her mind was racing. “I think you’re very observant.”

He looked pleased. “People don’t notice me. But I notice them. Like I saw this guy for the first time two weeks ago and he was always wearing sunglasses. Even if it wasn’t very sunny. And he had this newspaper in front of his face, but when that woman went by he always peeked over the top of it to watch her. I thought maybe he’d take her picture but I never saw him with a phone. He still might have,” he hastened to add. “I just didn’t see it.”

Clearly Muller had noticed the man only because he’d suspected the stranger of having a fetish similar to his own. “Was he wearing sunglasses every time you saw him?”

Carl nodded.

Sophia clasped her hands on top of the photo. Leaned forward. “Even when you saw him Monday?”

“Yes, I said…” He stopped then, as if aware of the trap.

“You said you saw him Monday. He was always watching her, you said. So Monday you were at the same park as this stranger and the woman. This could be very helpful, Carl. Especially if you have a picture of the man.”

He shook his head violently. “I don’t. I don’t take pictures of men, anyway. I’m not like that. Only women. Pretty girls.”

“Of course. But he could have been in the background of one of your pictures.”

“I told you I didn’t take any!”

“All right.” He was growing too agitated to be much help so Sophia went about soothing him. “I believe you.” With the warrant coming through soon, the police would discover whether Muller were telling the truth. Any new pictures the man had taken could possibly be enhanced to include others in the background. “Do you remember what the man looked like?”

Muller shook his head violently enough to have his hair tumbling across his forehead again. Sophia pressed on. “Was he blond like you? Or darker?”

“His hair was a lot darker than mine. Sort of curly, too. He always wore a hat, though.”

“A hat? Or a cap?”

Looking confused, Muller said, “A hat. Like the one I got at a Twins game once. Only his hat wasn’t blue, it was black. I don’t know what team has black for its color.”

A cap then, Sophia surmised. Although given the popularity of that particular item it wouldn’t necessarily be a ball cap. “Was he as tall as you or shorter?”

Muller squinted his eyes. “Maybe my height. But stronger, maybe.”

“You’re observant.” Sophia’s smile was so bright that the man blinked. “I think you’re right. Quieter people tend to see more, don’t they?”

“I guess.” Muller scratched his jaw. “I mean, I do. Sometimes…it’s like I’m invisible, you know? But I keep my eyes open.”