Dead Even (14 page)

He slumped down further in the seat as Audra's Datsun pulled out of the parking lot, passing only a few feet from him. He smiled to himself, imagining her reaction if she knew he was there, close enough to touch.

He wanted her again. He wanted to make her say the words to him over and over. She had been such a good girl before, after he had shown her what happened when she didn't obey him.

He couldn't even remember anymore, when it had all started. The craziness. He had always known he was different—and would be forever. Sometimes he could remember his mother beating him—trying to rid his soul of the evil—but he had only laughed at her futile attempts. As if a mere whipping could make him forgo his pleasures! Nor did her tears faze him. He liked to see her upset, crying. She finally realized her pain turned him on, and had handled it in her own selfish fashion.

It didn't matter anymore, anyway. That had been years ago, a lifetime. He was content with his world now. He had everything going his way. It had been tough before the fire. In fact, he had almost gotten caught. But he was smarter now. And more careful. It was funny how things worked out. In a way, the fire had set him free. He had killed a girl three days before that fateful day, but he had slipped up, left too many clues pointing toward him. Isabelle suspected. He could see it in her eyes when she questioned him. And it had been a mistake to confide in the boy, even though he had promised never to tell. After that, the kid had started looking at him differently. A little wary. A little afraid. It would only have been a matter of time before he broke down. Still, he regretted his death. He hadn't planned it that way. Only Isabelle was supposed to have died. How was he to have known about the gas leak?

Sometimes he missed the boy—missed having someone to confide in. They had done everything together, yet when it was all over, he realized it was better that he had died. Now there was no one who knew what he had done.

He sat there in the van, drumming his fingers absentmindedly on the steering wheel, unaware that an hour had passed. The sun was setting, lighting up the sky behind the school building. He pictured the swings full of children. Little girls—their dresses flying in the wind. Maybe when he dispensed with the Delaney woman he would try a child. He remembered the freckle-faced boy that had accompanied her, and wondered if the child were hers. Maybe he would have them both. He smiled as an even better idea came to him. He would make the woman watch. He sighed deeply as he slipped into the fantasy, going over all the details in his mind. Sometimes his fantasies were almost as good as the real thing.

First, he would take Audra—make her do and say all the things that pleased him. He would hold the boy over her head. Threaten to do things to the boy if she didn't fully satisfy him. After that, he would tie her up and make her watch as he raped and murdered the child—her payment for all the trouble she had caused him! Then he would have her once again before he killed her—and this time she wouldn't trick him into thinking she was dead! He felt a flood of warmth between his legs. Yes. It was a good plan.

*   *   *

The Hays Public Library was located on Main Street, across from the Fox theater and the Emprise Bank. As with many other buildings on Main Street, the library was a mixture of modern and frontier. The architecture of the library was modern, but in front of the building a massive limestone bust of Buffalo Bill Cody squinted blindly at the city the old frontier town had become.

Audra was glad to see there were two parking places open in front, because even with her small car, parallel parking always had presented a challenge. She pulled in easily, and felt a small pang of concience as she left several feet in front of her car, taking up half of the space in back of her. She reasoned that the last thing she needed this evening was getting wedged in between two cars.

Jason, of course, didn't miss it. “You're going to be over the line. Maybe you better pull up a little.”

Audra shut off the motor and gathered up her purse. “We'll just have to hurry, then. I don't want to get boxed in, or I'll never get out.”

“With
this
little car?” Jason hooted. “Even
I
could get out with a whole space to maneuver!”

Audra shook her head at him. “And I suppose now you're going to tell me you know how to drive, also?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. But I've read about it. I even helped my sister study for her driver's test. It seems easy enough.”

Audra got out of the car and went around to the passenger side where Jason was just hopping out. “Young man,” she said to him, “there are a
few
things in this world you can't learn from a book, and parallel parking is one of them!”

“Sure you can, Miss Delaney! Listen, all you do is bring your car up even with the car in front of the space you're wanting to enter. Then you twist—”

Audra burst out laughing. “Okay. Okay. I believe you. Sometime when there is no one around, you can give me a lesson in the school parking lot.”

They entered the library, and Audra directed Jason to the section with the classics. “Just browse around, look at the jackets, and see if any of them sound interesting to you. I need some information from the desk, then I'll be right with you.”

She left him, and walked over to the gray-haired lady who was stamping cards and inserting them in a high pile of books. “Excuse me,” Audra said. “I think I need a little help.”

The woman looked up at her and smiled warmly. “Yes, dear. How can I help you?”

“Does this library have a reverse telephone directory? You know, where the numbers are listed chronologically, and you can look up a number and find out who it belongs to?”

“Yes, we surely do,” the woman said. “In fact we have the new one that came out last month. It's called the Polk City Directory.” She pointed to a section. “It will be right by the telephone books, dear.”

Audra thanked her and walked over to the section. She found the book right away and opened it, scanning quickly down the numbers. It took her only minutes to find it. 555-2343—Howard L. Simpson, 2422 Castlebury.

Her hands shook as she took a scrap of paper from her purse and copied down the name and address. Howard Simpson! Such an ordinary sounding name for the bastard to have!

She felt a tug on her slacks and turned around to see Jason standing there, his arms loaded with books.

“Well, that was quick. What did you pick out?”

He placed the books on a table and began reading the titles. “
Treasure Island, The Old Man and the Sea, Moby Dick
—because it's about a whale,
The Prince and the Pauper, Huckleberry Finn,
and
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
”

Audra raised her eyebrows. “Dr. Seuss? How did that get in there?”

Jason grinned at her. “I know his books aren't hard to read, but they're
fun
to read! Don't you think so?”

Audra had to agree with him. Dr. Seuss
was
fun to read, even for her. “I think you made a good selection. I'm not sure you'll like
Moby Dick
—it's pretty long and tedious, but I'm sure you'll enjoy the others.”

Jason picked up
Moby Dick
and thumbed through it. “Tedious means sort of boring and uninteresting, doesn't it? Maybe I won't take it after all.”

Audra was again amazed at the boy's vocabulary range. “No. No, I think we should check it out, too. Who knows, you might like it the best of all.” After all, just because she had found the book to be dreary didn't mean Jason would.

They collected the books and took them up to the counter. The librarian smiled at Jason. “Just one book for you? You can check out more if you like.”

“They're
all
for me,” Jason answered her. “Even
Moby Dick,
which I've heard is tedious.” He looked at Audra and winked.

“You little scamp,” Audra laughed as they went out the door. “That poor lady didn't know
what
to think!”

“Yes, she did,” Jason said. “She thought I was a smart mouth!” He giggled. “That's what Momma says to me sometimes. ‘Now don't be a smart mouth!'”

“I'm glad to know that, Jason,” Audra responded. “I'll just keep that in mind.”

Jason pointed to the windshield of Audra's car. “Look, Miss Delaney! You got a ticket. I knew you should have pulled up further.”

Audra groaned and went around to the driver's side of her Datsun. She removed the yellow cardboard, looked at it and smiled. “Don't forget to be home by 7:00,” was scrawled across the face of the ticket, and under the arresting officer's name was, “Mike.” Of course. The police station was directly in back of the library.

“It's all right, Jason,” Audra said. “It's just a note from a friend of mine, reminding me that I'm supposed to be home by seven.” She looked at her watch. “We have plenty of time. We'll go to Pizza Hut, and I'll call a friend of mine to meet us there. She's a great lady. I know you'll like her.”

Jason stuck out his tongue to catch some of the snowflakes that had just begun to fall. He was having a good time. And Miss Delaney didn't seem too worried about that man—the one who had stabbed her. Maybe they had caught him already.

*   *   *

At police headquarters, Butch waited while the printer churned out the different formats he had requested. It had been a long day and he was tempted to call it quits, but he knew he would never relax until he found out just exactly what they had.

The printer made little zinging noises as it zipped back and forth across the page, pausing now and then to sort through the accumulation of material and spit out that which was requested. Butch often wondered if his own brain went through the same soft clicking sound as it sorted through all the garbage to come up with a specific answer.

Finally, one page was finished and he reached over and carefully tore it away from the remaining sheets. He had logged in a considerable amount of information, then requested a printout of the crimes that had four or more points of similarity. Later, he would request a format of all of the crimes, but to begin with, he wanted to see what the computer considered the most likely to be grouped.

The beginning sheet was formatted by dates, and he groaned as he leaned back in his chair. What the hell had he done wrong? No way could this printout be accurate. All of the crimes showing up on this run were committed in winter months. November, December, January and February. Not one damn rape in the spring or summer months, which normally had the highest number of incidents. Something had to be wrong.

He reached over and tore the next sheet off. This one was formatted by the place the body was found. When he had entered them into the computer, he had specified whether or not the body was located within the city proper, and if not, he had printed in rural. He had expected this format to be a mixed bag, but instead, all of the crimes listed were rural.

Rural area—Des Moines, Iowa

Rural area—Grand Island, Nebraska

Rural area—Springfield, Missouri

Rural area—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Rural area—Colorado Springs, Colorado

He scanned down the sheet. Twenty-three names in all. And every one of them found in a rural area, outside a fairly decent-sized city. The computer hadn't picked up even one crime committed in a smaller town, or found within a city.

He reached over and caressed his Epson. “Come on baby, maybe you know what you're doing after all! I'm sorry I doubted you!” His machine had done just what he had asked it to—eliminate those crimes which did not have at least four points of similarity.

The computer whirred to a stop and he reached over and removed the final sheets. It had taken him hours to log in the assumptions of the local police as to where the victims had been abducted. At best, they were only guesses. Now as he looked at the printout, he saw that his computer had eliminated all crimes except those where police suspected the victim had been taken in close proximity to a college.
All twenty-three of these girls were college students and disappeared from campus!
Some were jogging, some running, and some merely returning from the library or a late class. Most were taken after dark, but a few were abducted at dusk, like the Delaney woman.

Butch's hands were shaking as he picked up the last printout.
My God, what have we stumbled on here? Is it possible all of these girls were killed by the same man?
He knew if these crimes had been committed in one area, that would be the assumption, even if the method of killing was different.

The computer had organized the twenty-three deaths into different categories: knife wound, handgun, rifle, shotgun, strangulation. But they were all listed under one large category—Violent Death. Most serial killers used the same method of killing on all their victims, as a personal calling card. Could this killer have used different methods to deliberately throw off the police? Without anything to link these deaths, there would be no reason to tie a murder in Colorado Springs to a murder in Oklahoma City. It was only a stroke of luck that they had stumbled on it. Hell, even if the killer had used the same mode of killing on all of them, chances were that nothing would have ever tied them together! Not scattered over five states and twelve years!

He picked up the sheets and thumbed through them once again. There was still one thing missing. He needed the dates the girls were first reported missing, then one printout with all of the information. He fed the data into the machine, then headed to the back room for coffee while it completed its task.

“I don't care if the son of a bitch
has
been sober for two years! Ramsey has no business being on the force!” Butch heard the angry words and halted outside the door.
What the shit—?