Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (39 page)

“He studied tae kwon do under me at the dojang. Four years. I got to know him. Poor
kid. All these kids, they’ll never forget any of this,” he said, and I knew he was
right. “Kids always blame themselves.”

“What happened to his mom?” I asked.

“Boating accident.” He turned off Main Street. “Before I got here. The way I hear
it Rob took it pretty hard. Did some heavy drinking for a while. And he didn’t make
any friends. Mean drunk. Robbie was still a baby. His aunt took care of him until
Rob pulled it together. He ended up raising a good boy.”

I knew what it was like to lose something, to try and drink it away. “What’s Brolin’s
story?”

“Got married right out of high school. Stayed married. Most folks around here stay
married regardless of whether they’re happy. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing
or if it’s just depressing.” He looked over at me. “They make an unlikely couple,
don’t they, Tina and Rob?”

“Nora Pace told me she finds the band teacher irresistible, so anything is possible,”
I said.

Meltzer’s phone went off. He looked at the display, then switched to the Bluetooth
device in the vehicle. “Go ahead, Sam. I’m here with Dr. Street. What do you have
for us?”

“I think y’all are going to want to see this,” she said in the twangy accent that
made me think Ozarks and curvy mountain towns. “There was a note and a photograph
in the card.”

We pulled onto Logan Peele’s road and passed deputies moving up it, through the field
across from the houses, and through Peele’s neighbors’ yards. Peele had messed with
them, and they were making sure his neighbors knew it. “Read us the letter,” Meltzer
told Sam.

Sam cleared her throat.
“ ‘Dear Keye, I’ve started hurting her. I
thought you’d want to know. She’s weak. She won’t last. Don’t you hate it when you
find out they’re not who you thought they were?’ ”
She’d read it like an old telegraph, adding the words
comma
and
period
and
question mark
. She’d read it without anything at all in her voice. She’d read it like a scientist.

An officer with a German shepherd on a body harness stalked alongside the ditch. One
of Peele’s neighbors stood on her porch with a phone to her ear. Brolin and Raymond
stood near Brolin’s Crown Vic. They turned their heads and stared as we approached.
Meltzer slowed, then braked in the middle of the road.

“He’s telling us about his selection process and why he kills them,” I said. “He’s
shifting responsibility, blaming them, as if they’ve deceived him, and us because
we haven’t captured him. This is part of his compartmentalization process. Shifting
blame allows him to emotionally detach from his violent behaviors.”

Dear Keye, I’ve started hurting her. I thought you’d want to know. She’s weak. She
won’t last. Don’t you hate it when you find out they’re not who you thought they were?

“So who did he think they were?” I asked. “How did they appear? To him, to the world?
And why does that attract him?”

“Melinda was smart and outgoing just like Skylar,” Meltzer said.

I thought about Melinda’s friends. “They were both the leaders in their packs. Confident,
pretty, blond. Tracy fits the type physically. But she wasn’t outgoing. She wasn’t
an alpha. She wasn’t even allowed relationships outside of school.” The differences
in the offender’s selection and behavior with the first victim bugged me. “He requires
a stronger personality now. It makes his time with them more interesting. Until he
strips away their confidence and makes them afraid and timid and ugly. Then they aren’t
what he wants anymore.”

“Sam, you get any evidence off that stuff?” Meltzer asked.

“Dirt and a few fibers. Still working. The note was sealed inside the envelope so
it’s the evidence least likely to have been corrupted.
The soil sample and what’s in the dirt along with the fibers may help ascertain location.
We lifted several prints off the note inside. They belong to Skylar. ALS picked up
fluids on the note. It’s not blood. Judging by the spatter pattern, it’s tear fluid.”
She left it there while that vivid picture played in our minds. “The prints on the
envelope belong to Nora Pace, the florist,” Sam continued. “The twenty-dollar bill
is embedded with years of gunk. I don’t expect much help there. As I said, there’s
a photograph. It came off a color printer. We’ll work on the paper and ink and see
if we can identify the machine. The print is average, not photo quality, which makes
it more common, unfortunately. The handwriting is confirmed as Skylar’s but the final
sample tells us the victim was under extreme duress.”

“What final sample, Sam?” Meltzer said.

“Hitting
SEND
on the images now, Sheriff,” Sam said. She didn’t want to read it to us. She wanted
us to see it.

Our phones went off, Meltzer’s first, mine a heartbeat slower. I opened the first
picture, a shot of the letter Sam had read to us. I saw Skylar’s loopy handwriting,
widened the screen and studied it. “Sam, it looks like there’s a couple of punctures.
That from the pen?”

“Definitely written on a soft surface,” she answered. “Once we process the evidence,
we might be able to tell you what the surface is.”

A sound came out of Ken Meltzer, something flayed and aching. His lips, usually red
and full of blood, had drained to chalk. He held up the image on his phone—a picture
of a right hand, a girl’s mutilated hand.
NINE MORE
, it said at the bottom in a shaky, ragged print. He’d made her write it after he’d
broken her finger. I imagined him cracking her fine bones, the throbbing, burning
agony of that.

NINE MORE
.

“He’s put us on his timetable,” I said.

37

He opened the door shirtless with a thick white cotton towel around his neck. He was
wearing jeans, cut low below his navel. His stomach was rippled with muscle. The full
veins in his arms rose up under his skin. He stepped out on the porch. The German
shepherd sat next to its handler, panting in the heat, but alert. Bright eyes rolled
up at Logan Peele. “I’ve been expecting you, Sheriff,” Peele said, pleasantly. “Nice
to see you, Dr. Street.”

“We could waste a lot of time talking about where you went today,” Meltzer snapped.
“Or you can let us in with the dog so we can get this over with. Let me remind you
I don’t have to ask.”

Peele tossed his short red hair with the towel, dried an ear. “You know I really don’t
want that animal in my house. But wait.” He held up an index finger, reached inside
the door, pulled out a plastic bag, and dropped it in front of us. “Figured you’d
want them. My jogging clothes.”

Peele looked from Meltzer to me, gauging our reaction. He’d thought about this. Every
detail. He’d entertained himself and cost us precious time. “Get out of the way, Logan,”
Meltzer said.

Peele smiled, stepped to the side with a sweeping welcome gesture. “Tick-tock,” he
said, as the sheriff stalked past him into the house.

I walked down the steps to the cement driveway. It looked pressure-washed. Big surprise.
The entire property was immaculate.

“So how’s Whisper so far, Dr. Street?”

I looked up at Peele. I didn’t answer.

“Why don’t we go out for a drink sometime?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking
right now and you can tell me what it means.”

“You’re trying too hard, Mr. Peele,” I said. “To be interesting, I mean.”

Raymond’s Crown Vic eased down the driveway. Brolin had left for Whisper to interview
Skylar’s closest friends. Meltzer had separated them in order to cover more territory.
Plus, he had been furious with them for not starting the dog and the handler at Peele’s
house before the suspect had a chance to shower and destroy evidence.

Raymond got out and glared at Peele, still standing on his porch. Then he motioned
me over. He smelled like sweat and cigarettes. He’d just had his ass handed to him
by the sheriff and he didn’t look happy.

“Tell me what the letter said.”

I pulled up the image of the letter on my phone and handed it to him. I watched him
read it. “Christ oh mighty,” he muttered.

“The photo is on the next screen,” I told him. I glanced down into his car and saw
cigarette boxes and fast-food wrappers and what looked like it had been an iced coffee,
with some milky, melting ice. And the shirt we’d taken from the Barbours’ laundry,
Skylar’s shirt. It was on the passenger’s seat in a heap.

“Fuck.” Raymond wailed the word like he’d been hurt. His hand was on his stomach.
He bent forward and thrust out my phone. I grabbed it and backed away. “Fuck,” he
said again, then bent at the waist and threw up.

“Hey! What the hell?” Peele yelped as chunky yellow-brown vomit splattered his driveway.

The front door opened and Meltzer came out followed by the dog and the deputy. He
walked past Peele without a word or glance, came down the steps, looked at me, then
at Raymond, then at the driveway. He frowned. The sun caught the lines around his
eyes. The dog started to bark. He pulled past me, dragging his handler toward Raymond.

“Get that fucking thing away from me,” Raymond ordered. He was backing up as the barking
dog continued to alert on him. Peele started to laugh.

“Deputy, get control of your dog!” Meltzer shouted.

The dog ran his nose up and down Raymond’s pant leg while Raymond stood there stiff
and pale. The dog sat and barked up at his handler. “What the fuck?”

“You brought the victim’s shirt for K-nine?” Meltzer asked.

“Brolin told me to,” Raymond said defensely. He looked like he was going to toss his
cookies again.

“Where is it now?” Meltzer asked.

Raymond reached in his car and grabbed the shirt. The dog started to bark again. The
handler gave him a good-dog pat. “No evidence bag, Rob?” Meltzer said. “Really? It’s
like working with Barney Fife sometimes.”

Peele howled and applauded. “Well done,” he said. He was holding up his phone, recording
us. “Another fine job by the Hitchiti County Sheriff’s Department.”

Raymond wiped his mouth again, spat. “Fucking dumbass dog …”

“Pull the deputies out of here,” Meltzer told him quietly, keeping his back to Peele
and his video. “Then go into town and find me a witness to something in this damn
place.”

We headed for his truck. “Hey,” Peele yelled behind us. “Clean this shit up.” Neither
of us looked back.

We were quiet at first, both of us trying to digest the letter, the photograph, the
time spent on interviews and searches that went nowhere, the scene at Logan Peele’s
house and in his driveway, Raymond’s horror at the photo of Skylar’s broken finger.
Both of us were painfully aware of the time display on Meltzer’s dashboard. Twenty-four
hours since Skylar had tried to help her kidnapper with a breakdown and found herself
battered and bound instead. There was dirt on the letter. Whatever it had come in
contact with had a fine layer of dirt and dust. I looked at the image of the letter
on my phone, read it again.

“Gotta be a dirt floor,” I said, more to myself than to the sheriff. We were on the
highway heading back to Meltzer’s cop shop, where I
could retrieve my car. He was expected to speak tonight, to reassure Whisper. “A barn
or shed, a basement or crawl space,” I said. “An abandoned farmhouse.”

“Plenty of those around here. Broken down enough to have a lot of dirt too,” Meltzer
said, following my line of thought. He hit the Bluetooth button on his steering wheel
and called Deputy Ferrell. “Deputy, reach out to the captain at uniformed patrols.
Let’s get some units out to inspect all abandoned structures in the county—sheds,
barns, houses, businesses. Start with the Whisper area. And remind him we’re radio
silent on this. Coordinate with the search teams. We don’t have time to cover the
same ground.” The voice that usually radiated comfort sounded tired and beat by frustration.
“What about the time line?” he asked me, when he’d disconnected. “When that little
girl doesn’t have any healthy fingers left, she’s out of time? What do we have? Nine
days? Nine hours?”

“He wants us to think nine, nine days, nine minutes, nine fingers, whatever. But he’s
a psychopath, Ken, which makes him a good liar. He could kill her anytime if the mood
strikes.”

Meltzer was silent.

“This phrase,” I said. “He’s used it in both notes.
I thought you’d want to know
. It must be a regular part of his vocabulary. And he’s buddying up, giving us little
trinkets, letting us know he’s doing us a favor. He’s not just thinking about Skylar
now. He’s thinking about us thinking about him. It’s feeding his illness. Makes him
unpredictable. He needs to insinuate himself into the investigation. That’s the thing
about violent serial offenders: They’re good at lying and good at raping and killing,
but they’re impulsive and childish and incapable of self-reflection. And this craving
to be recognized, it’s usually their undoing. So keep the cards and letters coming,
you creep.”