Out Of Control (15 page)

Finally,
she checked her makeup in the mirror on her sun visor, applied fresh lipstick,
and turned on her PDA. By the time she got to the first family on her list, she’d
better be in full control of herself.

Chapter
Fourteen

He
could tell by the sudden paleness of Dana’s face and the way she’d tried to
sweep her eyes casually over the room that she’d sensed him. He’d been thinking
about her, planning for their eventual meeting. Somehow he must have sent off
unconscious vibrations she’d picked up on.

Careful.
Don’t want to spook her.

He’d
have to learn to keep his thoughts to himself when she was around. But who knew
she’d be so sensitive to him? So susceptible?

Susceptible.
That was a good word. She’d make an excellent victim with her susceptibility.

He’d
been so hard this morning just remembering Leanne, he’d had to take a cold
shower just so he could leave the house. Tonight he’d meet Tony and pluck one
of the delightful little flowers from the big van.

And
tomorrow, victim number two. He already had her picked out and his plan in
place. This, too, took some careful maneuvering. And if it didn’t work
tomorrow, there was always the next day. But he had a time limit. If one plan
failed, he’d have to figure out another.

****

Cole
was sure the coffee had eaten a hole in his stomach, yet here he was, sipping
at yet another mug of the venomous brew. But Nita Sanchez sat in front of him
with her completed autopsy report, a copy of which he held in his hands, and he
needed all the fortification he could get to deal with it.

“I’ve
seen vicious,” Nita told him, “and I’ve seen sadistic. I won’t say you get used
to it, but you learn to protect your emotions after a while. But to see what
someone’s done to a young girl like this…” She rubbed her eyes. “There’s a
terrible evil out there, Cole. You’ve got to find him before he does this
again.”

“Don’t
I know it.”

“I
cannot imagine the pain Leanne went through. This attack was…depraved.”

“Jesus.
God. “ Cole had to force himself to keep reading. “He bit her?”

Nita
nodded, gripping the arms of her chair to control her obvious rage.

Cole
had to swallow hard against the vitriol rising in his throat. “Were you able to
get any impressions?”

She
shook her head. “No. I think he used something over his teeth, too. He was well
prepared.”

“And
the massive bruising on her thighs and buttocks?”

“That’s
where he pinched her.”

“What
about DNA?”

“I
doubt we’ll get any. I found traces of latex, which means he wore gloves.”

Cole
dropped the report back on his desk and forked his fingers through his hair. “It
also means he was prepared. This was a premeditated act.”

Nita’s
eyes were filled with a volatile combination of misery and rage. Most of the
bodies she worked on died of natural causes or were accident victims of some
kind. While the latter could be badly injured and often mangled, he knew
nothing compared to what had been done to sixteen-year-old Leanne Pritchard.

Meeting
with her parents had been the worst hour of his day. He had no answers for
them, no explanation. No assurance that this man would be caught in a hurry.
But catch him he would. That was for damn sure. This was his town now, his
county, and he wasn’t about to allow this evil to linger.

His
only problem was, he had no idea how to get rid of it. This was one smart son
of a bitch. He left no clues, no traces, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And
to add to his shitty day, sickened by the crime and dreading the visit with the
parents, he’d been more abrupt than he needed to be with Dana Moretti. Sure,
she should know better than to pry information out of him with a case this
fresh, but he could have been a little nicer about showing her the door,
especially when she volunteered to help. God knows, he could used every bit he
could get.

And
then there was that crazy theory she floated.

Damn.

“Earth
to Cole.” Nita’s voice broke into his reverie.

“What?
Sorry, Nita.”

“I
said the tox screen should be back later today. There was a faint odor of
something on her face. I’m assuming it’s whatever he used to subdue her. Maybe
that will help us.”

“God,
I hope so.” He studied her for a moment. “Nita, you’ve lived here a long time.
Got a sense for the rhythm of this place. Do you think there’s a remote chance
that this cold be in any way connected to those child murders from twenty-five
years ago?”

“What?”
She glared at him. “No, and I don’t think you should be passing that around,
either.”

“Just
do me a favor. Please? Check your report against the old autopsies and see if
anything compares.”

She
pushed her chair back and reared to her feet. “I’ll do it, but it’s a waste of
my time. Whoever did those killings twenty-five years ago is long gone.”

And
isn’t that what everyone wants me to believe?

Even
the killer.

****

Stan
and Lois Kelly lived in a small house near High Ridge Middle School. Dana sat
in her car for a moment, studying the area. All the houses were small but
well-maintained, most of them made of the familiar Texas stone and adobe. The
lawns in front were neat, some with an abundance of flowers, others with
neatly-trimmed shrubs.

A
family neighborhood. Only some of the families had been ripped apart.

She
hadn’t called in advance, unwilling to give the Kellys a chance to refuse to
see her. Gathering her purse and her courage, she headed up the narrow walk and
pressed the doorbell.

At
first, there was no answer, although she could hear movement inside the house.
She waited a little longer, then pressed the bell again, this time more
insistently. The door cracked open the length of the chain inside, and a pair
of haunted eyes peered out at her.

“Go
away,” a woman’s voice said. “I know who you are. Just go away.”

Dana
made her voice as even as possible. “Mrs. Kelly, I just want a few minutes of
your time. That’s all. If you could just spare me that little bit.”

“I
have nothing to say to you. I don’t want to talk about it.”

The
door closed. Dana sighed and pressed the bell again.

“I’m
trying to give all of you here some closure,” she called. “Don’t you want to
find out who did this to your child? That person has been running around free
all this time.”

Silence.

“Mrs.
Kelly?” She lowered her voice slightly. “Just give me ten minutes. That’s all.
Please.”

She
was about to leave and try the next address when the door slid open, the loose
chain rattling against its hard wood, and a hand motioned her inside.

“I
don’t want you standing out there where all the neighbors can hear you,” Lois
Kelly told her. “But I don’t have anything to say to you.”

Dana
hurried inside before the woman changed her mind.

The
house was immaculate, so neat it was almost inhumanly clean. Dana had seen this
before, the compulsive cleaning, over and over, as if by doing so the stain of
what happened could be washed away. And it kept one from thinking. Repetitive
motion could be wonderful for blanking the mind. She should know, she harbored
many of the same habits.

Lois
Kelly was thin almost to the point of emaciation. Her straight dark hair was
cut unattractively short—less upkeep—and she wore no makeup. She was dressed in
black slacks and a black blouse. Dana wondered if she’d worn mourning clothes
all these years.

“Jane
Milburn told everyone what you’re after.” Her voice was high and thin. She
stood in front of Dana, twisting her hands tightly as if they were the only
thing holding her together. “You want to dig it all up again and bring back the
nightmares just so you can make money. We won’t let you do it.”

“Lois.”
Dana pulled out her best professional voice. “May I call you Lois? I think Jane
misunderstood what I said to her. That’s not my intention at all.”

As
she talked, she moved to a narrow wing chair by the window and casually lowered
herself into it.

“Yes.
Yes, it is.” Lois Kelly’s face took on a pinched, demanding look. “Why are you
doing this?”

Dana
looked around the small room. Nearly every surface was covered with framed
photos of a smiling, chubby redhead with dimples and snapping eyes. She wasn’t
older than five in any of them, the age the little girl had been when she was
raped and murdered.

“Every
one of you has mourned your children all these years yet you’ve had no real
closure. That’s what I’m hoping to do. Find some answers that will give you
closure.”

Lois
untwisted her hands and shoved them in her pockets. “What makes you think you
can do what the sheriff couldn’t? Besides, whoever it was has moved on. There’s
been nothing in High Ridge since then.”

“Until
today,” Dana pointed out.

Lois’s
face turned rice paper white. “Are you saying it’s the same man? That he’s come
back?”

Dana
still couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere there was a connection, but she
didn’t want to give voice to it just yet. People would really think she was
nuts.

“No,
not at all. I’m just hoping this doesn’t turn out to be an unsolved case like
your Bonnie’s.” She shifted slightly in her chair. “What I’ve found with all of
my books is that I bring a fresh eye to an old situation. Often I can see
things that other people overlooked because they were too familiar with them.
And many times that leads to answers that hadn’t been available or even
imagined when the original crime took place.”

“Familiar?”
Lois’s eyes widened. “Do you think it was someone we know?” She shook her head
violently, disabusing both of them of the idiocy of the statement. “No, no, no.
That’s just not possible.”

“Why
don’t you come sit down with me?” Dana suggested. “Just for a few minutes. Tell
me about Bonnie. I’d really love to hear about her. Come on. I’ll bet you don’t
get to talk about her too often.”

Dana
had found time and again that people buried their grief along with their loved
ones, then dealt with it by banishing the subject from all conversation. But
once she got them to talk, it was like opening the floodgates of a dam. And all
too often, the tiny missing nugget spilled out in the flow of words.

Lois
barely noticed that her unwanted guest had taken a seat and was carefully
guiding the conversation. Dana was sure she was the first person outside a
small circle of friends who had even been in this house since the death of
their child. Very often she found herself the catalyst that opened all the
locked doors.

“Stan
says it hurts too much to talk about her.” One tear slid down her cheek. “And
he blames me for what happened. Says it was all my fault.” She dropped into the
chair at the other side of the window like a rag doll, tears flowing in earnest
now. “But it wasn’t,” she protested. “He was there, too. He was right there.
Why didn’t he watch her better?”

Dana’s
heart pinched. These people had locked themselves in this obsessively neat
house, all these years living with sorrow and blame, barely existing. Maybe
even hating each other. Dana had seen that, too. How many others would she talk
to who were frozen in time like this?

She
reached into her pocket to turn on the voice-activated recorder, then leaned
over and touched Lois’s hand very gently. “Why don’t you just tell me about
Bonnie? I’d love to hear about her.”

“She
was such a sweet thing.” Lois pulled a tissue from her pocket and mopped at her
eyes. “So cheerful all the time. Laughed at everything. Stan would come home
and toss her up in his arms and she’d just laugh and laugh. He said it was the
one thing he looked forward to all day.”

Dana
nodded at the photos. “She looks like a very bright little girl.”

“Oh,
yes. She was smart all right. Maybe too smart. She wanted to know about
everything. That’s why…” The tears welled again.

“I
don’t understand. Are you saying that had something to do with what happened? I
thought you were all at a picnic?”

“Yes.”
Her dark head nodded. “We were at the big Fourth of July picnic out at the
park. Bonnie was having such a good time. Stan pushed her on the swings, and
they had rides for the little kids.”

“What
happened? Can you tell me?”

“She
was fascinated by the clowns. She wanted to know all about them.”

Dana
felt every drop of blood in her body chill. Clowns. Oh, God. She made a mental
note to go back over everything she’d copied down and see where the other
children were taken and if clowns had been there.