Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (19 page)

“Let me see it,” I said.

Wearing latex gloves, Nguyen inserted the letter and envelope—postmarked Saturday from a Dallas zip code—in evidence sleeves then gave them to me.

Some are chosen to live, others to die
.

This is destiny
.

The hand that wrote it was the same as the first, and I had no doubt he was our killer. He was warning me, but at the same time taunting me with his power. His murders gave him control over the lives and deaths of his victims. Now, the killer believed he could control the police, the investigation. He believed he could control me.

“Sarah, we need to talk,” the captain said, and from the tone of his voice I knew he wasn’t about to compliment my investigative techniques. This was bad news. “We just can’t have this. This has gone too far. This guy’s fixating on you. I’m sure, when you look back on this, you’ll agree. I really have no choice other than to remove you from this case.”

The captain’s words hit me full force. One thing I was sure of—I would not be replaced. If for no other reason than me with the letters, the killer had made this personal. For my own safety, so I could sleep at night, I had to make sure he was found and put away, forever.

“I’m making progress, I can find this guy. I know I can,” I protested. “I’m your best hope and, until this creep is stopped, he’s going to keep killing.”

“I don’t doubt that. None of us do. But it’s too dangerous; there’s just too much risk for you, personally, to continue on,” he said.

Maybe the captain was right. But in my heart, I felt certain I was the best person to stop this nightmare. “Bringing someone new on
now, it’ll take days for them to get up to speed. In the meantime, this guy’s out killing people,” I argued.

“I know that,” the captain shot back. “But this guy’s focusing on you. We can’t take any chances that may put you in jeopardy. If you’re not worried about yourself, think of Maggie and your mother. If he can’t get to you and he figures out how to get to them…”

My stomach tightened into a ball at the thought that the killer could go after Maggie and Mom. But I knew that couldn’t happen. “How would he find them? They’re safe on the ranch. The place has nothing to do with me. None of the property records, the utilities, not the phone, nothing out there is in my name. It’s all in Mom’s name. On paper, I haven’t existed since Bill died. My car’s titled to the department, and even my cell phone is state-issue. My mail comes to the office and a post office box. This guy can run a complete computer search on me and not find an address or a telephone number that links me to the ranch, Maggie, or Mom.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“No, I still don’t…” the captain began.

“Three days, seventy-two hours,” I countered. “Give me three days, and if I haven’t made an arrest, I won’t argue. If you still want to, you can take me off the case. I won’t fight it.”

“It’s not your performance. It’s for your own good, your safety.”

“Mom and Maggie are safe at the ranch, and I can take care of myself,” I said, meaning it. “Three days, Captain Williams. That’s all I’m asking for, just three more days.”

The captain didn’t appear to know exactly what to do. “You’ll be careful?”

“Yes. I’ll be careful.”

“All right,” he conceded. “But keep a low profile. A very low profile.”

“Agreed,” I said, relieved but wondering if I could live up to my
part of the bargain. My latest clue had just proven yet another dead end. The evidence was mounting, but it led precisely nowhere.

“Three days,” I repeated. “Then, if I haven’t made an arrest, I won’t argue.”

At ten that evening, I was in the office conference room reviewing evidence, rereading the two letters, searching for any overlooked clues, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted when David walked in.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “I heard about the letters.”

“I know the answer to all this is here somewhere right in front of me. It has to be. Why can’t I see it?”

“You’re tired, Sarah. It’s been a long day,” he said, in a tender voice I felt certain he reserved for those he deemed to be precariously balanced. “Let’s get a drink and then both go home.”

In David’s car, we drove to a nearby Tex-Mex restaurant and claimed two stools at the bar. I chewed on chips with queso and green sauce. My first margarita went down quickly and I ordered another. Silent, David lingered over his scotch and soda. I knew he was doing the same thing I was, rethinking each piece of evidence, wondering what we were missing, why we didn’t have the answers we needed. Halfway through my second drink, I just wanted to go home.

“I’m sorry, I’m not very good company tonight,” I admitted.

“This was a bad idea,” he agreed. “We’re both too wrung out for this to help.”

He stood up.

“Come on, I’ll take you back to the office for your car.”

The drive took only minutes. In the parking lot, he pulled into the slot next to my Tahoe and waited. I hesitated. I suddenly didn’t want to leave. The truth was, at that precise moment, I wanted more than anything not to be alone. If I’d been honest, I would have admitted I was both frightened and lonely. If Bill had been waiting
for me, I’d have had him to talk to. He would have found a way to make it all go away, at least for tonight.

David made no move to suggest he thought I should leave. Before I even realized what I was doing, I’d turned toward him and lightly skimmed his cheek with the back of my hand.

“Five o’clock shadow,” I said, smiling. “Long day.”

“Very long,” he agreed, taking my hand in his.

This time I made no move to pull it away as he gently turned my hand over and kissed my open palm.

“Am I overstepping?”

“No, you’re not,” I said, edging forward, feeling a bit like a bashful adolescent with a new boyfriend. I ran my other hand through his tousled hair. “There, I’ve been wanting to do that,” I said, smoothing it back.

“You didn’t need to ask,” he said, bending toward me. “You could have done that the first day we met.”

Our lips met full and hard, and I felt his hands beneath my blazer, pulling me toward him.

We said nothing as he drove out of the parking lot toward his house. There, in his bed, surrounded by his photographs, his books, we made love. We came in a rush of pent-up anxiety. For those brief moments, I felt the ache of the past year dissolving. In the morning, I knew, the world would be as I had left it, full of loss and frustration, but for just a little while, nothing existed outside that room and the feel of his firm naked body pressed against mine.

“I told you this before, the first time you came to this house with me, and I meant it. I have wanted you ever since I first saw you,” he said, nuzzling the side of my neck, his breath warm and moist.

“I think I knew that,” I said, lifting his face toward me and running my mouth over his. He tasted of scotch and me. “I think maybe I felt the same way.”

David gently skimmed his hands over my bare breasts and fondled
my nipples. My body quivered, and I pulled him closer, until he rolled on top and pressed hard against me. Wanting him even closer, I wrapped my bare legs around the small of his back and pulled him tight. This I had missed, the feel of a man’s body, hard and firm.

His tongue caressed my neck and ear, searching for my lips. David arched his back, and my body relaxed and tensed. For a moment, the past was the past and nothing existed outside the walls of David’s bedroom, not grief or anxiety or guilt. Nothing but the feel of his body and the sparks it ignited within mine. My legs tight around him, I rolled onto my side, taking him with me and pushed him down onto the bed.

“My turn,” I said, and David chuckled.

“Have your way with me,” he whispered.

“Ah, just the way I like a man,” I said.

I ran my hands over his solid muscles, his thick arms. I climbed on top of him, and he bent his knees and brought up his legs behind me, and once again I felt my body respond.

“Oh,” I whispered. “David, I…”

“We can talk later,” he said, grabbing my neck and pulling me toward him. The kiss was long and slow, and I hoped it might never end.

At that precise moment, on the nightstand his cell phone rang.

David caught it before the second ring. I didn’t feel rejected. I would have done the same. Ten minutes later, we were dressed and on our way to the airport, where the captain had arranged to have a DPS helicopter waiting.

N
othing in my years as a Texas Ranger prepared me for what awaited us on a quiet street in Fort Worth. The house was a massive redbrick colonial in the city’s premier old-money neighborhood. Cynthia Neal sobbed silently in the kitchen, attended to by her personal physician and her adult daughter. The impeccably dressed woman in her sixties had discovered the body upon her return from a performance of the Fort Worth Symphony. Her husband had complained of a cold coming on and decided not to attend, so at the last moment she invited a friend.

We arrived just after 4
A.M.
The two-story living room, arching into a cavernous cathedral ceiling, radiated heat, as yellow-blue flames licked the gas logs in the green Italian marble fireplace on the far wall. That’s where he’d posed it, above the mantel, nailed to the burled walnut paneling. Arms extended, legs straight, feet overlapping, head drooping to his chest, there hung the cold naked corpse of Dr. James Neal III.

It was a crucifixión.

“Do you think our guy did this?” I whispered, as we stood below the body.

After a pause, David nodded. “Yeah, it could be.”

For the most part, serial killers don’t drastically vary their killings. They know what turns them on, what pushes the right buttons to escalate their excitement, how to get the biggest thrill out of each and every gruesome kill. They are creatures of habit. As their hunters, we count on that. Their patterns help us not only link their killings but offer windows into their minds. These recurring details define the killers and eventually help us find and stop them. But sometimes, and apparently this time, their fantasies escalate. The wounds in the hands and the feet of the previous victims, it appeared now, hadn’t been torture. He’d been experimenting and toying with the bodies, working up to Dr. Neal, who bore the stigmata of Christ.

“I know this doesn’t match your other cases exactly. Hell, what could match this?” asked Detective Les Maddock, an avuncular man with a thick head of graying hair and washed-out blue eyes. When we failed to answer, he went on. “I still figured I’d call. It reminds me enough of your cases with the bloody crosses to make it worthwhile to take a look-see. Doesn’t it?”

After the briefest pause, he again jumped in. “That cross cut on his chest, for one thing, that’s similar,” said Maddock. “Another’s the wounds in the doc’s hands and feet.”

“Our victims had small knife wounds not nails driven through their hands and feet,” I said, slowly. “This isn’t the same, but…”

“Hell, maybe it’s not one of yours,” said the detective, pushing back the sides of his faded navy-blue sport coat. He thrust his hands in the pockets of baggy tan slacks. “Sorry I called you two in the middle of the night. Guess all I accomplished was depriving you of some well deserved sleep. You might as well be on your way and leave this mess to us.”

Neither David nor I moved. Both of us stared, transfixed. Dr. Neal reminded me of crucifixes I’d seen in Mexican churches over the years, before Maggie was born, when Bill and I took the occasional winter vacation. Not sanitized like those in churches in the States, these were liberally painted with streams of blood, and the expression on Christ’s face was always of inconsolable suffering.

“It’s in the fifties outside tonight. Not exactly fireplace weather. Who lit it?” I asked.

“We think the killer,” said the detective. “The doc’s wife says he had allergies and never liked having the fireplace on, so it’s doubtful that he would have.”

David said nothing, but I knew what we were both thinking. Dr. Neal had been crucified over flames, like the flames of hell. It wasn’t a reach. Protruding from the slash in the dead man’s side was a thick-handled, wide-bladed kitchen knife, more precisely a butcher knife.

“Was Dr. Neal a gynecologist?” I asked.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“He performed abortions?”

The detective shrugged and said, “Beats me.”

When we’d arrived, I’d noticed a sixteen-foot stepladder, used by the crime-scene photographer, against the wall. Wanting a better look, I walked over to get it. David helped and we set it up a few feet from the corpse. I kicked off my shoes and climbed up to the third rung from the top as David held the ladder steady on the thick carpeting.

“His throat’s been slashed,” I called down to David. “There’s so little bleeding from the wound in his side, I’d bet that came postmortem.”

“Staging,” David said. “It’s all for effect.”

“You did the right thing calling us. There’s a good chance this is
our guy,” I told the detective, once I was standing firmly on the floor. “It looks similar enough, at least, to make that a possibility. What has your forensics team found so far?”

“Looks like the butcher knife came from a set in the kitchen,” he said. “The medical examiner’s office hasn’t gone over the body yet, but that’ll happen later today, sometime before noon. We left it there on purpose so you could see this firsthand.”

“We appreciate that,” David said.

“The hair-and-fiber guys took one swipe through with trace lifts and collected bags of stuff, but we don’t know if any of it means anything. We’ll transport the body wrapped in a trace-evidence sheet as well, of course. We’ve collected fingerprints. We’ve got quite a few, but we don’t know if any belong to the killer,” the detective continued. “We do have one on an outside bedroom window, a nice one off the glass. We think that may be the point of entry, like maybe the guy screwed up and hadn’t put his gloves on yet. The window was unlocked. The wife says Dr. Neal liked to sleep with an open window.”

“Anything in the bathroom?” I asked.

“Blood around the sink drain, like the guy cleaned up some before he left.”