The Deepest Cut (2 page)

She was wearing a brass name tag, but his vision had to be extraordinary if he could read it at that distance in the dim light. She leaned forward and gave the horse a couple of firm pats while eyeballing the stranger.

The watch cap covered his hair and part of his eyebrows. He was seated, but his legs and arms were long. She guessed that standing he would be at least six feet. His clothes were bulky, but his build looked average. His face was ordinary. Not handsome or ugly. No distinguishing scars or marks. It was a blank canvas, brightened only by the way he looked at her: adoring and consuming. It put her in mind of the way her brother played with her infant niece, slobbering kisses over the baby while taunting, “I’m gonna eat you up.
Eat you up.”

“Didn’t mean to scare Gypsy.” Tossing off the horse’s name was good. He was golden. He could almost see the wheels turning as she sized him up, wondering, “Do I know this guy?” It was all this nondescript, young Caucasian male could do to keep from grinning. He knew how the world saw him. He had learned to use it to his advantage.

His adoring gaze made her wary. It aroused her instincts of danger. He hoped it also appealed to another part of her. She would be unaccustomed to such attention from men. She was a rawboned woman with a lantern jaw, a squat nose, and thin lips framing a gash of a mouth. Calling her handsome would be generous. She wasn’t the type of woman who inspired sonnets. But
he
loved her. He could hardly wait to show her how much. He caught his breath, feeling overwhelmed.

Control, he told himself.
Control.

Christmas always made him emotional.

She asked, “Do I know you?” She searched her mind, grabbing at a memory that stubbornly slipped back into the shadows. “Where have I seen you?”

He pulled the sticky marshmallow from the end of the hanger with his fingers and blew on it before tossing it into his mouth. He chewed with obvious pleasure, letting out a little moan. He stood and stabbed the wire into the sand, where it wobbled back and forth.

He struggled to calm his breath. “Nowhere. Everywhere.”

“What’s your name?”

He retrieved the wire hanger and intentionally held it by his side in his left hand, farthest from her, in a nonthreatening manner. He ducked beneath the yellow rope and walked a few feet toward the surf. He wrote in the wet, smooth sand.

Feathers cocked her head and squinted at the scrawling. “What does that say?”

He shrugged, chucking the wire away. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, pal …” Feathers reached behind her and pulled a small spade from a loop on the saddle bag. “You’re gonna put out that fire and I’m gonna escort you out of the park. Being Christmas Eve, if you cooperate, I won’t cite you. If you don’t, I’ll arrest you and you’ll spend the night in jail. Got it?”

“Ranger Feathers, you know about death.”

He was standing a few feet away from her and the horse, his hands by his sides. He didn’t want to breathe through his mouth, but he couldn’t help it. He’d never been more rock hard. He was afraid that the slightest movement would make him explode, which would be awkward.

Control.

“Tell me what you know about death, Ranger Feathers. I want to know. I want to know everything.”

She shifted the spade to her left hand and pulled out her two-way.

The call would go to Ranger Dispatch. Budget cuts had made staffing thin. They would probably reach out to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department. Backup would arrive, but not in enough time.

“Do you wear the pearl necklace?”

The question caught her off guard. She released the radio button.

“Yes, Marilu.
That
necklace. Do you like it?”

“So you’re the one who gave it to me.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“You earned it. The heroism you showed the day you brought down Bud Lilly … You were judge, jury, and executioner, ridding the world of a worthless creep. That should be honored in a special way.”

Finally, she raised Dispatch.

He detected relief in her eyes. A crack in the armor.

She announced her location into the two-way and asked for an assist with a nine-eighteen— a psycho/insane person.

Now.

In a flash, his hand was in and out of his pocket. He aimed the snub-nose .38 at a spot between her eyes as if it were something he did every day, even though it was the first time he’d aimed a gun at a human being, other than at his own reflection in the mirror.

She reacted quickly, but not quickly enough. He fired.

He couldn’t believe he’d missed. He looked at his gun as if it had betrayed him.

At the sound of the gun blast, the horse had reared. With one hand, Feathers tried to rein in Gypsy while pulling out her gun with the other. Struggling with the frantic horse, she got off a shot. The horse reeled.

His hand flew to his neck, which stung like crazy. He drew back bloody fingers. He stared at the blood. She’d grazed him. He started to giggle. She’d only grazed him. But the blood … And the heat radiating
from the long fissure across his skin. It thrilled and calmed him. His hand was steady. It was like magic. He aimed again.

Feathers did too, but this time, his aim was true.

Gypsy took off at full gallop. After fifty yards, mortally wounded Feathers fell from the horse into the surf, scattering the sandpipers and cormorants. The calls from the soaring birds grew more frantic.

Overwhelmed, he dropped to his knees. He tried to keep his eyes open, but the pleasure of release was so sublime, he had to close them as he cried out, his hands clutching the sand.

Still panting and fuzzy-headed with bliss, he pulled himself together to finish his mission. He picked up his beach chair and bag of marshmallows and walked to retrieve Feathers’s Ranger Stetson from where it had fallen just within reach of the foamy fingers of the surf. The mare Gypsy, hovering near her fallen master, galloped off at his approach.

He took a long, final look at his prize, Ranger Marilu Feathers, bleeding into the sand. The young man— whom years later Detective Nan Vining would give the nickname T B. Mann— then turned and walked into the lengthening shadows. The next phase of his life had begun.

A wave washed away his handwriting in the sand.

TWO

Pasadena, California
September

P
ASADENA POLICE DETECTIVE NAN VINING WAS IN HER KITCHEN
looking at a paper shopping bag that stood on the floor. She was in a ready position, hands by her sides, fingers twitching, feet shoulder-distance apart, as if the bag and its contents were about to harm her and her daughter. It was too late for that. Still, Vining’s instincts overrode logic.

Fourteen-year-old Emily leaned against a counter, arms folded across her chest, head tilted down, peering at the bag from the corners of her eyes. In contrast to her mother, who was all about action, Em was the more introspective member of the household of two.

“Mom, is that the shirt he was wearing when he attacked you?” Vining exhaled, relaxing a little. Leave it to Em to cut to the quick of the matter. The bag held a garment: a pale yellow, polo-style knit shirt, size large. On its breast was an embroidered logo of a lamb dangling from a ribbon— the insignia of Brooks Brothers. The shirt alone couldn’t hurt them. It was ordinary. Nothing that would draw most people’s attention. For Vining, however, it was consistent with her
memory of the man who had been wearing it when he’d ambushed, stabbed, and almost murdered her. For just over two minutes, he
had
murdered her. Flatlining, she’d been sent on a journey from which she’d yet fully to return. He was not merely a bad man; he was Vining’s and Emily’s personal bad man. And so they had given him a name: T. B. Mann.
The
Bad Man.

The only thing that did make the shirt extraordinary was the thickly caked dried blood that had saturated the front and trailed down the back. Vining was sure it was her blood. Testing would prove that T B. Mann had been wearing that shirt when he’d plunged a knife into her neck after first slicing and disabling her gun hand. The incident had happened in June, the previous year. For nearly a year, she’d been on Injured on Duty leave.

Her scars were still pink. There was a diagonal slash across the back of her right hand and a long garish scar on her neck that started behind her left ear and disappeared beneath her shirt collar. That was the one that garnered stares, and helped strangers place her as the cop who’d let herself get ambushed. That cruel judgment held truth. She
had
hesitated during her confrontation with T B. Mann, and consequently he’d been able to stab her and flee, leaving her for dead. Her body had complied for two minutes. She often felt her mind was still trying to claw its way back from the other side.

Just as spilled blood had created something horrifying out of a mundane shirt, it had also transformed an outwardly mundane human being. There had been nothing remarkable about T B. Mann apart from the coldness in his eyes. She’d detected the coldness even through the dark brown contact lenses that she’d later assumed he’d been wearing to complete his disguise.

Even as blood poured from her wounds, Vining had sought to get a good look at him, knowing that if she survived, she’d need an accurate description to track him down. She’d also had little choice. After he’d stabbed her, the knife jutting from her neck, he’d tightly held her, like a lover. She’d felt his moist, mint-scented breath on her face as he gazed into her eyes. He was panting, his face flushed, as if they’d been engaged in a sexual act. She could have looked away, but Vining hadn’t, thinking those cold eyes might be the last thing she’d ever see.

She knew that he wouldn’t take his eyes off her until he was forced to. He had
lived
for that moment, watching the life drain from her. He’d released her when he’d heard her backup arrive, gently letting her slip to the floor, she thought with great regret at not being around to observe her stepping away from this life. Then he’d successfully executed a well-planned escape and was gone.

She had many memories of that day— some clear, some hazy. One that was decidedly clear and as unsubtle as a baseball bat was his erection pressing against her belly. Of course he would get off on his triumph of having ensnared her. That was what defined him. That was what made this ice-eyed nobody into
somebody.
The sick fuck.

Vining vowed to take that from him and more.

She answered her daughter with a fib. “It might be the shirt he was wearing. Testing will show whether that’s my blood.”

Emily had found the shirt among dirty sheets and towels in a basket on top of the washing machine in the garage. It was nine o’clock on a school night, and she had gone to fold the clothes that she had left in the dryer. Deciding to empty the basket, she saw the shirt when loading the washer.

Vining had cleared the garage, house, and yard, service revolver in hand. Instinct told her this was a low-risk operation. Whoever had left the shirt was long gone. The shirt was a boast. A power play. T B. Mann didn’t
want
to get caught. That was the stuff of fiction. Killers like him loved their craft and planned to keep at it as long as they could.

He was playing with her, inciting fear, keeping her off-kilter, like a terrorist. He couldn’t leave her be. Vining was both T B. Mann’s greatest failure and achievement.

Pinching a small corner of the shirt between her thumb and index finger, she’d carried it into the kitchen and deposited it in a paper grocery bag. It was important evidence— the best piece she’d had in a long time. Even though it repulsed her, she had to handle it with respect. Beyond its evidentiary value, its appearance in her garage was important for another reason. It revealed a flaw. It showed that he was as obsessed with her as she was with him. Flaws in a nemesis were good. They could be fatal.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out the best ways to get to her. Her home. Her daughter. Just a few days ago, he’d made a veiled threat against Emily. He’d left a note for Vining at L.A. County General Hospital, where she’d put a goofball she was convinced was T. B. Mann’s minion, under psychiatric evaluation. The goofball wouldn’t speak. Even though he had a talent for drawing, the Pasadena Police couldn’t get him to write his name, so they nicknamed him Nitro. T. B. Mann had known she’d return to Nitro at the Big G, again taking advantage of his bland appearance to slip in and out without anyone taking notice. The note he’d left her had been written on a panel card in his usual fountain pen. The jerk favored fine inks and papers. The note read:

She didn’t want to admit how well his strategy had worked. It had taken massive self-control for her to quiet her trembling heart and hands and to remain focused. She couldn’t afford to let her rage get out of control, to let him goad her into making mistakes, to let him lead her into yet another ambush. She had to steel herself and stay the course, making slow and steady progress, tracking him via a trail of dead female cops and pearl necklaces.

Skein by skein, she wove a tapestry, built a web, one thread leading to another. Some she’d found via solid investigative techniques. Some had been thrown into her lap. She wondered why. Some, she’d broken the law to get, knowingly and with forethought. She’d even lied to her PPD partner, Jim Kissick, and her supervisor, Sergeant Kendra Early violating both her sworn oath and her own ethics. She hadn’t fully plunged into his murky slime pit, but she’d danced along the edge.

But the world was turning, casting light in his direction, chasing shadows into the corners where he lurked. Every clue she tracked down, every victim of his she located, made the light grow brighter. As she circled him, drawing nearer, pulling the noose tighter, she felt him stirring in the shadows, throwing out his own sticky skeins of spider’s silk. He wanted her to know that he was lurking outside her window,
watching her dance alone. He wanted to dance, too, with her, ultimately dragging her headlong into his stinking morass.