The Obsession (31 page)

“I thought you scraped them off with a knife.”

It was her turn for pity. “Sure, if you want to take all day and make a mess out of it. You just . . .” She picked up a carrot and peeler and demonstrated.

“Okay, okay. I’ve got it.”

Mason came back in to see Xander with a small pile of carrot peels, scowling at the carrot he worked on stripping. And his sister at the stove sautéing garlic.

Pretty homey, he thought. Maybe Xander looked out of his milieu, but altogether, pretty homey.

“Mason, do you remember how to floret a cauliflower?”

“Um—”

“Sure you do.”

She handed him a knife, set the head on a cutting board.

“I don’t even like cauliflower.” But he sat, comfortable now in an old Harvard Crimson T-shirt and jeans, and picked up the knife.

“You do when it’s disguised with butter and herbs. It’s nice,” she said, “having line cooks.”

“It’s like home.” Mason cut away the thick stem, sliced through the core from the bottom, pulled the head into two halves. “Back in New York, only you’re head chef instead of Harry.”

“When they get here, I’ll abdicate, but only after he lets me show off. That gives me a couple of weeks to devise a show-off menu, outfit guest rooms, and hope Jenny can redo those dining room chairs.” She added chicken to the pan with a satisfying sizzle.

“I’m going to try to be here. I should be able to work out of the Seattle office temporarily.”

After a long beat of silence, Mason set the knife aside, picked up his wine. “Okay. I’m going to lay this out for you—as much as I can. While the ME will determine, it’s clear from the on-scene examination and the evidence gathered that Donna Lanier was abducted and killed by the same unsub as Marla Roth.
You don’t need the details,” he added, and went back to the knife. “It’s my strong belief, shared by Chief Winston, that Lanier wasn’t his first choice. She was simply there. As with the first victim, she was held and killed at another location, then transported and dumped where she would be found quickly. He wants us to know he’s here, he’s hunting. He’s arrogant, enjoys both the attention and the fear he’s generating. He’s intelligent, organized, experienced.”

“You mean he’s done this before,” Naomi replied. “That’s what you mean by experienced.”

“Yeah. It’s unlikely a coincidence he took both victims on a Friday night, held them until Sunday. We can speculate he has his weekends free or has the privacy he needs during that time period.”

“You still think he lives here.” Xander finished the last carrot, waited for a reply.

“I can’t eliminate someone who lives in town, works in town, or works or lives in the area.”

“Why?” Xander demanded. “We haven’t had any rapes or murders, nothing like this around here before.”

“He may not have brought it home before. He may have taken a hitchhiker, a hiker, someone passing through, and buried or concealed the body. He may recently have acquired, through purchase, inheritance, divorce, a place he can use to do his work. So far, most of the rentals have been checked and eliminated. We’re also checking on seasonal workers, tenants, new residents, vacationers who’ve been in the area since the first victim was abducted. I’ll continue to research and analyze like crimes. If I find a pattern, if I find more, we’ll have the full resources of the FBI on this.

“I’ve asked a contact I have at the BAU to look over the files, to check my profile, to see if I’m on the right track or if I’ve gone wrong. But whether or not the unsub lives and works here or happened upon this location, he’s still here. It’s gone too well for him to move on.”

“Naomi fits his type.”

“Xander.” Annoyed, she turned the chicken.

“Yes, she does. I believe he has a type, and Naomi fits it. I trust her to take all reasonable precautions.”

“I said I would.”

“I love you, Naomi.”

She sighed, hugely. “I love you, too, Mason.”

“So even though I know you’re smart, you’re careful, and you can kick ass, I’m going to worry about you.”

“I worry about you, Special Agent Carson. Especially since I know you can’t always take what civilians consider reasonable precautions.”

“You could spend a couple weeks in Seattle,” Xander suggested. “Hang with your brother there, do some shopping or whatever, do some work. It’d give them a chance to do the floors in this place.”

“First, Kevin and I have a schedule and the floors are dead last. Second and all the other numbers after that, I’m not leaving here to run off to Seattle so my baby brother can look out for me.”

“You’ve got two years on me,” Mason objected. “That doesn’t make me baby brother. She won’t do it,” he added to Xander. “I walked through the conversation about it with her in my head, and always hit the same wall. But this might make you feel better about it. Did you tell him about the mugger, Naomi?”

“I haven’t thought about that in years.” She picked up the wine, dumped some into the skillet, then trapped the steam with a lid and lowered the heat.

“What mugger?”

“In New York. Naomi was home on summer break from college, working at the restaurant. Decided to walk home one night.”

“It was a nice night,” she added.

“The mugger thought so, too. Anyway, this guy comes up on her—with a knife—wants her money and her watch, her earrings, her phone.”

“I would have given it all to him, just like the uncles had impressed on both of us a million times.”

“Maybe you would have.” Mason shrugged. “But the asshole figured he had a defenseless woman, a scared one. And a pretty one. So he copped a feel.”

“And he
smirked
,” Naomi stated, and, remembering it all now, sneered.

“She bruised his balls, broke his nose, and dislocated his shoulder, called nine-one-one. He was still on the ground moaning when the cops got there.”

“He shouldn’t have grabbed my breast. He shouldn’t have touched me.”

“You broke his nose.” Purely fascinated by her, Xander studied those slim, almost elegant hands. “You like breaking noses.”

“The nose is a quick and reliable target—offense and defense. I like yours.” She gathered up the carrots, the cauliflower, the broccoli she’d prepped herself, in a big strainer, and took them to the sink to wash. “So don’t piss me off.”

“Just let me know if you’re not in the mood for me to cop a feel.”

She laughed, then brought the carrots back to slice for steaming. “You’ll be the first. Excellent florets and carrot peeling. You’re both dismissed from duty if you want to take the dog out or whatever. You’ve got about thirty.”

“Did you come over on your bike?” Mason asked Xander.

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.”

“Sure.” Xander led the way out the back and around. “Just so you know, the landscape crew starts tomorrow. Early.”

“Define early.”

“By seven. Maybe a little before.”

“As early as or earlier than the bang-and-clang crew inside. Oh well. I wanted to say I feel comfortable working out of Seattle, coming over a couple times a week, because you’re going to keep an eye on her. And I didn’t want to say that where she could hear me.”

“I got that. I feel more comfortable knowing she can dislocate some asshole’s shoulder. And still.”

“Still. I don’t know a goddamn thing about motorcycles.” Head angled, Mason studied it. “Except it looks impressive.”

“Okay.”

“Both women were taken in town, so I have to consider that, for now, as his hunting ground. But Naomi’s his type, and she shops and banks and has business in town. She’s the sort he looks for.”

“I got that, too. I’m going to be here every night. We play this Friday at Loo’s. I’ll make sure she comes, and make sure Kevin and Jenny stick with her until we close.”

“If I can be here, I will be. She’ll be careful, but I believe this guy works fast, takes his target quickly.”

As he spoke, Mason studied the house as if looking for security breaches.

“No defensive wounds on either victim. They didn’t have a chance to fight back. Anybody can be taken by surprise, even if they’re careful, even if they’ve studied martial arts and self-defense, so she’s going to have to deal with not having as much time alone as she likes for a while.”

“She’s doing all right with people around.”

“Better than she imagined she would, I’ll bet. She doesn’t know you’re in love with her.”

Saying nothing, Xander held Mason’s steady gaze.

“I’m going there because she’s the most important person in my world. We lived through a nightmare you never come all the way out of, because he’s sitting in a cell in West Virginia. Our mother wasn’t strong enough to keep living on the edge of that nightmare. Naomi found her—came home to pick something up on lunch break from school, and found her, already cold.”

“I know—at least some of it. I looked up what I could after I figured out about Bowes. And I found the piece she wrote back then, for the
New York Times
. I didn’t want to hit a sore spot by accident, so I read what I could find. I’m sorry about your mother, man.”

“It put another hole in Naomi. Me? Sure, I lived with it and through it, but I’m not the one who saw firsthand what our father had done. I’m not the one who helped pull a victim out of a hole in the ground and half carry her through the woods. I’m not the one who came home from school and found our mother dead by her own hand. Naomi has no degree of separation. And she might deny it—would,” he corrected, “but there’s a part of her that doesn’t see herself worthy of being loved.”

“She’d be wrong about that.”

“Yeah, she’d be wrong. We had counseling, we had the uncles, but no one else has those images of what our parents did, to themselves, to others, to us, in their head the way she does. So there’s a part of her that doesn’t think she’s capable of loving outside of me and the uncles, or worthy of being loved.”

“Well.” Xander jerked a shoulder. “She’ll have to get used to it.”

The simplicity, the carelessness of the remark, made Mason smile. “You’re good for her. That irritated me a little when I first came into it, saw that. I’m pretty much over that now.”

“Did you run my background?”

“Oh yeah, right off.”

“I’d have thought less of you if you hadn’t. I’m never going to hurt her. That’s bullshit,” Xander said immediately. “Why do people say that? Of course I’ll end up hurting her. Everybody does or says something stupid or petty or acts like an asshole sometime and ends up hurting somebody else. What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean, and I believe you. So, are we good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Mason held out a hand; they shook.

Then he studied the bike again. “How about you let me drive it?”

Considering, Xander rocked back on his heels. “Have you ever been on a bike before—at the controls?”

“No. But I’m an FBI agent, I should know how to drive a bike. Right? What if, in the pursuit of a criminal, I had to hop on a motorcycle, and due to lack of knowledge and experience, said criminal escaped justice? None of us would feel good about that.”

Amused, Xander unclipped the helmet. “Okay.”

“Really? Are you serious?” And beaming like a boy on Christmas morning, Mason took the helmet.

“Sure. You wreck it, you pay for repairs. You end up needing the ER, dinner’s going to get cold. I can go with that.”

“I don’t have a motorcycle license.”

“You’re FBI.”

“Damn fucking straight.” Delighted, Mason swung a leg over, settled. “Now what the hell do I do?”

Before long, drawn by the revving engine and Mason’s war whoops, Naomi came out the front door.

“Is that— Is Mason on your bike?”

“Yeah.” Xander sat on the steps with the dog.

“When did he learn to drive a motorcycle?”

“Pretty much now.”

“Oh, dear God. Get him off before he hurts himself.”

“He’s fine, Mom.”

She huffed. “Well, get him off because dinner’s ready.”

“Done.”

He got up as she went back in, and decided it was best all around that Mason waited until her back was turned to pop a wheelie.

Her brother was a quick study.

H
er house was full of people and noisy tools and machines. Now her front yard was full of people and noisy tools and machines.

She couldn’t defy her brother, Xander, and her own common sense and take off to the forest or down to the shoreline for quiet. For a couple of hours she made the best of it by taking pictures of what was essentially demo—just like the interior—while Lelo uprooted old woody shrubs and ugly tree stumps she’d simply stopped seeing with a massive chain attached to a massive tractor.

The sounds of a wood chipper, of chain saws, of trucks, joined the sounds of nail guns and saws.

Tag loved every minute.

Eventually she escaped inside, popped in her earbuds, and drowned out most of it with music.

The tap on her shoulder had her nearly jumping out of her chair.

“Sorry,” Mason apologized.

“God! I didn’t know you were back.”

“You couldn’t hear a plane land on your deck with this noise—and with Lady Gaga blasting in your ears.”

“Lady Gaga, and others, help me tolerate the rest.” But she took out the earbuds and paused her playlist. “Did they—the autopsy?”

“Yeah. There’s not much more I can tell you. She hadn’t had any food, any water, since about eight, nine o’clock Friday night. That’s consistent with Marla. The same type of blade was used on both. No prints, no DNA, no hairs but her own, that’s also consistent. He’s careful. Anyway, I’m going to work outside on the deck for a while, take advantage of the sun. I’m heading to Seattle tomorrow, and surprise, they’re calling for rain.”

“I don’t know how you can work outside with this noise.”

“My great powers of concentration. These are nice.” He nodded toward the photos on her screen. “These were taken in the forest just west of here?”

“Yes. I was just checking downloads and orders. And I think I’m going to do more notecards—nature shots. They tend to sell.”

Wanting his company just a bit longer, she began to scroll. “This one, then no, no, yes. This one. Then . . . maybe this.”

“Hold that. That’s a—what do you call it?”

“Nurse log.”

“Right, right, because it nurses other stuff. Moss and mushrooms and lichen.”

“And the younger trees. I love how they grow out of it, the way—in this one—their roots wrap around the mother.”

“Pretty cool.” With a hand light on her shoulder, Mason leaned in a little more to study. “When did you take that?”

“Oh, this one’s been up for a couple weeks. Got some nice hits, decent downloads. I figured I’d crop it a little more, and it would make a nice notecard, for a variety set of eight.”

“Yeah, I can see that. I like it. Anyway, I’m going to get to work, let you get back to your own.”

She’d barely started up before someone tapped her shoulder again. At least this time she didn’t jump.

“Sorry.” Kevin gave her shoulder another pat. “I wanted to ask if you’re ready for us to move you into your studio space.”

“It’s really ready for that?”

“It’s really ready, and we can start working in here again first thing tomorrow.”

“Then I’m ready. Let me shut down, unplug and all that.”

“We can start hauling out the supplies, the mat board deal, and the rest.”

“I need those worktables I bought. Downstairs storage.”

“Already brought them up, and everything you had marked for the studio.”

“I need to let Jenny know I’m ready for the desk whenever she can get to it.”

“Oh, she knows. I keep her up-to-date.”

“I’d better get moving.”

“Jeez, almost forgot.” As if jogging his own memory, Kevin tapped the side of his head. “Lelo and his dad need you outside. We’ll get things moving for you.”

“All right.” She shut down, unplugged.

Taking the back stairs, she hurried through the house, out the front.

There were questions about colors, heights, naturalizing, grass seeds. She had to switch gears from studio space to curb appeal. While she answered, debated, questioned, she reminded herself how glorious it would feel to head into summer the following year with it all done, with the quiet surrounding her like a gift from God.

Switching gears again, she went back in, up the stairs. Found it odd that the door to her studio space was closed, and the crew nowhere in sight.

She opened the door and froze.

The desk she’d first seen piled in Cecil’s barn stood gleaming, facing out as she’d wanted, with the leather chair she’d bought and stored behind it. Her computer, her in and out boxes, her desk lamp sat on it, along with a little squat vase of wildflowers.

Her tools, equipment, supplies were all arranged just as she’d diagrammed—and the sliding barn door on her new storage closet stood open to show everything inside organized on shelves.

The walls, a warm cognac, made a rich backdrop for some of her framed prints.

Jenny stood, her hands clasped between her breasts, all but vibrating beside a grinning Kevin.

“Tell me you love it. Please, please love.”

“Oh my God. I . . .”

“Say the words first. Say you love it.”

“Of course, I love it. I’d be crazy not to love it. You finished the desk. You didn’t tell me.”

Now Jenny threw up her arms in a V. “Surprise!”

“It’s—it’s exactly what I wanted. It’s more than I’ve ever had. I’ve never had a work space like this. It’s always been on the go, or jury-rigged.” More than dazed, she wandered. “Oh! The floors! The floors are done in here.”

“That was a trick.” Kevin’s grin just widened. “Shows you how the original wood’s going to come back just right. I thought, hey, let’s get it done in here—takes longer, but you won’t have to haul out again when we do the rest of the floors. It’s done.”

“Not done,” Jenny corrected. “She needs a nice love seat over there, a table—a comfortable thinking spot. And an accent rug, pillows, a throw. And—you’ll find what you want. But you love it.”

Incredibly moved, Naomi brushed her fingers over the petals of the wildflowers. “I’ve never had anyone go to this much trouble for me, outside of family.”

“We’re family now.”

Eyes welling, she looked over. “Jenny.”

Jenny flew across the room, grabbed her up in a hug, swayed, bounced, wept a little. “I’m so happy. I’m so happy you’re happy.”

“Thank you so much. So much. You’re the best.”

“I am!”

Laughing now, Naomi drew back. “Both of you.”

“We are! We were worried Lelo wouldn’t be able to keep you outside long enough for us to finish, but he did.”

“That’s what that was all about.”

“We’re the best, the sneaky best. I have to go.”

“I’m driving her back home.”

“He’s worried about me even being in the car by myself. Everybody’s so worked up . . . but we’re not going to think about that now.” Blinking at tears, Jenny swiped a hand through the air, erased sad thoughts. “You’re going to sit down in your new chair and bask.”

“I absolutely am. Thank you. Both of you. All of you.”

Alone, she did just as Jenny told her. Sat and basked. Then got up and looked at everything.

Then, forgetting the noise, she gave herself the pleasure of working in her own space.

With Tag apparently preferring Mason’s company, and all of her tools and supplies exactly where she wanted them, Naomi lost track of time in the best possible way. The productivity and the pleasure of working in a settled, organized space told her she’d been making do far too long, sacrificing all this for the pick-up-and-go she’d felt necessary.

No one chased her, she thought, but her own ghosts and neuroses. Time to put it all away, time to believe instead of doubt that the past was over and done.

She had a home, and in it, she’d watch summer roll in, then feel the change in the air, then the light change as fall painted the world. She’d have fires lit when winter blew, and be there, just be there when spring bloomed again.

She had a home, she thought again as she added the last of the new stock to her page. She had friends, good friends. She had a man she . . . All right, maybe she wasn’t entirely ready for what she felt for Xander, but she could be ready to see what happened tomorrow, or next week or— Maybe a week at a time was all she could be ready for in that department.

But it was a hell of an improvement.

Most of all, she was ready to be happy—all the way happy. To hold on to what she had, what she was building for herself.

Now it was time—past time, she realized as she noted the time on her computer—to go down and put a meal together.

She took the back stairs, reminding herself to hit her list and pick out the lighting for that area, and, singing the Katy Perry that had been in her earbuds when she’d shut down, she all but danced into the kitchen.

To find Mason at the counter, laptop open, maps spread out, coffee steaming, a couple of legal pads scattered among the work debris.

“Hey. I thought you were working outside in the sunshine.”

“I needed more room.”

“I see that. No problem. I have enough room here for the shrimp farfalle I have in mind.”

“I asked Xander to pick up pizza. He’s on his way.”

“Oh.” Already in the fridge, she paused, glanced back. “That’s fine, if you’re in a pizza mood, and saves me the trouble.”

Closing the fridge, she switched modes, decided they could eat on the deck. “Where’s the dog?”

“He wanted out. Everyone’s gone for the day.”

“So I see—or rather hear. I worked later than I’d planned. You
have
to see my studio space.” The thrill of it bubbled through her. “It’s finished, and it’s awesome. I’m going ahead with that darkroom space—in the basement. I don’t do film that often, and Kevin said the plumbing would be easy down there. So it would be really quiet, out of the way, and make use of some of that space.”

She turned, found him watching her quietly. “And I’m babbling while you’re working. Why don’t I take this outside, let you finish up in peace?”

“Why don’t you sit down? I need to talk to you about something.”

“Sure. Is everything all right? Of course everything’s not all right,” she said, shut her eyes for a minute. “I’ve been so caught up in my own space, my own work, I forgot about Donna and Marla. Forgot about your work.”

She sat at the counter with him. “It didn’t seem real for a little while. Donna’s funeral’s the day after tomorrow, and Xander . . . It’s the second funeral since I’ve been here, the second terrible funeral.”

“I know. Naomi—”

He broke off as the dog raced in from the front, danced in place, raced back again.

“That would be Xander and pizza,” Naomi said, started to rise.

“Just sit.”

“You found something.” She put a hand on his arm, squeezed. “Something about the murders.”

She swiveled in the stool when Xander came in, tossed the pizza box on the counter by the cooktop.

“What do you know?”

“Let me start with this. Naomi, this is the picture you took in the forest just west of here. This nurse log.”

She frowned at the image he brought up on his computer. “That’s right. Why did you download it?”

“Because this is one I took yesterday, when Donna’s body was discovered.” Carefully cropped, he thought, as he toggled to it. “It’s the same log.”

“All right, yes.”

“Donna’s body was dumped just off the track, beside this log. It’s an eight-minute trek into the woods—and that’s without carrying a hundred and fifty pounds. It bothered me right off. Why take her in that far? You want her to be found, why take her so far in—put in that time, that effort? Why that spot?”

“I don’t know, Mason. Wanting a little more time before she was found?”

“No point to it. But this place, right here.” He tapped the screen. “It has a point. You’ve had that photo on your site a couple of weeks.”

The chill skipped along her skin. “If you’ve got some wild idea he . . . this photo inspired him or factored into where he left her, it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, I’ve got a dozen photos up I took in that area.”

“He had to pick one.” Face grim, Xander studied the images.

“It’s just a weird coincidence,” Naomi insisted. “Disturbing, but a coincidence. I barely knew either of the victims. I’ve only been in this area since March.”

Saying nothing, Mason brought up another photo—one she’d taken of the bluff—then brought up another side by side. “Yours, and the crime scene shot. Up on your site, Naomi, for a couple months.”

And that chill seeped in, dug into her bones.

“Why would anyone use my photos to choose where they left a body? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.”

“Stop it.” Clamping a hand on her shoulder, Xander spoke sharply. “Stop it and breathe.”

Annoyance at the tone shoved the weight off her chest. “It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

“And doing what he did to Marla and Donna does?”

“No, no, but that’s—that’s a pathology, right?” She appealed to Mason. “I know enough about what you do to understand that. But I don’t understand how you could take these pictures and begin to think this killer is, what, a fan of my work?”

“It’s more.”

Xander had both hands on her shoulders now, and though they kneaded at the tensed muscles, she understood that another purpose was to keep her in place.

“What’s more?”

Mason took her hand a moment, squeezed it, then brought up another image. “You took this shot in Death Valley in February. I had the locals send me the shots from the body dump.”

He brought it up, heard her breath shudder out. “The victim was midtwenties, white, blonde, lived and worked in Vegas. High-risk vic—stripper, junkie, hooker. It didn’t pop on Winston’s like-crimes search because the locals charged her pimp—who’d been known to tune up his girls—with the crime.

“In January, you took this in Kansas—Melvern Lake. The body of a sixty-eight-year-old female was left here.” Again, he brought up the matching shot. “She lived alone, and as her house had been broken into, things taken, they put it down to robbery gone south.”

“But it was the same,” Naomi said quietly. “What was done to her, the same.”

“There’s a pattern. You flew home for Christmas.”