The Watcher (32 page)

A downtown Sacramento number and address were listed.

Kate closed the directory and stared across the room at the tall windows where the first streams of overcast daylight filtered through the trees. Who was “the boy,” and what did the reference to him on the calendar mean? What had Marconi seen a lawyer about? Who was M. and what relationship did he or she have to the boy? What did N.H. stand for?

And what the hell did any of this have to do with the murders of Jennifer Johnston and Alison Mathews?

Should she proceed along a line of investigation spurred only by a gut feeling? If so, she realized she had no idea where to begin. Fraley would certainly claim attorney-client privilege, but she might be able to elicit useful information from him anyway.

She debated asking Slater’s help, but she wasn’t ready to face him yet, less eager to reveal that she’d been snooping around Marconi’s office. Slater might know about M. and N.H, maybe even the boy. And he might know the right questions to ask the attorney.

On the other hand, if this information turned out to be irrelevant, then what she’d done by searching the Sheriff’s office was highly unethical, perhaps illegal.

Chapter Thirty-five

With a thrill of satisfaction, Smith thought of his uncle’s body, in the basement since Monday night, over forty-eight hours now. A messy sight, and the odor was starting to be a problem. He admitted he’d been nervous at times about this latest enterprise, but overall the results had been far more gratifying than he expected.

Yesterday he’d driven northeast over the California border and purchased several bags of lime at a nursery on the Nevada side of Bigler County. Then he’d taken a little road trip to an isolated area along Highway One, the Pacific Coast Highway that ran the coastal length of the state. There he used his stunner on one of the coastal deer that roamed at will in the area, and stowed the stunned animal in the back of his van. Chloroform kept it under for the trip back to New Haven.

Today, he wanted to relax a little and celebrate the successful execution of his plan. He giggled and reached for a beer in the compact refrigerator. Soon, however, he must complete the arduous but important task of eliminating the final remains of Uncle Mark. The utility sink drain would prove very useful.

Reflecting on Mark’s demise, Smith slouched on the sofa in the main room. His uncle hadn’t been any braver than all the girls who’d passed through his nephew’s life. Smith had now gotten rid of the only person who could connect him to the deaths of two girls in this area, and he’d dumped the vehicle where it couldn’t be traced back to him. His tracks were well covered. Best of all, his uncle got what he deserved. Smith laughed aloud, his voice high-pitched in the large room. Mark obviously hadn’t heard that curiosity kills the cat.

He gazed at the frosty bottle of beer in his hand. He wondered if his uncle had been smart enough to appreciate the irony of Smith drinking the beer that his uncle had insisted on having when he visited on Monday. Probably not.

The beer had been Uncle Mark’s undoing, so to speak.

Smith didn’t think anyone would come snooping around the ramshackle old house, but as a precaution he would scrub the basement’s cement floor with a strong chlorine solution and use a blow torch to dry the area. Heat destroyed trace elements. Following that, he’d painted the concrete with a white, glossy, oil-based paint.

After the paint dried, he’d slaughter the deer, smear the blood over the cement floor and sink, and hose down the entire bunker. A good cover-up to obliterate the human evidence.

Just in case.

He had no interest in the meat from the deer. All his young life he’d been forced to eat the venison his grandfather killed. The greasy residue on the roof of his mouth after eating venison steak made him nauseous. If the deer had been running and working up a sweat when it died, the strong gamey taste of the blood running through the muscle was worse. He hadn’t dared throw up in his grandparents’ presence, so he’d forced the meat down, nearly gagging on the sickening flavor.

Grandfather didn’t like the meat himself all that much, but he was too tight-fisted to buy beef or chicken from the market. Smith suspected his grandfather liked the rigor of the chase and the thrill of the hunt more than eating the flesh from the kill.

He sighed, satisfied that he’d thought of everything. After the hubbub died down, he’d want to hunt again, but he’d be forced to have his fun somewhere away from the house, outside the state, and use this place for recuperation. He wouldn’t give up his safe haven.

And who knew? Sheriffs and deputies, district attorneys and judges, all came and went. He was a patient man and could outwait them all. Hunt elsewhere for a while and spend the interim periods here in New Haven. Reliving his experiences. Using his journals and pretties to re-create the ritual.

He could never permanently abandon his sanctuary.

#

Every team had reported in and left, and the precinct was as quiet as it’d been when Kate had come in earlier this morning. The desk sergeant idly thumbed through a hunting magazine. Before Slater arrived, Kate made a quick call to the law office of Shawn Fraley. The phone rang four times before a recorded message kicked in.

A perky voice informed Kate the office would be closed until Thursday, November 13. Who the hell took off early in November, Kate wondered? But apparently the law office of Attorney Shawn Fraley was taking a vacation.

Slater arrived just as Kate finished the phone call. He stared at her for a moment, his expression measured. Trying to gauge her emotions, she thought.

“Are we going to be okay?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you
want
us to be okay?” he countered.

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

Moving into her office and scooting a chair close to her desk, he said, “I deceived you and I feel bad about that. I want you to be able to trust me.”

A flush of guilt washed over her. If Slater’s omission about Julie and Max was like a lie, then she was the liar this time. Slater had a right to know her suspicions about Marconi even if they didn’t amount to anything. The purloined information weighted down her jacket pocket. Seeing the sincerity in his warm gray eyes, she squirmed, knowing she should tell him what she’d found in Marconi’s office.

She sighed heavily. She didn’t have time to work on a relationship snag right now. Maybe she’d have done the same thing as Slater if she’d been in his place. She didn’t know. Maybe not telling him about Marconi’s notes was also a kind of betrayal, certainly a deception.

“We can’t deal with this right now.” Kate said. “After the case, we’ll talk.”

She saw the heavy disappointment in his calm gray eyes, even though he didn’t say anything. She had to focus on the killer, she told herself. That had to be her priority. She’d deal with the rest later.

Another twinge of guilt ran through her. She
should
tell him about Marconi, but she knew she wasn’t going to. She’d wrestle with her conscience later. At the moment, she’d check it out on her own. Then she’d tell Slater.

It would probably amount to nothing anyway.

She ignored her uneasiness.

#

Later that morning Slater, Kate, and Bauer studied the case board where the other detectives had jotted abbreviated summaries of their findings. Having found copies of the completed interview reports on his desk, Slater divided them in thirds, assigning a stack to each of them.

Brucker and Randall had done the knock and talks with the neighbors of Jennifer Johnston and Alison Mathews, but nothing significant had turned up. It was as if the entire neighborhood, hidden behind their gated community of multi-million-dollar homes, was deaf and blind. Harrison and Peterson had completed additional follow-ups with the Johnston family, Morris and Pitt with the Mathews.

“Zilch on everything,” Slater said.

“We already figured the families weren’t involved,” Kate reminded him.

“Yeah, but they might’ve seen something or gotten a description.” A futile hope, Slater knew.

“This guy’s too smart for that,” Kate said.

“We saw the Stuckey sister,” Slater said and nodded toward Bauer. “Tell Kate about the interview.”

“Angela Holster is younger than Mary by seven or eight years,” Bauer said, looking at his field notes, “so she doesn’t remember much about her sister except that Mary and her parents were always tangling about something, usually boys.”

“Any particular boy?” Kate asked.

“I guess there were lots of them. I got the impression that Mary had been around the block once or twice,” Bauer answered, casting a sheepish glance at Kate.

“Anything specific about the day she died?”

“The sister said Mary was pretty upbeat that day, going around like a cat that’d swallowed a canary, really pleased with herself.”

“Did she say why?”

“She wasn’t sure, but thought it had something to do with a fellow. Not one of the usual boys she was mixed up with. A new guy. Didn’t know who.”

Slater looked at Kate. “We’re thinking this unknown guy could be involved in her death.”

“It’s possible,” she murmured. “If it’s true, then Mary definitely knew her attacker.”

“And that also means someone around here will know him or remember him,” Slater said.

The three sat in silence a moment, contemplating the enormity of this possibility.

“Shit, I hate this feeling.” Slater ran his fingers through his hair. No one wanted to use the word “cover up.”

“How many days has it been since the last discovery, five?” Kate asked.

Slater picked up the oversized time chart they’d taken from the major incident room and were now using as a blotter on his desk and traced the dates with a forefinger. “Five days since the Mathews girl. He took the Johnston girl on October 15,” he reviewed, “and we found her body five days later on the twentieth.”

“Then Alison disappeared on Friday, the twenty-fourth. She was supposed to come home right after band practice, so no one noticed her missing until 7:00,” Bauer added.

Kate did a quick calculation. “That’s only nine days between kidnappings.”

“And Alison’s body was discovered at Ralston Park on October 25, less than a day after she went missing,” Slater continued. “We figured he did a rush job with her. It’s been a week now. When will he strike again? Tomorrow? The day after?”

Kate closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between her brows with her two middle fingers. “He’ll try again any day. If he’s accelerating like I think, he should be in the grip of overwhelming urges that weaken his judgment and make him careless.”

“There’s another possibility. That he’s left the county or the state altogether,” Slater said.

“It’s an awful thing for me to say, but I hope not,” Kate confessed.

Slater shrugged. “We stand a better chance of getting him here in Bigler County than anywhere else. I hope he’s still here, too. I want to get this psycho.”

Slater gathered up the reports and replaced them in the murder book which he put in the file cabinet behind his desk, and Bauer excused himself. While he locked the file, Kate stood looking at the notes they’d made on the time chart over the last weeks.

“Nothing’s coming in from the state or the feds today,” Slater said over Kate’s shoulder. “I’ll call an incident conference for tomorrow, and we’ll walk through the case again. Maybe by then we’ll get reports back from the labs, or one of the teams will have something.”

“My contact at Quantico promised a fax as soon as he found something.” Kate twisted her head to look at Slater. “Tell me we’re going to get him.”

“We’re going to get him,” he repeated.

“For Jennifer and Alison?”

Slater pushed confidence into his voice. “Yes, and for Kassie and you.”

Kate’s eyes were flinty with the hardness of a gun barrel, and her voice was firm and determined. “And for all the other girls he’s damaged and the lives he’s ruined in the process of playing out his sick fantasies.”

#

The man wore a gun holstered beneath his left arm under a Brooks Brothers tweed jacket. Smith saw it when the man returned to the precinct after daylight.

He was a cop, just like the woman.

Smith hated men who dressed like they were superior to everyone else, like a magazine model. And he especially despised cops. The cop-man was tall, taller even than Smith. As he’d assessed, a dark giant.

Since the man outsized Smith, he’d have to use cunning and intellect to get the upper hand. Shouldn’t be too hard. After all, brains were better than brawn. When he’d watched the man and woman together at the female’s apartment, he’d observed the proprietary way the cop-man placed his hand around the woman’s waist, the way he leaned in to listen to her words and whispered intimately in her ear. He’d nuzzled the woman’s ear and she’d playfully pushed him away.

But today they’d arrived separately, and Smith had noticed through the glass windows of the front doors that neither greeted the uniformed man sitting at the raised dais. Later, when they walked out of the building, they put space between themselves and didn’t touch hands. The man and woman didn’t even look at each other.