The Stranger You Know

  She returned to the brownstone just as tense and edgy as when she’d left. She unleashed Hero, who took off for the living room.

  Puzzled, Casey followed him to see what the attraction was. She found Claire waiting for her, perched on the edge of the sofa, with Hero now sitting at her feet, a captive audience. Claire reached into her pocket and pulled out a dog treat.

  “Here you go, boy.” She offered it to Hero, who gobbled it up without hesitation. Well aware of who the softie of the team was and who was therefore his meal ticket, Hero settled himself against Claire’s leg. Claire looked up. “Hi,” she greeted Casey. Her voice was high and thin, and her expression was haunted.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Casey demanded at once. “I would have come back sooner.”

  “I’ve only been here for a few minutes.” Claire scratched Hero’s ears as she spoke. “I was pacing around my apartment, hoping to put the horrifying images in my mind in some kind of understandable order. I couldn’t. And then I got this wave of darkness—we’re almost out of time, Casey. The next murder’s already been planned.”

  “Dammit.” Casey dragged a hand through her hair. “You have no idea who? Or when?”

  “No.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A redhead. College-age. I didn’t see a face. Only a shadow hanging over her, closing in until it hid her from view. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring the shadow into focus. I couldn’t see him.”

  Claire’s eyes welled up with tears, and she kept talking, faster and faster, as if by blurting everything out, she could empty herself of the evil, make the images go away.

  “I’ve spent the past eighteen hours focused on the black, black energy that’s Glen Fisher. I’ve felt him torturing women. Pinning them to the cold, hard ground until rocks or branches tore at their flesh. I could feel him raping them and then choking the last breath out of their throats. I could see their faces at the end, the terrified panic in their eyes as they realized they were dying. It made me sick.”

  She dashed away the tears with the backs of her hands. “I wish to God I could get the gory details out of my head. They’re forever etched in my brain. I threw up twice on my way over here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Casey said gently. “What about this next murder?”

  “It’s outside Glen Fisher’s realm. He’s on the periphery, but not at the heart of what’s going to happen. I don’t know who is.”

  “Whoever’s taken over the killings.” Marc had come into the room, and he was studying Claire through intense, knowing eyes. “If you’re really living inside all these brutal killings, you’re going to have to talk to someone.”

  “I know,” Claire said. “But not now. Not until we’ve caught this monster.” She leaned forward and picked up the pad she’d placed on the coffee table. “I wrote down everything I saw and felt—about Fisher and about the next victim. I only pray there’s something here to help us.”

  As she spoke, Hutch walked into the room, his concentration on rereading a text message he’d just received. He raised his head and focused on Casey. “It’s a done deal,” he announced. “We’re on Glen Fisher’s visitor list. Throw some clothes in a bag and let’s hit the road. If we leave now, we can be in Auburn after dinner, catch some sleep and meet with Fisher tomorrow morning.”

  “We?” Casey did a double take. “I don’t remember asking for an escort.”

  “You didn’t. But law enforcement isn’t happy with your going alone. Neither am I. Not under these circumstances. You’re a targeted victim, and Fisher has potential ties to the killer. They don’t want you facing him by yourself.”

  “So they’re sending a Fed in with me? Do they honestly think he’ll spill his guts with you sitting there?”

  “They don’t think he’ll spill his guts at all.” Hutch gave it to her straight. “But I’ll make the ultimate call. If I think it would be beneficial for me to take a stroll to the vending machine, I’ll do that, and you can have a crack at Fisher alone.”

  “How gracious of you.” Casey was pissed. “I’m not a child who needs a nanny, Hutch. As it is, I have a security team surrounding me 24/7. Now I’ll have a guard dog accompanying me to the prison.”

  “And you also have a psychopathic killer who wants you dead.” Hutch was equally blunt. “Look, Casey, you and I each have different training and different methods for reading people. Let’s not fight each other. Let’s just say that two heads are better than one and leave it at that.”

  “Because I’m not getting in to see Fisher unless I do.”

  “You got it.”

  “Fine.” Casey didn’t give in gracefully. “But no censoring what I say or how I say it.”

  “Translated, you’re going to do what you want, how you want—the way you always do.”

  “Play nice, kids,” Marc inserted dryly. “Otherwise, that long drive you’re about to make is going to seem even longer.”

  Casey nodded. “I’ll go pack.”

  * * *

  Prison guard Tim Grant approached Glen Fisher’s cell. It was late, and just about all the inmates in the cell block had gone to sleep. Tim himself was looking forward to going home and getting a good night’s rest.

  But first he had some business to take care of.

  Big payoff or not, he hated these meetings with Fisher. The guy scared the shit out of him. Tonight, however, would be relatively pleasant. He’d done his chore, and he’d also gotten the information Fisher was hoping for.

  This meeting should be quick and easy.

  Grant heard Fisher climb off his cot. An instant later, he was facing Grant down, watching him through the cell bars with that chilling stare.

  “Did you get me the new burn phone?” he demanded in a low tone.

  “Yes.” Tim passed the cell phone through the bars. “I loaded it up with sixty minutes. You should be set for a month.”

  “Nice job.” Fisher studied the phone. He was in a good enough mood to offer a compliment.

  “I also got some details on that visit you’re waiting for. It’s happening tomorrow morning at ten. You wanted to know who from Forensic Instincts would be coming. It’s just Casey Woods.”

  Fisher’s teeth gleamed in the dark. “Excellent. So she and I will have our privacy.”

  This was the one snag Tim hadn’t been looking forward to relaying. “Not exactly. They’re sending a Fed along with her. An agent from the BAU.”

  “Shit.” Fisher’s oath was muffled, but he slammed his fist against the iron bars. “That’s not acceptable.” The scary intense look crossed his face. “I’ll politely ask him to excuse us. If that doesn’t work, I’ll find a diversion to get rid of him. Be around. I might need your help.”

  “Okay.” Tim felt that gripping fear starting to tighten his gut. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “I know you will.”

  * * *

  Ryan had been researching that damned butcher shop all day. And he had turned up absolutely nothing. The store held its required licenses, and passed the usual health inspections. Everything seemed in order—at least on the surface.

  But that wasn’t good enough. Ryan’s sixth sense wouldn’t leave him alone. Suzanne’s trip to West 116th Street was just too bizarre to be meaningless. Ryan wouldn’t be satisfied until he checked it out himself.

  He glanced at his watch—1:30 a.m. He wasn’t discouraged. He knew Marc would still be awake and working.

  Sure enough, when he went upstairs, he found Marc cross-checking the employee background searches Ryan had done on the Auburn Correctional Facility staff.

  “Anything?” Ryan asked.

  “Nope. Not yet.” Marc stretched. “I need a break.”

  “Good. Because I need a date.”

  Marc’s eyebrows rose in amusement. “Do I get a corsage?”

  “You get to play a video surveillance game with me, from setup to stakeout. Interested?”

  “Sure.” Marc rose, looking down at his T-shirt and jea
ns. “At least I don’t have to change my clothes. I hate playing dress-up.”

  “Just bring refreshments,” Ryan advised. “We’re going to get bored, cramped and hungry. But I’m hoping it’ll pay off.”

  “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  It was 3:00 a.m. Most of New York was fast asleep, other than the occasional car and private sanitation truck removing garbage from West 116th Street before the restaurants opened.

  Marc and Ryan blended right in. They looked like construction workers getting an early start to the work day. Across the street from the meat market was the building Ryan had selected. It was under construction—the perfect place to mount one of his video cameras.

  He and Marc got immediately to work.

  Marc picked the padlock on the construction fence. That done, he and Ryan went inside and climbed the makeshift stairway to the roof. Squatting down, Ryan mounted his camera to the building wall. The camera had a large battery pack attached, and a solar cell on top. That would ensure it had adequate power to stream video wirelessly to the FI van, which Ryan had parked on West 115th Street.

  And, just for kicks and to make sure no one disturbed his setup, Ryan affixed a Department of Homeland Security decal on the camera, with a warning that tampering with the equipment was a federal offense.

  Marc chuckled at the forged decal. “Nice touch.”

  “Hey,” Ryan said with an amused shrug. “People will believe anything if it sounds official and is spelled correctly.”

  With that, he went back to work. He used his iPhone to remotely access the video server in the van, which was recording the camera feed. He made sure he could clearly see the meat market and would have no trouble checking out who entered and exited.

  Everything was a go.

  Marc and Ryan left the building, locked the construction entrance and returned to their van on West 115th Street.

  It was going to be a long, long night.

  * * *

  Casey and Hutch drove through the institutional gates of Auburn State Correctional Facility at 9:45 a.m. The prison was almost two hundred years old—the second oldest state prison in New York—with twin guard towers on either side of the building and an American Revolutionary War soldier atop the apex. Stringent security measures were in place, and Casey and Hutch presented their proper ID before they were frisked and allowed to proceed to the cold, barren visitors’ room.

  They took a seat at a table, waiting. Ten minutes later, the door opened and a guard escorted Glen Fisher in.

  The instant Casey saw him, a jolt of fear shivered up her spine. She fought the urge to flinch, instead commanding herself to hide her trepidation behind a composed veneer. It had been months since the trial, when she’d last seen Fisher. She’d submerged the memories—the soulless evil in his eyes, the cruel angle of his jaw, the arrogance of his stance. It all flooded back now, along with the memories of his hands on her as he tore at her clothes, the knife at her throat as he threatened to slit it—the entirety of what had happened in those moments before Marc burst into the alley, tore Fisher off her and slammed him against the wall, practically choking the life out of him.

  Part of Casey wished Marc had succeeded.

  The damned case hadn’t even been FI’s. The police had come to them at the last minute and requested their help in a setup. They’d already identified Glen Fisher as the perp. But they needed proof. And what better way to get it than to catch him in action? Fisher’s victims were redheads. Casey was a redhead. She was also the president of a maverick investigative team, with a great track record, that was known to push boundaries and to take risks.

  So Forensic Instincts had come on board at the eleventh hour. They’d arranged to have Casey pose as a lonely college girl at a bar—one where Fisher chose his victims. She’d timed her departure from the bar perfectly, and then walked “home,” taking a route that took her right past the alley where she knew Fisher was lying in wait. The rest had played out just as planned.

  And they’d brought down Glen Fisher.

  Casey had brought down Glen Fisher. She’d become his first and only failure, and the last pair of terrified eyes he’d looked into before being roughed up by Marc and cuffed by the cops.

  From that moment on, she’d become the embodiment of all his internal rage. She’d seen it in his stare when he looked at her during his trial.

  He blamed her for everything, even the things that went deep into his past and made him the monster he was today.

  Yet, in spite of all that, Casey was about to face him.

  Swallowing hard, she battled her inner turmoil, dead set on keeping the upper hand in this interview. Hutch had prepped her. She knew what to expect and what to do. And, dammit, she was going to do it, no matter what the cost.

  She knew Hutch sensed her reaction. But he didn’t glance her way. He kept a laser gaze on Fisher, hardly blinking as the killer ignored him, his stare locked on Casey. But, in an almost imperceptible motion, Hutch slid his hand over and squeezed Casey’s fingers beneath the table.

  Casey felt some of the tension ease from her body. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to have Hutch along for this meeting, after all.

  Fisher reached the table and his lips curved into a cocky smile as he took a seat. “Hello, Red. This is quite an honor.”

  Red. That was what the scrambled voice on the phone had called her. Fisher was using it purposely.

  “An honor? It’s not meant to be one.” Casey spoke in an even tone. “It’s meant to be a face-to-face meeting. You’re obviously determined to see me. So here I am.”

  “I was delighted to get word about your visitation request.” Without averting his eyes, Fisher jerked his thumb in Hutch’s direction. “Is this your ventriloquist?”

  “Supervisory Special Agent Kyle Hutchinson,” Hutch supplied. “FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit.”

  “Of course.” Fisher gave a tight nod. “You disappoint me, Red. I thought you’d be feisty enough to talk to me alone. What’s Agent Hutchinson’s role here—to protect you or to offer his professional take on me?”

  “Neither. Protocol.” Casey interlaced her fingers on the table in front of her, her fear receding beneath a wall of resolve. “Frankly? I didn’t want or need an escort. I wanted a one-on-one meeting. My request was denied.”

  That explanation seemed to please him. “So the decision wasn’t yours. I’m glad to hear that. It means I was right about you, after all. You are a little hellcat.” He paused. “For now.”

  “Let’s skip the veiled threats,” Casey said. “And the cat and mouse game.”

  “Fair enough. I’m listening.”

  “We’ve linked you to several old, cold murders.”

  “Have you? I hope you didn’t drive all this way for confirmation. You know I’m appealing my conviction. I won’t be admitting to anything. I wouldn’t have done so in the first place if you hadn’t used that barbaric navy SEAL to torture me and extract false confessions under duress.”

  “Funny, that’s not how I remember it.”

  “Then your memory is poor.”

  Casey shrugged, calling on her training and Hutch’s prep work. “Either way, it never occurred to me that you’d be making a full confession right now. You’re too smart to offer yourself up. If I’ve learned anything about you, it’s that we underestimated you. We won’t do that again.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “But you should know we found DNA evidence in both the Jan Olson and Holly Stevens cases.”

  “Did you? Fascinating.”

  “You were a novice in those days,” Casey continued. “Plus DNA evidence hadn’t come nearly as far as it has now. Which would explain why you left semen on both victims.”

  Fisher didn’t respond.

  “We aren’t the only ones who knew about the cold cases. My new BFF used his voice scrambler to call me and share the info. He’s been very busy, and very communicative. He’s on a brand-new crime spree, which I’m sure isn’
t news to you. He calls me after every one of his brutal murders. And he obviously admires you a great deal. Because his implication’s that he is you.”

  A fine tension emanated from Fisher. “Why? What did he say?”

  “He just gave snippets of information about where we can find the victims and made direct threats to me. It’s as if you trained him—and you did a hell of a good job.”

  Again, no answer.

  “He’s embellished on your work, you know,” Casey added. “He doesn’t simply leave the bodies as is. He’s very artistic and refined in presenting his work. Clearly a cut above the crude way you worked.”

  Anger flashed in Fisher’s eyes. “Artistry is in the eyes of the beholder.”

  “True.” Casey nodded thoughtfully. “So, theoretically, if you were the one committing those crimes now, you’d opt not to go for the dramatic?”

  “I’d opt for saying that the end results are dramatic enough. Embellishments like red ribbons and lipstick? In my mind, that’s overkill.”

  “I see your point.” Casey gave herself an internal high five. Getting Fisher to supply those details was a win. But she wasn’t done. “Still, he’s very clever,” she said, pushing the envelope. “He hasn’t left one shred of evidence. He’s pretty remarkable.”

  Fisher was tapping his foot on the floor. Clearly, Casey was getting to him.

  “Do you disagree?” she asked. “Am I missing something?”

  “You’re wrong as usual,” he retorted. “I thought you’d want to live. I thought you’d come here to beg for help.”

  Casey jumped all over that. “Would you offer it to me? Would you tell me what kind of danger I’m in? Do you even know?”

  A cruel smile—one that said Fisher felt back in control. “I know more than anyone. What I do with that knowledge is another matter entirely.”

  “You’re toying with me again.” Casey inserted a touch of nervousness in her voice. “You’re the one who wants me dead.”