Something about her wry tone made him say, “You didn't expect the news to not get around, did you?”
“No. But this town sets the land speed record for gossip, I've realized that much. The unfortunate thing is that it tends to be so damned accurate.”
“I'll say. I didn't grow up here, but when I started my practice fifteen years ago, it took less than a week for everyone in town to know that my parents were dead and my younger brother had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and married her literally at the business end of her daddy's shotgun.” He paused, then added, “I told no one, absolutely no one.”
Hollis smiled slightly and paid Sally Anne for her coffee. “They do seem to find out what they want to know. Which begs the question . . .”
“How can a killer walk among us, unseen?”
“Oh, not that question. Killers always have walked among us unseen. No, the question I'm asking myself is: how is it possible that a woman's decomposing body hung inside a derelict gas station less than three blocks from the center of town for months without anybody noticing?”
Sally Anne uttered a choked little sound and rushed toward the back of the shop.
Hollis grimaced. “Well, that was definitely indiscreet. To say the least. I must be more tired than I thought. Or, at any rate, that'll be my story.”
Caleb shook his head slightly. “Look, I know you've had a hell of a day, but can we sit down here and talk for a while? There's something I want to ask you.”
She nodded and joined him at one of the small tables by the front window.
“Have you eaten?” Caleb asked. “The sandwiches here aren't bad, or—”
Hollis shook her head, almost flinching. “No. Thank you. I'm reasonably sure the coffee will stay down, but only because I was practically breast-fed the stuff. I'm not planning to eat anything for the foreseeable future.”
It was Caleb's turn to grimace. “So I take it Sally Anne's gory details about the body were on the mark?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I'm sorry. That had to be rough.”
“Not destined to be one of my more pleasant memories. But I was warned what to expect when I signed on for this gig.” She sipped her latte, adding, “You wanted to ask me something?”
“Why did you sign on for this gig?”
Surprised, Hollis said, “I . . . didn't expect a personal question.”
“I didn't expect to ask one,” he confessed.
She smiled. “I thought lawyers always rehearsed what they said.”
“Not this one. Or, at least, not this time. If it's too personal, we can forget I asked. But I'd rather not.”
“Why so curious?”
Even experienced as he was at reading juries, Caleb couldn't tell if she was stalling or really wanted to know. “That explanation would undoubtedly involve a lot of me backpedaling and trying to justify my curiosity to myself, let alone you, so I'd just as soon skip the attempt. Let's just say I'm a curious man and leave it at that.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, blue eyes unreadable, then said in a queerly serene voice, “I was assaulted. Beaten, raped, stabbed, left for dead.”
Not what he had expected. “Jesus. Hollis, I'm sorry, I had no idea.”
“Of course not, how could you?”
He literally didn't know what to say, and for one of the very few times in his life. “That's . . . why you became an agent?”
“Well, my old life was pretty much in tatters, so it seemed like a good idea when I was offered a chance at a new one.” Her voice retained that odd tranquillity. “I was able to help—in a small way—stop the man who had attacked me and so many other women. That felt good.”
“Revenge?”
“No. Justice. Going after revenge is like opening a vein in your arm and waiting for somebody else to bleed to death. I didn't need that. I just needed to . . . see . . . him stopped. And I needed a new direction for my life. The Bureau and the Special Crimes Unit provided that.”
Tentatively, because he wasn't sure how far she would be willing to go in talking about this, he said, “But to devote your life to a career that puts you face-to-face on a regular basis with violence and death—and evil? How healthy can that be, especially after what you've gone through?”
“I guess it depends on one's reasons. I think mine are pretty good, beginning with the major one. Somebody has to fight evil. It might as well be me.”
“Judging by what I've seen in my life, it'll take more than an army to do it. No offense.”
Hollis shook her head. “You don't fight evil with an army. You fight it with will. Yours. Mine. The will of every human soul who cares about the outcome. I can't say I thought much about it until what happened to me. But once you've seen evil up close, once you've had your entire life changed by it, then you see a lot of things more clearly.” Her smile twisted, not without bitterness. “Even with someone else's eyes.”
He frowned, not getting that last reference. “I can understand feeling like that after what you went through, but to let it change your whole life—”
“After what I went through, it was the only thing I could do with my life. I not only saw some things more clearly, I also saw things differently. Too differently to ever go back to being an artist.”
“Hollis, it's only natural to see a lot of things differently after such a horribly traumatic experience.”
A little laugh escaped her. “No, Caleb, you don't understand. “I saw things differently. Literally. Colors aren't the same now. Textures. Depth perception. I don't see the world the way I used to, the way you do, because I can't. The connections between my brain and my sight are . . . man-made. Or at least man-forged. Not organic. The doctors say my brain may never fully adjust.”
“Adjust to what?”
“To these new eyes I'm wearing. They weren't the ones I was born with, you see. When the rapist left me for dead, he took a couple of souvenirs. He took my eyes.”
By the time Mallory got back to the station, it was nearly eight and she was tired. Tired as hell, if the truth be known. Also queasy, depressed, and not a little anxious.
“Mallory—”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Ginny McBrayer said. “I didn't mean to make you jump.”
“These days, everything is making me jump.” Mallory sighed. “What is it, Ginny?”
“You asked me to check with the other women in the department and find out if anybody had the sense of being watched lately.”
“Yeah. And have any of them?”
Ginny shrugged. “It's sort of hard to say. Everybody's jumpy. Two or three said they'd gotten the feeling of being watched at least a couple of times in the last few weeks, but even they admitted they weren't sure of anything. Of course, now that I've brought up the subject, everybody's talking about it, the guys too.”
Mallory sat down at her desk and rubbed her eyes wearily. “Well, hell. Dunno if that helps.”
“We'll all be alert, anyway. Have you talked to the FBI agents about it?”
“Not yet. Need to, though, I suppose.” She sighed. “The dairy farmer's wife; she turn up yet? And what is her name, anyway? Helton. What Helton?”
“Rose Helton. Not a sign of her. And we still have two other women reported missing in Hastings during the past month, not counting that news reporter who vanished last night. Sharona Jones and Kate Murphy. Plus the dozen or so missing from the general area outside Hastings in the same time period.”
“I know Sharona—she doesn't fit the profile, she's black. She's missing?”
“Well, her boyfriend claims she is. But her dog is also missing, as well as her car and a lot of her clothes, and her mother says she's always wanted to see the world, so we're thinking she might have upped and left.”
“If Ray Mercer was my boyfriend, I'd up and leave too.” Mallory sighed again. “Still, we have to make sure, so keep everybody on it. What about Kate Murphy?”
“More troubling, in that she does fit the p
rofile. Late twenties, blond, successful; she owns one of those new little boutiques on Main Street. Was doing pretty well with it too. Didn't show up for work on Monday, so her assistant manager has been running the shop.”
“We've checked out her house or apartment?”
“Uh-huh. No sign she's been taken—but no sign she left voluntarily either. Her car is in its slot at her condo, and far as we can tell it's clean. Haven't found her purse or keys, though. She didn't—doesn't—have any pets, and no family in Hastings. We're trying to track down relatives now.”
“And still no sign of Cheryl Bayne.”
“No. The station in Columbia has sent another reporter, this one male, to cover this new . . . angle.”
“How caring of them.”
Ginny nodded. “Yeah, even the other reporters are being pretty scathing about that.”
“While doing their own reports.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mallory shook her head in disgust. “Okay. Let me or the chief know if anything changes.”
“Right.”
When she was alone again, Mallory sat for a moment with her elbows on her desk and her hands cupping her face, fingers absently massaging her temples. She should stay, but Rafe had made it plain she was to go home as soon as the body had been taken from that old building and the forensics team finished.
Both of which had been done.
Mallory was tired but also curiously wide awake. She didn't want to go home. Didn't want to be alone. She wanted something to get the image of that poor woman out of her head.
With only a slight hesitation, she picked up her phone and called Alan's cell. “Hey, are you home?” she asked without preamble.
“Headed that way. Pulling into the parking lot now, as a matter of fact.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Nothing you could truthfully define as food,” he replied. “There was something a charitable person might have called a sandwich hours ago, but it may have been just a figment of my imagination. Are you offering?”
“I'm offering takeout Chinese. I'll even pick it up on my way to your place. Deal?”
“Deal. Stop for wine if you feel like that. My place is dry as a bone. Oh—and I have a splitting headache, so if you could pick up some aspirin as well? I don't think I have any.”
“Okay. See you in a few minutes.” Mallory hung up, telling herself this wasn't a bad idea at all. So what if she had spent most of the previous night in his bed? It didn't mean anything. It didn't have to mean anything. Alan could be an amusing and entertaining companion, and he was good in bed.
Very good, in fact. And she couldn't deceive herself into believing she wasn't looking forward to a little body-on-body comfort, because she was. Two clean, healthy, sweaty bodies tangled together in the sheets sounded like a dandy way to affirm that both of them were alive.
Alive. Not hanging from a beam like a weeks-old gutted fish. Not lying in a boneless, bloody sprawl in the woods off some highway. Not laced into an impossibly tight leather corset and smothered with a hood while a woman with a whip and chains tortured—
“Christ,” she muttered. “I've gotta get out of here.”
It took a few minutes, of course, to do what she had to in order to leave for the night, but she took care of things quickly and bolted before anyone could come up with anything that required her continued presence at the station.
She called and ordered the food on her way to the restaurant, so it'd be ready and waiting for her, and did stop for wine even though she wasn't usually much of a drinker. She even remembered Alan's aspirin. Still, it was barely half an hour after she talked to him when Mallory entered his apartment with one bag full of little cardboard cartons and another holding the wine and aspirin.
“You look jumpy as hell,” he commented as soon as she walked through the door.
“It's a jumpy time.” Mallory knew the way to the kitchen, of course, and lost no time in getting the wine out and hunting through his cupboards for glasses. “Jesus, Alan, not a single wineglass?”
“Housewares aren't a priority with me. Sue me.”
“My life has come down to drinking wine from jelly glasses. Could this day get any better?”
Alan had swallowed several aspirin dry, then began setting out the cartons on his breakfast bar, where they normally ate. He paused to look at her intently. “I heard. Couldn't have been much fun, finding that body.”
“No.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.” She poured wine into one of the glasses and immediately took a swallow. “I intend to drink at least half this bottle, part of it while I shower away the assorted smells of today, then choke down some shrimp and vegetables. After that, unless you object, the plan is to adjourn to your bedroom and fuck like bunnies. Possibly all night. Unless you still have your headache, of course. Tell me you won't.”
“I expect the aspirin to work any minute,” Alan replied. “And that plan suits me just fine.”
The Mexican restaurant wasn't crowded despite the fact that Saturday night was usually one of the busiest. As the owner had told them mournfully when he escorted them personally to a cozy table back in the corner, people were going out less at night since the murders had started. And after what had been found today, undoubtedly most of his usual patrons were home with their doors locked.
So if Rafe and Isabel didn't have the restaurant to themselves, they did have their own secluded corner of it. With quiet music playing in the background and an attentive but unobtrusive waiter, they were almost in their own world.
Almost.
“You still believe Jamie didn't mutilate Jane Doe?” Rafe asked as they were finishing up the main course. They had been talking generally about the murders and the investigation, both with too much experience as cops to allow either the clinical details of brutal death or the bloody images they had seen all too recently to affect their appetites. And both shying away from anything more personal.
“I'm positive. My guess is, he was watching Jamie and saw her put the body into the trunk of Jane Doe's car. I don't know if she drove the car to wherever she planned to leave it, or if he did—and when she came back either to the playroom or to the car for some reason and didn't find the body, that was when she really freaked out. In any case, I think he put the body in that old garage. And amused himself with it.”
“That's sickening,” Rafe said.
“Definitely. He's very twisted, our boy.”
“So his reasons for picking Jamie as his first victim in Hastings were probably twisted as well.”
“Well, it may have been about Jamie being a dominatrix rather than a lesbian. Her wielding so much power over other women, power he wanted and didn't have. Maybe sheer jealousy was the trigger. Or envy. Maybe he couldn't stand the fact that she could control the women in her life.”
“And he couldn't control the women in his.”
“Maybe. Or it could have been the fact that her partners came to Jamie, willingly put themselves into her hands, submitted to her. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get that response from women. Ironic, really. He always goes for the smart, successful ones, the ones least likely to allow themselves to be dominated in a relationship, and yet to dominate women is what he desperately wants.”
“So for him it really is the unattainable.”
“Unless his taste in women changes, yeah.” Isabel's voice was wry. “He'll never get what he wants—except by killing them. It's only when they're dying and then lifeless that he's the one in control, stronger than them.
“In killing Jamie, he could have achieved a particular sort of satisfaction, because she was a dominatrix. For the first time, he was able to dominate a woman whose specialty was dominating others. Even if he had to kill her to do it.”
“She possessed traits he wants to destroy?”
“That's usually the case with a sexual sadist.”
“But not this time? Not our guy?”
Isabel frowne
d. “Targeting the breasts and genitals is a classic sign of a sexual obsession. But this guy, our guy, the sense I get is that he seems to be . . . punishing them for being women. So maybe he is trying to destroy the feminine traits in his nature. Or maybe he's furious with them because they're too female for him, literally too much woman for him to handle.”
“And that isn't a sexually driven motivation?”
“Not really. More a question of identity. His.”
“This is fascinating,” Rafe said.
Isabel stared at him for a moment, then sat back in her chair with a sigh. “See, this is why my social life sucks. I always end up talking about killers.”
“My fault. I did ask.”
“Yeah, but the subject sprang to mind. Doesn't say much about my sex appeal.”
Rafe eyed her. “It says we're in the middle of a murder investigation. And so.”
“That's a handy excuse. Can't you tell when a woman is fishing?”
“You're not serious? Isabel, you have to know you're gorgeous.”
“My mirror tells me all the pieces fit together nicely, but that doesn't mean I'm your type. Lots of men prefer petite redheads, or very slender brunettes. Or—women who don't carry guns and know a dozen different ways to really hurt a guy if he pisses her off.”
He had to laugh. “I admit that last bit is enough to give any man pause, but you don't see me taking to my heels, do you?”
“No, but since we sort of have to work together—”
“We don't have to go out to dinner together. Isabel, I'm here because I want to be, period. Just for the record, I don't prefer petite redheads or slender brunettes. And I never figured you for the insecure type.”
“And here I was thinking I was coming on too strong.”
Their attentive waiter appeared to clear the plates and take their order for coffee and dessert, and Rafe waited until he'd gone again to respond to her somewhat mocking comment.
“So what happened today?”
Isabel blinked. “You know what happened today.”
“What don't I know? What's got you so rattled that you're pushing yourself to . . . make a different kind of connection with me when you're not sure it's what you want?”