Текст книги "The Last Victim"
Автор книги: Karen Robards
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 24 страниц)
“He couldn’t have hurt me, just like you can’t hurt me.” She was (almost) positive about this one; she’d lived in the world of ghosts-on-the-ground for too long. These rules she knew. “No substance, remember?”
“I wouldn’t bet my life on it.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall and folded his arms across his chest as he looked her up and down. Again, if Charlie hadn’t known for sure he was dead, she wouldn’t have believed it. Her stomach was even starting to settle down. “Anyway, you’re welcome.”
“I never said thank you.”
“That was me ignoring your bad manners.”
Charlie’s lips compressed. “What happened to the guy with the knife?”
“He won’t be back. We crashed through into Spookville right in front of a hunter. He was nabbed. Lucky for me, I’m getting pretty good at slipping out of there. Just dove right back out the same hole I came in through. What the hell was that guy doing anyway?”
“Apparently the old woman’s husband shot him a few days ago. He was trying to rob their shop at the time. He just hasn’t figured out he’s dead yet. He’s confused, and he’s repeating the last few minutes of his life.” Charlie shrugged. “It’s what happens sometimes.”
“Jesus, are you telling me you see nut-jobs like that all the time?” He regarded her with a combination of alarm and fascination.
“Oh, yeah. All. The. Time.” Her heavy emphasis on each word, coupled with the pointed look she gave him, implied that she included him in that number. He grinned.
“I bet it’s a real joyride.” He glanced around restlessly. “Damn, I’ve seen the inside of more ladies’ bathrooms lately than I ever expected or wanted to see in my life. Don’t you ever hang out anyplace fun? Bars? Nightclubs? Football games?”
“No,” Charlie answered. “During the day I work. At night I go home—or when I’m not at home, like now, I go to wherever I’m staying. And I hate football. But feel free to go to all those places without me. In fact, please do. Start now. The door’s that way.”
She pointed.
“You act like you think I’m showing up where you are on purpose. Sorry to bust your bubble, Doc, but like I told you before, it ain’t a choice. I come out where I come out. So far, it just so happens it’s been in your vicinity.”
Charlie stared at him with as much horror as if he’d suddenly sprouted horns and a tail. A terrible thought—no, scratch that, a terrible certainty—had just clonked her over the head. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before.
“Oh, my God.” She started shaking her head. “Oh, no, no, no.”
“What?”
Charlie took a deep breath. “I don’t believe this. I think you’re attached to me.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Garland looked wary. “I like you and everything, Doc, but attached to you? I am—was—attached to my dog. And my Harley. And—”
“No,” Charlie interrupted. “I see this kind of thing happen all the time. You’re attached to me. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. Just like that guy with the knife was attached to the old lady. Sometimes when people die suddenly and violently, like you did, they latch onto someone or something that’s close by at the time of their death. I think it’s kind of a way of not letting go, of hanging on to their lives and the earth, like throwing out a psychic anchor. I was working on you when you died. You latched onto me.”
Garland stared at her. After a moment his mouth twisted. “I got to say, if you’d started spouting off stuff like this a week ago, I would’ve said you were the one who needed to see a shrink. Bad.”
Charlie had gotten used to skepticism, back when she was still trying to enlighten people about the undead in their midst, but the difference here was that Garland had to believe her, because he himself was living (?) proof. It made a nice change, she discovered.
“Yeah, well, welcome to my world.”
“You mean to say I’m, like, tethered to you? Like by a psychic rubber band or something? Because you didn’t save my life?”
“You ever hear the saying ‘No good deed goes unpunished’?”
“Didn’t was the key word there. Didn’t save my life. So if I were you I wouldn’t get too wound up congratulating yourself on your good deed.”
“I don’t want you attached to me,” Charlie told him. “This doesn’t work for me.”
“You think I like it any better than you do? You’re cute, Doc, but you’re not exactly my idea of a rousing good time. Now, if you were a stripper, or a whore …”
“There, you see? You’re disgusting. And crude. And a psychopath. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you are.”
“And what’s that?”
“You brutally murdered seven women.”
“Did I?”
“The Commonwealth of Virginia says you did. They sentenced you to death for it, if you recall. What, are you going to try to tell me you’re innocent?”
“Would you believe me if I did?”
“No.” Charlie thought it over for as long as it took for logic to clench the matter, which wasn’t very long. “And don’t even bother trying to convince me otherwise. The afterlife you described to me—purple twilight, screams, the whole bit—that’s not what most people experience when they die. Most people see the white light. The reason you’re experiencing Spookville, as you call it, is because you’re on your way to hell. And if you’re on your way to hell, then I’m confident there’s a good reason. Like you brutally murdered seven women.”
“You always latch onto the worst in everybody, Doc? Or am I just getting lucky here?”
Charlie started to reply, realized there was no point, and shook her head. “I’m not doing this. Uh-uh.”
“I hear you. But unless I’m missing something, I don’t think you have a choice.”
“You can always let go and embrace the afterlife. Sooner or later, that’s what you’re going to have to do anyway.” She smiled less than sweetly at him. “I’d be glad to help you on your way.”
Garland straightened away from the wall. “You try any more ju-ju on me—”
“And you’ll do what, exactly? Just so we’re clear, I think murder’s out for you now. The spirit may still be willing, but the flesh is—oh, wait: gone.”
The look he shot her said he wasn’t amused. “Are you afraid of me, Doc? Is that it?”
“Afraid of the ghost of a serial killer who’s following me around like a puppy on a leash? How crazy would I have to be to be afraid of something—you notice I don’t say someone—like that?”
“You are. You got no need to be, Doc. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You couldn’t hurt me, Casper.”
“I wouldn’t if I could.”
“That’s actually kind of rich, considering you’ve been threatening me practically since you died.”
“If I’ve been threatening you, it’s only been since you tried to voodoo me out of here. Don’t do that again, and you and I should get along just fine.”
“I don’t want us to get along just fine. I want you gone. Nothing personal, but you’re a complication my life doesn’t need.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Afraid I’m going to cause a speed bump in your love life, Doc?”
“Afraid you’re going to be a total pain in the ass, which obviously you are.”
He gave her a warning look. “You try to get rid of me again, and …” His voice trailed off, but his face said it all.
“And chalk up one more threat.” As his eyes narrowed, Charlie held up her hands in a peacemaking gesture. “Don’t worry, I won’t try to get rid of you again. You know why? Because I don’t have to. The good news is, the state you’re in is a temporary thing. As I may have mentioned before, spirits who linger usually hang on maybe a week. It’s like you need time to get your head around the idea of being dead or something, and once you do you’re ready to go.”
“Without anybody doing anything? I’ll just … go?” Garland looked uneasy.
“You got it. The ones I’ve had experience with—one day they just disappear. According to my calculations, you’ve got at most—probably four or five days.”
Garland looked at her. “Fuck.”
“Who are you talking to?” Kaminsky’s voice made Charlie jump. She’d been so caught up with Garland that she hadn’t even heard the other woman enter the restroom. Now Kaminsky stood just on the other side of the threshold between the lounge and lavatory areas, staring at her. With obviously no idea that she was looking right through the hottest guy she’d probably ever seen in her life, who was large enough and vital enough, at least from Charlie’s perspective, to fill the space to overflowing.
“Myself.” God, I’m getting good at lying. And sick of it. Quickly she tried to recall the part of the conversation that Kaminsky had been most likely to overhear. “If you’re here to use the facilities, you’d best get a move on. We need to get going. Bayley Evans only has about four days left.”
“What’s your name, Sugar Buns?” Garland drawled at Kaminsky, who of course didn’t hear a syllable. Charlie would have been furious, except she suspected the remark had been aimed at riling her rather than hitting on Kaminsky, who he knew perfectly well couldn’t hear him. “Doc here never did introduce us.”
“I just came to get you,” Kaminsky told her. “Bartoli was concerned because you’ve been in here a while.”
“Ooh, Bartoli.” Looking at Charlie, Garland batted his eyes like a love-struck girl. “He was concerned. That’s touching, Doc, it really is.”
“Let’s go, then. Um, I’ll follow you.” Waiting until Kaminsky had turned her back and started for the door, Charlie cast an evil look at Garland.
“If you don’t shut up, I will ju-ju you. First chance I get, I swear to God,” she hissed, hopefully too low for Kaminsky to hear. Then, just to make a point, she marched right through him. The sensation of having plunged into an electromagnetic force field was worth it, she told herself fiercely, even with her skin tingling all over and her hair going all static-y. Even when she heard Garland laughing softly behind her.
In the SUV on the way back to Kill Devil Hills, a thought began to take root in Charlie’s mind. They’d been talking about the case, about various ways they could winnow the pool of suspects—which at that point was about the size of a small town—down to a more manageable number.
“Another characteristic to look for is a history of mental illness in the family.” Charlie was staring abstractedly out the windshield as she spoke. Beach Road was beautiful by night, despite the sizable volume of traffic traveling in each direction. The ocean and the sky above it were both shades of midnight blue, while, hovering just above the horizon, the moon looked as rich and round as a butterscotch candy. “Bipolar, schizophrenia, maybe ECT treatments. Probably the family member will have a record of psychiatric episodes. If not, alcoholism or drug abuse might serve as markers.”
“Nearly everybody we look at is going to have one of your ‘markers,’ ” Kaminsky objected. Charlie didn’t see her roll her eyes, but from the agent’s tone she figured Kaminsky probably did just that.
“Possibly, but I doubt very many in your pool will have more than one or possibly two of them,” Charlie replied, glancing around at Kaminsky. She and Crane were once again riding in the back, while in the third seat, the bench seat in the very back of the vehicle, sprawled out with his boots between the bucket seats occupied by Kaminsky and Crane, sat Garland. He had his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest, and looked like he was enjoying a nap. Not that Charlie thought he was (did spirits even sleep?), but at least he was silent—silence on his part was the best she could hope for until he disappeared for good, she figured. “By itself, each marker doesn’t mean all that much. It’s when they’re present in multiples that it sets off alarms. When we find the man we’re looking for, he’ll have a long list of markers in his background, I promise you.”
“Just think of yourself as a kind of human metal detector,” Crane said to Kaminsky. “You come across enough hidden treasure, and your alarm should go off.”
“The best lead we’ve got right now is the band—Kornucopia—and everyone and everything connected with it,” Bartoli said. “We need to look at the musicians, the technicians, the roadies, and anyone else who travels with the band. Kaminsky, while you’re compiling that list you also need to screen every name you identify as a possible suspect for their whereabouts on the nights of the murders, then cross-check them with the twenty-five remaining individuals you came up with who’ve been off the grid for fifteen years. Not that being off the grid is a deal-breaker, because it’s possible we’re dealing with a copycat, so keep that in mind. Crane, you do the background checks and evaluate every viable lead with an eye to the markers Dr. Stone has suggested. Anybody that overlaps gets put on the hit parade—bring that list to me pronto. And we have to be discreet, because if this guy stays true to his pattern, the girl is still alive and we don’t want to cause him to kill her faster than he planned.”
“So, who’s the human metal detector now?” Kaminsky asked Crane, sotto voce.
“Beep-beep-beep.” Crane approximated the sound of an alarm under his breath.
“Let’s try to stay focused, guys.” Bartoli frowned at them in the mirror. “Clock’s ticking.”
“Got it, boss,” Crane said. “Background checks and markers.”
“I don’t suppose you want me to go around asking this possibly very large pool of potential suspects where they were on the nights of the murders?” Kaminsky’s voice was dry.
“That’d be a little obvious, don’t you think?” Bartoli looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Try checking work records, phone records, credit card records, that type of thing first. If we find the guy, we don’t want him to know it until we’re sure where the girl is.”
“You can’t just arrest him?” Charlie asked. Never having been involved in an investigation of this sort from the law enforcement angle, she’d thought that swooping up the bad guy just as soon as they knew his identity would be the way to go.
Bartoli shook his head. “The smart ones never say a word. They lawyer up. They depend on the legal system to protect them.”
“Even if we arrest him, we don’t have any way of making the unsub tell us where he’s got the girl stashed,” Crane explained.
“See, for us, waterboarding’s out,” Kaminsky said. “All we can do is say ‘Pretty please tell us.’ ”
Bartoli gave Kaminsky another of those looks in the mirror, then spoke to Charlie. “We play this wrong, we could catch the perp, absolutely get the right guy, put a halt to this particular murder spree—and still not be able to save the girl. What we want to do is identify him and watch him until something he says or does leads us to Bayley Evans. Then we move in.”
Just thinking of the girl made Charlie’s heart thump. Quickly she tried to disassociate her mind from visions of the terrified, brutalized girl that threatened to take possession of it. We’re coming, was the thought she sent winging toward Bayley, before wrenching her brain back into the cool, impersonal mode that she knew would best serve the girl.
“So you got a murder spree and a missing girl,” Garland drawled. “I’d ask you to fill me in on the details, but I’m not that interested.”
Charlie tensed, but didn’t otherwise react. She’d known his silence was too good to last. His presence in her life was something she had no choice but to deal with until he vanished—or until she figured out how to get rid of him for good. That being the case, she concluded, she might as well see if she could make use of him.
The idea that had been taking root in her mind grew ten feet tall and shot out flowers.
“Do you think we could stop by the crime scene on the way back?” she asked. “There’s something in the boy’s room I’d like to check out.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That’s a fucking kid,” Garland said. He fixed Charlie with a flinty gaze that, once upon a time (like when he was alive) would have been intimidating. “I don’t mess with kids.”
The kid he was talking about was Trevor Mead. The blond eleven-year-old was curled up in the tan corduroy chair in the corner of his room, playing his flying dragon video game as if it were the most important thing in his world. As if horror and violence had never touched him or his family. As if he were still alive.
“I need you to talk to him,” Charlie whispered. Not that she thought Trevor Mead could hear her, because she was almost entirely positive that he could no more hear or see her than most people could hear or see him. She kept her voice low because she didn’t want to be overheard by any of the living human beings outside the closed door. The Meads’ house had been locked up tight and was still sealed off with crime scene tape when they had arrived. Neither the FBI agents nor the two cops in the lone patrol car that had been left sitting in the driveway to guard the place had had a key, which meant Bartoli had to call the local police headquarters for access. Haney had shown up, along with another detective, whom he introduced as his partner, Gary Simon, and two more beat cops in a patrol car. All had come inside. Now Haney waited in the upstairs hallway along with Bartoli and Crane, Kaminsky having been dropped off at Command Central to get cracking on the various things they needed to get cracking on. Meanwhile, Charlie, who had told Bartoli that she needed to be alone in the room to try to get into the mind of the assailant, got ready to do what she’d come there to do.
Which was get Garland to see if he could glean any new information from Trevor Mead.
“What’s in it for me?” Garland growled.
“Seriously?”
“You better believe it.”
“You narcissistic, opportunistic jackass.”
“Nice vocabulary, Doc. Still ain’t happening.”
Charlie’s lips compressed. “What do you want?”
“I want you to figure out a way to keep me here. That whole vanishing-in-five-days thing? Make it go away.”
“Sorry, nothing I can do.”
Garland shrugged and folded his arms over his chest. “Same here, then.”
Charlie felt her temper start to sizzle. “Fine. I’ll try.”
On a cold day in your final destination.
He shook his head.
“Don’t lie to me, Doc. Think I can’t tell? I want your word.” Garland’s face was set and hard. He was speaking in a hushed tone, too, although his voice was gravelly with intransigence.
“You have my word I’ll try.”
Garland looked at her measuringly.
Charlie made an exasperated sound. “If I said I could definitely do it, I would be lying. What’s more, you’d know it. Anyway, maybe it won’t happen. Maybe you’ll be an exception. Maybe you’ll be one of those spirits that hang around forever, like … like Abe Lincoln in the White House.”
Garland looked unimpressed. “Yeah, and maybe I won’t.”
“The point is, you have to trust that these things always work out the way they’re supposed to.”
“You know what? I’m a little short on trust at the moment. You going to work some of your ju-ju to keep me here or not?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“So talk to the kid yourself.”
“He can’t hear me. A lot of spirits can’t see the living, just like most of the living can’t see the dead,” Charlie explained impatiently. “Would you quit being such a tool and just do it? I’ll try, okay? You have my word.”
Garland seemed to reflect. Then he nodded, accepting the bargain. “So what do you want me to say?”
She could sense his continued reluctance. Because he didn’t want to interact with the boy, Charlie realized. Something about the idea of talking to the spirit of a murdered child disturbed him.
“Ask him what happened.” Her head hurt and her stomach churned. (If she had needed proof that the only spirit she was developing immunity to was Garland, she was getting it; she’d started feeling sick the minute she had stepped inside the boy’s room.) While Bartoli had been talking to the cops about getting into the house, she filled Garland in on as much of the situation as she’d felt he needed to know, which meant she’d left out the serial killer part, along with such details as the age of the victim. “His name’s Trevor. Find out anything you can. Get a description of the perpetrator if he’ll give you one.”
“You want me to ask a dead kid to describe the guy who sliced him and his family up.” He gave her another of those flinty looks. “I don’t get my kicks upsetting kids, Doc. What happens if he freaks out?”
“Just do it, would you?” She glared at him. The supper she had barely eaten was behaving badly, and she didn’t know how long they (actually, she, since Bartoli et al had no idea that Garland or Trevor Mead still existed in any form, let alone were in the bedroom with her) would be left undisturbed. If Haney’s hostile attitude toward her presence in the boy’s room was anything to go by, not long. “And hurry up.”
Before Garland could reply, Trevor cast a scared glance toward where they were standing, which was in front of the door. Both Charlie and Garland went perfectly still. The boy was starting on the loop she had observed before, the one where he saw or heard something that scared him, cast the controller down, and bolted for the closet. In other words, he was getting ready to relive some of the final, terrible minutes of his life.
Only this time, he saw Garland. Charlie knew the moment it happened: the boy’s eyes focused and widened. Looking terrified, he dropped the controller and sprang to his feet.
“Hey, kid, it’s cool,” Garland said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Where is he? Is he here?” Trevor’s young, high-pitched voice trembled with fear. He was referring to the killer, Charlie knew. It was also obvious that he was aware Garland was not the man who had attacked him, which, to Charlie, meant he must have gotten at least a glimpse of his killer.
“No, man. Like I told you, it’s cool.” Casting a hard look at Charlie, Garland moved toward the boy, who seemed poised on the verge of fleeing. “I know something bad happened to you. Can you tell me about it?”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Michael.”
Trevor shivered and threw a frightened glance toward the closed bedroom door. “I think something bad happened to my mom,” he said in a hushed voice. “I heard her screaming. Is she okay?”
Garland glanced at Charlie.
“Tell him his mom is safe now. Ask him what happened after he heard her scream,” Charlie whispered.
Garland did.
Trevor wet his lips. “I hid in the closet. This guy …” The boy shook from head to toe, then wrapped his arms around himself; in his blue soccer ball–dotted pajamas, he looked so small and thin and vulnerable, he broke Charlie’s heart. “… he found me. He had a knife. I—I screamed and fought, but he dragged me out of the closet and threw me on the bed and … and …”
“That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me the rest,” Garland said swiftly before Charlie could give him instructions. Weirdly enough, that’s almost exactly what she would have told him to say: no need to put the child through the trauma of reliving his own death.
“Ask him to describe the perpetrator,” Charlie told him.
“This guy—what did he look like? Can you remember?” Garland asked. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
Trevor’s lips quivered. “He was big, like a giant. And really strong. He just picked me up and threw me. He was, like, all dressed in black, like a goth warrior or something. It was like I was in this horror movie, only for real.” His voice broke. “It was real, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, kid. It was real. But it’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Hair color. Eye color. Age,” Charlie hissed. “Was his face round or thin?”
“What about his hair?” Garland asked. “What color was it?”
Trevor shook his head. “He had on a hat—you know, one of those ski ones. It was black, I think. Or maybe dark blue. I never saw his hair.”
“Garland, hurry.” Charlie watched with alarm as Trevor seemed to grow fuzzy around the edges. The child’s voice had thinned as he uttered the last words, making them sound as if they were coming from farther away.
Garland’s eyes were on Trevor, too. “How old was he? You see his eyes?”
“I don’t know. Older than Bayley. About as old as my cousin Cory, maybe. His eyes—they were like dead black. Like zombie eyes. And, oh, yeah, there was like an eagle on his hat. It was white—or maybe yellow. Or maybe it was a hawk.”
“How was his face shaped? Was it fat or thin?”
“Kinda long and thin.”
“Did he say anything?” Charlie prompted urgently, because Trevor was becoming more translucent with every passing second. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but she did know that it didn’t bode well for any extended questioning. He wasn’t looking at Garland any longer. His attention was all on something to his right, in the far corner of the room, although there wasn’t anything there that Charlie could see.
Garland, though, seemed to see whatever it was. His big body taut with tension, he was staring hard at the same place.
“Garland,” Charlie hissed. “Ask him if the perp said anything.”
That seemed to rouse Garland. He shot her a quick, inscrutable glance.
“Trevor. Did the guy say anything to you?” he asked.
Trevor looked around at that. “ ‘Peekaboo. I see you,’ in this really scary voice, like he was playing a game when he opened the closet door and saw me all scrunched back in the corner. And he yelled ‘Shut up’ when I started to scream. And …” Trevor’s voice trailed off as his attention shifted from Garland to the same place he’d been looking before. “Dad? Is that you?”
Cautious hope was there in Trevor’s voice. Charlie felt her skin prickle. She could see no one and nothing that hadn’t been there before, but it was clear the boy could.
“Ask him if he remembers anything else.” Even as she shot the instruction at Garland, she watched Trevor’s face break into a joyous smile. Garland obviously saw whatever Trevor was looking at, too. He stared, narrow-eyed, at the same spot, as still as if he’d been turned to stone. If he heard Charlie, he didn’t reveal it by so much as a flick of an eyelash in her direction.
“Dad!” Beaming with delight, Trevor took off running with his arms outstretched. After two bounding strides, he vanished into thin air.
For a second or two, Garland’s expression was a study in bemusement as he continued to stare at the place where Trevor had vanished. Then, as if finally feeling Charlie’s gaze on him, he glanced at her.
“That sucked,” he said. His face went as hard as his voice as he turned his back on the place where Trevor had disappeared and walked toward her.
“What just happened?” Charlie asked. From the savage look in Garland’s eyes, it had been something that he found profoundly disturbing.
“There was a man, okay? You heard the kid: his dad. The man said, ‘Come on, Trev,’ and held out his arms, and the kid went running. Satisfied?”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” As some of the awfulness that had weighed heavy as a boulder on her heart lightened, Charlie felt a tiny easing of the grief for the boy who she had been carrying around with her. The horror of what had happened to him could not be undone, but at least Trevor was at peace now, and that provided a degree of solace. “His father came for him. Loved ones do that, you know.”
“Wonderful,” Garland echoed in a tone that was profoundly different from hers. “Made my night.”
“You’re upset, I can see.” At the look on his face, Charlie instinctively went into professional mode, projecting empathy and understanding to the best of her ability. “Something obviously touched a chord.” The stone-cold gaze he turned on her was not encouraging, but she persevered. “Did what you just saw remind you of anything you experienced at around eleven years old? Some kind of interaction with your father or a father figure, maybe?”
Garland’s face could have been carved from granite. “Don’t start your shrink shit on me, Doc. I’m not in the mood.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk about things. If this bothers you—”
Garland cut her off. “You want to know what ‘chord’ got touched? You want to know what kind of interaction with my ‘father figure’ I had when I was eleven years old? I’ll tell you: I shot the bastard dead.”
Shocked speechless, Charlie stared at him. Before she could regroup enough to respond in any meaningful way, he strode past her and out of the room, passing right through the closed door.
Charlie’s heart did a weird little stutter. Beneath Garland’s anger and truculence, she sensed a tremendous amount of buried pain.
And it touched her.
Realizing that it touched her bothered her.
Don’t you ever forget what he is, she warned herself fiercely.
Left alone to stare at the solid, white-painted panel that was the closed door, she took a minute to regain her composure.
When she did, she went out into the hall. Garland was nowhere in sight. Charlie didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved—but in any case, she didn’t have time to think about it. Bartoli was waiting for her, leaning back against the stair rail with his arms crossed over his chest, looking cool as a cucumber, as was Haney, who was standing grim-faced in the center of the hall. Bartoli smiled when he saw her. Haney didn’t.
“Anything new jump out at you?” Bartoli asked as, doing her best to allow nothing of what she had just experienced to show, Charlie walked toward him. Haney just gave her an unfriendly look.
She took a deep breath. Any residual emotions she might still be experiencing weren’t for their eyes. She needed to get her game face on, and interact with these men like the professional she was.
“I’m almost sure this is a copycat.” With no more than a glance at the master bedroom—Charlie recognized that she had reached her limit: she just wasn’t up to dealing with another spirit’s anguish right then—she headed down the stairs. To Bartoli, she would reveal everything she had learned. But while Haney listened in, Charlie wanted to be careful about what she said: the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to start in on questioning how she knew what she knew again.
Believable, off-the-cuff lies were, she feared, beyond her at the moment.
“What makes you say that?” Bartoli was right behind her, with Haney behind him. As she reached the lower steps, she could see into the pretty, beach-y living room. The other cops—four patrol officers and Haney’s partner, Simon—were standing around the TV.
“This perpetrator didn’t use duct tape.” Charlie kept a firm grip on the banister as she glanced at Bartoli over her shoulder. Something had been bothering her about the killer’s MO from the beginning. This, she had realized as she had replayed Trevor’s words in her mind, was it: her memory of the duct tape over the mouths of Holly and her mother were vivid. It was an important point, and one she could have easily arrived at using only facts that she herself knew, possibly jogged by her visit to Trevor’s room. So this was what she was going to give to Bartoli while Haney was within earshot. “The original Boardwalk Killer put duct tape over the mouths of his victims to keep them quiet.”
