Cooked Goose (10 page)

“The twins are my niece and nephew,” Savannah said. “Redheaded, freckle-faced five-year-olds.”

“How cute!”

“Cute, my hind leg. Those cherub-faced gargoyles could guard the gates of hell. They’re holy terrors, I tell you! The worst! Where is Vidalia’s phone number? Dear Lord! I have to stop her before she gets to packing!”

* * *

10:02 A.M.

She was too late.

“Vidalia just hightailed it out of here and took my young’uns with her, she did,” Butch told Savannah when she called from her phone in the bedroom. “And here it’s just a few days before Christmas. I tell you, Savannah, that girl’s done gone plumb whacko on me. Worse than the last time she was pregnant, and you know what a nut-job she was then.”

Good old Butch
, Savannah thought as she sat on the edge of her bed and kicked off her shoes, he’d never win the “Sensitive Husband of the Year” Award. But Vidalia wasn’t a particularly easygoing gal either, even when she wasn’t pregnant, let alone when she was “big as a barn.”

“Maybe she just went to the grocery store,” she said hopefully.

“She packed six suitcases.”

“Perhaps Walmart?”

“She told me flat out she was going to California. Says she’s gonna live there with you in your spare bedroom, her and the twins and the new baby. Now what do you think of that there?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” She collapsed across the bed, which had begun to spin as though she had consumed a six-pack of beer on an empty stomach.

Staring up at the ceiling, she cursed Fate for making her the oldest of nine siblings—the big sister they always ran to when their lives were in shambles. Or when they perceived their lives were a mess. Usually, they weren’t half as bad off as they seemed to think they were. In her line of work, Savannah had seen worse. Much, much worse.

“Did it occur to Vidalia to give me a quick phone call and ask if it would be convenient for her and her offspring to live with me right now?” she said, more to herself than Butch.

“Who knows what’s between her ears? I’m plumb worn to a frazzle tryin’ to figure that girl out. If it wasn’t for the babies, I’d just say ‘Good-bye and good riddance.’”

“Come on, Butch, you don’t really feel that way.”

“Right now, I do. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

“Is she driving here in her condition?” Knowing the usual state of Vidalia and Butch’s domestic economy, she assumed her sister wouldn’t have been able to swing air fare.

“Nope, the car’s in the garage. Your brother Macon is overhauling the engine for me. She took the bus.”

Savannah gasped. “The bus? She and the twins are riding a bus from Georgia to California? That’s crazy.”

“Crazier than a sprayed roach, that’s your sister.”

“She’s not that crazy, even when she’s pregnant. She must have been hoppin’ mad. You two must have had a helluva fight. What was it about?”

“About?” he answered quickly. Too quickly. “It weren’t about nothin’.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Not a blamed thing. She just got on her high horse and—”

Savannah sat up suddenly. “Did you hit her? ’Cause if you raised a hand to my little sister, I’ll get hold of you, boy, and turn you ever’ which way but loose.”

“I never hit a woman in my life, and you know it, Savannah. Though lately I been thinkin’ that’s what Vi needs, a good paddlin’ on the behind. It might get her to thinkin’ what’s what.”

All the wind went out of Savannah’s sails, and she sagged like a wet sheet on a clothesline. “When will they be arriving?” she asked, too tired to breathe.

“Best I can figure, three or four days. You call me when they show up, you hear?”

“I hear. I’ll call.” She sighed. “Hell, I probably won’t even bother with the phone. You’ll just hear this long, plaintive wail and....”

* * *

7:30 P.M.

“Okay, ladies, it’s time to join the real world, cruel as it may be,” Savannah told her class as they exited the library’s front door and entered the poorly lit parking lot. “Has everybody got somebody to walk with?”

They paired up like third grade students on a field trip, but they weren’t nearly as chatty or jubilant. No sack lunches, no big yellow bus waiting for them. Just a dark, shrubbery-lined parking lot dotted with ominous shadows.

“Here’s your chance to practice what we’ve been preaching—parking lot safety,” she said, searching the shadows herself. The town bad boy preferred shopping malls, but you never knew when he might wax literary and start hanging out at the local library.

“What’s the first thing you do, Tammy?” she asked her assistant, who was bringing up the rear.

“Make sure you’ve got your keys ready in one hand, and if possible, some sort of weapon in the other,” Tammy responded.

“That’s right. And remember, almost anything can be used for defense, even an old, battered copy of Wuthering Heights. I once knew a young lady who was walking through the park on her way home from school when some perv flashed her. She smacked him on the dickey-do with
War and Peace
and altered his gender.”

A few giggles cut the tension for a moment, but it quickly returned. Savannah turned deadly serious. “Like I told you earlier inside, it’s when you’re getting in and out of your car that you’re the most vulnerable. And this is true, whether there’s a psycho on the loose or not. Angie ...” She turned to Angie Perez, who had joined them for the first time tonight at Dirk’s suggestion. The scared teen hadn’t required much coaxing. “What are you going to do on the way to your car?” Savannah asked her.

“Look everywhere. Make sure nobody’s following me. Check for anyone hanging around beside my car or even lying under it.”

“And, Margie, what do you do if you see anything at all suspicious?”

“Turn around and go back into the store,” she replied, all of her cockiness temporarily on hold. “Ask a security guard to walk me out or call a cop.”

“Good girl.”

Margie beamed, and it occurred to Savannah that the girl must not receive a lot of adult praise or validation. No wonder she was such a brat.

“And once you’re at the car?” Savannah continued.

“Look in the back floorboard before you even open the door, and make sure that sonuvabitch isn’t waiting for you,” said Denise, the previously prim and proper librarian.

Savannah smiled. “You’re darned right. And once you’re inside the car?”

“Lock the doors right away,” Margie supplied. “And don’t check your phone or make any calls. Don’t waste any time getting going.”

“I think you’ve got it. Use what you’ve learned—not just now but all the time. Be careful and be safe until we meet again. And, in spite of all this, try to enjoy the holidays.”

As Savannah watched her vigilant students file out to their cars, employing all of her suggestions, she should have felt good. At least, they were better informed, less likely to fall prey to the predator.

But she didn’t feel good.

And she wasn’t sure why.

Tammy walked up to Savannah and slid her arm around her waist. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t know.”

Savannah didn’t take her eyes off the lot, watching each woman as, one by one, they got into their cars and pulled away. Finally, the last one drove off, leaving only half-a-dozen empty cars in the lot.

“I’ve just got a creepy feeling,” she said, searching the shadows.

“How creepy?”

“Very.”

“Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Maybe.”

She walked Tammy to her car, and Tammy waited until Savannah was inside her Mustang before the two women drove away from the lot together.

“Maybe Tammy’s right; maybe it’s nothing,” Savannah whispered to the empty darkness around her as she headed home.

But inside, deep in her psyche, where Savannah stored things like feminine intuition and gut-level instincts, she knew all too well—it wasn’t nothing. It
was
something. Someone. She could feel him deep in her bones.

* * *

He had been sitting in one of the “empty” cars in the library parking lot, watching the women exit the building. Slouched low in the seat, his window rolled down a crack, he had been able to hear some of what had been said.

Their comments amused him. Their caution was so misplaced.

Because he had changed his M.O.

So what if the average criminal followed the same pattern, crime after crime, until he was caught? He wasn’t your average criminal. Not by a long shot.

He was smart—at least in his own, not-particularly-humble opinion. He was flexible. He knew when it was time to shift some things around. No problem.

The end result would be the same. He’d still wind up in an orange grove with the woman of his choice. And then...party, party!

This time he had chosen a bit more carefully. He had watched his quarry as she stood and chatted with the others, unaware he was watching, unaware of the role he would play in her life very soon.

Yes, this time he intended to do a number of things differently.

He would study his victim more thoroughly. He would stalk her a little longer, savoring the hunt. And when the time came, he would fulfill some of his darkest fantasies, dreams that, until now, had only been in his mind. But he would bring them into reality. Live every moment in the flesh.

This time, he was going to rape her, beat her, hurt her, as he had before.

But this time, she was going to die. The ultimate fantasy fulfilled.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” he whispered, as he watched her drive away. He didn’t care where she was going now; he knew exactly where to find her when he wanted her. This time he had really done his homework.

“That’s right, baby, twenty-four hours,” he repeated, then added, “more or less.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

December 12—7:04 p.m.

Charlene Yardley had drifted off to sleep long ago, but Savannah continued to sit in the chair beside her hospital bed, reading from the worn fairy-tale book she had brought from home. Although Savannah’s own mother had spent more evenings carousing in honky-tonks than reading to her children, Savannah had gone to sleep many nights with the sound of her Granny Reid’s gentle voice in her ears.

Although child psychiatrists might have objected to Granny scaring her granddaughter witless with tales of cannibalistic witches, cross-dressing wolves, and cinder girls whose only ambition was to charm a prince into supporting them for the rest of their happily-ever-after lives, such tales were part of a Southern girl’s upbringing.

Savannah betted on the fact that Charlene Yardley’s mom had read her to sleep with such stories, and the tears in Charlene’s eyes had proven she was right.

Earlier, Savannah had slipped out to make a phone call to Dirk. They had already spent the afternoon together, going over the victims’ files. But when Savannah told him she was at the hospital and had something new, Dirk said he would be over as soon as possible. She’d decided to wait until he arrived to discuss her latest finding with him in person.

He didn’t disappoint her. Five minutes later, he stuck his head into the room and seeing the sleeping Charlene, tiptoed over to the side of the bed.

“Thanks for coming,” Savannah whispered, laying the book aside. “I couldn’t wait to show you this.”

“Yeah, I wanna see it,” he replied. “But you may wanna show me and then get the hell outta here.”

“Why?”

“The captain was standing by my desk when you called. When I hung up, he wanted to know what you had told me. I described the bruise, like you did, and he got all interested. Said he was gonna drop by himself to look at it.”

“Since when does Bloss take an interest in the details of a case?”

He shrugged. “Mostly when it’ll irk your butt.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Charlene stirred and moaned slightly. They waited until she was completely still and her breathing was slow and even before Savannah nudged Dirk closer to the bed.

“Have you got your penlight?” she asked.

He pulled the small flashlight from his pocket and handed it to her.

Flipping on the small switch, she leaned over the sleeping Charlene. Shielding half of the light with her hand to keep it out of the woman’s eyes, Savannah directed the beam on the lower part of Charlene’s right cheek.

“Take a look at that,” she said, “just above her jawbone.” He leaned close and squinted, then he quirked one eyebrow. “I’ll be damned. You’re right,” he said. “Did you ask her about it?”

“Yeah. She has no idea how it got there.”

“Hmmm.”

Charlene stirred again, and Savannah snapped off the flashlight. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s talk outside.” She gave Dirk back his light, scooped up her storybook, and followed him out of the room.

They walked down the hall several yards, to get out of earshot of the formidable Officer Morton O’Leary and a couple of nearby nurses who were chatting over some patient charts.