Killing Spree (5 page)

The wind howled, and rain continued to tap against the glass. That thing fluttered along the window’s edge again. It looked like a bird or something. Maybe it was caught in the rosebush beside the window.

Climbing out of bed, Gillian threw on her robe, and crept to the window. She parted the drapes and peered outside. Past the rain-beaded glass, she studied the ravine: nothing, just a slight rustling amid the forest of trees and bushes. She didn’t see anything in the backyard.

Then it appeared again. Someone’s trash—a food wrapper—had become momentarily entangled in the rosebush by her window. Gillian caught a glimpse of the Taco Bell wrapper before the wind carried it away.

She shucked off the robe, and crawled back into bed. Hugging Barry’s old pillow to her chest, Gillian closed her eyes and prayed for a little sleep. It wouldn’t come easy, she knew, because that awful feeling in the pit of her stomach was back.

This book is dedicated to my oldest and dearest friend,

Dianne Garrity.

Di, you told me I should be a writer, and taught me

to pursue my dreams.

Everyone should have a friend like you.

The man on the Chicago El train was reading the dedication in Gillian McBride’s
Killing Legend
. Just five days ago, he had been in New York City, where the woman he’d stabbed was still in a coma.

He’d dog-eared another page in Gillian’s book. It was a passage describing how the killer, a former Hollywood hunk now disfigured from a car accident, snuck into his latest victim’s house to poison some milk in her refrigerator. Afterward, the killer typed a suicide note on the victim’s computer so people would think she’d killed herself.

The man got off at the Belmont El stop, and a cool, damp blast of wind hit him—courtesy of Lake Michigan. With Gillian’s book tucked under his arm, he walked three blocks to an old brownstone apartment building.

He’d arrived in Chicago yesterday, and had immediately gone to work, tracking down this address. He’d found
Garrity, D
on one of the four mailboxes by the front door. Walking around to the back of the building, he’d snuck up the back stairs to the third floor. There, he’d peered into the kitchen window, and spotted one of Gillian’s paperback book covers taped to the refrigerator door.

He’d found the right Dianne Garrity.

Pulling a small, unmarked vial from his coat pocket, he studied the liquid inside it—clear, colorless. It was supposed to be almost undetectable, except for a slightly bitter aftertaste.

The woman stepped into her kitchen. He quickly ducked away from the window, almost knocking over a garbage can by the back door. He prayed she didn’t see him. He didn’t want to have to kill her right there. It would have ruined everything. He held his breath and waited. After a moment, he peeked into her window again.

She was glancing at a Pottery Barn catalogue. She wore a pink terry-cloth robe, and had a coffee mug in her hand. He guessed she was in her mid-thirties. She was pretty with long dark blond hair and bangs. He watched her move to the refrigerator and pour some cream into her coffee.

He looked at the vial of poison again and smiled.

He hung around the apartment building for almost two hours, freezing his ass off. He watched her step out the front door and start down the block. She was all bundled up in her ski jacket and cap. He went around back again, and up the stairs. He used a skeleton key on the kitchen door. Breaking into the unit, he went directly to the refrigerator and took out the container of cream.

He’d told himself that by the time she noticed her coffee had a funny aftertaste, the poison would already be in her system, killing her.

Now, almost twenty-four hours later, he’d returned to the brownstone, hoping to view the fruits of his labor. There weren’t any police cars or ambulances in front of the building. That stuff was fast-acting. She probably didn’t even have time to call 911.

He walked around to the back of the brownstone. Someone was doing laundry; gray clouds of sweet-smelling vapor billowed from a vent in the basement window. He crept up the back stairs to the third floor. Approaching Dianne Garrity’s kitchen window, he noticed her coffee mug on the breakfast table. He half expected to see her corpse—in that pink terry-cloth robe—sprawled on the tiled floor.

Instead, he saw her stroll into the kitchen, talking on a cordless phone. She wore jeans and a pullover sweater. He darted to one side of the window, but continued to watch her. Cradling the phone with her shoulder, she kept up her conversation while she retrieved her coffee mug and refilled it. Then she went to the refrigerator and added a dash of cream to the brew. It wasn’t the same container.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

He waited until she headed out of the kitchen; then he lifted the lid from the garbage can by the back door. He saw the carton of cream he’d poisoned the day before. There was enough cream there for a few days. She couldn’t have tasted it, or she’d be dead right now. Why had she thrown it out? Maybe she’d thought it smelled funny. Or maybe she was just a careless, wasteful bitch.

He was livid. He wanted Gillian’s friend dead today. He had a schedule to keep.

An hour later, when she left the building, he followed her. Even half a block away at a crowded street corner, she was easy to spot. Her lavender ski jacket gave her away. At one point, she glanced over her shoulder, and he quickly ducked into a storefront alcove. She continued on, walking under the El tracks and turning down an alley. He trailed after her, and picked up his pace, narrowing the gap between them. There was no one else in the alleyway; just a few parked cars and some Dumpsters. On both sides of them were the backs of apartment buildings, the tallest one about four stories. The rear stairways and fire escapes were empty. He didn’t see anyone looking out their back window. He was only twenty feet behind her now.

He heard the El approaching. The sound of steel wheels on the elevated rails became louder and louder. With all that noise, he imagined no one would hear her scream.

At the end of the alley, she paused and looked over her shoulder again.

He quickly ducked behind a phone pole. He stood perfectly still.

Just a block away, the El train clamored by. The load roar started to fade.

His heart was racing, and he realized that excitement had replaced his anger. He liked this challenge.

She gazed into the alley, and listened to the El go by. The cold wind seemed to whip through her, and she shuddered.

Funny. A couple of blocks after leaving the apartment building, she’d thought somebody might have been following her. He’d been very elusive. She never got a look at him—just glimpses of a shadowy figure lurking behind a Dumpster, and then in a building doorway. She’d thought she lost him.

But a moment ago, she’d noticed her own reflection in the windshield of a parked car as she passed by it. And she’d seen someone—or something—behind her. Was it that man from before?

She told herself it must have been her imagination, because she was staring at an empty alley. But then she noticed something behind a phone pole—a little swirling vapor cloud almost six feet from the ground.

It was his breath in the cold.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. Swiveling around, she hurried up the side street toward Belmont, where she hoped to lose him in the crowd. She stopped to catch her breath at a traffic light in the busy shopping area. She was surrounded by people, waiting for the
WALK
sign. Glancing back, she didn’t see anyone.

She still didn’t feel safe. After crossing the street, she ducked into a women’s clothing store called Attitude, just down the block from Urban Outfitters. It was warm inside the store. But she couldn’t stop trembling.

Hanging back, he kept his eye on her lavender ski jacket as she merged into the crowd of pedestrians. He watched her hurry inside a clothing store. He waited a few minutes before going in after her—and the wait was excruciating. He couldn’t jump the gun. If Gillian’s friend had gone in there to escape from him, she needed time to feel reassured, time to be distracted by all the merchandise.

The tactic worked. Once he stepped into the store, he had to chuckle. Typical woman. She couldn’t resist the sale rack—even after she thought someone had been following her a few minutes ago. She’d already gathered several items on hangers, and was now talking with a saleswoman, who pointed her toward a curtained-off area.

He remembered a scene from another Gillian McBride mystery, where a woman was strangled to death in a department store changing room. He hadn’t planned to kill Dianne Garrity this way. He’d wanted to poison her—just like that scene in
Killing Legend.
But this might work out better. He remembered the changing room murder very well. It was one of Gillian’s better killings. The murderer had studied his victim’s face as he choked the life out of her.

After secretly spying on Dianne Garrity all morning and part of yesterday, he imagined being face-to-face with her. No more dodging behind phone poles or ducking beneath windowsills. He would stare into her eyes while he killed her.

All he had to do was sneak into the curtained-off area and do it. The saleswoman wasn’t paying attention. No one was looking. The plans had changed, but he could still make this work.

He just had to take a page from another book.

The postcard from Dianne Garrity fell to the floor.

Gillian had accidentally brushed it off the desktop while reaching for the partial news clipping about “Zorro.”

“My agent sent me this piece from
The New York Daily News
,” she said into the phone. “That’s how I found out about it.”

Gillian was at her desk, with the computer on. She hadn’t been able to uncover any more details or updates about the stabbing on Halloween night.

“Let me make some calls to New York,” said her friend, Ruth Langford, on the other end of the line. “I’ll dig around and get back to you, hon. In fact, I might hit you up for lunch or coffee—unless you have an autograph session in Timbuktu or some other place.”

“Not until later tonight. Lunch would be terrific. My treat. Thanks, Ruth.” Gillian leaned over and retrieved Dianne’s Palm Springs postcard. She set it back on her desktop.

After she hung up the phone, Gillian retreated to the bathroom for a quick shower. Maybe it would revive her a bit. Going on two hours of sleep, she’d dragged herself out of bed this morning to fix Ethan a hot breakfast. The poor kid had just wanted a bowl of Captain Crunch. Instead, he got French toast with heated maple syrup—all because she felt guilty about the dinners he’d had to fix for himself this week while she was out pushing her book. She invited him to tonight’s signing in Redmond. The bookstore had a café attached. He could eat dinner there. “How long is the bus ride?” he asked warily.

“We’d have to transfer, so about an hour each way.”

He cut into his French toast. “Sounds like a drag. Would you be pee-o’d if I passed?”

“No, that’s fine, honey.”

Gillian watched him head for the school bus stop, halfway down the block. She hadn’t mentioned anything to Ethan about the cryptic e-mail from someone claiming to have found Barry.

She hadn’t said a word about it to Ruth either. Maybe she’d tell her at lunch. For now, Ruth was doing enough detective work for her with this “Zorro” stabbing. Ruth had remembered Jennifer Gilderhoff from Gillian’s creative writing class two years ago. “Wasn’t she the pretty one with big eyes and brown hair? Kind of irritating and ditzy?”

Nothing got past Ruth. She didn’t pull any punches either. It didn’t matter if Jennifer Gilderhoff was lying in a coma with multiple stab wounds. Ruth still recalled her as
“kind of irritating and ditzy,”
and she was right, of course.

“You’ll have to add a dash of charm and sweetness to this Detective Maggie Dare character you’re patterning after me; otherwise, people will hate her guts,” Ruth had advised. “I’m so damned tactless.”

But Gillian’s fictional Maggie Dare did fine without the sugarcoating. The Ruth-inspired character was introduced in Gillian’s third thriller,
For Everyone to See
. It was about a serial killer who liked to murder—the same way some people liked to make love—in public places. Detective Maggie Dare was hunting down a maniac who strangled women in elevators, restrooms, movie theaters, and department store changing rooms.
For Everyone to See
was Gillian’s bestselling book to date. Her agent, Eve, had suggested she bring back Maggie Dare for her most recent thriller. And so
Black Ribbons: A Maggie Dare Mystery
came about.

While Gillian showered, she took solace in knowing that right now, the woman who had inspired Maggie Dare was on the phone with her contacts in New York, finding out everything she could about this stabbing on Halloween night.

The pipes squeaked as Gillian turned off the water in the shower. She could hear someone who sounded like her agent saying good-bye on the answering machine. Then a
beep
signaled the end of the message. Grabbing a towel, Gillian quickly dried off, threw on her robe, and hurried into the living room to check the answering machine.

“Hi, Gill, it’s Eve. Maybe you’re working too hard on that outline. I didn’t send you any news story on a ‘Zorro Killer’ Are you talking about that poor woman who was stabbed in a taxi on Halloween night? I read about it in the newspaper a few days ago, but didn’t send you anything. Did you want me to?”