Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel) (28 page)

"It's the strangest thing, actually. My son, Aaron, came home from a friend's house Saturday morning after a sleep over and said he'd seen the girl from the mall on TV. He asked me if she was famous.

"I hardly even remembered who he was talking about. But ten-year-old boys are just starting to notice little girls, and I think Aaron thought she was cute." She paused as she thought again that the little girl was dead. Elizabeth had been the last person to see the girl alive. Smoothing her pant leg, she shook her head.

"Ms. Weisman. Are you all right?"

Blinking hard, she nodded. "I just—I can't believe it. I was standing with that little girl. She didn't cry or scream. I had no idea. I keep thinking back to her face, to try to remember if there were any signs, but she didn't look upset or anything."

"Was it like she knew him?"

Elizabeth frowned, thinking. "No, it wasn't like that. It was like she had gotten in trouble. She looked ashamed."

The inspector wrote something on his notepad.

"I just can't believe I didn't realize anything was wrong. All weekend I've thought about it. Why didn't I ask?" She touched Emily's curls and felt on the edge of tears.

"You couldn't have known, Ms. Weisman."

She looked at the inspector, wondering if he meant it.

"It's not your fault."

"But to think he was right there. So close to my children. He actually touched Emily, told me how beautiful she was." Elizabeth felt herself choking.

The inspector stood and brought her a cup of water from a dispenser outside his door.

"Thank you." With a sip, she set it on the edge of the desk and commanded herself to gain control. She wiped her hand on her pant leg again and then tucked a tiny curly lock of Emily's hair behind her ear. "I've told Aaron a thousand times to scream at the top of his lungs if someone tries to take him, even if it's someone who says they know us."

"It's very important to teach your children safe habits."

Elizabeth nodded, kissing Emily's head. Emily was too young still. She had always wished the children were closer in age, but suddenly, she was glad Aaron would be old enough to watch out for his sister by the time she was five or six.

She blinked and tried to focus. "Aaron said he'd seen her on TV. I told him it was probably just a girl who looked like her, but he insisted. Well, I didn't argue. I didn't know who the girl was, but she looked normal enough to me.

"The next morning, Aaron points to the cover of the paper. 'See, Mom. She's famous.'" Elizabeth pressed her hand to her chest, remembering the way she'd felt when she read the headline. "Child Slayings Terrorize San Francisco Area Malls."

"I nearly died when I saw. I must've read the article ten times."

"Can you tell me more about him?"

She nodded. "He was tall with straight sandy-blond hair; pretty nice-looking. He sounded like my cousins."

"Your cousins?"

"My mother was from Indiana. People say Midwesterners don't have accents, but I disagree. I can always tell someone from Indiana."

"And this guy sounded like he was from Indiana?"

She nodded, hesitant. "He sounded like it."

The inspector made a note. "What else?"

"He was wearing a uniform."

The inspector leaned forward and asked, "What kind of uniform?"

She nodded, thinking. "Aaron called him a policeman, but I think it was a security outfit—navy with an emblem—" She squeezed her eyes and tried to picture it. "I want to say it looked like an eagle." What did she know about eagles? "It was some sort of bird, anyway."

The inspector made another note, and Elizabeth glanced at the page. It was much too far away for her to read what he'd written. Maybe she was wasting his time. She shifted Emily's weight to the other side, her arm sore from holding her daughter in place.

"This is very helpful, Ms. Weisman."

She pushed the stray hairs off her face and nodded.

"Can you tell me anything more about the uniform?"

Emily started to fuss, and Elizabeth bobbed her up and down, hoping she would settle down again. "I remember his badge said 'Obsgarten.' "

"Can you spell that?"

Emily began to cry. Bucking her head backward, Emily almost smashed Elizabeth in the chin as she fought to break free. Frustrated, Elizabeth let her down. Emily began to crawl around the room, and Elizabeth could sense the inspector watching her daughter as he spoke.

"The spelling of the name?"

"O-B-S-G-A-R-T-E-N." Elizabeth watched as Emily tottered along the edge of a bookshelf and then moved back toward her. "Obsgarten is my maiden name, and it's very uncommon. I remember commenting on it. Now that I think about it, he pronounced the name strangely."

"How so?"

"He said it,
Aub
-sgarten. Everyone in my family says, O-bsgarten. It isn't a big difference, but I hadn't ever heard it pronounced that way."

"If I showed you pictures of some uniforms, do you think you would recognize the one he was wearing?"

"I think so."

One of the officers sat with Emily, encouraging her to draw with a series of highlighters as Elizabeth looked through the third book of uniforms. Emily started to fuss again, and Elizabeth was ready to give up on the uniform search anyway. It had taken a half hour to do the police sketch, and she'd been looking through the books of uniforms for at least another hour. It was already after noon, and she had to get home before Aaron got out of school.

She turned the page, and there it was. "Here," she said, as relieved to be finished as she was to have found it.

The inspector stood and peered over her shoulder.

"That's an eagle, isn't it?" she asked.

"Looks like an eagle to me."

"Sterling Security," she said. "Never heard of them."

The inspector shook his head. "Me, neither." He took the book from her lap and set it on the desk. "Thank you very much for coming in, Ms. Weisman. I know it's a long way out of your way."

"You think you'll find him?"

The inspector nodded. "I'm set on it."

She exhaled. "Thank goodness." She hadn't slept in two nights, picturing his face. He had been so normal-looking—not at all the monster she wanted to imagine. She had almost thought he was attractive. It made her sick to think about it.

When she was growing up, killers were evil, slobbering monsters. Now they were handsome men in uniforms. She picked up her daughter and looked at her innocent brown eyes. It could have been her in that mall—or Aaron.

How did a mother teach her children to beware of such evil when the man didn't look so different from their own daddy?

Chapter 25

For the third day in a row, Casey awoke at the foot of Billy's bed. The only time she'd left was to take a cab ride to each of the body dump sites. She'd hoped to learn something more about Leonardo from the location of the bodies. Instead, the evidence of the cases had already been erased by the crime scene team as well as the effects of the weather, animals, and other people. Even when she was in the hospital with Billy, she still couldn't push the case from her mind. In sleep, she dreamt about it.

In her dreams, she was tied down, flat on her back, and Leonardo stood above her, talking about his crimes, his scalpel poised in the air. Each time she'd tried to get him to reveal a little more about himself, but he grew quickly bored and lowered the knife to her skin. As soon as he made the first incision, she awoke the same way, sweating and close to tears. But each clue, each new idea, made her feel she was further from catching him.

The crick in her neck shot a sharp pain up her spine as she shifted in the small chair in the corner of Billy's hospital room. Standing, she looked at the beeping machinery around him. He lay silent, seemingly in a deep sleep. Casey wondered how she had even been able to doze with the beeps and clicks of the machines in the room. Exhaustion had won, it seemed. She chastised herself for sleeping, though. She should have been awake, watching over Billy.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, she pushed the hair off his face, sweeping it with fingers that worked only because of him. "I'm using my hands," she said, pausing to touch his flushed cheek.

"You always told me that the exercises wouldn't do a thing unless I started trying to do normal things." She paused, waiting, hoping he would respond. "I had no idea you were sick, Billy. All this time you took care of me. I wasn't even paying attention to how you were doing." She paused and kissed his cheek. "I let you down."

"He wouldn't agree."

Casey jumped from the bed and spun around.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you." Kevin stood at the door, a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers in his arms. He wore a pair of khaki shorts and a navy polo shirt.

Casey shook her head, her palm pressed to her chest. "I just didn't expect anyone." She felt the same tightness in her belly and forced it away. There would be no palm reading today. She looked at the flowers Kevin had brought and smiled. "Beautiful flowers. Billy loves sunflowers."

"I know. He gave me some when we first met." He paused and looked around the room. "I've been by every day," he said, perhaps to explain or maybe just to fill the empty air. "This is the first day I've gotten the okay to see him." He set the flowers down on the windowsill. "I guess it was family only until he stabilized."

Casey turned her attention back to Billy, thinking of the way she'd been treated the first night. She wasn't family—how ridiculous. Billy refused even to speak about his family. They were from somewhere in Ohio, and that was all she knew. She thought briefly of calling them and then dismissed it. They didn't deserve to hear from him. She glanced back at Kevin but couldn't find anything to say. Instead, her mind drifted back to Leonardo. She glanced at Kevin's feet. She'd become so accustomed to her suspicions that she couldn't shut them off.

"It sounded like he was doing better. Has he been awake at all?" Kevin asked.

She shook her head.

"I remember when my first friend died—out in Arizona. They wouldn't let us in to see him. He'd even asked for us. It was terrible. Things are at least better here."

As he spoke, she recorded his voice in her mind, playing it against her memories. The longer he spoke, the more nervous she felt. She shook her head—the voice was too high, too feminine. She rubbed her eyes. Let it go, she told herself. She'd had too little sleep the past few days. She knew she couldn't function this way. It had started to get to her. Her best friend was in the hospital, and she wasn't even thinking about him. Billy was more important. She turned to Kevin, forcing herself to be polite for Billy. "How long have you been out here?"

"Eight years," Kevin said.

"You grew up in Arizona?"

"Minneapolis actually—just outside. We moved to Arizona when I was seventeen. My folks are still there."

Casey made mental notes, waiting for something to fall out of place, for some clue that something wasn't right. When she'd found out Billy was in the hospital, she'd wanted to blame Kevin for his illness, to think he was somehow involved. It all came back to Leonardo. Why couldn't she put him aside? When would it end?

When she caught Leonardo. That's when it would end.

She sank down on Billy's bed and stared at the white walls, trying to think of something to say. She took Billy's hand and squeezed it. "Billy told me you're a tax accountant."

Kevin smiled. "I feel like a kid on a first date."

Casey nodded, knowing she was grilling him. "It's more like a second date, but I wasn't very good company the first time." She paused. "I just realized I don't know much about you."

"I'm a tax accountant. I work for a firm called Armstrong in the city."

"You do personal taxes?"

"The firm does some of everything. I do more estate planning, but we have a personal income tax area."

His responses seemed natural, easy. Even knowing it was stupid, she still found herself wanting to push the inquiry one level deeper—was she positive it wasn't his voice? "Do you have a card? I might look at having someone do my taxes this year. I hate all the forms."