The Last Victim (21 page)

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.