The Last Victim (33 page)

For now, for just the few moments until she got her stuff together, that was what she needed.

She was hot, so hot. Her blouse clung to her sweat-dampened skin. With one hand she brushed away little tendrils of hair that had escaped the knot at her nape and threatened to stick to her face.

How unprofessional would it be if she were to keel over in a dead faint?

Charlie concentrated on her breathing as the world continued to spin around her. When she felt like she might topple sideways off the cooler, she quit worrying about looking unprofessional, folded her arms on her knees and rested her head on them.

“You faint, there’s not much I can do.” Garland’s familiar drawling voice was unmistakable. “Me trying to catch you before you hit the dirt probably ain’t going to work out so well.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Charlie’s eyes popped open. Garland crouched beside her, his mouth twisted into the slightest of wry smiles, his eyes focused watchfully on her face. He had appeared out of nowhere, and for an instant, the tiniest sliver of time, she was intensely glad to see him. But even as she registered that she felt stronger and safer and, yes,
comforted
by his presence, she remembered what he was. A member of the same vicious, conscienceless, sub-human fraternity that had done this to Bayley Evans, to Holly, to countless others over countless years. Had she actually been starting to care about him? Had she really been worried that he might have been whisked away to a well-deserved hell? Charlie scourged him with a look, and turned her face away.

“Not over the whole hating-me-in-the-morning thing yet, hmm?”

That snapped her eyes open and brought her head back around in a hurry. Appalled, she stared at him.

“What are you talking about?” Conscious of the people all around her, she mouthed the words rather than spoke them.

His smile widened, turned mocking. “Forgot what I told you right before you took your nightie off for me?”

Charlie sucked in air. No, she hadn’t forgotten. She remembered it as vividly as if the scene were branded into her memory cells.

He’d said, “You’re going to hate me for this in the morning, you know,” and then kissed her mindless. Right before she’d taken off her nightgown.

Oh, God, it wasn’t a dream
.

As that horrified realization slammed home, she sat bolt upright. It was only as she saw the satisfied gleam in his eyes that she realized she’d forgotten all about being dizzy and sick.

Her lips thinned. Her eyes narrowed.

“You okay?” Tony loomed over her. Charlie hadn’t even realized that he was nearby. Garland’s eyes darkened, but that was all she noticed about his reaction because she jerked her gaze away from him and looked up at Tony instead.

Focused on the real, live, good guy with long-term potential versus the ghost of a murderous psychopath who just happened, through some strange cosmic alchemy that she was never going to understand, to turn her on to her back teeth.

At least the adrenaline rush from the shock of Garland’s revelation had knocked out most of her physical symptoms. Was that what he had intended? Or had he, as usual, just wanted to be as annoying as possible?

“A little the worse for the heat, maybe,” she said, prevaricating only slightly. Garland stood up to his full height beside her, looking at Tony as if he didn’t like him very much. Charlie ignored him. Where Garland was concerned, she was a mess, and this was not the time or place to start sorting out anything to do with their hell-born relationship. Not quite ready to trust her legs yet, she kept her seat on the cooler as she spoke to Tony. “Listen, I think we really need to concentrate on why the perpetrator does what he does. The dance—he is most likely re-enacting something that actually occurred in his past, a real dance, a girl who rejected him. She would have been blond and pretty, a popular girl, and they both would have been teenagers. Bayley, the other girls, are substitutes for the original blond teenager who hurt him. He’s abducting these girls to give himself a do-over, and when his victim doesn’t behave according to the script in his head, he beats her because what she is doing spoils the fantasy. Eventually the fantasy is irretrievably destroyed and that’s when he kills her.”

Tony said, “Unless it’s a copycat.”

“If it’s a copycat, and I believe it is, he’s re-creating the pattern set by the original killer. The motivation that set off the murders would remain the same.”

“So we’ll find our unsub at one of these dances.”

“So what are we going to do, stake out every single dance up and down the southern half of the Eastern Seaboard over the next few weeks?” Kaminsky’s question dripped sarcasm. She had arrived in time to hear Charlie’s assessment of the killer’s motivation. “Do you know how many dances we’re talking about? To begin with, we don’t have the manpower.”

“You need to go back and look at every bit of video footage you can find of any dances the three primary victims attended within a week of the attack on their families. The killer is there, interacting in some way with blond girls who fit the victim profile. He’s here today, watching,” Charlie said. “I’m sure of it.”

“So you keep your ass with the group, Doc,” Garland told her. “No more sitting on coolers off by your lonesome.”

Charlie didn’t even glance his way.

“We’ve been through the crowds,” Kaminsky said. “If he’s here, we’re missing him.”

“He’s here,” Charlie repeated with certainty.

“We need to cross-reference,” Tony said. “Kaminsky, when we get back—”

“I’m on it,” Kaminsky said before he could finish.

Crane joined them. “According to the victim’s body temperature, the ME estimates time of death at around four a.m.”

Charlie knew that after death the human body cooled by about one degree per hour. Of course, the heat of the sand would have complicated the calculation, but any competent ME would have taken that into account.

“She wasn’t killed here, which means that after four a.m. the unsub transported the body here. Then he had to bury it without anyone seeing him. It would have taken him at least half an hour to dig that hole, and he would have done it while it was still dark,” Tony said.

Kaminsky whipped out her iPhone and pressed a button. A moment later she had what she wanted. “The sun rose at five thirty-seven
this morning.” She looked at Tony. “Wherever he killed her had to have been within about a half an hour’s drive of here.”

“He not only had to bury the body before dawn, but he had to be near enough to get back here quickly when the body was discovered, without knowing precisely when that would be.” Charlie’s mind raced. “So he has some sort of a shelter within about half an hour’s drive, and I’m guessing that’s where he keeps the victims. Something in an RV park, maybe, or a campground. Something mobile.”

“I’ll have the local guys get a list of nearby facilities.” Tony picked up his cell phone and started texting.

“You want my two cents, I’d say he’s listening to a police radio or scanner,” Garland said.

Charlie looked at him, momentarily surprised that he’d even felt motivated to contribute, much less that the contribution had been useful. Then she remembered that she was the only one who could see or hear him, dragged her eyes away, and repeated the observation to the others.

Kaminsky frowned at her. “You saying you think it’s a cop?”

“Anybody can have a police scanner,” Tony reminded them. He had finished with his text, and Charlie presumed that local FBI agents were now scrambling to identify any RV parks or campgrounds in the vicinity, and check them out.

“He’s a narcissist. He’s watching what we’re doing right now. He’s been following the investigation through the media. It makes sense that he’d have a police scanner. He shows up whenever the bodies are discovered, and that’s how he knows.” Charlie was thinking aloud. “And so far nobody has noticed him. He
could
be a cop. Or a reporter.” She grimaced. “Or just an ambulance chaser. But whoever he is, he’s here, and he blends in.” Even as she spoke, she swept another look around. He
was
there, she could feel it, and yet she couldn’t spot him.

The knowledge was both frustrating and terrifying.

“We’re wasting time here. Let’s get going.” Tony held a hand down to Charlie. “Need some help?”

“He’s here,” she said one more time, scanning as much of the crowd as she could see. “Right here with us.”

“Since we don’t know who we’re looking for, the best thing we
can do is go back and compare today’s video with video from the dances.” The very reasonableness of Tony’s voice told Charlie that he was feeling the frustration of it, too. “Whoever is in all those places makes our suspect hit parade.”

It made sense, and Charlie knew it. Still, knowing the killer was there and not being able to identify him was a bitter pill that she was finding hard to swallow. Taking Tony’s hand, she let him pull her to her feet, then smiled her thanks at him. All the while, she was supremely conscious of Garland’s narrowed eyes on them. It was obvious he didn’t much like what he was seeing. Charlie was mad at herself because she even noticed.

What do I care what he thinks anyway?

Answer: I don’t. This is not a relationship, and he is not a man. And even if he were a man this wouldn’t be a relationship
.

They were moving away toward the parking lot when Charlie glanced around again and saw that the coroner’s assistants were pushing the gurney with Bayley Evans’ body on it toward the van. The procession was almost abreast of them. Nobody had yet covered the girl with a sheet.

Charlie knew this because she looked. It was automatic, instinctive, and a mistake. Her heart lurched. Her chest tightened and her throat ached.

“Jesus,” Garland muttered. Charlie realized that he was beside her and staring at Bayley Evans’ body, too. Serial killers did not have the right to look sickened at another serial killer’s atrocity, she thought with a sudden burst of fury, and shot him a look of loathing.

“What?” He caught her look. It took him only a second to correctly interpret it. His face tightened. “You really think I’d do something like that to a woman?”

Charlie didn’t answer. There were too many people around.

But if she had answered, the only thing she could have said was
Yes
.

Because there was no way she was foolish enough to let her heart override what she knew.

Sometime before they reached the SUV, she realized that Garland had disappeared.

On the way back to Kill Devil Hills, everybody was out of sorts
and snappy, Charlie included. The local FBI called back: two campgrounds and an RV park existed near Jockey’s Ridge, but a search had yielded nothing suspicious. After that, nobody felt like eating; Crane ordered a pizza anyway. While he and Kaminsky went into the house to wait for the delivery person to arrive, Charlie reluctantly told Tony that she needed to go back to the Meads’ for just a minute. It was after ten p.m., they were all exhausted, disheartened, and weighed down with failure and sorrow for Bayley Evans, but there was something she needed to do and she wasn’t about to go out in the dark alone. Tony gave her a long look, but didn’t ask questions, which was one of the things she truly liked about him. Instead, he escorted her over to the Meads’ house.

This time, one of the two cops in the car out front had a key. She’d already told Tony that she needed to go upstairs alone, so he waited in the living room with the officers while she trudged up the stairs.

Now that there was no more need for Julie Mead to cling to earth, Charlie meant to help her go home.

However, when she reached the master bedroom, Julie Mead was not there. Charlie called her, softly, but got no answer. She also didn’t feel the least bit sick to her stomach, which was what finally convinced her that the spirit was truly gone.

A glance in Trevor’s bedroom told her that it was empty, too. What Garland had said he’d seen—Trevor’s father coming for him—apparently was true.

Not that she didn’t trust Garland’s word, but for Trevor’s sake she’d wanted to make sure.

I hope Bayley and her family are all together somewhere
.

The deep sadness she felt for them was oppressive. Her heart ached. And the worst part about it was, this dubious gift she had been given hadn’t changed a thing.

“So when were you planning to tell me that you’ve got some psychic ability?” As Tony escorted her back over the boardwalk between the two houses, he asked the question in such a casual tone, it took Charlie a second to process what he was saying.

Then she stopped dead, which meant he had to stop walking, too. He was beside her, and her hand was tucked companionably into his elbow. They were close enough so that when she looked sharply up at
him, she should have been able to read his expression. But it was very dark, with the moon and stars almost completely obscured by a bank of heavy black clouds that had blown in over the last hour. The air smelled of rain to come, and the crash of the waves hitting the shore promised a storm.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, because his face was deep in shadow.

But all of a sudden she knew where that question had come from, and she pulled her hand free of his arm.

“You got that from the background check, right?” She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it earlier: of course that’s why he’d never really questioned how she knew what she knew.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you ask me about it before?”

“I was waiting for you to tell me.”

“What, that I see dead people?” Angry, she resumed walking toward the house.

He fell in beside her. “Do you?”

She jerked a look up at him. “Yes. Sometimes. Not that it ever does anybody any good.”

He caught her arm, pulled her to a stop. “It’s not your fault we weren’t able to save Bayley Evans.”

She gave a bitter little laugh. “Isn’t it?”

“No.”

Then, to Charlie’s surprise, he bent his head and kissed her. It was a hard kiss, thorough, plenty of tongue. After the first moment of shock, she slid her hand behind his head and kissed him back. Her body reacted with a tingling warmth that told her there absolutely was promise in there somewhere.