The Stranger You Seek (20 page)

Diane was smiling down at me. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked her.

“Not when my best friend is in a car wreck. Margaret’s fine with it. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been dipped in shit and rolled in cornflakes.”

Everyone laughed except my mother, who slapped my father’s arm
and scolded, “My Lord, Howard, do you see what you’ve taught your children?”

“Jimmy doesn’t talk like that, Mother. Just me,” I said.

“Yes, but Jimmy’s
gay
,” Mother cried, and, inexplicably, hit my father again.

My convalescing came abruptly to an end two days later. Having found nothing more in my condition to cause concern, Piedmont Hospital was kicking me out. Weary of daytime television and Jell-O, I had decided to leave peacefully.

I was moving slowly, packing the few things I had into a small roll-on. My head ached, and the bite on my shoulder from the yappy accountant still burned. I slipped into the shorts, black sleeveless V-neck, and sandals that Rauser had thoughtfully retrieved from my apartment along with a few essentials—notebook, pens, toothpaste, hairbrush, underwear, and tampons. I hadn’t asked for the tampons, but Rauser assumed, as he always did, that when I appeared grumpy, I needed tampons. I decided to present him with a box of his very own the next time he so much as raised an eyebrow at me.

I brushed my teeth and looked in the mirror at the scrapes and bruises on my forehead, chin, cheeks, and arms. Had I rubbed elbows with the killer that night at the airport? Had I made eye contact, maybe even smiled at him?

I had been reading the Wishbone letters obsessively and I was more convinced than ever that the next murder would come soon. The killer was in a ramped-up state, writing, taunting, feeling invincible. And because I had appeared at a crime scene with Rauser, because I had been hired to help explain the killer, he was trying to pull me in too. He wanted to show me, and everyone, that we weren’t so smart after all.

Neil had delivered background files on Anne Chambers, Bob Shelby, Elicia Richardson, Lei Koto, David Brooks, and William LaBrecque. Six victims now that we could name. Six victims! Six human beings slaughtered to satisfy a psychopath’s appetite for blood. It made my heart ache. Reading the files, I trolled the information we had to piece together psychological sketches and risk assessments based on each victim’s lifestyle—friends, social gatherings, professional life, habits, even illnesses. Notes on three-by-five cards clung to the hospital wall with pieces of blue painter’s tape someone on the hospital housekeeping staff had turned up for me.

APD was not able to determine if I’d been followed from the airport the night the wheel came off my car and took off without me across the interstate. By the time the first officer arrived, followed minutes later by Rauser, it was all over. A civilian had seen the accident and pulled over to help me. The police, knowing they were there to intercept whoever might be following and intending me harm, assumed the worst when they found a man opening my car door. They forced the good samaritan to the ground on his stomach, cuffed him, and hauled him into the station, where he was questioned so thoroughly and for so long we are all certain he will never again commit a good deed. He said he saw the Impala swerve without warning and run off the road into the bridge railing. No one else had stopped, he swore, although several cars had shot by, not even slowing. He might have saved my life that night by stopping. I would probably never know, but I imagined the killer driving past the scene, disappointed by the presence of a do-gooder he hadn’t counted on.

The crime lab concluded that my left front wheel had been tampered with. Not surprisingly, they hadn’t found any physical evidence beyond the marks that suggested tampering with a tool that wasn’t made to fit the nuts on my wheel. No DNA. No prints.

We knew now that while the hourly parking decks at the airport are under constant surveillance, the long-term parking decks have cameras placed only in strategic areas—the entrance, the exit, the elevator and stairs. Cameras at the entrances and exits are pointed in two directions—at the driver and down, to record the rear of the vehicle and plate numbers. All those tapes would be carefully examined. However, there were dozens of other ways to get into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson. MARTA trains ran directly into the airport, and of course there were taxicabs and shuttle buses.

We were hopeful about something else, though. Inside, the Hartsfield-Jackson terminals are like a Vegas casino, Rauser said. No place to hide. The tapes from several cameras and locations inside and out of the airport were at APD, and Rauser had a couple of cops going over them, following my route from the gate to the exit, studying the crowds milling around me. Anything of interest would come to Rauser’s attention.

I was beginning to think about the piles of mail that would be waiting at my office and the voice messages. I still had not even delivered the
tapes I’d confiscated from Roy Echeverria in Denver to the rightful owners. I so did not want to do that looking like I’d been in an automobile accident. Bribing Neil into tucking in his shirttail and delivering the tapes seemed like a good idea. Old-fashioned chocolate cake from Southern Sweets usually broke him down.

“Hey, you,” Rauser said from behind me. I spun away from the notes on my hospital room wall. “Let’s sit down and talk for a minute before I take you home, okay?”

Uh-oh
. Nowhere in my memory had Rauser ever uttered those words. He was standing in the door looking massively serious. “So you know what the political climate’s like here, right? These cases are attracting a lot of attention and everybody’s upset and worried.”

“About me?” I asked, and felt myself sinking. I’d always felt a little outside the circle anyway. It didn’t take much to make me feel even more outside. It suddenly occurred to me perhaps that’s why I’d agreed to get involved at all—my own insecurities. Was I trying to patch up my own ego, prove at last to myself and everyone else that I wasn’t really the fraud I felt like deep down? “This is what the chief wanted to see you about?”

“Here’s the thing,” Rauser said. “Television journalist over at Channel Eleven got some background on you. Personnel records from the FBI, information about the rehab center you checked in to.”

Oh boy!

“File just showed up on the reporter’s car,” Rauser said. “It was enough to make them start digging.”

“What do you mean
just showed up
? Who made it show up? Those records are confidential.”

Rauser was silent for a few seconds and I knew there must be more. “Listen, Keye, Channel Eleven put together this, well, this goddamn report about the investigation and the individuals involved. They got an on-camera interview with Dan. He talked about your marriage and your drinking.”

“Dan?” I repeated, and the fiery hot sting of betrayal burned my eyes.

“If it helps at all, it’s not just you they’re slicing up,” Rauser said. “I look like a goddamned idiot. Channel Eleven was decent enough to send us a preview so we’d have time to patch together a response before the shit hits the fan. I gotta tell you that what I saw isn’t good. The chief’s
pretty hot about it.” He poked at my pillow with his fingers. “We need you to not have a visible presence at all, but I could still use your advice … unofficially.”

I was silent, sensing another shoe was about to drop.

“The chief hired Jacob Dobbs to be the public face of the task force.” Rauser waited, just letting that hang in the air. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. “He the one you told me about at the Bureau?”

“Yes. He’s the one.” I made a quick sweep of the room to be sure I had all my things.

A woman in pink scrubs bustled through the door with white roses, a couple dozen of them, long-legged and stunning against dark green foliage. “I’m so glad I caught you,” she exclaimed, in the high sunshiny voice that volunteers use on the sick and injured. She looked like a blonde cupcake with pink icing. “Aren’t these gorgeous? Somebody must love you.”

She set them on the table, beamed at Rauser and me. When neither of us smiled, her smile fizzled and she left the room. I felt like I’d just kicked a puppy. “What exactly does
no visible presence
mean?” I asked Rauser, and plucked the card from the center of the roses. “And
unofficially
—what does that mean, Rauser? Because you needing my unofficial advice sounds to me like I just stopped getting
officially
paid.” I tore open the envelope, getting a nasty paper cut for my efforts.

“Now just hang on.” Rauser held up both palms. It was the only calming signal he seemed to know—palms up, body moving slowly backward as if he’d accidentally cornered a coyote.

A gift certificate from Goodyear tumbled out of the card. It was for a tire rotation and inspection. I sighed. I fully expected to see my father’s scrawl for a signature, but I was wrong.

R
auser and I barely spoke on the drive home. I was trying to shake off the news he’d flattened me with at the hospital—the investigative report, my ex-husband’s TV interview, Jacob Dobbs being hired to replace me now that I’d been
officially
removed from the case. Or was it unofficially? The two dozen white roses with the familiar
W
signature on the creepy card was the icing on the shittiest cake ever made.

My phone rang. Rauser kept his eyes on the road. “Guess what I got?” Diane asked me. “Reservations at Bacchanalia. We’re overdue for a good, dirty gossip.”

Bacchanalia is a five-star restaurant near 14th on the outskirts of Midtown and so far over my budget I need to stand on tiptoes, but Diane and I pool our funds and treat ourselves once a month, regardless.

I looked in the mirror at my cuts and bruises. “I still look awful.”

“Perfect.” Diane laughed. “I’ll pretend I’m your abusive lover.”

A couple of hours later, we sat down to the white linen tablecloths and low lights at Bacchanalia, which is great for catching up but does nothing to disguise the sucking sound created by the arrival of the check and the departure of our disposable income. And it’s worth every penny. One bite tells you the chef is in love with her craft. The menu is big and bold, seasonal and local, and the meals are four courses.

Diane ordered arugula salad, cured Virginia flounder with watermelon relish, ricotta cavatelli, and asparagus cake with lemon gelato. I started
with the potato gnocchi, because when it comes to bad carbs, I like doubling up, and moved on to grilled snapper, a salad with Pecorino Romano, fava beans, and young fennel, and a blood orange soufflé for dessert—exactly what I wanted after fake eggs for breakfast, fake potatoes at dinner, and all the Jell-O I could hold at the hospital. I was starved.

A white-coated member of the waitstaff delivered a warm loaf of rosemary bread and sliced it at our table. Diane ordered an elderflower cosmopolitan for herself and coffee for me.

She listened intently as I told her about my feeling of being followed, about how I really wrecked my car, about the white roses, about how some TV muckraker was about to splatter my tattered record and disemboweled marriage all over Atlanta’s TV screens. Her drink came and she sipped it, blue eyes steady on me. She was wearing a wrapped linen jacket cinched at the waist with a black pencil skirt and patent pumps with ankle straps. Diane had never minded getting a little attention. And she was dressed for it tonight. Her blonde hair was short and tucked behind her ears, with little wispy sideburns.

“Do you feel safe?” she asked when I’d finished.

That’s why I loved Diane. Since we’d met at age six, she worried about me. I ran my knife over a mound of softened butter and spread it over the warm, scented bread. “I know this may sound strange, but I don’t think he really wants to hurt me. I think he just wants to scare me away.”

Our starters arrived and we dug in. The gnocchi was heaven.

“So enough about me,” I said.

Diane laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s
always
about you.” She drained her drink and signaled the waiter for another.

“So? Tell me about the new guy,” I demanded.

“It’s fantastic so far. Notice I have to qualify it? God knows it’s been forever.”

I chuckled. “Um, I think it was only like six weeks ago you dumped Brad.”

“Blake,” Diane corrected cheerfully. “What was that about anyway? He was so grungy.”

I nodded my agreement. “It was a look.”

“Great kisser, though.”

“You look fabulous, by the way. Is that Armani? You get a raise or something?”

Diane broke out her big white smile. “There’s more where this came from. We spent a whole day shopping last weekend.”

“He took you shopping? Wow. That’s so … so Richard Gere in
Pretty Woman
, isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on, Keye. Let me enjoy this, okay? I think it’s sweet.”

The waiter delivered Diane’s second elderflower cosmo in a wide martini glass. It had a lovely lavender tint and a thin layer of ice on the top. I could smell it. Diane held up her glass. “I drink for those who can’t,” she told me. “Cheers.”

“So selfless.” I smiled.

“This one’s different, Keye. It feels like the big one.”

Diane believed fully in love, believed everyone had a soul mate, a perfect match—the big one. I had believed it once too, but that was a long time ago.

“Tell me everything. Name, rank, serial—”

“Good evening, Dr. Street.”

“Jacob!” I dropped my fork. I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d hit my thumb with a hammer.

“Pardon the intrusion, but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.” Jacob Dobbs stood at our table, looked at Diane. “My, aren’t
you
lovely.” He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit with strong shoulders to project the power he so enjoyed. Dobbs was fair-skinned with light eyes. He looked like he’d just shaved. I could smell his cologne.

Diane smiled and extended a hand to shake Jacob’s. Instead, he bent forward and kissed the top of her hand. Diane’s fair skin reddened.