The Watcher (13 page)

She’d promised him the truth, but she hadn’t told him about the other three cases outside California that she’d already linked to this one. Today, she decided, she’d tell him today about the first two cases. She fiddled with her pen, turning it end over end as she stared at the wall. But not the other case, not the personal one. The truth was still a raw wound after all these years. How could she open herself up to that again?

She couldn’t. Not yet.

Surely the other two cases would be enough to show good faith. She’d give full disclosure on those two. They could nail this bastard with what they had. They didn’t need the case that still terrorized her dreams and haunted her waking hours.

She looked down at the hand holding the pen and noted the faint trembling.

Chapter Thirteen

The department was surprisingly up-to-date in its linkage of their computer files to VICAP. The program connected victims to serial murderers throughout the nation. In addition to these files, Kate searched birth, death, and marriage records, deeds of property sales and transfers. By late Thursday afternoon, she was beginning to feel the search was a waste of time.

Slater had left the office early this morning, explaining he and Bauer had regular county business. The routine of the department had to continue. In fact, Kate was glad they’d gone so she could analyze the data in peace. She’d never minded the tedious part of investigation, and Slater had a way of distracting her.

She turned back to her computer. Her search of CODIS and AFIS yielded no matches to the Johnston or Stuckey cases. Either no trace evidence, fingerprints, or DNA had been reported, or the crimes were cold cases that predated database coordination. Most likely the latter. The top level of the CODIS hierarchy hadn’t existed before 1994, so the homicides committed by her UNSUB prior to that date wouldn’t be in the system. Which was precisely why she hand-searched the cases.

So far she’d found no matches, but she wasn’t surprised. The success of CODIS depended on hundreds of local police entering a great number of DNA profiles in the forensic and offender indices. Unfortunately, small jurisdictions were notoriously backlogged in data entries. While Bigler County was current, most departments weren’t, and paperwork always took a backseat to active cases.

She reminded herself that any future crimes committed by their UNSUB, even those not involving a felony, might yield evidence that could be linked to the other murders. The Preston crime scene evidence, stored in the Franklin County seat at Pocatello, Idaho, contained some degraded blood and samples. With new technology, she hoped those degraded samples might match trace found at the Stuckey or Johnston crime scenes.

She’d just finished the Bigler County records and started installing her self-generated computer program on her office desktop when Slater poked his head in the door.

“So, what do you think?” he asked.

“About what?”

“You weren’t listening, were you?”

“You just got here. Am I a mind reader?”

“That’s a dangerous prospect. How about dinner tonight?”

Kate’s mind reeled at the unexpected offer. What was Slater up to? She held both hands out, palms upward, as if weighing the options. “Let’s see. Maintaining a professional relationship with my boss.” She dipped the left hand down. “Or going to dinner.” She dipped the right hand down and added, “
With
my boss. What a choice. Probably not a good idea.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“I didn’t say
that.”

“Myers, you don’t say much of anything.” He gave a lazy smile showing white teeth and long lines around his mouth that looked like giant dimples. “That’s what’s interesting.”

Kate felt blood creep up her neck, warming her face beneath her tan. Damn it all, why did he have to complicate everything? “Interesting,” she scoffed, sliding out from under the compliment.

“You know what I mean. Most women do.” A shadow clouded his eyes for a moment.

“And you’ve had lots of experience,” she muttered sarcastically.

“Some.”

“I’ll think about dinner after I’ve known you better, Detective Slater.” She sounded prissy even to herself.

She brushed by him to cross the bullpen and fill up her coffee cup. Without looking back, she knew that his eyes followed her across the room. She’d tell him soon about the other cases. If he stopped annoying her long enough.

#

Slater was thinking about Kate Myers’ secrets when they got the 911 call from Placer Hills High School, several hours after the students finished classes for the day.

Sheriff Marconi lumbered in from across the hall. “Something’s going down at the high school,” he announced to Slater. “Get the doc a vest outta the armory. We need a negotiator.”

Nestled at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, the school enrolled only 950 students, most from privileged homes. These children lived in gated communities like Granite Pointe on sprawling estates that sported swimming pools, tennis courts, guest houses, and beautiful vistas. These students of privilege were not used to being intimidated, but when three masked and armed teenagers from Foothill Heights, thirty miles to the southwest, stormed the school, the students felt vulnerable and unprotected for the first time in their lives. The few high school students left on campus were working on the Homecoming float. And they were scared shitless.

Slater explained these facts to his team as they assembled fifty yards from where Special Enforcements had set up a perimeter. The mayor, feeling the combined pressure of numerous influential parents, persuaded the Sheriff to pull out all the stops. This was the second disaster in as many weeks and no one wanted the kids traumatized more.

Slater got a full appreciation of Myers’ skills as a psychiatrist and negotiator at the scene. Her profile of teenage offenders who used armed violence in the high school setting was invaluable. Clearly she knew her stuff. She spoke in low, calm tones to the teenagers over the bullhorn, eventually getting them to give up their hostages and walk out of the building without their weapons.

Evidently Myers was more than a pretty face.

No one got hurt and everybody except the masked intruders was happy with the outcome. Within four hours of the dispatcher’s call – a record time in Slater’s mind – the gunmen were unmasked, unarmed, and arrested. Without their hardware and camouflage, they were no more than scrawny teenagers, sniveling for their mothers.

Afterward, when Slater’s team was off-duty and still high on adrenalin, they celebrated their success at Rusty’s, the out-of-the-way cop’s bar and restaurant off Highway 49. The owner, whose name was actually Joe Spadini—his wife was Rusty—greeted the team with free beers and the best seats in the restaurant.

Slater figured they all could use the break.

After they’d ordered from the limited menu, Bauer began a scene-by-scene recount of the day’s takedown. Others interrupted at intervals with details and gallows humor. Even though a maniac had recently committed a horrible murder in their county, today was a success.

Chalk up one for the good guys, Slater thought, observing Myers at the end of the table where she sat with flushed cheeks. Not all business and secrets now, he reflected, leaning back and watching the play of emotions run across her face. As she glanced his way, he felt a jolt across the scarred table.

The unmistakable current that sparked between them – elemental and almost primitive – tempted him before he forced his common sense to take over. Kate Myers was under his command and she was outright lying to him. He intended to find out why. Right now he could be objective about her, but if he allowed it, he suspected she was a woman who could breach the wall he’d built around himself and break his heart.

As he watched Myers drinking and smiling with the team members, Sanderson looming beside her, Bauer on her other side, it seemed to Slater that all week had led to this single moment when he felt that attraction. The only question was would they act on it? An emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time tightened his stomach muscles.

By the early hours of Friday morning, everyone had left and Rusty’s was deserted except for Myers and Slater. Spadini mopped up the bar and lined the liquor bottles beneath the mirrored splashboard.

“It looks like we’ve closed down the bar.” Myers grinned at him in the dimly lighted room.

“Let’s get out of here,” he growled.

Slater wasn’t much of a drinker, but he knew both of them were tipsy. He called a cab, intending to drop her off and go home to nurse the massive headache he felt coming on.

His first mistake was walking Myers to the door of her downstairs unit on Cirby Way, a duplex so newly built that the lawn consisted of hard, packed dirt. His second mistake was noticing how appealing she looked standing there backlit by the yellow glow from the porch light. His third was fixing his eyes on her mouth.

Her hair fell in messy tangles from the tight knot she’d worn at the start of the day. Dampness at her forehead and temples curled into small golden wisps. He lifted his fingers to brush aside the damp strands, and she surprised him by covering his hand with her own. Her fingers twined in pale contrast around his dark skin. He stared at her face as she pressed the cool tips of her fingers across the calluses of his palms.

One second stretched into a long minute until the cab driver honked and yelled from his window. “Hey buddy, meter’s running.”

Myer’s eyes, huge dark pools in the dim light, never faltered. She wet her lips, but he couldn’t decide if the movement was nervousness or invitation.

His heart pounded like a randy teenager’s until the clearer side of his brain brought him to earth again. “Kate, I have to leave.”

It was the first time he’d called her anything but “Doc” or “Myers,” and a warning clanged in his brain. Keep it impersonal, professional, he reminded himself. No woman was worth destroying a second career like Julie had destroyed the first one.

Trouble was, he was a starving man. He’d been with other women in the last few years. Hell, he was no monk, but he’d kept everything casual. He wasn’t ready to trust a woman he’d known less than a week. A woman who kept secrets from him—who still kept secrets—about a vicious murder, couldn’t be trusted at all. “God, Kate,” he whispered against all common sense.

A smile hovered in her eyes while he touched his mouth to her lips, using his tongue to spread them. She twined her arms round his torso and ran her hands up the muscles of his back. He trailed kisses down her neck and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, fingering the white lace that edged her bra, knuckling the smooth curve of her breast.

At the very moment he felt her succumb, felt her melt into him, invite him into the secrets of her body, he pulled back. “Myers,” he groaned, holding her at arms’ distance and shaking his head. “I’ve got to go.”

She jerked her eyes open, panting softly, looking embarrassed and frustrated.

“It’s late and we’re both a little drunk,” he muttered.

She nodded, breathless. “Right, and tomorrow’s a work day. Goodnight, Slater.” She turned quickly and entered the apartment before he could say another word.

The distance back to the cab was slow and tortured. Shit, he’d made a blunder of that, but something about Kate Myers got him tied up in knots.

Chapter Fourteen

Where the hell was she?

The watcher checked the time again. He’d seen other kids trail out of the gymnasium one by one, but the girl wasn’t among them. He shifted in the driver’s seat to ease his cramped legs. The school bell had rung fifteen minutes ago and he took a risk by parking too long near the spanking new high school.

You never knew when someone might notice you even though he’d deliberately created his persona like a poster child for the ordinary, an artist brushing the canvas with mediocrity. He’d never stand out in a crowd.

It was ironic, or
ironical
as his grandfather used to say, that he’d been so noticeable during his youth, but now he simply faded into the background. A portrait of a middle-aged man, slight and sandy-haired.

His anonymity protected his identity. Most people looked at him and saw a very plain person. Or looked through him and saw nothing at all.

Nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all.

He froze in his seat, stared out into the gray afternoon sky like a deer in headlights, while a flash of memory clouded his mind.

A girl. No, two girls, maybe three of them, glancing his way. Him, thirteen and awkward, ready to lift a hand in greeting. And then their eyes, sliding off, around,
through
him as they brushed carelessly past.

The perfect little bitches pretended he didn’t exist. He was nothing, a zero, a cipher. Later, it was worse. They’d stared at him with merciless eyes and tight, hard smiles, and he knew that his very existence was grotesque to them.

He began to understand what was so different about his body that caused Frances Daridour and Hilary Gates and Paige Turner to cover their pretty pink mouths with their pink-polished fingernails. And giggle when they heard the squeaky voice that deepened like a fog horn without warning. Stare at the light shadow of hair over his upper lip. Gawk at his freakish body, at his rounded chest and narrow hips and that thing that wasn’t supposed to be down there, but kept poking out of the folds beneath his belly button.