“If you get no answer when you call up, I will've fallen asleep,” Jessica warned.
“Shower and you'll be refreshed,” he reminded her. “If I get no answer, I'll pound on your door.”
“Pushy man.” Jessica left him for the registration desk, acquired her key and made her way to the elevator. She felt a certain relief in watching the passionate and sure of himself young agent disappear through the revolving doors toward his waiting car. He was an exhausting man to be around for one thing, and for another, she had gotten by so far without the murder books. Perhaps he'd have second thoughts, perhaps he'd get involved elsewhere, and perhaps she could get a good night's sleep. Not a likely thing while within arm's distance of a man so filled with kinetic energy.
After showering off the taxing day, Jessica sat on the bed in her white terry-cloth robe and pulled the phone into her lap. A red light signaled messages. She ran through them. One from Eriq Santiva, checking in, asking if she needed anything in Milwaukee, and wondering if this horrible case she was working on might signal a serial killer or not. After Santiva, it was John Thorpe, with a few pleasantries, saying he missed her at Quantico, and that everything was functioning quite well in her absence.
“Thanks, J.T. You always know how to make a girl feel needed,” she said aloud.
The third message was Richard Sharpe, calling from their Virginia home. He had called to tell her how much he missed her.
Jessica smiled at the sound of Richard's baritone voice. He sounded like the actor Richard Burton.
She immediately went to her suit jacket and pulled out the PCS Vision phone with built in camera that Richard had purchased for her-or them rather. It'd been a special gift, a way to see one another despite the miles between them. This particular model had a feature that allowed real-time panning of a room or vista.
Using the gift, she now called her live-in lover and best friend. She had first gotten to know him as Inspector Sharp of the New Scotland Yard, London, England. They had met when Richard had come calling at Quantico in search of help, and she had gone back to London to work with him on a curious case there involving millennium-phobic cultists and crucifixion murders. Richard, nowadays a working consultant and liaison between the FBI and the State Department, had only recently returned from an overseas assignment, and now she had to leave him at their home in Quantico, Virginia. Richard kept up a half-kidding needling of her to marry him, but she had remained reluctant, fearful of such a heady commitment.
He came on, standing in the yard at a white fence, horses playing over his shoulder as he smiled at her. His first words on hearing her voice were direct, as always. “When are we going to tie the knot, as you Yanks say? I'm feeding apples to Ben and Porsche. Bet you wish-”
“I was there, yes! As to getting hitched, things between us are too good to sacrifice to a marriage license,” she firmly replied, waving into the camera for him to see.
“That room behind you could be our wedding suite,” he persisted.
“Are you kidding, Richard? I'm going to want Maui or Tahiti, maybe New Zealand, but certainly not Milwaukee for our… But why am I even talking about this?”
“Because, you secretly want it as much as I?”
She quickly changed the subject. “I've gotten myself involved in quite a strange case here, Richard.” He became instantly curious on hearing the details of the bizarre Milwaukee case and Agent Reynolds's theory that it could be connected to two other murders years apart from one another.
“Does his theory have any credence?” Richard jokingly asked Ben, one of the horses nuzzling, when a second horse shoved him completely off camera. Jessica heard Richard shout, “Porsche! That's not very ladylike at all!”
More apple slices calmed both horses.
“As a matter of fact, Darwin's theory has a great deal of credence, just not enough hard evidence to get a man off death row. We have no DNA, no fingerprints to match, not even the killer's blood to make any comparisons with. And Towne's defense went from pleading insanity to denying this, and then he apparently stopped any move toward an appeal made on his behalf.”
“Sounds like a confused man this Towne. Still, young Reynolds may have a case, but how can you be sure? About the first crime scene. Just how bungled was it?”
“Hard to tell from here. But like I said, the kid's made some compelling arguments.”
“Fill me in.”
She rattled off the similarities in the three cases and added, “The only thing that distinguishes them as not being the work of the same killer is-”
“-the disparity of time between each.”
“Exactly, yes.” She nodded, her image reaching him but breaking up. “From all we know of serial killers, they strike within days, weeks, months at best, not years apart.”
The horse tugged off Richard's hat in a bid for attention. Richard laughed his full rich laugh. “And given our predilection for accurate bureau statistics, such an aberration frightens the hell out of us, doesn't it?”
“You're going to make those horses sick if you feed them any more apples. Put an end to it, for goodness' sake,” she suggested.
After a moment's thought, Richard said, “Speaks highly of this fellow Reynolds, I'd say, his catching these killings spaced so far apart both in time and geography.”
“He's awfully good and awfully young for an Area Special Agent in charge. I mean to be in charge in a field office as large as Milwaukee. I suspect he has a sterling record.”
“Else he knows how to suck up!”
“Don't think he needs to. He's enormous. Even on his knees, he'd find kissing up impossible. More likely has something to do with placing more blacks in high-level decision-making positions, not that he isn't talented from what I have seen of him.”
“Quotas, really? In the FBI?” Richard's mock grimace sold his sarcasm. “Does sound as if he's made an impression.”
“He does make an impression, yes.”
“Good bloke, heh?”
Jessica loved Richard's English accent and idioms. “Wish you were here,” she said.
He replied, “In Milwaukee?” But his imagination was sparked now, his rapt attention had left her for the burgeoning details of her case. Over the videophone, she recognized that his mind burned with curiosity.
“So then, we only have days if we're to save this chap in Oregon from the barbarous electric chair.”
“Three after today, and it's not quite so barbarous. They use lethal injection in a pristine sterile environment.”
“Like putting down a dog, huh?”
“And what do you mean by we? 'We only have days'?”
“If the man is innocent then I want to help.”
“How, Richard? How will you help?”
“I'll get on a plane for Millbrook, go over their tracks.”
“I'm not even convinced that Reynolds is right.”
“But you are convinced of his sincerity. I can tell that much.”
“True. I believe he believes.”
“And we don't have the luxury of debating it. This lapse in time between the murders could simply mean the killer himself has, at times, been incarcerated either in prison or an asylum.”
“Else he has the patience of evil,” she suggested.
“It may be what is meant by vengeance being best served up cold.”
“Well this is damned cold. If he knew any of these victims, they didn't know him. There's nothing in their backgrounds to warrant any of them should have ended life as mutilated victims.” “I'm just suggesting he likes his bone soup served as a consomme.”
“I tell you, Richard, you have a cookbook inside you wanting to get out.”
“You must know the Buddy Holly title, 'Love Waits,' right?”
“Of course, but-”
“Hate waits longer.”
“Still, can't help the doubts. A sociopathic monomaniac capable of this… I hardly think him capable of timing his killings to coincide with mid-November, spacing each by a year of interim quiet. A fantasy life for these guys is t wen ty-four-seven.”