“Toe-curler?”
“Yeah, an actual, honest-to-God kiss that’ll curl your toes.”
She didn’t want him to know that his little speech had gotten to her, but damn it all, she was without words.
“Hand me that cover, will you?”
She did.
“And those two little screws,” he said, without a please or thanks.
She scooped them up, pretended not to notice the way his fingers brushed over her palm as he took them from her.
Once he finished, he jumped down off the counter, put the tools in the bag, and then hopped up so that he was sitting beside her. “So, is that a yes or a no?”
She gave him one of her are-you-fucking-kidding-me stares. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I like things just the way they are between the two of us.”
“You do not. You like me more than you’re willing to let on. Everyone knows it, so just say yes. Go on a date with me, Hayley.”
“Where would we go?”
“How about a concert in San Francisco? A lot of new bands play at the fairgrounds over there. It’s cool. I think you’d enjoy it.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Fair enough.”
“Guess what?” she said in hopes of getting his mind off her, them, the possibility of a date.
“What?”
“I think I’m ready to give up cigarettes.”
His eyes lit up as if he’d just seen an elephant enter the room. “I can honestly say I never expected to hear you ever say that.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve always said you only had one vice and you were never going to give it up. What made you change your mind?”
“Actually, I experienced my first bout of morning cough, and I didn’t like it. I think it’s time to give my lungs a break.”
Tommy pulled his black knit ski cap over his head and then picked hers up and did the same for her, pulling the cap snugly over her ears. He looked into her eyes for a long moment and then released his hold on her.
Before he could step away, Hayley reached out and gently clasped her hands on to both sides of his face and pulled his lips to hers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lizzy followed Jessica into the building off Orange Grove. After they signed in, they were ushered through a long corridor by a petite woman wearing slacks, a white blouse, and a beige blazer. The click of her sturdy heels echoed through the hallway as they went.
With everything Lizzy and the girls had going on, the last thing she wanted to do was sit across the table from a couple of FBI special agents. In the end, she figured she didn’t have much of a choice. There was no denying that Jimmy Martin was a good friend, but, more importantly, there was a killer on the loose. If she could be of any help, then she would do whatever she could.
The conference room they were brought to was spacious with four white walls. A picture of J. Edgar Hoover dominated one of the walls. In the center of the room was a long rectangular table where Jimmy Martin and Kenneth Mitchell awaited them.
Jimmy was a cancer survivor. He was in his midsixties. He looked good.
Kenneth Mitchell was at least twenty years younger, tall and slender, with light-colored eyes and thinning hair.
Jimmy stood and greeted Lizzy with a friendly embrace.
After introductions were made, Jessica and Lizzy took offered seats across the table from the two men. The woman in the beige blazer made sure everyone had water before she left, shutting the door behind her.
Jimmy got to it. “Kenneth here will be heading up the Sacramento Strangler case, and I’ll be working alongside him at times. We wanted a chance to talk to you, Lizzy, and ask you a few questions.”
Lizzy nodded.
“I’d like to begin by saying how sorry I am for your loss,” Mitchell said. “Jared was well liked and respected for his single-mindedness when it came to solving a case. He was one of the brightest men I’ve ever worked with.”
“Thank you.”
“We realize this is an incredibly tough time for you,” Jimmy added. “I think you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t drag you here if it wasn’t important.”
“I understand.”
“To start off,” Mitchell said, “it’s important that we ask you if Jared ever talked to you about any of the cases he was working on.”
“He rarely spoke about work,” Lizzy said. “Most evenings, I was the one who brought work home and then picked his brain for ideas.”
He glanced at his notes. “Do you recall Jared ever keeping record of his daily activities, perhaps a journal where he might have kept tabs on people he interviewed or places he visited?”
“No. I would have known if he kept any sort of log.”
He scribbled something on his notepad before continuing. “What about any phone calls? Do you recall Jared having any conversation at all that might have sounded strained in any way? Perhaps you remember a change in his voice or demeanor, anything that might have stood out at the time as being out of the norm?”
She shook her head. “I can’t think of a thing. The truth is, I was so busy I didn’t have time to help Jared plan our wedding. You would have been better off talking to our neighbor, Heather, since she spent more time with him leading up to the wedding day than I did.”
“Can we talk to her?”
“She’s dead,” Lizzy said bluntly.
“I see.” Mitchell reached into his file and began laying out pictures of recent crime scenes in front of Lizzy. One photo was of a young woman among leaves and twigs, her body arranged just so. She had been sliced across the abdomen. There was also a picture of a handheld mirror with a gold finish. She figured that was the mirror Jessica had mentioned.
Among the other pictures was a magnified photograph of the mark the killer left on his victims. Jessica was right. The mark, in some cases, could easily be mistaken as a scratch or a cut. Some were big, some small. It looked like some sort of symbol. A capital Z with an extra line through it. There were also pictures of the other items found over the years: a clock, a sphere, a book, a bouquet of irises, a wreath of red roses placed around the top of a male victim’s head. There were more pictures, but nothing made sense, so she stopped looking. “What do you think all of this means?”
“We’ve got a team of people working on it. A lot of ideas are being tossed into the hat, but so far we have nothing definitive and no correlation between any of the objects.”
“It’s there,” Jessica said. “Right there in front of us. With every victim, he’s giving us a clue, a piece of him. It’s like putting together a puzzle.”
Lizzy picked up another picture. It looked like a stone. “Is that coral?”
Mitchell nodded. “That was found in the front pocket of one of his youngest victims, a young girl strangled outside a rest-stop bathroom while she waited for her mother. She also had a watch clutched tightly in her hand.”
“He wouldn’t have had much time,” Lizzy said.
“Which is why he didn’t take the time to carve his mark into the girl. She’s one of the few who does not have the symbol, but it’s the timepiece that connects her to the rest. Her mother was adamant about having never seen the coral or the timepiece before.” Mitchell pointed to a picture of the watch that was found.
“Four fifteen,” Jessica said. “Could be another clue.”
“Jessica mentioned that you thought Jared might have been close to identifying the killer. Why is that?”
“As you probably know, Agent Shayne worked this particular case for the last year after Gordon Presley retired. He’s the one who first noticed the symbol or mark on two of the victims. We have reason to believe that sometime within a twenty-four-hour time frame before your wedding day, the killer or someone close to the killer made contact with him.”