“Well, we better rock ’n’ roll outta here,” Randy said. “We’re gonna be in hot water for being late for supper. If Mama finds out we stopped here for some onion rings first, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Not quite sure whether the man was referring to his wife, or really talking about his mother, Dean murmured good-bye, then watched the duo leave the diner. “Mama?” he asked once they were gone.
Stacey rolled her eyes. “Randy’s wife walked out on him when Seth was little. Randy moved back in with his mother, who helped raise the boy. It’s a shame, really. Last year Randy was dating a good friend of mine, Angie, who runs the new Internet café. But I don’t think Mama liked that. She’s a sour old thing.”
“How about yours?” Dean asked, suddenly wanting to see that smile again. “Did she like that her sweet little girl took over as sheriff?”
Instead of a smile, he got a snort. “I was never a sweet little girl.” She glanced down, stirring her iced tea with her straw. “Dad did his best, but he never managed to drill many feminine qualities into me.”
He would argue that point. Noting the softness of her hair, the innate elegance of her movements, the huskiness of her voice that called to some deep part of him, he’d challenge anyone to call this woman anything but feminine. Strong, independent, yes. But still every inch a woman.
“My mother died when I was a baby, so it was just me, Dad, and my brother.”
He opened his mouth, trying to come up with whatever kind of lame condolences people offered when they found out about the loss of someone else’s parent. Not that he usually knew what to say to that sort of thing. Did anyone?
But before he could even find the right words, Stacey said, “About the case.”
So much for personal stuff and sharing. Which, frankly, relieved him. He wasn’t good at that. And the fact that she didn’t appear to expect him to come up with something inane to say made his opinion of her go up even higher.
But it also made him wonder, did she ever allow herself to be vulnerable? How many rooms did she have in her subconscious to tuck away all the emotion she didn’t allow herself to deal with?
“We’re talking about a serial killer, aren’t we?”
He could have thrown up defensive walls, given her the not-at-liberty-to-talk-about-it line. But something told him he didn’t need to go that route, not with Sheriff Rhodes. She was tough. More important, he had the feeling they were going to need her. She’d proven her worth earlier by pointing them in the direction of the crime scene. And if this small town was like every other one he’d ever been in, she’d know every person here and could prove invaluable at narrowing down potential suspects.
“Yes, we are.”
Her lips moved and her eyes drifted shut for a moment as she compartmentalized that information. Anyone in charge of the law in a town this size would react to having a nationally sought-after serial killer operating in her jurisdiction. For someone who knew the victim personally? Well, she was in for a rough time, no doubt about it.
“What do you have on him so far?”
“Not much. Most of what we know is from the videos.”
“Can’t even imagine them,” she whispered.
“Believe me, you don’t want to try.”
Dean’s jaw stiffened as a flood of images from the Reaper’s sick home movies flooded his brain. There was so much darkness to this case that even he, an experienced professional, had found himself having a few nightmares in the past few nights. Nightmares involving those poor women, sometimes with the faces of his sister or mother replacing one of theirs. There had been even worse ones involving his son, though thank God none of the crimes had involved children.
She obviously read the viciousness of it in his silence. Because, for some reason, she reached over, extended her hand, and brushed it across the back of his. The touch was brief, devoid of anything more than simple human-to-human understanding. But it made his hand thrum for a full minute after she’d pulled hers away.
“How many victims altogether?” she eventually asked.
Flexing his hand, then fisting it on his lap, he got down to business. He ran down the pertinent details, giving her surface information that he’d share with any law enforcement official helping with the case, because that was what she was. Nothing more.
Something told him he’d need to remind himself of that throughout his stay here.
She listened in silence, her eyes occasionally closing, emitting a soft sigh of dismay here or there. He didn’t get into details, especially not in-depth descriptions of the horrors playing out there in cyberspace to the twisted masses. But even the simplest explanation was enough to cause nightmares.
“So all the other bodies have been found. Lisa is the only one missing,” she finally said when he’d finished.
“Correct.”
“But no other victims were from around here. Lisa was our only missing person, and we haven’t had a murder in this area since my grandfather was sheriff.”
“Lucky you.”
She nodded absently. “This guy was likely some stranger who wandered in off the interstate, saw Lisa getting drunk in Dick’s Tavern, followed her as she stumbled out, and acted on the opportunity. Then he took off for his next town, next crime. Maybe he hid the body because it was his first murder, and he wanted to give himself time to make sure he could get away with it.”
Dean said nothing. There were holes in Stacey’s theory. He didn’t point them out to her. She’d work it out in her own head, and reach the conclusion that would shock her even more. Her mind was quick and astute; she had spotted that unusual flash on the video and had known it meant something. She’d soon realize she’d seen something else equally as important.
“But a stranger couldn’t have known what a perfect victim Lisa would be, that nobody would really take her disappearance seriously,” she whispered, gazing into the air over Dean’s shoulder, though, in truth, probably looking at nothing that existed here in this diner. She was visualizing that night. “Everybody at Dick’s Tavern had been around at least a few times before. No newcomers. Dick confirmed that for me himself.”
That made the thing she had missed even more important, though she couldn’t realize that yet. Dean, however, immediately saw it was important, one more tidbit to confirm what he and the rest of the team already suspected. More than suspected: From the moment a bureau lipreading expert had told them what Lisa Zimmerman had said to her killer before her death, they had known.
“And he had to be someone familiar with the area to know a place to take her where he could have a big enough clearing to move around, use spotlights, move his camera, all without being disturbed.”
“Yes,” he murmured.
The wheels in her brain clicked almost visibly. She’d grasped it. Her shocked gasp confirmed as much. “We’re not talking about some stranger off the interstate.”
Dean shook his head.
“The suspect was familiar with this area. He probably even spent some time around here beforehand.”
“It goes further than that,” he explained, knowing it was time to fill her in on what else they’d been able to learn from the video of Lisa’s gruesome death.
“What?”
“At one point, she looks at him in shock and says, ‘You?’ ”
Her jaw dropped. She understood. But he made it absolutely clear anyway.
“The Reaper personally knew his victim. And she most definitely knew him.”
After he’d finished his twenty-minute-long phone call with the head of the Cyber Division, Wyatt considered joining Taggert and the very capable Sheriff Rhodes at the diner. Dean had texted him, not wanting to interrupt his calls, saying he’d run into the sheriff there and thought they could manage a somewhat decent meal.