“Got it,” Dean said, ending the call. He tucked the phone away and related the information to the others.
“So let’s go knock on good old Mr. Lee’s door, tell him we’d just like to chat, and see if he’s online,” Mulrooney said. “I bet he’s got some high-powered security equipment out there, run by a state-of-the-art computer.”
The idea had merit, but he saw by the look on Stacey’s face that she genuinely believed they’d be wasting their time. And frankly, they didn’t have time to waste.
He trusted her. He hadn’t known her long, but he already had faith in her instincts, and if she thought they’d be barking up the wrong tree, he intended to take her at her word. “Let’s stick with the original plan,” Dean said.
He glanced at the computer screen again, unable to keep his eyes off the final words, the sick desires of the winner. And the Reaper’s agreement.
God, he hoped they found this guy before he grabbed his next victim.
He enters the Playground through the south gate.
The palette of odd colors is familiar, welcoming. The eerie, gray-streaked blue sky casts a perennial storm cloud over the preternaturally cheerful Playground. The grass is too green. The sun too yellow. The images too surreal, at odd angles, with unnatural curves and sharp edges.
It’s Dalí’s version of Sesame Street .
Only if you look closely can you see the writhing forms of anguished souls carved into the base of the tree holding the tire swing. At first glance, the yawning opening beneath the sliding board, which falls away into a pit of flame and torture, appears to be only a shadow. The metal rings hanging from a jungle gym seem simple gymnastic playthings-until you notice the screaming man hanging from them, begging for mercy as a fire is lit beneath his feet.
As always when he comes to the Playground, peace washes over him. Happiness fills him from his core to the tips of his fingers and the very ends of each strand of hair on his body.
Ahead of him, the morning crowd is thick and buoyant as the weekend begins and earthly workweek identities fall away. Possibilities abound; excitement ignites the air. Convention and morality and mundane laws simply do not exist in this world. Nothing is taboo, nothing sacred.
No one ever says no. No desire is too dark to fulfill.
Here is a woman being beaten by a long, spiked whip. There a man is led around on a leash like a dog. A crowd encircles a duo taking turns raping the brunette they have pinned to the ground.
And a tall, skeletally thin man draped in expensive clothes takes yet another child by the hand and leads him through an elaborate gate marked PRIVATE.
Then, at last, they notice his arrival. All fall silent. Watching him. Waiting for him. They part like the sea spreading for some biblical being.
As they should. This is his kingdom and he stalks it like an all-powerful, all-seeing deity. Death ravaging the earth with every step he takes.
His black cape ruffles in the breeze, casting a long shadow of dread across the landscape. His scythe, sharp and vicious, swings side to side as he cuts a path toward his destination, everyone backing out of his way, bowing to him, whispering words of love and praise and adoration.
He doesn’t love back. In this world. In any world.
But he is fond of them, as a god is fond of his worshipers. He bestows benevolence upon them, emerging from his dark fortress every so often so they may bow at his feet. He occasionally allows them the privilege of touching his robe, of getting close enough to death that they will experience endless nightmares.
The power invigorates him. He needs no sleep. No sustenance. Just this.
He reaches the marquee for the theater. Swiping his gloved hand across it, he erases the mundane titles promising sexual delights for those who enter.
He replaces it with words of his own:
COMING SOON …
BEHEADED .
And the crowd erupts.
7
In the car on the way to Lisa Zimmerman’s mother’s house, Dean forced himself to focus on the unpleasant task ahead. Notifying next of kin was never easy. With a murder case, it was a hundred times harder.
He wanted to focus only on the unsub, on what he might be doing this minute to another innocent victim, but he couldn’t allow himself to. Being distracted by that would make him less effective in his job, and he needed every brain cell in his head focused and in control. And every emotion he had shoved away to be dealt with later.
He needed Stacey to be the same way. Remembering what had happened before Wyatt’s call, when he’d realized just how much she blamed herself for what had happened to Lisa, he wanted to get that out of her head. Though he wasn’t the king of comforting women, and he knew she wasn’t the type who would be interested in being comforted, he couldn’t help saying, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Her hands clenched on the steering wheel.
“Stacey, you know as well as I do that she was dead by the time she was reported missing. There was nothing you could have done to save her, even if she’d been the mayor’s wife and the whole town had been in an uproar over her disappearance.”
“Tell her mother that,” was the flat reply. “Explain to Winnie that the past year and a half of crying and waiting and hoping and praying wasn’t my fault for not really believing something bad had happened to her daughter.”
He knew he shouldn’t, but something made him reach over and touch her shoulder. She flinched, taking her eyes off the road for one moment to glance at him.
“Anybody would have thought the same thing,” he insisted, focusing only on getting Stacey’s head back where it needed to be, in the now, rather than in the recriminations of the past. He squeezed lightly. “I would have. Wyatt would have. With someone like Lisa, who you admitted had disappeared before-”
“I know,” she acknowledged, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t make it right.”
He pulled his hand away, knowing Stacey wouldn’t be forgiving herself anytime soon. Sometime in the future, when they’d nailed this bastard to the wall, maybe she’d give herself a break. But not before then, if he was any judge of character.
Maybe that was one more reason he liked her. The incidents in her past that had forged her into the powerful woman she was today had also instilled a strong moral boundary within her. And the need to make a difference. He found the combination of sexy, sometimes playful, woman over that solid, implacable center incredibly appealing.
It could have been that the steel core inside her had been forged by fire in the heat of brutality she’d witnessed as a state cop. God knew, he’d never experienced anything like she must have at Virginia Tech. And part of him-a big part-wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her for the awful memories that he suspected haunted her.
He couldn’t, of course. She’d never accept that kind of gesture without reaching out for it first.
He only wondered what it would take to make her reach out.
Considering he’d never been able to acknowledge his own emotions about anything in his personal life until that life had been completely disrupted by his ex-wife’s choices, he couldn’t even venture a guess. He just hoped that whenever the moment did come, someone who really understood her would be there to respond.
“Do me a favor, okay?”
“Of course,” he said.
“When I tell Winnie, keep a close eye on her husband, would you? He’s not the nicest man in the world.”
His eyes narrowing, he tried to read between her simple words, wondering if Stacey suspected Lisa’s own stepfather of killing her. That seemed like a long shot, the Reaper being reckless enough to kill someone so close to him. But he’d certainly seen criminals do reckless things. “Of course.”