He looked back at the shoe in his hand. He’d strung her up and left her swinging. No one had questioned that she’d killed herself. Everyone had been relieved that she was finally gone. His only regret was that she’d been dressed in the cast-off Sunday dress she’d pulled from the church charity bin and not like the whore she was. And that he hadn’t had his pit then. He would have enjoyed walking over her any time he chose.
He placed the shoe back on the shelf, straightened it neatly. The next pair of shoes he placed on the shelf would be Rachel Ward’s, victim five of his six, who’d already agreed to meet him tomorrow night. Tonight, he amended.
But the next body into the pit would be Eve’s. Eventually, he’d have her here. She’d be silenced, her worst fear realized. She’d almost died twice. Third time was a charm.
Tuesday, February 23, 4:30 a.m.
Harvey Farmer sat drumming his fingers on his kitchen table when Dell returned, looking cold and tired. “Where have you been?” Harvey snapped.
“Following Jack Phelps, just like we agreed.” There was attitude in his son’s voice that Harvey did not like and he smelled like perfume. Again.
“And what did Phelps do?”
“Went to a bar, then sat outside for a few hours waiting for some guys to come out.”
Harvey’s brows lifted, sniffing a break. “Guys? Really?”
“No, not like that. Phelps is very much into women. He was waiting for these guys to come out so he could write down their license plates. I guess they’re suspects.” Dell dragged his palms down his face. “This plan of yours isn’t working.”
“It will. Be patient.” He jumped when Dell’s hand slammed down on the table.
“I’m done being patient. How long have you followed them, hoping they stumble?”
Harvey cocked his jaw. “Since I put your brother in the ground.”
“And so far? Nothin’.”
“Not nothing. Pages of notes on what they’ve done, who they’ve seen… You’ve been at this three weeks.” Fired by the article that made my son’s murderers look like gods. Harvey had welcomed Dell’s rage. Now he needed to harness it before Dell did something wild. “They’re on a big case. They’ll be under pressure to make an arrest.”
Dell scoffed. “They couldn’t find a crook if they tripped over him.”
“Exactly. When they can’t arrest somebody, they’ll find a scapegoat.”
“Like VJ,” Dell murmured.
“Like VJ,” Harvey repeated. “Here are the pictures I took of Webster tonight.” He handed the memory card from his camera to Dell. “Group them with the ones you took of Phelps and print them out. We’ll regroup in the morning.”
Tuesday, February 23, 6:45 a.m.
“You’re here early,” Jack said, dropping into his chair.
“I had a busy night. Somebody tried to break into Eve’s place last night.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I tried. Left you a message on your cell. Figured you were just sound asleep. If the unis had found anything, I’d have called your home phone and woke you up.”
Jack frowned at his cell phone. “There is no call from you in my log.”
Noah wanted to tell him to cut the bullshit, but didn’t have the energy. “Maybe you need a new phone,” he said wearily. “I asked Micki to check the area around Eve’s apartment this morning. We’ll see what she finds. Is one of those for me?”
Jack had two full cups from his favorite coffee house. “They were both for me, but you look like you need it more.” He slid a cup across their desks. “What’s that?”
“Eve’s test participants. I’m comparing them against the suicide reports.”
“She gave you the list?”
“I didn’t have to ask twice. So far, no matches. That’s the good news.”
“Bad news is you’ve got a long list and we don’t know who he’s targeting next.”
“It’s not that bad. Eve separated out the heavy users. If he’s luring them to meet him somewhere, it stands to reason that he’d have a better chance of encountering them in the virtual world the more frequently they play.”
“Makes sense to me.”
Noah sat back, pushing the list away for a little while. “So why are you here early?”
“I found Taylor Kobrecki’s pals at a bar last night. The bar was the first number on Kobrecki’s grandmother’s LUDs. She called the minute you left her yesterday.”
“I bet his pals say they haven’t seen him in weeks and Taylor would never hurt a fly.”
“Almost word for word. When I asked their names, they gave me every crank-call name in the book, so I waited for them to leave and copied down license plates. I’ll run their addresses. One of them could be hiding him.” Jack tossed his hat to his desk. “Although if Kobrecki’s IQ is anywhere near his Neanderthal pals’, there’s no way in hell he’s smart enough to have pulled this off.”
“Did you talk to any of the women who filed complaints about him?”
“Two of the three. Both caught him staring in the bedroom window. Both filed a complaint and suddenly things started breaking in their respective apartments. Finally both moved out, saying Mrs. Kobrecki would lie like a rug to protect her grandson.”
“So he’s a peeper and a sniffer. Could he have moved to murder? It’s a big step.”
Jack shrugged. “Like I said, based on the friends he hangs with, I don’t think he’s got the brains. But we’ll keep looking for him, if for no other reason than to cross him off.”
“Speaking of lists, I need to get back to this one. We’re going to have to decide if we begin contacting the heavy users on Eve’s list or not. If we do, Eve will bear the brunt.”
“And if we don’t,” Jack said seriously, “we could find one of them hanging from a rope. There’s really no choice, Web.”
“I know,” Noah said. “And Eve knows that, too.”
“Give me half of the names,” Jack said. “I think our time is better spent identifying potential victims than tracking Taylor Kobrecki.”
“You’re right.” Noah gave him half the stack. “Focus on the heavy users.”
They worked for twenty minutes in silence, and then Jack spoke in a strained tone. “Web, I think I found Samantha Altman.”
Noah’s head jerked up. “What? Eve said she wasn’t on the list.”
“She wasn’t, not as Samantha Altman.” Jack handed Noah a single sheet across their desks. “I put a check next to her name.”
“Samantha Porter,” Noah read, then he remembered. “She’d just gotten divorced. Porter was her married name, but she’d gone back to Altman.”
“But when she signed up for this study, she was still Samantha Porter.”
“Eve’s got her in the lightest user group. Zero to five hours a week.”
“Samantha couldn’t play if she was dead,” Jack said dryly, then he frowned when Noah picked up the phone. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Eve.”
“At this hour?”
“She won’t mind.”
“Noah?” Her voice was husky with sleep and he pushed the distracting mental image of her snug in bed from his mind. “What’s happened?”
“We found Samantha Altman, the first victim, on the list you gave me last night.”
He heard the creak of bedsprings. “That’s impossible. I checked myself. Twice.”
“She’d just gotten divorced and Altman was her maiden name. She’d registered with you as Samantha Porter. She was in the light user group.”
There was a pause, then a quiet sigh. “Because she was dead. She would have been at the zero end of zero to five hours a week. Oh God.”
“Can you check her usage history, find out when she stopped playing?”
“Already checking. Hold on… Two weeks ago she went from six hours a day to nothing. I must have seen this. How did I miss this?”
“If you had seen it, you just would have thought she’d lost interest in the study.”
“You’re right.” She drew a breath. “Hysterics won’t help. What do you need?”