“Dammit, don’t make me wait till tomorrow ta’ open the present, Chuck,” he said. “Tell me ya’ got this asshole in lockup.”
“Actually,” she said, “I was kinda hoping for a stocking stuffer from you.”
“Shit,” Ben muttered. “You got anything at all?”
“Well, we’ve been lucky and gotten to some of these right away. Seems he doesn’t bother with condoms, and he’s a secretor, so we’ve got a blood type and the whole DNA pedigree. But I don’t have a warm body to hang the dog tags on because he’s not in the database.”
“That’s more’n we’ve got. You chasin’ any good leads?”
“Haven’t got much. He’s apparently got a kink about necks though.”
“How’s that?”
“Shithead sucks hickeys on these women the size of Rhode Island. Guys down in Sex Crimes are calling him Count Suckula. ”
“Fuckin’ lovely.”
“Yeah, tell that to the victims.”
“You got anything else? Any of ‘em able to give ya’ a description?”
“Nope,” she sat back and shook her head, shifting in the uncomfortable seat. “Not really. Like I said, Roofies. Outta the eight, five of them went to the hospital within the first forty-eight hours, and they all tested positive. We’re guessing it would be the same on the other three, but they didn’t come forward right away. Lab says they can probably pick up trace amounts in hair if we have to go that route.
“All of ‘em pretty much remember getting zapped. Apparently he’s got this stun gun jacked up pretty good, and it’s kinda hard to forget getting hit with one of those anyway. But as far as anything after that, they’re pretty sketchy until they wake up.”
“How’s he grab ‘em? B and E?”
“Only on one.” She shook her head. “So far he’s taken three of them from parking lots at shopping malls, two when they were leaving their places of employment, one that was jogging, and another who was leaving a doctor’s appointment. Now here’s the spooky part. He’s keeping them for a while.”
“Whaddaya mean keepin’ ‘em?”
“I mean all of them are pretty much missing anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours out of their lives.”
“So he’s gotta be takin’ ‘em somewhere,” Ben mused.
“That’s how we’re looking at it.”
“Is there any connection there?” Ben pressed. “Where are they wakin’ up? Is he dumpin’ ‘em in the same general area?”
“Check this out,” she said. “The asshole is taking these women home.”
“Ya’ mean like their home, home?”
“Yeah, as in takes them back to their respective domiciles and leaves ‘em. Locks the door and everything. Even leaves their keys in the mailbox.”
“No way.”
“Yeah way. It’s like he doesn’t want ‘em to get hurt or anything.”
“Except by him.”
“Well, yes and no. I’m not trying to diminish the crime here by any means, but we’re not talking a typical rape scenario. There’s no real physical abuse to speak of, other than the stun gun and the hickeys. Other than that, it just appears to be sex. Statistically, as the assault goes, very non-violent. I’ve seen worse date rapes. We’re guessing that’s why he uses the Roofies on them.”
“Bizzarro,” Ben replied.
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Charlee acknowledged with a knowing tilt of her head.
“Any patterns we can do somethin’ with?”
“We’ve run it all. Common acquaintances, ex-husbands and boyfriends, the whole nine yards. What we’ve got is that they’re all blonde, around five-four, five-five, good looking. Ages range from twenty-two to forty-one.”
“Just City, or County too?”
“That’s another squirrelly thing.” She frowned. “Not only is he pulling from City and County, but one victim is in Saint Charles, another is across the Mississippi in Godfrey. If that’s not bad enough for ya’, I just got a call from the sheriff’s department out in Jefferson County. They’re faxing us a report, but from what was said when we talked, it looks like they might be hosting victim nine as we speak.”
“The motherfucker’s all over the map.”
“Yeah, and these are just the ones we know about,” she said. “You know as well as I do the stats on unreported rapes. Especially where Rohypnol is in the picture.”
“Yeah,” Ben nodded and frowned. “So Paige Lawson might’ve been an attempted rape gone bad instead of a robbery-assault.”
“From what I heard it sounds like she fits the profile,” Charlee agreed. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I just got the facts on Lawson an hour or so ago.”
“Yeah. Not surprised. You’ve had a lot on your plate.”
I was listening intently to the entire exchange, keeping my mouth shut, and taking in the information. The jumble of puzzle pieces I’d been laboring over earlier was suddenly starting to make sense; for the first time in a very long while I had a feeling that a significant number of them actually belonged to the same picture.
“It might be a good idea for us ta’ compare notes,” Ben told her.
“Yeah, although I’m thinking I’ll be helping you more than you’ll be helping me.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but ya’ owe me one.”
“How do you figure?”
“I lost twenty bucks on ya’ when you showed up here in a skirt.”
“You were in on that bet? Serves you right,” she laughed. “Oh yeah, before I forget, there were actually a couple of other things all the victims mentioned, although I don’t think it will help your cause any since it didn’t go very far.”
“What’s that?”
“Several of ‘em mentioned having quite a bit of makeup smeared on their faces. Kinda like it had been wiped off, but not very well. And they all remembered bright, flashing lights- I mean like blindingly bright.”
There’s a funny thing about approaching storms and squall lines. Sometimes you can look out across the vast, empty plain of life and see them coming countless miles before they ever reach you. Then there are other times when there is so much clutter in the way that they are already battering you with gale forces while you are still trying to figure out if the sun just went behind a cloud or if you should seek immediate shelter.
This particular tempest was on top of me before I even had a chance to look up.
The calm was definitely over.
CHAPTER 18
Dead I am! Dead I am!
D-E-A-D! Dead I am!
The painfully familiar chant echoed in the back of my skull as a repressed memory from the night at the morgue revealed itself in halting disharmony. A ghastly feeling of disorientation began spreading outward from my brain in a frantic race to meet the abject panic that was vomiting upward from the pit of my stomach. They arrived simultaneously in the middle of my chest and proceeded to join forces in an attempt to bring my heart to a complete stop.
I heard myself gasp loudly as I sucked in a breath. Then with no precursor, the memory became an explosion of light that burst directly in front of me. The sight stealing flash was accompanied by a muted pop and then followed by an electronic whine. Everything before me was immediately washed out, leaving me temporarily blinded. As the flare faded, after-images blurrily joined with a grey-toned reality that began repainting itself, only to be bleached out once again by a second bright strobe.
I started and out of reflex raised my hand as I blinked and turned my head away from the source of the overbearing luminance. It didn’t help. A third and fourth flash followed quickly on the heels of the first two, and it was still as if I was staring directly into them, wide-eyed and oblivious.
“Hey, Row,” Ben’s concerned voice met my ears. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
“Debbie Schaeffer,” I muttered, or at least that is what my brain told my vocal cords to do. What came out was an unintelligible burst of syllables as I tried to force the words past a catch in my throat.