“Showing off?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. He stole the contacts from Jolene and then planted them on Mindy. He was cross-contaminating the crime scenes with evidence from a future victim. I’ve never seen that before.”
I accelerated, passed a few cars. Kept an eye on the rearview mirror.
Ralph was quiet for a moment; I figured he was chewing on everything. “But if it’s supposed to be a clue to his next victim, it’s not nearly enough to go on. I mean, stolen contacts?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think he wants us to stop the killings,” I said. “I think he wants us to know we can’t stop them.”
The car I was watching passed a few other cars. Stayed the same distance behind me.
“Look,” I said, “I’m heading to the federal building to pick up my laptop-I left it there when we rushed out last night-and then I’m heading back to look at Mindy’s crime scene again. The medical examiner placed the time of death somewhere between 8:00 and 11:00 a.m.”
“I never understood why it’s so important for you to see the crime scenes at the same time as the murder-”
“You notice things. Lighting, maybe. Usage patterns. You see what he saw. It helps me understand the context of the crime. Listen, Ralph, I think I’m being followed.”
“What?”
“A car. It’s been with me since I left the hotel. He’s not being obvious, though. Whoever it is, he’s experienced.”
“What do you want to do?”
“There’s a tunnel up ahead. I’ve got an idea.”
25
About a quarter mile ahead of me the road disappeared into a tunnel that bore through the side of a mountain. I raced the engine and sped toward it. Whoever was tailing me was stuck behind traffic and couldn’t pass because the highway narrowed as we approached the tunnel.
I noted how many cars he was back-four-then entered the tunnel and flicked off my lights so the cars behind me wouldn’t be able to judge how far ahead of them I’d traveled. I floored the gas pedal and watched the headlights shrink behind me. A few seconds later I emerged from the other side of the mountain, whipped over to the shoulder, and backed up, spraying up a cloud of gravel in the process.
Now I could see the cars leave the tunnel, but they couldn’t see me.
I waited. He’d be out any time, and the tables would be turned. I would be following him.
Out came the first car.
I waited…
Car number two.
I gripped the steering wheel. My heart began racing. Is this the killer? Did he wait for me outside my hotel room after calling me last night?
Number three.
I got ready to follow. I wished I’d been able to get the make and model of the car.
Well, I’d have those in a second.
Waited…
The seconds passed. The car didn’t come.
I waited a few more moments and then spun my car around and headed back through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain, but he was gone. The road was empty.
He must have realized what you were planning when you sped up. He never entered the tunnel.
I wasn’t sure if I should feel disappointed or relieved. It was just another puzzle piece that didn’t make sense.
At last I drove back through the tunnel toward Asheville. I dialed Ralph and told him what had happened.
“I’ll have Sheriff Wallace check with those two officers.. ”-his voice was getting spotty-“… see if either of them noticed a car in the parking lot, or someone following you.” He was right about his phone. It did need a charge. In a bad way.
Static began to swallow his words.
“I’m losing you,” I said.
“I’m sending…” Ralph kept talking, but his voice blinked out in the middle of the sentence.
The phone was dead.
Dead.
Well, that was appropriate.
I glanced at the dark mountains looming around me. Above them, the bloated early morning clouds were drinking in the scarlet sunlight that seeped up and over the peaks. For a moment they made me think of giant gray bodies smeared with blood hanging from the sky.
Man.
I need to get a different job.
I turned on the radio and scanned the dial to try and find some music to get my mind off the case. Off death. A few snatches of whiny country music flickered on and then became garbled by static. Mostly all I could get were stations of radio preachers.
I spun the dial, turned them off.
But it was too late. The Bible verses they were quoting brought it all back… sitting on the stiff orange chair in the corner of the hospital room… seeing Christie on the bed… having to listen to the Reverend Donovan Richman go on about the goodness of God when all I could see was evidence of his cruelty lying right there in front of me…
She’d asked him to come, Christie had. She’d been going to a small storefront church, and he was their new pastor, and so when she was admitted, she asked him to come.
Reverend Donovan Richman. What a name.
Another man from the church came too, a retired African-American gentleman, Benjamin Grayson. He was one of the deacons, and I gathered from their conversations that he was the one in charge of the “visitation ministry” that served shut-ins and hospitalized church members.
Mostly I sat in the corner in the orange chair while they talked-well, while Richman talked. The rest of us pretty much just listened.
Richman was rife with cliches about why God allows suffering and nodded his head agreeably whenever Christie would whisper something about Jesus or heaven. Benjamin just sat quietly and held Christie’s hand and sometimes cried strong, round tears.
I don’t know that he meant it this way, but to me Reverend Richman made Christie’s pain seem trite, like some kind of cosmic object lesson sent by God to teach her something important about life. I have a hard time believing that God would torture people into loving him. I don’t know that much about God or about love, but I do know that torture isn’t what brings them together.
The Illusionist jiggled the mouse, and his computer monitor sprang to life. The first rays of sunlight were sliding through the window, sending streaks of light dancing across his fingers. A beautiful morning. Beautiful!
He cruised to some of his bookmarked websites and skimmed the latest online news concerning the abduction of Jolene Brittany Parker. He even downloaded a couple of articles about her. Mostly boilerplate stuff, but a few were actually interesting. It was always entertaining to see what people were saying about his work.
“Look at this, Jolene,” he called over his shoulder. “Your parents are waiting for a ransom note.”
No response.
Ah, well, that was to be expected.
He almost giggled. A ransom note! Who did they think he was? As if he were interested in money.
He took a sip of ice-cold orange juice and surfed over to a chat room for true crime enthusiasts, where some of the resident “experts” were taking their stab at profiling the Yellow Ribbon Strangler. How clever was that? Taking their stab at profiling him. Ha. And he thought of that right there, on the spot. He was that good!
He scrolled down the list, scanning the inane responses.
Someone named catchem16 had written that the killer was, “Obviously a unorganized introvert with latented homosexual tendencies since he didn’t have sex with none of the women.”
Idiot.
Someone named deadhunter1zero thought, “The main UNSUB has past military experience and probably has a dishonorable discharge for violent outbursts. He’s living out of a mobile home or travel trailer. He works a menial job and has a German shepherd.”
In a way it was funny. “He’s a white male between the ages of 25 and 40,” they would write, “antisocial, divorced, low IQ…” Blah, blah, blah, blah. Cookie-cutter profiling. Morons. Imbeciles. They had no idea who they were dealing with.
He wondered what Agent Jiang thought of him. He knew what he thought of her. Oh yes. He knew exactly what he thought of her. What fun they could have together in the moonlight with the ropes and the ribbon and his favorite silver blade.