The FBI was consulted, but hadn’t worked up more than a generic unsub profile that was virtually useless to the investigation.
Then, shortly after he’d taken number eight, Vincent fell off the map and hadn’t been heard from since. Several weeks passed, then a year, and as frustrating as the case was, the collective sigh of relief was audible at least three counties over. Wherever he’d gone, they all hoped to hell he wouldn’t come back.
Wishful thinking, from the looks of it.
Blackburn stared at the nearly severed ear. If Mats was right, if Vincent was indeed back, then taking a possible witness to Tolan had been a fairly large mistake.
Tolan’s wife had been Vincent’s eighth victim.
“Tell me you’re kidding,” Blackburn said. “Tell me you’re just having a little fun at my expense.”
“Believe me, I wish I could.”
“You sure this isn’t some kind of half-assed copycat?”
“I’m sure,” Mats said.
Putting the ear back in place, he shifted a hand to Janovic’s mouth and grabbed hold of his lower lip.
In every homicide, particularly those involving serial murders, investigators try to keep at least one detail out of the press. That detail helps weed out the chaff and send the false confessors packing. The theory being that only the killer would know about it.
In the Van Gogh murders, the killer had left behind a very distinctive calling card that only a select few in the department were aware of. Even Blackburn had been in the dark until recently.
He watched as Mats pulled the lip downward, exposing the pink flesh inside. There was a tiny mark burned into it with what the medical examiners had determined was a battery-powered cauterizing tool. The kind fishermen use.
Anyone who got e-mail or surfed the Net had seen the mark a thousand times:
;)
Blackburn stared at it.
“Ohhh, fuck,” he said. “The shit has just officially hit the fan.”
12
Tolan wasn’t sure what had happened in seclusion room three, but he knew it wasn’t something he could easily dismiss.
After leaving Cassie to keep an eye on Jane Doe Number 314, he found Lisa at the nurses’ station, signing in for her shift and getting ready for the morning handover. She was wearing her blue scrubs and carrying what looked like a half gallon of coffee in a Starbucks cup. She took one look at him and said, “What’s wrong?”
Tolan shook his head. “Nothing, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I had a long night, remember? Do me a favor and cancel my morning session.”
“Michael, what—”
“Just cancel it, okay?”
He immediately realized he’d been too abrupt, so he softened and said, “I’m sorry. Everything’s fine, but I’m wrapped up with this new patient and I need some time to think.”
Lisa eyed him skeptically, but finally nodded. She had always had the good sense to know when to back off. She squeezed his hand. “Consider it canceled.”
“Thanks.”
Then he left her there and headed straight to his office.
Self-analysis can sometimes be a dangerous thing, but Tolan knew he needed to sit himself down for a careful review.
He was obviously losing touch with reality. That much was certain.
The face he’d seen, the voice he’d heard, was clearly Abby’s, yet the patient in that room just as clearly wasn’t. Once he’d gotten to his feet and taken another look at her, he saw a petite, not unattractive young woman who bore only the slightest resemblance to his dead wife.
So why, then, had it seemed so real?
Was it this day? Could the anniversary of Abby’s death be having that much of an effect on him?
You. You hurt me.
It was true. He had hurt Abby. Many times in the last months of their marriage. But the biggest hurt of all had come in the form of a betrayal. A betrayal she had never even known about.
On the night she died, Tolan was not alone.
When the police called to tell him the tragic news, that she’d been found in her studio, murdered, her body brutally shredded, the shower had been going full blast in the bathroom behind him.
And waiting inside was a woman he’d met only hours before.
He could always make the claim that nothing had happened yet, that no bodily parts had been compromised, no fluids exchanged, but the betrayal of trust had already been committed. And in those last few hours, he had become the kind of man he had always despised.
A cheat. A philanderer. A liar.
You. You hurt me.
He had come to Los Angeles for a business meeting. His book, What Color Is Your Anger?, had been a surprise New York Times bestseller. Several national television appearances had put him on the network radar. Book signings that usually attracted a crowd of one or two people, suddenly had lines around the block. And celebrities he had known only from their television and movie work were calling to meet him.
It was a pretty heady experience, and he hadn’t handled it well. Like so many others assaulted by sudden fame, he had begun to believe the hype and had started to lose touch with what was important to him.
He was, after all, a rising star — George Clooney meets Dr. Phil. At least that’s how one talk show host had described him. His network Q-rating among women ages twenty-two to fifty was through the roof and rising. He was the man of the moment. The media’s new darling.
In retrospect, it was all pretty ridiculous. His star had been a lot brighter and hotter than it had any right to be and had threatened to burn a hole right through his four-year marriage. He had become difficult to live with and he and Abby had begun fighting on a regular basis.
Vicious fights sometimes. And none more vicious than the one they’d had the night she died.
He had accused her of cheating on him. An accusation she vehemently denied. But the color of his anger was black, as black as an empty soul, and he couldn’t be reasoned with.
He had been planning to drive the three hours to Los Angeles the next morning, but left that night instead and drove straight to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, nearly causing an accident on his way there.
His meeting was scheduled for eleven A.M., an exploratory meet-and-greet at Paramount Pictures’ syndication wing, which had been making noise about featuring him in a new daily talk show.
After checking into the hotel, he’d gone straight to the bar, looking to quell his anger with as many drinks as he could manage.
And he managed quite a few.
He was a couple hours into it when a soft voice at his shoulder said, “Aren’t you that doctor? The one who wrote the book?”
He turned to find a stunning young woman of about twenty-six standing next to him. She looked vaguely familiar and he was sure he had seen her on television or in the movies. What the tabloids would call a starlet.
“It’s Tolan, right? Michael Tolan?”
By then his anger had dissolved into a drunken, formless melancholy. “Right now I’m not sure who I am.”
The young woman smiled and shook his hand, telling him her name. The warmth of her skin sent a small tremor through him.
“I just love your book,” she said. “It’s my new bible.”
He’d had no real response to that. Was sure that whatever he’d said, it was only semicoherent.
Then she asked if she could buy him dinner.
There were a dozen different rationalizations for his behavior. He could blame it on the trouble in his marriage, or his sudden fame, could point to some typical psychological quirk that drove him, could even cite his newfound belief that his wife was no angel herself — but what was the point? None of it excused him.