He didn’t say anything right away.
“Hello?” she repeated.
Still no reply.
“Listen,” Katie said, letting all of her anger flood through her voice, “this is bullshit, Stef. I told you not to call me anymore.”
A car horn honked in the background, followed by the sound of an engine racing by.
“I wasn’t kidding about the no-contact order, Stef. I can get one on Monday.”
No answer.
Katie sighed. “Just leave me alone, all right?” She waited another moment for a reply, then started to hang up.
“Katie?” came a voice from the phone receiver.
She brought the phone back to her ear. “Stef?”
There was a low chuckle. “No. Not…Stef,” he said in a hissing stage whisper.
She recognized the voice. Fear lanced through her stomach. For a moment, she thought it might be Phil, coming back from college to haunt her -
You liked it. Don’t forget that.
— or to try to do that to her again. But after that frantic moment, her mind cleared. She knew who it was.
“Are you there, Katie?” he whispered into the phone.
She swallowed hard before she spoke. When the words came out, she tried to put an edge to them. He couldn’t know that she was afraid.
“I’m here. What do you want?”
He laughed then. The sound grated against her nerves. She closed her eyes and bit her lip.
“I want you, bitch.”
Think, Katie! Do something!
“When I find you, Katie, I am going to lay the whammo on you.”
Say something!
“You’re going to get it good.”
She cast her eyes around the room, her mind racing.
“And you’ll like it, too. Count on that, bitch.”
You liked it. Don’t forget that.
His echoing words cut through her fear and found her anger. Who the hell did he think he was? She clenched her jaw, then spoke in a tight voice. “I don’t think you have the balls,” she told him.
There was a pause.
Good. I surprised him.
She forged ahead. “In fact, I think you’re a giant chicken shit. You only go after weak women because you’re weak yourself. You don’t have the guts to come after a strong woman like me because you know I’ll kick your ass. You know-”
“BITCH, I WILL FUCK YOU UNTIL YOU CRY!” he screamed at her.
“I don’t believe you,” Katie goaded him. A flare of satisfaction went off in her chest, settling down her body in a warm glow. The tables were turned and she liked it. “I think you’re all talk.”
“I WILL CUT YOUR FUCKING TITS OFF!”
“You’re a coward,” she told him, ignoring the graphic visual.
There was another pause. She heard his heavy breathing in the receiver. The sound of traffic in the background was again audible.
How do you like that? she thought. Not used to a woman who fights back? A grim battle smile spread across her face.
“You’re nothing but a coward,” she repeated. “And I know it.”
“Really?” he whispered into her ear, his voice full of barely controlled rage. “Well, I know something, too.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I know where you live, bitch.”
Then he hung up.
Katie’s smile melted away.
1039 hours
Captain Reott leaned back in his leather chair, giving Detective Tower a hard look. “This really hasn’t gone as you planned, has it, Detective?”
Seated next to Lieutenant Crawford, Tower shifted in his chair and looked away, his jaw clenched. “There’s been some setbacks,” he admitted.
“Setbacks?” Reott repeated, surprise and sarcasm plain in his tone. “In order to have setbacks, don’t you have to have some progress to be set back from? Where’s the progress on this case? All I’ve seen is more women being raped and botched operations.”
Crawford cleared his throat. “All due respect, Captain, Detective Tower is my responsibility. I’ll do the ass-chewing, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” Reott said. “Because now one of my patrol officers is the target of this whack job pervert.”
“What would you have done differently, sir?” Tower asked quietly through his clenched teeth.
“Lots. For starters, how about catching the guy?” Reott snapped.
A silence settled into the room. Reott gave Tower a hard look. The detective was unshaven and wearing a pair of jeans and a wrinkled shirt along with a Seattle Mariners windbreaker. His eyes held a desperate, haunted look that worried Reott. He made a mental note to bring it up with Crawford after Tower left. This case had almost certainly become too much for one detective to handle, though he knew that was Crawford’s call.
Finally, Reott rubbed his own eyes and sighed. “All right,” he said. “I guess there’s no profit in casting blame here. Everyone’s doing the best they can with what they’ve been given. The question now is, how do we move forward?”
“As far as the rapes go,” Tower said, “I’ll keep working the case. Something will break.”
Reott glanced at Crawford, but didn’t reply.
“I interviewed MacLeod for about an hour this morning, after the phone call,” Tower continued. “She recognized the voice, so it was definitely the same guy.”
“Any chance of a telephone trace of some sort?” Reott asked.
Tower shrugged. “Maybe. The phone company supposedly keeps a seventy-two hour record of all local calls made on a rolling basis. We might be able to find out where the call came from.”
“That’s good.”
Tower frowned. “Maybe.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Several reasons. For one, their techs aren’t available on the weekend, so Monday is the soonest we’ll be able to get at the information. Plus, they won’t let us have the information without a subpoena.”
“So get a subpoena from the prosecutor. Patrick what’s-his-name.”
“It’s Patrick Hinote,” Tower said. “That’s no problem, just a matter of doing it. The thing is, it probably won’t help us at all.”
“Why not?”
“He called from a pay phone. So the odds of getting prints off that are virtually nil, especially by the time we get the information.”
Reott scowled. It would be the same thing with finding any witnesses who might remember some guy who was there making a phone call two days prior. “So it’s a dead end.”
“The phone call is,” Tower said, “but I think we have a different opportunity here.”
“What’s that?”
“We can stake out MacLeod’s house, for one. See if we can catch the guy prowling around.”
“That sounds smart. What else?”
“We stake out MacLeod.”
Reott paused. “You mean use her as bait?”
Tower shrugged. “Call it what you want. He’s obviously keyed in on MacLeod. We can use that to draw him out.”
“No.” Reott shook his head firmly. “She’s been through enough with this task force. I’m not going to ask her to do that.”
“Captain-”
“I said no,” Reott interrupted. “This isn’t some cop movie, Tower. MacLeod is not the answer.”
“Why don’t you at least ask her?”
“Because it isn’t her choice,” Reott said. “It’s mine. And I’m not going to do it.”
“Why not?”
Reott leaned forward and fixed Tower with a cold stare. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, detective. I don’t work for you.”
Another silence settled into the room. Outside Reott’s open window, the distant sound of tires hissing on wet pavement meshed with high-pitched birdsong.
After almost a minute, Tower broke the silence, “Captain-”
“You’re dismissed, detective.”
Tower gaped at him, surprised. Then he rose and stalked out of the room.
Reott watched him go. Once the door snapped shut behind him, he turned his attention to Crawford.