Lizzy Gardner. The thought of her sparked an idea. Perhaps he would check up on the gal and see how she was holding up. After keeping track of Jared Shayne for so long, he felt as if he knew her, rather quite like the dead sister he once had.
It hit him then—felt as if he’d been clunked on the head with a stick.
A moment of clarity was all he’d needed.
Everything happened for a reason, and everything was playing out exactly how it was meant to be.
He’d been on a downhill spiral of late, hadn’t understood what he was feeling, didn’t know what was wrong with him. He absolutely did not appreciate the heavy waves of overwhelming melancholy that hit without notice. Definitely a new experience for him.
When it came to killing, he’d done his homework. He liked to think he was extraordinarily careful, but the truth was he’d left clues on or around every single one of his victims. What made him do that? Was he looking to get caught? Did he want recognition, after all?
Perhaps now was the time to change things up.
He folded the paper neatly in front of him. He would strike quickly and randomly over the next few weeks, over and over, often enough to make the investigators’ heads spin.
A dead body here, another one there.
They wouldn’t know which way was forward and backward, let alone up and down.
Maybe he would find someone to bring home for a while.
Excitement burst open inside him as a plan began to form.
If he were to do that—bring a potential victim home, that is—he would need a place to keep her. He lifted a brow. He would need a dark room . . . windowless . . . a place where—
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.
He walked to the front entry and looked out the peephole. Saw the neighbor kid, Landon, and opened the door.
“Good morning, sir. My mom was wondering if she could borrow a cube of butter. She’s making oatmeal cookies, and I’m supposed to tell you we’ll pay you back after she goes to the store. I’ll bring you some cookies, too. If you pick out the raisins, they’re pretty OK.”
This wasn’t the first time the neighbor kid had come for a visit. He had to admit the kid was sort of cute. He especially liked that the boy showed respect by calling him “sir.” He leaned his head out the door, looked both ways. Neither of the child’s parents was hanging around. Interesting. Other than waving hello every once in a while to the adults, he’d only ever had a conversation with Landon. Opening the door wide, he said, “Come on in.”
Without a care in the world, the kid stepped inside. He craned his neck as he looked at all the artwork covering the walls in the entryway. “Wow,” Landon said. “Did you paint all these pictures?”
He shut the door. “I did.” He guessed the boy to be about ten or eleven years of age. An all-American kid with a mop of tangled brown hair and freckles that looked like blood splatter across his nose and cheeks.
“Why does everyone in your paintings look dead?”
He looked the kid in the eyes. “Maybe because they are.”
Landon’s big brown eyes doubled in size. “Really?”
He felt a tightening in his chest. Really. Then he smiled and said, “Nah, just pulling your leg, Landon. Come on, let’s get Mom some butter.”
Detective Chase was on the phone, but he waved Lizzy into his office and into a seat in front of his desk.
After being shot in the left shoulder, the detective had ended up in the hospital for nearly a month. He’d lost a lot of blood and for a while there the doctors weren’t always sure he was going to make it. She’d known better than that. Although she had to admit he looked like crap. He had a sling around his left arm, dark circles under his eyes, and he looked as if he’d lost at least fifteen pounds since she’d seen him last.
As soon as he hung up the phone, she said, “You wanted to see me?”
His sigh came out sounding like a dying engine. “Nice to see you, too.”
“I’m glad to see you pulled through,” she told him. “I had no doubt you would make it.”
“Because of my stubborn and determined will to live?”
“Something like that.”
With his good arm, Chase pushed a manila file across the desk.
Lizzy opened it up and looked through a half dozen eight-by-ten color photographs. The date stamped on the back told her the pictures were taken three months ago. A man with a bag over his head. Dead. Suffocated. A close-up revealing duct tape over his mouth. Red markings around his wrist.
Confused, Lizzy looked across the desk at Chase. “What’s this about?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Listen. I know you don’t think what I do is important, but I take my clients and my job very seriously, and I have a hell of a lot of work to do. I don’t have time to play games with you. I’ve never seen this man before. So, for that reason, I ask again . . . what is all this about?”
“It’s about Hayley Hansen.”
“What about her?”
“We have reason to believe she might be involved.”
She grabbed one of the pictures and held it up. “With this? Involved how?”
He shrugged.
“Hayley would never hurt anyone, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Do I need to remind you that she sliced a man’s penis off?”
Lizzy poked his mahogany desk with her finger for emphasis. “Brian Rosie deserved what he got, and you know it. She did her time for that. Everything that girl does is for the good of others. She has been handed a shit-for-nothing life, and yet she does all she can to make other peoples’ lives better.”
“Well, the guy in the pictures here might argue with you about that. I have a witness who can put her in the area within an hour of that scene you’re looking at.”
“Judging by these pictures, I would say this is a suicide.”
He sighed. Rubbed his chin. Sighed again. “Listen to me,” he said at last. “I’m going to be as blunt with you as I can. I’ve been hearing stories about you and your girls trying to take the law into your own hands. I don’t like it, and I won’t allow it to go on. You and your whole merry band need to stand down.”
And that’s when Lizzy saw a telltale sign in the detective’s eyes. This wasn’t about the man in the photo or Hayley. This was about something else altogether. It was about Wayne Bennett. The detective was trying to pull a fast one on her. He wanted Lizzy to think he had the goods on Hayley, something to throw in her face and get her to behave. “He talked to you, didn’t he?”
“Who?”
“Oh, don’t give me that innocent look,” Lizzy said. “You know who—Wayne Bennett.”
He fidgeted just enough so that Lizzy knew she was right. “And what did you tell him, Detective? That you would give me a good talking-to, let me know that Mr. Wayne Bennett is off-limits? I have pictures of him talking to Miriam Walters, the girl who was in his program and who is now missing. And yet he told me he’d never met her in his life.” Although Lizzy had yet to see any actual pictures of Wayne and Miriam together, she’d heard they existed. They better, because she was banking on it.
Detective Chase scratched the side of his head. “Bennett works with hundreds, maybe thousands, of young people in Sacramento. You think he would remember every single young woman he ever met? Be reasonable.”
“Miriam Walters isn’t the type of girl you would forget. She’s tall and statuesque—a young Beyoncé. A guy like Bennett wouldn’t forget a girl like that.”
Detective Chase leaned forward and then squinted in pain and quickly readjusted his posture. “You’re right,” he said, apparently giving up on his other tactic. “I’m telling you to lay off. Miriam Walters is a troubled young lady. Everything we’ve learned about her points to her being a runaway.”