“Let me see the pictures,” Noah said, his voice flat.
“Noah, just go home,” Abbott said. “We’ve got eyes all over the city searching for his car. Everyone understands the urgency. We will find him.”
“Let me see the fucking pictures,” Noah repeated, hostilely, and Abbott shrugged.
“Fine, let’s see them. Faye,” he called, “get the head of security up here with a copy of the tapes. I want to review them myself.”
As a group they moved to Abbott’s office and Micki dumped a stack of photographs on Abbott’s round table. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, Web,” she said.
“Neither do I. Where are the cameras?”
“In the evidence room,” Micki said. “I’ll get them.” She left as Olivia’s cell rang.
Olivia grimaced at the ID. “Ramsey’s waiting for me in Interview with Damon.”
“Go,” Abbott said. “Good luck.”
Noah didn’t look up when she left. He was sorting photos with single-minded focus. There was something here. There has to be.
Thursday, February 25, 12:10 p.m.
Didn’t your parents… Eve couldn’t breathe. She could only stare up into Winters’s face as he grabbed the twine and pulled. Can’t breathe. Going to die. Again. Didn’t your parents- No. I won’t go there again.
She opened her eyes with a hard jerk and found herself looking into the amused face of Dr. Carleton Pierce. He smiled at her, patting her face mildly. She tried to bite him but when her head turned it moved slowly, as if through molasses.
“What did you give me?” she asked him, her words slurred.
“Ketamine. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off. And it’s not addictive, although that doesn’t really matter. You wouldn’t be living long enough to care if it were.”
“Noah… will find you.”
Pierce laughed out loud. “No, he won’t, my dear, but you go on thinking that if it makes you feel better. How’s your leg?”
“Shot,” she said, her teeth clenched. She was lying on the backseat of his car and her thigh burned where his bullet had pierced her flesh.
“Well, I’ve bandaged you up,” he said, mockingly benign. “Don’t want you to bleed out. I’m not done with you. In fact, I haven’t even started.” He smiled and Eve tasted true fear. She’d seen that smile before, on Winters’s face… before he killed me.
“Very good,” he said. “I can see the fear in your eyes. Did you like my message?”
Pain mixed with fear to back the breath up in her lungs. “I thought it was Dell.”
“And it suited me for you to think so. But now, I find I want the credit.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out another syringe and she twisted hard to roll, move, anything to get away. But his knee clamped over her thighs. “It’ll hurt less if you don’t fight me.” He plunged the needle into her neck. “That will hold you until I get you where we’re going. Listen, Eve.” He put a microrecorder near her ear and clicked a button.
And once again Eve heard Winters’s voice. “I stabbed her, eight times. She tried to claw at me. Feisty little thing she was. So I slashed her hand, then her face.”
“Why her face?” another man asked. “I mean, you’d already all but killed her.”
“Because she thought she was pretty. Because I wanted to. Because I could.”
She was fading fast, faster than before. She blinked hard, and clicking off the recorder, Pierce leaned close. “I’ll kill you,” he whispered, “because I can. Because I wish it. Because it will give me pleasure. But it won’t be quick. You’ll wish you were dead, but I won’t make it as easy as Winters did. Don’t worry, Eve. You’ll see.”
He stepped back, drawing sweet cold air through his nostrils. This was going to be so good. He’d been in a constant state of arousal since he’d forced Eve to the back of his wife’s car. The knowledge he’d been carrying his wife and Liza in the trunk all this time… This was going to be so good.
He wouldn’t limit himself to killing her only once. Eve had died twice before. I’ll let her relive that, moment by moment, again and again. He had visions of his hands around her throat, taking her almost to death. Then letting her come back. And letting himself go. Again and again. It was going to be an amazing experience.
He slid from the backseat and looked both ways. No one was coming. He’d pulled to a side road, well outside the city limits, a smart move given the chatter on his police scanner. They were searching the city and the highways, but they’d never look for him way out here. Still, he needed to hurry. He was only another twenty minutes from his place.
He prepared another syringe to administer to Eve just before he took her into the house. She was tall, and stronger than she looked. She’d nearly gotten away, back in the garage. Bitch. He rolled his shoulder gingerly. That computer bag of hers had been as hard as a brick. That’s why he always went for the petite types. They took far less effort to subdue, leaving him more energy for the main event. He didn’t want to fight with Eve again until he had her tied to the narrow bed in his basement. But when he was ready… He liked it when they fought on his terms. It made it so much better. Eve was going to be the kill of his life.
He went around to the trunk to check on his other passengers. His wife was still quiet. Being dead did help that. And Liza was still in a stupor. She wouldn’t give him much trouble. She’d been bordering on catatonic since she’d realized she was riding with a dead woman. She probably still thought it was her sister. That made him smile.
“You shouldn’t have come looking for your sister,” he murmured. “And she shouldn’t have been a hooker. But she was, and you did, and now you’re mine.”
He closed the trunk and headed for his place. Arranging the details to explain his wife’s upcoming extended absence had taken most of the morning. It was only sheer luck that he’d been back to his car in time to hear police scanner chatter about the discovery of another homicide. He couldn’t let the opportunity to watch Webster’s horror at his final “Red Dress Kill” pass by unenjoyed. And it was good that he had not. Good to know Donner was dead before he set him up any further.
Of course the best thing to come out of his visit to Virginia’s this morning was the news that Eve was going to a safe house. Once she’d been so ensconced, it would have been nearly impossible to get to her without arousing suspicion.
Taking her in the police garage had been a necessary risk. And, he had to admit, an awesome thrill. But even better thrills were to come.
Thursday, February 25, 12:45 p.m.
Noah put his head in his hands. Eyes all over the city and no one had seen anything. She’d been gone an hour. Time enough for whoever took her to be miles away. “Where’s Pierce? We need a better profile.”
“I’ll call him,” Abbott said and Noah began searching each pile of photos again as Micki returned with two cameras, both with a long-range zoom.
“Here it is,” she said. “And I think I found out what he meant by ‘he almost got you.’ ”
She showed Noah the view screen, pointing at the shadowy interior of, surprise, a black SUV. “Whoever that is had a gun trained on you and Eve.”
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“Farmer’s got pictures here of you in front of Jack’s house last night,” she went on, “but most of the rest of what’s on this memory card he’s already printed out.”
“So we keep looking,” he said, and started searching again. Everyone at the table picked up a stack, even though none of them knew what they were looking for.
Abbott rejoined them. “I left Carleton a message. Give me those pictures, Noah. You’ve looked through them twice already. Look at something different.”
Noah handed him the photos from Martha Brisbane’s and picked up a new stack. They were from Christy Lewis’s house. Monday night. He put the pictures in sequential order, trying to remember what had happened that night three days before.