Since no one knew which car was his, if he needed to bolt he had time to circle back later and pick it up. Or he would leave it. It was untraceable to him, that much he’d planned in advance. If it was safer to abandon it, that’s what he would do. He was prepared for that. He was fairly sure he’d thought of everything there was to think of.
The flannel-shirted witness glanced back twice as he walked toward his pickup, then unlocked it and ducked inside. The dome light flickered on, then extinguished as the door slammed shut. His brake lights brightened, and a puff of gray exhaust burst from the tailpipe.
He shifted the woman’s unconscious weight and wrapped her arm around his neck. He walked slowly, waiting for the man’s truck to move out of the lot. Then, with a flick of his free hand, he slid open the minivan door. After another quick look over his shoulder—all was quiet—he tossed her inside like a sack of garbage.
AS HE DROVE AWAY, careful to maintain the speed limit, he swung his head around to look at his quarry. The woman was splayed on the floor directly behind him. He couldn’t see her face, but her torso and legs were visible.
And then she moaned.
“What the fuck? I gave you enough to keep you down for at least twenty minutes.”
Perhaps he had been too conservative in figuring the dosage. He took care not to use too high a concentration, as excessive parts per million could result in death—and he didn’t want to kill her.
At least not that way. His first time with a woman, it had to be special.
He bit down and squirmed his ass deeper into the seat, then gently nudged the speedometer needle beyond 45. Any Highway Patrol officer would give him some leeway over the limit. It was taking a little risk, but hell, wasn’t this all one giant gamble on timing, luck, planning, and execution?
Really—how can you kill a person and not incur some degree of risk?
He rather liked it. His heart was thumping, the blood pulsing through his temples—and a look into the rearview revealed pupils that were wider than he’d ever seen them. What a fucking rush. All those wasted years. He had much time to recapture.
He checked all his mirrors. No law enforcement, as best he could see in the dark. Fast glance down at the woman. Her legs moved—she was waking.
Heart raced faster. Hands sweaty.
But really—what could she do to him? Scream? No one would hear her in this deathtrap. Scratch him? Big whoop.
He hit a pothole, then checked on her again—and in the passing flicker of a streetlight, saw a flat metal object poking out of her purse. What the—
He yanked the minivan over to the curb and twisted his body in the seat to get a better look. It was.
A badge.
He fisted a hand and brought it to his mouth. What to do? Is this good or bad? Well, both. He felt a swell of excitement in his chest and forced a deep breath to calm himself. Could this be better than sex? Sex . . . why have to choose? This really could be like his first time with a woman. But not just a woman. Some kind of cop.
He pulled away from the curb and had to keep his foot from slamming the accelerator to the floor. Slow—don’t blow it now.
A moment later, his headlights hit the street sign ahead. He flicked his signal and slowed. Almost there. He grinned into the darkness. No one could see him, but in this case, it didn’t matter. It would be another one of his little secrets.
HE LEFT THE WOMAN in an abandoned house at the edge of town. He thought about bringing her back to his place, where the other body was laid out in the shed. But he nixed that idea. One corpse was enough to deal with. It would soon start to smell, and he didn’t want a neighbor calling the cops on him. If they found one of their own in his house, they might kill him right there. Forget about a long prison term. He’d be executed. It was an accident, they’d claim. Resisting arrest. They did that kind of stuff, didn’t they? He wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t take the chance.
He needed to get to a coffee shop to sit and think all this through. Now that he was deeply committed, the reality of how far he’d gone began to sink in. And although he thought he had prepared properly, he was concerned he had rushed into it, letting the swell of anticipation cloud his planning. Certainly he hadn’t figured on killing a law enforcement officer. But how could he have known?
As he drove the minivan back to where he had parked his car, he wondered if he could use this vehicle again. There was no blood, and he could simply vacuum it out or take it to a car wash for an interior detailing. If they did a good job, there’d be no personally identifiable substance of the redhead left inside. And then he wouldn’t have to search again for an untraceable minivan. Still—what if someone had seen it in the Lonely Echo’s parking lot and that guy in the pickup was questioned by police? He could give them a decent description of him. No. Better to dump the vehicle and start from scratch.
But as he pulled alongside his car and shoved the shift into park, he realized he had made a mistake. No one would find the woman’s body for days, if not longer. He slammed a palm against the steering wheel. What fun is that?
Can’t go back—that would definitely be too high a risk.
Turn the page, move on.
He thought again of the evening, of what went right, and what he could’ve done better. He didn’t get caught, so, overall, he’d done a pretty damn good job. But something else he had learned this past week was that perfection was rarely there in the beginning. But it would come, eventually.
He would keep seeking until he found it. The next one he would do differently.
2
Smeared blood enveloped the hands and face of FBI profiler Karen Vail. It wasn’t her blood—it came from a colleague who had just died. But blood did not differ among serial killer, philanthropist, husband, vagrant, soldier, or prostitute. Young or old. American or foreign. Blood was blood. And when it got on your skin, it all felt the same.
No, that’s not true. Some blood did feel different; the blood coating Vail’s fingers did not have the usual slippery, wet consistency that she had felt many times—too many times—in the past. No, tonight it felt like pain. Guilt and heartache.
But as the van carrying Karen Vail rocked and lurched, she realized the pain and guilt and heartache were not coming from the blood on her skin, but from the injury that festered in her soul. Her best friend and lover, Detective Roberto “Robby” Hernandez, had vanished. No note, no secretly hidden message. No indication last time they had spoken that anything was wrong.
In fact, just the opposite. They’d had passionate sex only hours earlier.
And now he was missing.
John Wayne Mayfield, the serial killer who might have had something to do with Robby’s disappearance, was likely deceased, and a police sergeant who could have provided answers was growing cold in the morgue. But this man, Detective Ray Lugo, who had ties to the killer—ties Vail had yet to explore—did not mean anything to her.
His had just been blood, like anyone else’s.
Now pain and guilt. And heartache.
“TURN THE VAN AROUND!”
Vail shouted at the driver, but he couldn’t hear her. She was locked in the back of a state Department of Corrections transport truck, a thick metal cage surrounding her. Symbolic in some sense of what she felt.
Beside her, Napa County Detective Lieutenant Redmond Brix and Investigator Roxxann Dixon, stunned by the loss of their colleague, had watched Ray Lugo’s body being off-loaded at the morgue. They were now headed back to the Hall of Justice to clean up and retrieve their vehicles. But Vail had other ideas.