She was prowling again. Searching the floor for answers.
“Are they still on the camera?” she asked. Not him. The floor. “Did he print them so he can jerk off to them or some other sick thing?”
“Jordan... take it easy.”
She came over and leaned on the table and, eyes wild, demanded, “I want those photos! Those are the last photos of my family and I want them, and they are for me to have and for me to destroy. If you people have them, goddamnit, I want them!”
“We don’t have them. Jordan. Sit down. We really don’t.”
“It’s not your case. You don’t know—”
“I know. I have access to the file. Sit. Please.”
She did.
He said, “Serial killers often keep souvenirs of their atrocities. Mementoes.”
Her eyes disappeared into slits. “They’re evidence. Mark, Jesus, Mark, he must have some kind of horrible scrapbook, and monstrous as that is, that’s great!”
“It... it is?”
“Find that scrapbook, and you’ve found him.”
“True. And that book, or maybe data file, will put him on death row.”
They sat in silence for what felt like a very long time, to Mark at least. She was staring at her folded hands or maybe the tabletop. Anyway, not at him.
Finally, still looking down, she said, “What David and Kay wouldn’t tell you? That I had told them?”
“Yes?”
“That’s the reason I reacted like that. When you tried to kiss me.”
“Wh... what is?”
Her eyes lifted from the table and they were clear and lovely with no sign of tears. As if telling him what tomorrow’s weather would be, she said, “He raped me.”
Mark felt like he’d been struck a blow to his stomach, so hard a blow that the wind was knocked from him. His vision blurred, and he felt very sick.
“Where,” he said softly, “is your...?”
She pointed, and he ran, and he knelt over the stool and threw up the pizza and the cola. It came up hard and wrenching and he was still kneeling over the stool when she entered, flushed it for him, knelt by him, and slipped her arm around him, patting his shoulder. There there, there there...
She helped him to his feet and then slipped out and let him wash up. He threw water on his face, looked at himself in the mirror and saw an exhausted, emotion-ravaged wreck. You’re really showing her some great support, pal, he told himself, and toweled off his face.
Then they were sitting at the table again. Now she was watching him until he was ready to speak.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Did he do that to anyone else?”
“Huh?”
“Rape anyone else?”
“Not... not that’s been reported.”
“I never told anyone.”
“I know.” You didn’t talk for ten years. “They didn’t examine you?”
“I bathed and changed my clothes before the police came. A doctor looked at my bruises from the struggle, but that’s all.”
“I’m so sorry, so sorry you went through that. All alone.”
“Don’t start crying. If you cry, Mark, I’ll cry, and I don’t want to fucking cry. Get it?”
He nodded.
She was frowning. “I don’t understand why he did it to me.”
“Power. Rape is about power.”
“I know that! But I’m the only one, seems like, that he did it to. He killed my family. Power? He could have killed me at any time. How much power does one fucking asshole need?”
“He... he wanted to own you, to show you that whether you lived or died was his decision.”
She grinned at him. How could she grin? “Wonder why I was silent all those years? Why I haven’t talked to anyone about this until lately?”
“Tell me.”
“Because he said he wanted me to tell his story.”
“Wanted...? His story?”
“That’s right. Well, fuck him. That was my attitude, from that first night on. I wasn’t going to say anything about him — ever.”
He frowned at her. “Why break your silence now?”
“The Strongsville homicides. I saw it on the news. I knew it was him. I had to stop him.”
“You had to... stop him?”
“Yes. And I’ve let you and the support group in, because I don’t think I can find him on my own.”
Mark was studying her. “And if you find him? What then?”
“...Turn him over to the police.”
It almost sounded like a question.
He said, “I hope so. Because I can’t help you, if you’re looking for revenge.”
“I want revenge, but I’ll settle for justice.”
Mark put his hand on hers. She started to draw it away, then left it there. Their eyes were locked as he said, “Do I have to tell you how dangerous this individual is? You cannot deal with this yourself. Tell me you won’t try to deal with this yourself.”
“I’m not. Who was it said, ‘I get by with a little help from my friends’?”
“Stopping him is what’s important. Getting even... you can’t get even with a lunatic. You can only stop him.”
She sighed. Nodded. “There is one other thing about that night...”
“Yes?”
“When he was... done? He said some very weird shit to me.”
“Weird how?”
“ ‘Thou shalt not wear a garment of different sorts, as of woolen and linen together.’ ”
“Deuteronomy 22:11,” Mark said.
“You know the Bible?”
“Some. Enough to recognize that’s not the King James version.”
“No?”
“King James uses the phrase ‘divers sorts’ instead of ‘different sorts’.”
She was frowning. “What the hell does it mean?”
Mark said, “What it means to us isn’t important. What it means to the killer, and his twisted take on it, could be vital.”
“So... where do we go from here?”
“If you’ll allow it, I’ll meet with you and your team. They can show me what they have, and maybe I can bend a few rules and share some of what I’ve learned.”
Her half smile had a wry tinge. “Isn’t that better?”
“Better?”
“Than going behind my back?”
“Much,” he said, and grinned at her. “It’s, uh... getting late. I really should go...”
He hoped she’d have a different opinion, but instead she just walked him to the door.
“Trust me, Jordan. We’ll catch this SOB.”
She smiled at him. “Pretty salty talk.”
“Maybe you’re a bad influence on me,” he said, and as she closed the door on him and her own small smile, he found himself wishing she’d be a much worse influence than that.
Chapter Fourteen
“He kissed you?” Kara said, gawking at Jordan.
“More like he tried,” Jordan said, shrugging. “I about knocked him on his ass, and that shut him down.”
“You want him ‘shut down’?”
“One thing I don’t need is a man in my life. There’s already a man in my life.”
“A man in your life that you want to kill.” This time Kara shrugged. “Maybe there’s room for one you want to kiss.”
Jordan shook her head. “No. Anyway... no.”
“Anyway what?”
She sighed. “I doubt he wants to even touch me now. After what I told him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“...About what the intruder really did to me that night.”
Kara leaned forward. “You told him?”
She nodded. “And it made him sick.”
Kara shook her head and the punky hair bounced. “He got sick because he cares about you. Not because you sicken him or some shit. Girl, you need to screw that head on tighter.”