Chapter 18

"I'll just be another moment." Jerome covered the receiver with his hand. "I apologize profusely for asking you to wait. Under normal circumstances, I would never do this, but my wife is very ill." He paused. "She's terminal, and I've been on hold for twenty-five minutes. I'm bringing her home this evening from the hospital. I just needed to talk to her doctor about pain management."

Jerome didn't usually speak about anything personal with his patients, but he was rattled today. Tired. Worried, and feeling sorry for himself, at least just a little. He didn't know how he was going to live without his Sela.

"I understand. It's quite all right." Blue smiled with kindness, and Jerome realized he liked the patient, a judgment he usually tried not to make.

The phone connection clicked in Jerome's ear. "Yes?" he said.

"Dr. Fisher?" a female voice inquired.

"Yes, this is Dr. Fisher, still holding for Dr. Attiya." He tried not to sound impatient.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Fisher, but Dr. Attiya will have to return your call. He's unavailable right now."

"I just need to speak with him for a moment," Jerome intoned, glancing up at his patient, who was seated, legs crossed.

"He asked me to give you a message. He asked if he could call you at home this evening. Say, eight-thirty?"

Jerome checked the clock on the wall. An hour with his patient, an hour to get to the hospital and pick up Sela. He'd have to hustle to make it. "Yes, yes, that will be fine. But I'll be picking up my wife to take her home, so let me give you my cell phone number. If I don't answer at home, please tell Dr. Attiya that I want him to call my cell."

"I certainly will. And that number?"

Jerome gave her the number and hung up. "Again, I apologize," he told Blue as he came around his desk.

The patient raised a hand. "Apologies aren't necessary. I'm very sorry to hear about your wife's illness. Is... is there no hope?"

Jerome picked up Blue's file from the edge of his desk. "I'm afraid we've passed that point." His voice was devoid of any emotion. He was slipping into psychiatrist mode and there was no place for sentiment. "We've stopped treatment. Now." He took a seat in his comfy leather chair. "Tell me how your week has been." He flipped open the file. "Two weeks, really." He glanced up. "I'm sorry about having to reschedule; my wife had to be hospitalized suddenly."

The patient smiled. "I knew how to contact you if I needed you. Really, Dr. Fisher, it was all right."

"And your week? Did you go out often?"

"To bars, you mean?"

Jerome nodded.

"No." The patient smiled with pride. "Actually, I didn't. I... I haven't had sex in weeks. Months now."

Jerome nodded. "So you feel you're making progress?"

"Of sorts."

"Meaning?"

"I... I've been able to stay away from bars." There was a hesitation. "But... but I seem to have picked up another... habit that I fear could be destructive, as well."

"I see." Jerome looked up and the patient's demeanor changed almost before his eyes. The attractive, intelligent person sitting across from him seemed to draw up in the chair, almost shrivel. The face seemed to soften until it was almost childlike.

"Would you like to tell me what you've been doing?" Jerome asked gently, setting his pen down.

The office was quiet for a moment except for the tick of the clock on the wall and the muffled sound of the copy machine on the other side of the door.

"I don't think so."

"Blue—"

"I lied."

Jerome waited.

"I lied," the patient repeated. "When... when I said I hadn't been treated before by a psychiatrist."

"I see."

"No. No, I don't think you do. When you asked me about my psychiatric history, I lied. I've been treated on and off my whole life."

Jerome was not entirely surprised; he had been certain more was going on here than met the eye. He had told Sela that, hadn't he? "Would you like to tell me about it?" Jerome gave Blue another opportunity to speak, then went on. "I take it you were treated for the particular concern you came to me to address?"

The patient's head shook rapidly. "Not for this. For... for other things." There was a shuddering exhalation. "It's very complicated."

Jerome smiled, not unkindly. "Life is, isn't it?"

The patient's gaze lifted. Jerome still saw the child, but Blue's demeanor was shifting again. The mature, reasonable person who had entered the office only minutes ago was reappearing.

"I want to tell you. I want you to help me, but I... I don't know that I can say it."

Jerome was quiet for a moment. "We have some options, then. Perhaps you'd just like some time. We could talk about it next week."

"I... don't know that I would know where to start next week, either, and... and I'm concerned that my behavior could... worsen."

Jerome contemplated their options, choosing to offer the best first. "Then what would you think about my requesting your previous psychiatric records? You would have to give permission, of course, but then I could acquire copies. I could read them and then I would know where you and I should start." He hesitated. "Because, Blue, I've suspected for a number of weeks that we were not starting in the right place."

Tears filled the patient's eyes. "It's not that I didn't want to tell you."

"I understand. Sometimes it's hardest for us to say what is foremost in our minds." Jerome hesitated, glancing down at his notebook and file on his lap. "Do you know that when I told you a few minutes ago that my wife was terminally ill, that's the first time I've told anyone?"

Blue's eyes were filled with compassion.

"It's all I have thought about day and night since she has been in the hospital, but I haven't been able to actually say it." Jerome chuckled. "Now Sela, she has no difficulty discussing the subject."

"Sela—that's a lovely name."

Jerome lowered his head. "For a lovely woman. Now tell me, would you be willing to give me your previous psychiatrist's name? Mrs. Elright could bring in a consent form. We have them already printed up for just this type of situation."

"I think that would be best."

"Excellent." Jerome rose from his chair. "I don't think you'll regret this. It's a wise step in gaining the control you seek over your life." He opened the door. "Mrs. Elright, could you please bring a patient's records release form?"

"Certainly, Dr. Fisher."

Jerome closed the door and headed for his chair again. "That will be just a minute—now, why don't we talk about something else? Something you're more comfortable with." He sat down. "Tell me how you made out this week with your journal entries."

* * *

"So what do we have?" Adam walked into the conference room M.K. had commandeered as her own the day after Tiffany Faulk's murder. He took a chair across from her. She had the conference table covered with files and stacks of legal-size notepads set in orderly rows. Around her chair were white cardboard file boxes she was beginning to fill with information she'd gathered on the Chesapeake Bay College case. All week he'd been letting her get as far as she could alone, doing the legwork on the case, while he worked the wiretap at the docks and plowed through the old files Crackhow kept leaving on his desk.

M.K. sat back in her chair, pushing her hair aside on her forehead and reaching for a diet soda. "What have we got? Nothing," she said, gazing over the paperwork, files, folders, and legal pads in front of her. She tipped the can, taking a drink. "That's why I thought we needed to talk. This isn't working. I don't know what to do. What direction to go. I've got a big, fat bunch of nothing."

"That isn't true. You've worked hard for days, and we've got a list of possible suspects now, right?"

She sighed, nodding as she set down her can. "Right."

She looked tired to him, not quite so tough, maybe just a little vulnerable. He liked that side of her. "So let's go over them," he said.

She grabbed a yellow legal pad and began to scan her notes.

"We've got Patrick Purnell, the security guy. He found Peter Wright's body. He was also conveniently within a block of the football field when the groundskeeper called Tiffany Faulk's body in. He was first on the scene, even before the Ashview police."

Adam tented his hands, nodding. Processing the information. "Okay, the guy's definitely got possibilities. Let's think about what we know from Serial Killers 101. We know they often like to be directly involved with the discovery of the bodies. They like to stand in a crowd of bystanders and watch, call in tips, offer to help with the investigation. I can't tell you how many cases have been solved by starting with a photograph of the bystanders. If our killer's really got cojones, he'll even be the one to report the deaths."

"I know. I've interviewed Purnell twice now, first in person, then on the phone, but he just doesn't seem right." She pressed the forefinger and thumb of one hand to her temples. "He doesn't appear to be bright enough to be a serial killer, if you want to know the truth. They usually have IQs well above average."

"Okay. Who else?" Adam prodded. He was proud of how well M.K. was doing on this investigation. She really had a head for the order of things, the patience it took to see each and every detail through. That was what it took to work these cases. Not intuition or feelings. Just hard work. It was the best way. The only way.

"Buddy Caruso. Pizza delivery guy." She glanced up. "Come to find out, he's Chief Seipp's stepson."

"You're kidding."

She shook her head. "Don't know that it has anything to do with anything, but..." She shrugged. "Seipp sure never mentioned it. Guess how I found out."

He lifted his brows.

"Our own campus sleuth, Miss Liza Jane Thomas. I spoke with her yesterday. She has an excellent memory for details. She was the one who told me she had seen Caruso leaving Wooten Hall the night of Peter's murder."

"Please tell me she isn't reporting he's a suspect"

"You don't read her articles in the campus newspaper? Watch her news show?"

He reached for her soda. "A swallow left in that can?"

She handed it to him. "It's hot and flat. And no, she didn't give any names, but I feel like she's got a better handle on this investigation than I do. You know, you should watch her show. Read her articles. She's good."

Adam ignored her advice on being a good father. "You're doing fine. You know I wouldn't hesitate to tell you if you weren't." He took a sip of her soda. She was right, it was flat. He drank the rest of it anyway. "So, what have we actually got on this Caruso?"

"Nothing, really, except that he's creepy as all get out. Delivered pizza to the janitor working in Wooten that night." M.K. ran her finger down the page of notes. "And he's got a record. Assault and battery. Minor marijuana possession. He's on probation. And I'm almost positive his record was expunged more than once prior to his eighteenth birthday, so I have someone looking into that."

"Excellent." Adam shot the soda can into the trash bin in the corner of the stuffy room. "Records that are no longer supposed to exist are always fun to read."

"Get this, also thanks to Miss Liza Jane. Caruso delivered pizza to Bart Johnson's house that Friday night after the football game. The night prior to his death."

He frowned. "How the hell did she know that?"

"Talked to some girl she knows from her psych class whose sister works at the pizza place. I didn't get a thing out of them, but Liza Jane is less intimidating, I'm sure. Caruso also delivered pizza to Tiffany Faulk's dorm the week prior to her death."

"No shit"

M.K. frowned.

He groaned inwardly, but it didn't bother him as much as it had a couple of weeks ago. So she had her quirks. Didn't they all? "Sorry."

"Trouble is," she continued, "he's probably delivered pizza to every dorm, and every frat and sorority house on campus. Shoot, he's probably delivered to your place. Liza Jane said he even delivered to your ex-wife's once in a while."

"Doesn't matter." Adam leaned back in his chair, parking his ankle on his knee. He enjoyed this part of the work. He liked trying to outthink these bastards. And he was finding out that he liked doing it with M.K. "It's a place to start."

"I know." She set down the legal pad. "I just feel like we have so little. Something as big as this, I would just think there'd be more."

"Maybe something will come up with the forensic testing," he offered.

"Maybe, but you heard what Belker said. There wasn't that much evidence. A hair on her sweater that could have come from anywhere. No follicle, though. Footprints we couldn't match to anyone at the scene, but we have to have suspects to compare to and I don't have enough on anyone for a judge to let me confiscate shoes. There's no DNA anywhere." She opened her arms wide. "I'm telling you, we've got nothing."

"Who else is on your list?"

"Let's see." She looked down. "Arthur Connelly, professor of biology. Jessica, Peter, and Tiffany were all either presently taking a class from him or had taken one of his classes in the last three years." What she didn't tell him was that Bart had had Connelly, too. She wasn't ready to push that button yet.

"Liza Jane has him, too," Adam said thoughtfully. He looked up. "How'd you get that information?"

"Requested all their schedules, cross-referenced them."

"It must have taken hours." He met her gaze across the table.

She looked down. "It did."

"I notice you just included Jessica in your list of those who had contact with this professor. Why are you connecting her death with these last two? The official cause of death was an OD. For God's sake, M.K., we found the roofies in her purse."

"I know, but everyone said she didn't do drugs, including her roommate. What if someone put them in her drink? It's how it's used as a date rape drug. And we never found any explanation for the missing lock of hair. Her roommate knew nothing about it. I know there's no direct evidence, but I just have the feeling her death is connected."

More of her damned feelings. M.K.'s stubbornness annoyed him. It could get in the way of the investigation. An agent couldn't afford to stubbornly stick to certain thoughts or assumptions, not leaving the door open to other possibilities. "I'm still not buying it," he told her firmly. "I'm not buying the idea that someone fed Bart through the chipper-shredder, either."

"Who said anything about Bart? Anyway," she said, "I was thinking about interviewing this professor, but I don't know what my approach should be. I don't know what reason to give him for the interview or how to proceed once I've got him. If it is, by chance, him, which I don't think it is, obviously I don't want him to think he's a suspect."

"We'll do it together. I'll run the interview, you sit back. We all develop our own techniques with time, but I can show you the general direction to follow when you talk to a possible suspect that's way outside the perimeter."

She tapped her pen on the table. "I feel like I'm really grasping at straws here with no physical evidence to go on. No witnesses, no forensics that will help us..."

"It's how we do it in these situations, M.K. You heard Crackhow yesterday morning. He warned you these serial killer cases can take years."

"We haven't got years! The president of Chesapeake College has called Crackhow twice. Parents of students are holding news conferences. Kids are dropping out left and right." She slapped down the pen and leaned forward, pressing her hands to the table to move closer to him. "Adam, this guy's on a hot streak. He's going to kill again, and you know it. We've got to find him."

Her gesture came pretty close to getting in his face, but he didn't get pissed off because he knew her anger wasn't directed toward him. It came out of her frustration with the case. He'd been there too many times not to cut her a break. "But the only way we're going to find him," he said, "short of him leaving us a calling card, is by following through on every possible lead, every hunch, no matter how insignificant or far-fetched it might seem."

She glanced away, folding her arms over her chest, staring at the wall painted government-green behind him.

"So let's talk about our killer," Adam pushed. "Tell me what we know about him."

She threw up her hands, still angry. "Are you not listening to me? We don't know anything!"

"Sure we do. We know more than you think. I know you've been reading up on everything the Bureau has printed on this subject. I've seen the piles of stuff you're printing to read. You're killing entire pine forests with your printouts. Mother pine trees are weeping everywhere. Now tell me what we know, statistically."

She hesitated for a second, then reached for a different legal pad in front of her in one of her neat rows. "Male, Caucasian. Either employed during the day, or the night, but not a shift-worker."

"Why?"

She glanced up. "What do you mean?"

"I mean first, how do we know he's male and Caucasian?"

"We know it's a male because more than ninety-seven percent of serial killers are male and only males take trophies," she said, as if he was an idiot.

"Excellent."

"He's Caucasian for the same reason. They almost always are, and the fact that the victims are Caucasian ups the percentage to almost guarantee it."

M.K. leaned back in her chair, her jacket falling open to reveal her Glock service weapon in her shoulder holster and the thought crossed Adam's mind that he liked a woman packing a weapon. It was kind of sexy, somehow. "Tell me about his job."

"He probably works days since all the deaths occurred at night." She lifted a finger. "Unless, of course, he's killing them while on the job."

"Like if he was a night security cop or a pizza delivery guy."

She tapped her nose with her forefinger, then scanned her list again. "Let's see... what else? He's smart, because they are, but also because he's leaving no physical evidence behind except the body. Being outside helps—the elements make it more difficult to collect evidence, but these are very well planned murders. If not well planned as in forethought, at least well executed. Both the penknife and rock at the Wright scene were wiped clean. He didn't leave the weapon at the Faulk scene."

"Who are the victims?"

"If we only look at Peter and Tiffany, all we can really say is that they're college students at Chesapeake." She chewed on the end of her pen. "I mean, they never even knew each other."

"You're sure?"

She nodded. "Peter was a sophomore, undeclared major, but going into some kind of sciences. Tiffany, a senior, was a communications major. No extracurricular activities for Peter, and he roomed alone. He had a small group of geeky friends from the science department, but he was kind of a loner. Tiffany, on the other hand, was a cheerleader, a member of all sorts of clubs and committees, and shared a dorm apartment in the towers with three other girls. She was Miss Popularity. She told friends when she graduated, she was going to go west to try out for a position as a Laker girl."

Adam shook his head at the notion of such unrealistic goals. And to think, the poor girl's family had been putting her through college so she could be a half-naked cheerleader. He was thankful his own daughter had more lofty objectives. He shifted his focus back to the investigation. "The actual murders are very different, though, aren't they?" he thought aloud.

She nodded. "With Peter, the killer used an object he found lying around."

"Which suggests it was unplanned."

"But with Tiffany, we found no weapon. We know it's a large knife, but it wasn't left behind, which makes us think he brought it with him."

"And the knife used to kill Tiffany was not the same type of knife used to cut off Peter's ear?"

"Nope. According to the M.E., the killer definitely used Peter's own penknife to cut off his ear." She looked up. "Speaking of which, did we get a written report from your buddy, Dr. Wood?"

"Nah." He shook his head, wondering how the coroner had become his buddy. "But she's been backed up. She told you she couldn't get right to it."

M.K. glanced down at her notes again. "We haven't gotten those audiotapes from her autopsies that she promised, either."

Adam frowned. "So I'll give her another day and if we don't hear from her, I'll give her a ring. Don't get so pissy. Why do you get so pissy with me every time her name comes up?"

M.K. flipped the page on her legal pad so hard that the paper made a loud pop. "I don't."

"You do."

She shot him another one of those killer looks. "I am not being pissy. What do I care if you're dating her?"

It was bad enough to be in trouble for things he did. "I'm not dating her."

"I don't want to talk about this. You have a right to date who you want. We already agreed that you and I,"—she kept her gaze on the notepad—"that it wouldn't work out."

What a mess. Adam knew better than to allow himself to become attracted to a co-worker. He knew agents made lousy partners. The fact that he was attracted to her was just getting in the way here. "M.K., I said I'm not dating her."

She flipped another page. "If you are, it's fine. She's nice. Pretty. I'd kill for that body of hers."

"I thought you didn't want to talk about it."

"I don't." She slapped the notepad down and grabbed another one. "What do you think about the trophies? From Peter, he took an ear, from Tiffany, a breast."

"Dam—darned gruesome, isn't it?" He put emphasis on his better choice of words. "And with Tiffany, it seems as if it escalated. An ear—I mean, that's not so hard to do. Just slice it off. But a breast..."

"It's definitely a pattern, especially if we include Jessica's hair." She raised her hand. "I know you don't think they're connected, but how can we know for sure? It's a pretty well documented fact that serial killers have often killed sometime prior to becoming serial killers. I'm just afraid of what we're going to find next if we don't catch this creep." M.K. scribbled something down and looked up. "And why? Why would a person do such a thing?"

Adam looked down at his hands on the table, suddenly feeling like a dark cloud had drifted over him. Why would a person do such a thing to another person? Against his will, memories of the past were coming back, pushing at the walls of his mind where he had so carefully constructed barriers. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly feeling like he couldn't breathe. Ten years. How in ten years could he still feel this way?

"I think you're doing a great job here, M.K." He got out of his chair. "I think we're definitely moving in the right direction." He kept nodding as he went to the door. "See what you can do about making arrangements to speak with the professor."

She followed him with her gaze, his sudden retreat not going unnoticed. "Okay..."

"I've got something else to take care of." He hooked his thumb in the direction of the hall... the world beyond the building. "Let me know." In the hall, he walked straight to the elevator. It was only three-thirty, too early to leave, but he was beginning to break out in a sweat. The memories weren't just pushing on the walls anymore. They were banging on them. Breaking through. He saw the flash of the gun. The look on Mark's face.

He punched the call button, and when it didn't light up at once, he punched it again. The doors sprang open and he hit the button to take him down with his fist. The doors closed and he leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes, thankful no one had seen him.

FBI agents losing their marbles ended up losing their jobs.