Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
—Denis Diderot, Pensées Philosophiques
Chief Richmond stood in front of the 40-foot-deep room, the camera bulbs blinding his vision. A barrage of questions came at him like machinegun fire. God, he hated the media, hated the way their concerns, questions, became paramount, at least in their own minds. Hated the fact that clips from this briefing would likely appear on Extra or one of those sleazy tabloid shows his wife couldn’t get enough of.
From what he had seen of the four o’clock newsreels, speculation was already running rampant about who the girl was, that there was a copycat killer who had changed the MO just slightly. One reporter even stated that the killer’s media tag should be changed to reflect the escalation in violence, “the once a week killer.” As promised, the department delivered on its guarantee of an eight o’clock briefing.
Raising his hand, Richmond stated that questions should be held till the end of the briefing. He introduced McGregor and Stevenson and briefly outlined the case for the media.
An overly ambitious reporter jumped up, hair and makeup primed for the spotlights. “What can you tell us about this victim?”
“I’ll turn that question over to Dr. Powers,” he said, stepping off the podium.
Cat stepped up to the plate, watching the room now, bodies silhouetted against harsh lights. Her auburn highlights were set off by the glow, yet the gold-rimmed glasses could not hide her exhaustion. Still, she appeared proficient, masterful, in her description of the investigation. Purposefully, she made no mention of the ligature bruises. She also did not disclose the lacerations’ exact placement.
Cat was careful.
She listed the evidence, keeping the reporter focused on the Burning Man investigation while two plainclothes officers surveyed the room. From Cat’s estimation, the killer would be here. The officers scanned the faces. None looked out of place; none squirmed or looked away as Cat spoke. She squinted, trying to get a read on whether the plainclothes guys had anything. Liston shrugged his shoulders.
Yet she knew he was here.
“Dr. Powers, Dr. Powers,” an older man called out as he stood up, the end of his pen pressing against his lower lip. He looked like someone out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Snow-white hair, ruddy checks. His chest was rising and falling, as if he had run a marathon. “Do we know anything about the killer yet?”
“Not much. We believe he is a white male in his late twenties to early fifties, likely employed in some capacity in the medical profession. A fit man, though not overly large. He takes good care of himself. He is a control fre—” Cat chose her words conscientiously, mindful that the wrong word could set him off. “He is domineering. He is a man of power, of position.”
“What can you tell us of the latest victim?”
“Right now we don’t have a name. Jane Doe appears to be slim, attractive, early twenties. We are asking anyone who might have a friend or relative missing that fits that description to contact us right away. The number should be on your screen. I know it’s not much but that’s all I have.”
As Cat talked, she scrutinized the faces in the crowd, looking for someone who fit the killer’s description. It was impossible. Hell, the reporter who fired the last question at her fit it. They all did. When the conference was over, she stationed herself to the side of the room, close to the back door, watching men as they funneled out. The plainclothes guys mixed with the crowd but looked as befuddled as she felt. She was pissed.
They didn’t have anything concrete on this guy.
Not anything.
As a man moved through the crowd to the door, his eyes would not meet her gaze. He fit the profile, mid-forties, fit, white, wearing expensive Italian shoes. He was wearing a Yankees baseball cap, pulled down over his face. As he turned to go, she glimpsed just a bit of his hair showing from under the cap. At that instant Cat’s instincts screamed it’s him! She lurched across the room, drawing her firearm from its holster in one seamless motion. Her mind was spinning at the possibility of the guy bolting.
As she grabbed his arm, he gasped. The plainclothes guys were walking over chairs as if they were water, crashing through the furniture.
“What?” The man jerked his arm.
She held on. “You knew them.”
He turned away from her now, looking over her shoulder, eyes fixated on the door. “I what?”
“You knew them.”
“I’ve got to go.”
The plainclothes cops worked their way through the crowd. Two people stopped at the door, turned at the commotion.
The man gathered himself up, preparing to speak.
For the first time, he looked at her. A steely stare. He looked through her eyes, not at them. It gave her the creeps. His eyes were a strange shade of hazel that seemed out of place with the rest of his coloring, his hair dark—almost black. This too did not fit with his pale skin.
“I am an admirer of your work,” he said coolly. “Nothing more.”
She pulled him off to the side.
“You know who I am?”
“Doesn’t everyone who is here?” he mocked. “You are the matchless Dr. Catherine Powers.” He used her name for the first time. “You are the FBI’s chief forensic pathologist, I believe with the Behavioral Sciences Unit, out of Quantico, Virginia.” Neither cocky nor arrogant, each word was controlled, delivered in a deep baritone. This man was cool and well-spoken.
He didn’t seem to hear them, two plainclothes surging up on him from behind.
“What is it?” one of them said, out of breath.
She did not reply. Rather, she concentrated on the man.
The first thing that struck her was how ordinary he appeared. Below the baseball cap, trimmed dark hair, clean shaven, oxford shirt. Yet he was strange. The way he looked at her, studied her. The color of his eyes.
“We were just having a conversation,” she said to the agents, her gaze never leaving his. They backed off.
She cocked her head to one side. He did the same. He had the weirdest smirk, not quite a smile, not a frown, but something in between as he looked at her as if she were a specimen butterfly he had just pegged to a corkboard.
Touching him, she was suddenly aware of a strange intimacy. He held her in it, as he wanted to. “You are quite beautiful.”
She did not speak.
“I know of you by reputation. Reputation as the best.”
“You knew them.”
“Knew who?” He remained in control, though clearly he was becoming impatient with her questioning. “To whom are you referring?”
“The girls.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.” He gestured toward the door. “Now, I would like to stay to chat, but I have an appointment.” He glanced at his watch, breaking eye contact with her for the first time.
Cat felt like she had been in a trance, her head fogged over, her thoughts not right.
As he tried to pull away, she could feel his bicep flex. Hard, rigid, yet smooth, like the man himself.
She looked around at McGregor, who was talking to one of the plainclothes guys, then turned back to this man. She felt herself smile at him. He smiled back.
“I have every intention of finding him,” she said.
His arm twitched.
“I am sure you do.” His words were confident, monotone.
He paused. “Do you have any theories about why they were killed?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” she challenged him at his own charade.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Tell me about Nancy Marsh. Was she some girl you picked out in the crowd, or did you know her?”
“This is ridiculous,” he said, his anger growing. He tried to pull away. Then, as quickly as the anger came, it dissipated, replaced again by the country gentleman. “I know I can trust you, doctor. I have seen your work.”
She shivered, watching his transformation.
He stared at her lips, mouth. “Perhaps we will meet again.” He gave her an intense, sincere look. Began to move away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“My name is not important,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.
It was as if she were caught in a nightmare with not a lick of peace. Cat was drained by the day’s events, yet as she ambled into her hotel lobby, a reporter was on her.
“Doctor, doctor, what is the connection between the victims? Did they know each other? Has the FBI turned up any leads on the assailant?”
Assailant, that was a nice word for a madman, she thought.
The questions persisted, this man in his mid-fifties lapping at her feet like a puppy.
“You know, I’ve had a very long day. I have no intention of giving an interview.” She tucked her black valise close to her chest, her heels clicking faster on the beige marble floor.
The man would not take no for an answer.
She tried to be pleasant, offer the idiot an alternative. “Perhaps if you leave your card with the front desk, I can call you in the morning.”
Still not good enough. Typically reporters with any heart let her be after a day like today. She had been going nonstop since seven, with barely a break to use the bathroom.
She got a good look at him as he squared off in front of her like a high school quarterback waiting for a delayed hit. Tall and rangy, a modest build, disproportionately enormous hands. She recognized him from the press conference.
“OC Metro magazine, isn’t it?”
“Very observant.” He seemed fascinated by her observation, or perhaps that he was the object of that observation. Either way, she had no intention of answering his questions.
She stopped in her tracks. “As you can see,” she glanced at his press pass, dangling like a dog tag, “Cooper, is it? I am very tired. When I’m tired, I turn real bitchy, you get my drift? So unless you’d like your press credentials suspended for any future press conferences I hold on this case, I suggest you get out of my way.”
“Come on, doc. Not everything’s so black-and-white. The public’s got a right to know. You up for dinner?” He spoke to her as if they had known each other all their lives; she was taken aback by it.
“What?”
“You do look beat, worse than my kid sister when we used to use her for defensive football practice. She made for a great battering ram and all.” He grinned in her direction, trying to provoke a smile. There was something disarming in his demeanor, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“What in God’s green earth are you talking about?”
“Come on, sis. I’m harmless. A big puppy dog. And you look like hell warmed over. Haven’t eaten a decent thing all day, have you?”
He was reading her mind, though she didn’t want him to know it.
“I have work to do.” She tried to step around him, but he rolled left, sensing her direction.
“Very good, and do you play tackle too?”
“Let me take you to dinner, doc.”
“Absolutely not. I have a number of rules I live by.” She stopped, remembering his name. “Cooper, first, I don’t buddy up to reporters, no matter how charming or ‘harmless’ they are. Second, I don’t have dinner with strange men I hardly know. And third,” she patted her firearm, holstered beneath her shoulder, “if you don’t get the hell out of my way, you’re going to meet Clarence here. Do I make myself clear?”
The man stepped to the side, scratching his head. “Jesus, just trying to be friendly and all.”
She ignored him and walked toward the elevator. In the aftermath of the encounter, Cat thought what an odd man. Did he honestly believe she would grant him an interview in the middle of this investigation? She was stunned by his audacity, his informality. Learning more and more about the Burning Man, she felt herself disengaging from any intimate contact with men. It had always been this way.
At this point, relationships seemed neither important nor particularly fulfilling.
Her life was systematized. Get the call, a plane flight to Anywhere USA, then the analysis, the inevitable body trail. Although she wished it were not so, she was married to her work. There had to be a release for her at some point. Right now, she did not know what that might be.
Inside, her emotions felt all twisted up.
When she got inside Room 428, she didn’t turn on the lights, didn’t check her messages, didn’t turn down the bed.
Instead, in the semidarkness, she walked through the room, poured a glass of merlot from the wet bar, and sat down in a wing chair facing a big window. The curtains were open. The window loomed in front of her—a big unfamiliar black void, a few stars from apartments and high-rises here and there.
Kicking off her shoes, she curled her feet up under her, leaning back, letting the wine fall down her throat. Hoping it would ease her nerves. Wincing, she could feel the throbbing over her left temple, pain down toward her jaw. She tried to draw a breath. See if it would help. It didn’t.
Close your eyes.
When she opened them, she knew tonight would be no different than before. As she expected, the need to know more rose up in her. Sometimes this came early in a case, sometimes not at all. She didn’t know. She only knew it would last till sunlight, as it had done fifteen years ago—when she had her first date with a serial killer.
Placing a manila folder on the immaculate hotel desk, she opened her laptop. No death certificates here, just death faces—fanned out across the laminated desktop. Rubbing her eyes, she took a sip of wine, wishing the fluid would wash away her tension. The girls’ faces, her headache. She was tormented by these girls’ looks, but more so because they were all someone’s daughter.
“I’m a professional,” she said, trying to convince herself. “What am I missing?”
She read her notes, wanting something to develop. Nothing came but flashes of waxy lifeless bodies.
Then a new image.
A silhouette of a well-tailored dark-suited man. Standing straight. Looming over something. Can’t make out the details. A flash of light washed over him just as she glimpsed a gentle, loving, maddening mouth…a smile.
Memories stirred. Cat stifled a gasp. She had seen that smile before. But where? She closed her eyes again and the vision returned. Through gritted teeth, a clenched jaw, she wanted to remember. “Come on, dammit, focus,” she said out loud, surprised at the sound of her own voice. In her mind, the vision came closer— closer on the mouth. His lips moving, tongue licking them. He was speaking to her but there was no sound. A message she could not decipher.
Hot confusion, like the waking panic of a nightmare. It was always like this. Fluttering in her belly, nerves like insect wings. The mouth was moving, speaking, but no voice. Cat opened her eyes. A chill of panic flooded her, the panic of not knowing what is real and what isn’t.
Cat pushed back from the table, massaged her closed eyelids with her thumb and index finger. When she opened her eyes, they felt red, her body numb. She sat heavily for a while, staring out the window. She had learned to live with the episodes, as she called them, learning that they did not mean she was any less of a woman, but perhaps more of one. She used her sixth sense sparingly. Always in private, never revealing it to anyone else. It always came at times like this, when she was so exhausted she could hardly think. Cat typed what she remembered of the vision into her laptop notes.
She stretched her legs and yawned. Lying out on the bed, she stared at the ceiling. “Time to get some sleep,” she said to herself as if she were a child, as if she were Joey. It was too late to call him tonight. In spite of her discipline and steady resolve, Cat knew there would be no sleep tonight. The illusion of control had a crack, and it all might come crashing down.