MATTIE CLOSED HER EYES AND THOUGHT ABOUT her next move. Someone opened the hospital door. She couldn’t see who with the curtain partially blocking her side of the room.
Her pulse thumped hard, but she lay still and sniffed the air. The stench of the flowers beside her bed made it difficult. Footsteps approached and she concentrated. Soap, medicinal. A nurse. She pretended to be asleep. A warm hand checked her pulse, the rustle of starched fabric moved away from the bed, a pause before a pen scratched on paper, then the door clicked.
Mattie jerked at the tiny sound. She counted to four slowly, then opened her eyes a slit. The room was empty. Hurry. The nurse would return in an hour. Rolling onto her side, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat upright. The world spun for a moment, then steadied. The IV line in her wrist would be a problem. She hooked her arm around the IV pole and wheeled it to the window. Her room was on the ground floor. Perfect. “
Why would you think the girl was delivering a message?” Beth asked.
“Maybe she was a message or had a message. But he had to make sure I’d get it. Hmm. Thinking back, when Winston headed toward the McCandless place, every little bit he’d stop and sniff.”
“So he was tracking. I taught him that.” Beth smiled at the memory.
“Ah, yeah, that might be it. But what if . . . Let’s go for a walk.”
Beth jumped to her feet. “Is it safe? I mean, the killer just called you.”
“That means he’s pretty far away. Only one spot here gets cell service.” I nodded toward my lawn. “So that means either a landline in town or cell, also from town. And I’m going to be prepared.” I swung by my bedroom and strapped on my holstered SIG Sauer, then tapped on Aynslee’s door. “We’re going for a walk. Did you want to get outside for a bit?” I didn’t wait for a response. She joined us in the kitchen.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Part way to the McCandless farm. Keep your eyes open.”
“What are we looking for?” Beth pulled on her jacket.
“I’m not sure.” I found a sweatshirt in the pantry. “Dog treats? Meat? Something to lure Winston in a particular direction.” Both of them looked startled but trooped after me.
The sun peeked through the clouds, adding a bit of warmth to the spring day. Flowering shrubs perfumed the air, and black-capped chickadees called to each other with their distinctive fee-bee-bee, fee-bee-bee. Once we entered the forest, chipmunks scolded us for our intrusion.
Aynslee spotted the evidence shortly before the McCandless farm came into sight. A cube of meat, now swarming with flies, lay along the game trail. We gathered around it like it was an ancient artifact. “Why didn’t Winston eat this last piece of meat?” Aynslee asked.
“I suspect we’re close enough to the grave, and Winston’s find, that he focused on that goal,” I said.
“Can you get fingerprints off that?” Beth asked.
“No.” I suddenly felt exposed, as if a hundred eyes were on me. “Let’s get back to the house.” My hurried walk turned into a trot, then a run. Both Beth and Aynslee were in better shape than I was, even though I’d been working out to regain my strength, so I was the one gasping for air when we finally slammed the kitchen door.
“So,” Beth said.
“Yeah.” I yanked off my sweatshirt, now bathed in sweat. “Aynslee, if you want to go anywhere, you’d better get your schoolwork done.”
“Right,” she said. “In other words, warden, exercise period is over. Back to your cell.” She strolled from the room.
“I’m telling you, Beth, when my hair turns gray, I’ll have earned every strand.”
“Mmm.” Beth plucked some dog hair off her sleeve. “I could leave, maybe return those books to the library . . .”
“Stay. That is, if your sweet husband can spare you?”
“It’s income tax time and his clients are keeping him busy. I don’t think he even knows I’m gone during the day.”
“Good. We have things to do. For some reason, there’s a very personal aspect to this killer’s actions. And apparently something bigger he’s planning. Let’s see what else isn’t a coincidence.” A half an hour later, I sat back at my drafting table. “That’s all I can remember. Read what we have so far.”
“Under ‘Known’ are the exact words he said, then: ‘male, knows the area, at least two other bodies, control, restraint, leaves little evidence, educated, prepared, drives a car, returned to the scene, knows you or about you, mentioned Hudson’s Bay blanket, baited Winston to go to the farm, said hitting your dog was an accident, about five foot ten to six feet tall, around wood chips.’ ” Beth looked up. “That’s a lot.”
“But not enough. Read on.”
“Under ‘Unknown’ is: ‘Mattie message, leaving bait for Winston to find? Or grave? Why returned to site? The numbers six and twenty-five. Does not like/admire you? Waited for something or someone? May be thin or weak (bodies near kill site).’ What’s the six and twenty-five mean?”
“Mattie said it. Maybe she was victim twenty-five, or it’s a time, 6:25. A date, June 25?”
Beth bent over my computer’s keyboard. After a few minutes she glanced up. “I’ll need more in the way of parameters to run down these numbers.”
“And she could have reversed them, so twenty-five and six. I don’t even know if it’s connected. We’ll come back to it. What else do we have?”
“On your yellow tablet you wrote ‘Bundy signature.’ Elaborate.”
“It has to do with victimology.”
“But isn’t signature the same as MO?” She reached for a library book.
“No. People don’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘Today I’m going to become a serial killer.’ It’s a process. They learn what works and what doesn’t work, and what best satisfies their desires. That’s two different things.”
“Go on.”
“So the modus operandi are the methods used to commit the crime. Like the location, restraints, weapons, how they left the scene, that kind of thing. That can change, evolve as the killer learns his craft. The signature is why he does it. It’s a message from the offender, meant to be seen and understood, that fulfills their need or fantasy.”
She looked up from a page she was reading. “Ah. It says here a signature is like tying a special knot.”
“Sure. Or he could leave notes, engage in necrophilia, and so on.”
“You wrote ‘Bundy.’ ”
“Ted Bundy chose his victims based on how they looked. Another signature.”
“Didn’t Bundy experience a traumatizing incident from a girlfriend and subsequently select and murder women based on their conformity to her appearance?”
“Possibly, or Bundy was just attracted to certain women.” I tapped my pencil on the desk for a moment.
“What aren’t you saying?”
“Huh?”
“Tapping your pencil. That usually means you’re contemplating something.” Beth looked at the list, then back at me. “Bundy?”
“It’s probably nothing, but I just keep seeing that poor girl and how I thought it was Aynslee.”
“So what does Mattie Banks look like?”
I stood and pulled a pad of Bristol paper from my taboret, then sat at my drawing table. I reached for a pencil, choosing the sharpest one from the lineup.
“You do know you have two pencils behind your ear?”
I touched them. “Backup.” I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured Mattie’s face, then opened them and began to draw. Her image emerged under my rapidly moving pencil. As I continued to shade, Beth stood and wandered over.
“Finished?” she asked.
“Yup.” I turned the drawing in her direction.
“Extraordinary. Eyes, nose, mouth, hair . . .”
“There’s a difference in her face shape.” I taped the sketch to the window next to my drafting table, then pulled a photo of Aynslee out of the taboret drawer and attached it next to the drawing. “But you can see why I was so shocked.”
She nodded.
“It wasn’t just the idea of Ted Bundy. I worked on a case a couple of years ago where one signature was the appearance of the victims. Come to think of it—”
The phone rang.
I jumped.
Beth picked it up. “Forensic Art Studios, Beth Noble speaking.” She listened for a moment, then held out the receiver. Her cheeks held a faint flush.
I stood and moved toward the desk. Who is it? I silently asked her.
Robert, she mouthed back.
My stomach bunched into a knot. I jerked to a stop.
Beth impatiently wiggled the receiver.
The room seemed Africa-hot and sweat broke out on my forehead. I took the phone from her. “Yes?”
“Gwen?” Robert said.
“Yes.”
Silence.
“What do you want, Robert?” I finally asked.
“I . . . I’d like to see you.”
I clamped the phone harder to my ear. “Your daughter’s been trying to call you. She wants to go to the movies. She left you messages—”
“I got them. That’s one reason I want to talk to you.”
“Why?” Another hot flash seared my face and neck.
“Look. Not over the phone. Can I please come and see you? Alone.”
My hand ached and I loosened my grip. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“There. At our house.”
“I guess so.” Slowly hanging up the phone, I looked at Beth. “Well, that had to be the strangest phone call I’ve gotten in a while. Robert wants to come here.”
“Rather odd, I agree.”
“The weird part is he said ‘our house.’ When someone uses the pronoun our, it means he’s unconsciously thinking of togetherness.”
Beth straightened in her chair. “Someday you’ll need to instruct me on statement analysis. I’d love to interpret people’s real thoughts.” She glanced at the stack of statements Dave sent over for me to look at. “Like those. What are you going to look for?”
“I’ll give you a quick glimpse if you’ll do me a huge favor.”
“Agreed.”
Picking up the stack, I ruffled through them. “Statement analysis takes time and concentration, neither of which I have an abundance of right now.” I pulled out one sheet. “Dave told each person to write what happened, in ink, on the front side only of a piece of paper. This is Ron’s statement, and I’ll use him because I was with him and knew what he did. I’m cheating, but this is fast.” I walked over to where Beth was sitting. “Notice how he goes through the events with great detail.”
Dispatch told me to go to the McCandless farm, located at 16517 Copper Creek Road, at 1000 hours, and investigate a possible dog or wolf attack. I was the first to arrive . . .
“Okay.”
“Now look here.” I pointed.
. . . Gwen nailed a bottle cap into a tree to mark the north-south line. Later I held the tape measure . . .
“So?”
“He used the word later. There’s a gap in his story between the bottle cap and the tape measure. He left out something. His statement jumped forward at that point.”
“Ron threw Dave’s phone into the bushes! Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “You solved the mystery—”
“Maybe, but more likely he left out having to go to the bathroom in a patch of bushes. Not a lie, just a simple omission to cover a rather embarrassing event. I can pick out more than lies from these.” I fanned the papers. “Now, for that huge favor . . .”
“I want to know more.”
“All in good time. For now—”
“Do you want me to research something? Interview suspects? Go undercover—”
“Would you take Aynslee into town for a movie tomorrow?”
Beth stared at me, speechless.
“Pretty please? I don’t know what Robert wants, but he asked to see me alone. With a killer out there . . .”
“What’s the movie?”
“A Disney something.” I picked up a pencil.
“I don’t know. I still get all teary eyed just thinking about Old Yeller.”
“That was a long time ago.” I doodled a dog’s head. “I’m sure this is a recent release.”
“So was Eight Below. Those poor huskies. I cried for hours. And did you ever see Hachiko?”
“I’m sure there’re no dogs in it!” Too late. Beth dove for a box of tissue.
Dave stared at the teapot. “Louise, how many times—”
“It’s one of my special blends.” The older woman beamed at him. “It will have you regular in no time. Chamomile, fennel, cardamom, and with my secret ingredients, it will work wonders on digestion—”
The phone rang. Dave snatched it up like a lifeline. “Sheriff Moore.” He gently slid the teapot to the other side of the desk.
“Sheriff? This is Dr. Hawkins, the vet. I’m on a farm call. It’s wolves. You need to get out here.”
Dave let out a deep sigh. “We don’t exactly investigate wolf attacks—”
“You’ll want to investigate this one.”
“Why?”
“Because I found a woman’s body.”