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“Hi, Lin. It’s me.” It was the first time Beth had picked up the telephone to call a friend since she’d been discharged from hospital.
“Beth? Oh my God.” Lin swallowed loudly.
“Are you OK?”
“Am I OK?” she said incredulously. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t know if I should call you there. I spoke to your parents and they said you were staying with your brother. They offered me his number, but I figured you wanted some time alone.” Her words tumbled over each other.
“I have been hiding out...” Beth heard Lin take a trembling intake of breath.
“I’m so sorry about Luc.” She sniffed. “I can’t imagine what the past weeks have been like for you.”
“Jerome was just here.”
Lin sighed. “I told him not to call on you until you were ready.”
“It was fine. Really. I understand. He can’t allow Avellana to fall apart.”
“It will now. You know that, don’t you.”
The statement startled Beth. On the occasions they’d dined with Jerome and Lin at their ultra-modern home, they’d always presented a united front, maintaining Luc was responsible for nothing more than half of its success. “He mentioned he’d moved out...”
“He told you?”
“Yes. Temporarily, he said.”
“He might have said that, but I don’t think there’s any way back for us.” Lin’s statement terminated in a whisper.
It was a typical Lin conversation. It entirely orbited her, even given what Beth had been through. But she was glad of it. Was happy to shift the focus from her. “I’m so sorry, Lin. It’s none of my business. Just be sure.”
“Of what?”
“That this can’t be saved. Ask yourself if never seeing him again will be his punishment or yours.”
“It wasn’t Jerome’s fault.” Her voice thickened. “Jerome hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Beth was momentarily dumbstruck. Jerome had an eye for the ladies. He’d flirted with her on several occasions and made her more than a little uncomfortable. She’d assumed...
“It’s my fault, Beth. I don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
“But it sounds as if that’s exactly what Jerome wants to do.”
“Jerome’s forgiveness wouldn’t even be the start...” Emotion spilt over.
Beth listened to her and surprised herself by how resentful she felt. Tears for a husband that was still alive, that Lin could still reach. Or was it because Beth hadn’t yet shed them for the man she would never see again?
“Can we meet?” Lin’s voice was suddenly clear, as if it were the product of a sudden determination.
“Lin, I’m not sure I’m ready...’
Silence on the other end.
Beth tried to pre-empt further sobs. She didn’t want to hear them. “Although it would be good to see you again...”
*
Mimic was sitting in the car looking at the backs of his hands. They weren’t shaking, but felt light, as if they’d float upwards, lifting his arms above his head. As a kid, he remembered his brother getting him to stand in a doorway and press his knuckles against both sides of the frame and count to thirty. When he let his arms slacken, they rose like they were on invisible wires. It was the sensation he was experiencing now, and Mimic wondered if it was a side effect of his attack. He anticipated the pain in his jaw again and wondered if he should still be hospitalised. He had work to do, though, and they’d only pump him full of meds. Mimic hated taking even an aspirin.
He’d followed the MO to the letter. Used the bottle on the woman exactly as the perp had at the other crime scene, and all the time he was doing it, the same thought that always occurred to him played through his head. He was giving the real guy an airtight alibi. If he was ever arrested, it was likely he’d be able to prove he’d been elsewhere when Mimic’s duplication was carried out.
But while he’d used the jagged glass to deface the looks and genitals of a healthy woman, another thought had been paramount. He’d given the sick fuck an alibi and achieved nothing. Was he slacking because it was his last contract, or just turning into a doddering old fart?
The woman lying dead in the house wasn’t Marcia O’Doole. He’d allowed his focus to shift. Only briefly, but while he’d considered that the target he was about to bludgeon had probably saved his life and he was about to repay her by murdering her two sons, he’d relinquished control. He’d tried to hasten a procedure he should have been a hundred percent removed from.
The woman had been the same sort of age, height and build as Marcia. It had been an understandable but still inexcusable mistake to make. Who was she? Her sister, by the looks. The sons had been absent from the house when he’d searched it as well. He’d found instructions for watering plants that had been left for the house-sitter, and there had been dust outlines on tops of the wardrobes where the suitcases had been taken down. Where had Marcia O’Doole and her family gone?
He hadn’t found anything on either of their computers to indicate where they were headed. No vacation-booking emails, nothing. He’d sat on Mrs O’Doole’s bed and communicated with his contact at the NCS. As an ex-operative, he still had significant currency with a lot of key staff. Accessing phones and credit card transactions was easily achieved, but they’d turned up nothing. Yet. Kevin O’Doole was a Facebook junkie, though. They were probably on the road now but it wouldn’t take long for them to leave a footprint online.
He’d track them like he had so many of his other targets. His movements connected him to some of the vilest scum in twenty-three US states alone. It was rich territory for his line of work. His jigsaw personality was a global one, however, and his crimes peppered Interpol’s database.
His technique not only covered his trail but also made it someone else’s. He had become, amongst many identities, serial killers, random drive-by gunmen, terrorist bombers, Chechen and Namibian Mafia, Bratva, Yakuza and myriad organised and disorganised crime gangs of varying nationalities.
Whether he’d used it to kill single or multiple individuals, however, he’d only replicated another’s method once. More than that meant he was stimulating his own chain of evidence and significantly threw any ongoing investigation. He was grateful for the mask he could wear, but he always handed it quickly back.
With one impersonation, either the police suspected the original perp or, if they couldn’t be convicted for Mimic’s crime, a one-off local copycat. And he was long gone by the time they had the right man in custody. If that ever happened.
He took an interest in those whose styles he’d adopted. If they were ever arrested, it was a chink in his armour. But it happened shockingly infrequently, and the lack of police success was breath-taking. There were only nineteen people who had been convicted of crimes that had included his.
From his position, Mimic could see the smoke curling out of the top of the house. Even though the body was downstairs, he’d set the fire in the bedroom as the perp had in the other apartment. He’d planned to tell Mrs O’Doole why it had all been necessary, and it was a conversation he still had to have with her. He started the engine and pulled the car out of its spot to make room for the fire trucks to access the street.
