by Leslie Wolfe
“Did he say why?” Kay asked, although she believed she knew the answer.
“No,” Meg whispered, “he didn’t. Then, later that same month, he did something unspeakable.”
Kay looked at her, insisting without words that she continue her story, but Meg shook her head gently, letting silence engulf the room for a long moment. After a while, the silence became heavy, unbearable to the weary heart that had kept secrets all those years.
“I caught him touching himself when watching Judy and you,” she added, averting her eyes, her voice strangled with embarrassment. “Then he came to my bed one night, when I was asleep. I nearly… I almost didn’t realize—” She choked and shook her head, as if to rid herself of the nightmarish memory. “I threw him out,” she eventually said, then burst into bitter sobs. “I told him he wasn’t my son anymore. No one was to speak his name again in our house.”
Kay wrapped her arms around Meg’s heaving shoulders. She understood her turmoil. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You had reasons, two other children to protect. Don’t forget that.”
“I never forgave myself,” Meg whispered between tears. “But I had no idea what to do. His sexual urges were scary… As soon as he entered puberty, he wasn’t my little boy anymore. He turned into an intense stranger who looked at me as if I were—” She pressed her lips together for a split second, then continued. “We didn’t know how to handle him. We just didn’t.” She wiped her tears, then looked at Kay with guilt in her eyes. “We were simple people; back then I didn’t know what else to do.”
Kay allowed Meg the time to gather her thoughts. It must’ve been tough for her to revisit the most painful moment of her life as a mother. But the more she thought about it, the more Nick Stinson fit the unsub’s profile, and the thought of that energized her.
She looked at the photo again, then flipped the page over. There was another image taken inside the house, showing Judy wearing the ribbon she’d won in the seventh-grade spelling bee. But that wasn’t what had caught her attention.
On the wall behind the couch there was a blanket, hung in traditional Native decor style. It was a geometrical design on dark brown, framing around a bundle of feathers tied together with a blood-red leather twine and carried by an arrow. She’d seen it before.
All the Silent Lake victims had been buried in one just like it.
“Do you still have this?” she asked Meg, pointing at the blanket.
She smiled between tears, a sad, loaded smile. “Funny you should ask about it now. Roy bought it for me, seeing how upset I was for not attending the annual powwow with my people, the first year after we got married. But it’s Shasta, not Pomo; he screwed up.” She sighed and wiped a tear with her finger. “I gave it to Nick the night I—the night he left. I figured he wouldn’t know the difference. It was chilly that night, and I—” A new wave of sobs overcame the poor woman, her breath shattered as she tried to control herself.
Kay held her hand the entire time, squeezing it gently, reminding her she wasn’t alone and giving her the time she needed to sort through the painful emotions that her questions had unleashed.
“I heard he’s doing okay for himself,” Meg added when he could speak again. “I don’t know anything else of him and it’s better this way. He’s not my son anymore.”
Kay stood, a strong sense of urgency driving her away from there, even if they didn’t finish looking at the entire photo album.
She apologized profusely and promised both Meg and herself that she’d return the next day, when, under no circumstances, was she to open the painful subject again. She cringed, though, hoping she’d finally identified the unsub, while at the same time dreading having to break to Meg Stinson the news that her firstborn son was a killer.
But how did Nick, the boy who’d vanished from Mount Chester all those years ago, know about her family secret? How did he find out about her father’s demise, and how did he figure out where to find the knife with her father’s fingerprints on it?
Pushing the turmoil out of her mind, she focused on her priorities, simple and urgent: finding the missing children and the woman the unsub had taken the day before. Finding them alive.
Back in the car, she speed-dialed Elliot’s number, barely waiting for him to pick up.
“Elliot,” she said, as soon as she heard his voice. “I think I know who the unsub is.”
“Shoot,” he replied.
“Sam Stinson had an older brother, Nick. He disappeared when I was about twelve, so that’s—”
“Eighteen years ago,” he said. “What about him?”
“Have you heard of the homicidal triad?” she asked. “You might know it as the Macdonald triad,” she continued, seeing he wasn’t replying.
“No, I haven’t. What’s that?”
“A set of three predictive factors of future violent antisocial behavior: bed-wetting, cruelty to animals, and fire-setting. Any two of these three factors are strong predictors of serial violence later in life. Well, Mrs. Stinson just told me Nick used to strangle animals and he also set the barn on fire before he was kicked out of the house. His own family ousting him could’ve been the main stressor that led him to kill, with his mother as the central object of his rage. She’d been the object of his sexual fantasies, but she rejected him firmly and made him feel insignificant, inadequate. From deep desire to burning rage, all it takes is the word no.”
“That’s it? He strangled animals and set the barn on fire? And dreamed of sleeping with his mother? That’s all you got?”
“There’s more evidence pointing at him. Everything correlates, Elliot. The blanket, I saw it in a photo dating back years; it used to hang on his childhood home’s wall. And his mother braided her hair just like the unsub did his victims’. Just run a full background on Nick Stinson and let me know what you find.”
“On it,” Elliot replied, and for a long moment, all she could hear was the keyboard clacking under Elliot’s rushed fingers. “Huh… He graduated from law school cum laude, then had a legal name change to—”
Silence filled the air, taut as a wire before snapping.
“Oh, hell, Kay. He’s the district attorney,” Elliot said. “Our district attorney, Nicholas Stevens. He can’t be the unsub.”
But Kay knew in her gut it had to be him. The blanket his mother had given him the night she’d banished him was a symbol of his rage. He’d probably found a company in China that could replicate the design and had several made and shipped to him, an essential part of the ritual he performed with every killing and every burial. The braided hair, just like his mother’s, was another symbol.
“Check his DMV records, Elliot,” she suggested, knowing precisely what Elliot was about to find.
Another moment of keyboard clacking, then a whisper. “Jeez… He drives a Cadillac Escalade, dark Adriatic blue metallic.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Running a property check. He’s got a house at the base of the mountain, in the next county over, and an apartment in San Francisco. I’ll send you the address for the house and I’ll meet you there.”
She peeled off from Meg Stinson’s driveway in a cloud of dust and gravel. “Heading out there now.”
Forty-Nine
Hunted
Kay vaguely remembered Nick, from all those years ago. She had one foggy memory of him, one time when he was watching Judy and her playing from behind the fence, looking at them with a strange intensity in his eyes, slightly trembling. She recalled how Judy’s mom had told him to go work in the barn, the fearful tone in Meg’s voice etched in her mind. That part she remembered clearly, because she still had a recollection of her own thoughts at the time. I’m not afraid of Nick. Nick is cool.
She closed her eyes, subjecting herself to a silent cognitive interview. She invited the distant memories to return, rewinding through them as if they were a video stored in the deepest recesses of her mind.
Kathy threw the pebbles carefully, weighing them in her hand to make sure she hit the righ
t spot. Still, a pebble bounced right out of the green circle, in defiance of her best intentions.
“No,” she squealed, then looked at Judy, waiting for her orders.
“Lay flat in the dirt,” Judy commanded, laughing heartily.
Resigned, she lay on her back by the driveway, her arms folded under her head, pretending she didn’t care she lost again. Stupid pebbles had a mind of their own.
“Face down,” Judy insisted, laughing. Winning was fun. Yeah.
“You didn’t say!” Kathy replied, jumping to her feet and brushing some of the dirt off her dress.
She picked the pebbles from the chalk circles and gave them to her friend, then took her position to the side. Judy missed, and Kathy was quick to order, “Do a cartwheel.”
Her eyes wandered while Judy threw her pebbles, and saw Nick in the distance, behind the fence, by the barn. He was looking at the two girls, and Kathy waved. He was tense, rigid, and his eyes burned strangely when they met hers. He seemed to be trembling a little, although it was hot outside, his entire body shaking, his jaw clenched, his brow scrunched in effort. Or maybe she was wrong; she was imagining things. Or was she? What was he doing behind that fence? In her memory, she couldn’t see Nick’s hands, hidden from view by the pickets. Was he touching himself, while looking at them? Was he trembling with arousal?
“Why can’t Nick play with us?” she asked.
“Mom said he has to do chores,” Judy replied indifferently.
Her smile waned. She liked Nick. He must’ve been about sixteen; he kept the girls supplied with his old stash of school homework. All his notebooks were saved in a box under his bed, and he readily shared when asked. Nick was cool. She wasn’t afraid of him; had never been.
She waved at him, but he didn’t wave back. The tension on his face had waned, and the shaking was gone. His eyes still burned though, his gaze intense, fixated, making her eyes veer to the side.
He showed her the rake he was holding, lifting it up in the air and pointing at it in an exaggerated way, then went toward the barn, to work. He threw her one long, loaded stare, probably feeling sorry he couldn’t play with them. Or maybe there was something else in that look, an intensity her child mind hadn’t picked up on at the time. An urgency, a longing that could not be denied.
“Nick!” Mrs. Stinson called. “Get in the barn and lay the straw already. It’s almost dark.”
That’s where her childhood memories of Nick ended, with him going into the barn, and her regret for not having played with him.
Well, apparently, developing good instincts about people doesn’t happen in early childhood, she thought bitterly, wondering how she’d forgotten all about that boy. Meg was keeping him at a distance, not allowing him to play with the girls. Back then, she hadn’t shared why, but now, in retrospect, Meg’s decision to keep Nick away from the two little girls made sense.
And that visit he’d paid his mother one night, that had scared Meg Stinson into throwing him out of the house, her own flesh and blood, that must’ve been the culmination of his sexual urges seeking relief.
Her experience as a profiler painted a clear picture of what had happened that night. In all the serial killer cases she’d studied, the homicidal triad was just the beginning, sending the pubescent teen into a rapidly evolving rash of urges and hormone-based drives he could not understand nor control. Maybe he’d become aroused by Judy or even by his own mother. Maybe that day, behind the fence, he was masturbating while watching the two little girls play. And then later one night, when he couldn’t control his urges anymore, or when masturbation wasn’t satisfying enough, he took it one step further. One step too far.
But not all children who display at least two of the three factors of the triad end up evolving into serial killers. For some, the parents seek professional help, and that is sometimes able to detour them off the path to killing people. In Nick’s case, his family had banished him, seeding in him a rejection-fueled anger that must’ve been all-consuming, devouring him from the inside out, a wound that could never heal.
His trigger.
Exacerbated by whatever challenges his life as a homeless teenager might’ve thrown at him.
Engendering an unsatiable urge to soothe his pain, to soak it in the blood of strangers who reminded him of his mother, the woman who rejected him instead of showing him unconditional love.
But how does one get from homeless teenager to district attorney? Less than ten percent of all serial killers were high-functioning, successful and perfectly integrated individuals. Those who were, in one hundred percent of the cases, were pure psychopaths, people who never had to carry the burden of a conscience weighing them down. People who could manipulate, lie and claw their way into whatever place they desired to hold in society. And kill.
Immersed in her thoughts and rushing to the address Elliot had sent her, she floored it the entire time, the winding, sloped road over the mountain no longer a challenge for her. She almost didn’t notice when she passed by Katse Coffee Shop, the sight of the place making her think briefly of Tommy, another kid she didn’t remember. He was thirty-two, but looked fifty-something, and had a rap sheet for assault and battery. How did that happen to otherwise normal children?
Then again, how did Jacob’s rap sheet happen?
Then another thought crossed her mind, this one making her stomach sink. She scrolled quickly through the phone numbers stored in her phone’s memory, almost missing a curve, then dialed the number. This time, Joplin picked up the call himself.
“Who was my brother’s DA?”
“Nicholas Stevens himself, not one of his errand boys,” he replied, his voice cutting off badly. “I found that strange, for a low-profile case like that. Why?”
She heard a chime when the check engine light came on the dashboard. She’d just driven by Katse, heading into the valley. The temperature gauge on her dashboard was at the max, and there were two warning messages displayed, “Engine coolant low. Engine malfunction.”
Another buzz announced the call with Joplin had dropped. She looked at the media screen and saw she’d entered the cellular dead zone of the valley.
She knew exactly what was going on.
Nicholas Stinson was coming after her.
Her heart racing, she slowed barely enough to pull a one-eighty with screeching tires, knowing she was merely a few hundred yards downhill from where she had a couple of bars on her phone. Unlike others before her, she didn’t need to stop to check what was going on with her car; she already knew. Yet she wondered why Nick was coming after her. Was it because she was getting close to him? And where did he get so close to her car to damage it? Where and when?
Just as her engine stalled, she realized exactly why he was coming after her.
She’d visited Meg Stinson that morning. His mother. He was probably out there somewhere, watching as she basked in the motherly love that was forbidden to him, while she sat by Meg’s side on the porch swing, chatting, holding hands. Then Meg and she had gone inside the house, to make tea, giving him the chance to damage her car, unseen, unheard.
The Ford’s engine sputtered and came to a stop, while she barely had enough momentum to pull the SUV off the road, dangerously close to a deep ditch. Out of habit, Kay felt for the weapon that used to be at her hip, but found nothing. She remembered how she’d decided to leave it at home, thinking she was going to visit old friends.
He could come at any time, from any direction, and she had no defense, nothing she could use. Nothing, except knowledge of what he’d done to the other women. Mostly all of them had had the time to walk back to Katse and call for help. For some reason, he never snatched them right away, right after their cars had stalled. She could, most likely, make it on foot to Katse and call Elliot. Knowing that the unsub was close, hunting for her, turned her blood to ice, while fear coiled in her gut, awakening her senses. She felt the urge to run all the way to Katse, although she knew well that was exactly what he wanted her to do. What all the
others had done.
But more than anything, she wanted to see him, to put a face to the monster she’d been trying to catch. Curiosity got the best of her, and instead of rushing to the coffee shop, she found some shrubs behind a large oak and crouched there, hidden by the thick foliage, and waited. She wanted to know how he took them, why he let them go to Katse in the first place. To her, it seemed an unnecessary risk he was taking; they could run into traffic, another driver who would stop to help or even a cop.
Soon she’d be able to sketch another missing part of the profile, and that, in itself, was worth the risk.
She’d been waiting for about thirty minutes when she heard the ATV engine, approaching from the opposite side of the road, through the woods. She peeked from behind the tree trunk, hoping she’d see his face and recognize him, but he was too far away. He’d stopped his vehicle a few yards into the woods and had crossed the road on foot, approaching her car. He was dressed head to toe in hunting gear, the fall camo pattern making him barely distinguishable against the foliage.
Circling the SUV, he looked inside, then paced up and down the road, waiting for her. Then he made a call, pretending to be a tow truck driver looking for his customer. By his responses, the call hadn’t gone as expected.
He swore out loud, then started looking for her. She held her breath, afraid he’d hear it from only a few feet away, fear clouding her judgment while her heart thumped in her chest. She hated being afraid; it wasn’t a feeling she was used to. Think, she willed herself, letting out air slowly and quietly from her lungs and watching the unsub’s search drawing nearer.
Checking the opposite side of the road, he went a few yards deep and several yards up and down from where she’d stopped. Then he crossed the road again, after waiting in hiding until two passing cars were out of sight. He searched skillfully, every few steps stopping and listening for any noise that didn’t belong, looking at the ground for tracks, everything a hunter would do.