by Gayle Wilson
“So how would writing on my car tell him that?”
“Maybe he was watching you. Studying your reaction.”
It was a possibility she didn’t want in her mind. Now that he’d put it there, she knew it would be hard to dislodge.
“The only person I know is watching me is you.”
“Then maybe you’d better look again. I’m not the one you need to worry about, Dr. Kincaid,” he said. “You can believe that or not, but the quicker you understand it, the quicker you can start dealing with reality.”
“With your version of reality.”
“If I’m right, if he is watching you, it’s with a purpose. While you’re talking to the cops about that restraining order, you be sure you mention what happened with your car. Ask for Lieutenant Ray Bingham. Tell him I sent you.”
That advice was the last thing she’d expected from him. It threw her, making her question the assumptions she’d made. All except the purely instinctive one.
“Are you…?” She hesitated, unsure what kind of law enforcement he might be. Obviously not local, which left… “FBI?”
“My interest in this is personal. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m talking about. You tell the cops about your car.”
If he were trying to scare her, he’d succeeded. Of course, he’d done that from the moment he’d walked into her office.
He leaned into the interior of the SUV to cut off the engine. The music that had provided a backdrop for their conversation ended abruptly, leaving in its wake a silence she felt she should fill.
Before she had come up with anything, he closed the door, hitting the remote to lock it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m going inside to get something for dinner. Don’t let me keep you.”
As neat a dismissal as any she’d ever made with a patient reluctant to end a session. He nodded before he brushed past her. She watched, lips parted on the last word she’d again not gotten to deliver, as he made his way toward the well-lit entrance to the market. He never looked back, but she didn’t move until he disappeared inside.
She was no closer to a resolution. Not about the message. And not about him.
All she knew was that Sean Murphy wasn’t averse to her talking to the cops about him. Not if it accomplished the task he’d given her.
And right now, doing that didn’t seem nearly as foolish as it might have half an hour ago.
Eight
This time Sean had no idea what had awakened him. Not until the phone rang again.
Not his cell, he realized, but the room phone. Since he’d had no idea where he’d be staying until he’d gotten into Birmingham, he couldn’t imagine who could be calling him at this number. The cops? With a warning or a restraining order?
Except he hadn’t told Jenna Kincaid the name of the motel. So how could the locals have tracked him down?
They couldn’t, he concluded. Not without a time-consuming process of elimination he doubted they had the interest or the manpower to carry out right now. Not in the middle of a multiple-homicide investigation, one that required coordination with all the other law enforcement agencies looking for this killer.
The phone rang again, interrupting that speculation. Without sitting up, he reached over and picked up the receiver, putting it to his ear. “Hello?”
A strange emptiness seemed to fill the line, more threatening than any silence should be. Sean pushed up to prop on one elbow, straining to hear something. The sound of breathing. Background noise. Even static, which would at least tell him the line was engaged.
Normally, by this time he would have returned the receiver to the cradle, deciding the caller had dialed a wrong number. For some reason he didn’t do that. Nor did he repeat his greeting. He waited instead, the hair on the back of his neck beginning to lift.
And finally into that disturbing stillness came a sound, so faint that at first he couldn’t begin to guess what caused it. As he listened, the noise grew in volume. Still elusive. Still unidentifiable, at least until it assumed a pattern. A rhythm.
Breathing. Someone was breathing into the phone.
His mind considered and then rejected all the variations on the heavy-breathing theme. The quality of this was different. It wasn’t sexual. It was as far from sexual as he could imagine anything being.
Suddenly, in the background, he heard another noise. Although indistinct, it sounded like the creak a door might make as it was opened. His guess was strengthened by the more solid click that seemed to represent a reclosing.
The intake of breath that followed was clearer, louder than anything that had gone before. And then the words came, a stream of them. An outpouring.
Soft, seemingly mindless, the same phrases were repeated over and over. They grew in agitation and volume until he could finally distinguish the words.
“Please. Please. Please. Don’t. Please. Please don’t. Please. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”
Only with the last sentence did he understand. Although he’d heard the expression “blood ran cold” all his life, he now knew it was a physiological process. Something that could literally happen.
He should have been prepared, then, for what came next. He wasn’t. Not even after all the pleading.
The scream seemed to echo and reecho inside his skull, growing to a crescendo that had nothing to do with the sound transmitted through the receiver. He listened, too horrified to slam it down, while the cry shattered the emotional distance it had taken him three years to put between himself and his sister’s death.
Despite Makaela’s courage, despite what he knew would have been her resolve not to give the bastard the satisfaction, this is what her suffering would have come to. That desperate begging. Followed inevitably by an unbearable agony. And then, finally, by the knowledge that there was no hope. No escape.
Nothing but death. Devoutly wished for. Deliberately denied.
Rage, as overpowering as his initial horror had been, flooded his body. He opened his mouth to give voice to that fury. Before he could, a click in his ear, followed by the dial tone, destroyed the sounds he’d heard as well as any opportunity to respond to them.
Stunned by the speed with which it had all happened, for endless seconds he was unable to breathe, much less formulate a plan of action. Then, determined to break through that paralysis, he punched the O on the dial pad, waiting through the three long rings it took for the motel operator to answer.
“Front desk.”
“A call just came through to my room. I need to know where it originated.”
“A phone call, sir?”
“That’s right. I need to know the number it came from.”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have the capability to provide you with that information.”
“What do you mean you don’t have the capability? Everybody has caller ID. Where the hell did the call you just put through come from?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” The cheeriness had been shattered by his profanity, but the operator managed to hold on to her customer-service politeness. “We don’t subscribe to that service. We so seldom have any call for—”
“Long distance?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Was it a local or a long distance call?” His voice had risen with each unanswered question.
“Sir, I’ve told you—”
“Get me the Birmingham Police Department. Lieutenant Ray Bingham. And don’t you fucking A tell me you don’t have the capability to do that.”
“Makaela O’Brien was the killer’s eighth identified victim,” Lieutenant Ray Bingham told her. “She was thirty-six years old when she died. A single mother. She left two children behind, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy. Sean Murphy is her brother, older by…” Bingham glanced down at the folder he’d been reading from. “By two years. Her big brother,” he added, his voice softened by the realization.
Jenna wondered if that played a role in Murphy’s quest. T
he fact that for most of his childhood he had probably been expected to take care of his little sister.
Or maybe that wouldn’t have made a difference. He struck her as a man who would make any sacrifice necessary to protect his own. And if he couldn’t, as one who would try to avenge them.
“And he’s here to find his sister’s murderer?” she asked aloud.
Although he appeared to be in his late thirties, Bingham was going bald. Rather than giving in to the loss gracefully, at some point he’d made the decision to beat nature at her own game, and shaved his head. Before he answered her question, he put his hands behind that dark, well-shaped head, his fingers interlocked.
“That’s what the man says.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“I don’t have any reason to disbelieve him. Murphy has friends on the national task force who speak very highly of him. And he not only identified himself almost as soon as he got here, he gave us information that hadn’t yet filtered down through the official pipeline.”
“Because you hadn’t associated the murders here with the others.”
“You’d think that’d be easy, wouldn’t you? Everybody does. Why the hell didn’t the cops see what was going on? In case you might be wondering the same thing, Callie Morgan’s murder was the hundred-and-twelfth homicide in the metropolitan area this year. We don’t automatically assume any of them are connected. And I can’t ever remember having a serial killer operating in this area. Not during my years on the force. Not in my memory.”
“If you don’t believe he’s here to discover the identity of his sister’s killer, then…”
“Murphy, you mean?”
With the detective’s question, Jenna realized that, while her mind had still been occupied with the information he’d provided about her “stalker,” the detective had moved on to the difficulties this case presented for the local police departments. Her preoccupation with Sean Murphy was something she had just as soon Bingham not notice, but there were still questions she needed answered. “What other reason would he have for coming here?”
“Maybe he’s writing a book. Been known to happen. Usually not with relatives, but…” The broad shoulders under the white dress shirt lifted. “It’s always possible.”
With a killer like this, one gaining national notoriety now that the FBI had figured out that those deaths were connected to one person, writing this story might be a very lucrative endeavor. She just couldn’t imagine Sean Murphy in that role.
“Maybe he wants you to help him,” Bingham went on.
“Me?”
“Maybe that’s why he’s following you. You certainly have the credentials.”
“That isn’t something I’d be interested in doing.”
Not in a hundred years. Despite her training, she knew she didn’t have the stomach for that kind of research. She couldn’t believe Sean would be interested in that, either. Whatever he was here for, it wasn’t to collect material for a book that would exploit his sister’s death.
Which brought her full circle. Back to the question of why he was in Birmingham. And more importantly, why he was following her.
“He told me I fit the victim profile.”
Still leaning back in his chair, the detective looked at her across the desk. “Yeah? So do thousands of other women. From what I’ve seen of the profile, it isn’t all that specific.”
Dark hair and eyes. Tall. Not a prostitute.
“Murphy said that the killer would be attracted to me because of the interview I did. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Sorry, I didn’t see it. But again, you aren’t the only local woman who’s given interviews.”
“He thought that in the course of mine I came across as…sympathetic to the killer.”
She was aware that she sounded defensive. Of course, when you’ve been told the same thing over and over, you begin to wonder if it could be true.
“Are you?”
“No one could be. Not if they know what he’s done.”
“Then I wouldn’t worry too much about whatever Murphy thinks. The important thing would be whether or not the killer felt the same way.”
Something else Sean told her. That the Inquisitor would have been watching the news—something she actually agreed with. And that he would have interpreted her statements exactly as Murphy had. “What if he did?”
Without unlacing his hands, Bingham brought them down over his head. When they were in front of his face, he pushed the joined fingers forward, popping a couple of knuckles. Then he put his palms flat on his desk to lean toward her.
“We don’t have any idea what sets this guy off, Dr. Kincaid. Much less what makes him go after a particular victim. I haven’t seen anything from the FBI that suggests he chooses those any differently from the way most serial killers do—at random and based on opportunity. There’s nothing in the official profile to indicate he’s ever done anything other than that. And believe me, during the past forty-eight hours, I’ve read all of the material the Bureau has collected.”
The dark eyes held on her face, as if willing her to believe him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was just that she was aware that even the FBI didn’t claim profiling was an exact science.
She knew that much of it was guesswork, pure and simple. Highly educated perhaps, but still guesswork.
“Do I think he’s watching the local news?” the lieutenant went on, apparently viewing her silence as acceptance. “Without a doubt. Did he see your interview? Chances are, given his ego, he did. Does that mean he’s gonna choose you for his next victim? In my opinion, highly unlikely.”
Although the information was intended to be comforting, Jenna found she needed more than the detective’s opinion. After all, that’s what Sean Murphy had offered. For all she knew, his might even be better than Bingham’s.
“Why it is unlikely?”
“Because that isn’t his pattern. It’s been less than two weeks since the Morgan woman’s body was found. And we got lucky in that somebody stumbled on it quickly. He’s not even thinking about the next one. He’s too busy glorying in his success.”
“Specifically what does that mean? ‘Glorying in his success.’ In police terms, I mean.”
“Reliving the act. Handling whatever he took from her. Looking at it. Maybe revisiting the location where he killed her. Only we don’t have any idea where that is right now.”
“He takes souvenirs?”
That information was something she hadn’t read in the papers, although she should have assumed it would be the case. It was certainly the norm.
“Yeah, but don’t ask me what. That’s one of the things the feds have put the lid on. No release of information concerning his trophies.”
The phone on the desk between them rang. Bingham shrugged apologetically, and reached out with one large, beautifully manicured hand to grab the receiver. “Gotta answer this. It’s the hotline.”
Hotline? For the investigation?
“Bingham.”
He said nothing else for perhaps twenty seconds. His eyes found her face, however, as he listened.
“Tape,” he said, his tone confident.
He listened again, his gaze falling to a pencil on his desk as he did. He picked it up with his free hand, but rather than taking notes, he turned it over and over, bouncing the eraser and then the lead against the blotter.
“It isn’t time. It’s only been two weeks since Callie Morgan. He’ll still be able to control his impulses. He isn’t gonna risk another snatch until he has to.”
The motion of the pencil stopped, the big hand stilling as he listened to whatever had been said in response.
“She’s sitting in my office right now.” The dark eyes lifted to Jenna’s face.
He listened again. A long time. Although Jenna couldn’t distinguish any of the words, whoever was on the other end of the line was now talking loudly enough that she could hear the sound of his voice, even from across the desk
.
“I’ll tell her.” Bingham hung up the phone, steepling his fingers before he lowered them to lie in the center of his desk. “Our mutual friend.”
“Murphy?”
“Someone called his hotel room. Some kind of harassment.”
She’s sitting in my office right now. Which seemed to indicate that Sean had implicated her in some way.
“Whatever he just suggested, I didn’t call him. I have no idea where he’s staying.”
“According to him, no one does. Don’t worry. You aren’t a suspect. The call came in minutes ago. While you were here.”
“Reporters can be remarkably resourceful, especially when the story is as big as this one. If they found out Murphy’s connection to the case…”
“That’s an angle I hadn’t thought of,” Bingham said. “I think Murphy did some interviews when he came home to identify his sister’s body. He thinks this is our boy.”
Our boy. For a moment, Jenna didn’t understand what the detective meant. And when she did—
“The Inquisitor? But…” She shook her head, trying to make sense of that. “Why would he call Sean Murphy?”
“There was something he wanted him to hear.”
The lieutenant had said “tape.” She’d been thinking of duct tape, which the papers said had been used to bind the victims. The word could have referred to an audiotape as well, she realized belatedly. The chill she’d felt when Bingham had mentioned souvenirs was back.
“What?”
Bingham exhaled, his mouth rounded and his cheeks slightly inflated. “You sure you want to hear this?”
She wasn’t. Despite having driven downtown after work today to talk to someone on the task force, she had now discovered she didn’t want to know any more about the murders than she had to.
Of course, if she were involved, as Murphy suggested, she had no choice but to be informed. Like it or not.
“Maybe I ought to,” she conceded.
“Murphy thinks that what he heard was another victim.”
“Another victim?” Bingham made no response, letting her work it out on her own. “You said it was too soon.”
“That’s why I think it’s a tape.”