by P. D. Martin
Carter’s still in the doorway talking to the Raymonds, but I stand out front near the car and call O’Donnell. I brief him on the meeting with the Raymonds.
“So we definitely have the necklace,” he says.
“It’s our guy. He carved the crude tattoos on those Michigan girls to relive Sally-Anne’s murder.”
“Mmm.” He pauses. “What’s Carter like?”
“Good. He’s being very helpful.”
“Anderson, watch yourself.”
That’s the second time he’s said that.
“Any particular reason?” I ask.
“I’m personally investigating everyone who’s worked the cases, including Detective Carter and his old partner, Bob Watson.”
“I’m meeting Watson in a few minutes.” I look up at Darren and he smiles. “So they’re suspects?” I know Carter or Watson can’t be the killer because my vision just told me our perp is in D.C. with Sam, but I can’t share this with O’Donnell.
“With the law-enforcement background from the profile, it’s something we have to look at. I’ve spoken to Rivers.” He pauses. “I’m even investigating some of the task force members.”
“Really?” I say, but I’m not surprised. It had to be done.
“You and Couples are clear, because of your sex. Listen, keep this quiet. I’m only telling you in case you’re in danger in Arizona.”
“Okay. I’ll check it out.”
“No, don’t go asking questions, just in case. I’ve got all the information coming through to me. It won’t take long to check their movements over the past eleven years.”
“Let me know.”
“Will do. But just remember, our perp could be linked to Carter or Watson, someone they work with. Keep your wits about you.”
“Always. Bye.”
I hang up and look at Carter again. Could he have anything to do with the murderer? My instincts are saying no, but it might be unwise to rule him out totally.
Carter sees I’m finished on the phone and excuses himself. We ride a few blocks and pull up outside Bobby’s Diner. To me, it’s a stereotypical American diner. There’s a white laminate counter that runs the length of the building with red vinyl bar stools dotted along its length. At the end of the counter is the kitchen. The rest of the diner consists of a dozen or so booths, each one a roomy fit for four but a squash for six.
Darren scans the room and his eyes fix on the third booth from the door. The man in the booth smiles at Darren, but when his eyes move to me the smile vanishes. Darren and I make our way over and Watson stands up. He’s a stocky, slightly overweight man who looks as if he’s lived life hard. His hair is thin and dark gray, and his face is etched with many wrinkles, perhaps a few more than is normal for his sixty-odd years. His nose seems to be permanently red—telling me that he is, or perhaps was, a bit of a drinker. Alcohol is a common vice in this business.
“Hey, Watson.” Darren reaches out his hand.
Watson takes it and gives it two short pumps. “Bet you’re missing me, Carter. Specially with that rookie you got.”
Darren smiles. “She’s doing fine.” He steps aside. “Bob, this is Agent Anderson.”
“Uh-huh. FBI.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Take a seat.” Watson motions to the other side of the booth.
He climbs back to his original seat and Darren and I move in on the opposite side. The bench seats are covered in red vinyl and the tables are white laminate, just like the bar. The menu stands up on the edge of the table, propped between salt, pepper and sugar on one side, and maple syrup on the other side.
“Marli’s coming by later,” Darren says to Watson.
“How’s she doing?”
“Fine, I guess.”
Watson fixes his hazel eyes on me. “So, Carter tells me Sally-Anne’s pendant was left at the abduction site of the killer’s latest victim.”
Straight down to business. I like that.
“Yep. A definite link between the crime scenes.”
“So, what do our friends at the FBI make of that?” he says.
“We’re happy to have the link. It means we’re heading in the right direction.”
Watson nods and looks up behind us.
It’s the waitress. “What can I get you folks?”
“I’ll have a Bud,” Watson says.
“Make it two,” Darren says.
“Do you have Becks?” I ask.
“No, sorry, ma’am. No imports.”
“I’ll grab a Bud too, then.”
“Anything to eat?”
“I’ll have the Bobby’s burger,” Watson says.
I grab the menu and start scanning it. I couldn’t face food on the plane, and for the first time since Sam was nabbed I feel a little hungry.
“The wings and the nachos are good,” Darren says to me, then orders, himself. “I’ll have wings, hot, and a salad.”
I’m still scanning the menu. Nothing’s really jumping out at me.
“I’ll have the wings and a salad too,” I say.
“Sure thing. Hot for you too, honey?”
My hunger suddenly disappears—she said “honey” and it reminds me of Sam.
“Hot?” she repeats. I’m wearing her patience thin.
“Yeah, hot.”
She’s cheery again. “Won’t be long, folks.”
Watson watches her retreat.
“Where were we?” he says after he’s satisfied he’s had enough of the waitress’s butt.
“Some things never change, right, Bob?” Darren leans back into the seat and smiles. “The link. Heading in the right direction.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right.”
Watson seems to be with us again.
I make sure I have his eye contact. “We think the perp’s in D.C. for the thrill. He wants to raise the stakes and do it under the FBI’s nose. He left the pendant at the apartment of the last woman he abducted.” I shift the sugar around with my right hand. It’s hard referring to Sam in a detached manner, but maybe it’s best that Watson doesn’t know my relationship with the victim, especially given he’s officially a suspect until further notice.
I continue. “Maybe he thinks he’s untouchable, that no one would notice the necklace. Or maybe it’s all part of the thrill for him. It’s his way of taunting us.”
“Catch me if you can?” Darren says.
“Yeah. But he doesn’t really believe we can.”
“He’s graduated since Sally-Anne,” Watson says.
His tone of voice reminds me that everyone at the table has a personal investment in this case. In this perp. It also makes me want to dismiss Watson as a suspect.
“You ever been to D.C.?”
“Sure,” Watson says. “But it was twenty years ago.”
I nod. He could be lying, or it could wipe him off our suspect list. Besides, he’s here in front of me, not in D.C. What if my vision was inaccurate somehow? He knew I was coming, he could have hightailed it back to Arizona, but it’s unlikely. And he certainly doesn’t fit the age profile. But Darren does. Though I can’t see Carter killing anyone, let alone a relative. Still, it’ll be nice to get the official word.
I get back to the Raymond case. “So who was Sally-Anne meeting that day?”
“You think we’d be sitting here if we knew the answer to that?” Watson says.
“It’s the million-dollar question. If we knew that, we’d have our guy,” Darren adds.
“I find it hard to believe that Sally-Anne didn’t tell anyone who she was meeting that day,” I say.
“Well, believe it. ’Cause if she’d told anyone, we would have found it out,” Watson replies.
The waitress comes back with our beers. We all take a swig—mine is a small mouthful, Darren’s a couple of gulps and Watson drains nearly half the bottle.
“Okay, so why wouldn’t she tell anyone? Including her best friend?” I ask.
Darren takes another mouthful. “Older man?”
>
“Possibly. Maybe older and a friend of the family.” I pause to consider my own words. “Anyone you know through the family that was a suspect?” I ask Watson.
“I can’t think of any of the Raymonds’ friends who match the profile. Certainly none that have since moved to Michigan, then Chicago and then Washington. Besides, he couldn’t have been that much older if you guys believe he studied in Michigan. Even as a grad he’d have been closer to Sally-Anne’s age than to her parents’.”
“True.” I take another sip of beer and then twist the bottle around on the table, making small wet circles on the white laminate. “But to a sixteen-year-old girl, even a twenty-year-old boyfriend might be something you feel you have to hide from your parents.”
“So you’re thinking early twenties—grad student or maybe someone who waited a few years to save for school?” Darren says.
“Could be,” I say. I hadn’t thought about the possibility that our perp took time off before college, but that would fit the profile.
We sit silently for a moment.
“You checking in again tonight?” Darren asks.
“Only if I find something. O’Donnell, the task force leader, wants me to phone him on his cell if anything comes up.”
“You need something soon.” Darren rubs his hand across his stubble.
“Time’s running out.”
Our meals arrive and Watson orders another beer.
“Darren, how come your reports don’t mention that the second victim was your aunt, and that she was a psychic?”
“We can’t write every detail in them reports, little lady,” Watson says through a mouthful of fries.
Darren is a little more forthcoming. “At the time it seemed the right thing to do. We were worried the media would get hold of it, and that it might interfere with the case because I knew her. Plus, my aunt’s husband didn’t want anything to do with me or my family after what happened. Who could blame him? He begged us not to reveal that she’d been called in as a psychic. So we kept it quiet.”
For a second time today I want to give Darren’s arm a comforting squeeze but resist the urge.
“It’s not your fault. How could you know the killer would track the case so carefully?”
“It was in the profile,” he says, chastising himself.
I’m about to jump in again, when Watson saves me the effort. “The FBI profile came out after Rose’s death. Well after.” He shakes his head. They’ve obviously had this conversation several times. Guilt is such a hard thing to shake, even when it’s irrational. I know that all too well.
Darren doesn’t respond. Instead, he starts gnawing on a chicken wing.
I finish my mouthful and swallow. “So, let’s go through your suspects and unusual interviews.” Hopefully the killer was at least one of the suspects or one of the one hundred and twenty-plus people Darren and Watson interviewed during the course of the investigation.
We spend the next hour going through the murder in detail. From the person who found Sally-Anne’s body to Jamie Wheelan, to her father—every male acquaintance of Sally-Anne’s. No one sticks out to me. In fact, no one really seems to match the profile or the impressions I have of the killer. But we do keep coming back to Jamie Wheelan.
“The creep even admitted to seeing Sally-Anne that day, though he tried to cover it up at first,” Watson says, now on his fifth beer.
“That’s right.” I say, remembering the case notes. “Claims he saw her at his place around midday. They talked, had sex and then she left around one in the afternoon.”
“So he says,” Watson says. I can see a paternal instinct coming through. Obviously when they started the investigation he saw a side of Sally-Anne he’d never seen before. She was certainly relatively sexually active for a sixteen-year-old.
“I always thought there was something fishy about Wheelan,” Watson says. He stares behind Darren and I, and smiles at someone.
Darren turns around. “Marli’s here.”
I turn to look as Marli closes the door behind her. She’s tall and slender and wears a tight black top that shows off her trim waist and pert breasts, and a shortish, classy, straight black skirt. Her long legs are tapered by slight heels. She looks like a woman who’s used to getting her way. She saunters over to the table and smiles at us all, but her gaze lingers on Darren. They either had something going at one stage, or she wishes they had. I study Darren, trying to determine which, and I’m surprised by the ever-so-slight jealousy I feel. It’s ridiculous.
He looks at her but doesn’t respond to her blatant sexuality or the looks she gives him. I decide nothing ever happened between them.
“Hi, Darren,” she says, smiling even wider to reveal perfectly straight teeth with some slight nicotine stains.
Darren returns the smile. “Hi.”
“Hi, Bob,” she says, like a child who’s just called some older relative by their first name and is waiting to be told off.
Watson nods. “Marli.”
“Marli, this is Agent Anderson from the FBI,” Darren says.
“Hey.” She holds out a jewelry-covered hand. I give her a firm handshake.
“Hi, Marli. Thanks for coming down to see us.”
“No problem.” She orders a beer from our waitress, who is clearing dinner plates from the table next to ours.
She sidles in next to Watson, sitting opposite Darren. She looks at Darren, then me. “So you want to know about Sally-Anne.”
“Yes. I’m investigating her death in relation to some murders and one abduction in D.C.”
“Yeah, I know. Darren told me.”
“Good.” I fix my eyes on her, ready to read her responses. “So, you have no idea who Sally-Anne was meeting that day?”
“Nope. She told me she liked a new guy and all, but was all secretive about it. Like he was a rock star or something. Said she’d tell me in a week or two. I could see she wasn’t going to budge, so I left it.”
“Did she normally keep secrets from you?”
“No. We were best friends. It was real unusual. She was weird about this guy, whoever he was.”
“Do you think he was older? Or married?” I say.
Marli’s beer arrives. She takes a long swig.
“Well, he wouldn’t have been an old fuck, if that’s what you’re saying.” She waits for a reaction but I don’t give her one.
“She wouldn’t have gone for that. But she did say something about Jamie being too immature for her. So I thought he may have been, you know, eighteen or twenty. A couple years older.” She brings the beer bottle to her lips again and then stares at the bright red lipstick ring left on the neck.
“And you both used the spot by the river.”
“Sure. It was romantic, and secluded.” She leans in, giving Darren an eyeful of cleavage. “Lots of us went down there. Sometimes Sally-Anne and I would even go down there together.” She looks at me intently. “Like, as a group of four.”
“Did you swap partners?” I ask, impassive.
“No. But we didn’t mind doing it in front of each other.” She looks at Darren.
I glance at him from the corner of my eye to see his response. He’s not buying into her flirtation. He keeps eye contact with her and takes a mouthful of beer, finishing the bottle.
“Any of the guys you or Sally-Anne were with that you might suspect of murder?”
“Who knows what goes on in some people’s heads.” She pauses. “Nah, not really. They were pretty good guys.”
“Jamie included?”
“Sure, Jamie. Him and Sally-Anne were together for about six months. He liked her a lot.”
Jamie as the killer doesn’t ring true to me. One death, Sally-Anne’s, could have been through jealousy, but it wouldn’t have explained the birth of a serial killer.
“Was she seeing anyone else during that six months?”
“Not that I know of. Not until they broke up. She still used to see Jamie from time to time, but she was seeing other
people too.”
“Was there anyone you knew who was sweet on Sally-Anne?”
“Heaps of guys. They all wanted to be with Sally-Anne.”
“What about someone who hung around a little too much. Perhaps someone who’s attention Sally-Anne didn’t want?”
“Sure. All the geeks. You know what it’s like,” she says, looking me up and down, obviously deciding that I did know what it was like.
“No one specific though?”
“Not that I can remember. All this is in my original statement. Why don’t you just read it?”
“I have read it. I’m hoping something else, something new will come up.” Except for the necklace, Arizona is turning out to be a dead end.
“Can’t think of anything.” She pauses. “Sorry.” And for an instant I see a flash of sadness. Of regret. She lost her best friend. I can relate to that. I think of Sam lying on a gurney somewhere. I don’t want to lose her to this bastard too.
I twist my beer bottle around and start peeling off the label. “This was his first kill, he had to mess up something.”
“He was either very smart or very lucky,” Darren says.
Watson takes a swig of beer and slams the bottle down on the table. “Or both.”
Marli is silent, sucking on her beer. We’ve moved out of the realm of questioning a witness and back into colleagues discussing a case. It isn’t appropriate with Marli still sitting here.
“Is there anything, anything at all you can think of, Marli? Perhaps you’ve seen someone or something recently that made you think of Sally-Anne,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been through this hundreds and hundreds of times in my head. There’s nothing I didn’t tell these guys in the first place.” She stares at her beer bottle. “I wish I could help, I really do. I wish something I knew would help find Sally-Anne’s murderer.” The “bad girl” has almost totally disappeared.
“That’s okay, Marli. I’m sorry to bring all this up again. If you think of anything, give me a call, okay?” I hand her my card.
She knows the interview is over and I can tell she’s relieved. She’d rather go back to the bad-girl image than talk about Sally-Anne—it’s easier for her, less painful.
She nods, downs the rest of her beer and walks out, forgetting even to give Darren an extra smile.