The Last Time I Saw Her

by Karen Robards

  “The police are on the way.” High heels clicking, Tam flew across the room to Charlie’s side. “I called Tony, too.”

  Charlie nodded in acknowledgment. As Tam hunkered down beside her Charlie registered peripherally that, instead of being dressed for bed, Tam was wearing plum-colored slacks with a purple wool jacket like she’d been out somewhere. The fresh scent of the outdoors clung to her. Charlie frowned, but tucked Tam’s attire away as a matter to question later.

  “Drop the knife.” Michael’s voice was still murderous. No surprise, the knife hit the floor. If the intruder had had any real intention to try to escape, he’d clearly given it up. “Kick it over here to me.”

  The man did. Without taking his eyes or the gun off the man, Michael bent and picked up the knife. Suddenly, the danger that had filled the room went away.

  “Breathe wrong and you’re dead,” Michael said to the intruder, and then to Charlie, “You’re bleeding. How badly are you hurt?”

  “She’s cut across the top of her shoulder. It doesn’t look like it’s very deep,” said Tam. Charlie supposed the adrenaline spike she’d experienced had kept her from feeling anything before. Now she could feel the sting of the cut and the warm ooze of blood against her skin. She looked around at her shoulder. A long cut across the top of it was bleeding pretty freely, but as Tam had said the wound didn’t look deep.

  Didn’t matter. She felt light-headed anyway, probably because as she’d looked at the wound she’d been hit with the realization that, if she hadn’t awakened right when she did, she could easily have been killed.

  Stabbed to death in her bed.

  “I’m all right,” she told them as Tam got to her feet and hurried toward the bathroom. Moving was beyond Charlie for the moment. The best she could do was try to regulate her breathing. Shaking her hair to one side to keep it away from the wound, she asked, “Who is he?”

  “You mean he’s not one of yours?” Michael’s tone was only mildly edgy. Charlie shook her head, started to say No. Then she stopped. She’d thought she didn’t know her attacker. But she had this sudden, niggling sense that she’d seen him before. Tam came back with a towel and Charlie’s robe, distracting her. Draping the robe around Charlie while leaving her injured shoulder bare, Tam sank to the floor beside her, then folded the towel and pressed it to the wound, applying steady pressure. Charlie winced even as she murmured “Thanks.”

  “What’s your name?” Michael asked the man. Charlie’s attention refocused on the intruder, who was shifting his weight from foot to foot uneasily. His eyes were fixed on Michael and the gun. He was wetting his lips and breathing heavily. She could see his chest heaving beneath the long-sleeved black tee he wore with black sweatpants. A kind of wary confusion came into his eyes at Michael’s question. He didn’t answer.

  Charlie stared at him. Michael was staring at him, too. Mid- to late thirties. Buzzed reddish blond hair. Broad face, meaty nose, thin lips. Light blue eyes. A big guy, at least six-two, husky. Not bad looking.

  I was almost stabbed to death in my bed. That thought ran through Charlie’s mind a second time, then stayed with her. She’d come across that scenario, that MO, before.

  She looked at the knife in Michael’s hand. Long, thin blade, with a leather-wrapped handle. Wickedly sharp.

  She had files in her office with an ME’s sketch of a missing murder weapon that looked almost exactly like it: Michael’s files.

  Her heart started to speed up just as Michael said with a trace of surprise, “You’re Detective Dan Foster with the Mariposa Police Department.”

  Even as Charlie had her own flash of recognition—she’d seen a video of this guy interviewing a handcuffed Michael inside the Mariposa police station right before Michael was charged with Candace Hartnell’s murder—the truth hit her like a brick.

  She knew, knew, who he had to be.

  The Southern Slasher.

  Her hands curled into fists. Her insides twisted.

  “I’m with the Baltimore PD now,” Foster said, frowning at Michael. “You know that. You’re my damned lawyer.”

  Of course, Foster thought Michael was Hughes. And Hughes was Foster’s lawyer? Hughes was a criminal defense lawyer; the case that had brought him to Big Stone Gap involved his client killing his girlfriend in the style of the Southern Slasher. Foster had to be the boyfriend suspected of murder. The true scope of his evil unfolded in Charlie’s mind like a game of connect-the-dots.

  Foster was a serial killer. The actions and motivations of serial killers almost always followed a pattern, and were actually highly predictable to someone who knew what to look for. To someone like her.

  Fixing him with wintry eyes, Charlie said, “Your girlfriend was breaking up with you, wasn’t she, Detective Foster? She rejected you, and you lost control and killed her because rejection is your trigger. Then you panicked, knowing you would immediately be the prime suspect because in any murder like that the boyfriend or husband always is.”

  Foster’s eyes widened. Looking at her as if she’d suddenly morphed into a spitting cobra, he said in a hoarse, startled voice, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Charlie’s eyes never left his. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that she was right. All the clues, all the little anomalies, added up to this man. This was her area of expertise, and she pulled on everything she knew to work out exactly what he’d done, and how, and why. Identifying psychopaths like Foster and figuring out what made them tick was what she did. She did it now, and all the pieces started falling into place.

  She said, “I do know what I’m talking about. For one thing, I’m talking about this knife right here. The same knife you always use. You used it to slash your girlfriend to death, just like you used it to slash all your other victims to death. Monsters like you tend to be consistent in their methods of killing people, and you’ve used the same knife for every murder you’ve committed, haven’t you? Do you think that knife can’t be connected to all your previous murders? I’m betting it can.”

  “You’re crazy.” He looked at Michael and Tam as if seeking their support. “She’s crazy.”

  Tam shook her head. Michael glanced down at Charlie, then looked back at Foster, his expression increasingly grim.

  Charlie continued, “You killed your girlfriend because she rejected you, and then you panicked because you knew it was going to come back on you. You looked around for a scapegoat because the one you had already used, the one you had already framed, who had already been arrested and convicted of your previous crimes, was dead. Killed in prison.” Charlie felt Michael stiffen beside her, as exactly who he was looking at dawned on him at last. Charlie went on, “Fortunately, he had a twin brother. Exactly when you ran across Mr. Hughes I’m not sure—probably when you joined the Baltimore PD—but run across him you did. You couldn’t have missed his resemblance to Michael Garland, so you did a little detecting—that’s what you do, after all, isn’t it, Detective?—and discovered that Michael Garland and Rick Hughes were indeed identical twins.”

  Charlie could feel that she had Michael’s fascinated attention even though his eyes stayed fixed on Foster. She could feel the emotions seething through him: disbelief, hope, a rising anger. But it was Foster’s reaction that interested her most. His already florid face turned tomato red, and his eyes—his light blue eyes, which, along with his size and fair coloring would match Michael’s general description, Charlie realized—were bulging out of his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “This is bullshit,” Foster snarled. “Total bullshit.”

  Charlie shook her head. “I know what you did, Detective Foster. When you needed someone to pin your girlfriend’s murder on, you decided that the easiest thing to do was make it another Southern Slasher murder. After all, it had worked beautifully for you before. Did Candace Hartnell reject you before Michael Garland picked her up in that bar? Yes, I’m sure she did. You were probably right there to see her leave with him.”
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br />   Foster was starting to sweat. “You’re pulling all of this out of your ass. You weren’t there.”

  Charlie smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Somehow you knew Michael Garland. You had it in for Michael Garland. You watched Michael Garland walk out of that bar with the woman who’d rejected you and you got angry. Then you came up with a way to make them both pay. Were you starting to feel the heat for the murders of the six women you’d killed previously? I think you were. I think you were worried that you’d left something behind, a hair, some saliva, something, although as a cop you knew how investigations were conducted and were very careful. But you were afraid you’d made a mistake and someone would figure it out, so you took what you must have seen as a golden opportunity to pin the blame on someone else and followed Michael Garland and Candace Hartnell back to her house. You waited outside until he’d left, and then you killed her. Did you call in a report of a possible drunk driver and have Michael Garland stopped after he’d left her house?” The look on Foster’s face answered that. “Yes, you did. Very smart. And thorough. You’re very thorough, aren’t you, Detective Foster? So thorough that you took some of the DNA Michael Garland had left behind—it wouldn’t have taken much—and salted those previous cases, your previous victims, which logged evidence you had access to because you were a detective. Then you made the supposed discovery that Michael Garland was the Southern Slasher and you got to play the hero.” At the thought of what Michael had suffered because of this man, Charlie felt a ferocious anger flood her veins. It was all she could do to keep her voice even as she continued, “Did you enjoy testifying at his trial, Detective Foster? I bet you did.”

  “You can’t prove any of this.” Foster’s voice was a croak. He was looking at her like he was afraid. Charlie was fiercely glad. He deserved to be afraid.

  She said, “The police and the FBI can. Now that they have the road map, it’ll be easy. Where you went wrong was killing your girlfriend, Detective Foster. You would have gotten away with the rest of it. But you’re arrogant. You think you’re smarter than everyone else. You should have just sat tight and hoped that the police investigating your girlfriend’s death couldn’t find enough evidence to tie it to you. But instead you came up with another brilliant plan, hired Rick Hughes as your defense attorney—probably the very next day. You salted the scene of your girlfriend’s murder with something like a few hairs, anything containing DNA, that you either obtained from Hughes or you had saved from Michael Garland, and you waited for police to make the connection. Or, no, you didn’t wait, did you? You’re a doer, not a waiter. You told somebody, probably a cop buddy of yours, that your girlfriend’s murder reminded you of the Southern Slasher killings you investigated back in Mariposa, and wondered out loud if maybe the real killer was still on the loose and out to get you, and the word got around. The only thing that was worrying you was that, having discovered how much he looked like Michael Garland, the convicted Southern Slasher, Hughes had decided to check him out.” Charlie remembered the sense of evil she had felt the evening she had seen Hughes’s Shelby parked across the street from her house, the evening she’d seen that brief, shimmery image of Michael in the neighbor’s yard, realized that the evil must have been emanating from Foster who’d been nearby, too, and with that everything else, the rest of what Foster had done, fell into place. “You followed Hughes here to Big Stone Gap because you were afraid that he would realize he was being set up. When you saw him having dinner with me, coming home with me, you followed us and waited outside my house for him to leave.” She shot a quick glance at Michael, noticed for the first time that he was wearing khakis and a blue shirt instead of the black pants and gray shirt he’d had on the previous night, and concluded that he had, indeed, left her asleep in bed to go back to the Pioneer Inn and change clothes. “When he left, and my house guest left, too—”

  She slanted an inquiring look at Tam, who said in a squeaky voice, “I had an errand to run. I was gone for about an hour and a half. I just got back when you started to scream.”

  Charlie nodded and continued addressing Foster. “When I was alone, you broke into my house and tried to kill me, the woman you assumed Hughes had just slept with and had just left his DNA all over. That would have sealed the deal, wouldn’t it? That would have made everyone think that Rick Hughes was the real Southern Slasher all along, and, while a regrettable mistake had been made in convicting Michael Garland, it was understandable because they were identical twins, and anyway the right twin would be captured and convicted now. You would have proved how much smarter than the authorities you are once again, and you would have gotten away with one more murder.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Michael said slowly. She could feel the burning heat of his anger, and put a calming hand on the powerful leg beside her. He glanced down at her, and then she could feel him gaining control, reining his emotions in.

  “That’s crazy, all of it. You can’t prove any of that,” Foster said again. His voice was hoarse, his eyes were bright with fear and hatred as he looked at her, and if his face got any redder it would burst into flame. “Who the hell are you?”

  Charlie knew that she was right in almost every detail. She would have known it even if he hadn’t been looking at her like that because analyzing how serial killers thought and behaved was what she had dedicated her life to, but everything from his expression to his body language left her in no doubt that the scenario she had just described was close to the truth.

  “I’m Dr. Charlotte Stone,” she said, her eyes holding his. “Stopping serial killers is what I do.”

  “Wow,” Tam said, nudging Charlie. “I thought I was the psychic here.”

  Charlie took a deep breath. Breaking eye contact with Foster, she glanced at Tam. “I study patterns of behavior. Everything he did fit a pattern. No psychic ability involved.”

  “Not one word of that fairy tale you spewed is going to be admissible in court.” Foster seemed to be trying to get himself under control. His voice was stronger. Charlie knew how his mind worked: he still thought he was smarter than everyone else, and he would figure a way out. “It’s all rampant speculation on your part. All of it.”

  Charlie shook her head. “The knife isn’t speculation. Neither is the fact that you just tried to kill me. As for the rest, well, we’ll see, won’t we? It certainly gives investigators a good place to start.”

  Michael was frowning as he stared at Foster. “I’m as sure as it’s possible to be that I never laid eyes on this guy before he pulled me out of that cell at the Mariposa police station. Why would he have it in for me? And where the hell did he get that watch?”

  “I don’t know, but it’ll come out in the investigation,” Charlie said. A commotion below announced a whole herd of new arrivals seconds before a man yelled, “Police!”

  “I must’ve left the front door open,” Michael muttered, while Tam yelled back, “We’re upstairs.”

  As multiple sets of feet pounded up the stairs toward them, Tam jumped up, ran over, and grabbed Foster’s arm.

  Eyes widening, Tam stood stock still. Charlie, Michael, and, yes, Foster, too, were so surprised that all they could do was stare at her.

  “I had to know for sure,” Tam said, letting go and retreating to stand by Charlie, who with Michael’s help was getting to her feet. Charlie understood—Tam had been reading Foster. She nodded and pulled her blue bathrobe closer around her as what seemed like half the Big Stone Gap police force burst into the room. While explanations were being given and Foster was Mirandized and handcuffed, Tam told Charlie quietly, “It’s all true. He’s the Southern Slasher. I felt so much evil in him, so much hate! He killed his girlfriend and all those other women”—she looked at Michael, who stood beside Charlie, and directed her next remarks to him—“and he hated you because you were the only one of—twenty-four, that’s the number I got, twenty-four—the only one of twenty-four who undertook the mission in which his brother was killed who got back to this country alive.
His brother never made it home from Afghanistan. The watch—Foster inherited the watch from him. Foster was wearing it the night he killed Candace, and he left it behind on purpose, in her bed, to incriminate you, because he knew you had an identical one. He hid your watch, which was intake material, when you were arrested. Only—I don’t think the watches were totally identical. Something—something was different. The watch Foster left belonged to his younger brother, Dean Foster, who was killed during that twenty-four-man mission with you. Foster thought it was unfair that…He hated watching you go on with your life while his brother was dead.”

  —

  Later, when Foster had been taken away and Charlie’s wound had been treated and bandaged and she’d gotten dressed and told her story what felt like a hundred times, she was walking through the entry hall with Tony, Lena, and Buzz, who were on their way to the door. The three FBI agents were headed for the police station to conduct the first formal interview with Foster.

  Charlie had just a moment of relative privacy with Tony, who bent his head toward her and asked quietly, “You doing okay with that guy?”

  She had no trouble identifying “that guy” as Michael.

  Nodding, she said, “We’re fine. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  “You do that,” he said, and she knew that he meant for more than just information purposes.

  Then Lena and Buzz caught up.

  “That was a close call,” Tony said to Charlie, totally professional now. “Too close. You need a home security system. Pronto.”

  “You attract serial killers like a dog does fleas.” Lena sounded almost gleeful. “We can just cart you around the country with us and watch the arrest count pile up.”

  Charlie shook her head. “After this, I’m sticking to research. And I might write a book.”

  “Not that we don’t appreciate the help, but that’s probably a good idea,” Tony said.

  “If Foster had managed to kill you, his plan might very well have worked,” Lena told Charlie. “At the very least, it would have taken the focus off him as a suspect in his girlfriend’s murder.”