Which was why she was not prepared for the black truck that suddenly loomed up behind her as she reached a particularly hairy series of curves in the road that wiggled around a magnificent stand of first growth cypress trees. Nor was she prepared for the truck to pull out into the opposite lane as if it intended to pass her on a part of the road that was clearly marked as a no-passing zone.
Thinking perhaps the driver was drunk, Clare slowed the BMW and waited for him to pass.
“Come on, there’s room, you can go by me,” she muttered.
Only he didn’t pass her, he didn’t even attempt to. In fact, he slowed down, too, apparently intent on staying in the oncoming lane and riding along beside her. Clare could see a car coming toward them around the curve up ahead, and she knew he had to have seen it, too, and yet he continued to pace her until they reached a spot in the road where the shoulder fell off sharply and the other car was almost upon him.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, leaning hard on the horn to alert him.
But he looked right at her, as if to suggest that he had no choice in the matter, and he shrugged. Then, without warning, he gunned his engine and cut her off, missing the oncoming car by a matter of feet, and sideswiping the BMW as he shot past.
Clare did the only thing she could do. She hit the brakes and swerved in an attempt to avoid him. But there was no room to maneuver. The BMW’s wheels spun out of control and lost contact with the road, and the car hurtled down the embankment and slammed into the trees.
Four
“Clare? Clare, can you hear me?”
She heard a woman’s voice calling to her, but it was coming from so far away that she didn’t think it was necessary to reply. If the woman really wanted her, she reasoned, she would come closer, so that Clare wouldn’t have to raise her voice in return.
“Clare?” the woman said again, this time sounding as though she was right beside her. “Open your eyes, Clare. I want you to open your eyes for me.”
Clare thought about doing that, but it seemed like just too much trouble. She was so tired and her head ached so badly that all she wanted to do was go to sleep. She decided, if she kept still, the woman would eventually go away.
But the woman didn’t go away. She kept calling and calling to her until Clare’s head began to throb even more and she finally had enough and opened her eyes. Annoyance turned to alarm. She was in a place she didn’t recognize, lying on something hard and unforgiving, and the light was so bright that it hurt to focus on anything.
“Well, there you are,” a woman she was quite positive she had never seen before said. The woman was dressed in white. “You had us worried there for a minute.”
As Clare wondered who she was, a man she was also sure she had never seen before loomed up beside the woman. He, too, was dressed in white. She wondered who these people were, and what they wanted with her. She wondered where she was, and what she was doing here. She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t seem to move.
“No, no, you don’t want to do that,” the man said quickly.
It was then Clare realized that, aside from her pounding head, she couldn’t feel the rest of her body. Her eyes widened fearfully. “Am I dead?” she whispered.
“My goodness, no,” the woman chirped. “Although I don’t mind telling you how lucky you are that you’re not.”
“Am I in an asylum?” Clare asked.
“No, you’re not in an asylum,” the man told her. “You’re at Harborview Medical Center.”
Clare was confused. “If I’m in a hospital, then why am I in a straightjacket?”
“You’re not in a straightjacket.”
“Then why can’t I move?” she said, beginning to whimper.
At that, the man and woman in white seem to vanish and Dusty Grissom and Erin Hall appeared in their places. Only now it wasn’t light in the room anymore, it was dark.
“You were injured in an accident, Mrs. Durant,” Erin said gently. “Do you remember?”
Clare thought for a moment. “Yes, I remember,” she said finally. “I fell off the mountain.”
“No, you were driving on Mercer Island and your car went off the road.”
“Mercer Island?” Clare repeated vaguely.
“Yes,” Erin said.
“What was I doing there?”
“You took Julie to her art class.”
There was confusion in Clare’s eyes. “Julie? Where is Julie? Did something happen to Julie?”
“No, no, no,” Erin assured her. “She’s safe at home.” The detective had called the house in Laurelhurst the moment the accident report came in, and Doreen had immediately driven down to collect the girl.
“Why can’t I move?”
“You injured your spine and apparently there’s some temporary paralysis. You’re wearing a cervical collar until the doctors can fully evaluate your condition.”
Clare closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. This wasn’t about the mountain. That was in the past, and this was the present. She forced herself to think.
“Someone tried to pass me on a curve,” she said.
“Do you remember that?” Dusty asked eagerly.
“I think so,” Clare replied. “I think I tried to get out of the way. Is that when I went off the road?”
“Yes,” Dusty told her.
***
According to two eyewitnesses, both of whom stopped to help, the BMW careened right off the road and into the trees. The two good Samaritans pulled the unconscious woman to safety barely a minute before her car exploded into flames.
“I don’t know,” one of the witnesses reported at the time, “but I have to say it looked to me as though it was deliberate.”
“What do you mean it was deliberate?” one of the Mercer Island police officers detailed to the scene asked. “You think she was trying to commit suicide?”
“No, no, no,” the witness corrected him. “I’m talking about the guy who ran her off the road. At first, I thought he was drunk, or crazy, or something, but now I think he meant to do it.”
“You’re saying someone intentionally ran her off the road?”
“Yeah,” the other witness corroborated. “It happened right in front of me, and I saw the whole thing. The guy was driving in my lane, and then just at the last minute, when I’m starting to wonder how in hell I’m going to get out of his way, he cuts over and sideswipes her. I know he saw me, and I know he had plenty of time to get back in his lane, but he waited until he got right to this spot here, where the road curves and the shoulder narrows. Poor woman, she didn’t have a chance.”
“Did you get a look at him?” the police officer asked. “Do you remember anything about him?”
Both witnesses shrugged. “Not much,” one of them said. “It was a black truck and it was a man driving is all I can really tell you for sure.”
“He had dark hair,” the other one said. “Looked like he hadn’t shaved for a while. And I’m pretty sure the truck was a Ford.”
“I don’t suppose either of you caught the license plate?”
“I got a look at it,” the man who had been driving behind Clare said. “But I’m afraid all I can give you are the first two numbers.”
The police officer took down the information. He would pass it along. Maybe it would lead to something.
***
“What did I do?” Clare asked the detectives.
“You had a very close encounter with some very big trees,” Dusty told her.
“Is the car ruined?”
“I’m afraid so,” Erin replied.
Clare sighed. “Richard gave me that car for my birthday. I’d only been driving it for a few weeks. He’s going to be so upset.”
Erin frowned. The woman had suffered a concussion, a spinal contusion, and some nasty cuts and bruises. By some miracle, when the odds were all against her, she was still alive, and the only thing she could think about was that she had totaled the BMW.
“That’s n
othing for you to worry about now,” she suggested.
“I guess not,” Clare said, her eyes beginning to close.
“You just concentrate on getting some rest, and feeling better,” Dusty advised, leaning over and patting her hand.
The two detectives turned to go.
“Did he do it on purpose?” Clare asked suddenly, her eyes opening.
“What?” Erin said, turning back.
“The man in the truck -- he looked right at me before he cut me off. Do you think he did it on purpose?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Dusty replied.
Clare stared at the police officers, and there was real fear in her eyes. “Why would he want to do that to me?” she whispered. “I’ve never done anything to deserve him wanting to do that to me.”
She began to cry softly.
“We don’t know why yet,” Erin said. “But I promise you we’re going to find out.”
Clare’s eyes moved from one to the other. “You think it was him, don’t you?” she whispered. “You think it was your stalker.”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“Did you recognize him, did he look familiar?” Dusty asked. “Can you tell us if you’ve ever seen him before?”
Clare tried to remember. “I don’t think so,” she said slowly.
“He didn’t look at all familiar to you?”
Clare closed her eyes and tried to picture him through the pain in her head.
“No,” she said finally. “I really can’t remember ever seeing him before.”
“You’re sure?”
Suddenly, the woman in the neck brace began to giggle like a schoolgirl. “Besides, I don’t think my parents would let me associate with someone they didn’t know. They’re very strict, you see.”
“I beg your pardon?” Erin said frowning uncertainly.
“Oh my, yes,” Clare rambled on. “My daddy would take after any young man who made advances without a proper introduction.”
“It’s the concussion,” Dusty whispered.
Erin nodded. “Do you think you could describe him for us?” she pressed. “If we brought a sketch artist in here, could you tell him what the man looked like?”
“I could try,” Clare said. “Maybe Julie can paint him for you.”
“I’m sorry?” Now it was Dusty’s turn to frown. “Julie wasn’t with you when you went off the road. She couldn’t have seen him.”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Clare murmured. “Julie is taking art classes now. I drive her over to Mercer Island every Saturday morning, and her teacher says she’s doing very well at it.”
And then her eyes closed and she drifted off.
***
“She’s pretty confused,” Erin remarked as they made their way out of the hospital. “I think we’ll have to give her a couple of days.”
“Yeah, she got to running on pretty good there,” Dusty said.
“Meanwhile, we’ve got another problem.”
“I know,” Dusty agreed. “The guy we’ve been looking at never did anything like this before.”
“He taunted from a distance, and then he snatched,” Erin said. “There’s nothing in the files that tells us he tried to run either of the other two off the road or harm them in any way. Or that he ever so much as tried to meet his victims before the night he snatched, raped, and murdered them.”
Dusty sighed. “We’d better talk to Picard.”
***
“He’s thrown us a real curve now, hasn’t he?” the FBI profiler said thoughtfully. “He’s changed his MO . . . but the question is -- why?”
“That’s sort of what we wanted to ask you,” Erin said.
“Well, I suppose it’s always possible that he’s decided to refine his plan, perhaps for the purpose of increasing the torment,” Wendy mused, “but it’s odd that he would actually try to kill her. Scare her, yes, but kill her, I don’t know.” She rubbed her fingers along her chin line. “More than the pursuit, this man gets his high from the endgame, when his victim has to look him in the eye and know that he’s in control, and that he’s going to do whatever he wants with her, and that she’s helpless to stop him. That’s what it’s all about for him -- the power trip.”
“So what happens when he finds out that his little run-her-off-the-road game didn’t end up killing her?” Erin asked.
Wendy shrugged. “Well, if he’s changing his game plan, then it’s anyone’s guess,” she told them. “But if he’s serious, I suppose he’ll try something else.”
Erin looked at Dusty. “How are we going to protect her?”
“I don’t know,” her partner replied. “We can put someone on her round the clock, but he could just wait us out. He knows we won’t be able to do it forever, and he’s very patient, our guy. After all, he’s taken three years to set this up.”
“But we have to do something,” Erin urged. “We can’t just hang her out to dry.”
“You know, there may be another possibility,” Wendy said. “What if he didn’t mean to kill her? What if he just meant to scare her, and it went a little further than he expected?”
“That would make sense,” Erin conceded.
“Yes, it would,” Dusty agreed. “What was it he said to her the other night? That she wasn’t afraid of him anymore?”
“That’s right,” Erin exclaimed. “He did say that. Maybe that is it. Maybe he did just mean to scare her.”
The profiler nodded. “He could have felt he was losing her in some way, and he just couldn’t resist the opportunity to pull her back in. If so, then I think we can assume he was trying to frighten her, not kill her. And then somehow, the whole thing just got away from him.”
“But is our guy the kind who would let something like that get away from him?” Erin wondered. “I mean, everything he’s done so far has been so calculated, so meticulous. Would he really take a chance doing something he wasn’t positive he could control?”
“If he feels you’re getting closer, he might,” Wendy replied. “Remember, this is about her, but it’s also about you now, too. You’re onto him. You know what he’s done before, and he knows it. In both of the previous cases, the police got involved relatively late in the game -- after he was calling Laughlin at home, and after Medina was already dead. This time, you got in earlier.”
“That’s true,” Erin conceded.
“And he may be feeling the pressure,” Wendy said. “In fact, it’s quite possible that Clare Durant might actually end up becoming secondary to his outmaneuvering you. Which means that his whole game plan could be changing, and he could even be changing his timetable, too.”
Erin turned to Dusty. “It’s absolutely essential that we get a good description of him out of her,” she told him. “Even if we have to hypnotize her to do it.”
***
“I thought you people were going to protect her,” Richard Durant barked.
He had cut his business trip short the moment Doreen notified him, and took the first plane out of Birmingham, arriving back in Seattle at ten o’clock Saturday night, to sit with his wife while she drifted in and out of consciousness, alternately complaining of the pain and the dizziness, and apologizing for wrecking the car.
“This was completely unexpected, and we’re very, very sorry,” Erin tried to explain. “He threw us a curve, and we were unprepared for it. But I promise you, nothing like this is going to happen again.”
“You bet it won’t,” Richard declared. “I go away for two days and he gets to her. Well, that’s it. You’ve had your chance. I’m not leaving town again, not as long as this guy is still on the loose.”
“I know how upset you are,” Dusty assured him. “And I can’t say as I blame you. But there was no way we could have anticipated what happened to your wife. Our man has changed his pattern, and we believe it’s because he knows we’re onto him, and he thinks he can outwit us.”
“And as far as I can see,” Richard snapped, “he’s doing a damn good job of it.”
“Mr. Durant, please.”
“Look, I appreciate everything you’re trying to do,” Richard said in a more moderate tone, “but my wife means a hell of a lot more to me than whether or not you catch this creep. All I care about is keeping him away from her.”
“All right, so let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you’re right, and that we blew it,” Erin interjected. “How are you going to protect your wife? Lock her up twenty-four hours a day? Surround her with an armed guard? Sling an Ak-47 over your shoulder and follow her everywhere?”
“That’s a start.”
“The start of what -- the rest of your life?” Dusty inquired. “What makes you think that, just because you’re around, this guy is going to go find himself another target?”
“Well, maybe he will, if he can’t get to Clare,” Richard said. “You don’t know that he won’t.”
“Not for certain, of course,” Erin conceded. “But let us remind you that he took three years to plan this, three years to pick your wife as his next victim, to learn everything he could about her, to study her habits, to get to know her, to get inside her head. I don’t know what that tells you, but it tells me that he has an infinite amount of patience, our stalker -- patience, I might add, that I suspect will far outlast your willingness to play bodyguard. And there’s something else you might want to consider. If he wants your wife as bad as we think he does, he won’t mind going through you to get to her. Who knows, he might even prefer it. He has killed before, Mr. Durant. He has no reason not to kill again.”
“Hell, I don’t mind risking my life, if it’ll save my wife,” Richard asserted.
“And that’s admirable of you,” Erin said. “But what if it won’t save your wife? What if it won’t save either of you? You have two children. Do you care what happens to them?”
Richard opened his mouth to respond sharply and then shut it again, because the detective was talking sense, and he knew it. “Of course I care about my children,” he muttered instead. “Of course I care what happens to them.”
In Self Defense Page 7