The Watcher (The Bigler County Romantic Thriller Series)

by Jo Robertson

  The sound of dripping water permeated her foggy brain.

  Her limbs ached as if heavy weights anchored her body to a hard surface. Kate turned her head toward the sound, and pain shot from her shoulder to her neck in a white-hot flame. She tried to force her mind out of the tight cocoon that enveloped her, but she couldn’t. Her arms and legs wouldn’t obey. She wasn’t even sure her brain was sending the correct signals. Her eyelids felt swollen, her lips parched.

  Each distant plink of water dropping onto something metallic reminded her how thirsty she was. Where was the water coming from? And how had she gotten here? Where was here? She moaned and forced open her gritty eyes.

  Black as pitch.

  After several long moments, the darkness finally morphed into indistinct shades of gloominess. She sensed an open vastness. Cool air rushed around her, chilling her flesh. She felt the unforgiving hardness beneath her hips and back and the rough texture of coarse fabric covering her breasts and thighs.

  She knew she’d been drugged because she’d felt exactly this way when she came out of the anesthesia after her appendectomy, her head and body mummified in a swath of cotton batting. The fog over her mind lifted momentarily and she groaned, only to drift again toward unconsciousness.

  Stay awake, Kate, she screamed in her head. If she lost consciousness this time, she might not wake up again. Move, she commanded her useless limbs, but they wouldn’t obey. Stay awake, she shouted to her muddled brain. Don’t go back under.

  It wasn’t true what they said about your entire life passing through your mind in the last seconds before your death. You only remember the important things.

  Kate remembered the last careless glance she’d given her sister as Kassie clutched Shamus’ leash and trudged off toward the river like a prisoner serving an unwarranted sentence. She remembered the day her parents told her that Kassie was dead, how they wouldn’t look at her because they couldn’t bear for her to see the details of her sister’s last moments etched on her face. She remembered the dead expression her dad had, her mother’s tears, fragile crystal drops that froze beneath her eyes and refused to fall.

  She remembered Slater hovering over her, his muscles strained with passion, the look on his face that now seemed beloved and dear, and one she might never see again. The lost expression when she’d told him that she didn’t know if she could forgive his betrayal. How could she have cast him off so quickly, so carelessly? Oh, Slater, I’m so sorry.

  She had no doubt that she would die here, that she was a hostage in some hideous prison, but one for which no ransom could be paid. She would die in the same way as Kassie and Jennifer and Alison and all those poor, young women whose wasted lives had fed the monster who now had complete power over her. She knew with absolute certainty that she was at the mercy of the same evil force that’d ended their lives.

  She wished she’d asked Slater again if he believed in God or heaven. She’d like to think she’d see her sister once more, and maybe Slater’s little boy, but she was terribly afraid she would simply drift away into nothingness after a great deal of pain.

  Suddenly, a faint light glowed in front of her, swinging in an arc around the room, illuminating damp cement walls. From behind the light, a dark shape loomed, and a strong odor she couldn’t identify assailed her nostrils. She squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to protest, to move out of the reach of the anesthetic smell, but she couldn’t open her mouth, couldn’t move her body.

  Rough fingers held her cheek. She tried to blink her eyes open again, but like her mouth and body, they no longer worked. A soiled cloth, redolent with the same stringent odor, covered her mouth and nose, and she sank back into the void of oblivion.

  #

  The buzzing of the cell phone against his thigh jarred Slater into wakefulness. Groggily, he lifted his wrist to peer at his watch. How’d it get to be after one o’clock in the morning? He spoke into the phone, a sense of alarm barking his nerves back to life. “Slater.”

  “Ben, it’s Matt.”

  A chill ran down Slater’s spine. Bauer never used his first name. “This’d better be good, Bauer.”

  “I tried to get Dr. Myers, but she’s not answering her phone or cell.” Bauer hesitated. “Is she, uh, there?”

  No, Kate wasn’t here. She might never be here if he didn’t patch things up with her.

  “No, she isn’t. Why?”

  “God, Ben, I don’t know.” Words tumbled out of Bauer’s mouth as if by getting them out fast, he could ward off panic.

  “Calm down,” Slater interrupted. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the precinct. Sanderson, he’s doing desk duty, well, he got a call from the FBI, and since he couldn’t get you or Kate, he called me.”

  Slater’s hand shook as he clutched the phone. Dread gripped his chest. Where had the time gone and where the hell was Kate? She should’ve been at home and asleep hours ago.

  He couldn’t breathe. His chest spasmed with a crushing pain. In his mind he saw himself opening the bathroom door again, saw the burning candles on the granite ledge beneath the window, the smoky darkness and moist humidity of the room. Saw Julie reclining in the bathtub. The soft humming. The thick, wet hair of his son’s head floating beneath the water.

  “You better come down here right now, Ben.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Slater knew he’d be twenty minutes longer because he was going to stop at Kate’s apartment first. When he arrived, the apartment was dark, and even though he pounded until his knuckles were raw, there was no answer. Finally he raised his foot and kicked in the door.

  Even though the heat was running, the apartment had that unoccupied feeling. No one had been here for several hours. He searched the bedroom and bathroom, but everything looked normal. Kate’s coat was gone from the hall closet and her purse was missing. Maybe she’d gone out for something and had been in an accident. It was possible. He told himself a dozen legitimate reasons could explain why she wasn’t safely tucked in her apartment.

  But there was only one that he believed. Something had happened to her. Icy fingers trailed down his spine, and he felt the chill of wet winter settle into the marrow of his bones. The detective in him forced aside his emotions and went on analytical autopilot. Whatever happened to Kate didn’t happen here. The apartment looked normal, exactly the way he’d expect her to leave it, no signs of struggle, nothing out of place. Every room looked exactly as he remembered leaving it this morning. Cups, saucers, and cereal bowls were neatly stacked in the drainer, the dishcloth folded on the towel bar.

  Downstairs in the parking lot he found proof that confirmed his fears. Kate’s car was parked behind the duplex where she normally left it. The security lamps were smashed, and the yellow automobile was barely visible in the residual light from the moon.

  As Slater got closer, he saw the ripped top of the Volkswagen, the black canvas peeled back and hideously shredded, the material gaping open to the wound of the car’s interior. He walked the perimeter of the vehicle, checking the doors and peering through the windows. All locked. Nothing inside the car, no luggage, purse, no sign that Kate had been here at all.

  The slashed top of the convertible could be vandalism. Slater told himself there was no evidence yet to prove the slick fear that wormed its way into his mind – fear that Kate had barely made it to her car before her assailant reached her. That someone, armed with a knife, had ripped open the canvas to get at her.

  He snapped on the surgical gloves he always carried in his pocket and carefully reached in to unlock the passenger door. The light from the interior illuminated the blood on the pavement. Kate’s blood? Her attacker’s? There’d been a struggle, evidence that she’d fought hard.

  God, Kate. He clutched the car door until he brought himself under control.

  The cop in him knew the blood would yield DNA, further evidence against the assailant. The man in him wanted to scream and bellow, do something. Kate, be safe, hang on. Slat
er closed his eyes and clamped down hard on his lower lip before he called the precinct.

  By then his voice only shook a little.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  As the haze over Kate’s brain receded, she remembered how she’d gotten here, relived again the panic that’d come over her when she’d sensed the man behind her. He’d been a phantom, filling the dark space of the parking lot with malevolence. And suddenly he was there, coming at her out of the shadows of her nightmares.

  She’d fought him. Adrenaline and a fierce instinct for survival had kicked in, and she’d lashed out, but her fists were ineffective against him. She remembered the hands, oh god, the huge size of his hands, and saw again the boy-man who’d trailed after her in Preston. Skulking everywhere with hooded eyes and hunched shoulders – at the soccer field, the convenience store.

  Her teeth chattered and tears gushed down her face. Oh, Kassie, I’m so sorry.

  She shuddered, feeling what her sister had. Instead of a crude log cabin in an Idaho wilderness, she lay on a rude slab of a bed in a dimly lighted, cement-walled room. Positioned on her back with her legs pulled apart and tied to the corners of the cot, she resembled the girls in the crime scene photos. Her arms stretched above her head, bound together with a frayed rope. She could tell she was naked beneath a coarse blanket.

  Terror coursed through her veins like liquid fire. She remembered telling Slater that, unlike Kassie, she’d have been able to escape. Remembered believing her arrogant claim. She wouldn’t be able to escape this horror any more than her twin had.

  “Slater, please find me,” she whispered under her breath.

  Without warning, a bright light pierced the large room, and she squeezed her eyes together, feeling doubly vulnerable and exposed with the glare in her face.

  “Good,” the voice said with eerie alacrity. “You’re awake.” The man lowered the lamp of an industrial flashlight like the ones used by coal miners, and he stepped to the side so that she could see his face. Like a predator, he loomed over her, scrutinized her closely.

  Kate’s first thought was how ordinary the man looked, not like a monster at all, but someone who might live next door to you in a nice neighborhood, the local grocer, or the man who delivered your mail. But of all people, she knew that killers never looked like the monsters they were. They looked just like the man who’d come to her door and claimed he was soliciting money for his daughter’s school band.

  Her second thought came on the heels of the first and confirmed what she already knew in her heart. Not only was he the bogus parent from a few days ago, but Kate knew him. His image was burned into her bones, her mind, and her memory. She’d seen him in her dreams, in the nightmares where she’d been Kassie, where she’d suffered the indignities and pain of her sister’s last moments. His was the face that terrified her from the dark abyss. This was the monster from the past.

  She saw the residual boy-features in the man as he examined her with a look frighteningly devoid of all affect. The boy who’d followed her and her sister years ago, the man she’d been hunting all these years, Kassie’s killer, watched her with the intensity of a large cat ready to ravage its quarry.

  Even though the truth stood before her in hideous reality, she couldn’t convince herself that it was over, that the journey for Kassie’s killer had ended. Worse, that she’d lost and the demon had won.

  The man must’ve seen the flash of recognition on her face because his eyes widened, and then he positioned his mouth close to her ear. She could feel the spittle of his hot breath and smell its rank odor.

  “You remember me,” he whispered. “And I remember you. You’re the one with the purple eyes. Oh, yes, I remember you very well.”

  #

  On his first trip around Kate’s Volkswagen, Slater found a scrap of paper stuck beneath the left rear tire. It looked like the wind had blown it under and the light drizzle had plastered it in place. Dirty and torn, it was part of a larger, missing piece. Partial words and letters were visible: “the bo” and underneath that the letters “N” and “H.” The second time around the car, Slater spied traces of blood on the pavement leading away from the car. Light spatters, they gleamed darkly rust-red, like wet paint on the slick gray concrete.

  The crime scene unit arrived less than fifteen minutes after Slater called Matt Bauer. It was now 2:30 in the morning, and Slater had last seen Kate around ten o’clock that night. Bauer pulled Slater aside and left the crime technicians to complete the tedious task of collecting trace evidence with their night illuminators.

  “What did the FBI want?” Slater asked.

  “I brought the paperwork they faxed,” Bauer said, handing him a manila file folder. “Seems that the blood sample we found on Alison Mathews’ pants matched DNA found at five other crime scenes.”

  Five? Christ. “Where?”

  “All over the country, two of them matched ones we had on our list.”

  “All unsolved?”

  Bauer nodded. “That’s not all. The Ceres P.D. found the Sheriff’s Explorer.”

  Slater felt like he’d dropped down the rabbit hole. “What?”

  “Ceres is just south of Modesto, right off Highway 99.”

  “I know where Ceres is, Bauer. Why the hell was Marconi vacationing there?”

  “That’s just it. The duty officer reported that Marconi sent an email saying he’d gone to Arizona for hunting season.”

  “Arizona? Shit, Matt, the Sheriff never hunts in Arizona. They have game draws. Hell, nobody from around here hunts out of state.”

  Slater heard his voice shrill with panic and took a calming breath to gain control. “Marconi wouldn’t know how to send an email if his ass was stuck in the crapper,” he muttered.

  “The Explorer was abandoned behind a closed-down gas station, the plates removed,” Matt went on, “but they tracked it through the VIN number. It’s definitely the Sheriff’s car.”

  “Any trace evidence?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to say.” Concentration furrowed his brow. “They used super glue fuming in the interior of the car. Crime scene got nothing until they checked the bottom of the seat adjuster. They got a print from the underside of the lever.”

  Bauer bounced like a little boy ready to pee his pants. “When they ran it through AFIS, they got a hit, a single fingerprint found in an unsolved federal case.”

  Slater knew that the techs heated super glue and blew it on areas where they couldn’t normally get a print, especially on nonporous surfaces. After about five hours the fumes adhered to the latent print and acted as a developer.

  “Because it was a cop, they rushed the evidence,” Matt continued. “It’s a match to the feds’ UNSUB, and to our killer.”

  He forgets to wipe down certain places, the underside of levers and door handles. Not as smart as he thinks.

  “The print from the Pontiac matches the print found on Marconi’s vehicle and another FBI case?” Slater clarified.

  “You bet.”

  “So now the feds are forced to get involved. Was that victim one of the ones we’d listed?”

  “No, it’s a seventeen-year-old girl from Gainsville, Florida. The feds got involved because her body was found in Georgia a few months later.”

  “So this is our guy, the one Kate’s been chasing. Plus, he’s tied to the Sheriff’s disappearance and our two vics. I can’t wrap my mind around this, Matt. What’s the connection?”

  “Other than the blood, it doesn’t make sense. Why would our UNSUB take the Sheriff? That’s not part of the profile. Do you think we’ve been wrong about this guy?”

  Slater lowered his voice and slanted it toward Bauer’s ear. “I don’t know, but I think he’s got Kate too.”

  Shock registered on Matt’s young face. “God, no. How? Why?”

  The shakes threatened to overcome Slater again. “I don’t know,” he repeated, “but we’re going to find out.”

  “Do you think the Sheriff’s dead?”

&
nbsp; Slater aimed a look at his partner meant to quell the same fear he had. “Don’t even think like that.”

  “I mean, if Marconi’s dead, then Kate’s – God, Slater, I’m sorry.”

  Slater rounded on Bauer as a deputy rushed up to him, holding a woman’s handbag. When Slater recognized the purse as belonging to Kate, he broke out in a clammy sweat, and a cold tremor raced like packed ice from his nape to the base of his spine. Instinct deep in his bones told him that the blood the techs were processing right now in the parking lot behind him belonged to Kate. Now the proximity of her abandoned bag so close to her vehicle, combined with the signs of a struggle, made it clear that someone had kidnapped her.

  If it was their UNSUB, she was in grave danger.

  He glanced at his watch again. It’d now been six hours since he’d last seen her. That meant the perpetrator had a six-hour jump on them, and Kate was six hours closer to whatever horror the attacker had in mind.

  What in God’s name happened? Was the killer changing his M.O.? Switching from girls to women and men? That didn’t correlate with the profile. Serial killers didn’t change their basic methodology. According to Kate, they were compelled to repeat the same act in the same way over and over again.

  First Marconi and then Kate. The killer had to have been stalking them. But why?

  What was the connection with the Sheriff? Early on Kate had been suspicious of someone in the department. She suspected a cover up in the Stuckey case. Marconi? Were they looking for two suspects?

  How had the killer found her? Had she been right when she’d said it was supposed to be her, not Kassie? Slater’s mind whirled with unanswered questions. Six hours. He’d be damned if he’d let Kate die because of six lousy hours.

  Bauer tugged on his jacket sleeve. “Man, are you okay?”

  “Let’s get back to the office and let the techs finish up here. The answers have to be in the reports and the evidence.”

  Slater told the techs to contact him at the precinct as soon as they finished processing the crime scene site. He and Bauer rode the twenty-minute drive from Kate’s duplex in silence.