The Watcher (The Bigler County Romantic Thriller Series)

by Jo Robertson

  Years ago the police said that Kassie hadn’t fought back when this monster kidnapped her. Kate swore she would. She’d struggle against the dying light for Kassie. She’d fight hard enough for both of them.

  For all of them.

  Fighting against fear, she summoned a torrent of anger. Fury for the waste of her sister’s life. For the destruction of her parents’ marriage and their family. Her father’s desertion and failure to protect them. For all the innocent girls who’d suffered at the hands of this freak. She’d rage like no one had ever raged before.

  With a shudder of relief, Kate saw that the man was no longer naked. It was easier to glare at him when he was clothed. She made her tone imperious. “Who are you?”

  Silence.

  “What’s your name?” she demanded.

  More silence.

  “You think you’re so brave,” she sneered, “but you’re too cowardly to tell me your name. You come at me with a knife while I’m bound. When you have a weapon and I’m tied up.”

  His face turned reddish-purple, and he brandished the knife near her face. She couldn’t stop a gasp from escaping her lips.

  “Shut up,” he warned. “Be quiet unless I tell you to talk or I’ll – ”

  If he were going to kill her then she’d rather he succumb to anger. It’d be quicker that way. She’d only feel the first sharp sting of the blade. He’d be too out of control to choose his spot. To plunge the knife in the right place to keep her alive, to torture her. Her release from pain would come from his wrath. She couldn’t stop now.

  “You’ll what?” she taunted. “Hurt me? Cut me? Rape me? Look at you.” She scathed her eyes down his form. “You’re not even a man. You have to use a knife because you don’t have a dick.”

  A hideous distortion crossed the man’s face, fury mixed with vengeance and something else. Had she gone too far? Would he use the knife on her now? Or had she failed to go far enough? What was the emotion that registered on his face?

  Enmity? Or fear?

  Kate forced her voice into a lower register, but intensified the authoritative tone. She sounded like her fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Taylor. “What—is—your—name?” she commanded.

  A fleeting look of uncertainty crossed his features, and he surprised her by answering. “Joey.”

  “Joey. Is that short for Joseph?”

  “Grandmother called me Joey.”

  Grandmother?

  “Joey, untie me.” Pushing her voice to sound hard and confident.

  “Why?” Voice soft, timid.

  “So we can talk.”

  A range of emotions crossed the man’s face – confusion, rejection, fear. Finally, disbelief.

  “That’s a lie, a big, fat lie,” he said in a sing-song voice.

  “What’s a lie?”

  He scrunched his face up like a small boy trying to remember an important fact, and the words of each phrase accented upward in a parody of imbecility. “Your name, you said it was Kate, but it’s not. It’s not. You’re that girl. You’re Kassie.”

  Her sister’s name on his lips was a blasphemy. How did he know her name? A flash of intuition nearly made her sob. Of course, Kassie had told him before she died.

  Kate wanted to scream and yank against her restraints, to free herself and pound his face into a bloody pulp. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t want to think of this freak forcing her beautiful sister to reveal her name.

  No, she screamed in her head. Don’t think about it. Push the image out of your mind. She swallowed, softened her voice, and spoke firmly. “No, I’m not Kassie. I’m her sister. Her twin sister. I’m Kate.”

  He danced around the room, brandishing the knife and speaking in the same childish tone. “No, no, no, Kassie doesn’t have a sister. You’re lying again. You’re lying to me, lying to me.”

  “Listen to me. I’m Kate.”

  “No, no, no, no. Not Kate.”

  “Look at me, Joseph,” she compelled.

  “My name’s Joey,” he screamed, covering his ears with his hands, the knife gleaming dangerously close to his face. “Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey.”

  “Joey,” she soothed. “All right, Joey. Remember that day? Remember how you saw me getting off the bus? There was another girl with me, a girl who looked a lot like me. That was Kassie. I’m Kate.”

  “No, no, no, no, no. You’re not.” Joseph paced around her in a stiff-legged march, his voice increasing in volume with each step. “No, you’re Kassie and I have to do it right this time, do it right, have to, can’t get it wrong.”

  Dear God, she was losing him. Soon he’d be in the middle of a full-blown psychotic episode, a raving lunatic, and she’d have no control over the situation. “What do you have to do right, Joey?”

  “You know, the – the – the thing. The thing that doesn’t work for me. That never works.” Mucous and tears commingled as they streamed down his cheeks. He laid the knife blade against his cheek and scrapped it against his light beard.

  “Why is it so important? What do you have to do right, Joey?”

  The monster glanced fearfully over his shoulder, a dangerously mad monster. “The, the grandfather thing,” he whispered.

  Kate tapped down all feelings of pity. “Listen to me, Joey,” she said forcefully, lowering her voice. “Put the knife down. Now. Do it. Right now.”

  “Grandfather?” Joseph said in a small voice.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Slater was supposed to wait for the team of federal agents arriving from Fresno, but after hours of wasting time, he wasn’t going to. Not with Kate’s life was at stake.

  The FBI would eventually claim jurisdiction of the case because of the interstate and serial nature of McClelland’s crimes, but he knew they’d move ploddingly, more concerned with having their case hold up in federal court than saving lives. Kate had already become part of the collateral damage, the cost of capturing a serial killer and preventing more deaths. In their minds she was now in a category with Jennifer Johnston and Alison Mathews and Kate’s sister.

  For the moment Slater was in charge, and he would call the shots. While he preferred both outcomes, he’d rather save Kate than capture a killer. He believed he could do both.

  Slater’s team had spent the entire day fitting together the pieces of the puzzle that ended up being the suspect Joseph McClelland. Shawn Farley further confirmed that McClelland was Mark Marconi’s nephew by marriage and had inherited family property, an old house and acreage, in New Haven.

  Slater didn’t know if the Sheriff had been pursuing a lead based on suspicious behavior from his nephew, or if he was abetting his relative. Had he helped his nephew all those years ago with the original investigation into the death of Mary Stuckey? Had the then-sergeant really been involved in a cover up? If so, Marconi could be a co-conspirator in Kate’s disappearance rather than a victim.

  Slater organized his best men, the ones he trusted most, within Special Investigations. Then he called up a Special Enforcements Team to stake out the New Haven house. He prayed Kate was there and they weren’t too late.

  Judge Strickland authorized the warrants after they’d wasted precious time running their asses off to get the probable cause evidence from the feds. While Bauer finished the warrant process, Slater convoyed up the narrow, winding road to New Haven with his teams.

  Darkness had fallen again in the early winter evening, and a light scattering of sleet began to rain down on them. A cold wind whipped up around their jackets and the pines swayed from the wintry gusts. They cordoned off the county road and began to hike the few miles into the forest where the map indicated the McClelland house was located.

  Before they reached the house on Maidu Dam Road, they encountered an adjoining ranch several miles down the road from the McClelland acreage. Mr. Jenkins, the old-timer who owned the property, filled in more of the family background.

  A kid had lived at the house, he said. With the grandparents. Maybe twenty or more years ago. The kid had
come to stay when he was a young feller. The old man passed away first and the old woman died just last year.

  But the kid grew into a teenager, tall but scrawny, and run off the summer of ’89, maybe ’90, the neighbor wasn’t too sure about that, some kind of trouble with the granddad. The old man was a tight ass, that’s for sure, and an unfriendly, downright mean son of a bitch to boot. The grandma wasn’t nothing to write home about either. There was something else the neighbor couldn’t rightly remember. Some kinda scandal. His wife would’ve known, but she passed last year too, God rest her soul.

  Anyway, nobody ever heard from the kid, and as far as Jenkins knew, there hadn’t been any visits. So it was a real surprise to see the house occupied. You could tell from the smoke coming out the chimney. He didn’t know anything else. He was a man liked to keep his nose out of other folk’s business.

  But he had to admit that was one queer family.

  As they left the Jenkins’ ranch, Slater cursed the extra time it’d taken to abandon their vehicles and trudge along the dirt road by foot. He didn’t dare alert the suspect to their presence by arriving with a battery of police vehicles. Mr. Jenkins’ information confirmed that McClelland currently inhabited the residence on Maidu Dam Road. Slater posted deputies to warn the nearest neighbors about the imminent arrest.

  He couldn’t even be sure Kate was held at the McClelland wasn’t – Christ, he didn’t want to think about what that meant or where she could be. When they reached the McClelland farm, they quickly constructed a perimeter around the house. It was now 9:45 in the evening, nearly twenty-four hours since he’d last seen Kate.

  Slater felt the weight of his semiautomatic at his hip. Special Enforcements carried assault rifles as well as single-shot or double-action pistols, depending on their preference, but Slater liked his double-action, self-loading weapon, liked that the pull of the trigger cocked the weapon, liked the heft and surety of the revolver.

  His hands were sweating inside thick protective gloves. When they advanced toward the house, he’d remove them. He wanted his aim to be accurate and deadly. He didn’t care if they took McClelland dead or alive. The man inside Slater warred with the analytical cop, and the man was winning.

  Federal agents had arrived from Fresno, and they weren’t going to give the courts a chance to throw out evidence at arraignment. If they blew this chance to enter the farm house legally, they’d never get the suspect for multiple homicides. Everything they discovered in the house would be fruit of the poisonous tree and inadmissible in court.

  As they waited for Bauer and the warrants, Slater was aware of time passing too fast and Kate’s life hanging in the balance. He was like a wild man, and only Sanderson kept him from rushing in to save her, no matter the risk or damage to the case.

  Right now that was down the list of Slater’s concerns. He just wanted her back alive. Still, he sat on his anxiety until Bauer arrived in a breathless rush with both the search warrant and an arrest warrant for Joseph McClelland.

  Now it was time to go in.

  Slater patted the warrant inside his shirt pocket beneath his jacket and watched as the Special Enforcements Team advanced toward the house. They approached the doors, four men at the back, four men at the front. Slater’s unholstered side. When everyone was in place, he signaled: one-two. On the silent three they crashed in both entry doors and rushed the house.

  The entire first floor was empty. Double pairs of deputies checked each area and subsequently shouted “clear,” before proceeding to the next room. A swarm of men stomped up the stairs to the second floor and the attic, sounds of their voices repeating the word “clear,” again and again in cacophony. Finally it was quiet.

  Slater stood and silently listened for an errant sound, anything that would indicate the presence of another human being. Nothing.

  The house was as dead as a graveyard.

  Chapter Forty-three

  The watcher eyed the woman warily. She used the voice of his grandfather, strong, booming, and ugly. A voice that controlled him, tethered him to the old man’s will. But he knew she wasn’t his grandfather. She was the purple-eyed escapee.

  He hesitated, confused by the glare in the eyes of his prey. She hadn’t been so – defiant before. He remembered her crying. Snot and tears running down her chin, bawling like a baby. Cowering when he’d bent over her. Wetting herself, even though she was a grown, teenage girl.

  Now she was a she-devil, lying to him. Why? Did she think he was stupid? Was she trying to trick him?

  He tucked the knife in his waistband, leaned closer, inspected the vivid hue of those eyes, the same purple orbs that’d lured him the very first time. The same ones! But now their color was bold and flashing. Not like at the cabin.

  No, no, he remembered. At the store. She’d been insolent. Not with her words, but with her sneering lips – and those eyes. Those audacious purple eyes.

  So, there was just her.

  He walked away toward the sinks, turned on a spigot, and scooped a mouthful of water. Stared at the woman over his shoulder. Splashed water on his sweaty face. She faced the opposite way, against the far wall and couldn’t see him from his position at the utility sinks. He slurped another handful of water.

  Why was she trying to convince him there were two of them? Could he be wrong? Was she another purple-eyed girl, one he hadn’t gotten? He’d thought she was dead. He’d killed her, seen the blood, and heard her screams.

  But she must’ve escaped. She’d gotten away! How was that possible? How could a girl – bleeding and broken, nearly dead – flee an isolated cabin in the dead of winter?

  A sharp pain shot through his temple, and he couldn’t control the spasmodic twitch of his right eye. He inhaled deeply and spat out the breath of air, suppressed the roar that built in his head, controlled his mind.

  Didn’t matter, he thought. Never mind what’d happened back then. None of that stuff in the past was important. What really mattered, what was super important was that he needed to be free of the purple-eyed girl. Once – and – for – all.

  He would never escape from her clutches unless he stabbed her and stabbed her, made sure she was really dead this time. Let the blood run freely onto the cement and down the drain, let her life spurt from her body in great arterial sprays. Dipped his knife into the coppery liquid and dribbled it on his body, dug his hands into her body and pulled the stuff out, pulled out what made her torment him.

  Smith’s mind cleared. He knew what he had to do. His purpose fixed, he turned back to the purple-eyed girl.

  For a moment Kate thought she’d won. The monstrous eyes had gone lucid and the man gazed at her with a faint measure of sanity. But the next moment unadulterated hatred shadowed the man’s face and crept into the man’s voice.

  “You’re not my grandfather,” he declared as he moved toward her.

  “I told you, Joey, I’m Kate.”

  “Liar,” he spat.

  Kate could only guess at what horrors in Joseph’s life had brought him and her to this awful reunion, but she needed to get the upper hand if she were to survive. His psychosis was so deep she didn’t know if she could reach him. She couldn’t tell if he even knew who or where he was.

  Clearly he still fantasized that she was Kassie. Okay, she’d work with that. “I’m not a liar, Joseph,” she said, forcing her voice to imitate the hip disdain of a teenage girl. “It’s totally mean for you to say that.”

  The monstrosity hesitated.

  “I’m Kate,” she continued, “and I’m Kassie’s twin sister. You remember don’t you? I saw you at school by the soccer field and then later at the Cavalier Store in Preston.”

  Joseph went still, a deep furrow of concentration etched between his brows. Kate knew he was in a state of ambivalence, balancing between present reality and past memory.

  “I saw you and Kassie. She was walking the stupid dog because I tricked her.” It broke Kate’s heart to denigrate her sister like that.

  “I
remember the dog. It was big and brown.”

  “Sure you do, and you remember me too. I was the one you wanted. Not her.” Kate pushed adolescent scorn into her voice. “You made a mistake.”

  The effect was instantaneous.

  “I never make mistakes,” he screamed, his face red with rancor, the veins of his neck bulging like angry worms writhing beneath the surface of his skin.

  “Well, you did,” Kate answered in a matter-of-fact voice. What was she doing? Would provoking him like this buy her more time? Or instant death? She softened her voice.

  “Come closer, Joey. I want to tell you a secret.”

  Joseph leapt at her and splayed his fingers across her neck. God, what had she done? She began choking as the pads of his giant thumbs dug into her larynx. She saw the knife gleaming brightly at his waist.

  “Mistakes are not tolerated. Don’t fool with me, bitch.”

  He pressed his hand tighter around her throat, squeezing as Kate tried to turn her head. Was this it, she thought, was this how it’d end? Her tears streamed down her cheeks as Joseph gradually released pressure on her neck.

  “You better not mess with me,” he snarled.

  She coughed and sputtered, struggled to catch her breath. “I’m not fooling around, Joey. Honest, I have a secret. A good secret.”

  His curiosity momentarily piqued, he squinted his eyes at her and tilted his head. “What secret?” Then he reached for the knife and scraped it down her neck to the blanket’s edge. Kate trembled under the cold steel blade against her flesh. He eased the knife under the blanket and slowly dragged it down to her waist, his eyes fixed on her breasts.

  He licked his lips. “What secret?” he repeated, his voice husky.

  Kate swallowed and whispered, “This is the secret. I wouldn’t have disappointed you, Joey. Like Kassie did.” She forced herself to stare into Joseph’s flat eyes. “I wouldn’t have made you angry. I would’ve been the best of all the girls. Not like Mary, not like Kassie either. You know I would. That’s why you wanted me first.”