Profiled

by Renee Andrews

  Fine. She could handle the notable detective. But could she handle everything she’d learned about him over the past eight months? Could she handle knowing he’d been a potential suspect in the 1999 murders?

  But he hadn’t been found guilty, and the District Attorney, Warren Young, insisted the profiler’s claim unfounded. There’d been no evidence beyond the detective’s match to the FBI profile generated for the killer. Nevertheless, John Tucker had worked to prove his innocence ever since, begrudging the marring of his stellar reputation as Macon’s best guy in homicide.

  Last fall, Lexie had covered Tucker’s heroics when he’d gone head-to-head with a child killer and emerged the victor. She’d admired his honesty, been impressed with his determination and believed in his innocence regarding the Sunrise Killer’s crimes.

  So why did he still make her nervous?

  She waited a moment to gather her bearings then went inside to start working on her formal request for lead reporter of the story, a bigger story than everyone realized. A premeditated plan that began twenty-eight years ago with a killer that had haunted Lexie’s nights just as long. She couldn’t let it fade into the background. Therefore, she remained at her desk the majority of the day banging out her frustration on her computer keys as she generated the extensive report that would prove to her boss that they were indeed dealing with the Sunrise Killer.

  And she fought to keep her mind off the handsome homicide detective and the way those blue eyes seemed to see straight to her soul.

  Clipped articles, photographs and notes wallpapered her cubicle. Not her own award-winning stories from twelve years as a television news correspondent in Atlanta, or even from the noteworthy segments that had aired during her current stint at WGXA, Macon’s smaller station. Oh no, nearly three decades of details regarding Macon’s Sunrise Killer covered every stitch of gray particleboard. A constant reminder of the reason she moved back eight months ago. No way would she allow another broadcast journalist to get the story of a lifetime, the story of her lifetime, seniority or not.

  She read the last words on her computer screen, decided she’d covered the reasons she should receive the coveted story and hit the print key. Then she waited for twenty-four pages of information to spit out while preparing to hit her boss with her biggest request yet, one that Paul Kingsley better grant. Unless he wanted to battle Lexie on a daily basis.

  True, she was the newest correspondent on WGXA’s talented team, but she was also the most renowned. Lexie made a name for herself in Atlanta. The people of Georgia knew her, respected her and appreciated her tenacity for the truth. However, she hadn’t used her name to get more money from the station, hadn’t asked for any favors in order to take the job at the smaller station and hadn’t bucked any other reporter from the bigger stories. Until now.

  Although Kingsley didn’t know it, and she’d never confide the truth, she’d worked so hard in Atlanta to get to this station, this story. It’d been her sole motivation for returning to Macon, in spite of her comfortable life in the bigger city. And she’d waited for this story since...well, longer than any of her coworkers realized.

  She snatched the first three pages off the ever-chugging printer and scanned her text. Perfect. Succinct. Would Paul give her the assignment? Would he agree they were dealing with the Sunrise Killer? Because Lexie knew it as well as she knew she had to cover the story.

  Kingsley couldn’t argue with her abilities. He’d described her on more than one occasion as the “best investigative reporter in Georgia,” which meant Lexie McCain had the best chance of helping the police stop the monster who’d plagued her for years. A monster that deserved to be caged.

  She grabbed another handful of pages, shuffled them into place, then stacked them on her desk while the printer spat, coughed and jammed. Clenching her teeth, she popped the lid, yanked out the paper obstruction, and hit the reset button. Then she noted the last printed page and kicked off the remainder of her report once more. She needed to get this thing printed and on Paul’s desk.

  For the past twenty-four hours, since Cami Talton’s body had been found, Lexie had pleaded her case for this story, the full story, not the one she’d already covered on the evening and morning news. However, Paul had yet to admit Macon’s notorious serial killer had returned.

  “It’s been seven years, McCain,” he’d said. “How can you be sure this murder is related to the others? We don’t want to scare the public without cause. The mayor has already called over here more times than I can count to ensure we don’t panic, and that we don’t cause his community to panic.”

  “It’s him.” In two more days, Lexie would know for sure. Easter Sunday. His very first kill occurred on Easter Sunday, and in each series that followed, he’d had an Easter kill. He would again; Lexie knew it. Why didn’t Paul? They needed to warn the city. They needed to warn all women who were blonde, single and pregnant. And they needed to do it fast.

  Her printer jammed again and she banged the side of the hunk of junk. How she missed the state-of-the-art equipment she’d left at the Atlanta station. But the killer reigned in Macon; therefore, she was where she wanted to be, ancient printer or not.

  “You okay, Lex?” Melody Harper poked her head around the side of Lexie’s cubicle. A plump woman in her late fifties, she had purple-gray hair and granny glasses daring to tip off the end of her nose. Melody hadn’t bothered getting out of her chair, but instead wheeled it across the threadbare carpet to check on her friend.

  “Yeah.” Lexie managed a grin while fighting a grimace. She pressed reset, and the thing started up without requiring her to resend pages.

  “You think it’s him, don’t you?” Melody leaned into Lexie’s space, keeping her chair outside the narrow opening. She looked around, cupped one hand around her mouth and whispered, “The Sunrise Killer.” She indicated the multiple forms of media lining her friend’s walls.

  “Don’t you?”

  “I hope not.” Melody frowned. “My daughter-in-law, Delia, is expecting. And she’s blonde.”

  Lexie’s chest clenched. “Maybe it isn’t him this time.” Did that sound reassuring?

  Melody’s round face drained of color. “Yeah, maybe it isn’t him.”

  “And Delia’s married.”

  The older woman’s tense shoulders relaxed. Then she scooted her chair back to the next cubicle and banged her keyboard to prepare the lead-in to tonight’s news, or to send an email of warning to her daughter-in-law. If the latter were the case, Lexie wouldn’t stop the woman. Lexie also wanted to warn the world. Before Easter, if possible.

  Her printer stopped, and the paper light flashed.

  “God, please help me.” She flipped the latch on the tray, pulled a ream from her supply shelf and ran a finger along the end to remove the outer cover. The thick paper sliced her flesh, and a thin smudge of red marred the end of the white sheets. Lexie popped the stinging finger in her mouth, jabbed paper in the tray and slammed it closed. The printer moaned but then continued, while Lexie focused on the very first newspaper article identifying the madman.

  April 7, 1985. Easter Sunday.

  A murder rarely happened in Macon at that time. Molly Taylor’s bright smile, big round eyes and long blonde hair seemed to bring her to life from the center of the front page. But nothing could bring her back. He’d taken her, and since then, he’d taken twenty-seven more. Yet it had all started with Molly Taylor, and no one knew why. What role did she play in this maniac’s plan?

  Lexie had learned through covering Atlanta’s I-20 rapist that the first kill spoke volumes about a serial killer, but no one had ever determined how Molly Taylor factored into the killer’s initiative. Why her? And what did the church where they found her body have to do with it?

  That year, as they did every Easter, a group from several Macon churches met at the Coleman Hill Park downtown for the sunrise service. However, on that particular year, they saw more than a pristine yellow-gold Georgia sunrise. A young blonde wo
man, her belly swollen with the child she’d lost, lay dead in the center of the park.

  At eighteen, Molly Taylor had been pregnant, blonde and single, three factors later determined as the killer’s signature criteria. He’d beaten her and strangled her, killing both the woman and her unborn child, then left her face up in the center of the park with her hands resting on her belly, the same pose in which the remaining victims were found that year. Macon lost six women at his hand in ‘85 and never had the first lead toward identifying the killer. When 1986 came and went, the city thought it’d seen the last of the monster. But seven years after his first kill, he returned. And at the end of 1992, seven more women, all blonde, pregnant and single, were dead.

  Then in 1999, he was back. And once again, at the end of the year, the police had no leads and no killer behind bars. But seven more women dead.

  Ditto for 2006.

  Now, seven years later, another blonde, single and pregnant woman had been murdered in Macon. Yesterday, Cami Talton’s body had been found in her home. Although his killings occurred outdoors during that very first year, he’d since veered from the pattern. The last twenty-two women had been murdered in their homes, where they should have been safe, and left presented atop their own beds with each blonde head resting on a pillow, hands resting on the stomach of a lost child and the covers beneath smooth and unwrinkled. “Not even a hair out of place,” one cop had claimed, when interviewed about a victim in the 1999 spree.

  Why hadn’t the police acknowledged he’d returned? Why hadn’t her boss? Because they didn’t want to scare the town? In Lexie’s opinion, the town needed to be scared. Very, very scared.

  She snatched the last of the printout, added it to the rest of her notes and stormed the short distance to Paul Kingsley’s office. A glass window formed the top half of his outer wall allowing him to view employees with a quick glance. Not that he did. Too busy to play overseer, Paul Kingsley instead played the king of multi-tasking. Right now, in fact, he had his phone trapped in the crook between cheek and shoulder, one hand scribbling on a yellow steno pad and the other using the Bible method, seek-and-find, on the keyboard, while his glance darted to the television screens on one wall, where WGXA’s current broadcast played, along with several additional stations, and where CNN announced the latest headline news. Lexie knew his inbox held her report, but she was certain he hadn’t opened it yet, so she held the hard copy. He would read it, one way or another.

  She knocked on the door, watched his head bob—yet another task added to the mix—then entered. He sat tall in the chair, his starched white shirt smooth except for one thick crease near the right shoulder. A red power tie had been knotted at his neck when he began the day; now it hung an inch below the top button of his shirt. His skin had a golfer’s tan and crinkle lines at his eyes and mouth to go with it. Mid-forties, Lexie would guess, though without the salt-and-pepper hair—heavy on the salt—he could pass for late-thirties.

  He ceased keyboarding and waved her to a chair, but kept his right hand writing on the page. “Right, Tucker. I’ve got it. Yeah. So what time is the first meeting?” He looked up at Lexie then frowned as he scribbled numbers at the bottom of the page and circled them. “I’ll send her over.”

  Lexie straightened in her chair. Tucker. So he had been talking to Tucker about the story.

  Paul finished the call and hung up the phone. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?” She watched his pencil continue to circle the numbers at the bottom of the yellow page. A time. 6:00.

  “Okay, what did you need?” His chair creaked as he leaned forward, steepled his fingers beneath his chin and examined her with steel gray eyes. “Coming to beg for the story?”

  “If you’re airing it, then I deserve it. I don’t beg.”

  He smirked and shook his head, causing a wavy silver lock to shift against his right temple.

  Lexie waited for his response. A word, a nod, any sign of affirmation. She received none. But their relationship was peculiar at most, odd at best. Boss-employee for Lexie, but he wanted more, had made it no secret he wanted more. However, Lexie didn’t feel nervous around Paul Kingsley. As a matter of fact, she didn’t feel anything. A good-looking man, Paul had divorced three years ago and was ready to move on, but he was her boss, plain and simple. She didn’t need complications in her life when she was so close to getting the story she’d always wanted, the killer she’d always wanted. Going out with Paul Kingsley qualified as a complication.

  She’d left her ex-husband and his wife of ten years in Atlanta, but the three of them had an amicable relationship. In fact, she and Phil had always gotten along in areas involving Phillip, Jr. Their marriage lasted eleven years on paper, even if they hadn’t had a real marriage beyond the first three years. In spite of the son they created and her desire for Phillip, Jr. to have a “real home,” she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t give Phil her heart, her soul. The memories hurt too much. The nightmares cut too deep.

  Even knowing about Lexie’s past, Phil never understood her distance, and when he met Ginger, he fell for her. Lexie attempted to save the marriage, but she couldn’t correct a problem that she didn’t understand. And why hadn’t she been able to love, to trust?

  Because of what happened back then.

  Now, with Phillip, Jr. in college and with Lexie financially secure and having passed her thirty-sixth birthday, her life was settled and her lifetime goal close to complete if Paul gave her this assignment.

  “I know you don’t beg.” Leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head, he took his attention from CNN and focused on Lexie. “I don’t either. But I have with you, haven’t I?”

  Lexie took a deep breath, gathered her composure and prepared a rebuttal.

  “No, save it.” He shook his head. “You don’t have to humor me. Besides, this ended up not being my call.”

  Her eyes widened, pulse skittered. “What ended up not being your call?”

  “The request for you to cover the story.” His gray-eyed stare penetrated her like piercing daggers from across the desk.

  “Who requested me?”

  “Tucker.”

  “Detective Tucker?” She knew the answer. This case called for Macon’s top guy in homicide and tainted reputation or not, that meant John Tucker. And Tucker got what he wanted regarding his cases. This time, he wanted Lexie to air the story. Her stomach quivered. John Tucker requested her, the most recent hire at the station, rather than one of the hometown favorites. Why? Because of her previous history covering the Atlanta series? Maybe, but Lexie couldn’t fight the gnawing reporter’s instinct that told her it was more.

  “Tucker, that’s the one. Seems he was so impressed with the way the two of you worked together that he wants you involved with the task force.”

  “Task force?” She swallowed. Lexie had been prepared to argue her right to the story, but what did Tucker mean, involved with the task force? And why couldn’t she control the excited surge of adrenaline that raced through her at the possibilities?

  “The cops seem to be under the same impression as you, McCain. And if it is true, if the Sunrise Killer has returned, then we all know what’s going to happen on Sunday. The police department has formed a task force to try to stop him from succeeding, to try to catch him once and for all.”

  “They had a task force last time.” She’d read all about the group and about the profiler they’d brought in from the FBI. She wondered who they’d send this time. Though she suspected—hoped—that she knew.

  “Yeah, but they’re trying it again. In 2006, they didn’t get the force organized until after the fifth murder. Not a lot of time left by then. This time, they’re grabbing hold from the get-go. According to Tucker, they don’t intend to let the guy make it through another killing spree. And if at all possible, they don’t want him to accomplish the next kill.”

  “On Easter.”

  “Right. So that gives them two days to warn all women who fit the killer’s criteria.”<
br />
  “They want me to warn them?”

  “Can you think of anyone better, given your past experience with that serial rapist in Atlanta?”

  “No. No, I can’t.” And although Paul didn’t realize it, Lexie had more “past experience” with this killer than anyone.

  “Good. The task force is meeting at the Macon P.D. at 6:00. I expect they’ll meet again tomorrow and Sunday, so this will be a full weekend assignment.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Tucker said he’d like to talk to you before the others, since you’ll be the newest member on the team. He wants you up to speed.” Paul tapped his pen against the paper as he spoke.

  “Did he say when?”

  “Whenever you can get there.” He circled the numbers on his pad again, taking those gray eyes from hers. “I can extend your deadline until 4:00 a.m. for tomorrow’s morning news segment. That should give you the time you need to provide the most up-to-date story. We’ll intersperse breaking news pieces throughout the day then air an update at the evening 6:00 and 10:00. Does that work for you?”

  “That’s fine. And Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll do a good job.”

  “Never questioned it.” He tore the top sheet of paper off and handed it to her. “Here’s the information you’ll need for the meeting.” He paused for a moment when she touched the page, looked at her and swallowed hard enough for her to see his throat pulse against his collar. His mouth flattened, then he released his hold on the paper and exhaled.

  “Thanks.” Lexie stood and turned to leave, but stopped when he cleared his throat. “Is there something else?”

  “For what it’s worth, McCain, I never doubted you were the best reporter to cover the story. And I never doubted your theory about the killer’s return.”

  “Then why didn’t you give it to me the first time I asked?”

  His jaw stiffened. “Because I agree with you. I think it’s him. And I don’t want you having anything to do with that monster. He killed twenty-eight women, and he won’t appreciate the one who airs his dirty laundry on TV. The guy’s not right, Lexie.”