The Last Victim

by Karen Robards

  “Guess I can forget about ordering that bottle of Dom Perignon, then.” Kaminsky’s tone was dry.

  “I thought you couldn’t drink alcohol,” Crane said. “What with being a Scientologist and all.”

  “You thought wrong,” Kaminsky retorted even as Charlie, upon hearing the other woman’s religious affiliation, experienced an “ah-hah” moment. She was kind of fuzzy on the details, but she was pretty sure Scientologists didn’t believe in psychiatry, which explained a fair amount about Kaminsky’s attitude toward her. “Anyway, just because I was raised as a Scientologist doesn’t make me a Scientologist now. I’m nonpracticing.”

  “I don’t think you can do that,” Crane said, as the SUV reached the head of the line at last and pulled to a stop beneath the scarlet canopy.

  “You don’t know anything about it,” Kaminsky answered caustically. “And you’re never going to.”

  Then the driver’s door and Charlie’s were opened simultaneously by a pair of solicitous valets. As Charlie slid out, she spotted an old man following the couple ahead of them up the stairs. Her eyes widened. Since the man was semi-transparent and being ignored by everyone else, Charlie felt safe in assuming that he was an apparition. She sighed inwardly. Seeing a dead man was par for the course for her, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. Her stomach gave an uneasy rumble, but at least it was only a rumble: the connection was too slight to bring on full-blown nausea. As she joined Bartoli, she couldn’t help but eye the old man carefully. There wasn’t a mark on him that she could see, but obviously he had died in some violent fashion several days previously (recent deaths usually bore signs of the manner of it, and spirits rarely stayed earthbound for longer than a week). Either he was attached to the building itself, or to one or both of the couple walking up the stairs ahead of him. They were middle-aged, attractive, absolutely ordinary-looking in every respect: the chance that they were murderers or that he was a murder victim was remote, Charlie decided. Probably the old man had been killed in an accident or … who knew. In any case, this particular ghost had his back turned to her, had no idea she could see him, was in no apparent distress and did not seem to require her help. He was, therefore, no concern of hers, and the last thing she wanted was to make him her concern with so many witnesses, including the three FBI agents accompanying her, on hand. So she studiously ignored the apparition as he entered the building in the couple’s wake, and looked the other way as they, their otherworldly third wheel in tow, were ushered through to what, from its dark-paneled coziness and the sounds of clinking glasses emanating from it, seemed to be a bar. By the time she again tuned in to her group’s conversation, the four of them had arrived at the hostess’ table and their SUV was heading for the parking lot.

  A few minutes later Bartoli had paid for their admission and they all sported half-dollar-sized red hearts with the day’s date stamped on the back of their hands.

  Just as Julie Mead had described it, Charlie thought, looking down at hers, but of course she couldn’t say that.

  “I still don’t see how you could know the perp had a heart stamped on the back of his hand,” Kaminsky muttered in her direction as a tuxedoed waiter led them through a side door, across the verandah, and down into a patio area. There, dozens of glass-topped tables were set up in concentric rings centered on small circular flower gardens that were interspersed at regular intervals along the trio of descending brick terraces. They overlooked an emerald green expanse of marsh grass and, beyond that, the dark blue water of Albemarle Sound. A slight breeze blew in off the water, and that, coupled with the encroaching twilight, lifted the humidity and mitigated the heat to the point where it had become pleasant rather than enervating. The smell of slowly roasting meat hung in the air, courtesy of a couple of black iron roasters smoking away near a long line of buffet tables. In a gazebo near a wooden dance floor that had been laid down atop a swimming pool, a live band was tuning up.

  “What can I tell you? I’m good like that,” Charlie answered back. As the hostess seated them at one of the upper tables, waiters roamed the terraces lighting small votive candles in glass jars in the center of the tables. Charlie was just accepting her menu from their waiter when the tall bronze ibis sculpture in the center of the circular garden in front of them started shooting water from its beak.

  “It’s a fountain,” she remarked in delight as the others looked at it, too.

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than, on the other side of the garden, Garland materialized.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It took Charlie just a second to make sure she was really, truly seeing what she thought she was seeing. Yes, there he stood, dressed in jeans and a white tee, exactly as she had last seen him, still gorgeous enough that under any other circumstances just setting eyes on someone who looked like him would have made her heart go pitty-pat, seemingly solid as a stone wall, his booted feet planted apart, his fists clenched and his shoulders tensed as if, maybe, he was expecting to be attacked. Positioned between two tables of four almost directly opposite from where she was seated, with the lushly colored, perfumed garden between them, he glanced around, his movements edgy. He seemed to be a little disoriented, a little confused. The occupants of the tables closest to him laughed and sipped their drinks and looked at the menus they were holding, clearly oblivious to his sudden arrival. He was maybe thirty feet away, and it was getting dark and the fountain shot fine drops of silvery spray into the air between him and her, but that in no way interfered with Charlie’s view. There was no mistaking Garland for anyone else.

  He doesn’t know I’m here.

  But even as Charlie had the thought Garland’s head whipped around in her direction as if—horror of horrors!—drawn by the power of her gaze.

  Their eyes locked before she could gather her wits enough to try to duck behind the menu, or hide beneath the table, or something.

  After that it was too late to do anything at all but sit there like a rabbit frozen in place by the proximity of a hound.

  Of course he saw her.

  Garland’s eyes widened as he obviously registered her presence, his whereabouts, the whole nine yards, in an instant. Then they narrowed. His face hardened. His lips thinned. In short, he looked pissed.

  Then he vanished.

  Poof! Like he’d never been there.

  Charlie couldn’t believe it. It was the most unexpected of reprieves.

  But her jittery heart didn’t seem to have caught on to the fact that he was gone, because it just kept right on pounding.

  Charlie only realized that she must have caught her breath and stiffened in her chair upon spotting Garland when she became aware that the others were looking at her curiously.

  “Is something wrong?” Bartoli asked. He was seated beside her, as handsome and desirable a dinner companion as any sane woman could ask for, his black hair waving back from his high forehead, his well-formed features bronzed by nature and candlelight, his strong jaw showing just the beginnings of five o’clock shadow, his warm brown eyes filled with concern for her. Yet here she was, having a hard time bringing him into focus. Why? Because every atom of her being was focused on the whereabouts—or not—of Garland.

  Spirit, spirit, go away. Don’t come again another day.

  She realized she was breathing way too fast, and tried to consciously dial down what she recognized as her body’s instinctive fight-or-flight response.

  Oh, God, please God, let my sighting of Garland have been an illusion, the product, maybe, of too much stress and too little sleep and food, or something similar. Then she gave an inner grimace. How sad was it that she would be thrilled to learn that she had just experienced a brief psychotic break in which she had conjured up an unwanted vision out of her imagination?

  “I thought I saw a hummingbird,” Charlie managed, feeling like a fool even as she uttered the lie. Her voice sounded almost normal as she made a vague gesture in the direction of a cluster of hot-pink hibiscus on the other side of the gard
en, in the general area in which Garland had—or had not—appeared. “It’s gone now.”

  “You into bird-watching?” Crane looked at her with interest. “A lot of people are.”

  “I like hummingbirds.” That much was true, so Charlie found saying it somewhat easier. Her nerves were jumping like a thousand tiny grasshoppers under her skin as she tried, and failed, by means of discreet, darting little glances all over the place, to spot any further sign of Garland. If she hadn’t caught herself and consciously relaxed her hands, she would have been gripping the arms of her thickly cushioned, wrought-iron chair tightly.

  “You see anything else interesting? Like our unsub?” Kaminsky’s tone was caustic.

  “N-no.” Okay, stuttering wasn’t going to cut it. Neither was looking around every which way like a thief hiding from the cops. Whatever was going on with her sighting of Garland—and there was no way that she should have seen him, because there was no way he should have been able to return from the Great Beyond, or wherever the hell (probably literally) she’d sent him—he was gone now. She needed to focus on the here and now or risk having her companions think there was something seriously wrong with her. “Of course, I haven’t really had much time to look at anyone yet.”

  “The unsub’s more likely to be an employee than a guest,” Bartoli said. “After we eat, we’ll walk around, take a look at the staff.”

  “Think we should circulate his picture?” Crane asked.

  Bartoli shook his head. “Not yet. If word gets out that we’re looking for someone, we’ll scare him off if he is somewhere on the premises—and maybe even scare him into killing the girl prematurely. We need to be real careful here.”

  “This seems like a pretty good place for a predator like our unsub to hang out.” Kaminsky was glancing over the tables, which were now almost full. “Lots of families.”

  “He’s an ephebophile, remember.” Charlie was glad to concentrate again on the reason they were there instead of worrying about the possible presence of Garland. “His primary purpose in frequenting a place like this is to find and evaluate teenage girls for how well they fit his criteria. The families are just collateral damage.”

  “Ephebophile?” Crane looked at her over his menu.

  “An ephebophile is someone who is attracted to post-pubescent children—teenagers,” Kaminsky replied before Charlie could. “Come on, Crane. Keep up.”

  Just then the waiter arrived to take their order. Charlie realized that while her mind had been occupied elsewhere, everyone else had made their decision about what to eat.

  Easy enough, she discovered: it was a buffet, so the waiter only wanted to know about drinks. Charlie could really have gone for a bourbon and Coke—or something even stronger, under the circumstances—but since the agents were on duty and thus not drinking, she settled for iced tea. While the waiter went to fetch the drinks, they hit the buffet. Getting in line, she surreptitiously swept her eyes over the men responsible for refilling the buffet dishes: no way any of them were the Boardwalk Killer. So far, in fact, none of the staff with whom she had come into contact even fit into the category of remotely possible.

  Unless it was a copycat. Or unless everything she knew was wrong and science and statistics went totally out the window.

  That was a world in which she couldn’t function. Everything in life and death had rules that governed them, including ghosts and serial killers. Banished ghosts couldn’t come back. And serial killers fit within certain parameters.

  Or the universe—to say nothing of her head—had gotten seriously screwed up.

  It wasn’t until Charlie got within range of the heavenly smells of shrimp and grits, slow-roasted barbecue and corn on the cob, fried chicken and pecan pie—that she realized how hungry she was.

  Unfortunately, with her stomach now in a knot, she was afraid to put too much in it. The flash she’d gotten of Garland had caused it to clench up. The last thing she wanted to do now was fill it and risk an attack of full-blown upchucking if another spirit—and please God, if she had to have an encounter with a spirit, let it be another spirit—should show up.

  “Is that all you’re going to eat?” Behind her in line, Bartoli looked down at her plate and shook his head. It held a spoonful of this and a little dab of that, because, sadly, that was all she dared attempt. “Getting to eat this well while on the job is a rare treat in our line of work. You probably want to take advantage.”

  “I’m dieting.” Which was just one more lie she’d told him. Still, it was better than admitting the truth. He—all of them—would never believe the truth. Not for the first time, Charlie felt a surge of fierce resentment about the confining aspects of her unwanted ability. Her choices were extremely limited: lie, or tell the truth and have people think she was nuts; isolate herself, or suffer sudden-onset, flu-like bouts of debilitating illness every time she interacted with the newly, violently departed. Frequently being scared to death and grossed out by phantoms with horrific injuries were part of the package, too. To say nothing of the off chance of having a dead serial killer whom she had tried and failed to banish from this plane of existence come hunting for her, possibly with vengeance on his mind. Charlie gave an inward snort. Anyone who thought it would be fun to be able to see ghosts didn’t know the half of it.

  God, did you ask me if I wanted to be able to see dead people?

  “You ate a Big Mac for lunch!” Kaminsky, in front of her, turned around to point out.

  Instead of grinding her teeth, which was what she really felt like doing, Charlie managed a saccharine smile. “Which is why I’m dieting now.”

  “Better you than me.” Kaminsky turned back to the buffet with a shrug.

  “You’re pretty slim. You should be able to handle a Big Mac and a decent supper,” Crane told Charlie cheerfully. “Especially considering your height. Now, if you were short, you might have something to worry about.”

  Kaminsky’s head snapped around. “Is that some kind of a dig at me, Crane?”

  Crane looked as taken aback as if one of the shrimp on his plate had suddenly snapped at him. “No.”

  “Because if it is, you know what you can do with yourself.” Well-filled plate in hand, Kaminsky turned and marched back toward their table. Crane looked at Charlie and Bartoli, who were behind him, with an expression of bewildered appeal. Its silent message was, What did I do?

  “You dug your own grave,” Bartoli told him with a shrug. “Women and weight don’t belong in the same conversation.”

  “Holy Mother of God,” Crane said in disgust, and turned away to follow Kaminsky back to the table.

  Charlie lifted her eyebrows at Bartoli. “I take it there’s something going on between those two?”

  “He was engaged to her sister for a while this spring. Broke it off two weeks before the wedding. Kaminsky wasn’t happy, to say the least. I doubt the sister was, either, but the sister’s not my problem, thank God.”

  He gave her a crooked smile as he said the last part. Looking up at him, Charlie registered that the top of her head just reached the base of his nose and that his shoulders were broad and his body was lean and fit in his FBI-guy suit, and felt a pleasant little tingle of attraction. Bartoli was a good-looking man who was gainfully employed, and she liked him. She’d had more than one relationship that had started off with a lot less going for it than that. Probably she ought to think about—

  “Miss me, Doc?” drawled an unmistakable voice in her ear. Garland! Charlie jumped so high and so fast that her plate went flying. It landed with a wet plop right in the middle of a big crystal bowl full of scrumptious-looking banana pudding, spilling its contents across the creamy surface. Yellow blobs of pudding went flying everywhere. Wide-eyed with horror, Charlie watched them land on a couple of individual ramekins of crème brûlée, a carrot cake, a plate of petits fours, and a chocolate pie.

  “I am so sorry,” she gasped to the servers on the other side of the table, to Bartoli, to the diners around her in line.
“I just—I don’t know what happened.” Even as she turned seven shades of red and stammered out more apologies, she glanced covertly around for Garland.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  The sun was setting in a swirl of pinks and oranges over the purple waters of the Sound. Tiki torches were lit and their flames swayed in the breeze. Candles glowed like hundreds of fireflies from the centers of the white-clothed tables. Posh people in their Friday-night-out clothes were everywhere: in line at the buffet, sitting at the tier upon tier of tables, walking along the verandah and paths. The band was playing now. Charlie recognized the song: “Forever Young.”

  There were lots of sounds, lots of auditory and visual stimuli. Maybe she’d made a mistake.

  Maybe it hadn’t been Garland that she’d heard at all.

  Even as she told herself that, and hoped, desperately, she’d just imagined it—first, Garland’s appearance, and second, his voice—she knew better: she didn’t know how or why or where exactly, but she was now as sure as it was possible to be of anything that he was there.

  Toying with her like a cat with a mouse.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “No worries, ma’am,” one of the servers (who clearly didn’t know the half of it) assured Charlie, while the other nodded his head. They whisked away the ruined pudding and got busy cleaning up the mess she’d made, while Bartoli gently pulled her away from the scene.

  “I can’t believe I did that,” she told him, genuinely mortified, even as her gaze darted hither and yon in a fruitless search for Garland. Others in the buffet line who had witnessed her clumsiness made sympathetic faces at her as Bartoli took her back to the first buffet table and supplied her with a clean plate and silverware. “I’m not usually such a klutz.”

  “Anybody can have an accident. Didn’t you get some of that shrimp stuff?” His tone was soothing as he pointed out a dish she’d helped herself to before. Charlie dutifully scooped up another serving. She didn’t miss the speculation in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking, however. Bartoli was wondering what was up. Well, she would be, too.