“I just came to get you,” Kaminsky told her. “Bartoli was concerned because you’ve been in here a while.”
“Ooh, Bartoli.” Looking at Charlie, Garland batted his eyes like a love-struck girl. “He was concerned. That’s touching, Doc, it really is.”
“Let’s go, then. Um, I’ll follow you.” Waiting until Kaminsky had turned her back and started for the door, Charlie cast an evil look at Garland.
“If you don’t shut up, I will ju-ju you. First chance I get, I swear to God,” she hissed, hopefully too low for Kaminsky to hear. Then, just to make a point, she marched right through him. The sensation of having plunged into an electromagnetic force field was worth it, she told herself fiercely, even with her skin tingling all over and her hair going all static-y. Even when she heard Garland laughing softly behind her.
In the SUV on the way back to Kill Devil Hills, a thought began to take root in Charlie’s mind. They’d been talking about the case, about various ways they could winnow the pool of suspects—which at that point was about the size of a small town—down to a more manageable number.
“Another characteristic to look for is a history of mental illness in the family.” Charlie was staring abstractedly out the windshield as she spoke. Beach Road was beautiful by night, despite the sizable volume of traffic traveling in each direction. The ocean and the sky above it were both shades of midnight blue, while, hovering just above the horizon, the moon looked as rich and round as a butterscotch candy. “Bipolar, schizophrenia, maybe ECT treatments. Probably the family member will have a record of psychiatric episodes. If not, alcoholism or drug abuse might serve as markers.”
“Nearly everybody we look at is going to have one of your ‘markers,’ ” Kaminsky objected. Charlie didn’t see her roll her eyes, but from the agent’s tone she figured Kaminsky probably did just that.
“Possibly, but I doubt very many in your pool will have more than one or possibly two of them,” Charlie replied, glancing around at Kaminsky. She and Crane were once again riding in the back, while in the third seat, the bench seat in the very back of the vehicle, sprawled out with his boots between the bucket seats occupied by Kaminsky and Crane, sat Garland. He had his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest, and looked like he was enjoying a nap. Not that Charlie thought he was (did spirits even sleep?), but at least he was silent—silence on his part was the best she could hope for until he disappeared for good, she figured. “By itself, each marker doesn’t mean all that much. It’s when they’re present in multiples that it sets off alarms. When we find the man we’re looking for, he’ll have a long list of markers in his background, I promise you.”
“Just think of yourself as a kind of human metal detector,” Crane said to Kaminsky. “You come across enough hidden treasure, and your alarm should go off.”
“The best lead we’ve got right now is the band—Kornucopia—and everyone and everything connected with it,” Bartoli said. “We need to look at the musicians, the technicians, the roadies, and anyone else who travels with the band. Kaminsky, while you’re compiling that list you also need to screen every name you identify as a possible suspect for their whereabouts on the nights of the murders, then cross-check them with the twenty-five remaining individuals you came up with who’ve been off the grid for fifteen years. Not that being off the grid is a deal-breaker, because it’s possible we’re dealing with a copycat, so keep that in mind. Crane, you do the background checks and evaluate every viable lead with an eye to the markers Dr. Stone has suggested. Anybody that overlaps gets put on the hit parade—bring that list to me pronto. And we have to be discreet, because if this guy stays true to his pattern, the girl is still alive and we don’t want to cause him to kill her faster than he planned.”
“So, who’s the human metal detector now?” Kaminsky asked Crane, sotto voce.
“Beep-beep-beep.” Crane approximated the sound of an alarm under his breath.
“Let’s try to stay focused, guys.” Bartoli frowned at them in the mirror. “Clock’s ticking.”
“Got it, boss,” Crane said. “Background checks and markers.”
“I don’t suppose you want me to go around asking this possibly very large pool of potential suspects where they were on the nights of the murders?” Kaminsky’s voice was dry.
“That’d be a little obvious, don’t you think?” Bartoli looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Try checking work records, phone records, credit card records, that type of thing first. If we find the guy, we don’t want him to know it until we’re sure where the girl is.”
“You can’t just arrest him?” Charlie asked. Never having been involved in an investigation of this sort from the law enforcement angle, she’d thought that swooping up the bad guy just as soon as they knew his identity would be the way to go.
Bartoli shook his head. “The smart ones never say a word. They lawyer up. They depend on the legal system to protect them.”
“Even if we arrest him, we don’t have any way of making the unsub tell us where he’s got the girl stashed,” Crane explained.
“See, for us, waterboarding’s out,” Kaminsky said. “All we can do is say ‘Pretty please tell us.’ ”
Bartoli gave Kaminsky another of those looks in the mirror, then spoke to Charlie. “We play this wrong, we could catch the perp, absolutely get the right guy, put a halt to this particular murder spree—and still not be able to save the girl. What we want to do is identify him and watch him until something he says or does leads us to Bayley Evans. Then we move in.”
Just thinking of the girl made Charlie’s heart thump. Quickly she tried to disassociate her mind from visions of the terrified, brutalized girl that threatened to take possession of it. We’re coming, was the thought she sent winging toward Bayley, before wrenching her brain back into the cool, impersonal mode that she knew would best serve the girl.
“So you got a murder spree and a missing girl,” Garland drawled. “I’d ask you to fill me in on the details, but I’m not that interested.”
Charlie tensed, but didn’t otherwise react. She’d known his silence was too good to last. His presence in her life was something she had no choice but to deal with until he vanished—or until she figured out how to get rid of him for good. That being the case, she concluded, she might as well see if she could make use of him.
The idea that had been taking root in her mind grew ten feet tall and shot out flowers.
“Do you think we could stop by the crime scene on the way back?” she asked. “There’s something in the boy’s room I’d like to check out.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That’s a fucking kid,” Garland said. He fixed Charlie with a flinty gaze that, once upon a time (like when he was alive) would have been intimidating. “I don’t mess with kids.”
The kid he was talking about was Trevor Mead. The blond eleven-year-old was curled up in the tan corduroy chair in the corner of his room, playing his flying dragon video game as if it were the most important thing in his world. As if horror and violence had never touched him or his family. As if he were still alive.
“I need you to talk to him,” Charlie whispered. Not that she thought Trevor Mead could hear her, because she was almost entirely positive that he could no more hear or see her than most people could hear or see him. She kept her voice low because she didn’t want to be overheard by any of the living human beings outside the closed door. The Meads’ house had been locked up tight and was still sealed off with crime scene tape when they had arrived. Neither the FBI agents nor the two cops in the lone patrol car that had been left sitting in the driveway to guard the place had had a key, which meant Bartoli had to call the local police headquarters for access. Haney had shown up, along with another detective, whom he introduced as his partner, Gary Simon, and two more beat cops in a patrol car. All had come inside. Now Haney waited in the upstairs hallway along with Bartoli and Crane, Kaminsky having been dropped off at Command Central to get cracking on the various things
they needed to get cracking on. Meanwhile, Charlie, who had told Bartoli that she needed to be alone in the room to try to get into the mind of the assailant, got ready to do what she’d come there to do.
Which was get Garland to see if he could glean any new information from Trevor Mead.
“What’s in it for me?” Garland growled.
“Seriously?”
“You better believe it.”
“You narcissistic, opportunistic jackass.”
“Nice vocabulary, Doc. Still ain’t happening.”
Charlie’s lips compressed. “What do you want?”
“I want you to figure out a way to keep me here. That whole vanishing-in-five-days thing? Make it go away.”
“Sorry, nothing I can do.”
Garland shrugged and folded his arms over his chest. “Same here, then.”
Charlie felt her temper start to sizzle. “Fine. I’ll try.”
On a cold day in your final destination.
He shook his head.
“Don’t lie to me, Doc. Think I can’t tell? I want your word.” Garland’s face was set and hard. He was speaking in a hushed tone, too, although his voice was gravelly with intransigence.
“You have my word I’ll try.”
Garland looked at her measuringly.
Charlie made an exasperated sound. “If I said I could definitely do it, I would be lying. What’s more, you’d know it. Anyway, maybe it won’t happen. Maybe you’ll be an exception. Maybe you’ll be one of those spirits that hang around forever, like … like Abe Lincoln in the White House.”
Garland looked unimpressed. “Yeah, and maybe I won’t.”
“The point is, you have to trust that these things always work out the way they’re supposed to.”
“You know what? I’m a little short on trust at the moment. You going to work some of your ju-ju to keep me here or not?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“So talk to the kid yourself.”
“He can’t hear me. A lot of spirits can’t see the living, just like most of the living can’t see the dead,” Charlie explained impatiently. “Would you quit being such a tool and just do it? I’ll try, okay? You have my word.”
Garland seemed to reflect. Then he nodded, accepting the bargain. “So what do you want me to say?”
She could sense his continued reluctance. Because he didn’t want to interact with the boy, Charlie realized. Something about the idea of talking to the spirit of a murdered child disturbed him.
“Ask him what happened.” Her head hurt and her stomach churned. (If she had needed proof that the only spirit she was developing immunity to was Garland, she was getting it; she’d started feeling sick the minute she had stepped inside the boy’s room.) While Bartoli had been talking to the cops about getting into the house, she filled Garland in on as much of the situation as she’d felt he needed to know, which meant she’d left out the serial killer part, along with such details as the age of the victim. “His name’s Trevor. Find out anything you can. Get a description of the perpetrator if he’ll give you one.”
“You want me to ask a dead kid to describe the guy who sliced him and his family up.” He gave her another of those flinty looks. “I don’t get my kicks upsetting kids, Doc. What happens if he freaks out?”
“Just do it, would you?” She glared at him. The supper she had barely eaten was behaving badly, and she didn’t know how long they (actually, she, since Bartoli et al had no idea that Garland or Trevor Mead still existed in any form, let alone were in the bedroom with her) would be left undisturbed. If Haney’s hostile attitude toward her presence in the boy’s room was anything to go by, not long. “And hurry up.”
Before Garland could reply, Trevor cast a scared glance toward where they were standing, which was in front of the door. Both Charlie and Garland went perfectly still. The boy was starting on the loop she had observed before, the one where he saw or heard something that scared him, cast the controller down, and bolted for the closet. In other words, he was getting ready to relive some of the final, terrible minutes of his life.
Only this time, he saw Garland. Charlie knew the moment it happened: the boy’s eyes focused and widened. Looking terrified, he dropped the controller and sprang to his feet.
“Hey, kid, it’s cool,” Garland said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Where is he? Is he here?” Trevor’s young, high-pitched voice trembled with fear. He was referring to the killer, Charlie knew. It was also obvious that he was aware Garland was not the man who had attacked him, which, to Charlie, meant he must have gotten at least a glimpse of his killer.
“No, man. Like I told you, it’s cool.” Casting a hard look at Charlie, Garland moved toward the boy, who seemed poised on the verge of fleeing. “I know something bad happened to you. Can you tell me about it?”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Michael.”
Trevor shivered and threw a frightened glance toward the closed bedroom door. “I think something bad happened to my mom,” he said in a hushed voice. “I heard her screaming. Is she okay?”
Garland glanced at Charlie.
“Tell him his mom is safe now. Ask him what happened after he heard her scream,” Charlie whispered.
Garland did.
Trevor wet his lips. “I hid in the closet. This guy …” The boy shook from head to toe, then wrapped his arms around himself; in his blue soccer ball–dotted pajamas, he looked so small and thin and vulnerable, he broke Charlie’s heart. “… he found me. He had a knife. I—I screamed and fought, but he dragged me out of the closet and threw me on the bed and … and …”
“That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me the rest,” Garland said swiftly before Charlie could give him instructions. Weirdly enough, that’s almost exactly what she would have told him to say: no need to put the child through the trauma of reliving his own death.
“Ask him to describe the perpetrator,” Charlie told him.
“This guy—what did he look like? Can you remember?” Garland asked. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
Trevor’s lips quivered. “He was big, like a giant. And really strong. He just picked me up and threw me. He was, like, all dressed in black, like a goth warrior or something. It was like I was in this horror movie, only for real.” His voice broke. “It was real, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, kid. It was real. But it’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Hair color. Eye color. Age,” Charlie hissed. “Was his face round or thin?”
“What about his hair?” Garland asked. “What color was it?”
Trevor shook his head. “He had on a hat—you know, one of those ski ones. It was black, I think. Or maybe dark blue. I never saw his hair.”
“Garland, hurry.” Charlie watched with alarm as Trevor seemed to grow fuzzy around the edges. The child’s voice had thinned as he uttered the last words, making them sound as if they were coming from farther away.
Garland’s eyes were on Trevor, too. “How old was he? You see his eyes?”
“I don’t know. Older than Bayley. About as old as my cousin Cory, maybe. His eyes—they were like dead black. Like zombie eyes. And, oh, yeah, there was like an eagle on his hat. It was white—or maybe yellow. Or maybe it was a hawk.”
“How was his face shaped? Was it fat or thin?”
“Kinda long and thin.”
“Did he say anything?” Charlie prompted urgently, because Trevor was becoming more translucent with every passing second. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but she did know that it didn’t bode well for any extended questioning. He wasn’t looking at Garland any longer. His attention was all on something to his right, in the far corner of the room, although there wasn’t anything there that Charlie could see.
Garland, though, seemed to see whatever it was. His big body taut with tension, he was staring hard at the same place.
“Garland,” Charlie hissed. “Ask him if the perp said anything
.”
That seemed to rouse Garland. He shot her a quick, inscrutable glance.
“Trevor. Did the guy say anything to you?” he asked.
Trevor looked around at that. “ ‘Peekaboo. I see you,’ in this really scary voice, like he was playing a game when he opened the closet door and saw me all scrunched back in the corner. And he yelled ‘Shut up’ when I started to scream. And …” Trevor’s voice trailed off as his attention shifted from Garland to the same place he’d been looking before. “Dad? Is that you?”
Cautious hope was there in Trevor’s voice. Charlie felt her skin prickle. She could see no one and nothing that hadn’t been there before, but it was clear the boy could.
“Ask him if he remembers anything else.” Even as she shot the instruction at Garland, she watched Trevor’s face break into a joyous smile. Garland obviously saw whatever Trevor was looking at, too. He stared, narrow-eyed, at the same spot, as still as if he’d been turned to stone. If he heard Charlie, he didn’t reveal it by so much as a flick of an eyelash in her direction.
“Dad!” Beaming with delight, Trevor took off running with his arms outstretched. After two bounding strides, he vanished into thin air.
For a second or two, Garland’s expression was a study in bemusement as he continued to stare at the place where Trevor had vanished. Then, as if finally feeling Charlie’s gaze on him, he glanced at her.
“That sucked,” he said. His face went as hard as his voice as he turned his back on the place where Trevor had disappeared and walked toward her.
“What just happened?” Charlie asked. From the savage look in Garland’s eyes, it had been something that he found profoundly disturbing.
“There was a man, okay? You heard the kid: his dad. The man said, ‘Come on, Trev,’ and held out his arms, and the kid went running. Satisfied?”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.” As some of the awfulness that had weighed heavy as a boulder on her heart lightened, Charlie felt a tiny easing of the grief for the boy who she had been carrying around with her. The horror of what had happened to him could not be undone, but at least Trevor was at peace now, and that provided a degree of solace. “His father came for him. Loved ones do that, you know.”
The Last Victim Page 16