The Last Victim

by Karen Robards

  “Wonderful,” Garland echoed in a tone that was profoundly different from hers. “Made my night.”

  “You’re upset, I can see.” At the look on his face, Charlie instinctively went into professional mode, projecting empathy and understanding to the best of her ability. “Something obviously touched a chord.” The stone-cold gaze he turned on her was not encouraging, but she persevered. “Did what you just saw remind you of anything you experienced at around eleven years old? Some kind of interaction with your father or a father figure, maybe?”

  Garland’s face could have been carved from granite. “Don’t start your shrink shit on me, Doc. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Sometimes it helps to talk about things. If this bothers you—”

  Garland cut her off. “You want to know what ‘chord’ got touched? You want to know what kind of interaction with my ‘father figure’ I had when I was eleven years old? I’ll tell you: I shot the bastard dead.”

  Shocked speechless, Charlie stared at him. Before she could regroup enough to respond in any meaningful way, he strode past her and out of the room, passing right through the closed door.

  Charlie’s heart did a weird little stutter. Beneath Garland’s anger and truculence, she sensed a tremendous amount of buried pain.

  And it touched her.

  Realizing that it touched her bothered her.

  Don’t you ever forget what he is, she warned herself fiercely.

  Left alone to stare at the solid, white-painted panel that was the closed door, she took a minute to regain her composure.

  When she did, she went out into the hall. Garland was nowhere in sight. Charlie didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved—but in any case, she didn’t have time to think about it. Bartoli was waiting for her, leaning back against the stair rail with his arms crossed over his chest, looking cool as a cucumber, as was Haney, who was standing grim-faced in the center of the hall. Bartoli smiled when he saw her. Haney didn’t.

  “Anything new jump out at you?” Bartoli asked as, doing her best to allow nothing of what she had just experienced to show, Charlie walked toward him. Haney just gave her an unfriendly look.

  She took a deep breath. Any residual emotions she might still be experiencing weren’t for their eyes. She needed to get her game face on, and interact with these men like the professional she was.

  “I’m almost sure this is a copycat.” With no more than a glance at the master bedroom—Charlie recognized that she had reached her limit: she just wasn’t up to dealing with another spirit’s anguish right then—she headed down the stairs. To Bartoli, she would reveal everything she had learned. But while Haney listened in, Charlie wanted to be careful about what she said: the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to start in on questioning how she knew what she knew again.

  Believable, off-the-cuff lies were, she feared, beyond her at the moment.

  “What makes you say that?” Bartoli was right behind her, with Haney behind him. As she reached the lower steps, she could see into the pretty, beach-y living room. The other cops—four patrol officers and Haney’s partner, Simon—were standing around the TV.

  “This perpetrator didn’t use duct tape.” Charlie kept a firm grip on the banister as she glanced at Bartoli over her shoulder. Something had been bothering her about the killer’s MO from the beginning. This, she had realized as she had replayed Trevor’s words in her mind, was it: her memory of the duct tape over the mouths of Holly and her mother were vivid. It was an important point, and one she could have easily arrived at using only facts that she herself knew, possibly jogged by her visit to Trevor’s room. So this was what she was going to give to Bartoli while Haney was within earshot. “The original Boardwalk Killer put duct tape over the mouths of his victims to keep them quiet.”

  The sounds of the TV had apparently masked their steps until now, but as she, Bartoli, and Haney reached the entrance hall at the bottom of the steps, a couple of the cops in the living room became aware of their presence and glanced their way.

  “How the hell can you know that?” Haney demanded.

  Before she could formulate a reply, or Bartoli could weigh in, the cops in the living room, who were still focused on the TV, stiffened almost as one. Then Simon, who was about Haney’s age, tall and stocky with short, thick, light brown hair, let out a low whistle and looked around at his partner.

  “Lou, you’ll want to come here and see this,” he called. “Bartoli, you and the lady, too.”

  As they obediently approached the group, the cops rearranged themselves a little so that the newcomers could see the TV screen. On it, in vivid color and high definition, was a picture of the Palmers’ house. Charlie’s heart started to pound as she realized what she was seeing: old footage of the day after the killing of the Palmer family and the kidnapping of Holly.

  Everything being shown on that TV was etched into her mind and heart. Even the yellow crime scene tape fluttering in the ocean breeze was the same. She remembered the sound—flap flap flap flap—as she had taken the police officers around, shown them where Holly had been chained, where Mrs. Palmer had died. That night—the first night after the attack, the first full night she had spent in the hospital—it had rained and rained and rained.

  The rain had smelled like worms, and death.

  “… investigation into the Boardwalk Killer serial killings that have struck terror into the residents of the Outer Banks in recent days has taken a fascinating new turn: the last victim of the previous Boardwalk Killer murders, the sole survivor of the attacks that took place in beach towns a little farther north fifteen years ago, has resurfaced,” the anchorman said. “Any longtime viewers, or longtime residents of the coastal towns in the area, may remember the seventeen-year-old girl who managed to hide from the killer and thus survived the attack on the family she was visiting. That girl”—Charlie was struck dumb when a picture of her teenage self, taken from her high school yearbook, flashed on the screen—“is now Dr. Charlotte Stone, a psychiatrist and expert on serial killers. She has been recruited by the FBI to assist in identifying the Meads’ killer and locating seventeen-year-old Bayley Evans, who has now been missing for almost forty-eight hours.”

  The footage taken earlier that day of Charlie hurrying toward the van with Bartoli holding her arm while Kaminsky and Crane brought up the rear and the media peppered them with questions filled the screen. Watching, Charlie felt her chest go tight. Her stomach dropped. Her pulse shot through the roof.

  “You know what they say about the first forty-eight hours, Craig,” a woman anchor intoned weightily as the camera pulled back to allow a wider view of the news desk; in the Meads’ living room, the cops standing around the TV all cast covert glances at Charlie. As they looked at her, Charlie realized she was holding her breath. Her hands had clenched into impotent fists at her sides. “If a missing person is not found within that time frame, their chances of being recovered alive are cut almost in half.”

  Charlie forced herself to breathe. Then, seeing how Haney was looking at her, seeing the surprise on his face, she put up her chin and met his gaze.

  “That’s how I know,” she said coolly. Turning her back on the TV, she headed for the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I’d be apologizing for getting you involved in this, except for the fact that we have a missing girl. And I have to say, I still think you’re the best hope Bayley Evans has.” Bartoli followed her out onto the deck. Charlie’s stomach had settled down now that she didn’t have any apparitions to deal with, but she still felt shaky and a little weak-kneed. Her head hurt. She was tired, and not just physically. The distance to the house next door seemed way too far to even attempt to walk it right then, so she paused by the rail near the steps to gather her strength. She didn’t bother glancing around for Garland; if he was nearby, she figured she would find out soon enough, but she didn’t see him or hear him right now, so she thought maybe he wasn’t. Maybe the emotions Trevor Mead had trigg
ered in him had been enough to catapult him back into the afterlife.

  I hope.

  But knowing what he was facing there, did she really?

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  Bartoli had stopped behind her. “Is it?”

  The sky was black now, and velvety soft–looking above a black satin sea. The moon, as palely luminous as a pearl, hung high among glittering stars. The wind blowing in from the water was warm, but strong. It smelled of salt. The rush of the waves pounded as relentlessly as her heartbeat as the tide rolled in. A few people walked the beach, as faceless as shadows. Not knowing who they were, realizing that they could be anyone at all, did make her anxious. But still …

  “Yes, really.” Charlie’s fingers gripped the rough wooden rail as she stared blindly out to sea. And thankfully, even as she said it, she knew it was true: whatever personal danger joining the investigation might have placed her in, it paled into insignificance when she thought about Bayley Evans. If anything she brought to the search could help save the girl’s life, it was worth it. “I’m glad I’m here. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t come.”

  “You’ve already helped tremendously. Somewhere amidst the reams of information that has come in, we have the fact that Bayley Evans and her friends attended a dance at the Sanderling less than a week before the attacks, but it might have been weeks, if ever, before anybody focused on it. Even then, it might not have meant much if you hadn’t found out the unsub had a heart stamped on his hand.”

  Charlie smiled a little wryly at that, and threw a glance over her shoulder at him. Bartoli was standing close, looking tall and lean and darkly handsome. Just the kind of guy she would have wished for before all this had happened.

  He’s even wearing a suit. How perfect is that?

  “There’s more,” she said. “I was able to find out more tonight. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Haney.”

  His eyes had questions in them, but instead of asking, pushing, he glanced at the lighted windows behind them. The curtains covering the French doors weren’t completely closed, and through them she could see Haney and Simon and the uniformed cops standing around in the living room. They were talking, probably about her. Having observed the same thing, Bartoli took her arm. His hand felt firm and warm as it curled around the smooth skin just above her elbow.

  A strong, steady hand.

  “Let’s walk and talk,” he said, and Charlie nodded.

  When they were on the wooden path, he said, “Tell me,” and Charlie did. As they walked, she told him every bit of information she—or rather, Garland—had gleaned from Trevor Mead. What she didn’t tell him was how she knew it.

  And he didn’t ask.

  “So what we’ve basically got is more confirmation that the unsub is a tall, strong white male, probably around six-one, one hundred ninety pounds, mid-twenties, with a long, thin face, black eyes—or any color eyes, with severely dilated pupils—who was wearing all black clothing plus a black or dark blue ski-type cap at the time of the crime,” he summed up when she was finished. “That’s good stuff. As soon as I get you safely tucked away back in the house, we’ll start digging into it. A ski cap with an eagle or hawk—it could be a company emblem of some kind. Or a team cap.” He shrugged, and his tone turned dry. “Then again, it could be something the unsub picked up on sale at the Dollar Store with no particular meaning at all.”

  “You understand why I think the perpetrator is almost certainly a copycat.” Charlie looked out toward the ocean, but didn’t really see it. The coalescing certainty, the significance of which was just now really registering with her, brought with it a lessening of the terrible fear that had gripped her ever since she had seen herself on TV and realized that the monster who had killed Holly might also be watching the newscast and thus seeing her in her grown-up incarnation of Dr. Charlotte Stone. Since then she had felt exposed, vulnerable, naked. Now she grabbed on to the lifeline Trevor’s revelations had thrown her way with both hands: if the perpetrator was a copycat, he shouldn’t care anything about her. Except, perhaps, as just one more investigator to outwit.

  “Because of the unsub’s age.” Bartoli seemed to be mulling the possibilities over. Charlie had told him mid-twenties, because she vaguely remembered reading in one of the files that Julie Mead had one sibling, an older sister, with two daughters in their mid-twenties. Tomorrow she would check to be sure that one of those daughters was named Cory, and verify her age. Although Charlie hadn’t told Bartoli that Trevor had described his attacker as “about my cousin Cory’s age,” because she didn’t know how to explain that.

  “The age is the clincher. If the perpetrator is in his mid-twenties, he can’t possibly be the original Boardwalk Killer. But there’s also the duct tape. And the missing fifteen years,” she said.

  They were walking almost side by side, with her slightly in front, close enough so that her shoulder and arm brushed his jacket. Charlie was glad of his nearness. With the rolling dunes and blowing sea oats between the wooden sidewalk and the beach, and a stretch of scrub ground thick with trees and other vegetation on the other side, they suddenly seemed very isolated. The spill of light from the windows of the Meads’ house and the subdued glow emanating from the RV illuminated only the beginning and end of the walkway, far short of where they were. Darkness enfolded them and the sandy ground around them like a blanket.

  The killer could be out here right now.

  A shiver raced down Charlie’s spine. She glanced covertly all around: nothing. Of course nothing. Besides the police car guarding the Meads’ house, there was another one, complete with two officers, parked beside the RV. And the road in front of both houses had been closed to all but official traffic, in an effort to combat media intrusion. There was plenty of protection, she knew. But she was nevertheless suddenly very glad the man she was with carried a gun.

  “You’re probably right.” Bartoli’s voice was nearly borne away on the wind. “But still, I don’t want you going anywhere alone. One of us stays with you at all times now that your connection to the old cases is known.”

  Charlie opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. Reluctantly she admitted to herself that, for all her increasing certainty that the man they were after was a copycat, she was deathly afraid.

  The memory of the horror that had unfolded that night in the Palmers’ house was something she was never going to escape; it had established itself in her body on a cellular level. And this perpetrator, this killer, had awakened her once again to that inescapable truth.

  “Just as long as Kaminsky doesn’t have to stay in the apartment with me,” she responded, rallying. “Across the hall is close enough.”

  Bartoli nodded. “Fair enough. But anywhere outside the house, one of us needs to be with you. Even a short distance like this, you make sure you tell one of us, and we’ll accompany you.”

  “I’ll go nuts,” Charlie said. “I’m used to being alone. I’m a runner. I miss my runs.”

  “So set a time. I’ll go running with you.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. Set a time. Morning is better for me. Before work.”

  “Six-thirty a.m. Tomorrow.” Charlie’s tone made it a challenge. She glanced at him to see how he would respond.

  “Done.” He grinned. “I—”

  Whatever he’d been going to add was lost as a man came charging out of the shadows toward them. He came from the direction of the road, and his dark form blended with the night so well that Charlie was only aware of him when he was almost on top of them.

  Her heart leaped. She gasped and jumped, but had no time to do anything else because Bartoli thrust her behind him and at the same time whipped out his weapon, leveled it, and barked, “Federal agent! Freeze!”

  Dear God …

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s John Price.” Identifying himself, the figure stopped so suddenly that he nearly toppled over. He wasn’t the only one struggling for balance, either.
When Bartoli had thrust her behind him, Charlie’s heel had caught on the edge of one of the planks. She stumbled and would have fallen backward into the sand dunes if she hadn’t grabbed on to Bartoli’s waist to steady herself.

  “Price?” Bartoli questioned sharply.

  “Yeah.” The man’s reply was sheepish. “You know, Officer Price from Kill Devil Hills PD.”

  “Did you want something?” There was an undertone of disgust in Bartoli’s voice. As he asked the question, he slid an arm around Charlie’s shoulders to help steady her. Even though her brain registered that they were not in danger after all, her heart still thundered, her pulse still raced, and her legs felt like spaghetti. Grateful for the support, she leaned into Bartoli’s side as he reholstered his gun. His arm stayed around her, and she liked it being there.

  “Haney sent me to tell you …” Price, out of breath, huffed between words. “… that we got a surveillance video of a car he wants you guys to look at. It’s from Wednesday night … Thursday morning, I guess … about four a.m., taken off a traffic camera not far from here. The picture’s blurry, but he thought you guys might be able to sharpen it up so we could get something off it.”

  Bartoli’s eyes brightened. “Where is he?”

  “In the car, out there on the road. We were heading back to town when he spotted you and Dr. Stone walking here, and he told me to bring it over to you. So here it is.” Still huffing, Price pulled something from his pocket and handed it to Bartoli. “He said he’ll stop by tomorrow to see what you get.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “He said he doesn’t want anybody talking about it on the phone. He’s paranoid that some of the reporters … or somebody else … might be listening in.”