At the door, as she put on her parka, Trina said, "Will, it might be a good idea if you'd list every woman in town you've dated. Slept with. Heck, flirted with! If the list isn't too long, maybe we can try to keep an eye on them. Get them to be proactive, notice who suggests a drink, who drives by their apartment."
He abruptly turned her to face him and kissed her. Hard, with what felt like anger or maybe just frustration. When he lifted his head, he said, "You make me feel like a bastard. The goddamn Don Juan of Elk Springs!"
She stepped back, a chill inside. "The list is going to be that long, huh? Just don't put me on it, okay?"
Without checking to see how he reacted, she opened the door. "Drive carefully tomorrow."
"I'm walking you out." He crowded her on the landing.
She started down the stairs, footsteps echoing in the well. "I'm a cop, Will. See?" She pulled her sidearm from her parka pocket to show him, then shoved it in her waistband at the small of her back. "Let some bastard try to mug me."
"Or rape you," he said, in a rough voice. He was following her down the damn stairs, still in his shirtsleeves and wearing only slippers.
Old pain squeezed her chest. "Don't worry," she said carelessly over her shoulder. "I don't look like Gillian. Besides, who's to know?"
At the bottom of the steps, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Let's keep it that way, okay? For now?"
"No problem." She jerked away. "See you."
He just watched as she got in her Explorer and backed out. He didn't wave, and she didn't, either.
Some jackass in a big mother of a pickup truck came up behind her immediately and crowded her on the way home, his headlights enough higher than hers as to blind her in her rearview mirror, which pissed her off enough to keep her from crying. He made a couple of turns right behind her, but kept going without slowing when she turned into her complex. Not interested in her, she decided, surprised by the release of tension to realize how much had gnawed at her. Nope, he was just your garden-variety jackass. She should have let him pass and then hit the roof lights and ticketed him.
Safe in her apartment, door locked and double-locked, she forgot about the pickup truck and thought instead about Will's last words.
Let's keep it that way, okay?
She guessed he wouldn't be suggesting they join his friends at J.R.'s or the Timberline some night soon. She wanted to think he was reluctant to be seen with her because of what was happening to every other woman he'd dated around here, but why wouldn't he have said that to her? No. That was just wishful thinking. Trying not to care, she checked phone messages and found one from Sandy Kilts, her journalist friend.
"I've called every night this week. Have you quit answering your phone? Or are you never there anymore?"
Hitting Delete, Trina realized she'd have to think up some lie or other. Gee, this must be how it felt to have an affair with a married man. Sneaking around, lying to everyone you knew.
The sad thing was, for the first time, she understood why a woman would do something that went so utterly against her deepest values.
She'd never understood before because she'd never really been in love. Not like this, with the desperate, hungry knowledge she'd do anything at all to have another night with him, to have him kiss her with that light in his eyes one more time, to hold him one more time.
Standing stock-still in the middle of her living room, she closed her eyes and felt tears leak out.
And she'd thought she was pathetic before.
* * *
WILL HAD BEEN sleeping badly anyway, but now his dreams swirled around the crux. He'd be playing basketball, and realize he and everyone on both teams running down the court wore nothing but jockstraps. Standing on the free throw line, the ball in his hands, he would turn in shock to scan the bleachers, only to discover that the guys in the audience were naked but for jockstraps, too.
Or someone would call out a question and he would turn to answer and see that the other person's face was covered with a jockstrap. Pretty soon everyone was faceless in his dreams. He woke up sweating after he looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he, too, wore a goddamn jockstrap wrapped around his head and covering his face like a hockey mask.
Even awake, he hardly recognized himself in the mirror these days. He looked like hell.
"Think," his mother had said, during a brief phone call.
That's all he did. All he had been doing when he was alone and sometimes when he should have been concentrating on a judicial decision he was studying or a police report. It was a good thing he wasn't trying a major case right now. He couldn't possibly have given it his best.
What his mother had done was give him one more thing to think about. One more gem on top of bed-wetting, arson and the torture of small animals.
Hadn't there been talk back in high school about a bunch of guys tying a dog to the bumper of a car and dragging it down a gravel road, laughing as it tried to run fast enough and fell and writhed and finally became dead weight? He couldn't remember who, only feeling sickened. Fires? There'd been a streak of them during his junior year, he thought, culminating in the one that gutted the shop building. Again, everyone talked. Didn't they always? Gavin had been the one who liked bonfires and threw on logs until flames leapt high into the night, sparks scattering to rival the stars. But they'd all stood and stared, mesmerized by the power.
But jockstraps…Who thought about them? It wasn't like women's panties that came in a variety of styles and colors, lacy, racy, staid. Jockstraps were pretty well all alike, white and utilitarian. Wearing them, guys looked somehow defenseless, butts hanging out.
He could recall a thousand scenes in locker rooms with guys strutting around wearing nothing else. Razzing someone because his jockstrap was size small instead of large. Hooting down any suggestion that the sizes represented waist measurements rather than how impressive your equipment was. Occasionally they'd been used as slingshots or even shot like giant rubber bands in a free-for-all.
He'd never seen anyone pretend to strangle someone else with one, or pull it over his face for God knew what reason. The truth was, he had no meaningful memories that involved a white elastic jockstrap.
He even called Travis and asked if he did.
After a long silence, Travis said, "They're thinking the jockstrap has to do with you, huh. Like a message? Damn. No, nothing comes to me. If it does I'll let you know."
"Thanks."
"Haven't heard from you much."
"I'm…seeing someone."
With more heat than Will had expected, Travis said, "Are you crazy? Some maniac is raping and murdering women you've dated, and you decide to red flag one more woman?"
The bitch of it was, he was right. Will tormented himself daily with fear that Trina might be the next victim.
He was arguing as much with himself as with Travis when he said, "You're the only person who knows. We're keeping it quiet. We haven't gone out. The killer doesn't know. He can't know."
Unless, God, he'd been following her and had seen Will kiss her cheek.
"Don't tell me who it is," Travis said. "Don't say her name out loud to anyone."
"You think he's tapped my phone?"
"Who the hell knows? Just…keep her safe, okay?"
"Yeah." He rubbed his breastbone to ease the burning beneath. "Okay."
"You talked to your mother yet? Groveled?"
Trust his buddy to prod another ache.
"No," he admitted. "When I see her, we talk about the murders. The words make it to the tip of my tongue, and I keep letting myself off the hook. We're easier with each other than we've been in years, and I'm coward enough not to want to stir up the bottom of the pot."
"You make a better soup if you do stir," was all Travis said, before changing the subject.
Trina was all that kept Will sane. He made it through dark, sleepless nights by thinking, I'll see her again tomorrow. She listened like nobody he'd ever known, and he loved to hear her talk in
turn. She was a fascinating mix of innocence and toughness. Blunt one minute, shy the next, Trina had the same strength he'd always seen in his mother, the same dogged determination, the same intelligence and single-mindedness. There was a reason they were both cops, both detectives. He wondered why he'd wasted so many years dating women who were never going to measure up to the expectation his mother and then his aunts had instilled in him.
Gillian…well, she'd been different. He had loved her, and he thought he would have kept loving her if she'd lived and he had matured fast enough to be ready for a strong woman.
Oddly, since he'd been thinking about Gilly, Trina asked about her the night after he made the run over to Salem. He'd cooked dinner again, and they sat lazily talking after they ate, still sipping wine.
"You never mention Gillian," she said out of the blue. "Do you not like to talk about her?"
A month ago, he might have said no. But he didn't want to keep secrets from Trina. Not that he had many left, he thought ruefully.
"No, it's okay. What do you want to know?"
She shrugged. "Tell me about her."
So he did, and realized it felt good. He'd met Gillian his freshman year at Willamette. They were in an intro to psych class together. He already knew he wanted to go to law school and thought the more he knew about how people's minds worked, the better attorney he'd be. She was interested in child therapy. Once she saw the world, she said, in the grand way college freshmen did. Once she made a difference. She'd had an inner serenity that drew him from the beginning. She could be beautiful one minute, plain the next, and she didn't care either way. She rarely bothered with makeup, ran 10K races for fun and was passionately involved in half a dozen campus organizations that raised awareness of women's issues and money to build schools in African or Honduran villages. One summer, she went to Africa and volunteered for Save the Children, coming back more committed than ever.
"You'd have liked her," he said, gazing at the past but very conscious of Trina's warm brown eyes. "She was smart, kind, nosy." He lifted his glass in salute. "Like someone else I know."
She let that pass. "Then what went wrong?"
Count on her to go right for the jugular. But he'd known this was where they were going. He'd never told a soul what he and Gillian had fought about that night.
"Me. That's what went wrong." He shook his head. "Gilly matured into the woman she'd promised to become. She wanted to go into the Peace Corps. I talked her into putting it off and getting her masters degree first. The Peace Corps sounded great back when we were sophomores and juniors. I had some sort of hazy image of me flying over during summer break from law school to see her in Kenya or wherever she went. But at some point I started thinking I could distract her and eventually she wouldn't want to go. I was going to be a big important attorney." Shame clawed at him. "Doing my bit crusading, of course, but also making a shit pot full of money. I was starting to think about going into politics down the road, once I'd made partner in some important firm. It was okay if she became a child psychologist. I wanted a smart wife, one who'd impress the people I wanted to impress." He gave a harsh laugh. "What I didn't want was her to up and leave for two years. Just disappear. See, our ambitions were supposed to circulate around me. Not her. Oh, I didn't say that. I'm not sure I even realized that's what I thought. But she knew."
When he fell silent, brooding, Trina nudged. "What happened?"
"She let me know right before that spring break that she'd applied to the Peace Corps and been accepted. She didn't know yet where she was going, but once she finished her degree in May, she'd be leaving for language training. She wanted me to be excited for her. I said, 'Don't go.' We fought about it all week. She tried to reason with me, and I wouldn't listen. In retrospect, I realize I was afraid she was ditching me."
"You didn't think she'd come back to you."
"Yep." His mouth twisted into a mockery of a smile, the best he could do. "So I issued an ultimatum. Her dream, or me."
"And she chose the dream," Trina said softly.
He swore. Realized his cheeks were wet. "She told me what an idiot I was, grabbed her stuff and tore out the door. I thought she was driving back to Portland. Instead, she went to a bar."
Not just a bar. It was a crummy place, a world away from the upscale tavern or brewpub she might normally have chosen if what she'd really wanted was a drink and a few minutes to think. No, just as Ricky Mendoza had said, she'd gone there to find a quickie with someone who would shock Will.
Trina touched his hand. "And she was dead a few hours later."
It still hurt, but the pain was duller. Was it his fault she'd died? He'd been a jackass, but he wanted to believe he'd have woken up one day after she left and had the sense to write her, to say, I'm sorry. I was a fool. Any choices, any possibilities, had been taken out of his hands, out of hers. With wonder, he discovered that somewhere along the way he'd learned that no, he wasn't to blame. For losing her, yes. For her death, no.
"I loved her." He refilled his wineglass again even though he knew he shouldn't. Time muted pain and memories; alcohol just muddled them. "But, you know, sometimes I have to pull out a picture to remember what she really looked like."
"You didn't have to put them away because of me."
Startled, he said, "How did you know?"
She smiled. "You don't dust."
He found himself grinning back. "Right. You're a detective. I guess I forgot."
Laughing, she said, "Sure you did."
They made love, and afterward, with her sprawled atop him, he thought with pleasure about how different her body felt than any other woman's he'd ever held. She wasn't delicate, coltish. Instead, she was lush in the right places, taut and strong in others. He liked that contrast, along with all her others.
Stroking a hand down her spine, Will spared a glance for the dresser, where a couple of framed photos were missing.
He didn't think he'd be putting them back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NOTHING LIKE HAVING a split identity. By day, Trina was a composed, prosaic detective hot on the trail of a serial killer. At night, she was Will Patton's lover, dazzled and feeling so unbelievably lucky, she refused to think beyond the moment.
Tomorrow was as far as she'd let herself look. Of course she'd hurt eventually, but wasn't this week worth any pain? Yes, it was, she told herself.
Over and over again.
The hardest part was maintaining her cool in front of Lieutenant Patton.
Trina hated this kind of secret. But she also knew it would be a heck of a lot easier to keep her head high around here if nobody ever knew she'd had a brief affair with Meg Patton's son.
Lord, she thought, with the Butte County Sheriff's son.
Oh, yeah. She didn't want anyone to know.
It still stung when Will mentioned a Sunday dinner at his aunt Renee's house without, of course, inviting her. "The clan gathers," he said carelessly. "Unless you want to have a late-night tryst, I won't be able to see you until Monday."
Trina didn't have much pride where he was concerned, but she did still have some. "Nah, I've got plans Sunday, too."
"Plans?"
"Some friends talked me into going sledding," she improvised. "We'll have dinner, and then see."
"Ah." Lines deepened between his brows. "I wish…" He stopped, shook his head. "Never mind." The frown deepened before he said explosively, "Why can't you catch this bastard?"
"He doesn't know it, but we're closing in."
She hadn't told him that Dirk Whittaker had been eliminated as a suspect after Jerry had confirmed his admission that he'd had a brief affair, one he now regretted. Or so he claimed. Trina had felt sad, thinking of Marcie, who'd lost her best friend and her closest connection to her days of glory as one of the sought-after girls. Remembering the mantel display of photos of their kids, smiles bright, she shook her head.
She'd learned that Astoria and vicinity had only one unsolved rape from the relevant tim
e period, and it had key differences from the ones here in Elk Springs, even aside from the fact that these had culminated in the strangulation death of the victims. The woman there had been in her early fifties. She'd gone out to the car from her hotel room to get something and been dragged behind a Dumpster, where the perp held a knife at her throat and made her perform oral sex on him, after which he'd told her he'd be back if she went for help before morning. She'd believed him.
"By that time, half the folks in the hotel and all the nearby ones had checked out," the gruff sergeant said in disgust. "She claimed not to remember his face. Of course, she was sure he was six foot three or four minimum."
"Which means he was five foot nine. Maybe." Trina thanked him profusely for his help and crossed Astoria off her list.
Vancouver and Portland, right across the Columbia River from each other, not surprisingly came up with a long list of unsolved rapes and murders from the two-year span Gavin Husby had lived in the area. The detective who'd compiled it and faxed it to her had starred three rape/murders, all of young, attractive women snatched from the parking lots of bars, all found displayed in obscene poses, bite marks in savage evidence.
Trina called and asked for photos. He scanned and e-mailed them. Just today she'd looked at them, bothered that none of the victims had any resemblance to Gillian Pappas, Amy Owen or Karin Kristensen. Two of the three were Caucasian, one short, plump and brunette, the other model-thin, freckled and redhead. The third was Hawaiian, a racial mix that defied categorization but resulted in an exotic, dark-eyed beauty. The brunette was a prostitute, the Hawaiian woman a bartender, the redhead just out for the evening. One had a broken neck while two were strangled manually, leaving livid marks of the murderer's fingers. Other elements of the crimes were highly suggestive, but Trina was uncomfortable jumping to a conclusion. Killers tended to pick victims with a lot in common. Starting with looks, of course, but in other ways as well. If they went for prostitutes, they usually stuck to prostitutes. They weren't likely to target a hooker one time, a nice girl the next. And the way they killed usually stayed consistent. Maybe the broken neck was an accident; maybe he'd been pissed because he didn't get the chance to strangle her. But maybe not. Maybe that one was killed by somebody different from the other two. Or maybe the Portland/Vancouver area murderer didn't care so much how he killed the women.
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