“I don’t think so,” Roarke said automatically. Cara could have killed him any number of times already. He said it aloud. “If she wanted to kill me, I’d be dead.”
The fact was they had no evidence that she had ever killed anyone who wasn’t dangerous or just plain evil. And she didn’t seem to care much about self-defense, either, although he didn’t want to think about what might happen in a law enforcement standoff, either to her or to law enforcement.
So what did she want? And how long had she been watching him?
And then the obvious hit him.
“Blythe,” he told them. “It had to be in Blythe. She followed me from there.”
She must have picked up his trail when he’d gone back to her old home, the site of the massacre of her family. It made the most sense that she had been drawn back there, just as he had, but with a much stronger pull.
Epps was speaking. “So we stake out your place, we put a team on you everywhere you go. And you should be wearing a vest at all times.”
“She’s not going to shoot me,” Roarke said, stiff with annoyance, and a tension that went deeper than that.
Epps looked at him stonily. “All due respect, you have no fucking clue what she’s going to do. No one does.”
He was right. Not that Roarke had any say in the matter, ultimately. Since he was suddenly the center of the investigation, it was on Epps to dictate the terms. Epps briefed Reynolds and pulled two other agents from another team in to rotate shifts with them. Roarke felt relegated to the sidelines as Epps conferred with the backup. He finally went for coffee to avoid looking useless.
When he came back to the conference room, Epps had the game plan. “So we start with you going home, in plain sight. No point in you staying in the building. She’s not going to come after you here.”
Roarke barely refrained from answering back about her “coming after him.”
“We don’t know she knows where I live,” he said, but that was just contrariness, and Epps didn’t even bother responding. No one in the room had any doubt that Cara Lindstrom could find out where he lived.
Epps continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “We stake out the house today and tonight, see if we can just pick her up watching you. Let’s remember that she uses wigs, sunglasses, to change her appearance.”
And costumes, Roarke thought. He knew now she had gone with Mark and Jason Sebastian to a Halloween festival dressed in a Catwoman costume. Under the circumstances, a perfect disguise.
Epps indicated the case board, the sketch of Cara. “But she’s also distinctive, there’s a focus about her that stands out. She won’t be invisible. And she covers her neck, so always be on the lookout for a high collar, a turtleneck.”
Yes, the turtleneck. Was she aware now of how that had given her away? Would she find some other way of covering her scar, now? Or was it a moot point? It was fall, going on winter. Thousands, tens of thousands of women in San Francisco would be wearing scarves.
Epps had taken complete charge. “Singh, get word to the single room occupancies, and the sketch of her—”
Roarke spoke up automatically. “She won’t use an SRO.”
Everyone looked at him.
“She used an SRO last time she was in the city,” he reminded them. “She won’t do it again.”
“How would she even know we knew that?” Epps asked, exasperated.
Roarke shook his head. “Doesn’t matter if she knows it or not. She won’t do the same thing again.”
Epps’ face was tight. “Maybe. Contact them anyway,” he said to Singh.
When he was finally allowed to leave, Roarke exited the building in what felt like a painfully ostentatious way, walking with his carryon suitcase on the sidewalk to the underground BART station, stopping in to a café to buy coffee, picking up a newspaper at a news stand. Jones was following him and Epps was already headed over to Roarke’s neighborhood to plant himself in a stakeout.
Roarke couldn’t fault the plan, he knew it made sense. It still was a new and disturbing feeling that Cara was following him. He wondered if she knew that they’d be watching for her, if she’d anticipate that and take precautions not to be caught.
Despite himself, he spent the short train ride edgy and scanning the car and platforms for her, as if setting a trap for her would automatically manifest her. He exited the train at Twenty-Fourth Street/Mission and rode the escalator up to the plaza, where he walked through clouds of marijuana smoke strong enough to bring on a contact high. Twenty-fourth Street was not quite the junkie central that Sixteenth and Mission was, but the BART station plaza could sometimes give Sixteenth a run for its money. Pimps and dealers scattered like roaches as they saw Roarke coming. They could spot a lawman from a block away.
A block up from Mission the neighborhood abruptly changed, from taquerias and seedy bars to boutiques and specialty shops hawking overpriced artisanal food. Noe Valley had become so gentrified it had acquired the nickname “Stroller Valley,” but being San Francisco, it was still light years more eccentric than most non-San Francisco neighborhoods, which suited Roarke just fine. He walked past flower stands and fresh-churned ice cream shops, and found himself fixating on every glimpse of blond hair he passed.
His own street was on one of Noe Valley’s ubiquitous hills, lined with Victorian duplexes and triplexes. He let himself in through the porch gate and climbed the stairs to his top half of the building.
In the entry hall he dumped his roller bag in the closet and shrugged off his coat and suitcoat, then turned to the sidetable in the entry hall to strip off his shoulder holster and service weapon, as much a nightly ritual for an agent as loosening and removing his tie.
He walked into the living room, and the emptiness of the apartment surrounded him. His life had been halved by his divorce, nearly five years ago now, and that half-life was still reflected in the unfinished décor: minimal furniture, bare spots on the walls where framed prints had been.
Automatically he stepped to the window to survey the street. Only mid-afternoon, but the sky was shading, the city lights intensifying on the hills. No sign of any agents out there, of course. Epps hadn’t even told him where they were going to be holed up, and he didn’t want to know. It would be too easy to give the game away by indicating the lookout points with his body language.
He turned back into the room and the emptiness of the apartment surrounded him, instantly oppressive. He wasn’t used to being at home with nothing to do, and the idea set him on edge.
But he could work the case. The Reaper case.
He fished in a pocket and pulled out his phone to call Snyder, who had semi-retired to the wilderness outside Portland. Roarke had worked under Snyder during his years in the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, the division of the FBI responsible for profiling the most violent of killers. While his old mentor was not officially on the payroll, Roarke had been briefing him on Cara Lindstrom every step of the way. Luckily for Roarke’s state of mind, Snyder was answering his phone.
“Did you have a successful trip?” Snyder asked without preamble, and there was no mistaking the quick interest in his voice. For a profiler, a female serial killer was too rare and fascinating a subject to ignore.
“She’s alive. She’s been following me,” Roarke said into the phone, as he walked the softly gleaming hardwood floors of the living room.
There was electricity in the silence. He could picture Snyder: lean, craggy, ascetic, his eyes faraway, processing. “Of course,” Snyder said softly.
“Of course?” Roarke said, his voice grating. “Really? Nice of you to let me know.”
“I’ll send you my bill for twenty-twenty hindsight,” Snyder said dryly. “Did she approach you? Contact you?”
“Not exactly.”
Roarke explained about the dolphins at Torrey Pines, the feeling of being watched, the stuffed dolphin that had been left for Jason Sebastian. He found himself vindicated when Snyder murmured:
“Undoubtedly from C
ara. Undoubtedly a message to you.”
“Maybe you can tell me what she wants, then.”
Snyder took his time answering. “I can’t, but I can observe that she brought you into her fantasy once, in that attack on the trafficking gang out in the desert. Arguably that was a success: you killed in tandem with her, a significant number of the men were eradicated, and she escaped, apparently without mortal injury.”
Roarke had stopped pacing. He was completely fixated on Snyder’s first sentence.
“She wants to bring me into her fantasy,” he said.
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “You know repeat killers are driven by a very personalized fantasy.”
“So she wants me to kill with her?” Roarke felt cold all over, a feeling of complete unreality.
“That I can’t be sure of. And who knows how she sees it, inside her own delusion? I’m merely pointing out that she deliberately brought you into her planned massacre of that gang in the desert, and the practical result. And…” Roarke sensed a caution in Snyder’s next words, “It was most likely a bonding moment.”
You have no idea, Roarke thought grimly. Although there wasn’t much that Snyder hadn’t seen, and who knew what he might have speculated about that night at the cement plant? But Roarke volunteered nothing.
“She’s a solitary,” he said slowly. “As far as we know she’s always been completely on her own.”
He could hear the shrug in Snyder’s voice. “But we know violent female killers far more often kill in tandem with a male partner than on their own. The impulse may be there. It’s something to bear in mind.” Roarke couldn’t even begin to process it. After a moment, Snyder prodded, “In the meantime, what’s the plan?”
“I’m bait,” Roarke said. “There’s a team watching me, seeing if she’ll show herself.”
“Yes,” Snyder said, and Roarke could feel him nodding. “Sensible.”
“I’m glad you feel good about it.”
There was a slight pause. “I’m sure this must be very conflicting.”
Oh, no, Roarke thought. You’re not getting anywhere near the inside of my head tonight.
“More like annoying,” he said aloud. “I’m stuck in for the night and I don’t for a second expect her to show. But I’ll be able to catch up on my paperwork tonight.”
He felt a tension in the silence, and wondered if Snyder would probe him, but instead the older man said, “Nonetheless, be on your guard. There’s really no way of predicting what she might do.”
No, there isn’t, Roarke thought. “I’ll keep you posted.”
As he hung up, he felt a little shaky, even though he suspected he’d been let off easy. He wondered how much Snyder had guessed. He wondered if he even knew himself what he felt.
He stood to dismiss the thought. Despite himself, he stepped to one of the bay windows in the front room and stood in the dark, looking out on the street as if he would see her. And as soon as he realized that was what he was looking for, he turned away.
He briefly considered ordering food, but didn’t feel like coordinating a delivery with the watching agents, who would undoubtedly make it more of a production than Roarke was up for. There was always a stack of pizzas and Trader Joe’s meals in his freezer, fine to get him through the evening. He wandered into the kitchen and chose a marsala to stick in the microwave.
As he stood waiting for it to heat, he realized he’d been so quick to get off the phone he’d forgotten to tell Snyder about the dead rabbit that had been left on the Lindstroms’ porch.
But there was something he could occupy himself with that night. He felt a thrill of illicit excitement. The cold case was nothing like official business, but the Reaper case had been under his skin ever since he was nine years old. If this was his chance to lay that mystery to rest—
The microwave beeped shrilly, startling him. He pulled out the tray, dumped the steaming spicy chicken and rice on a plate and carried it out to the dining table he only ever used for work, to eat and think back over the case.
The Reaper had mysteriously vanished after the killing of the Lindstrom family, although the entire state of California and the bordering states had remained in a panic for more than a year after the killings. For years any violent incident involving a family had set the public into a tailspin. But the Reaper and his particular brand of madness had never been seen again.
Many law enforcement officials had speculated that the killer was dead. A suicide, possibly, or an accident. Nine-year old Matt Roarke had even wondered, with a child’s magical thinking, if perhaps Cara, the sole survivor, had vanquished the monster in some unfathomable way.
But Roarke the adult agent knew that serial killers rarely ended up suicides. They enjoyed what they did far too much. It was much more likely that the Reaper had been arrested for some less spectacular crime that had never been connected to the three family massacres, and had been quietly rotting away in prison ever since.
The thought made Roarke grab for a legal pad and scribble a list for Singh, starting with checking California prison records for 1987 arrests. He would have to brainstorm factors to narrow down the extreme list of arrestees that was likely to generate, but it was a start.
He could get Snyder to do a profile, unofficially, for characteristics to plug in: age range, likely crimes to have been committed…
And then a thought struck him so hard he felt himself vibrate with the insight.
Cara had seen him.
What she had seen, and described at the time, her five-year old brain had interpreted as a monster. But she was an adult, now, delusional maybe, but unquestionably intelligent. Her memories of the night might be accessed with the proper regression techniques.
With what she knew, they could come up with more than a profile: they could have an actual description.
If they could catch her, first. And take her alive, his mind added uneasily, something he didn’t want to think too much about.
Even then, would she cooperate? He thought she would.
Snyder had talked about Cara’s possible motivation to team up. Pulling you into her fantasy, he had said. The thought made Roarke queasy again. But what could be more likely to draw her than a hunt for the killer of her family, the monster that had haunted her for most of her conscious life?
Roarke stood abruptly from his chair, the cold and sinking feeling intruding again. If he himself wasn’t the perfect lure to draw her out, a hunt for the Reaper surely would be. In fact, even without an actual trail to follow, if they put out the idea that they were on the hunt for the Reaper, it would pull Cara to them like a magnet.
He paced, feeling the tension of adrenaline in his jaw and nerves.
Leak word that another family has been killed in the same way.
How could she resist?
He could close both cases at once.
He stepped to the window again and stared out into the lengthening shadows. It was brilliant, the clear way to proceed.
And he hated himself for it.
Chapter Nine
She walks the meandering trails of the dreamy fantasy that is Golden Gate Park, with its towering eucalyptus trees and windblown cypress, past the rowboats and pedalboats drifting on the lakes and canals winding between botanical gardens and museums. She is drawn to it, this city, always; she feels more comfortable and anonymous in its wildly unconventional setting than she does in most towns.
She has dumped the trafficker’s truck in a questionable area, leaving the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. It will be gone in no time, and there is no need for a vehicle in this place, with its excellent public transportation and draconian parking enforcement. She is better rid of it.
The bus she had boarded some blocks away took her through the city and when the doors opened in front of the park, she disembarked, and now she wanders past the Victorian Conservatory of exotic flowers, the Temple of Music, the Japanese Tea Garden. The footpaths are sparsely traveled, but it is stil
l an unaccustomed density of people to have around her, especially after her weeks alone in the desert.
As the afternoon shadows creep from between the trees, she knows she must consider accommodations.
SROs are good, Single Room Occupancy flophouses — but she’d used one last time she was in the city and she never does the same thing twice. Unpredictability is her key to keeping invisible. She has been leaning instead toward a youth hostel. They are cheap, anonymous places with such a high turnover that she never has to be concerned about being remembered.
But something is pulling her toward the Haight, the legendary hippie mecca of Haight Ashbury, adjacent to the park.
She walks out of the park onto Haight Street, passing a mega record store and a free clinic with a sprawling street mural painted on its front wall, and cruises the proudly run-down streets past boutiques, used clothing stores, head shops, restaurants ranging from hole-in-the-wall dives to world cuisine, and the ubiquitous wall paintings of mythic and mystic symbols. Clouds of marijuana smoke drift from every other passerby.
The street is layered, era upon era, but the power of the sixties dominates all else. There are so many people, so many young people, drawn by the vortex, the power spot that it was and still is. Even though it is fading, she still feels the power.
She thinks about Roarke as she walks. He doesn’t live far from his work, at the Federal Building. She guesses that he wears a pretty familiar trail between his Victorian in the area San Franciscans call Noe Valley and the Civic Center, downtown.
He is being watched, staked out, by the other agent, the beautiful African one she now knows as Epps, and some other younger one. Undoubtedly because of her.
Roarke knows from the dolphin that she is alive and watching him. She had seen it in the way he stared out over the hills of the olive ranch as he stood with Mark and Jason Sebastian.
The father and the boy had been the path for a time. Now it is done. A new path has begun.
She stops in to one of the ubiquitous thrift stores to pick up some props. Hippie clothes are as much a uniform as ever in this hood. She can pass for far younger than she is, and for an extra level of concealment it isn’t hard to look European: a battered backpack, an Aeropostal sweater, a little makeup to simulate world-traveler grime and jet lag circles under her eyes. There are so many young people here, and it is a good disguise for her; Roarke has only seen her in the edgy designer wear of a city professional. A teenager is not what he will be looking for.
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