Haven (20 page)

He wondered idly just how much she remembered about what had happened. Not very much at the time, obviously, or so it had seemed. Afterward. Maybe not anything at all.

Or maybe just enough to cause him problems.

Why else would she be here?

Unconsciously, he made a clicking sound with his teeth. “Oh, Jessie,” he murmured. “You should have stayed away. You should have left well enough alone. I had the others under control. Everything was going along just fine.

“Why did you have to come home and spoil it?”

QUICKLY BUT METHODICALLY
, conscious of her inner clock ticking away the time she’d have until the end of the storm and approaching darkness forced her to head back to town, Jessie began to search. She found nothing unusual in the kitchen or bedroom—the latter holding only a bed and a bedside table with no drawers or shelves.

There were no toiletries in the bathroom beyond a very generic bar of soap on the sink. Old and worn—but clean—towels, otherwise nondescript.

Returning to the living area, frowning, she began a more careful search, tapping walls that felt solid, lifting chair and couch cushions to look beneath them, checking the books—all of them, this time.

She found it on the bottom shelf, a thick book whose title proclaimed it to be
The Complete Book of Gardening
, but whose pages had been cut to hollow out an opening for a small wooden box.

It looked handmade, and reminded Jessie instantly of other boxes she had seen just that morning, locally carved with various original designs by artists who loved and understood wood.

Jessie carried the book a few steps away so she could sit on the couch and lay the book on the coffee table. Carefully, she pried the wooden box out of its hiding place. It had a tiny lock.

Child’s play. Jessie had that open in about three seconds.

She didn’t know what she had expected to find. Such a hiding place was, after all, not particularly suspicious in and of itself; ready-made “safe” books were easy to buy, with velvet compartments fashioned in pretend books so a homeowner’s small valuables could be hidden in plain sight.

But this box didn’t hold small valuables.

It held trophies.

Jessie knew what they were as soon as she opened the box, even though she had never, in her work for Haven, been on a case involving a serial killer. She had studied, as every Haven operative did, the cases investigated by the SCU in recent years. And despite a fair noninterest in the sciences, she had a solid working knowledge of
the basics of law enforcement investigative techniques, including profiling.

Most serial killers kept trophies, reminders of the victims they had slaughtered.

There was a part of Jessie that told her she should have felt shocked, or sickened, by what she found, and she was bothered by the fact that what she felt was only intense interest. Until she really looked at what the box contained, and it hit her with the force of a blow that she was looking at the representations—in some cases
pieces
—of people. People who had lived and laughed and thought they had a normal life ahead of them.

Until they encountered a monster wearing a human face.

Jessie set the open box carefully on the table, swallowed hard, and began removing the items it held one by one.

Half a dozen tiny locks of hair: blond, brunette, coppery, and shades in between. A dozen driver’s licenses, all belonging to young women, the oldest issue date going back seventeen years, the issuing states covering the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard. Half a dozen student ID cards from colleges and universities, two from as far away as California and Nevada. A small gold cigarette lighter. Two silver charm bracelets. Four gold stud earrings, each with a different semiprecious stone in the center. And—

Jessie saw her gloved hand trembling, and had to try twice before she was able to pick up the final item lying at the bottom of the box. It was another earring, but unique: a small, handmade dream catcher with a fringe of three tiny, beaded rawhide strips dangling from it.

Dear God.

Her free hand lifted to her ear, and Jessie had a flash of memory.
That night, that hot night, fingers fumbling at her ear, pain when the earring was roughly taken from her as so much had already been taken from her.

The mate to that earring had been lost at some point that night as well, and Jessie was glad.

She stared at the earring, thoughts and memories tumbling through her mind. Just a few weeks after her mother’s death in a car accident. She and Emma still numb. Their mother’s jewelry box held open before them, and their father telling them with matter-of-factness that each of them, Emma and herself, could choose one piece of their mother’s jewelry to keep as a memento. The rest, he’d said, would be offered to Sonya Rayburn’s favorite charity, sold to raise money for a worthy cause, like her clothing and most other possessions.

Not a bit sentimental, their father.

Jessie, the elder, went first. She’d known what Emma would choose: the strand of pearls their mother had almost always worn. Not because Emma, only eight then, knew the value of pearls, but because her mother had often let her borrow them when she played dress-up.

But Jessie, who had always sensed beneath the poised and proper surface of Conner Rayburn’s wife a suppressed and perhaps half-forgotten bohemian side, had chosen the earrings she had never even seen her mother wear.

If her father had been surprised by the choice, he hadn’t shown it, merely accepting it with a shrug.

Jessie had treasured the earrings, wearing them only on special occasions.

Like that “party” when she was seventeen, when everything changed.

The ticking of the clock in her head grew louder, breaking through the memories and her absorption with a literal crash of thunder, and a glance toward one of the windows told Jessie that despite all the noise, the storm was beginning to wind down. And it was getting late.

She barely had time to get back to town before dark.

For just an instant, she was tempted to keep her earring, but in the end she returned it to the box with all the other…trophies. Then she closed and relocked the box, returned it to its book hiding place, and put the book back on the shelf.

The evidence had to be here. She couldn’t afford to alert the killer to the fact that someone had found his trophies. That someone understood what he had been doing for years.

And, nagged by more than one unanswered question, Jessie knew she had to come back here again before she raised the alarm. At least one more time.

She had to know where he was doing the killing.

AT FIRST, HE
was disappointed that Jessie had slipped away before he could get his hands on her. But a moment’s thought convinced him that it would be more fun to hunt her.

Tomorrow, during the festival. That would be perfect. There would be so many people around that no one would notice her disappearance. Or his, for just long enough. And since the festival went on into the night, finishing with fireworks, he would have plenty of time to bring her back here and finish her off.

He wouldn’t be able to spend a great deal of time with her, unfortunately, because the real trick was going to be planting all the evidence necessary to strongly suggest Jessie had merely run away.

Again.

Satisfied with the plan he would embellish later, he got back to the work at hand. He went into the cabin first, just to carefully check and make certain Jessie had not discovered anything she shouldn’t have. The cabin looked untouched, and his prize box was where it was supposed to be, so he felt certain she hadn’t found it.

He left the cabin and went around to the cellar, down into it, then deeper into his trap. He freed his June Rose from his special chair and wrapped her in a plastic tarp. He hadn’t removed any limbs this time, so it was easy enough to toss the bundle over his shoulder and leave his secret room, climbing up out of the cellar.

It was still raining, though only lightly, and thunder rumbled faintly as the storm moved off to the east. With the sky still overcast, darkness was coming sooner, but he still had time enough.

He had already prepared her place in his garden, taking care as always to select the perfect plant to complement all those already in the ground and thriving.

His garden, densely planted and filled with meandering paths and small benches and the occasional tasteful statue, was his delight. He had taken care to plant it so that it was screened from any but the most determined visitors—and that was a kind of visitor he never had out here.

His secret garden.

It took a great deal of effort, and though he had to steal time from
a busy schedule, he didn’t need much sleep, so he worked out here every chance he got.

He was either manicuring his garden, preparing it for another lovely rose—or preparing the rose.

He used his time wisely, and today even had the foresight to dig the hole and cover it with a tarp hours ago. He laid his Rose gently on the ground, then removed the tarp that covered what would be her final resting place.

He unwrapped her from the plastic tarp, and laid her naked in the place prepared for her. They had to be in their purest state, his roses, when he planted them, naked and baptized in their own blood. He arranged her carefully, folding her bruised and broken hands over the gaping wounds in her breasts.

He lingered there for a moment, even bending down so he could gently brush a strand of blood-sticky hair away from her temple.

Perfect. She was perfect.

He looked at his left forearm, a where rolled-up sleeve left the skin bare, and studied the tattoo there. A rose all wound about within a thorny cage.

“I said I’d keep you with me,” he murmured. “I promised I’d keep you safe.”

He got to his feet and, whistling, began to shovel rich, dark, wet earth over his June Rose until the depth was right and he could plant above her a lovely pink-blooming rosebush.

The passenger door of Victor’s Camaro opened and Nellie got in, bringing with her a wave of faint perfume and bright cheerfulness. “Hey. Did I keep you waiting too long?”

“Not at all.” He paused, thinking rapidly. “It’s still early, but do you want to grab dinner before we go back to my place or yours?”

It was their usual Friday evening routine: dinner and then back to his house or hers, one of them almost always staying overnight.

“Dinner,” she said promptly. “I’m starving, and there’s nothing more in your pantry or refrigerator than there is in mine.”

Victor shrugged as he started the car. “We both prefer restaurants and takeout. Single people can afford to opt for convenience.”

“Single people with a decent income,” she countered dryly. “I have a couple of single friends who’re learning how to cook. Much cheaper to eat at home, and they’re tired of soup and scrambled eggs.”

“I’d get tired of that after a day.” He shrugged again. “So, where do you want to eat?”

There were three good restaurants in Baron Hollow, two downtown and one about five miles away, near the highway that bypassed the little town. There was also the usual assortment of fast-food restaurants and a couple of pizza places, but neither Victor nor Nellie considered them especially satisfying for the evening meal. Even if that meal was a bit early.

“Let’s just go over to Mario’s,” Nellie suggested. “I feel like Italian, and even though it won’t start for another hour, the music is best on Friday nights.”

The restaurant in question was only two blocks down from the newspaper office, but she didn’t suggest that they walk. Nellie knew very well that he liked to be able to see his classic car from wherever he was seated while out in public, not out of any fear that it would be stolen, but simply because he enjoyed looking at it.

He also enjoyed looking at Nellie, of course, but he’d taken care to leave her wondering just which he enjoyed most. Not to play mind games, but because he didn’t want to hurt her, and rejection hurt; as long as she thought he might prefer his classic car to her, she was unlikely to get too serious for his peace of mind.

He did
not
want to settle down, even in theory, and in practice he found himself inevitably bored with any woman after a time.

Nellie had lasted longer than most, probably because she was no more interested in marriage or long-term relationships than he was, because she had a healthy sense of humor and a robust enjoyment of sex, and also because she got him.

Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure any other woman he’d slept with really had.

“Hey, you missed an empty space,” she pointed out.

He dragged his mind back to the task of driving, forced to circle the block because that empty space was the only one in front of the restaurant.

Friday nights meant downtown Baron Hollow was as busy and crowded as it was ever likely to be—except for Saturday afternoon, which, typical for small towns, was the busiest time of the week.

And, of course, the festival on the Fourth would bring in hordes.

“Something on your mind?” Nellie asked, looking at him with raised brows while he maneuvered the Camaro into that vacant parking space.

“Tell you inside,” he replied absently, concentrating on parking just so for the maximum amount of space between his baby and the cars on either side. He didn’t like dings.

Nellie waited patiently until he was satisfied and they could go inside the restaurant. Inside, of course, he had to greet several people he knew, regulars who tended to come a bit early on Fridays to grab the best tables.

Victor always got the very best table, at the front window, whether he came early or came late.

He flirted mildly with the young waitress, with Nellie looking on in amusement, and she waited until the slightly flustered Allison had gone to fetch their drinks before asking again.

“Something on your mind?”

Victor glanced out the window at the Camaro, then looked across
the table at Nellie. “Yeah. Know anything about the writer staying at Rayburn House?”

“Knew there was one staying there. And that he’s the one who found the body on Tuesday.”