Kill Me Once (24 page)

And now he had the money to pull it off.

The money and the perfect plan.

Nathan finally quit his job at the
Plain Dealer
thirteen months later and used his media connections to audit a profiling class at the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. He took to the course like a duck to water, of course. If anything was right up his alley, it was this.

He was
so
good, in fact, that it wasn’t very long before he decided he could probably teach the class himself.

Hell, Nathan knew so much on the subject that he could probably write a goddamn
book
.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Dana crossed the hall and let herself into her own apartment. She’d put on a brave face for Eric but more than twenty-four hours had passed since she’d last slept, not counting the short nap on the plane, and it was really starting to catch up with her. Exhausted as she was, though, sleep really wasn’t an option right now. Not when she had a long-overdue date with the demons of her past.

She shuddered and glanced down at her watch. Almost two o’clock already, and Crawford had agreed to meet her over at the house in West Park at three-thirty after stopping off to pick up a search warrant from a judge downtown. If she left now that would give her just enough time to make sure that she got all the crying out first. With any luck she could fix her make-up and pull herself together before Crawford arrived and had the chance to realise she’d been there before. That was if he didn’t remember before then why the address rang a bell and had something to say about it. She was slightly surprised he hadn’t phoned to bawl her out already. Probably, understandably, because he had other, more important things on his mind.

Dana shook her head and went into the bathroom to freshen up. Her career was on the line here if anybody got wind of the fact that she was suppressing information her superiors had every right to know. All her hard work over the years and the sterling reputation she’d built up as a person who always played by the rules would go right down the toilet. But what choice did she have? If she told them about the connection to her past they’d yank her ass off the case so fast her head would spin, and that really wasn’t an option. Not at this point. If that meant the end of her career, so be it. She’d worked at K-Mart throughout her high school and college days, and she could probably catch on back there if she really needed to. Hell, it might not be the most glamorous job in the world, but innocent people didn’t usually die at K-Mart so there was something to be said for that.

Dana locked her apartment’s front door behind her and made her way down the hall to the elevator. Down in the parking lot of the apartment complex two minutes later, she hopped inside the Protégé and began the short drive over to West Park.

Her pulse quickened when she pulled onto Eastlawn Street fifteen minutes later. Most of the houses on the street looked exactly the same, with the odd different paint job here and there. The exact same maple trees lined the exact same perfectly manicured tree lawns, blowing gently in what appeared to be exactly the same breeze.

Dana got out of the car before she could change her mind and stood in front of the house of her childhood. The single-storey ranch-style home was still painted white, with black shutters adorning the windows. A metal sign in the front yard declared that Chem-Lawn had been there recently. Even though it was November now, the chemicals made sure the grass stayed a deep, lush green – unlike the lawn next door, where the grass had slowly withered and died before fading away into a limp lifeless brown.

Dana marshalled her courage and marched up to the front door before looking down at her watch again.
Fuck the search warrant
. She was going in without it. She’d clean up the mess with Crawford later on if it came to that. That was the least of her worries.

She jimmied the lock on the door and pushed it open. Stale, unmoving air filled her nostrils. The living room was empty save for a small desk with an old rotary phone sitting on top. Exact same model as the one from her childhood.

Dana sucked in a sharp breath and looked around. Her mind immediately slammed back to 1976. She could almost
hear
the sound of her mother’s laughter as she chuckled at another one of her father’s silly jokes. She walked into the kitchen and remembered the faint pencil lines that had been drawn on the wall next to the refrigerator marking her slow growth in height over the years. They’d been long ago painted over now.

Hot tears filled her eyes as she went back into the living room. Down the hall to the right was her bedroom. She started in that direction, but the sudden sound of a telephone ringing almost made her jump right out of her skin.

Dana’s heart slammed in her chest as she stared at the old rotary phone on the desk. Several seconds passed before she realised that the ringing was coming from her own cellphone. She dug it out of her pocket with shaking hands and flipped it open. Crawford’s voice filled her ear.

‘Slight change of plan, Dana,’ he told her without a preamble. ‘I’m in Cleveland now but I won’t be coming out to West Park. I managed to get an appointment with Dr Anthony Justice over at the Cleveland Clinic. He’s the best brain-cancer specialist in the country and I had to pull a lot of strings to get the appointment so I really don’t want to miss it. Could you manage without me for another day or two?’

Dana shook her head hard to clear the cobwebs away while the ghosts of her past gleefully danced in the living room all around her. Her beautiful mother. Her handsome father. The sadistic killer who’d murdered them both. ‘Of course,’ she told Crawford, desperately trying to keep her voice even. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m headed out to Chicago in a couple of hours, though. You can meet up with me there when you’re done in Ohio.’

‘Where are you now?’ he asked.

‘At the house in West Park. I couldn’t wait.’

‘Find anything interesting?’

Dana looked over at the rotary phone and tried to ignore the apparition of her parents’ killer laughing at her. ‘Not really.’ Crawford obviously hadn’t made the connection yet and perhaps it was just as well that he wasn’t coming over. She found herself torn between relief that he wasn’t about to walk into her past and surprise that he would miss out on something potentially key to their case. But of course he’d want to see the specialist. She couldn’t possibly understand how he was feeling right now – and so she couldn’t possibly judge him. She just wondered why he hadn’t told her before that he was trying to get an appointment.

Crawford coughed and said, ‘Well, soon as I get this damn appointment over with I’ll be at your full disposal.’

Dana brought the conversation to a speedy conclusion and switched off the phone. Her skin crawled, being in this place, and she needed to get out.
Now
.

She practically ran through the living room to escape, the ghost of her parents’ killer hot on her heels.

Finally reaching her car ten seconds later, she let out a deep breath. Coming here by herself had definitely been a very bad idea, to say the least.

She slammed the Protégé into drive and peeled out. She didn’t bother looking back, fearing the house of her childhood would be laughing at her, too. She’d walked straight into the emotional trap the killer had set for her.

Twenty minutes later she was back inside her apartment in Lakewood. She went into the kitchen and grabbed a quarter-bottle of Jack Daniel’s by the neck off the counter and unscrewed the cap. She lifted the bottle to her mouth and winced as she drained the remainder of the contents in four quick swallows. Then she headed straight for her bedroom and fell into bed. Exhaustion flooded over her. A moment later, her eyelids drooped.

Six hours later Dana awoke with a start and stared at the clock on her bedside table.

‘Goddamn it!’ she yelled, hauling herself out of bed. What was wrong with her? How could she fall asleep
now?
She couldn’t miss her flight – she had to get to Chicago on time.

She rushed into the bathroom and slipped out of her clothes, letting them fall to the floor in a pile at her feet before stepping inside the shower and turning the hot water up full blast. She had to wash the filth of her memories out her hair, out of her nostrils, out of her skin.

Without warning, a low gurgling noise sounded deep in the pit of her stomach. A split second later a rainbow of vomit exploded from her mouth and covered her naked body. The Jack Daniel’s, coupled with exhaustion and a whole lot of other shit she was carrying around with her.

Gagging with dry heaves now, Dana twisted the shower off – it made a metallic squeak – and stepped out onto the tiled floor. She stumbled to the sink and brushed her teeth for five solid minutes. She gargled for another two before finally using a clean white towel to wipe the steam away from the mirror. Still nauseous and shaking, she gripped the sides of the sink and peered at her reflection.

‘You look terrible,’ she told herself. ‘You really look like shit, sister.’

She towel-dried her hair and quickly dressed in a pair of hip-hugger jeans and an oversized green turtleneck before strapping her Glock into the holster around her waist and checking the mirror again.

Much
better.

She glanced down at her watch. Only thirty minutes until take-off. She’d really have to hustle.

Tossing a couple of changes of clothing, her notebooks and some toiletries into a second overnight bag, Dana bolted down the fire-escape stairs toward the parking lot. No time to wait for the elevator, and Eric and Oreo would just have to miss out on their goodbye kiss tonight.

Down in the parking lot two minutes later, she switched off the car alarm with the keychain control and slid behind the wheel of her silver Mazda Protégé before cranking the engine to life.

Five minutes later she was on Interstate 90, headed back to Hopkins for her second plane trip of the day. Ten minutes after that she was hurrying her way through the crowded terminal again. As she was signing for her ticket, a voice came over the intercom to announce that her flight was now in its final boarding phase.

Dana looked down at her watch again and let out a deep breath. She’d cut it pretty close, but she’d made it.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Nathan’s flight from Wichita passed entirely without incident, serving its intended purpose of transportation while he whetted his enormous appetite for murder with a dog-eared paperback copy of Vincent Bugliosi’s
Helter Skelter
balanced on his knee. He’d easily sidestepped the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office deputies at the airport, but that came as no surprise. He’d waited a full day to leave and the officers had grown bored with the hunt, just like he’d known they would. Like everything else,
that
step had been planned right down to the tiniest detail. And even if that photo had ever made it out of Cleveland there was no way that anyone would have recognised
him
from it.

He leaned back in his first-class seat, wishing like hell he’d brought his scrapbook along for reading material. Inside, Dana Whitestone’s entire career had been intricately chronicled through newspaper clippings and photographs. Still, there was no way in hell that he would’ve been stupid enough to bring incriminating evidence along with him, so he’d just have to rely on his exquisite memory to amuse himself on the ride.

As the plane streaked deep into the cold black night, he imagined the voice in his head filling the delightful role of Charles Manson in Bugliosi’s book. He, of course, would play the part of Tex Watson.

The man who got things done.

Nathan smiled. Obtaining the plane ticket hadn’t posed the slightest problem. Nobody had given him any trouble along the way, not so much as a sidelong glance. His fake driver’s licence had worked perfectly both times he’d been compelled to produce it, and that didn’t surprise him in the least. Years of meticulous planning simply awaited careful translation into perfect execution now. Everything the voice had foretold was coming to pass – everything was proceeding
exactly
according to schedule – and he had every confidence in the world that events would continue to unfold in the precise manner prescribed.

Three hours after his plane touched down at O’Hare, he pulled up to the guard shack protecting the western entrance of Loyola University in downtown Chicago and pressed the button to activate the power window in the rented blue Acura. The black-tinted window slid down with a mechanical whine and he smiled up at the frail old codger manning the booth, saw the half-empty bottle of vodka wedged into one corner, only half-hidden by a leather book bag.

‘Welcome to Loyola University, sir,’ the guard said. ‘May I help you?’

Nathan slid his prescription-free glasses down the bridge of his nose. ‘Yes, sir. I’m certainly hoping you can be of some assistance. I’m here to see a friend of mine.’

The old guard smiled brightly. ‘Name?’

‘Ted Jansen.’

‘I meant your friend’s name, sir.’

Nathan’s cheeks flushed as he quickly turned up the wattage on his own smile. ‘Of course, sorry about that.’ He told the guard the girl’s name.

The old man squinted down at his clipboard – probably a visitor’s log – then back at Nathan. ‘Right-o, sir, here it is. Do you have an authorised visitor’s pass?’

Nathan handed him the pass he’d paid a student down the street twenty bucks for – beer money, no doubt – and the security guard waved him through with a cheery ‘Have a great night, sir!’

As the gate slowly creaked up and Nathan eased the Acura carefully over an irritating series of huge yellow speed bumps, he reached out a hand and punched a button on the tape player. A moment later the narrator’s perfectly pitched voice filled the car.

‘Jeremy Bryan Jones,’ the man intoned. ‘Jeremy Bryan Jones was a smooth-talking, extremely handsome psychopath who raped and murdered more than two dozen women, bragging that he could “talk the panties off a nun”. ’

Arriving at the library three minutes later, Nathan parked the car in an open space and hurried inside. The tape was enough for the time being, but what he really needed right now were his precious
books
.