Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) (10 page)

You knew this was important to me. You knew it would bring me out of the haze.

“
Haze?”

It’s where I go sometimes. But something told you to bring this photo book to me. Because it’s important to both of us.

“
I don’t understand.”

It’s like Noah’s sketch pad. A way of sharing the pictures.

Kate looked at his outstretched hand and studied the album dubiously. “I already looked in there. There’s nothing to see.”

He gestured for her to take hold of it.

I’ll help you. But when the pictures come, they’ll come fast and you may not like it. So you have to be ready.

Kate hesitated. Ready for what?

But she was on the hook now and there was no going back. She reached out and took the album from him, turning it in her hands.

Go ahead and open it.

She did as she was told, already knowing what was inside, expecting to see that canned portrait of some anonymous, telegenic family. But to her surprise the album was filled with photographs now, snapshots of a little girl, taken over the course of several years.

Lucy?

But before she could even register surprise, the photos began to shift and change in front of her eyes, morphing into images she had seen before, images that had lingered in her mind ever since she sought them out in the Open Unsolved storage room.

Pictures of a woman’s battered body, found between two Dumpsters in the alley behind the Sandy Point Mall.

Crime scene photos.

Her
mother’s
crime scene photos….

K
ATE WANTED TO FLEE, WANTED
to jump up and run from the room and keep running until she was out of breath and her feet were sore. Until she had put as much distance as she possibly could between herself and these photographs and this strange little boy.

But before she could think beyond this simple impulse, she felt herself being pulled toward the photo album, invisible hands wrapping around her and urging her forward. Then suddenly she was falling, flailing, tumbling through darkness as images of her mother’s twisted corpse enveloped and swirled around her, pulling her deeper and deeper into the vortex.

Then all at once they were gone and she was standing.

But not in her office.

It was night and chilly and she stood at the mouth of a dark alley, looking toward a pool of incandescent light that came from a bulb over a blue metal door. Just past the door were two Dumpsters, overflowing with cardboard boxes and black plastic bags.

Hold on, now. What was happening to her? Where was she?

But she already knew the answer.

How could she
not
know?

She was standing in the alley behind the Sandy Point Mall. But it wasn’t the alley you’d find there today, the walls and adjoining brick fence covered with a decade’s worth of graffiti. This was the alley of many years past, the alley from the photographs, where her mother’s body had been found.

Drawing in a sharp breath, Kate shifted her gaze to the space between the two Dumpsters and saw a dark shape lying on the asphalt.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, God…

She didn’t want to move, but found herself stepping forward anyway, walking toward that dark shape as she unhooked the flashlight from her belt.

She glanced down at her hand and realized with dismay that it wasn’t
her
hand she was looking at. It was a man’s hand—big and sinewy and covered with tufts of dark hair. And the clothes she wore were not
her
clothes, but a uniform—a security guard’s uniform.

The placard on her chest read
M. BONNER
, and she recognized that name from her mother’s murder file. Michael Bonner was the guard who had been working the mall that night twenty years ago and had discovered Cassandra Messenger’s body.

It was at this point that Kate decided that she was definitely dreaming. Not just this moment of insanity, but the entire day. The call from her father, the fight with Dan, the confrontations with Bob MacLean and Noah Weston, the phone calls with Dillman, the encounter with a boy who spoke to her with his mind and may or may not have been the victim of a psychopath…

What Kate had only moments ago thought was real and even normal was clearly very far from that. She was in the middle of an epic nightmare and any moment now she’d wake up and either be at home in bed or strapped to a gurney in a padded room.

She wanted to flee again, but realized that wasn’t possible because she wasn’t in control of this body. The guy who owned it, way back in 1995, was still moving forward, completely unaware that the daughter of the woman he was about to find was on an unofficial ridealong.

They slowed as they approached, then crouched together just feet from the body, and shone the flashlight beam across it.

Kate sucked in another sharp breath at the sight of the glassy eyes, the gaping mouth, the purple and black bruises darkening the skin. If she hadn’t seen the crime scene photos, she wouldn’t even know this was her mother.

The mother she remembered was soft and lovely and always warm and kind and attentive. But the beating she had suffered seemed to have taken all of that away from her, leaving only this soulless shell behind. A soulless shell that…

Wait now.

What was Bonner doing?

He had gotten up and moved closer to the body and was now leaning toward it. He placed the flashlight on the ground, positioning it to shine its beam across her mother’s face, then reached forward with his left hand and placed his palm over her eyes.

When it came away, they were closed.

This was a sweet enough gesture, but didn’t Bonner realize he was tampering with a crime scene? Sure, he was only a security guard, but he had to know that you never, under any circumstances, touch the…

Oh, Jesus.

Now he was lowering his left hand—
their
left hand—to her mother’s open mouth, sticking a finger inside.

What the
fuck
was he doing?

Then the thumb went in and to Kate’s utter astonishment, he grabbed hold of her mother’s tongue as his right hand went to his belt and reappeared carrying a utility knife. And it was only then that Kate noticed a mark on his inner wrist, peeking out from under his shirt cuff:

A crude black circle with a dot in the center, like the single ring of a target with a bullseye. The same tattoo—the same wrist, in fact—she’d seen in Weston’s sketchpad.

Bonner now flicked the utility knife open, exposing steel, and lowered it toward her mother’s mouth.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, God…

Kate felt sick and horrified and outraged all at once, watching him—
feeling
him—pull on that tongue until he’d exposed enough lingual membrane to make room for the blade. And just as he was about to cut her—to
mutilate
her—a voice called out from behind him:

“Hey, Mickey, what the hell is taking you so…”

The voice trickled to a halt as Bonner—and Kate—quickly let go, stowed the utility knife, and spun around to find another security guard standing at the mouth of the alley, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“Jesus H. Christ…”

“I was just checking her vitals,” Bonner said in a deep voice, “and it looks like we’ve got a DB on our hands.”

As Kate inwardly began to wretch, she found herself falling again, tumbling forward, plunging into a swirling, chaotic darkness, shedding Bonner’s body like an old skin….

And a moment later she opened her eyes and was back in her office, seated next to Christopher, the pink photo album in her hands, its plastic pages empty except for a single canned photograph of a smiling, anonymous family.

Without a word, she dropped it to the floor and bolted across the room.

B
Y THE TIME SHE GOT INTO
the restroom, she couldn’t remember what she’d said to Dan as she flew past him.

“Keep an eye on him” or something along those lines—meaning Christopher, of course. Although she had a feeling the boy was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He’d certainly done a number on her.

Dan had called out to her, asking if she was okay, but she’d ignored him and come straight here. Now she slammed her way into a stall, leaned toward the toilet bowl and let fly, relieving herself of about a gallon of coffee and some of last night’s dinner.

When she was done, she grabbed a wad of toilet paper, wiped her mouth and felt her legs go weak. She sank to the floor, leaned back against the booth wall, and before she knew it she was crying. Not loud, but there were enough tears streaming down her cheeks to require another wad of toilet paper.

Kate hated crying. Had hated it ever since she cried herself to sleep every night for two weeks after her mother’s murder. It was supposed to bring you relief, but all she’d felt was exhaustion and sadness and defeat. And in the years since, she had done her best to turn off that part of her brain, to never allow sentiment to take hold of her again.

To control her.

That was what Kate thrived on. Control. And losing it in her office like that, seeing what she was forced to see,
being
there in that alleyway with the man who had surely killed her mother, had left her feeling helpless and a little scared. Especially now that Christopher’s words made sense to her.

Because you’re one of us
.

She was a victim. Like Christopher. And Weston. And that family up in Tacoma. It was clear to her that the guard in that alleyway, the man who claimed to have found her mother’s body, had done much more than that. He was the same man who had victimized them all.

Because you’re one of us
.

Bonner may have failed to cut out her mother’s tongue, but only by chance. After spending those few moments inside his body, seeing what he saw, feeling what he felt, Kate knew that the tongue-cutting gave him some kind of release. Brought him the relief that crying was supposed to give her.

Had her mother been the first of his victims? The beginning of a two decade-long killing spree?

She needed to get down to the file room, get hold of the murder book and find Bonner’s statement. Find out as much as she could about the guy.

Where had he gone after his interview with the police?

And where was he now?

Wiping the last of her tears, she climbed to her feet and was headed out of the booth when she heard the restroom door fly open and someone said, “Hey, Messenger, you okay in here?”

She recognized that voice immediately.

Rusty Patterson.

S
HE CAME OUT OF THE STALL
and saw Rusty standing just inside the doorway in jeans and plaid shirt, a craggy Tommy Lee Jones doppelgänger with just a touch of Keith Carradine thrown in for good measure. And despite herself, she burst into tears again.

He came forward and wrapped his arms around her and in that moment she realized just how much she missed him. For all her criticism of his investigatory skills, she admired his effortless charm and uncanny ability to get people to do things for him.
She
had been one of those people, and had never once felt used or abused. She didn’t really want his job. She wanted
him
to want his job and to stay where he belonged.

Rusty was still a young man—fifty-eight, if her count was right—and she’d never understood why he’d been so anxious to retire.

He patted her back and said, “One of those days, huh?”

She pulled away from him and wiped at her tears with her sleeve. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“I know the feeling. But this may be a first. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you reduced to tears.”

“Blame it on the divorce and the new job,” she said, avoiding any mention of the Tilt-a-Whirl ride she’d just taken. “I’m still trying to adjust.”

He nodded. “That’s understandable. And I probably should’ve warned you that the job wouldn’t be easy. The trick is to make it look that way.”

She smiled now. “You’re definitely the master of that. When did you get back in town?”

“Couple days ago. Bangkok was too damn hot. Heard I missed a big one up in Oak Grove while I was gone.”

Kate nodded. “Five dead, along with the family dog.”

He paused, looking serious. “I also heard from Bob MacLean. Just got off the phone with him, in fact.”

Kate stiffened. “Why am I not surprised?”

“He’s a good man, Kate. You gotta give
him
time to adjust, too.”

Kate couldn’t believe this. The war was already starting. And it was the last thing she needed right now. “Is that why you’re here? To beg me to give Bob his job back?”

“I’m not big on begging,” he said.

“Yeah, but you’ve always been the peacekeeper. Can’t stand it when the kids fight. Did he tell you what he missed at our crime scene?”

Rusty shrugged. “He mentioned one of the vics hid a cell phone, but come on, Kate, we’ve all made those kinds of mistakes at one time or a—”

“Did he tell you what was on that phone?”

“No, he didn’t, but—”

“It was a major lead, Rusty. A possible suspect. A guy we could’ve pulled in here days ago if Bob had done his job.” She sighed. “But that isn’t why I brought the hammer down. Bob isn’t
interested
in adjusting. His world centers around what’s best for Bob MacLean, and everyone else can go screw themselves. I don’t need someone like that on my squad.”

Rusty studied her a moment. “Your squad. I’ve gotta admit it’s a little strange hearing someone else say that.”

“You can always have it back,” she said. “You didn’t have to retire.”

He shook his head. “I promised myself a long time ago I’d travel the world before I hit sixty and that deadline’s approaching faster than I’d like. Bangkok was just the start. I plan to fly to Hamburg next, then head on to Amsterdam from there.”

Kate raised a brow. “You’ve never struck me as the globetrotting type.”

He shrugged. “I’m mostly trying to get away from the ex-wives. They both seem to think they’re still married to me.”