Shadow Play (18 page)

“Eve.” Joe was standing in the doorway.

Her hand tightened on the cup as she saw his expression. “You found one?”

“Maybe. I can't be sure.”

“What do you mean?” She followed him back to the desk. “Why aren't you sure?”

“Because there was the death of a child shortly after Walsh examined those school photos Tierney took.” He pulled up the report on the computer. “An eight-year-old student from McKeller Elementary School three weeks later.” He nodded at the report. “But no foul play was suspected. Donna Prahern drowned in the pond in back of her house early one Saturday morning.”

“Then it was a coincidence. Poor little girl.”

“Except that she could swim like a fish, and no one could figure why she'd be walking along the edge of the pond by herself. The consensus was that she'd slipped on the edge of the pond and hit her head on the rocks bordering the water.”

Her gaze narrowed on his face. “But you have doubts?”

“You know what a suspicious bastard I am. It was too close to the time that Walsh was doing his search.” He was typing into the computer. “So I decided to check and see if there were any other curious coincidences.” He pulled up another report. “Candace Julard, another eight-year-old girl. Another unfortunate accident. She died of smoke inhalation a month after Donna Prahern's death, when Candace's mother's house caught fire from faulty wiring. Again, no foul play suspected; her mother also died in the fire.”

“Candace went to the same school?”

“No, she wasn't even from the same town. I went a little farther afield to Fillmore, seventy miles south. Candace went to Douglasville Elementary.”

“But we don't even know if Walsh made the effort to search for her out there.”

“No, I haven't gotten that far yet. But there's a good chance that he'd hit the local photographer in that town, too.”

“Why?” She impatiently shook her head. Hadn't she just been thinking that some serial killers were prone to go after certain physical types? “Walsh went to a hell of a lot of trouble. Definitely not victims of opportunity.”

“Neither was Patsy Danver.”

“Another one?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Same town. Seven months later. Eight years old. Car accident with her father, brakes failed, and they went off the side of a cliff.”

“Good God.”

He nodded. “But every one could be an accident.”

“Yes, and none of them bear the signs of the usual serial killer. Most of those killers are into power and the attacks are close-up and personal. Except for possibly the first child, he wouldn't have even touched those little girls.”

“And there was no indication of abuse even with her.” He paused. “If it was Walsh, he only wanted them dead and was willing to give up any personal satisfaction to make the kills safe and appear unconnected and go virtually unnoticed.”

“Then why did he want them dead? What did they have in common?”

“They were all little girls. Eight years of age. They all had type O blood. They all had dark hair, green or hazel eyes.” He bent over the computer. “And one other similarity. I'll pull up the school photos for you. It's only slight but enough so that even I noticed…”

The three photos were suddenly before Eve, staring out of the screen at her. Smiling at her with all the vitality and adorable beauty of children. Dark-haired, green eyes …

She inhaled sharply. “Dear God, they all look a little like Jenny.”

Joe nodded. “Only a little. The same arched brows, but the cheekbones aren't that pronounced. Still, they all bear a faint resemblance to that reconstruction I saw on your worktable that morning.”

“So he killed them all because they looked like Jenny?” She lifted her shaking hand to her temple. “Not only the same type, but an actual resemblance?”

“It's a possibility. But we can't rule out that it could be a family resemblance and that tie could be significant. Providing we accept the premise that these seemingly accidental deaths were murders committed by Walsh.”

“I'm close to accepting it.” She shuddered. “Though the idea of his going through those photos and picking out three innocent children just because they reminded him of one of his former victims is totally macabre.”

“Maybe more than three.”

Her gaze flew to his face. “What?”

“I didn't have time to go any deeper into the search yet,” he said quietly. “It appears he might have confined his killing to this area of California, but how do we know that he limited his hunting ground to these few towns?”

“We don't.”

“
There were lots of little girls.
”

She felt sick.

Joe nodded. “Then we'd better find out what we have to deal with.” He dropped down in the chair again. “We know what we're looking for now. Let me get to work. It may take a few hours.”

And he wasn't suggesting that she help him. He was trying to protect her from being pulled any deeper into this horror.

But it was her horror, too.

And so was the terrible anger that was beginning to flare within her.

“Maybe not if we do it together.” She pulled out a chair and logged into the computer. “Eight years old. Accidental death. Right?”

LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA

Everything about these mountains was knife-sharp, Walsh thought.

Pale blue skies, sharp wind whipping the rental car almost off the curves as he drove up the road.

He knew these mountains. He had been sent to hunt down an escaped target in the next valley. That was a long time ago, but he remembered that day with pleasure.

As he would remember this day with pleasure.

That little bitch, Jenny, had not really been at that campfire in the woods that night. It had only been a hallucination.

But everything up here was sharp and clear, and he felt in control as he had told Salazar.

I'm going to destroy you once and for all, bitch.

Try and stop me.

He was at the top of the mountain, and he pulled over to the side of the road with a screech of tires. The wind tore at his hair as he jumped out of the car and went around to the trunk. He grabbed the FedEx box and stuffed it in his knapsack, trying not to look at it.

Not that he believed that skull meant anything but what it was. Proof that he had triumphed and crushed that defiant girl who had fought him and stared at him with those eyes that seemed to see right through him.

Because the dead did not return once he'd killed them.

As Eve Duncan would soon learn.

He moved to the edge of the cliff and gazed down at the glacier lake that was Tahoe. Blue and cold and over a thousand feet deep. The man he'd been hired to find and punish was still down there beneath those waters. He'd had difficulty getting that weighted body down the cliff to where he'd managed to push him into the lake. But he'd regarded it as a challenge, and he'd needed to prove himself after Jenny.

No one was ever going to find that body.

So why not just hurl that skull from the cliff? He could weight it and then—

“
No.
”

He stiffened. He would not believe it was her.

“
You can't destroy it. I won't let you.
”

He could feel her staring at him. He would not look over his shoulder; he kept his eyes on the water below.

His hands were suddenly burning as they had that night when he'd held the skull over the flames.

“That's all you know,” he muttered as he started down the narrow trail toward the cliff edge. “I'll do what I want, bitch.”

She wasn't real.

It was his imagination.

When he killed, they stayed dead.

“
Walsh.
”

“I don't hear you.” He looked straight ahead and smiled recklessly down at the ice-cold waters below. “But you can come along if you like and watch the show. It may not be what you expect…”

*   *   *

“We've got to stop, Eve.” Joe's gaze was raking her face. “You're pale as a ghost. We'll come back to it later.”

“Just give me a few minutes,” she said wearily as she leaned back in her chair. She felt as if she had been beaten. All those eager faces in the photos. All those smiles and expressions of hope and wonder.

All those deaths.

“We'll come back to it,” Joe repeated firmly. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Let's get some air.”

She nodded jerkily and let him lead her out of the precinct. The sun was going down, but the air was clean, fresh, and still possessed a lingering warmth that felt comforting against her face. She needed that comfort.

“You should have stopped when I asked an hour ago.” Joe was leading her across the street toward the park. “I should have made you stop.”

“
He
didn't stop,” she said numbly. “He just went from town to town and killed and killed again.”

“Yes, he did.”

“And nobody knew. How many were there, Joe?”

“I'm not sure.”

“You're always sure about things like that. How many?”

“Twelve.” He pushed her down on the bench. “If there were no real accidents in the mix.”

“I doubt it. They all looked like…” She drew a shaky breath. “I don't understand it. What kind of satisfaction did he even get out of it? Some of those boat and automobile accidents were completely without visual or physical contact. If there was any power rush for him, it was definitely remote.”

“Then we look for a different motive than pure pleasure. We've been looking at Walsh as a child predator. What if he's not?”

“I don't know.” She rubbed her temple, trying to banish the ugliness of the past hours. “Okay, why did he target those little girls? The first half a dozen or so we located were the same age as Jenny. Then, as time passed, the ages escalated as well. Nine. Ten … Maybe he was bored with the younger children. Same color eyes and hair.” She stopped. “Blood type was the same as all the other children. O. What about Jenny?” She grabbed her phone and dialed Nalchek. “Nalchek, what was Jenny's blood type?”

“Just a minute, and I'll check it.” He came back on the line. “B negative. Is it important?”

“Maybe not. I'm not certain.”

“You sounded urgent. Is there something I should know?”

Yes, he should probably be told about those children, but she wasn't up to it at the moment. “It's not urgent. I'll call you tomorrow.” She hung up and looked at Joe. “That's one thing that wasn't the same. B negative.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Not thinking, grabbing for something to hold on to. Okay, that was one thing different. Though it may not have any significance.” She gazed at the fountain. Only hours before, she had sat here with Bonnie and tried to make sense of Jenny and her own connection with her. Now she knew there was no sense to the violence that had rocked the world and destroyed that little girl. But there might be reasons, and they had to find them, so they could find Walsh. “So many deaths. What a monster he must be.” Her hand clenched her phone. “And we haven't even scratched the surface. Who knows how high the body count is going to rise.” She straightened on the bench. “We should go back. We've been following his trail through all these small towns in northern California watching him decimate and destroy with a kind of morbid fascination. It's time we accepted what he's doing and pull away and try to stop him from doing it again.” She moistened her lips. “Jenny said when he was thinking about the girl he was targeting, he was excited because she was ‘the one' at last. I didn't realize what that could mean, but I'm beginning to see now. She was supposed to live in Carmel. But we looked at Carmel records and didn't find any photos of anyone resembling Jenny. Maybe Jenny was wrong.”

“You believe he was going to try to arrange another ‘accident' in Carmel or wherever?”

“It may not have to seem like an accident. How do we know? He might be planning to allow himself a sudden explosion of pleasure. Maybe this girl is the finale he's been working toward.” She repeated, “‘She's the one,' remember.”

“How could I forget?” He helped her to her feet. “Okay, we'll skip to a few towns near Carmel and go looking for little girls who meet the same criteria as the ones we've located.” He paused. “But, as you noticed, the ages changed with the dates of the kills. The last one in Silicon Valley was last September and she was ten years old. We should probably be looking for a ten- or eleven-year-old.”

Eve nodded. “We'll check for both.” She started for the gates. “And what did he mean, ‘She's the one'? I'm beginning to have a terrible feeling that I have an idea about—” Her cell phone rang, and she glanced down at it impatiently.

No ID.

But it could be someone from Nalchek's office.

She answered it. “Eve Duncan.”

“You're very interfering, you know. You've caused me a good deal of trouble. I don't like the idea of having to deal with you twice.”

She went rigid. She knew that voice. She pressed the speaker. “And you think killing an innocent FedEx driver is just trouble?”

Joe's eyes narrowed as he leaned forward.

“Ah, you remember me? I thought you might. You're very sharp.”

“Why shouldn't I remember you? You didn't even try to disguise your voice when you were pretending to be that dispatcher, Walsh.”

Silence. “Walsh? Now I wonder where you got hold of that name.”

“Perhaps you're not as clever as you thought you were. Joe is a very competent law-enforcement officer and terrific at searching databases. Why would you think that you might not have managed to let something slip along your very ugly career?”

“Because I'm not that careless.”