Stone Maidens (28 page)

Prusik started to walk parallel to the exit ramp, looking for a break in the thickset shrubbery that buffered the dunes from
the roadway. She could smell the water that she couldn’t yet see. Being next to an interstate highway, there was no public ingress. She walked a quarter of a mile farther and was about to turn back when a loosely draped cable cordon appeared in the scattering headlight beams of a turning tractor trailer. It was much darker here, far from the lights of the truck plaza. She flashed her Maglite on the ground next to the cable and saw that this was apparently a popular way in; a jumble of footprints led over the sand and disappeared across the humpy terrain of a large sand dune. Christine glanced over her shoulder, carefully stepped over the cable, and made her way through roadside rubble. Past the shadowy bushes, the vista opened up: sand dunes and beaches extended as far as she could see in either direction under the dimming sky. Out farther still, the deep waters of Lake Michigan mirrored the dark night sky. For a moment, the place almost seemed peaceful.

She knew she couldn’t be far from the crime scene. She walked slowly toward the water, taking her time, letting her mind wander. Far behind her, a truck door slammed. Sound would carry far here near the water, and if there had been a breeze from the lake, which was likely, surely the young girl’s screams would have been heard. She must have been murdered in the hours after midnight and before dawn, when any truckers at the stop would have been asleep in their cabs.

Christine rubbed the back of her neck, suddenly uneasy. The thought of the terrified teenager screaming into the void made her shiver involuntarily. She sucked in a tense breath and headed back toward the truck plaza, her footsteps sinking in the deep sands as she trudged. As she stepped back over the cable, the ankle holster on her trailing foot caught, and she stumbled to the ground.
Very graceful, Prusik
. She brushed off the sand and grit that clung to her pants and hands and started to stand.

The bushes in front of her rustled, and a shadowy figure exploded out at her before Prusik had time to get to her feet. From her knee, she withdrew her weapon.

“Stop! Raise your hands above your head! FBI!” She flashed her Maglite at his face, her gun pointed at the man’s midsection.

He obeyed instantly. “I ain’t done nuthin’.” His voice was high and scared, and his hair hung long and greasy from under a hooded plastic poncho that was badly torn, probably pulled out of the trash up by the public restrooms. His beard was untrimmed. After a moment his right hand dropped toward his waist.

“Keep your hands up!”

“I ain’t done nuthin’,” the man whined.

Prusik took a breath. She realized this homeless man couldn’t possibly be the killer she sought, but her heart was racing all the same. “Right. You were just rushing to help me to my feet.”

“I was just...looking for something to eat. Or some money or something.”

Prusik rose to her feet. “You know there are laws against vagrancy.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But I didn’t do nuthin’.”

“You came at me pretty quick. That’s something.” The words sounded weak even to her.

He squinted at her, his sheepish smile revealing a number of missing teeth. “Gee, I didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

Prusik stifled an urge to groan. Her fear was so obvious that a homeless man was taking pity on her. “OK then,” she said shortly. “I’ll let it go this time.” She dug into her pocket and threw him a package of peanuts she’d gotten on the airplane, then turned and strode toward the lighted parking area and her car.

“Thanks, lady. I appreciate it. You have a nice night,” the man called after her.

Christine’s forehead felt hot in the cool night air. Inside the car, she locked the doors and tried to slow her breathing. After a few minutes, she gave up on natural relaxation and swallowed two Xanax tabs on a dry throat. Then she turned the key in the
ignition and accelerated out of the truck plaza fast, hoping to leave behind the specter of death.

Parked nearer to the interstate, the Sweet Lick Resort’s borrowed truck faced out toward the dunes and open water farther in the distance. The sky turned suddenly blacker and the lake, too, in spite of the dull fluorescence emanating from the truck plaza terminal bays. He fingered the key fob’s medallion with the gold intersecting initials—SL—of the resort. He’d taken the bus from Chicago down to Weaversville last night as a precaution. Besides, his own truck still needed parts and was safely hidden behind an abandoned building in Delphos three blocks over from his own old place. When the lady agent flew out of Weaversville earlier in the day, he’d followed his instincts, borrowed a truck, and driven straight back to Chicago. It had been easy to locate the downtown FBI office in the large federal building, park on the street opposite the garage, and wait. He quickly had deciphered the government-issue plates designating the bureau’s vehicles coming and going, and he caught a lucky break seeing her drive out in the large maroon sedan—all by herself.

His right leg caught in a high-speed jiggle. His mind spun wildly. He was paying the price. He’d restrained himself as he’d watched her linger by the sedan and then hurry into the shadows. It had taken mountains of self-control, but he’d done it. When she’d emerged from the brush back into the bright lights of the truck stop, he’d almost sobbed with relief. Five more minutes and he’d have followed her into the blackness, and he knew that wasn’t a good idea. Not yet.

He blinked away the old tears that sometimes found him in moments like these, moments when what he wanted most was suddenly terribly gone. Following the FBI woman back here had been more than curiosity. He would have come anyway, eventually, to
rest on the beach, watch the sky go dim and die, and remember the young loner warm and wet there with him.

In the confines of the parked truck, he twisted both hands around the steering wheel, riding out wave after wave of desperate longing, wave after wave of an endless sorrow that took him right back to that raw boy all cold and wet in the dark of his room. Cold and wet and so terribly alone.

After meeting with her team the following morning, Prusik took the inner stairwell one floor down to Dr. Emil Katz’s office. Katz had turned out to be a damn good forensic shrink, well read on the workings of sick minds. He had teamed up with her on the Roman Mantowski case, the one that had been cause for Christine’s promotion to senior forensic scientist, a title she never used with introductions, choosing to simply refer to herself as a special agent. Prusik deeply respected him for the tact and careful manner he had shown her while working at the bureau.

Stepping down the flight of stairs, Christine shrugged to herself. The workings of sick minds. She knew that her personnel file with the FBI contained her full health history, including the hospitalization for injuries suffered in New Guinea. Years of on-again, off-again therapy sessions were, no doubt, in her record, too. But she had never once intimated the reason for it with anyone at the bureau.

“Christine, come in, come in.” The roly-poly man with the graying sideburns held a well-chewed ballpoint pen. Unlike many private practitioners whose offices included an acre slab of some exotic wood uncluttered by papers, Katz’s battleship-gray Steelcase was piled high.

The doctor shuffled around to the front of his desk and took Prusik’s free hand in both of his. “How good of you to come see me.”

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, eyeing a wall of swinging pendulums. Prusik couldn’t fathom or abide Katz’s obsession with clocks. The room was deafening with ticktocks.

“Shall we go across the hall to the conference room?” Katz asked graciously. “Where it’s quieter?”

Prusik sat down and went straight to the point, giving Katz a synopsis of the murders and describing the gutting technique and removal of vital organs from the crime scenes. “In the last few months the suspect recounted to his psychiatrist the grim details of what could only be explained as facts relating to the killings. Notably, his therapy appointments were consistently held shortly after each killing.” She crossed a leg over her knee.

“Well, then, you do have something.” The doctor threaded his fingers together and leaned back in his chair, attentive.

Prusik described her interview with Claremont, his idiosyncrasies, his appearing to struggle with himself, the conflicting physical attributes—such as his left-handedness—that were at odds with her profile of the killer.

“These visions”—Katz twirled the end of the ragged pen between his teeth—“delusional tendencies or do you mean something quite different?”

“Different, but I’m not quite sure why.”

“This is a bold one.” Katz nodded. “Very bold indeed.”

“Oddly, Claremont has no previous police record for violence, except a recent incident where he appeared to be functioning in blackout for a minute or less. He more or less fell on a woman in a parking lot after carrying something to her car for her, but he didn’t let her up right away. She didn’t press charges. There are two other reports of his blacking out in public. Once at a farm show this spring and then more recently while having dinner at a local restaurant with his parents. He rarely leaves the farm. The police down there have confirmed as much.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Which brings me to this.” Prusik looked straight into the doctor’s eyes.

“Ah yes, your reason for coming.”

“The eyewitness identification was by Joey Templeton, a local boy, eleven years old. He knew Julie Heath, the latest victim we’re aware of. This boy claims he biked past Claremont on the same day the victim went missing. Claimed Claremont was stuffing something in the bed of his truck, which was parked along the same road where the victim had earlier visited the home of a friend.

“Thing is”—Prusik stared down at the swirling pattern on the vinyl floor tiles, remembering the moment in the lineup viewing room—“something’s not quite right about the identification. It won’t stop bothering me.”

Katz raised his eyebrows. “I’m listening, Christine. What is it?”

“Seven men were in the lineup. I stood directly behind the witness. He was clearly frightened but concentrating hard. No one seemed to jump out at him. Every once in a while he looked back over his shoulder at his grandfather for reassurance. Then number four stepped forward. The boy gave the man a good look straight on from not ten feet away through the glass. The kid paused, frowned a little, seemed puzzled, but had no other reaction. I tell you, if Claremont
had
lawyered up, there’s a very good chance the lineup would have been ended right then.”

“Coercive circumstances?”

“Well, yeah, a lawyer would have said so. Throughout the session, the boy kept turning around, checking with his grandfather, it could be argued, as if they had some kind of identification code.”

Katz nodded, tugging off bits of ballpoint with his teeth, listening intently.

“After the kid studied number four for a minute, he turned one last time toward his grandfather. It was then that it happened. The boy froze, staring toward his grandfather, who was sitting in the back of the room. Except Joey wasn’t really looking at his grandfather at
all.” Prusik paused. “He was looking
above
where his grandfather sat, at a reflection in an interior window of a darkened office.”

Katz nodded again and spit out some of the ballpoint pen.

“In that interior window there was a clear reflection of the man who had stepped forward. The witness practically fell against the one-way glass of the lineup room, horror-stricken. All eyes in the room were riveted on the boy’s obvious reaction. After catching his breath, the kid practically collapsed, scared shitless.”

“So there was no positive identification until the witness spotted your suspect’s reflection?”

“Yes, not until then. Now somehow I feel sure of it. The reflection is what did it.”

The door rattled before springing open. “Oh shit! Sorry, sorry, Christine, for not knocking before entering. But I knew you’d want to hear this right away. Hi, Doctor.” Brian Eisen nodded briefly at the doctor and handed Prusik several fingerprint program printouts.

“Something kept jamming on the new Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems technology. Or that’s what I initially thought.” He held his free hand up by his head, as if assembling his thoughts.

“Yes? We’re listening, Brian.”

He nodded his head rapidly. “OK, the thing is that the partial palm print we lifted from one of Missy Hooper’s running shoes, while not identical to the suspect’s, does have a meaningful correlation, very significant, in fact.” He spread the pages on the conference table. “See here, the whorls on each palm? They’re nearly identical to David Claremont’s, only they swirl in opposing directions. It’s as if you’re looking through a mirror. They’re exactly opposite but the same in every other respect.” A broad grin spread across the technician’s face.

“Mirror twins,” Katz said softly.

“According to the data, I’d say absolutely one hundred percent,” Eisen agreed. “And—you’re going to love this, Christine—we
confirmed from a bite mark on the shoulder of one victim that the killer without a doubt has a chipped right eyetooth.”