The Killing League (14 page)

Mack had profiled the killer and was certain it was someone in the hospital who knew their way around the facility. It didn’t fit the profile for this killer to hit a retired cop in broad daylight. Too dangerous. It wasn’t the way the South Carolina killer thought.

So what was going on then?

A coincidence?

Mack hated coincidences and didn’t really believe in them.

He picked up the phone.

He needed to talk to Reznor.

Now.

53.

The Butcher

Despite the claims that his expert analysis could be bought, Dr. Frank Mueller lived in a modest home in an inexpensive suburb of Kansas City. The area was known as Soccer Mom Central. Good schools, neat lawns and not much crime.

It was also an area with gentle rolling hills that were perfect for runners who were big believers in interval training.

This morning, Dr. Mueller laced up his Brooks Beast running shoes and hit the road. He did the same 4.5 mile loop every other day. It was his second passion, taking a backseat to his fascination with the criminal mind.

The fact was, Dr. Frank Mueller had never sold his expert testimony. Not once. He’d been offered plenty of payments under the table. He’d even been threatened if he
didn’t
take the money. But he always refused.

The real reason for the accusations stemmed from his firm and inflexible belief that nearly all criminals knew the difference between right and wrong. That there were very few individuals who could legitimately be labeled “criminally insane.” Yes, he believed there were plenty of insane people in the world. And he knew from nearly thirty years of clinical work that there were even more criminals. The number of people with severe criminal intent was impossible to determine, but he suspected the actual number was higher than most people wanted to believe.

He also felt that the combination of the two, the person who was a dyed in the wood criminal, and who also happened to be totally insane, was a very rare species.

That entrenched opinion often landed him in the prosecutor’s corner when it came to charging killers with their crimes.

Defense attorneys hated him with a passion. The insanity defense rarely worked when Dr. Mueller testified.

He had never paid any attention to his detractors. He did his job, he did it well, and he did it with a relentless consistency that that made him loved by many, and hated by a few.

As he climbed the first hill and felt his heart rate immediately begin to climb as well, he thought not of his career, but of his children. He had a daughter and son, both adults themselves now. They were all planning to get together for a family reunion in the summer, kind of a loose tradition. They sometimes found a cottage to rent on a lake and would spend a long weekend eating, drinking and laughing.

He checked his Ironman watch and noted the distance as well as his pace. He was moving quite well this morning.

He didn’t hear the car that came bearing down on him nearly thirty miles per hour over the speed limit. He briefly heard the roar of an engine before he felt himself lifted into the air and thrown forward.

Dr. Mueller landed awkwardly, his hip twisted nearly all the way around, shock and pain racketing through his brain. A man approached him. Dr. Mueller tried to explain what the man needed to do, that he was a doctor, but there was something about the man’s face that stopped him.

The man was smiling.

He had dark hair, slicked back, and large hands with bulging knuckles. In those hands was a large butcher’s knife.

The man put his hand on Dr. Mueller’s head, pushed it backward, and raised the large, gleaming knife.

Dr. Mueller thought he got the definite smell of freshly butchered meat.

54.

Nicole

“You’re doing what?” Tristan said.

Nicole felt her face get warm. They sat on the small patio behind Nicole’s house, each with a glass of chardonnay. It was one of those perfect southern California days: warm, dry and sunny. A slight breeze from the Pacific.

“I’m just going to have a friend check him out,” she said.

In the time after the attack, when she was putting her life back together, Nicole had from time to time sought and used the services of a private investigator. Now, she felt guilty about one of them, anyway. She had run a background check on Jay Lucerne. The report had proven what she assumed, that he was a straight shooter with no criminal history. No financial swindles or lawsuits.

“And this friend is a private investigator?” Tristan said.

Nicole nodded.

A woman in Los Angeles, Mary Cooper, had done work for Nicole and now, Nicole had called her again.

“I just like to be safe,” Nicole said.

She had prepared a document with Kurt’s full name, a brief physical description, and the tidbits she had gleaned from him during their two outings.

Nicole felt conflicted about running a background check on Kurt. She wasn’t really sure why she wanted to. Maybe it was that look of near anger on his face when she refused his kiss, or the way he roared off down the street when he left.

But as Nicole fired off the email to Cooper Investigations, that small part of her heart that had grown steel during the aftermath of her attack and recovery stayed strong.

She had learned that it was never a good thing to ignore your instincts.

That was certainly one thing Jeffrey Kostner had taught her.

You can never be too careful.

“So what will you do?” Tristan said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if it comes back clean, what will you do? And if he comes back dirty, what will you do?”

Nicole sipped the wine. “If she finds out that he’s got no priors I need to worry about, we can still be friends and classmates.”

Tristan raised her eyebrow.

“And if it comes back that he’s got a checkered past, or he knows about my past and is not who he’s pretending to be, then obviously I won’t see him again and I’ll try to get him removed from my class.”

Tristan laid her head back, let the sun catch her exposed throat. Her eyes were hidden behind big Ralph Lauren sunglasses.

“You know what’s best for you, Nicky,” she said.

Nicole thought that was true.

Right now, however, she didn’t feel good about it.

55.

Lady of the Evening

Patrick Tomlinson couldn’t believe his luck. He’d gone to the bar with one plan, and one plan only: to get face down drunk in some good whiskey. And he’d been halfway there until a voice spoke into his ear.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” the woman’s voice had said. Tomlinson turned and looked into the eyes of a beautiful woman. With a journalist’s trained eye, he pegged her as late thirties, with plenty of mileage on her. But she was gorgeous, he was sure of that. He was a little worried that he might have on whiskey goggles and that she wasn’t really as attractive as he thought, but the booze washed away any doubt he briefly had.

“And put it on my tab,” he said to the bartender. It was a long time since he’d been elbows to elbows with a beautiful woman in a bar, and longer still since that woman drank Jameson whiskey.

“I’m Patrick,” he said.

“Patrick, I’m frazzled,” she said.

He laughed. “Well hello frazzled,” he said. “Is that a nickname or did your parents have a sense of humor?”

She smiled and Tomlinson went weak at the knees. She was even prettier than he’d thought.

“Oh, they had a sense of humor, all right,” she said. That’s about all they had.” She raised her glass. “To parents,” she said.

They both drank deeply and before long, Tomlinson bought her another drink. And then another, and another.

It was nearly midnight when they both staggered from the bar. When she told him that she was a businesswoman here for a convention and that she was staying at a hotel two blocks from the bar, he offered to walk her there.

She accepted.

Even better, she invited him up to her room and offered him a drink.

He accepted.

Once there, he sat at the edge of the bed, amazed at how absolutely shitfaced he was. He got drunk pretty much every night, he would admit that. But he’d been doing it a long time and his resistance was very high. Right now, he felt totally snockered and just wanted to put his head down and fall asleep.

Instead, he managed to pour them both a drink from the minibar while she went to the bathroom.

When she came out, he nearly dropped his glass.

She was dressed in black stockings, knee high leather boots and a black leather bustier.

In her hand was a black leather riding crop.

She walked over to the bed and knocked the glass from his hand.

“Take your clothes off and get on the bed,” she said.

Tomlinson nearly had an orgasm. He had never been into kinky stuff, but then again, he’d never really had the opportunity.

Now, he fumbled at his shirt and pants, finally got them off. Nearly tripped over his shoes as he flopped onto the bed. He was excited, though. He gladly let this incredibly sexy woman tie his arms to the bedpost, and bind his feet to the footboard. He almost fell asleep but forced himself to stay awake. No way could he let himself miss this.

Just for the hell of it, he tested the restraints and found they were pretty damn good. He pulled his leg and he really couldn’t move.

When the woman went to her back and pulled out a large knife, the fatigue Tomlinson felt changed to worry.

He stopped worrying shortly thereafter, but through the gag in his mouth he screamed for the next three hours.

Until he couldn’t scream, or breathe, anymore.

56.

Mack

Deborah Nahler was dead and Wallace Mack refused to believe it. He stared at the story, sent via email to him from Ellen Reznor. He read it for the third time straight through.

The Nailer. Dead.

He shook his head. As much as television and movies loved to portray criminals seeking revenge on attorneys, the fact was it almost never happened. Criminals preferred picking on the innocent and helpless. The easy targets. Most attorneys, especially prosecutors, were either prepared or armed, or both.

But Deborah Nahler.

Mack shook his head. He had liked her a lot. They had worked together on the case of Leonard Goldberg, a librarian who had abducted thirteen children, a mixture of boys and girls, tortured and killed them, then buried them beneath his garage.

He was now doing a life sentence in Robertson State Prison.

Nahler had nailed his defense to the wall and gotten the death penalty, which had later been changed to life. Mack had been the one to build the case.

He had a ton of respect for Nahler.

And now someone had killed her.

Mack typed a response to Reznor, asking to be copied on all crime scene analysis and investigative reports relating to Nahler’s death. She would send it all along to him, whether it was official or unofficial, he didn’t care.

He wanted to know what happened.

And if he could, help catch the bastard who’d done it.

57.

Blue Blood

It was a typical book signing for Victoria Pugh. She was disappointed in the turnout. Disappointed, but not surprised. In fact, she’d never been happy about the number of fans attending one of her signings. Tonight, there were maybe ten. If you subtracted the employees from the bookstore, eight.

The scary thing was, Victoria Pugh was a highly successful thriller author. She’d never made it to #1 on the New York Times list, but she’d been as high as #12. Which was pretty damn good, she had to admit to herself.

She wondered, though, what did other authors experience at their signings? The authors who weren’t on The List at all? Did one or two people show up?

Victoria Pugh wasn’t judging, she honestly wondered how they did it, because when she made ‘The List’ she had assumed money and fame and glory would roll in like big surfing waves in Hawaii.

It hadn’t happened. Her option money was small, and her advances weren’t all that big either.

Now, looking out at the ten people, eight if you didn’t include the bookstore workers, she steeled herself with a positive attitude.

They were lined up for her to sign her new novel KILLING MARCIA, and she put on a smile.

It wasn’t until she got to the last person in line that her interest perked up. The last fan was a good-looking man, with that look of success and money. He had on a sportcoat that was clearly high quality, jeans, perfect skin, beautiful teeth, and hair that was casually elegant. The kind that resulted from two hundred dollar haircuts.

He approached the little desk Victoria sat behind. She looked up at him, and at the book in his left hand. Her pen was ready and a smile was on her face.

But he didn’t hand her book to her.

Instead, his right hand came forward.

It held a gun.

For a brief second, a laugh began to escape her lips.

What, was he going to ask her to sign his gun?

She was about to ask him, but the bullet made its way into the middle of her brain before the question made it out of her mouth.

58.

Nicole

Nicole threw the tennis ball and watched Salvatore lumber after it. He was never the quickest dog at the dog park, nor was he the fastest, but Nicole always thought Sal was the most focused.

When most people saw the dark form of a Doberman, a brief look of apprehension would cross their face. Not the sheer disgust or fear displayed when people spotted a pit bull. But the bulk, the dark, muscular shape of a Doberman tended to put people on edge.

But Sal was totally keyed on her, Nicole, or the tennis ball.

He was never as happy as when he chased that little yellow sphere.

Nicole’s musings on Salvatore’s personality were interrupted by the vibration of her cell phone. She slipped it from her purse and glanced at the caller i.d. It was Mary Cooper, the private investigator.