The Last Victim (10 page)

“She touched the knob. She touched the lock. She touched the goddamned toilet handle.” Haney practically bristled with indignation. “At a minimum.”

“So? If your people did their jobs, all those surfaces have been tested for fingerprints,” Bartoli countered. “I know our lab’s already working on the trace evidence that was recovered in there.”

“A killer of this type would wear gloves. Probably surgical gloves,” Charlie said, with Julie Mead’s words in mind. “I doubt you’ll find any fingerprints, although if the gloves were ripped it’s possible.”

Haney gave her a hard-eyed stare.

“Detective!” A shout-out from the kid’s room interrupted before he could say anything, making them all glance that way. “You want to come in here a minute?”

“Yeah,” Haney called back. With a dark look at Charlie and a glare for Bartoli, Haney growled, “She’s your expert. In the future, I suggest you keep her under control,” before heading that way.

“When they find forensic evidence in that closet, you can thank me,” Charlie called after him.

Haney replied with a dismissive wave of his hand before disappearing into the kid’s bedroom.

“Way to be tactful.” Bartoli gave her a faint, wry smile.

“I don’t think he likes me,” Charlie said, making an effort to lighten the atmosphere.

“I doubt I top his favorite person list, either. He’s one of those local cops who resent us being here. He thinks it’s his investigation, and we’re hijacking it. Happens sometimes. Plus, word is he suffers a lot of pain from his leg. Smashed it up pretty bad in a car accident years ago.” Bartoli slid a comprehensive look over her. “You sick or something? That’s the second time today that you’ve tossed your cookies. What’s up?”

She managed what she felt was a truly commendable casual shrug.
“I’m thinking I might have a touch of food poisoning. Or the flu. Hard to say, really.”

“Yeah.” Bartoli’s eyes slid over her again. “You up to the girl’s bedroom?”

No
was the honest answer. But it had to be done, so Charlie braced herself and nodded.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In the end, there wasn’t anything to see. Just a small bedroom with a stripped double bed. Pale blue walls, white wicker headboard and chest. No bloodstains, no sign of a struggle. Clothes and other belongings already carted away by the FBI. Since the house was a vacation rental, Charlie wouldn’t have expected to find anything of Bayley Evans’ personality in the room, and she didn’t. What she also didn’t find was Bayley Evans’ spirit.

Which didn’t necessarily mean that the girl was still alive, although Charlie hoped it was the case. Charlie hadn’t seen Tom Mead’s spirit, either, and he was definitely dead. Some souls, no matter how violently they had died, crossed over peacefully without lingering. Although it was always possible that Tom Mead’s spirit was still earthbound and was just not attached to anything in the house. In her experience, spirits forcefully ripped from their bodies were unpredictable in what they attached to. She’d encountered one attached to a neighbor’s cat.

“Come on, let’s go,” Bartoli said as they emerged from the bedroom. His eyes slid over her, the expression in them making Charlie question what she looked like. If the way she felt was any indication, she was as white as Wonder bread, huge-eyed, and covered with a fine
sheen of sweat. Chalk it up to meet-the-ghosts anxiety. Although, of course, he had no way of knowing that. “Time to wrap it up for the night.”

Charlie wasn’t sorry to precede him down the stairs. She’d had the day from hell several times over, and right now what she needed was to put as much distance between herself and the spirit world as she could.

There was just one problem with that.

“Bayley Evans is still out there.” Her voice was flat as she spoke over her shoulder to Bartoli, who followed her out the French doors. Letting herself think about what might be happening to the girl was the worst thing she could do, Charlie knew. If she did, she would devolve into a mass of quivering despair, which would do no one any good. As difficult as it was, she had to stay strong, had to stay focused, had to keep the horror at arm’s length. It was the only way she could do her job.

Anything else was counterproductive.

This time, when the brisk sea breeze hit her, she shivered like it was an arctic blast. She was glad for her jacket. Sliding it on as she walked across the deck and down the steps to the walkway below, she was still freezing as she buttoned it up and had to fold her arms over her chest in an effort to get warm. Everywhere she looked, the night was dark and forbidding. The beach was deserted, the sea oats blew almost double, the tide rolled in with a crash, and the weathered planks beneath her feet seemed to stretch out endlessly into the shadows. Even the stars seemed small and cold and distant.

She was, Charlie realized, still suffering from her reaction to the gruesome visions of Julie Mead and the heartbreaking ones of her son.

God, you’ve got the wrong woman here. I’m not tough enough for this
.

Bartoli said, “We have teams of agents working twenty-four seven to find her. You’ve done everything you can for today. You are officially off the clock.”

Charlie sighed inwardly. She was so exhausted, so cold and queasy and headache-y, that her thought processes were affected. For the moment, coming up with a good lie to explain how she knew what she
knew was probably beyond her, but still there was something that she had to tell him.

“The killer wore surgical gloves. More important, he has a red heart on the back of his hand. Maybe it’s a tattoo, I’m not sure.”

Bartoli had been walking beside her. He stopped. Charlie kept on going, head bent against the wind, arms folded, trudging on determinedly toward the pink house that thankfully was getting close now. It took him a few seconds to catch up with her again.

“You want to tell me how you know that?”

No, she really didn’t. “I just know. It’s accurate. Use it to find Bayley Evans.”

“You do some kind of fancy expert analysis back there that I missed?”

“Yep.”

“Want to explain your methodology?”

“Let’s just say that your investigation is benefiting from my years of experience, okay?”

Bartoli said nothing for a moment. He was frowning, and Charlie could feel speculation rolling off him in waves. She kept walking. The planks ended when they reached the driveway. It was packed with official-type vehicles, and the RV was brightly lit and still as busy as a beehive at noon. It was good to know that, even if she was about to bow out for the night, the search for Bayley Evans would be proceeding at full throttle.

Realizing she was just a tiny cog in a big machine was an enormous relief.

She was going to put Bayley Evans, and her family, and the other victims, out of her mind, at least for the next few hours. What she needed to do now was rest and get her brain back up to speed. Then she would turn all her formidable resources to helping the authorities find the bastard who had done this.

Please, God, let it be enough
.

“A red heart on the back of the unsub’s hand. You’re sure enough about that for me to add it to the official description of the individual we’re looking for,” Bartoli said finally. From his tone, it wasn’t really a question.

“As of the night the Meads were killed, he had a red heart on the back of his hand.” Charlie looked back at Bartoli as they reached the steps that led up to a wide, screened-in back porch. “I’m absolutely positive about that. I’m not sure what it is, or if it was permanent. But it was there.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“I do.” Charlie felt her throat tighten. She’d been battling the memory ever since Julie Mead had described the heart, but it kept thrusting itself into the forefront of her mind, and now there was no escape.

Once again she was seventeen years old, peeking around the basement door just in time to watch a killer cut Diane Palmer’s throat. For the space of a terrible heartbeat, she could picture the scene as clearly as if she were there.

Stumbling on the top step, Charlie nearly fell to her knees. Only Bartoli’s arm hooking her waist at the last minute saved her from a fall.

“Careful.” He hauled her upright.

“Thanks.” Thrusting the memory away, grateful for the steadying arm that remained around her waist as she regained her balance, she took a deep breath, then forced herself to take one more quick plunge into the past. “The Boardwalk Killer—the man I saw when I was seventeen—didn’t have a heart on his hand. There was nothing on the backs of his hands, nothing at all.”

“You sure?”

They were walking across the dark screened porch as they talked. When they reached the door, Bartoli’s arm dropped away. Charlie was surprised by how much she missed its warm support.

“Yes. Absolutely.” Trying not to shiver openly, Charlie cast a quick look around while Bartoli unlocked the door. The screened porch was darker even than the night, with inky shadows everywhere. The wind blowing off the ocean was picking up, making the fronds on the nearby palms flap with a sound like birds’ wings and carrying a strong smell of salt with it.

“He could have acquired it later.”

“Yes.”

At least Bartoli didn’t start delving into the whole how-sure-are-you-and-how-do-you-know-anyway school of questioning, and for that she was grateful. Something about the night itself was unsettling her, but she really didn’t want to start trying to analyze why that should be. She was too tired, too emotionally wrung out. She already knew, because Bartoli had told her on the flight down, that she would be sharing the house with him, Crane, and Kaminsky. She was less clear on how that was going to work, exactly, and at the moment she didn’t care. What she desperately needed was a couple of Tums (knowing she would probably be encountering nausea-inducing spirits, she had brought her own supply, but unfortunately the two she had taken prior to leaving her house back in Big Stone Gap had worn off by the time she encountered the dead kid in the chair), a hot shower, and bed, in that order.

Got to lie down before I fall down
. Her mother used to say that a lot, when she came home drunk. Charlie couldn’t believe she was hearing the familiar slurry voice echoing in her head under these very different circumstances, even if the sentiment was apt.

“You want something to eat? Might make you feel better.” Bartoli pushed the door open, and gestured to her to go inside, which she did. “Unless my nose deceives me, they ordered pizza.”

Like the Meads’ rental, this beach house had its main rooms facing the ocean. Charlie walked into the kitchen and glanced around to discover a familiar cardboard box on the table: as Bartoli had predicted, there was pizza. With her stomach in the shape it was in, though, food was the last thing she wanted. Walking past it, trying not to breathe in the spicy aroma, she saw that the layout of this house was very similar to that of the Meads’. The main difference was that the tile floors were terra-cotta and the walls were sunshine yellow. Otherwise, kitchen, dining area, living room, entry hall, stairs: everything looked to be pretty much the same.

Charlie fought the impulse to turn and run away, screaming.

Someone was coming down the stairs from the second floor.

“I ordered pizza. Pepperoni. There’s plenty left.” The speaker was Kaminsky, who stopped a few steps from the bottom. Despite the hour, she was still fully dressed in her suit and heels. Her expression as she looked at Charlie was less than welcoming. “Or if you’d rather,
there are some groceries in your refrigerator. Eggs, cheese, lunch meat, that kind of thing. For tonight, that’s the best you’re going to get.”

“I’m not hungry.” The mere thought of food made her stomach cramp warningly. To divert herself, Charlie latched onto something that puzzled her. “I have a refrigerator?”

“You’ve got the in-law suite. It’s basically a self-contained apartment. Fridge included.”

“If you’re ready to go up, Kaminsky will show you where it is,” Bartoli said.

Charlie was. More than ready. She nodded.

“Get anything?” Bartoli asked Kaminsky as Charlie started up the stairs.

“Twenty-seven men who fit the parameters living within a two-hundred-fifty-mile radius. I was working on narrowing it down when I had to stop to babysit.” Kaminsky’s gaze shifted to Charlie, who had almost reached her by that time. “No offense.”

At the moment, Charlie was too tired to take any. She shook her head. “None taken.”

“You’re not babysitting, you’re protecting a witness.” Bartoli’s voice was crisp. “There’s a strong possibility that Dr. Stone has seen our unsub, remember. If he knows that, and discovers she’s here helping us, there’s a chance he’ll come after her.”

That stopped Charlie in her tracks. Her heart lurched.
There’s a happy thought to top off a perfect day
. She was surprised it hadn’t occurred to her. Gripping the rail hard with one hand, she turned to look at Bartoli.

“The Boardwalk Killer knows I saw him, or at least he should,” she said. “He didn’t see me at the time, but it was all over the news. Killers of his type tend to like to follow the investigation through the media. If this is the same man, he probably has a scrapbook or some similar physical record filled with news clippings from the killings. The authorities tried to keep my identity secret at the time, but it leaked out. I’m quite sure information about me, including my picture, will be among his artifacts.”

Bartoli nodded. “If this unsub
is
the Boardwalk Killer, and that’s still an if, we’re hoping he doesn’t find out you’re here. We’re doing our best to keep the fact that you’re working with us confidential.
Outside of the three of us, and my boss, nobody else knows who you are, and by that I mean about your association with the previous murders.”

“Even if he has a picture of you, it would be of a seventeen-year-old girl, not the illustrious Dr. Charlotte Stone, serial killer expert.” Kaminsky’s eyes ran over her mockingly. “I’m guessing there’s a pretty big difference. He probably wouldn’t even recognize you if he saw you.”