The Seventh Victim (41 page)

“Why, Raines? You saved my life yesterday.”

Raines shook his head. “Do you have any idea what trouble you and your private stalker Matthews were to me these last seven years?”

Her hands trembled as she scrambled to calm her mind. “What did I do?”

With the tip of his gun he motioned for her to stand. “You were the object of his obsession. You drove him to kill. You drove him to Seattle—to
my
town.” His calm tone was more frightening than Jonathan’s ranting. “Let’s go.”

She touched Lincoln one last time and then slowly rose. “How is that my fault? He was insane.” A breeze across the rolling hills chilled her skin.

“And then you couldn’t remember.” He sounded so reasonable. “I wanted to kill you seven years ago. I hated the idea that people thought I had raped you like some animal. The press couldn’t let that detail go. They called the Strangler a pervert. They said he was warped. I needed you to remember who your attacker was so that I could catch him.”

Fear compressed her chest. “I tried to remember!”

“God, but all I did to make you remember. And you couldn’t remember one goddamned detail.”

“You got Jonathan. You killed him. You are the hero of the hour.”

“And everyone knows me as the guy who killed the Strangler.”

She thought about running into the woods. If she could get past him and into the woods, she could call for help from her cell. “Why is that bad?”

His voice sounded like a growl. “Because he tainted the work I did. He soiled it.”

“He killed those women!”

“He killed in Austin.” Raines shook his head. “But he was not the Seattle Strangler.”

Energy rushed from her as if she’d been punched. “He killed those women. I heard about the journals detailing how he stalked them.”

“He killed the ones in Austin. But not Seattle. In Seattle all his information was secondhand. From papers.”

“He attacked
me
in Seattle and Austin.”

He motioned for her to move down the steps. “Just you. No one else in Seattle. Move.”

Following his orders would only make it easier for him to kill her. “But you found the penny in my hand. You said he was the Strangler.”

Raines smiled as if relieved to share a secret long hidden. “That penny. Drove me insane trying to figure out how he knew.”

“What?” She tripped on the bottom step and took several hard steps before she recovered.

“When I came on your crime scene and the officer in charge told me it was another Strangler case, I was stunned. But the guy was certain. The penny. He kept talking about the penny.”

Moonlight cast heavy shadows on his face. “Only the Strangler knew about the penny.”

“That’s what I thought, but Matthews figured it out.” Raines shook his head. “Do you know the answer turned out to be so simple? Took me a couple of years to find the answer, but I did. One of the forensic techs that’d worked several of the Strangler murders went out on a date with a guy. He got her drunk, and she talked about the case. She got drunk and talked. So stupid. I kept up with everyone who worked the case. I took her out for drinks one night and she finally told me that she’d slipped up. The guilt was eating her alive. I asked her who she told, but the name was bogus.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He leaned forward a fraction and dropped his voice a notch. “Because I was the Strangler.”

“What?”

“I killed the first six women. And I didn’t appreciate some poacher taking over my gig.”

Stunned, she could barely string two thoughts together. “You were a decorated policeman, and you killed six women?”

He looked relieved to talk. “Six that were found. Eight in all.” He muttered an oath. “When I heard about the Austin killings I knew that son of a bitch was at it again. I knew I had a second chance to track his ass down and kill him for taking what was mine.”

“You didn’t kill anyone in Austin.”

He frowned, his disgust evident. “Just one.”

She searched for logic in the madness. “Who?”

“The last victim. The one that was not sexually assaulted. Fitting I should steal the last act from Jonathan as he did with me.” Raines sighed. “The last Austin victim reminded me of the women in Seattle. They were all lost souls. Broken. Sometimes death is a kinder option than life.”

“Your wife and daughter.”

“That’s right. After they died I wanted to die. But I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger. And then I saw the first woman standing on the street corner. She looked so lost. So sad. I couldn’t bear to see her clinging to a life that would never improve for her. I couldn’t kill myself, but I could make it better for her.”

“You strangled her.”

“I thought about her for days. Couldn’t get her face out of my mind. So I decided to man up and take care of business.” His voice was soft, winsome. “It was quick, easy, and over in minutes. The look on her face after she died made me feel good. She was at peace and in a place where she’d never hurt again. And so I dressed her in white and put the penny in her hand so that she could enter heaven right. It had been a mercy killing.” He shook his head. “But the peace didn’t last, and when I saw the next lost soul I knew I had to set her free.”

“Eight women.”

“I was better at hiding them than your boyfriend. He thought he knew me so well. But he picked a spot too close to the interstate. That’s why he failed.”

She felt sick. Didn’t know what to say.

“When the paramedics said you were alive, I thought it was a lucky break. You could identify the poacher for me, and I could take care of him.”

“But I didn’t remember.”

A bitter smile twisted his lips. “No, you did not.”

“Why come after me now? You killed Jonathan. You got what you wanted. Surely killing me will draw attention to you.”

“The things Jonathan did to you and those women in Texas disgusted me. I was saving broken souls; he was violating women for his own pleasure. He made good and decent work appear sick and twisted. I thought I could let him take the fall for all the killings, but in the end I couldn’t let him take credit for my work. The world needs to know that the Seattle Strangler was not Jonathan Matthews.”

Hysteria bubbled inside her. “Raines, I wasn’t the one who stole from you.”

“No, you were not.” He sounded so reasonable and so sure. “But you got him started so you are going to help me finish it.”

She clenched her fingers. “Finish what?”

“Prove to everyone that the Seattle Strangler was a better man. A humane man. Don’t worry. I’m not like Jonathan. I’ll make it quick. It’ll only hurt briefly, and then you will know everlasting peace.”

In that split second, she knew that to stand and obey meant certain death. Disobeying could mean death, but it offered a slim chance.

She took the chance. And ran.

No one wanted the Strangler case closed more than Beck did. His bad guy lay on a slab in the morgue. His boss had slapped him on the back. The mayor of Austin and the Texas governor were crooning over a just ending to a terrible case.

And still Beck couldn’t let this case go or shake the idea that he’d missed something. Like with the Misty Gray case, he was obsessed. And like then, he couldn’t walk away when nagging doubts wouldn’t turn him loose. “Why the hell is this eating at me?”

He picked up Raines’s Seattle file and then glanced at Matthews’s journals. All the victims had books. All the journals were covered in Matthews’s fingerprints. Most had his handwritten notes scrawled inside.

Yet the first six books were different. He’d collected and scrapbooked the articles about the victims as if he were an observer.

An outsider.

A copycat.

Adrenaline shot through Beck. A copycat would explain why the first six killings were so different from Lara’s attack and the first three Austin killings. The last Austin victim had been different ... more like the Seattle cases than any of the others.

A copycat.

Shit.

Beck flipped through the Seattle case files. He needed to prove that Jonathan had been in Seattle when the initial six victims had vanished. He scanned the pages making a list of the dates on a yellow notepad.

December 20

January 2

February 6

March 11

April 9

May 1

The last Seattle victim had been Lara, who’d been attacked on June 1.

Beck then glanced at the articles Matthews had collected about the killings and himself. There were older articles about the animal killings in Austin. An article about Matthews winning contracts for furniture. Another piece about him opening his own custom furniture business twelve years ago.

Beck found an Austin article featuring a picture of a grinning Matthews surrounded by a half dozen older women. According to the caption, he had crafted and donated a cedar chest to be auctioned at the group’s annual fund-raiser. The photo had been snapped the day before the holiday event—December 20, the exact day the first Seattle victim had vanished.

Matthews couldn’t have snatched the first victim and also attended a fund-raiser.

Despite what Raines had said, none of Matthews’s credit card receipts showed any flights, trains, or buses to Seattle around dates the women vanished. Private planes and cash would get the job done. And driving was an option. The trek from Austin to Seattle was over fifteen hundred miles, but doable in two days if the driver pushed himself. If Matthews had wanted to travel untraced, it was possible.

But Raines had said he had evidence of Matthews’s travel during that time period.

He dug deeper, comparing the critical dates to credit card and phone receipts, and found discrepancies with two other killings.

Jonathan had killed women in Austin and attacked Lara, but Beck now had proof he could not have killed three of the first six Seattle victims. He’d either had help or he wasn’t the Seattle Strangler.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

And until Beck could explain it away with evidence he wanted Lara somewhere safe.

His radar in overdrive, he called Lara’s cell. No answer. He glanced at the clock. It was after six. It would take him twenty minutes to get to her place and see for himself that she was okay. He grabbed his coat and hurried to his car.

As he pulled out of town onto the interstate, his phone rang. “Beck.”

“Got a call from a kid named Danni Rome.”

Beck tightened his grip on the wheel. “She’s a student of Lara’s. Lara has been worried about her.”

“Right. Danni’s been hiding out in a hotel paid for by Mike Raines.”

“What?”

“The two met up and hit it off. According to this kid, Raines helped her out of a jam with her stepfather.”

Beck pressed the accelerator and passed a truck. “Okay. Why did she call you?”

“Raines gave her a birthday present. He told her not to open it until her birthday, which is two days from now.”

He knew enough about inquisitive teens to know the kid had opened the present early. “What was in the box?”

“A picture of the stepfather, Roger Hill. The guy’s throat appears to be cut. We sent a cruiser to the Hill house. No sign of Roger, but lots of blood.”

Shit.
“Where is Raines?”

“He checked out of his hotel room,” Santos said. “And the rental car agency says he turned his car in at the airport. Looks like he’s skipped.”

His stomach tightened as he wove in and out of Austin city traffic and then edged toward the I-35 exit that led to Lara’s house. He gave Santos the rundown on what he’d found out about Matthews and the first killing.

“He couldn’t have been in two places at once,” Santos said quietly.

“No. No he could not.”

A heavy silence. “We know Matthews killed the Austin victims.”

“He stalked them and took pictures of them after they were dead. But he had nothing personal about the Seattle victims.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “Because he was studying the killer.”

“The penny.”

“Somehow he figured it out.” The officers might have been sworn to secrecy, but leaks happened.

“Damn.”

“What about Pamela Davis? There was no sexual assault and no postmortem pictures in Matthews’s book. She fits the Seattle profile perfectly.”

“Two killers?”

“Raines was in Seattle when the first women were killed and here when Davis died. And now he is gone.” Beck punched the accelerator. “Put out an alert on Raines. I’m headed to Lara’s.”

He raced down the back roads, dirt kicking up as he barreled toward Lara’s house. When he pulled up into her driveway, he saw her car and a rental. Raines. Parking, he called for backup and then, drawing his gun, raced toward Lara’s truck. A dog’s whimper drew his attention to the front porch where Lincoln lay bleeding. He rushed to the dog and touched him. The dog cried and his own hand was covered in blood. Lincoln had been shot.

Beck grabbed his phone, dialed into dispatch, and asked that a vet be dispatched. He glanced up and saw Lara’s keys still dangling in the door.

Lara screams echoed out from the woods.