The Seventh Victim (8 page)

Raines flipped open his phone, checked messages, and played a message from his wife.

“Hey, baby, happy birthday.” From the background his daughter’s giggling rose up like a blooming flower. She started to sing “Happy Birthday” and his wife, laughing, joined in. He closed his eyes and listened as they danced through the song. “We miss you,” they said. “Come home soon.”

He closed the phone and pressed it to his temple. He should be with them. Only an insane man would fly across the country and chase a killer that no one else remembered but him. But if anyone understood his need to catch this guy, it was his wife, Susan. She understood he’d always be a cop and that being a cop was more than a job.

“It’s not your nature to give up,” she’d said so often. “It’s why I married you, after all.”

He checked his watch and subtracted two hours. Susan would be getting Tara off to school now. She’d be rushed. Distracted. Tara would be sitting at the kitchen table nibbling on her toast and taking far too long to eat. He smiled. Now wasn’t the best time to call.

He’d give anything to be there.

“I’ll catch this guy, Susan. I’ll catch him and then it will be over just like I promised.”

Chapter 6

Tuesday, May 21, 9:45
AM

Lara sat on the stone hearth next to the cold fireplace and buried her face in her hands. Her heart drummed so loudly she was certain it would crack through her ribs.

She’d told Beck she read the papers. What she hadn’t told him was that these last seven years she read the local papers from cover to cover searching for signs that the Strangler had resurfaced. She’d read about dozens of murdered women over the years, and each time she’d paused to pray for the soul wrenched from this earth.

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Lou Ellen and Gretchen, God bless you.”

After several moments of silence, Lincoln nuzzled her hand with his nose and looked up at her as if he was worried. She summoned a smile and scratched him between his ears. “It’s okay, boy. I’m just fine. Only a little rattled by that guy.”

That
guy
was a Texas Ranger. She didn’t know a lot about Texas or even being Texan, but she’d gleaned enough to know that the Texas Rangers tackled some of the nastiest and toughest cases in the state. They weren’t people to go against. The fact that Sergeant Beck had shown up on her land suggested that this case, and especially that Ranger, weren’t going away.

Even without the hat and the badge, Beck would have put her on edge. A six-foot-six frame coupled with broad shoulders and a lean, muscled body intimidated without a single word spoken. Cutting ice green eyes combined with steel under his Texas drawl had had her struggling not to lock herself inside her cabin.

She shoved out a breath and straightened. Just because two women had been murdered within thirty miles of her didn’t mean the Strangler had returned. Those two women, like most, probably had known their attackers. She’d read all the statistics. Random acts of violence, as she’d suffered, were indeed rare. Most women were killed by men they knew or, worse, loved.

The man who’d attacked her was not in Texas because the odds that he had come to Austin were astronomical.

Beck’s extremely male appraisal had her smoothing nervous hands over her jeans. Worse still, a deep, deep part of her had been intrigued and pleased.

There’d been a time when she’d loved the scent and feel of a man. Confident and self-assured, she’d never been afraid to ask a man to dance or to join her for a cup of coffee. But for the last seven years, she walked wide circles around males. And most who showed interest were easily dissuaded by anger, sarcasm, and humor. Her shields. God, she wanted to love, wanted to be held, but behind each new man lurked the fear that he was her attacker.

The lingering unknowns and lost memories no longer sent her into hiding as they had after the attack. These days they drove her to her camera.

Though she needed to finalize details for her gallery opening, the need to create overrode practicalities.

Lara’s upcoming show,
Mark of Death
, featured murder scenes from around the country that she’d photographed with her one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old bellows camera. Since only a handful of people knew about her attack, many considered such subject matter odd and more than a little quirky in one so young. But it didn’t take a shrink for her to know why she took the pictures she took. In each new image she searched for the spark that would trigger her memory.

“Come on, Lincoln, let’s get our lunches packed so we can hit the trail and shoot some pictures before class this afternoon.” She thought about yesterday’s murder scene. As it was only twenty-four hours old, the cops would still have it roped off. She’d not get close for days.

But the first crime scene that Beck had mentioned was well over a month old. That scene would be open now. She made herself a cup of coffee and toast and headed to her computer.

Lincoln followed and lay down at her side, keeping a careful eye on her toast, just in case crumbs should fall to the floor. Since he was a small puppy she’d never been able to eat in front of the dog without sharing. He’d had her number since day one. She tossed a piece of buttered bread his way, grabbed her reading glasses, and searched
San Antonio, Woman’s body found, April
.

She got a hit almost immediately. The woman Beck had mentioned had been in her twenties. She’d worked in a bar and, according to the articles, been liked by friends. She’d been a student. She’d been months shy of graduation.

The murder scene was off I-35 north of San Antonio. The articles did not mention that she’d been wearing a white dress or that she’d had a penny in her hand. But then the Seattle cops had not released many details at first. They’d been guarded about giving specifics until the fourth victim had been discovered. That’s when they’d mentioned the white dress. There was no label in those dresses, but the hope had been that someone might come forward with a description of the man who’d commissioned the dresses. But the tips, from what the media had reported, had led nowhere. The fifth and sixth victims had been wearing the same dress and when she’d been found, she’d been wearing the same dress.

She ran her hands over her arms, remembering the feel of the dress’s cotton sleeve. She couldn’t recall wearing the dress during the attack, but one of the shrinks had convinced her to put on the dress, hoping she’d remember. The dress had smelled of sweat and the backside of it had been stained with grass. She’d stood in the doctor’s office for over an hour willing her brain to release one single detail that would help catch this killer. Nothing had come that day or the next or the next.

Inwardly, she’d begun to crumble under police questions and the constant talk in the media about The Unidentified Victim. Who was she? How had she crossed paths with the killer? One reporter had offered a bounty to anyone who could identify her.

Fear of discovery coupled with not knowing her attacker had simmered to boiling until finally she’d fled Seattle.

She’d not had a plan when she’d left the West Coast. All she’d wanted was to get away. And so she’d bounced around aimlessly for months, working odd jobs that kept her gas tank filled and food in her belly. She’d been aimless. Lost. And about nine months after Seattle she’d wandered into a pawnshop and spotted a digital camera. On a whim she had spent what little savings she’d had and bought the camera. That precise day she’d started snapping pictures and almost immediately a sense of peace had eased the tension gripping her body. The world made a little more sense when she saw it through the lens of a camera.

Her subject matter had been varied and scattered until she’d read an article in the Baltimore paper about a murder scene. A woman had been stabbed near the Inner Harbor. Pulled by forces she could not articulate, she’d gone to the murder scene and started snapping pictures. Later when she loaded the images onto her computer, she’d studied them so carefully, hoping to see just one element that would explain the violence that had claimed a woman’s life.

No answers had surfaced that night, or the next. But the need to keep shooting remained. Her cameras got fancier, more sophisticated, but none gave her the feel she needed. And then she’d visited a Chicago auction house selling old photographic equipment. The trip had been more of a curiosity than a mission until she’d seen the hundred-and-fifty-year-old bellows camera. Instantly drawn to the camera, she’d bid high enough to win the camera and drain her savings.

The digital camera had forgiven her amateur photographic skills, but the bellows camera had no patience for novices. She’d found a photographer in Pennsylvania who taught her how to prepare her glass negatives, shoot her images, and develop the smoky, moody pictures that so suited her subject matter.

Lara scribbled down the address of the murder scene and grabbed her keys. “Ride in the car?”

The dog perked up immediately and bounded out the front door to her black truck. He sat by the driver’s-side door barking and wagging his tail while she fired up the engine and the car’s air-conditioning. She loaded her camera equipment into the back of the truck along with a cooler of water in the backseat.

She slid behind the wheel, shifted into drive, and headed toward the main road.

Traveling to the murder scene took forty-five minutes and by the time she arrived the sun was high in the sky and the air hot.

Lara pulled off the highway. A glance at the rolling landscape told her the light was not right. The sun was too high. But later, maybe at sunset.

Still sitting behind the wheel, she snapped digital pictures of the road, her truck, and the area around it as she tried to get a feel for the area. In the distance she spotted a slight flap of yellow, which she guessed was crime scene tape left behind by the police.

Shutting off the engine, she locked the car and with Lincoln headed toward the hint of yellow. Gravel crunched under her boots as Lincoln dashed ahead. She stopped ten feet short of the yellow tape. The tape looked fresh, as if the cops had returned to the area to renew their search. Made sense if they were looking for a connection between the two murders.

Pulling off her sunglasses, she stared at the low-lying grass in the center of the tape; it still appeared to be matted down. She squatted and set her sunglasses on a rock.

Was that the impression of a body? She started to snap pictures moving in a counterclockwise fashion around the site. Later, she’d load the images on her computer and then determine which angle would work best for the bellows camera and tripod.

When she’d snapped over one hundred images she lowered the camera and without the lens’ protection stared at the ground. A woman had lain here, perhaps dead, perhaps dying, as someone had knelt over her and wrapped strong fingers around her neck.

She closed her eyes as she’d done a hundred times before and tried to imagine her attacker. The cops had said that she’d had no defensive wounds, but there’d been skin under her nails. She’d fought.

The Strangler had brought her to the wooded location off Route 10 and had laid her on the ground. What had happened next? Had he straddled her before he wrapped fingers around her neck? Had he been in a rush or had he enjoyed slowly watching her fade away? She glanced at her hands, wondering where she’d scratched him. She prayed it had hurt him like hell.

Lara could not remember.

A honking horn from the highway snapped her back to the present. Sweat dampened her brow and the sun had left her pale skin pink. “Lincoln!”

The dog appeared over the ridge and ran toward her. The two hurried to her truck, where she replaced her camera in its bag and then filled a water bowl for Lincoln. Her hands trembled slightly as she held her own bottle to her lips and drank. The liquid cooled her body temperature but did little to ease her nerves. She did not like this place, though at dusk she would return to shoot the same scene in the fading light.

And so here she was, trying to put down roots, let go of the past, and live. She glanced toward the yellow tape and the grass that looked a little matted.

Here she was.

But where was he?

Beck spent the better part of the day reading the Raines file on the Seattle Strangler. The case files were detailed and precise. The observations were thoughtful. Raines had not taken any shortcuts. There was no doubt that Raines had been one hell of a cop.

As he’d sipped a fresh cup of coffee, he studied a seven-year-old picture of Lara that had been taken right after the attack. It was rough. Not only was her neck black and blue, but also her eyes were so bloodshot their vivid blue was lost. Notes indicated that an internal examination confirmed rape, though no semen had been found in or on her body. There was DNA under her fingernails, but the sample didn’t match any known DNA on file.

Anger twisting his gut, Beck closed his eyes and rubbed calloused fingers over a brow. He willed memories of the gun-toting Lara Church to elbow aside images of the sad, broken woman in these police photos. Seeing any woman hurt bothered him. Seeing Lara Church bruised and battered cut deep.

His phone rang, pulling his thoughts back. “Beck.”

It was the officer at the front desk. “There’s a guy named Raines out here to see you.”

Beck pinched the bridge of his nose. He did not have time for this guy. However, to ignore him invited trouble. “I’ll be right down.”

He rose, rolled down the sleeves of his white shirt and fastened the cuffs, and slid on his coat. He took the elevator down to the lobby and found Raines talking to the officer on duty.

Raines was relaxed as he and the duty officer shared a joke.

“Raines,” Beck said.

The detective looked up, wished the officer behind the desk a good day, and moved toward Beck with a confident stride. He’d showered and shaved and was alert.

Beck extended his hand toward a bank of chairs in the lobby. “Raines, caught any sleep?”

He eased into a chair as if he owned the place. “You get caught up on your rest while you were on leave?”