Total Victim Theory (13 page)

And indeed Jeff seemed to linger near her for a moment. Closer than he needed to be. Deeply invading her comfort zone. Saying nothing. Just hovering and looking into her eyes for a wonderful, excruciating eternity.

But then he drew back.

She was hugely disappointed but tried not to let the emotion find its way into a frown. Keep the game face on. There would be other opportunities.

“Hey, that kind of looks like you!” Courtney laughed and pointed to an FBI wanted poster tacked up against the wall above bins of
The Onion
and
Westword
magazines. The poster was one of several depicting the faces of fugitives and missing persons.

The sketch really did look like him.

Jeff positioned his smiling mug next to the image. “Maybe it's my long-lost brother.”

“Or your evil twin.” Courtney drew closer and read the caption. “
Wanted for the murder of nine women in California, Oregon, and Colorado
.
Called the Handyman killer by the press—
oh, I’ve heard about this guy on the news. Super creepy.” She took a
Westword
and covered up the lower part of Jeff’s face to compare his eyes with the eyes on the sketch. “Same eyes.” She withdrew the magazine. “Same mouth, same nose . . . and you’re both lady killers . . . but no, sorry, you’re too good-looking to be him.”

Jeff remained next to the poster. “Maybe I could play him in the movie version?”

“Yeah,” Courtney said. She looked at the portrait again. “But what I’m wondering is . . . if he kills all these girls, how do they know what he looks like?”

“I guess one of them must have lived to tell.”

“Probably the cutest one.” Courtney looked at her reflection in the glass door and brushed back her wet hair. “I bet he’d let me live. What do you think, Jeff?” She turned, expecting to encounter Jeff’s eyes, but he was hunched over the poster reading some fine print at the bottom. He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Jeff?” she repeated.

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“I was asking if you thought the killer would let me live?”

Jeff turned and drew close to her. He made a show of closely looking her over. He looked so cute with his soaked clothes and hair. Even his eyebrows were wet. “I can't speak for him, but I doubt I could bring myself to do it,” he said.

Courtney leaned forward. But again. No kiss.

The rain eventually stopped. They left the Student Union and crossed through the rest of campus back to Guadalupe. Everything was cold and glistening. They walked slowly. She wanted to savor his company.

“This is my place.” Courtney gestured toward the huge white Chi Omega mansion just ahead on their left. It was already after 2:00 a.m., but dozens of the house’s windows still blazed with light. Many of the girls had probably just returned from the bubble wrap party. This was the critical parting moment. Jeff hadn’t kissed her or even asked for her number yet. If he walked away now, she might never see him again.

She needed to jumpstart the situation a bit. Inject it with some
sexual tension, so he’d make a move. Then she could politely turn him down, get his number, and he’d call her in two or three days.

But he wasn’t even looking at her. He was ogling the Chi Omega house as if he wanted to scarf it down in a single bite.

“So, is that a . . . um . . . sorority house?” Jeff asked. He made his eyes exaggeratedly wide, like a kid in a candy store.

“Easy there, Ted Bundy. Don’t get too excited.” She gave his shirt a little tug and batted her eyes at him. Now she had his full attention again.

“How could you tell I was excited?” A mischievous smirk crept onto his lips.

“Well, more so . . . earlier. When we were dancing, you know,
close
at Chuy's.”

“Yeah?”

“Something either piqued your interest or else you had a roll of quarters stashed in your pocket.” Well, there is was. A Hail Mary pass with five seconds left in the ball game.

He leaned in close. Intense eye contact. “I was planning to do laundry later.”

She made a forlorn sigh. “That's so disappointing.”

“Why’s that?”

“I took you for the caliber of guy who owns his own washer-dryer.”

He maneuvered his mouth to within inches of hers. His lips hovered there like a snake poised to strike. So close they were almost, but not quite, touching.

Was he just intentionally tormenting her?

She couldn’t take the tension. She edged forward onto her tiptoes and bridged the gap between their lips.

He pressed his mouth firmly against hers. She closed her eyes and brought her arms tightly around him. She liked the way he smelled—Bulgari Aqua maybe—and how his lean body felt touching hers.

They made out for what must have been five minutes. Drunken people stumbled by and snickered. Then, somewhat to Courtney's surprise, Jeff pulled back and placed his hands on her shoulders. She opened her eyes, wondering how smeared her lipstick looked.

“I’d love to stay, but I didn’t bring any pj's,” Jeff said.

She considered the notion of letting him stay. She wanted him—probably. But not yet. Definitely not tonight. Still she wanted to push things just a bit farther. To leave him wanting her. “I could lend you a pair,” she said.

Jeff batted his eyelashes. “But then you'd just think I was trying to get into your pants.”

She laughed. “Actually, it's against the rules for boys to spend the night. So don’t get any ideas in your head, mister.”

He drew his mouth up to her ear. “So, sneak me in,” he whispered.

Courtney pursed her lips. “That would be kind of romantic.” She was a master at giving mixed signals. The green stop sign, as she called it. “But no, I could never do that. It's way too risky.”

They kissed again.

She felt his hands slip beneath her sweater. He was touching her stomach and edging upwards. Waves of heat coursed through her body. She wedged her fingers into the furrow of his lower back and pulled him into her. Things escalated, as hands did what hands will do.

This time, it was she who pulled away. And this was as good a time as any to put on the brakes. Before things got too out of hand. “I think we should call it a night, Jeff.”

He stared at her. For just a second, there was something distant in his eyes. Almost calculating. But then it was gone before she was even sure she'd seen it. Like an image flashing subliminally on a TV commercial.

Finally, he smiled. “So let me walk you up to your door and kiss you goodnight.”

Jeff took her hand and they strolled up the long, winding sidewalk that led to the front door of Chi Omega. They stopped and their lips picked up where they’d left off.

The resumed make-out session went on longer than Courtney had planned and soon was getting hot and heavy, which she also hadn’t planned.

Her heart was beating hard. She liked the way his lips felt. And the way he was touching her. His hands were clouding her judgment.

Soon, she found herself wanting him for real.

Not on a second or third date.

Tonight.

Rules have exceptions. And this guy was exceptional. If he was the real deal, he wouldn’t hold it against her if she invited him in.

She pulled back for a moment and searched his eyes for some hint of a false heart—that this was a game to him. She found nothing there but true-blue sincerity. “I guess I could sneak you in for a quick tour. Pajamas not included, got it?”

“I can live with that,” he said.

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ll go in the front door and make sure the coast is clear. You go around back. There’s a door that goes to the basement. Meet me there in three minutes.”

Jeff gave a nod.

16

El Paso, 1989

Rose entered the laundry room two or three minutes before the load was dry. She heard the familiar sound of clothes tumbling about. However, a second later, her ear tuned in to a slight irregularity. Behind the smooth tumbling, there was a thumping sound, clear and distinct. A sound which meant something had gotten mixed in with the clothes, probably a stowaway from an unemptied pocket. Years of housework had given Rose a certain expertise at guessing what random objects would turn up based on the noise they made. Coins were the easiest to divine, but she could also readily diagnose combs, key rings, action figures, and a host of other tag-along items.

Waiting for the buzzer, Rose pondered the possibilities, but could not put her finger on what it might be. Whatever it was, was small, but not tiny, probably roundish and soft, or at least not metallic. What was odd is that the thump came in two distinct varieties, one that was light and soft, and a second, much like the first, but accompanied by a scratch, as if the object had a sliver of plastic on just one side.

The buzzer finally went off, and Rose flung open the dryer door to a rush of heat. Inside was everything that had been tossed in the hamper in the last two days. Mostly clothing belonging to the household’s four male residents—her husband Gary and the three boys: Garrett, Tad, and Luke, ages twelve, ten, and seven. Curiosity mounting, Rose wrestled the clothes into the hamper and peered into the dryer’s dim interior to uncover the culprit of the odd thump. Seeing nothing, she reached her arm in probing
around on the concave floor. After a moment, she felt something and gave a slight jerk as the sensation registered.

Whatever it was felt . . . well . . . furry.

She pulled it out. At first glance, it looked like a rabbit’s foot. However, the next instant, she saw that wasn't it at all.

What she held in her hand was a dog's paw.

She stared blankly at it and ran her fingers across the black pad. Then she turned it over and examined the short gray fur on the top and the black nails. She felt the fragile bones of what was the left front paw of a small dog.

A paw she could not help but recognize.

She tilted it forward and saw that the back end was encrusted with blood. A rough edge marked where it had been cut from the animal’s leg. Her hands were shaking—either with horror or rage, she couldn't have said which—and her eyes darted about in intense reflection. Thinking more evidence of the deed might turn up, she picked up the bin of clean laundry and began going through the pockets.

In the pocket of the blue jeans of her eldest son, she found a small silver key. At first, she couldn't think what it might go to, but by the end of the second minute, she knew the answer to the riddle.

*

“Are all three of the boys still at school?” Rose asked Margarita, the ranch’s sole female worker.

Margarita was an illegal smuggled across from Juárez like the rest of the workers. She’d been with them a couple of months now. While she usually helped out with housework, at the moment she was digging up weeds in the flowerbed next to the front door.

“Yes, ma'am,” Margarita said, looking up at Rose from beneath the brim of a straw hat. “They should be back in an hour. Everything's okay?”

“Is Gary still out on the ranch with the other workers?” Rose asked, ignoring the question.

Realizing she still held the paw in her hand, Rose quickly slipped it into her front pocket before Margarita had caught sight of it.

“Yes ma'am. He and all twelve of the hands are out. They were
breaking the two new colts and then moving a few dozen head into the barn. There’s a pickup tomorrow. They probably won’t be back for an hour or two. Is something wrong, Miss Rose?”

She must have been doing a poor job of concealing her anger. “It’s nothing,” she muttered. “Did they take any of the dogs with them, did you notice?”

“I think I saw Chuck with 'em earlier,” Margarita said, referring to a watery-eyed and high-mileage cocker spaniel, a favorite of Gary's. It was clear that Margarita wanted to ask again what the matter was, but this time held back.

Rose walked around to the back of the house and over to the dog kennel, a rectangle of chain-link fences twenty yards long and ten yards wide, enclosing a patch of grass. A dozen or so yelping dogs ran up to the fence to greet her, tails wagging, tongues dangling. They were of a variety of breeds, half-breeds, and Heinz 57s, including several heeler mixes, a collie, a Mexican hairless, a husky, and two retired greyhounds Gary’d bought from the dog track across the border. Rose saw which dogs were missing, but perhaps out of a wish to disbelieve what she'd found in the laundry, she insisted on counting them.

The pack was two canines short—Chuck, who was accounted for, and Roscoe, who was not. Her Roscoe. She'd seen him last the previous evening around dinner, which gave her a rough timeframe for whatever had happened to him.

The dogs stared up at her. She could have sworn there was a subtle difference in their eyes and ears and tails. An uneasiness, as if they knew something wasn't quite right—as if they noticed Roscoe’s absence. Or perhaps they discerned the alarm on her face. They were so attuned to human emotion. Or maybe she was just projecting her thoughts onto a dozen indifferent canine brains.

*

Rose knew in her heart that Garrett was responsible for whatever had been done to Roscoe. All three of her boys were capable of mischief, but only her eldest son was capable of . . . something like this.

And yet it wasn’t enough to feel something as a certainty. She had to see the truth before she could reconcile herself to the reality and take the appropriate actions to deal with it.

Her hunch was that the key found in her eldest son’s pocket would open the shed. And the shed was where further proof of this deed would be found. Located on the west side of the property about a half-mile from the house, the small structure was a favorite hangout of her three sons. It had been there long before Gary bought the ranch. The prior owner stored branding equipment there. When Gary built a new barn for this purpose, he bequeathed the empty shed to his sons. Since then it had served as a hideout and a seat of boyhood mischief, remote enough to evade parental scrutiny. Such lack of supervision, she'd often thought, afforded too much latitude to impressionable minds. Too much opportunity for whimsical depravities to take root in young psyches. But when she'd voiced these misgivings, Gary only laughed and said not to worry.