Unforgivable (29 page)

“But you touch me,” she said in a soft voice.

“It’s different with you. I’m used to feeling you.” He pulled his gaze away from her after once again taking in her new look. “It’s hard enough working with people who have lost their children, but that’s what I do. Three years ago I was interviewing a serial killer named Charles Swenson along with an FBI agent.”

“I’m reading that book now.”

“Don’t read it. It’s worse than anything you can imagine.”

She tried a smile. “You don’t mean your writing, I hope.”

He didn’t return the smile. “Katie, it’s ugly. It’s dark. He was one of the most vicious serial killers in history.”

It touched her that he was protecting her and yet… “But it’s what you write.”

“Some of us belong in the dark, trying to sort it out and understand it. Trying to figure out what makes a man cross the line into evil. You’re not one of those people.” The Boss walked over and sat down heavily near Silas. When he lifted one of his big paws, Silas started rubbing it with deliberate strokes, though he kept his gaze on Katie. “Swenson killed twenty-two women, maybe more. You can’t even imagine in your worst nightmares what he did to those women.”

She shivered. “I haven’t gotten that far. Worse than cutting them up and feeding them to pigs?”

“Much. I was only an observer in the interview. The FBI was trying to find out what he’d done to the bodies. Swenson had teased us about revealing their locations, though he never did. Since I was working on the book about him, I was allowed to sit in on the interviews. There were several of them spanning almost a year. Swenson would look at me—just look at me. All that time, he never said one word to me. I couldn’t feel anything from him. He’d masked his emotions.” His gaze drifted out to the yard. “Like he knew I could feel them.

“On our last interview, he reached over and grabbed me. He locked his fingers over my arm and looked at me with”—the memory clouded his eyes with revulsion—“satisfaction. The FBI agent pulled his gun and ordered him to let go. I heard it as though it were happening in some far off place. All I could see were Swenson’s memories. They flashed through my head, one pounding in right after another.” He ran his hand down over his face, his gaze still directed inward. “And I could
feel
his joy, his lust, his carnal hunger…I could feel everything. I staggered back and passed out. When I came to, I went to the restroom and threw up.” Even now his expression was grim, and his tan skin was pale.

“Why did he grab you? Did he ever say?”

“No, though I never saw him face-to-face after that. I was too afraid to initiate contact again. He knew, Katie. Somehow he knew I was reading him. When he touched me, he…changed something inside me. I can’t explain it exactly, but it opened a door. Until he died in a jail fight two months later, I dreamt about his crimes. It didn’t help that I was writing about them, too. It was like I was connected to him the same way I’m connected to you. When he died, I’d finished his book and was back on this case. I was consumed with it, researching it on my time, living and breathing it. It had been two years since the last girl had been taken, or at least that they knew about. Later that year, another girl disappeared near Ivey.” He finally turned his gaze to hers. “And I saw it happen. I felt it.”

“But Swenson was dead.”

“It wasn’t Swenson. When he died, the weird connection I had with him somehow…transferred to the guy I was trying to hunt down. Maybe because I was emotionally involved with this case more than any other.”

“Because of Celine?”

“Yeah, because of Celine.”

“Do you think this is the guy who took her?”

“I don’t know for sure. He’s the only one who can tell me that.” He ran his fingers back through his hair in one quick motion. “I can feel when he starts to get antsy. It starts slow, and as it builds, I get these flashes of him prowling, though I can never figure out where he is. When he finds his victim, his emotions are so high, so finely tuned, I’m in his head and I understand why he’s doing it. He feels justified, entitled. He likes the power he has over their lives, and especially relishes the moment when they realize they’re in danger. He gets off on the surprise factor as much as the power factor.” 

Silas switched paws, keeping his focus now on the gentle kneading motion. Still, she could see the pain and horror of what he’d seen. Her own chest felt so tight, she could barely breathe.

“I’ve been with him now for eight of his kills.”

“Eight? In just three years?” She couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.

“Including Geraldine and Dana, yes. Like most serial killers, he’s escalating. As they become more desperate to satiate their lust, they make mistakes. But this guy thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. I call him the Ghost, because he never leaves behind a trace.”

“But he left a finger.”

“He was probably caught in the act and it slipped away from him.”

“You didn’t see—or feel—that?”

“No.”

Those words, along with his serious expression, gave her the willies. She looked at the gauze on his arm. “Have you seen him…cut them up?”

“No. That’s the letdown part for him. I’m only with him as his excitement grows, and when he takes the woman. When he ties her up and rapes her. He’s keeping them alive longer, too. Sometimes for a few days. But he always gets tired of them. He probably has no emotion at all when he kills them. That part’s probably inconvenient.”

“Oh, God, Silas. Have you gone to the police with this?”

“Do you know what they’d do to me if they discovered what I knew about the crimes? I’d be as dead as Swenson. I’ve given them anonymous tips.”

“Tips?”

“Where to find his trophies. All serial killers take a trophy, some part of the woman, her body or jewelry or hair, to keep the fantasy alive for him after she’s dead. A lot of times that’s how they’re proven guilty. Dahmer kept pieces of his victims in his freezer. Ed Gein upholstered his furniture with human skin and decorated his house with skulls he hung on the walls. He made things from body parts, like a belt made of nipples. There was a guy who murdered for his shoe collection. This guy, he’s different. He doesn’t want a particular object to relive the fantasy. For him, it’s leaving something in plain sight that gets him off. And because shoes are commonly found on the side of the road, that’s what he uses.

“I started seeing him leaving the shoe, but I couldn’t always spot a landmark to help me find it. He’s covered this entire area, always leaving the shoe somewhere far from where he took the victim. And usually where another victim was or will be taken.”

She leaned forward and took the Boss’s foot in her hand and started massaging it, trying very hard not to picture a belt made of nipples. “The other night in the graveyard, you said he was on the prowl again and took off.”

“When he goes on the prowl, I do, too. At first it’s to try to find him. But something happens as he gets closer and then finds his victims. It gets so strong, it knocks me out, just like that first time Swenson grabbed me. I wake up sometime later, usually in my vehicle. Lately…”

She waited for him to continue, but the haunted look on his face made her prod him. “What?”

“Lately…I’ve been waking up closer and closer to where he’s been. I probably just missed him this last time. Maybe next time, or the time after that, I’ll come face-to-face with him.”

“And then it’ll be over. You’ll turn him in, and he’ll be put away.” He didn’t look relieved. “You said I knew him. That I was in danger. Is he stalking me? Tell me. I want to know it all.” 

“I don’t know if he’s stalking you. But once, when I was getting the flashes, when his urge to kill was just starting…I saw you. He was looking at you. That’s why I came back.”

CHAPTER  16

Gary watched Katie and Silas sitting out on the porch. He’d been staking Silas out since that morning. Despite everything he’d told her—all designed to scare her away from Silas—she still seemed to trust him. And like him.

And she was still scared of Gary, still hated him. She had to understand what was at stake, though how could he tell her when she didn’t trust him? She’d never believe his confession if she didn’t trust him. It seemed, however, that he was going to have to force it on her anyway.

He wished he could hear what they were talking about. He’d parked near the road and walked down the drive. He couldn’t get any closer than the bend that hid him. His binoculars let him see them, but not enough to read their lips. Enough to see that she looked scared. 

After a while, they stood. He touched her chin. She’d let him touch her. Gary couldn’t tell whether they shared a bond like brother and sister or something sexual. Either way, it burned him. He wanted to pound Silas into the ground.

Silas dropped his hand and glanced out toward the road. Gary was sure he couldn’t have heard him, couldn’t see him. Still, Silas walked out into the yard and headed right at him.

Spooky Silas. He’d almost forgotten that nickname, but this sure as hell was spooky. Gary ran down the drive, keeping to the far left where the trees shadowed the drive. He hopped into his vehicle and sped away.

Silas heard the engine start out by the highway, but there wasn’t any way to catch up and see who it was.

“What’s wrong?” Katie said, coming up behind him.

“Nothing.”

“I may not be empathic, but I do know a lie when I hear one.” 

When he turned to face her, determination bristled from her. Oddly enough, her words warmed him. She didn’t think he was a freak. He’d felt her concern as he’d told her his story, but not horror. That’s when he’d felt something else: rage and jealousy. Not from Katie.

“Someone was watching us. And they weren’t too happy that we were together.”

“Ben?” She
did
look concerned about being caught there by him. He felt a mixture of fear and guilt.

“I don’t know. Do you want to go home and check?”

She glanced toward the woods, then back at him. “No. I want to see your notes. I want to know everything about this murderer.”

“Some of it’s pretty graphic.”

“I don’t care. I need to know.”

She had been kept back for too long. He wasn’t going to hold her back anymore. “Come on.”

Before he opened the first folder, she said, “I’d like to see a picture of Celine.”

He blinked at that. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But I would.”

He dug through a box of old case notes and found a picture of the two of them. He handed it to her. She took it gingerly and studied it. She’d probably think how young he looked, and in that particular picture, how happy. He had been happy then. For the first time, he was in control of his world, and he was at peace with it. Soon after that picture had been taken, that world had been irretrievably damaged.

“She was pretty,” Katie said, handing the picture back. 

He nodded, taking in Celine’s laughing face. Dark, long hair, brown eyes. Seeing that picture and Katie in the same moment, he realized that Celine looked a lot like her. Did she see it too? 

If she did, she didn’t say. He put the picture back and pulled out the more recent folders. She tried to hold in her reaction to the photos, keeping the horror from her face, but of course he knew exactly how she felt. Still, she kept reading, kept studying everything. She touched several of the pins on the map, traced his charts and tried to follow his statistics.

She closed the last folder. “Is this what you do when you’re working on a book? Have all these notes and stuff around?” 

“I have to immerse myself in the case.”

“Why do you do this, Silas? Why do you live so close to the dark?”

He was glad she couldn’t read his mind as flashes of his childhood played through his head: shooting that animal, being kicked out of the house at night for some misdeed, feeling the blood lust as his father skinned his prey.

“It’s where I’m comfortable.” He turned to those woods where he’d spent many nights alone. Then he thought of the victims whose terrors he witnessed. “And because it lives inside me.”

She started to reach for him, but he moved away under the pretense of gathering up the folders. “There’s a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche that FBI profilers live with. It goes something like:
‘
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’  The profilers I’ve worked with over the years look into the abyss of the killer’s mind, trying to understand them. One agent was emotionally traumatized by Ted Bundy, who drew him into the abyss. They walk the fine wire between good and evil. I’ve been inside this killer’s mind. I have, while in his mind, understood why he kills. I’ve felt his triumph and joy. What does that make me, Katie?”

“A tortured man.”

He looked inside those big brown eyes of hers and saw salvation. And he couldn’t take it. He didn’t want to drag her down into the dark—into the abyss—with him. “I think this is what I’m meant to do, figure out what makes a man—or woman—cross the line. We all have evil inside us, or at least the capacity for it. We all feel rage and hatred.” She nodded at that. “I need to understand how that rage transforms to murder.” He continued to sort his folders and put them back into the box where he stored them.

She read some of the lists of known serial killers and the events leading up to their first kill. “You’ve done a lot of studying on the fine line between good and evil.”

“Ted Bundy seemed to be pushed over the line by not being able to possess the one woman he wanted. Another man was pushed into rage killing when his wife threatened to never let him see his sons again.”

Her fingers tightened on the folder. “Are you looking for the line that keeps you from crossing over?”

He couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t breathe for a moment. For years he’d been driven to read everything he could on serial and spree killers. He’d done graphs and charts, telling himself it was for his writing. She had crystallized that search in one simple question.