“No, it was usually one of the girls in some dramatic gymnastic pose. Advertising for the competition season. People around town would complain if the poses were too risqué. Arched backs, bare limbs, that sort of thing. If you’re not used to watching gymnastics competitions regularly, the leotards and bare legs are a little too much in a conservative town.” Janet stood up. “Amy had a beautiful board one year, but it did draw quite a few complaints. I’ve got a poster-sized copy I can show you.”
Michael nodded as Janet hustled out of the room, leaving it cold and tense. He and Gary were left in silence, sizing each other up.
“My life was better when I thought it was simply an accident.” Gary’s eyes moved to a portrait of a toddler above the stone fireplace. Amy.
Michael nodded. Understandable.
Silent resentment filtered through the room.
“I found it.” Janet bustled into the living room, bringing back the warmth. Pride for her daughter rang in her voice and, seeing the poster, Michael appreciated why.
Amy had been beautiful. It was a profile shot of her sitting on the floor, her body filling the entire poster. She leaned back on one elbow, her head flung back with her chin pointing to the sky, exposing her neck. Her right leg was bent with her foot flat on the floor; the other leg stretched out straight, toes pointed. Her free hand rested lazily on top of the bent knee. She was in a red team leotard that highlighted the developed muscles particular to gymnasts. “Southeast Oregon University Gymnastics” was printed across the top of the poster. Without the college banner, it could have been a layout in any men’s magazine. The overall effect was sexual but athletic.
Michael studied the long blonde hair that caressed the floor from her tilted head.
It was just like Lacey’s.
Glancing at Gary, he saw the man regarding at the poster with an expression that swung between displeasure and pride. Michael tried looking at the poster through a father’s eyes.
Would he want his daughter posed on a billboard like that?
Hell, no.
“She’s beautiful.” Michael gathered up his notebook and coat, clearing his throat. “Thank you for your time, I’m sorry to bother you.”
Startled, Janet pulled her misty gaze from the poster. She’d been somewhere else. Feeling like a trespasser, Michael headed for the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned back to Janet.
“Would you mind giving me Matt Petretti’s phone number?”
Twenty minutes after the video had been sent to Lacey’s phone, Alex walked in with two huge bags of Chinese food and two local cops at his heels. Rich smells filled the house and Lacey dashed out of the kitchen. She dry-heaved over the toilet, thankful she hadn’t eaten all day.
The food was cold by the time the police had left with her cell phone and a report of the incident. The men sat down to eat and pushed food at her, but Lacey’s appetite was gone. How could they eat after seeing those fishing lures? Both Alex and Jack had watched the clip several times. Once had been enough for her.
Alex ate quickly and excused himself, saying he had to make a phone call. He disappeared down the hall and Lacey heard the door click as he shut himself in his bedroom. She and Jack sat alone at the table. Several half-full white boxes dotted the table. The men had made a good-sized dent in the food, but Alex was going to have leftovers for several days.
Alex seemed to be warming up to Lacey. He’d responded in anger to the video clip and seemed genuinely concerned for her safety. He and Jack had done most of the talking over the meal, but he had asked her a few questions about DeCosta.
Now in the quiet dining room, she wished Alex back. He’d made a good buffer between her and Jack. Jack was impossible to ignore. He was one of those people who innately demanded attention simply by being in a room. In the tiny room, his male aura clogged every corner. No female could sit across a table from him and not physically feel the impact. A pang of sexual awareness swept through her, startling her. How could that happen, when she’d just seen the most petrifying sight in her life?
The plain truth was she was attracted to him and it scared her.
The man flitted from woman to woman like a kid let loose in Baskin-Robbins. A little taste here, a little taste there. Tired of one particular flavor, move on and try something else. That article in Portland Monthly had made it clear: Jack Harper didn’t have a commitment cell in his body.
That wasn’t the kind of man she needed.
“Don’t you like Chinese?”
“I do.” She grimaced. “I’m just not hungry anymore.”
Jack laid down his fork and gave her an inquisitive look. “What else do you like?”
“Mexican is good or Italian...”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean food. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know what kind of music you like, where you went to high school, or how you lost your mother.”
She blinked. Jack Harper wanted to know what made her tick.
She studied him, wondering at his intentions. He looked sincere. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked such personal questions. She’d locked herself off from relationships for so long, she’d forgotten how to create that feeling of intimacy. She’d been too private for too long. Michael and Amelia were the only people who truly knew her. And Kelly.
Tears filled her eyes at the thought of her missing friend.
“Oh, shit. I didn’t mean to pry. I didn’t think a few questions would upset you. Was it the question about your mom?” Jack looked genuinely distressed.
She grabbed at a clean napkin and pressed it against her eyes, then her leaking nose. Damn it! She hated crying in front of people. “No. It’s not that.” She tried to gracefully blow her nose in the napkin. Impossible. “It’s Kelly. Dear God. What’s happening to her?” Her tears cranked up ten notches.
Lacey had been through this before. When Suzanne vanished, she’d swam and struggled in the “what if” ocean for years. Her imagination had terrified her with painful scenarios. Her visions had been fueled by the newspaper descriptions of torture endured by the murdered girls.
“I didn’t mean to remind you of her. I’m sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean to. It’s just that she’s one of the few people who know me inside and out. When you started to ask...I realized how few people I let inside.” She sniffed through the words, avoiding those prying and sympathetic eyes.
She wanted to unload on him. She wanted to tell him how scared she was for her friend. And for herself. She wanted to tell him how alone she’d felt after her mother’s death and Suzanne’s disappearance. And why she was afraid to let other people close: It simply hurt too much when they left.
What man could handle her fucked-up life?
Somehow he appeared, crouching next to her chair, one hand on her shoulder in comfort and the other brushing the hair out of her eyes. The soothing touch started the tears anew, but this time her eyes stayed with his, watching him through the wetness blurring her vision. Genuine compassion stared back from those steel-gray eyes. Those eyes that had captivated her fancy at their first meeting.
Her tears weren’t scaring him.
She didn’t want him to be the solid rock she ached for in her life. It would rip her to shreds when he left. But right now she needed someone to hold her.
She took the risk and leaned in to him, burying her wet eyes in his shoulder. His arms moved around her and held tight. She felt his lips brush her temple. Calming warmth swept through her, quieting her fears and cracking the hard wall around her heart.
Mason Callahan had three dead men, one missing woman, and no obvious answers. The common denominator was Dave DeCosta, and from that center the threads spread out in 360 degrees. He needed to narrow it down. He didn’t like wasting time on useless threads of information, but the flip side was that he didn’t know a thread was useless until it’d been meticulously investigated. Like the fact that Suzanne had given birth. No one knew anything about a baby. Where was he to start with that one? Had the baby even survived? There weren’t any anonymous babies or baby remains that’d been found in the last decade.
He ventured out of his office into the light snowfall and stared at the hazy sky. Several more inches were predicted in the next twenty-four hours. With a big cup of black coffee in his hand, he walked the parking lot, plowing snow paths that crossed and circled around the vehicles. He liked to think outdoors. The crisp air cleared his head after hours of sitting in the office with its fluorescent lights. He kicked at a chunk of dirty ice that’d fallen off a vehicle. It tumbled through fresh snow, making a dark path. Mason glanced up and spotted Ray watching him from the same window where they’d watched Dr. Campbell and Harper.
Ray would shake his head, stomp around the office, tell every coworker that Mason was psychotic to be out in the cold, and then come join him. They’d put in a lot of miles in the parking lot over the years. It was surprising what progress they could make as they froze their noses. Mason would hypothesize, question, and brainstorm out loud while Ray took notes in his damned book and bounced theories back at him.
Hurry up, Ray.
Mason sipped his cooling coffee and concentrated. He knew the person who’d left a card for Dr. Campbell, shot a video of Dr. Campbell and Harper, and downloaded the grisly video of Richard Buck was his man. His killer.
But who was he?
Had DeCosta done the old murders in Mount Junction? Or did their current on-the-loose serial killer do them back then? DeCosta had never breathed a word about dead girls in Mount Junction. And that was a man who’d liked to talk.
DeCosta had dumped his victims in forested areas; he didn’t hide them. Forest rangers or backpackers had easily spotted his girls. Each one had been found within a few weeks of disappearing, bodies tortured and legs broken.
The Mount Junction girls’ deaths had been disguised as accidents, and had stayed hidden for months. The car driven into the river. A missing skier who’d turned up when summer sun melted the snow pack. A lone hiker who’d fallen in a ravine. All eventually had turned up, their remains harshly affected by weather or animals. And the femurs—that could be found—had been broken.
The recent three murders all had the same broken femurs. But they were all men.
Damn it. Mason wanted to hit something. There were too many similarities and differences between the cases, and he couldn’t keep them straight. Where was Ray with his notebook?
Two killers. One living and one who’d been dead for the past eighteen months. Which man killed which victims?
Who would be the next victim?
Ray slammed the back door and trudged toward Mason with a sour expression on his face. He made a big show of pulling on his hat and turning up the collar of his coat. “This weather is a freak of nature. We’ve never had this kind of nonstop snowfall and freeze in town.”
“Must be that global warming thing.”
Ray shot him an incredulous look before realizing that Mason was joking. He snorted and whipped out his book and pencil. “Start talking.”
They talked and paced for an hour. The snow and cold forgotten.
“Frank Stevenson has been in both places. He’s from the Mount Junction area and moved here after graduation. That puts him in both places at the right time.” Ray made bullet points under Stevenson’s name as he talked.
“There’s no direct DeCosta connection,” Mason countered.
“Maybe he’s just a fan.”
Mason spit out a choked laugh. Frank Stevenson was an ass. He’d proved it the night he attacked Dr. Campbell and then proceeded to mouth off in a jail cell for five hours. The police had wanted to kick him out just to shut him up.
“DeCosta assaulted his ex-wife. There’s your connection.”
Mason pulled that apart and examined it from all directions. “Weak. Improbable.”
“What are you? A Borg? You sound like a computer program.”
“Next input, please.”
Ray blew out a frustrated breath that floated up and dissipated in the cold air. “OK. Jack Harper.”
Mason stopped walking and turned to face Ray. “He’s still on your list? The man’s appointed himself bodyguard to Dr. Campbell.”
“Yeah, convenient access.”
“Aw, you’re full of shit.” Mason started his snowplowing again, but Ray pushed ahead and stopped him with a hand to the chest.
“Listen. He’s been in both places. We can place him close by on the night Suzanne Mills vanished, he owns the property she turned up on, and he dated one of the victims. His name’s turned up in more places than anyone else’s. Plus he’s got a hot temper.”
Mason knocked Ray’s hand off his chest and pushed on.
“Hey, I know you like the guy and I do too, but we gotta keep looking at him.”
Mason halted and spun to face his partner. “He’s also a former cop with a bullet hole in his leg and he’s the head of one of the most successful businesses in town.”
“BTK.”
“What?”
“The BTK killer was an elder in his church or something. I doubt his neighbors ever thought he was the killer type. For some reason you’re not logical when it comes to Harper.” Ray eyed Mason with concern. Like he was cracking.
Mason didn’t answer, considering Ray’s words. The BTK killer had killed over decades, fooling police and family. You couldn’t look at a person from the outside and know he was a killer. Mason knew that. Police school 101.
Ray hadn’t mentioned it, but Mason knew he was thinking of the short FBI profile. Seemed to fit Harper to a T. Charismatic. Intelligent. Socially competent.
“What have you found on DeCosta’s family?” Analyze other suspects for now.
Ray winced. “Still nothing. I can’t find them. I did just dig up a previous address for the mother, Linda DeCosta, in Mount Junction.”
“During our window of time?”
“For the most part.”
“What does that mean?” Mason didn’t like half answers.
“Well, it looks like she lived there during the Amy Smith case and one of the other Mount Junction deaths. But not during the other case. The hiker who fell in the ravine.”
“Where’d she live at that time?”
“Don’t know. Maybe she stayed with family or friends.”
“They don’t have any family. And I seriously doubt they have friends.”
“You know what I mean, somewhere temporary. Maybe even a shelter or something.”
“Look into it.”
Ray made a note in his book. Mason could see the wheels turning in Ray’s mind as the detective considered where to search online. The man had a gift when it came to computers.
“I don’t like the big hole DeCosta’s family is leaving. For some reason...”
Pencil poised, Ray finished his partner’s sentence. “You like the mother and the younger brother.”
“Yeah, I do. We don’t have much to go with there, but my gut tells me we need to dig some more. Who has better motivation to avenge her son’s death than a mother?” Mason said it out loud even though he knew exactly what Ray’s counterargument would be.
“Well, for the most part few women are serial killers. And when they do kill, their methods are less...gory. Poison is usually a woman’s instrument.”
“Usually is the key word there. How about the kid? Maybe the mother is the brains and the kid the brawn.” Mason was grasping at straws. “Not that he’s a kid anymore. Gotta be in his twenties.”
“But why the strange focus on Dr. Campbell? That’s got to be a male not a mother instigating that crap, the note card and video surveillance.”
“Maybe she’s a lesbian.” That idea got a chest rumble from Ray.
“Don’t laugh. Remember that movie about the female serial killer? Monster. Aileen Wuornos killed truckers. She was gay and it affected what she did. Nothing’s improbable.”
“You just told me Frank Stevenson was improbable.”
“He’s still on our list, isn’t he? I’m not ruling anyone out right now.” The look on Ray’s face told Mason he was thinking of his partner’s illogical view on Harper.
Ignoring him, Mason noticed his hands were numb. “Let’s get inside. We’ve got some threads to tie up.”
The two men kicked the snow off their boots, their breath forming misty clouds, and silently went up the station stairs. Mason was sure they’d accomplished nothing except raising more questions.