The Stranger You Seek

9





I felt like I’d been out jogging all night. Rauser stayed until almost six. I was supposed to serve a restraining order at nine. Normally, these things aren’t scheduled, but I got lucky on this one. The target, one William LaBrecque, had been forced to agree to church counseling sessions and to accept the documents I intended to hand him, a restraining order he’d dodged from the sheriff for weeks, in order for the State to consider supervised visitations. Easy money.

I found him in the chapel, sitting ramrod straight, staring ahead. A carpenter, I knew from his file, and a strong block of a man. William LaBrecque didn’t seem particularly happy to see me. The feeling was mutual. I had not been inside a church in fifteen years.

“Don’t you dare hand that to me in a house of God!” He practically hissed at me. His top lip curled.

“Look, we both know you have to take this or you’ll never get to see your kid, so don’t give me the house-of-God crap,” I whispered. “Take it or I’ll leave it sitting here. Either way, you’ve been served, Mr. LaBrecque.”

Uh-oh. I was beginning to think we might have a problem. A lovely crimson rose up from his neck and a bulging blue vein in his temple started doing the Macarena.

“I’ll just leave it,” I whispered.

“Screw you,” he snarled, and quite unexpectedly grabbed my wrist hard as I tried to squeeze past him in the pew. I didn’t like his hands on me and I didn’t trust his eyes, glossy and lit up now like lava. So much for the house-of-God thing.

“Hey.” I twisted my wrist free. “I’m just the messenger here, pal. You knew this was coming. Your pastor made the arrangements. I don’t think a big ole scene in church is going to help your case.”

“You know why that bitch lawyer and the pastor wanted us to meet in the church?” LaBrecque asked. “So I wouldn’t be tempted to cut your Chink ass into little pieces and stuff you in the f*cking sewer.”

Oh boy.

That was my morning. Maybe later I could poke myself in the eye three or four hundred times just for fun.





The sun is streaming in through windows. The room is quiet as the killer leans back and reaches for the iPhone. There’s video there, video of the black lawyer and video of the Asian bitch, the fussy mother hen cooking stinking cabbage for her son. That one was a favorite. Lei Koto on her knees begging and pleading. No dignity at all.

The killer smiled and slipped a hand into expensively tailored pants, and switched on the video of Lei Koto. Everyone needs a release now and then.

“Put on the gloves. That’s right. Now give me your hand. Touch me right here just like this. Do it! Yeah, that’s right. Keep doing it, baby. You stop and I’ll f*ck you up. You hear me? Stupid f*cking bitch. You like jerking me off, don’t you? Say it. Tell me you like it. Tell me.”

“I do. I like it.”

“Like what? Say it!”

“I like jerking you off?”

“Oh no. That’s no good at all. You know what happens when you don’t do this right? I get the knife back out. Is that what you want? Now, try again with some conviction this time. Say it. Say it like you mean it. You like jerking me off, don’t you? You love it. You want me to come, don’t you?”

“Please, just let me go. I’ll do anything you want. I will. I swear. I won’t make a sound. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want you to say it right or I will end this now. Do you understand, Lei?”

“I do. I understand. I’ll do whatever you want. Please.”

“Good. Now tell me how much you like touching me. Tell me you want me to come. Tell me!”

“I like touching you.”

“Say you like jerking me off. I want you to use that language. You think you’re too good to say it? Do it! Say ‘jerking off.’ I want to hear it from your f*cking bitch mouth.”

“I love it. I do. Please let me go and I’ll do anything. I’ll put my mouth on you. I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll let you do whatever you want and I won’t make a sound. Just please don’t hurt me anymore. Please! I’ll be quiet.”

“That’s good. The crying thing really works. Keep that hand going. I’m so close. I’m so close. Don’t stop talking. Tell me what you love.”

“I love jerking you off. I want your come on me.”

“Oh yeah. Tell me you want it. Keep saying it. Tell me.”

“I want it. I want you. I love your come on me …”

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. F*ck! Now, wasn’t that nice, baby? Look at the camera for me and smile. Smile, bitch! Excellent. Now take the gloves off and hand them to me. That’s right. Don’t want to forget these, do we?”

“I feel so dizzy.”

“Yes, I bet you do. Are your lips tingling yet? You’re losing a lot of blood.”

“What happens now?”

“I’m going to stop your bleeding.”





I pulled in to the parking lot at 1800 Century Center Boulevard in the Century Center Office Park off the Northeast Expressway, a seventeen-floor glass building, triangular and black, baking in the midday sun. A few things needed to be picked up at a client’s office, a small law firm but reliable about tossing work my way. Larry Quinn specialized in personal injury suits and his partners handled a lot of divorces. I’d been scratched up by a few rosebushes trying to get a good shot of an unfaithful spouse, and served divorce papers and subpoenas and restraining orders relating to those very cases. Time plus a hundred and fifty a pop for the paperwork, good work if you can get it.

The day was dry like most of our days had been since a three-year drought had kicked in. The weather patterns were changing now, I’d heard, and rain would come back to us. I knew I should care more about our trees, about Lake Lanier, our main source of water in Atlanta, being sixteen feet down. The local news crews were practically hyperventilating over this. Every day the papers treated us to a chart showing just how low the lake was and how long we had until we would run out of water and start eating one another. I secretly and very selfishly enjoyed the drought. It meant I could ride in my old Impala with the top down.

I headed for the revolving doors and felt the hot sun on my shoulders. It had some work to do burning through the morning smog, but it was doing just fine and was almost at the front side of the building, the side that faces I-85 where Larry Quinn’s office was positioned. I sighed. I’d been in Larry’s office when the sun had moved to his side of the triangle. Even with air-conditioning, it was tough to cool the glass-walled offices. We’d had meetings around his conference table with sweaty hairlines and pushed-up shirtsleeves. AT&T, the Atlanta field office for the Bureau, tons of doctors and lawyers, and the Marriott all called this office park home. Executive Park and the Druid Hills section of Atlanta were nearby, and in the opposite direction, was Buford Highway, which was hands down the best area for authentic ethnic cuisine, anything you want, miles of it, Korean, Malaysian, Indian, Chinese, Cuban, Peruvian. If you can dream it, if it walks, crawls, slithers, swims, grows on trees or vines, above or underground, somebody on Buford Highway is putting it in a savory sauce and cooking the shit out of it.

Larry Quinn’s office was on the fifteenth floor, a long shoulder-to-shoulder elevator ride on busy mornings, at lunch, at five o’clock, but today I’d squeezed in quickly between the rush hours. Quinn’s legal secretary, Danny, was at the front desk, a handsome guy in his mid-twenties with a headset and fingers that were always busy on the keyboard. Danny seemed to be able to do twelve things at once without skipping a beat. He put in forty hours a week at the offices of Larry Quinn & Associates, juggling work for three attorneys, but on the weekends, Danny shaved himself from cheek to ankle, slipped into heels and something slinky, and strutted like a runway model at one of Atlanta’s drag clubs. He was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

“Morning! I’ll let Larry know you’re here. He’s in a mood, though.”

“Something happen?”

Danny shrugged. “You know Larry—girl, he can go from silly to mean bastard in fifteen seconds. Unfortunately, it’s the mean bastard that’s been hanging around for a couple months now.”

“Maybe his panties are too tight,” I whispered, and we both laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Quinn demanded from his office door.

“Girl talk,” Danny said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Quinn was in his early forties but could pass for younger, a dirty blond with a southern accent who had become famous in Atlanta for his eye-rolling TV commercials. Divorce, personal injury, tax problems. Make one call before you fall. Practically everyone in town recognized Larry. I couldn’t accompany him anywhere without some jerk-off saying “Hey, Larry,” and then repeating his slogan word for annoying word.

“Danny, bring the Bosserman file, would you? Thank you,” Quinn said, and we walked into the conference room. Vertical blinds had been installed and it must have been ten degrees cooler than the last time I was here. “How ’bout some coffee or bottled water, Keye?”

“I’m okay, thanks. You all right?” Larry was generally a happy guy, joked a lot, a mischievous little glint in his brown eyes. Today he seemed drawn.

He opened a bottle of water and sat down, smoothed his purple tie. “It’s showing, huh? Market tanked. I took a hit. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll be fine. But I don’t own a damn thing that’s not worth about half what it was. Know what I mean?”

“Everyone knows what you mean.”

Danny handed Larry the file and quietly closed the door on his way out. Larry looked it over. “So the claimant’s position is this. She goes to one of the Laser Treatment Centers of the Southeast to get the hair on her top lip removed. The technician in charge of this procedure improperly uses the equipment, has the setting way too high, something normally used for less sensitive areas like legs. The result is second- and third-degree burns above her upper lip.”

I shuddered. “So now she has a burned-on mustache?”

Larry’s trademark smile stretched out across his face for the first time today. “I swear to Jesus, Keye, she looks like my uncle Earl now.”

We took a moment to enjoy his client’s misfortune. It was wrong, of course, but funny doesn’t know any better. “You want the history on this treatment center and the technician, right?”

Larry nodded. “Complaints and in what form and if this guy appeared in any of them, statements from individuals harmed, court records and any settlements you can dig up. Danny copied the file for you.”

Quinn was staring at his cell phone when I walked out of his office. I felt good about the file under my arm. It was something mildly interesting for a change, and with plenty of billable hours.

Neil was in his usual position at the computer when I walked in. I saw an extremely large fruit basket on the conference table where we sometimes worked and sat with clients, but generally it was where we ate and socialized and sometimes spread out pieces of jigsaws. Neil was a whiz at jigsaw puzzles. He could spot the right shape in a mountain of pieces. I think his brain must be shaped something like the state of Texas.

“What’s this?” I asked stupidly. Neil didn’t bother answering. I pushed aside a satsuma orange to find a card. It was heavy stock, embossed, expensive, a thank-you for a job that had ended to their satisfaction, and signed by Margaret Haze, my first big client and now my most prestigious reference. There were law firms and corporate headhunting agencies that used my services now thanks solely to the weight of a hard-to-get recommendation from Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze.

I would have to hire help soon. I needed another pair of eyes and ears for those long surveillance hours, cramming sugar and caffeine to stay awake and listening to crappy books on tape, someone to take over the errands, research and schedule gigs, someone to actually be nice to new clients when they call, which doesn’t always happen now. I dreaded bringing a new person into my business and into my life. Change is, at the very least, inconvenient.

I dug through the fruit basket looking for something I wanted. “People really eat this stuff?” I would have preferred a bag of Krispy Kremes. “Freaks,” I muttered, and reported to Neil that the basket was a gift from Margaret Haze’s office.

“That’s why you’re the detective,” he said grumpily.

It was going to be one of those days with him, I thought. Neil could be, well, a bit of a moody little bastard at times. But then I’d always been drawn to little bastards.

I sat down at my desk, picked up the phone, and heard the pulsating dial tone. My voice mail was full when I checked for messages. Neil doesn’t take messages. He simply transfers the ones that hold no interest for him to my mailbox.

I listened to a batch of messages, client stuff, most of it, and then I heard Rauser’s voice, stretched so tight it seemed about to snap, and realized I’d let the charge on my cell phone run down. I called him immediately.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had received a copy of the first letter from the killer, the one describing the Lei Koto murder, and they had decided to run it nearly in its entirety. Rauser was furious for the loved ones who might read this cold account of the killing, and he was afraid, too, that the publicity would only motivate the killer further and damage the investigation. “And the mayor and the chief are so far up my ass it hurts,” he complained, enraged.

When would the second letter show up in print, the one about David? Rauser told me he had tried to get APD onboard with releasing the second letter to the press, but Chief Connor and the mayor had flat-out refused. They said they would all be eaten alive if APD wasn’t able to find David after being handed a set of clues.

I retrieved the morning paper, slid it out of the plastic sleeve, and unrolled it on my desk. Wishbone Killer Taunts Police.

It was front-page stuff. The papers had given him a name, something grisly to live up to.

The last sound she heard above her own whimper was the click of my shutter and the tiny crack of her neck, like a wishbone snapped in half.

A chill started between my shoulder blades and snaked down my back. No wonder Rauser was going nuts. The pressure from his superiors would increase now. He’d have to work with them second-guessing his every move. He’d take the heat when the killer struck again. And the killer would strike again. Right now he was probably imagining himself on the minds and lips of the city, of the country. Celebrity is an aphrodisiac to someone seeking it.

Would he write again, to taunt, to display his superiority? This one likes the game, I thought, and the more it’s played, the greater the likelihood he’ll screw up.

I pulled a fresh legal pad from my drawer and began a list.

1. Precautionary acts, surveillance, schedule research … Victims alone.



2. Daylight attacks. Risk taking to obtain victim.



3. Locations—1st vic school dorm, three victims’ homes, first floor.



4. Method of approach: con. No forced entry. No witnesses. Chooses time of day with fewest people. Disguise? Someone familiar? Mail carrier, landscaper …



5. Victims’ diverse backgrounds.



6. Different gender & age groups.



7. Lack of physical evidence, added precautionary acts—staging, cleaning scenes—hinders investigative efforts.



8. Communicates with police. Motivation unknown.




Note: Arrange access to autopsy photographs, crime scene sketches, videos, detectives’ interviews & lab reports from all scenes.


I was sure APD had already checked all shared services—electric, gas, mail, cable, anything that might connect the victims in some way. Rauser had pulled teams of detectives off everything that wasn’t a priority. Had they also checked photography supply houses, camera and electronic stores? If the killer’s taking pictures, he’s probably using a digital, something small and high res. Is he printing out hard copies? Yes, of course he is. He’d need the freedom of hard copies. Photo-quality printers, electronic and photography stores. He’s probably arranging stills in some sequence that is meaningful, masturbating, reliving, but why settle for stills when all he needs is a decent camera phone for video? It was a small thing, but one of those head-slapping moments nonetheless. I knew I’d just moved a tiny bit closer to understanding something about the interior life of this killer. And a phone would be so easy. On the train, in the office. I thought about this. I didn’t like it. It gave the killer the ability to keep the fantasy charged up. He could watch anywhere, anytime, without special equipment. No one would look twice at a guy staring at his phone. Half of Atlanta never looks up from their BlackBerry even to cross the street.

Anne Chambers had been killed in Tallahassee and Bob Shelby murdered in the Jacksonville area. Double-checking those dates with airline and rental car records made sense. Also, if the killer had relocated from Florida, there would be records. Check Motor Vehicles, Postal Service, IRS.

Breaking a neck is an unusual choice, especially for a serial. To break someone’s neck required some expertise as well. Martial arts studios, military service, med students … doctors?

And why are they opening the door? A repairman? A delivery person? Had APD checked uniform rentals and costume rental receipts in the days leading up to the killings? Were there any neighborhood disputes, local elections, anything that might have petitioners knocking on doors? Zoning board, real estate records. Read detective interviews with neighbors.

I leaned back in my desk chair and closed my eyes. What the hell was I doing? This carried too much risk. In some ways I felt I needed to relearn my years at the Bureau, redo them sober. It wasn’t remembering my craft that was the problem, it was knee-jerk issues, like someone who can’t talk on the phone without lighting a cigarette. I’d spent my years at the Bureau as an active but functioning alcoholic. I wasn’t even sure how to think about this, what to do with the emotions surrounding it, without a drink waiting at the end of the day. And yet here I was on the fringes of this investigation and I realized suddenly that I would know and discuss in detail with Rauser every scene this killer left behind. My heart would both ache and delight at each new discovery. I rolled my neck a few times, but the cables weren’t letting go. Just one drink would fix that. Just one. I was back in it, sucked back into the violence again. Damn you, Rauser.

I needed to move, physically move. “Hey, Neil,” I said from my office. I could see him at his desk in the main room. He didn’t budge. “Want to go to Southern Sweets?” No answer.

Southern Sweets, a tiny bakery in Avondale Estates, had things in their display cases you’d have to be made of iron to resist. “I’ll buy you cake. Come on, Neil. We’ll both feel better. Jump on DeKalb Avenue and we can be there in fifteen.”

Neil was one of my very favorite people to eat with besides Rauser. He was enthusiastic about food. Very. He smoked a lot of pot.

I saw him stir in his chair. “Cherry pie?”

“You got it,” I said, and grabbed my keys. “I was thinking old-fashioned chocolate or sweet potato cheesecake.”

Neil frowned. “Cheesecake is wasted on sweet potatoes. Might as well just smear some peanut butter on it. Cheesecake deserves something more sophisticated.”

“Riiight,” I said. I’d seen him standing at the refrigerator just last week dipping raw hot dogs into yellow mustard but decided not to bring it up.