The Stranger You Seek

20





Rauser and I barely spoke on the drive home. I was trying to shake off the news he’d flattened me with at the hospital—the investigative report, my ex-husband’s TV interview, Jacob Dobbs being hired to replace me now that I’d been officially removed from the case. Or was it unofficially? The two dozen white roses with the familiar W signature on the creepy card was the icing on the shittiest cake ever made.

My phone rang. Rauser kept his eyes on the road. “Guess what I got?” Diane asked me. “Reservations at Bacchanalia. We’re overdue for a good, dirty gossip.”

Bacchanalia is a five-star restaurant near 14th on the outskirts of Midtown and so far over my budget I need to stand on tiptoes, but Diane and I pool our funds and treat ourselves once a month, regardless.

I looked in the mirror at my cuts and bruises. “I still look awful.”

“Perfect.” Diane laughed. “I’ll pretend I’m your abusive lover.”

A couple of hours later, we sat down to the white linen tablecloths and low lights at Bacchanalia, which is great for catching up but does nothing to disguise the sucking sound created by the arrival of the check and the departure of our disposable income. And it’s worth every penny. One bite tells you the chef is in love with her craft. The menu is big and bold, seasonal and local, and the meals are four courses.

Diane ordered arugula salad, cured Virginia flounder with watermelon relish, ricotta cavatelli, and asparagus cake with lemon gelato. I started with the potato gnocchi, because when it comes to bad carbs, I like doubling up, and moved on to grilled snapper, a salad with Pecorino Romano, fava beans, and young fennel, and a blood orange soufflé for dessert—exactly what I wanted after fake eggs for breakfast, fake potatoes at dinner, and all the Jell-O I could hold at the hospital. I was starved.

A white-coated member of the waitstaff delivered a warm loaf of rosemary bread and sliced it at our table. Diane ordered an elderflower cosmopolitan for herself and coffee for me.

She listened intently as I told her about my feeling of being followed, about how I really wrecked my car, about the white roses, about how some TV muckraker was about to splatter my tattered record and disemboweled marriage all over Atlanta’s TV screens. Her drink came and she sipped it, blue eyes steady on me. She was wearing a wrapped linen jacket cinched at the waist with a black pencil skirt and patent pumps with ankle straps. Diane had never minded getting a little attention. And she was dressed for it tonight. Her blonde hair was short and tucked behind her ears, with little wispy sideburns.

“Do you feel safe?” she asked when I’d finished.

That’s why I loved Diane. Since we’d met at age six, she worried about me. I ran my knife over a mound of softened butter and spread it over the warm, scented bread. “I know this may sound strange, but I don’t think he really wants to hurt me. I think he just wants to scare me away.”

Our starters arrived and we dug in. The gnocchi was heaven.

“So enough about me,” I said.

Diane laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s always about you.” She drained her drink and signaled the waiter for another.

“So? Tell me about the new guy,” I demanded.

“It’s fantastic so far. Notice I have to qualify it? God knows it’s been forever.”

I chuckled. “Um, I think it was only like six weeks ago you dumped Brad.”

“Blake,” Diane corrected cheerfully. “What was that about anyway? He was so grungy.”

I nodded my agreement. “It was a look.”

“Great kisser, though.”

“You look fabulous, by the way. Is that Armani? You get a raise or something?”

Diane broke out her big white smile. “There’s more where this came from. We spent a whole day shopping last weekend.”

“He took you shopping? Wow. That’s so … so Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on, Keye. Let me enjoy this, okay? I think it’s sweet.”

The waiter delivered Diane’s second elderflower cosmo in a wide martini glass. It had a lovely lavender tint and a thin layer of ice on the top. I could smell it. Diane held up her glass. “I drink for those who can’t,” she told me. “Cheers.”

“So selfless.” I smiled.

“This one’s different, Keye. It feels like the big one.”

Diane believed fully in love, believed everyone had a soul mate, a perfect match—the big one. I had believed it once too, but that was a long time ago.

“Tell me everything. Name, rank, serial—”

“Good evening, Dr. Street.”

“Jacob!” I dropped my fork. I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d hit my thumb with a hammer.

“Pardon the intrusion, but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.” Jacob Dobbs stood at our table, looked at Diane. “My, aren’t you lovely.” He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit with strong shoulders to project the power he so enjoyed. Dobbs was fair-skinned with light eyes. He looked like he’d just shaved. I could smell his cologne.

Diane smiled and extended a hand to shake Jacob’s. Instead, he bent forward and kissed the top of her hand. Diane’s fair skin reddened.

I intervened. “Diane Paulaskas, this is Jacob Dobbs. My old boss.”

The information had to wade through the cosmos she was drinking, but I saw it register. Her smile withered.

Jacob pulled a chair from the empty table next to us without asking, smoothed his shirt and tie as he sat. “Well, then, it’s nice to see you looking so well,” he said to me in his Masterpiece Theatre British accent.

One of the staff arrived with our salad selections, and Dobbs announced in his showy way that our check should be delivered to his table. Diane ordered another twenty-dollar cosmo on Dobbs, then winked at me.

It had been years since I’d spoken to Jacob Dobbs. I’d seen him, of course, like the rest of the country, when television needed a talking head with a photogenic face to explain why killers kill. The media loved to employ Dobbs as their expert witness. He specialized in sounding so sure of the labyrinthine ways of killers. Oh, what the hell, I decided. It had been a long time. Why not bury the axe? Besides, if I was rude now, after being thrown off the Wishbone case, I’d appear bitter and jealous.

“You’re looking well too, Jacob. Are you alone for dinner?”

He nodded. “Never miss Bacchanalia when I’m in town. The chef is an old friend. Would you like to meet her?”

“I’m good, but thanks.”

A slightly bored smile from Dobbs. His eyes skipped over me. I felt my entire body tense. The bastard. His eyes moved away from me and to the table, the coffee press, my water glass, then to my breasts and neck and face, very deliberately and very slowly. “Still sober, then, are we?” he asked, and his eyes finally rested on mine.

So much for burying the axe.

Diane accepted delivery of her third cosmo. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Dobbs, but—”

“Please call me Jacob.”

“It’s girls’ night, Mr. Dobbs,” she persisted to my surprise. Diane was usually all aflutter around power types. I thought her coolness now spoke volumes about her loyalty to those she loved. “But it’s very nice of you to pick up our check,” she added.

“I didn’t mean to intrude. A pleasure meeting you, Diane.” Dobbs rose, then looked down at me. “You’ll be asked to turn over your notes and files to me, Dr. Street. Let’s make time for that very soon.”

“Of course,” I said. “And Jacob—it was nice to bump into you. It reminded me what a sonofabitch you are.”

Dobbs touched my shoulder lightly. “Have a drink, Keye. It always calms you down.”

And then he walked away, shoulders square, head up, expensive suit, expensive shoes.

Diane blew out air. “Whoa! That was intense.” She was beginning to look a little tipsy.

I decided it would be best if I drove us back to my office after dinner. Diane had two more drinks and held on to my arm as we left the restaurant.





Neil had popped a theater-size barrel of popcorn for the occasion and tried hard to lighten my mood when we arrived. It wasn’t working. The three of us sat on leather sectionals in front of the big television and watched the special report in stunned silence. The media had hired “experts” to second-guess APD’s forensic team, the ME’s office, the crime lab, the detectives. They even questioned the way the uniformed officers handled the scenes. My name was tossed into the pot with a psychic APD had once consulted years ago and we were all put under a microscope. The talking heads made it sound like Rauser had hired a bunch of drunks and palm readers to consult on the Wishbone murders. Dan made an appearance, explaining gently and with tears in his eyes that my drinking had destroyed our marriage and that my FBI job might have been too big for me. They cut to a clip of Neil leaving our office carrying an open beer. Families of the victims were shown all this for an on-camera reaction, and they were understandably shocked and outraged by our glaring ineptitude. Tears were shed. The public was cautioned to be wary while a killer stalked Atlanta’s streets.

My phone started ringing even before the credits rolled. Rauser called to check in. He hadn’t watched. Better things to do, he said. He had been ordered to lay low. The mayor, the chief, and APD’s spokesperson, Jeanne Bascom, would handle the press briefings from now on. He told me he was sorry, so, so sorry he’d gotten me into this. He wanted me to agree to regular reports regarding my location. Rauser’s view was that there was physical danger to me. My view was that the killer was getting exactly what he wanted from me at the moment. The headlines, the TV clips, the chief wanting me to disappear, the email, the roses, all of it orchestrated by him, designed to embarrass APD and me, to outsmart, to gloat. All of that fun would come to a grinding halt the moment he seriously hurt me. I was betting that was not part of his plan.

Dan called to console me after he’d seen the “embarrassing” special report documenting my precipitous decline from Special Agent to hostile rehab patient. He claimed he couldn’t have known it would be that kind of show, that his words had been taken grossly out of context. He had told them a story of strength and recovery, he said. The truth was, he confessed, he had just wanted some face time on camera to kick his career back into gear. He’d had no idea it would sound the way it sounded. This, unfortunately, could have actually been the truth.

Mother called. My father isn’t really a telephone guy. He’s more of a grunt-and-nod guy. “I swear, Keye, you could have buttered us up and called us biscuits, we were so completely astounded. We were watching Joyce Meyer and your father, you know how he is with that remote control, started flipping around. He’s intimidated by women preachers even though he won’t admit it. Admit it, Howard. You don’t like women to have any power at all, do you? Anyway, all of a sudden we see you. Our daughter on television! And the things they said! Oh my Lord. Bless your little heart. Your brother called too. He said the story was picked up way up in Washington. You believe that?”

“Sonsofbitches, reporters,” I muttered bitterly.

“Keye, for heaven’s sake, when did you start talking like that all the time? It’s just not attractive. Howard, did you hear that? I hope you’re happy. Your daughter talks exactly like you.”

I asked Neil to drive Diane home. The alcohol was settling in on her. She had been very quiet for the last hour. I didn’t want her behind the wheel, and I couldn’t wait to sink into my own bed with White Trash, stare at mindless television. In the last couple of weeks I’d picked pieces of glass out of my neck and forearms with tweezers after being shot at by a bail jumper with a pump-action shotgun, been hit in the back of the head by a flying coffee cup, and shot at by an angry skinny woman over a crummy witness subpoena. I’d stumbled on a Wishbone murder scene, wrestled an accountant who sank his teeth into my shoulder, been hurled through the bullet-wounded windshield of my Impala, officially fired, hospitalized, released and handed over to the media, watched my ex-husband on TV dissecting our dysfunctional marriage, watched strangers on TV discussing my rehab and FBI records. And I was getting roses, white roses, from a violent serial offender. Oh joy. What was the significance, I wondered, staring at the screen without seeing it as White Trash snored on my stomach. White roses were used at weddings—the purity of a new bond of love. Was it about him thinking we were in a relationship, as he probably felt with David Brooks or Rauser or anyone he pulled into his twisted fantasy life? White roses were used at funerals too.

Rauser had chased down the volunteer who delivered the flowers to my room. They had arrived at the front desk and passed through many hands to get to my room on another floor and in another wing. Rauser had ordered the surveillance tapes from the hospital and taken the roses and the card to the station.

“Check it out,” Neil said, nodding toward the television. He was looking for the orange flip-flops he loved to wear while Diane used the door frame for balance. A banner at the top of the screen read Breaking News, and there stood Jacob Dobbs on the white Georgia marble steps at Fulton County’s courthouse wearing a six-thousand-dollar suit and talking to reporters.

Dobbs had been one of the pioneers of the original behavioral science unit at the Bureau. The last few years he’d been a partner in a private forensic investigating organization and was known all over the world for his work in and out of the Bureau. He’d sold out since he’d started making his living in the private sector. His conclusions were no longer evidence-based. He had developed profiles for a considerable fee without ever examining the physical evidence and without qualifying his theories as equivocal. His profiles looked more like press kits, and anyone with any ethics left in the business knew it. In my opinion, he had betrayed his science and totally suckered the press.

I watched, feeling a flicker of anger, as he bent forward slightly to speak into a handheld microphone that advertised one of the national networks. He stood alone. No mayor, no police chief. Just Dobbs with his pale, creased face and sharp jaw, and the famous scar on his right cheek he’d earned when a killer had gotten very close to his private world. His wife and children had been home when the window shattered downstairs and the subject of one of Dobbs’s profiles had broken in to kill them. But Dobbs saved the day, of course, hero that he was. It was a grim and electrifying story and I’d heard him tell it in his modest understated way, discuss the terror of discovering and then killing a murderer in his own living room with his family in peril only inches away.

“I’ve been invited to Atlanta by the police department to profile on the Wishbone case,” he announced into the cluster of microphones and cameras in his proper British accent. “I’m looking forward to getting to work straightaway.”

“Mr. Dobbs,” a reporter yelled. “Any comments on the investigation?”

Jacob Dobbs knitted his brow into an expression meant to convey the gravity of the situation. “I have enormous respect for this department. I was privileged to work in Atlanta during the child murders some years ago and, I might add, with great success. Wayne Williams was incarcerated and those murders stopped. Just as this killer will soon be stopped.”

Another reporter pressed him. “Were you hired because APD mishandled the Wishbone investigation?”

Dobbs answered with a thin, almost remorseful smile. “I think it’s best for the city and for the families of the victims if we move forward, don’t you?” He looked directly into the camera. “The evidence is now being professionally evaluated.”

Dobbs began his self-assured descent down the courthouse steps—the man with the answers. I flung the bowl of popcorn in my lap at the TV screen.





I was at the office early. I had a lot of catching up to do. Payables and receivables, bank deposits, my personal bills, mail, phone messages, it had all piled up to almost unmanageable levels. I considered sweeping it all into a big trash can and starting over. Maybe it would just go away. Truth is, I’m not cut out for office work. Filing is torture. It almost hurts. I actually start to itch. How I admire the OCD types who keep neat desks and file everything right away. That wasn’t me and it wasn’t Neil either. Jesus, I needed to hire someone to manage all this, but I dreaded it. It’s not like you hire just one person. You hire their family and their problems, their illnesses and financial issues and weird habits and friends. You’re forced to share a bathroom with them. It’s like sleeping with someone without the obvious benefits.

Hooga, hooga. I smiled. Charlie was a happy distraction. I wondered what he had pilfered and from whom, what he had folded up in his baseball cap to treat me to today. It was too late for blackberries, the figs were gone, and the weather was still too warm for winter pansies.

“Where were you? ’Member we were going to eat at Fritti?” Charlie had his hat in his hand and a worried expression on his face. He was talking too loudly as usual. No volume control.

Fritti is the Neapolitan pizza place down the street. I can smell the dough when the wind blows just right, and it makes me crazy some days. They have an artichoke-and-black-olive pizza that will make your head spin around. The panna cotta is like velvet on your tongue.

“Charlie, I totally forgot. I’m so sorry. Did you wait long?”

“I waited for twenty minutes,” Charlie said. He closed the door behind him. I noticed his hair was beginning to thin at the crown. There was nothing in his cap for me.

“I’m really sorry. I have so much work piled up and everything has been just kind of nutty. I just forgot. We could go now if you want.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Charlie said. I’d rarely seen him without his goofy smile. “I was worried. Were you with Mr. Man? Is he your boyfriend?”

“Rauser isn’t my boyfriend, Charlie. You know that. He’s my friend. Want something to drink?” Charlie nodded and followed me to the kitchen, where I found a Diet Pepsi for us both. “I would never stand you up on purpose. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he mumbled, and sat down.

“Maybe I could find us something to eat, huh?”

He shook his head.

I sat next to him and put my hand on his forearm. “You know, you’re my friend regardless of what’s going on with Rauser.”

“Okay,” he said, and laughed too loudly. “I’m sorry. I’m hungry now.”

I smiled. “You got it.”

I stood and Charlie stood too. He reached for me and I let him hug me. I hugged him back. It was no secret that Charlie had a crush on me from our very first meeting. I was in the parking lot when he rode up on his bike one day a couple of years ago. I found him absolutely charming then and now, and a little heartbreaking. Neil, Rauser, and Diane all teased me about Charlie’s infatuation. I didn’t mind.

I gave him a kiss on the cheek and turned away, but Charlie pulled me back into his arms and pressed his lips against mine. I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d pulled a live lizard out of his ear. His hands were squeezing my arms.

I said firmly, “It’s not okay to kiss me like that, Charlie. Now let me go.”

“Because we’re just friends,” Charlie said. “Like you and Mr. Man.”

I started to twist free. One of his hands quickly moved to the back of my neck and grabbed a handful of hair. The other held my upper arm tightly. He pressed his mouth against mine again. He was strong, his teeth cutting into my lips, his hands digging into me.

He jerked hard on a fistful of my hair, forcing my face up to his. His eyes behind his glasses were greenish brown and without any emotion at all. Nothing.

“I think I should f*ck you the way Mr. Man f*cks you,” he said, gripping my hair with his right arm and using his left to get his fly unzipped. I felt his erection pressing into my stomach. His slur was gone. His goofy smile had vanished. I’d never seen this Charlie Ramsey before. “Does he have a big cock?” he asked, and something inside me, something pressurized and unstable, went from a spark to a bonfire in a split second. I didn’t wait, didn’t take an extra breath before I slammed the top of my knee into his crotch. His reaction was predictable and instantaneous. He doubled over just as we’d been assured would happen in agent training, and when he did, I raised my knee again and rammed his forehead with as much force as I could muster. I had no reservations whatsoever about using what I’d learned. I didn’t like being handled, and Charlie no longer had the benefit of the doubt. His intentions had been made abundantly clear.

He staggered. When he raised his head, wheezing, the flat of my palm hammered into his nose and practically pushed it into his eyeballs. He tumbled backward. “I’m sorry,” he moaned. His hands covered his face and he was making gagging noises. “I keep forgetting to take my meds. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t tell Mr. Man.”

I stormed to my office and came back with my Glock, furious. “You ever touch me like that again, you won’t have to worry about Rauser. I have no problem at all using this. You got it? You take your meds, Charlie.”

Neil walked in and saw my face. His eyes dropped instantly to the gun in my hand, then to Charlie writhing in pain. Neil looked at me as if I’d just peed on the floor in church.

“Get him out of here, Neil. Rauser’s coming over. He’ll freak out.”

Neil bent over and looked at Charlie. He straightened, gathered up a bunch of tissues from a box on his desk, then stuffed them under Charlie’s nose. Charlie held them there pitifully.

“Jesus, Keye, what the hell?” Neil asked.

“I thought he was an intruder,” I said. Neil eyed me skeptically. “I’ll explain later. Just get him out.”

Charlie sat up holding the blood-soaked wad of tissues to his face and gagged some more.

“Jesus,” Neil said again.