"I think so."
She grabbed her coat and started down the hall. Gus followed and opened the front door for her, then switched on the porch light. A chilly wind stirred the evergreens in the big front yard. Carla walked down the steps in silence.
"Thanks for watching Morgan," he said, standing in the doorway.
She stopped and looked back. "What's an aunt for?" She started down the steps again but stopped short, as if she had something to say. "Gus?"
"Yeah?"
She paused, measuring her words. "Let me just say this to you. You may never have stopped loving Beth. In your own loyal and convenient way, you may even still love her." Her eyes began to well, her voice even quavered. "But in the last six months you really stopped knowing her."
He watched in silence as she turned and walked to her car. The door closed slowly, leaving him alone with his thoughts in the dark and empty hallway.
Chapter Twenty-five.
The profile arrived by fax. Six typed pages, double spaced. Andie read it several times. It was her job to disseminate it, not critique it. But she couldn't help herself. She at least had to compare it to what she had come up with.
On several key points she was on Victoria's same wave length. A man in. his late twenties or early thirties. Caucasian, same as his victims. Higher than average intelligence. Doesn't know his victims. Likely to have experienced a recent stressful event in his life, such as job loss, divorce, or breakup with his girlfriend.
But the heart of it was somewhat different from what Andie had envisioned. Leads a normal and even respectable lifestyle by day. A roamer by night, possible insomniac. No felony convictions, but arrest record includes peeping torn or trespassing offenses. Fancies himself smarter than police. No formal police training, but probably self-educated through books and magazines on police procedures and perhaps even profiling techniques. Subscribes to detective magazines, frequents bars or restaurants where law enforcement personnel gather, may even befriend or strike up conversations with cops to fit in. A law enforcement reject, possibly a security guard who didn't make the police cut.
Andie's overall impression was disappointment. She wasn't expecting a name and address. Profiles were by their nature generalizations. But this one struck Andie as a little too general. It didn't exhibit the genius Victoria Santos was.
But what do I know?
She scrambled to get the profile delivered to each of the local law enforcement agencies before six-thirty. Then it was off to her usual Friday routine: yoga classes. Andie rarely missed, especially when the stress level at work was high. Nothing like the downward-facing dog pose to get your mind off work, even if it wasn't nearly as kinky as it sounded.
Andie parked in the paved lot on the corner, across the street and a half block down from the studio. Beneath her coat she wore a clingy aerobic leotard. Her workout bag was over her shoulder. Inside were the usual yoga props: a thin rubber sticky-mat, a strap, and two wooden blocks. The yoga instructor banned cell phones and beepers from class. Fortunately, he had never said anything about the firearm an FBI agent was required to carry. That too was in her bag.
The yoga studio shared space with a ballet company in a low-rent area. The office building across the street was eighty years old and looked even older. The red brick warehouse next door was abandoned and slated for demolition. The handful of restaurants nearby were strictly for the lunch crowd, all closed by late afternoon. It wasn't an unsafe neighborhood, but it wasn't for the fainthearted, either. Most students came in groups. Andie, late as usual, came alone.
She locked her car and headed briskly down the sidewalk. Her sneakers squeaked on the damp cement. A lone car passed, spraying the curb with foul-smelling runoff. Andie danced out of the way and continued up the block. It was a straight shot to the studio, with the entrance to the dark alley beside the warehouse her only real safety concern. She made it a practice never to cross the street till she was past it. In less than a minute, she was there. Seeing no degenerates in the shadows, she jumped off the curb and cut across the street. A truck passed. The sound of tires on wet pavement faded behind her. It was replaced by footsteps.
Andie quickened her pace. The footsteps quickened. Leather heels, she could tell, probably a man. She slowed her pace, just to test. The footsteps were closing.
Paranoid already. All this serial killer stuff.
Just to be safe, she stepped off the curb, pretending to cross the street. The sound changed from the sharp click of heels on a cement sidewalk to the more muffled heels on asphalt. She hopped back on the sidewalk. Again, the footsteps followed.
This was not paranoia.