Outside, the change had been hidden beneath her winter hat. The brunette was gone. She'd colored it. Son of a bitch!
Three days of preparations and planning for nothing. He was furious at first, until he realized it was of his own doing, a manifestation of the immense power he wielded. The publicity had gotten to her. Yet another woman unnerved by reports of a serial killer who targeted thirty-something brunettes and who was apparently working his way south from Seattle. He wondered how many other women had been affected the same way and were now driven by fear, though he realized the purse snatching had probably driven this one over the edge.
He watched as she slipped into her robe and admired her new color in the mirror. He was tempted to go through with it, just out of anger. After all, the last one hadn't been such a perfect match either. Then inspiration struck. He could kill her and dye it back to the rich shade of brown it used to be. That would send a message that no one was safe. If you didn't look the part, the killer would remake you. Blondes and redheads were no longer immune. No more hiding behind your bottle of Lady Clairol.
It was a stupid idea, giving a corpse a dye job. He had no interest in playing beautician. In fact, he had nearly lost interest in this one altogether. Those self-proclaimed expert profilers would probably say he was in some supposed cooling-off period. They'd say he was still too sated from the last one to get excited about the next. The FBI thought it had everything figured out, as if every serial killer on the planet went into hibernation after a kill and needed time to rejuvenate before the next strike. Some of them did. Some slept for days. But he wasn't like them.
They didn't share his energy.
Quietly, as secretly as he had come, he sneaked away from the house. This wasn't a failure, his walking away. His lack of enthusiasm had nothing to do with timing. It wasn't even the dye job that had ruined the excitement for him. At bottom, he was simply losing patience with the whole scheme. After three dead look-alikes he had to know.
Was Beth Wheatley with him? Or was she against him?
Part Four
Chapter Thirty-Seven.
Early Friday morning found Andie at Goodwill shopping for secondhand clothes. She bought two pairs of old jeans, one black, one blue; hiking boots; a stained sweatshirt; two sweaters; and a brown winter coat with a torn pocket. She returned to the office at mid-morning and met with a backup technician to construct her cameo persona. They didn't bother with the phony driver's license, Social Security number, apartment, telephone number, employment history, credit record, bank account, and other trappings of identity that came with a full-blown undercover operation. For such a short assignment she needed only a name and a story. For the next three days she would be Kira Whitehook, a high school dropout who had drifted in and out of trouble and part-time work for the past ten years. It was not the kind of past to be proud of, which was perfect. She couldn't be expected to answer many personal questions.
It took some effort to look the part of a transient. She did most of the work herself in one of the office changing rooms. She stripped the polish from her nails and cut them down jagged, till they looked bitten to the quick. She had a few calluses from the weights at the gym. She roughed them up with a pumice stone and gave her knuckles a few nicks with the car keys. The hair was next. Too stylish. She trimmed it at the ends, making sure the ends were slightly uneven. She wet it and blew it dry for nearly a half hour, till it looked baked and over-processed. Finally, the face. The eyebrows were far too perfect, but she couldn't unpluck them. She shaved off the very outside tip of the left one. Nothing too distracting, just enough to create a little asymmetry, as if she'd been in some kind of brawl at some point in her life. She washed off every bit of makeup, but the Cover Girl complexion wasn't exactly in role. She did a caky, over-brushed job on her cheeks. A waxy brown lipstick helped harden the soft mouth.
She checked the mirror and nearly screamed. Then it seemed funny. She imagined herself sneaking up on Isaac and telling him this was what she looked like on the morning after. Suddenly, it wasn't so funny. Two weeks ago she would have joked at her own expense, but now for some reason she wouldn't think of letting him see her like this.
Life is too damn complicated.