The Inquisitor

“And if you weren’t a psychologist? How would it have come across to you then?”

His hesitation was slight, but it was enough. “Look, I don’t—”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Jenna said, her words strained and flat. “Thanks for trying, though.”

“You can’t let yourself be held hostage to the morons of the world. If you do, then they win. You said nothing wrong, Jenna. Believe me, nobody here thinks so.”

That at least sounded genuine. It didn’t explain the writing on her car, but it did make her feel marginally better about who might have put it there.

“You want me to follow you home?” Gary asked.

“I appreciate the offer, but I have a couple of things to pick up on the way. I’ll be fine. Really.”

“Everybody’s feeling the pressure. I honestly don’t mind following you, even on your round of errands. We could stop and grab a bite to eat. Or get a head start on that drink you mentioned.”

She was a little surprised by the offer. Although Gary had been a member of the practice for well over a year, she’d gotten no vibes that he found her attractive.

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was being kind because it was obvious she’d been upset by the message. She was reading more into the gesture than it warranted.

“That’s really very sweet, but…maybe I can get a rain check. Some night when we haven’t both been working late.”

“You got it.”

Jenna couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. As he made the agreement, he’d stepped forward, reaching for the door handle of the Honda.

She realized that she hadn’t punched the remote. The accompanying beep when she did echoed through the nearly empty deck, just as her footsteps had.

Gary opened her door, and she slipped into the seat, using the excuse of fastening her seat belt to delay looking up at him. When she did, he was peering down into the car, his lips slightly pursed.

“Lock your doors.”

“You think—”

“I think I’d tell any woman in this city the same thing right now. Better safe than sorry.”

Unsure how to respond, she nodded. “I will.”

“Be careful,” he added, closing the door. He put the tips of the fingers of his right hand against the glass for a moment before he straightened, allowing her room to back out.

She inserted the key and started the engine. Then she looked out through the window to smile at him again. Before she put the car into Reverse, she lifted her hand and waved.

He didn’t return the gesture, but he stood watching as she headed toward the exit. When she looked back, just before she began the descent to the lower level, he was still standing in the same spot. And he was still watching her.

Six

Sean came awake with a start, neck muscles straining as his head jerked up off the pillow. His breath rasped in and out of his lungs as if he’d run a race.

He had. One he’d lost a long time ago. One at which he would never get a second chance.

Not unless you counted this.

He stretched his eyes wide in an attempt to wipe away the last of the dream. The motel-beige walls and plastic-backed floral draperies, which he had pulled across the window in order to sleep, helped to orient him.

He remembered where he was. And he knew why he was here.

The nightmare he’d just had was the same one he’d experienced over and over in the years since Makaela’s disappearance. Although he was painfully aware of how his sister had died, the dream never played out to that end. He always awoke before it could, his body drenched in sweat and his heart beating as if it would tear its way out of his chest. Today had been no different.

He closed his eyes again, waiting for the pump of blood to slow. He hadn’t experienced the terror of the dream in a long time, but he knew he shouldn’t be surprised it had happened now.

He was closer to Makaela’s murderer than he’d ever been before. He knew that with a certainty for which he could offer no rational explanation. He simply knew it.

Just as he had known outside Jenna Kincaid’s office two nights ago that the man he sought was also there. So near he could feel his evil. Could sense it in the air around him.

This was a smaller city than the ones the killer had chosen before. A limited population spread over a relatively contained geographic area, bound by the narrow valley that ran between the two mountain ridges in which the original settlement had been made.

Not only was the hunting ground here more contained, thanks to the friend Sean had made on the FBI task force, he’d gotten in on this spurt of homicides early. While the bastard was feeling invincible. Maybe this time…

Feeling his expectations rise to a level experience had taught him was premature, Sean released a slow breath, deliberately focusing on his plans for today. One step at a time. He had learned long ago that was the best way to keep the images from the dream, as well as those that represented the fulfillment of his quest, out of his consciousness.

After a moment, he held his wrist up so that despite the artificially darkened room, he could see the hands of his watch. It was 3:30 p.m. Which meant he would have time to shower and shave and maybe get something to eat before Jenna Kincaid left the office.

It would all get easier once he’d completed his move into the vacant unit in the building below hers, which might take place as early as tomorrow. The apartment he’d chosen wasn’t directly across from hers, but it did have a view of both the front entrance and the expanse of glass in Jenna’s living room.

He could only imagine how she would react when she discovered he was there. As much as he’d like to, there was probably no way to prevent her from finding out, which would almost certainly mean a confrontation with the local cops.

He wasn’t overly concerned about that. He had his own resources within the law enforcement community, people who would be willing to speak to the locals on his behalf.

And he wasn’t breaking any laws. Not by moving into an empty apartment. Nor would he be by sitting outside in the parking lot.

From now on, he was going to keep a very low profile. The only way he had any chance of finding the man he’d come here to kill was to fade into the background of Jenna Kincaid’s world, so that when the real stalking began, the man he was hunting would never know that he, too, was being stalked.

“Hey, sport. Whatcha doing?”

“Watching Wiggles,” Ryan said.

His nephew’s voice was so soft Sean had to strain to hear the words. If he hadn’t already known the probable answer, he wouldn’t have been able to decipher it.

Sean had long ago learned to keep his feelings about the boy’s choice of TV shows and books to himself. The kid didn’t need criticism, not of any kind. Especially not from him.

His day-care teachers all praised Ryan’s sweet nature and gentle disposition, assuring Sean that his nephew would eventually grow out of his shyness. Of course, none of them knew the kids’ backgrounds. He had figured that the fewer people who knew about Makaela’s murder, the better.

“You have a good day at school?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not much longer now,” Sean said, allowing his voice to rise teasingly at the end.

“Till Christmas?”

“That’s right. You getting excited?”

“Are you coming home?”

Sean swallowed the lump that hopeful question created. He knew he was their security blanket. Knew and accepted that that was his role. They were his family. And he was theirs. Literally all they had.

The problem was that he had also undertaken another role. One he took just as seriously. One he was far more suited to than playing mama and daddy to a couple of youngsters.

“As soon as I can,” he said, being careful not to make any promises he couldn’t keep.

“Before Christmas?”

“I don’t know, Scout. I hope so.”

“I got you something. Me and Cathy.”

“Yeah?”

“Something good. You’re gonna like it.”

“I know I will.”

“Cathy don’t think we’re getting a puppy, but I asked Santa.” They’d been over the dog thing a dozen times. Ryan had been told over and over again that it wasn’t possible. The lease didn’t allow it. Besides, it was hard enough to get someone good to live in and take care of the kids while he was away. If the job required cleaning up after a non-housebroken animal in the bargain—

“Uncle Sean?”

“I’m here. Look, we talked about the puppy. Maybe next summer. If we can find a house with a fenced-in yard—”

“That’s what she said.”

“Well, she’s right. I explained all that.”

“I still asked Santa. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

Sean closed his eyes, wishing he weren’t several hundred miles away. Wishing he had answers for that kind of question. Wishing most of all that this wasn’t the kind of fucked-up world where somebody could murder a little boy’s mother.

Makaela would have known how to respond to that wishful tone. She would probably have been able to juggle a full-time job and a puppy. When all he seemed able to manage—

“Uncle Sean? You still there?”

“Yeah. It’s okay to ask Santa, Scout, just as long as you’re prepared for him saying no.”

“Like when you pray.”

“What?”

“That’s what Maria says. It’s okay to pray for something, but that don’t mean you’re gonna get it.”

“Doesn’t mean,” Sean corrected.

“Doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it. Santa’s like that, too?”

“Something like that.”

“But sometimes you do.”

Get what you pray for, Sean thought, automatically filling in the missing syntax. “Sometimes.”

“I wish you were home.”

“Me, too.”

“You want to talk to Cathy?”

“Sure. You be good, now. Mind Maria.”

Maria Alvarez had been a godsend. She was older than he’d been looking for, but she had become the grandmother the kids had never had. Despite her references, when he’d first hired her, Sean had thought about setting up one of those home-surveillance cameras. It had quickly become apparent by the way the children responded to her that wouldn’t be necessary.

“Hey, Uncle Sean.”

“Hey, Princess. How are you?”

“Fine. How are you?”

Where Ryan was withdrawn, Cathy was the proverbial chatterbox. She never met a stranger, something that occasionally gave him nightmares, too. Only, her radar seemed pretty good in detecting the good guys from the bad.

The same thing you thought about Makaela.

“Missing you guys. Wishing I was home,” he said aloud. That was the truth. There was no need to prevaricate.

“Maria and I are making a fruitcake.”

Visions of the brick-shaped, perennial butt of holiday jokes flashed through his mind. “Yeah? Sounds good.”

“My job is measuring out the fruit.”

As far as Sean was concerned, the word fruit when used in conjunction with fruitcake was a misnomer. The artificially colored bits of red-and-green gunk it usually contained bore no resemblance to the real stuff.

“Your grandma used to make fruitcakes.”

The memory was just suddenly there in his head. Unexpected. And unwanted.

“Really? Cool. Did Mama help?”

“Yeah,” he said, fighting the rush of memories that had accompanied the first. “Yeah, she did.”

That was the problem with allowing any of them in. It opened the door to the rest. The ones he had fully intended never to think about again. Another reason the interview Jenna Kincaid had given had bothered him.

“We’ll save you a piece, but you have to promise that you’ll be home in time for Christmas.”

He swallowed, fighting two sets of emotions. Determined to give in to neither.

“I can’t promise that, Princess. I told you.”

“But you’ll try, won’t you? Ryan really wants you to be here. He needs you to. He’s started all that stuff about wanting a puppy again.”

“I know. He told me. You keep talking to him, okay? Make him understand that…That now just isn’t the best time for something like that.”

“I will. He’s just a baby.”

The gulf between Cathy’s seven-going-on-thirty maturity and Ryan’s immature four-almost-five seemed immeasurably wide. At least it was better than it had been three years ago when family services had handed the kids off to him.

He’d had no idea what to say to a four-year-old who had just lost her mother in the most brutal way imaginable. And no clue in hell what to do with a two-year-old.

That initial panic had, in the intervening years, given way to more normal concerns like whether or not he was providing all the right things for them. Child-care issues. Keeping up with vaccinations and checkups. Just getting them to bed at a reasonable hour sometimes seemed Herculean.

At least it had before he’d found Maria. And if it all worked out here…

He destroyed the thought, realizing how far from those concerns the one he was currently embarked upon was. How foreign to his problems with childcare.

“Gotta go,” he said, glancing at his watch again.

It was already four-thirty. With traffic, making it to Jenna Kincaid’s office before five would be a close-run thing. And it would mean doing without dinner again.

“But you’ll think about it, won’t you?” Cathy said, bringing his attention back.

“The puppy?”

“No, I know we can’t have a dog. Getting home before Christmas. You’ll try, won’t you?”

“I told you the last time. It just depends on how things go down here.”

“In Birmingham.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s where that killer is, right?”

The question caught at Sean’s gut, twisting it. He hesitated, wondering if someone could possibly have said something to the little girl about those deaths here.

“Who told you that?”

“I saw it on the news. Maria turned it off, but they said ‘Birmingham.’ I’m pretty sure.”

“And it worried you?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Princess. You can quit worrying about that.”

There was silence on the other end. It lasted long enough that he felt that same squeeze of dread in his belly.

“You hear me, Princess. I’m taking care of business down here, and then I’ll be home. I swear to you.”

“Okay.”

“You take care of your brother. And save some of that cake for me.”

“Okay.”

The usually bubbly voice was still subdued. Sean closed his eyes, trying to find words that would comfort a child whose world had already been destroyed once.

“Have I ever lied to you?” he demanded.

“No,” she said softly. “At least I don’t think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“Is it him?”

“What him?”

The question was too harsh. He’d guarded them against everything he could possibly think of and still she’d somehow learned what had happened.

“The man who killed Mama.”

There was no way he could deal with this. Not from this distance. Not over the phone.

“I don’t know.”

“But you think so. That’s why you went down there, isn’t it?”

“I thought I could help the cops.”

“Because of what you know about Mama?”

“That’s right.”

His heart rate was beginning to slow. Maybe she’d known all along. Even at four, not much had gotten by her. And he had no idea what the social workers had told her before he’d gotten stateside. He’d never asked, and she hadn’t volunteered the information.

“You promise that’s why you went.”

“I promise.”

There was no response. The silence stretched until he wondered if she’d hung up.

“Princess? You okay?”

“I’m okay. But…I really think that even if you haven’t finished helping them, you need to come home for Christmas. For Ryan’s sake. Tell them everything you know as soon as you can, okay?”

“Just as soon as I can,” Sean promised. “Mind Maria, now. Tell her to give you a kiss for me.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Talk to you soon.”

“Bye, Uncle Sean.”

“Bye, sweetheart.”

The line went dead before he was forced to tell another lie. He punched the off button on the cell and closed it to stick it back into his jacket pocket.

Tell them everything you know as soon as you can….

If only it were that simple. That clean. A collaborative effort between him and the local cops.

He knew what was likely to happen instead. Despite the fact that the guy had murdered at least fourteen women, Sean would be arrested if he so much as touched him.

Jenna Kincaid was his ace in the hole. No one could possibly object to his killing the bastard in order to protect a prospective victim. All he had to do was to wait until the Inquisitor made his move against the psychologist, as he was now convinced he would. Then he could avenge Makaela’s murder under the guise of preventing another one.

There would be a couple of people on the national task force who would know what he’d done, but he could trust them to be pragmatic about the guy’s death. One less maniac on the loose. One less murderer to lose sleep over. And one less victim’s photograph to pin on their whiteboard.

No one who had seen those pictures was going to come after the guy who’d put an end to this monster. Nobody involved in the manhunt was going to grieve for that bastard’s death. That was the one absolute certainty he had had going into this.

It was the one he intended to cling to until this was over and he headed back to Michigan to buy a puppy for a little boy and to prove to a little girl that he still had never lied to her.

Seven

It was cold. It was dark. And it was beginning to rain.

Jenna knew she was being ridiculous again, but the knowledge of how irrational this was didn’t stop her from pulling into the service station three blocks from her office, which offered a free car wash when you filled up your tank.

She had planned to do exactly that, but when she pulled next to the pumps, she noticed a windshield squeegee and a roll of paper towels sitting in the middle of them. Nearby was a container of soapy water. With those, she could clean the writing off her car while her gas was pumping.

That method also had the advantage of getting her home and out of the cold more quickly. Something that at this point weighed heavily in its favor.

She stepped out of the car, her shoulders hunched against the assault of the wind and rain. She swiped her card and at the prompt lifted the nozzle. As she turned to stick it into her tank, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a black SUV pulling onto the service road she’d taken to get to the station.

She watched as it drove by and into the lot of the upscale supermarket next door. The nozzle still in her hand, she continued to track its progress as the driver maneuvered the vehicle into a parking space. The taillights winked off. Although she waited, eyes straining at the distance, no one emerged from the car.

Jenna started as a horn blasted at close range. Her eyes jumped from the car she’d been watching to the pickup that had pulled up behind her at the pumps. The driver rolled down the window and stuck his head out.

“You gonna get gas or not, lady? I gotta pick up my kid at basketball practice.”

In an unthinking response to that demand, she began once more to direct the nozzle she held toward the opening of her tank. As she did, the writing on the side of her car seemed to leap out at her.

Help me. Sean Murphy’s idea of a practical joke? An attempt to make her believe the killer had sent her a message?

It seemed to fit with all the rest. His contention that she’d been sympathetic to a murderer. His attempt to terrorize her by telling her she matched the victim profile. Even his mocking phone call last night.

This had gone far enough, she decided. Too damn far.

She turned, slamming the nozzle back into its niche on the body of the pump. She opened the car door and climbed behind the wheel. She started the engine and then maneuvered around the rear end of the car in the line in front of her.

The man behind her yelled something through his open window, but his words were lost in the wind and growing distance between them. Her total concentration was on the SUV in the next lot.

It was parked near the main entrance of the grocery store, where the shoppers who were coming in and out walked right by it. At this time of the evening, the place was crowded because of the deli-bakery this market was noted for. Since it was on her way home, she had often stopped here to pick up something for supper.

In addition to the people coming in and out of the store, the lot was well-lit and patrolled by a security cart. If she was determined to confront Murphy, this was probably as safe a place as she could find. Undoubtedly safer than the deserted lot of her apartment complex last night.

As she approached the SUV, she realized that the nearest open space was in the next row over and three or four slots down. Only when she’d pulled in and turned the key, killing the motor, did doubt about the wisdom of her actions resurface.

Despite her initial assessment in her office that day, there was really no way to know if Murphy was dangerous. He was certainly out of line in following her. And if he had written those words on her car—

Remembering the chill she’d felt when she’d seen them—obviously the effect he’d been trying for—she grabbed the keys from the ignition and climbed out. She hit the remote to lock the car and dropped the key ring into the pocket of her coat.

As she walked toward the SUV, she expected him to peel out of the parking place in an attempt to avoid her. The vehicle didn’t move, however, not even when she crossed in front—clearly visible through the windshield—to get to the driver’s side.

She glanced up long enough to verify that Sean Murphy was watching her approach. Before she could knock on the driver’s side window as she’d intended, he opened his door, forcing her to step back against the car parked beside him.

In the light of the halogen lamp, he seemed to loom above her. She fought panic caused by the sudden realization that this was probably not the smartest thing she’d ever done.

She had deliberately provoked this confrontation. It was too late to back out now. Besides, the best defense…

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She sounded like a broken record. They’d had this conversation last night. Obviously, it had gotten her nowhere.

“Stopping to pick up something for dinner.” His voice was conversational, in contrast to the shrillness of hers.

“And you were going to do that without getting out of the car.”

“Actually, I was listening to something on the radio.” He inclined his head toward the open door. From inside the SUV came the sound of a country song.

“Are you honestly going to tell me that you aren’t following me?”

“I believe I was here first. Are you sure you aren’t following me, Dr. Kincaid?”

The amusement in his voice produced the same reaction it had last night. Jenna couldn’t remember ever striking anyone in her life. She couldn’t even remember wanting to. But she wanted to hit him.

“I was at the service station when I saw you drive by and then park over here. You didn’t get out of the car. You didn’t go inside. It’s pretty obvious you were just waiting for me to finish getting gas.”

“The last time I checked this was a free country. I told you. I stopped by to pick up something for dinner. I’m in the process of moving and cooking’s difficult right now. Somebody recommended this place, so I thought I’d give it a shot.”

She didn’t believe him. Nor did she believe his story about listening to whatever was on the radio.

“I’m going to get a restraining order against you.”

“That’s your prerogative. Just be warned they may want you to demonstrate I’ve actually done something I need to be restrained from doing. Something illegal. You should probably be prepared for that.”