So Close the Hand of Death

“A foster child,” Sansom said. “Hmm.”

“He’s also transient, just sets up base wherever he is, which makes him harder to track. He’s in his early thirties, lacks confidence in himself, takes jobs as necessary to pay for his basic needs. He’s computer savvy, knows his way around the message boards. He believes he’s a scholar, a student of serial murder. He’ll have books with him, anything and everything to do with serial killers. He considers himself as much of an expert as I am. And he has a fascination with blood that would have started at an early age. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he killed very young, a sibling, perhaps. He’s good with his hands, affable, charming, sexual. He can go unnoticed, or he can draw attention, whatever suits his purpose.”

He leaned into Sansom, making sure she was paying attention. “Don’t ever let your guard down if you do happen upon him. I’m dead serious here. He has no feelings, can’t be reasoned with. He’ll kill you without hesitating and never give it a second thought. If he’s cornered, he’ll do whatever it takes to get away. We’re going to have a hard time bringing him in alive. He has nothing to lose. He isn’t a glory seeker, trying to see himself in the news. He’s a pure sociopath who enjoys killing by any available method.”

Sansom didn’t flinch at that, and Taylor thought she should. Of course, Taylor had seen him in person, or thought she had, back in Nashville last year, in a bar called Control, at what was supposed to be her bachelorette party. She’d felt the evil emanating from his skin like sweat on a hot summer day, visible and malodorous.

“Okay then. Where do we start?” Sansom asked.

Baldwin sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “With the note you found in the trailer in Asheville. It’s handwritten. I have one of the world’s preeminent experts on sociopathic graphology ready to study that note. With any luck, she’ll be able to tell us something about him that we don’t already know.”

Sansom turned to Taylor. “That’s a start for you, then. I still have a kidnapping and murder on my books to clear. So let’s get down to it. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. What else do you know about the Pretender? How are we going to catch him? Lieutenant, I’d like to hear from you. What do you think his next move is?”

“His next move?” Taylor laughed lightly. “Me. I’m his next move.”

Five

Taylor had a flash drive with a PowerPoint presentation on it, one that had originally been given to her team when they were dealing with the Snow White Killer’s apprentice brutalizing Nashville. The Snow White had killed ten Nashville girls in the 1980s, then sent a letter to the police telling them his reign of terror was finished. He was true to his word for over twenty years. But then, the previous Christmas, the long-dormant killer resurfaced. Out of the blue four girls were viciously murdered in the Snow White style. Taylor’s team suspected a copycat, and they’d been partially correct. That was the first time the Pretender had come across their radar screens. But he’d existed long before he touched Taylor’s world.

She popped the flash drive into Sansom’s laptop computer; Yeager and Polakis got behind to watch.

Taylor narrated, trying to ignore the chill creeping up her spine. The last time she’d heard this information, FBI special agent and profiler Charlotte Douglas had been speaking. Charlotte had used the information as a weapon to make Taylor look bad. Her actions had backfired.

Taylor didn’t think she’d ever forget arriving at that crime scene, the shock of seeing Charlotte’s fire-red hair commingled with her life’s blood, the setting sun echoing the bloody sheets.

Taylor forwarded the slides, covering the original killings of the Pretender, sharing the details as they knew them. By the time he’d hit Nashville, he had eighteen confirmed kills under his belt already. He’d committed another four under the tutelage of the Snow White Killer, then he’d gone off the rails. He killed three more girls before he was shot and ran. Adding Charlotte to the mix took his total up to twenty-six homicides.

Taylor heard an echo from the past, Charlotte’s voice ringing through her head in triumph. These four murders in Nashville have been directly connected to the other eighteen. You don’t just have a copycat on your hands, you have an obscenely prolific serial killer with victims in five states. The CODIS results are definitive. His pattern is undeniable. It is quite likely that he will move on to another state, kill more young women, if you don’t stop him here in Nashville.

Despite her proselytizing, Charlotte Douglas had been right on the money. They hadn’t stopped him. And now look where they were.

Taylor played with the remote in her hand. “As you can see, Susie McDonald makes twenty-seven confirmed kills. If the evidence matches the forensics we already have, of course.”

“I thought you were certain this was tied to the Pretender. You have an eyewitness, after all, even if he says he can’t remember anything,” Sansom said.

Taylor ignored that last comment. “You know as well as I do that we have nothing yet to definitively prove it was the Pretender. We need the DNA results, the forensics, to confirm it for sure.”

Sansom opened a folder, laid out an Identi-Kit sketch. “I was under the impression that you’d seen him before. We have this picture we’re working from, and your sergeant thinks it was the same man.”

Taylor glanced at the picture, at the electronic depiction of the man he’d seen. Remembered giving the description. Cruel eyes. Square jaw. Dark blond with a military buzz cut. Generic.

“Fitz told me he thought it could be the same man but he never got a solid look at his face. Yes, he gave a description, from a moment’s glance at over four hundred yards through binoculars, of someone who might have been the same man we saw in Nashville, but we have no real proof he’s the Pretender. We need to tie the crimes together with actual evidence, and with DNA, and the only way we’re going to do that is by capturing him.”

“Okay. I see your point. Tell me more about his earlier kills. I want all the gory little details.”

Taylor clicked to the next slide. “In Los Angeles, he copied the Santa Ana Killer from the mid-fifties, the one who dismembered the bodies of the women he killed and left them in the desert. In Denver, it was the LoDo, the Lower Denver Killer, who preyed on prostitutes. He strangled them and left them posed on street corners. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, he copied the Classifieds Killer of the 1970s. Do you remember him? Old guy, placed ads in the Star Tribune for temporary secretarial work. They’d answer the ads and he’d gut them.”

Sansom’s eyes shone. “Yes, I’m aware of that case.”

“Good. In New York, he became the Prospect Lake Killer, strangling his victims and dumping their bodies into Prospect Lake Park on Long Island.”

Taylor set the remote down on the table.

“Here’s the thing. Nashville changed everything. He broke the pattern. The Snow White was the only killer he emulated who was still out there. All of the other original killers had been caught and jailed. Two had been put to death. While he was with the Snow White, he started to improvise.”

“Why?”

Baldwin joined the conversation. “An excellent question. We don’t have a good answer for that. The relationship between the two men began as some sort of…apprenticeship. The Pretender was studying under the Snow White just like a painter or sculptor would study under the tutelage of a master. Snow White had a very specific script he wanted followed, and his apprentice disagreed. He felt he was powerful enough to strike out on his own. And that’s where we lost him.”

Sansom was finally looking impressed. She stared at the computer screen for a long minute, then said, “So why has he changed his pattern?”

Taylor and Baldwin exchanged a glance.

“That’s what we want to know,” Baldwin said. “He’s self-actualizing, testing to find his preferred method of killing. His MO is blatant though—he likes to imitate. He’s been successful pretending to be other killers for years. He’s a method actor, getting into the role by imitating the originals. He’ll go back to that—I’m sure of it. But there’s another component that’s come into play, interrupted his plans. His attraction to Lieutenant Jackson. I believe that, ultimately, he’s trying to impress her.”

“Lucky you,” Sansom said.

“You have no idea,” Taylor replied.

“Has he threatened you directly?”

“Several times. It’s been more cat and mouse in the past. He wants kudos for his work. He’s reached out to me before. But this time, it got personal.”

Baldwin tapped a pencil on the sketch. “I believe he’s feeling rejected by the lieutenant. She hasn’t been willing to play his game. That’s upset him, and he’s taking it out on those closest to her.”

“Hmm,” Sansom said. “How do you sleep at night?”

Taylor shrugged. “I don’t. Not much, at least.”

They were all quiet for a moment. Sansom seemed energized by the briefing, excited. She dismissed her two agents with a curt nod, waited for them to close the door, then smiled at Taylor and Baldwin.

“It sounds like a good time to get our hands on him. And why do you think he let Sergeant Fitzgerald live? And where do you think he’ll go next?”

“A warning,” Taylor said. “Fitz is just a pawn to him, a tool to get my attention. Where he’s heading next is anyone’s guess. No predictable pattern, remember?”

“Looks like the warning worked,” Sansom said. “You’re here.”

Taylor simply nodded. Silence filled the room. Sansom watched her for a few moments, then scooted her chair closer.

“I want in on this. I want to help you track him down. Let me tell you what we have, and we can go from there.”

“I seriously doubt he’s still in North Carolina,” Baldwin said. His BlackBerry beeped; he looked at the screen. Taylor felt his posture change, saw his spine straighten just a fraction. What was that all about?

Sansom seemed to sense the shift in Baldwin, too. She leaned forward, eyes gleaming, tapping her forefinger on the file for emphasis. “Listen to me, Dr. Baldwin. We are going to act like he is still in North Carolina, at least for the time being. I’ve had crime scene techs sweep every square inch of the boat and the Airstream trailer. You want forensics? I’ve got them in spades. And I’ll trade them for a chance to be in on this.”

Baldwin broke his eyes away from his BlackBerry, cleared his throat. Taylor heard the tension in his voice.

“Agent Sansom, this isn’t a game. You don’t get to make the rules. You don’t trade the information, you give it to me, willingly, then you step aside and let my team handle this. If you do this, and we catch him, you’ll receive the credit you and your team are due. Rest assured, we want everyone to win here. For the moment, though, I’m afraid you’re going to have to excuse the lieutenant and me. We have another meeting we need to get to.”

Sansom openly bristled. “There’s nothing more important than this right now. I can hold you both as material witnesses if I want. But I don’t think that’s necessary. I just want to help. You need me on this. I’ve already gotten clearance from my superiors to join your task force.”

Taylor watched Baldwin’s eyes cool, the green becoming a stormy sea. Normally the offer of help from an obviously capable agent would feel like a good idea, but Sansom rubbed her the wrong way. And Baldwin didn’t trust Sansom either, that was clear. No, they’d be better off without her.

“We haven’t set up a task force, and I can’t say that we will. So no, Agent Sansom, I don’t need you. I already have a team in place, all the positions are filled.”

Sansom and Baldwin stared at each other for a brief moment, playing some sort of silent game of chicken. Baldwin’s phone began to ring. He ignored it, eyes locked on the SBI agent. Taylor expected him to answer it, but he let it go, on and on, until it stopped with a beep she knew meant the call had gone to voice mail. The second it stopped ringing, it began again.

Sansom smiled, and Taylor sensed something was terribly, terribly wrong. She glanced sideways at Baldwin, saw his right hand was on his gun. She hadn’t even noticed his arm moving. She went on alert. Sansom shifted, and Taylor coughed, using the noise as an opportunity to unsnap her holster strap. Despite her efforts, the click echoed in the room.

Sansom moved with a swiftness Taylor couldn’t believe. She shoved the table toward them, catching Taylor hard in the gut, then bolted for the door. Baldwin was up and out of his chair in an instant. Taylor was a couple of seconds behind, her wind just starting to come back, her weapon drawn. But Sansom had the advantage, the element of surprise. She was out the door and sprinting away, her heels slapping the linoleum as she ran down the hall. Taylor and Baldwin exploded out of the room after her.

“Where’s her team?” Taylor shouted.

“I don’t know. Keep an eye out.”

“What the hell is going on?”

Sansom darted out the heavy steel door. Taylor could see it had been propped open so the lock would be disengaged. A gunshot rang out, followed by a scream, and more shots, close together. They barreled into the hallway in time to see Captain Nadis slump over onto the floor. A bullet had caught him high in the chest, the blood pooled under him in a dark puddle.

“Stay with him,” Baldwin shouted. Taylor knelt beside him, searched frantically for a pulse, found none. He was past her help.

Baldwin had taken up a defensive position at the entrance to the reception area. Wiping Nadis’s blood on her jeans, Taylor lined up opposite him. She risked a quick look out, saw nothing but the stocking foot of the receptionist. She was down, on the floor, one leg sticking out from under her desk.

“It’s clear,” she said, low. He nodded, then eased around the corner. An engine gunned, tires spitting up seashell gravel in an effort to gain purchase. They rushed to the deck just in time to see a black sedan fishtail out onto the main road.

It was pointless to shoot at a fleeing car, dangerous, even, but they both started firing, bullets winging through the thin, chilly air. A few metallic thunks resonated back to them, but the car never stopped, it disappeared with a squeal of tires around the corner.

“We have to go after them,” Taylor yelled. Baldwin lowered his weapon and grabbed her hand, holding her back.

“What are you doing? Let’s go!”

“Taylor, it’s okay,” Baldwin said quietly. “They won’t get far.” The distinctive whump, whump, whump of a heavy helicopter sounded in the distance.

“Is that Fitz’s chopper?”

“No, it’s one of ours.”

The snow was tumbling down fast, littering flakes on Baldwin’s dark hair that melted quickly. He turned to her, his eyes hard and cold.

“The message I got while we were talking to Sansom was from Garrett. Three people were found dead about twenty minutes ago, their bodies dumped on the beach just south of here. A woman, and two men. An SBI agent is on scene and says they’re theirs.”

“I don’t understand.”

Baldwin gestured over his shoulder. “The people in there, the ones we’ve been talking to all morning? They’re plants. The real Renee Sansom, Wally Yaeger and Eliot Polakis are dead.”

Six

Nashville, Tennessee

Colleen Keck was deep into her background on the Zodiac when her computer started going wild. She looked up, saw the words Nags Head. North Carolina? She flipped her online scanner over to the appropriate channel. Her mind was instantly processing this information as if it were linked to the earlier messages she’d received—what serial killer had struck in North Carolina? Was this part of the pattern from the murders last night? Was she simply reaching? She was a crime blogger after all, prone to seeing killers in every corner of her world. An overreactor, Tommy would say.

She was instantly grateful for the new protocols in many police departments that had allowed their personnel to shift away from 10 codes and into plain speak; while she was familiar with a wide array of codes from the major metropolitan areas, the smaller jurisdictions didn’t follow the same patterns. Plain speak allowed everyone to understand. The scanner crackled.

“Officers down, officers down. We need backup, my location.”

What the hell was his location? she wondered, writing the words down in her personal journalism shorthand. The disembodied voice went on, describing the scene.

“Update, there are seven officers involved in two separate shootings. We have a total of seven down. We need extra personnel, my location. Send out a BOLO on a black Lincoln Town Car, North Carolina plate, state owned, numbers to come. Suspects are armed and dangerous, repeat, armed and dangerous. Last seen heading west on Highway 64. Put roadblocks in place all the way out to 95. Switch to channel eighteen, code three, code three. Switching channels now.” The scanner went dead. They’d switched to a private channel to avoid people like her. It wouldn’t have mattered if the voice had continued, she wasn’t hearing anything but the roaring in her own ears.

Oh, my God.

Colleen’s breath came short, and she gagged a little, unable to resist a brief glimpse into her own hell after hearing the words officers down. Seven cops hurt in the line of duty. Seven families torn apart. Seven.

The memories assailed her anew, and she barely made it to the bathroom in time. She vomited in the sink, tears mingling with sudden beads of sweat that popped up on her forehead.

Oh, Tommy. Why did you have to leave me? Why did you have to be so freaking brave?

After a few minutes, her cries died down, and she gathered herself. She rinsed her mouth out with cool water, splashed some on her face, which managed to smear her already desiccated day-old mascara even further. She swiped furiously at the dark smears with a bit of toilet paper. Weakness was not allowed. Weakness was her enemy, the taloned beast that lived in her chest and couldn’t wait to sharpen its fangs on her heart. She’d considered succumbing many times, but Flynn—her darling, sweet boy, the spitting image of Tommy—Flynn kept her strong. Strong enough to fight back the beast and its basilisk stare into her soul.

Empty. She was terribly empty. The less she had to give, the less she could get hurt.

The phone rang.

She had a moment’s irrational fear—it was a call from the police, something’s happened to Flynn—but she pushed the thought away firmly. This time of day, it was some sort of telemarketer. She allowed the answering machine to pick up, heard the long beeps of a facsimile machine.

Sniffing hard, Colleen went to the refrigerator. She poured a little orange juice in a glass, then opened the cabinet above the stove, the one locked against her child’s roving hands. The small vial of Ativan was nestled in between some old painkillers and a never-used package of birth control pills, standing ready for when she and Tommy were able to resume post-baby connubial relations. Choking back another sob, she extracted the benzodiazepines, shot two into her mouth before she could change her mind, and swallowed. Thus indulged, she brushed her hair back from her face and tried to focus.

Something major had happened in North Carolina. Combined with the reports coming in from California, Massachusetts and New York, she felt it her duty to explore the cases further. They were connected, she was sure of that. Something told her that they hadn’t seen the end, either.

Seven

The Outer Banks, North Carolina

Taylor felt the cold seeping into her stomach. No wonder Fitz had been so reluctant to talk to her. He must have sensed something wasn’t right about Sansom and her goons.

Oh, God. Was Fitz safe? Surely this was an anomaly, not some sort of reengagement. Would the Pretender let Fitz go only to take him back into his custody? She took a deep breath. No. The helicopter that took him away bore the Duke Medical Center insignia. There was no way.

She was through taking chances.

“We have to get that helicopter diverted to Nashville, just to be safe.”

Baldwin looked at her for a long moment. “I agree.”

He made a call. Taylor could hear the voice of Charlaine Shultz, one of Baldwin’s lead profilers, on the other end. She promised to take care of it immediately, and Baldwin put the phone into his pocket.

They could hear sirens wailing now, and the SBI chopper soared past overhead in a swirl of dusty snow. The cavalry had arrived.

Baldwin touched her arm. “Come on, let’s do a sweep. This place is going to be crawling in a few minutes and we’ll need to give a SITREP.”

As always, Baldwin was thinking ahead. Taylor wasn’t in any mood to stop, hand over their knowledge to another officer, calmly give a situation report. No, she wanted to go after that damn car. But she joined him back in the police station. The scene inside was worse than Taylor remembered. Nadis and his receptionist were sprawled in their own blood, and they found another Nags Head officer and their SBI driver garroted in a closed-off room. Taylor barely recognized the silent smoker who’d picked them up from the airport. The scent of death was close in her nose.

Standing over the bodies, looking at the thin necklace of bruised and bloodied flesh on the officers’ throats, Taylor felt ice sweep through her veins. The sight thrust her back in time, to more deaths on her hands. Garroting was the signature of another killer, one long since dead. She swallowed hard.

“Fake Polakis and Yeager were taking down the others while Fake Sansom talked to us,” Taylor said.

“Looks that way. See, there are drag marks,” Baldwin said, pointing to a series of black scuffs on the white linoleum that led to the small break room where the bodies of the men had been stashed.

“They must have taken them down one by one, then lugged them in here, out of the way. How did they pull this off?”

“I don’t know. They were excellent though. If I hadn’t been warned, we might still be in there. Or in there.” He pointed toward the break room.

Taylor heard the sound of a car, the wheels crunching on the gravel. Their alone time had run out. She had that queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, the aftermath of adrenaline, when her senses were oversharp and she felt like she might throw up. A few deep breaths quelled her nausea, and the rage started to bleed in.

“I assume they were meant to take me?”

Baldwin shook his head. “I don’t think so. They could have easily shot all of us and grabbed you at any time. I think fake Sansom was supposed to get on the team, go with us, and report back everything we knew. Drive us, like cattle, to a predetermined place and time so they’d have the upper hand.”

“We gave her a lot of information.”

“Nothing they didn’t already have. Charlotte’s PowerPoint wasn’t anything new.”

“The Pretender arranged for all of this. He has help.”

“Yes.” Baldwin was gritting his teeth, the muscles in his jaw jumping. “Yes, he has help. More than we could have anticipated.”

Taylor breathed in deeply and regretted it. She slumped against the wall.

“So he arranged for Fitz to be dropped in Nags Head, where he could control the scene. Left the boat where it could be easily found, everything. He set us all up.”

“Yes.”

“He has to have people on the inside, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“And he knew I’d come rushing here, playing right into his hands.”

Baldwin turned to her, lips set in a thin line. “Yes.”

“A little less affirmation from you would be helpful, you know.”

He snorted through his nose at that, and shot her a crooked smile. “Then stop being so right all the time.”

The levity helped, and she felt herself settle. She’d spent years in training for these types of situations, and despite the personal nature of the crimes, the fact that the dance was directed at her, she felt certain they would win. It was what they did. Good triumphed over evil, even if it sometimes got trampled along the way.