Blood Dreams

Chapter Nine

THE INFORMATION didn't make Dani any happier, but she knew better than to protest. Instead, she said, "I'm guessing Becky Huntley didn't have anything helpful to offer you?"

"They seldom do, I've discovered. And when they do, it tends to be vague or cryptic. Becky said to pay attention to the signs, that someone was leaving us a trail to follow."

Marc frowned at her. "Someone?"

"Yeah. Unfortunately, she didn't stick around to explain that. Which is a real shame on several counts. As a rule, serials don't leave trails, and the Boston killer certainly didn't."

"Or signs?" Jordan murmured, glancing toward the crime-scene photo on the bulletin board.

"Or signs. With serials, if they get caught it's most often not because of stellar police work but because the bastard slips up. Makes a mistake. Leaves a victim alive, or doesn't clean up after himself, or is otherwise careless."

"But not because he leaves a trail," Dani said.

"No, that's not the norm. It would have been nice to get specifics from Becky, but the contact was just too brief." Hollis grimaced. "Though I have to admit that I'm relatively new at this medium stuff, and I'm only now reaching the point where I can-sometimes-hear them."

"Do you see them?" Jordan asked. As Marc had promised, he seemed to have no difficulty in accepting, without a blink, the reality of psychics and her own claims of being a medium.

She wondered why and made a mental note to find out later. She nodded. "Sometimes as clearly as I see you now. Other times, hardly at all."

"That must be unsettling. Either way."

"You could say that."

With a slightly queasy look crossing his expressive face, Jordan said, "When you see them, they don't look like-"

"Like they did when they were killed? Showing me how they were killed, how they died? No. No wounds, no signs of illness, not even especially pale-when I see them clearly, at least."

"Do they ever tell you anything about… what comes after?" he asked, clearly genuinely curious.

"No. But something must, right? I mean-they're dead but they still exist, somehow. They communicate. They seem to think, to feel, just as they did when they were alive. Personality intact, as far as I can tell."

"And they stay like that?"

"You mean indefinitely?" Hollis shrugged. "I don't know. All I can tell you is that once we've closed a case, murderer caught or killed, I don't see or hear the victims anymore. Another SCU member, a much stronger medium than I am, says some spirits choose to remain in that state to serve as guides, but not many of them. No idea why."

Before Jordan could do more than open his mouth to ask another question, the sheriff interrupted.

" Jordan, I know you're curious. Hell, I'm curious. But let's get our priorities straight. If this is the same son of a bitch who tore through Boston last summer, we're looking at more victims, and probably sooner rather than later."

"It's the same killer," Hollis said.

"Okay, it's the same killer," the sheriff said. "So, why here? Why pick Venture as his hunting ground? This is a long way from Boston, and a small town makes it far less likely he can disappear into the crowd."

Dani shook her head. "He has to have some connection here, with someone or someplace. Something that drew him here. Isn't that the only reason that makes sense?" There was an itch at the back of her mind that told her she had forgotten or overlooked something important, probably in her vision dream.

Hardly surprising, that. But damned frustrating.

"It's certainly one of the few reasons," Hollis said. "To ditch the anonymity of a big city for a small town, where strangers very likely get noticed, and quickly, is not exactly a smart move, especially if you plan to remain an active serial killer."

"Maybe he panicked," Jordan suggested. "If you guys were getting close-"

It was Hollis's turn to shake her head. "No, the task force wasn't closing in on him. But the media spotlight got awfully bright when Annie LeMott went missing, and brighter still when her body was found. Bishop believes that's what drove the killer from Boston."

"It makes sense," Marc agreed, "But Dani's right. I doubt this bastard picked Venture by sticking a pin in a map."

Jordan said, "So I guess we're looking for a connection."

"Which," Paris said, "is not going to be easy when we have no concrete facts on this man."

"Not going to be easy." Dani sighed. "Masterly understatement, I'd say, at least unless we're able to pick up the right signs and follow this trail supposedly being left for us."

"That's assuming there is a trail," Jordan said, adding to Hollis, "No offense."

"None taken. I'll be very surprised myself if we do find a trail. The universe is usually not so helpful."

"And why would a killer be?" Dani said to the room at large.

Marie Goode, in additlion to not being an especially fanciful woman, was also not a stupid woman. So finding a necklace that was not hers very late on Wednesday night in her supposedly safely locked-up apartment had sent her internal alarm bells jangling. Especially after the walk home and the creepy sensation of being watched and followed.

So she had done what any rational woman would, under the circumstances, and called the police. And uniformed sheriff's deputies came, and took her statement, and checked all her doors and windows for her, and carried away the necklace, saying they'd look into it and promising that a patrol car would cruise past her complex every hour for the rest of the night, just to make sure there was nobody lurking out there.

That should have been the end of things.

Marie had tossed and turned fitfully nevertheless, leaving lamps on in her living room and her second bedroom, plus the outside lights, and getting up at least three times to check the doors and windows again.

By the time morning finally came, she was hardly rested, but it was a workday for her. She dragged herself out of bed and took a quick shower, unable to relax even after she was dried and dressed. She skipped her usual coffee for toast and weak tea, hoping to settle her jumpy stomach. It even worked.

Until she unlocked and opened her front door.

A dozen red roses that had been propped against the door fell over the threshold.

She didn't even have to bend to read the card nestled within the green tissue wrapping. There was no envelope, just a plain white card with two words written in a flowing hand.

Hello, sweetheart.

Maybe another woman would have been charmed by a secret admirer leaving flowers. Maybe another woman would have enjoyed a much brighter day with that thought in her mind.

Maybe Marie would have. Except for that creepy walk home last night.

And the necklace left inside her locked apartment.

And the fact that the hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up once again.

It was broad daylight, and Marie's apartment was less than a dozen blocks from the sheriff's department.

She closed and locked the door,, leaving the flowers outside. She got her pepper spray and her whistle, holding both in shaking hands.

And then she called the sheriff.

"All we can do is work with the information we do have," Marc reminded the group in the conference room. "We have crime-scene data, forensics reports, victim profiles. From Boston as well as here. Right?" He looked at Hollis with his brows raised. She nodded and gestured to a very thick accordion file folder on the conference table. "In there is every bit of information Bishop felt we needed concerning the investigation so far. It's not all the case information, obviously; that would fill boxes. But in there is a complete background and profile of each of the Boston victims.

"And his victim preferences are very important, we believe. In Boston, that was his only really consistent trait, and Bishop believes he won't stray far from it, now or in the future. He always chose the same physical type of woman. Small, delicate, dark brown hair, brown eyes. Almost childlike."

Jordan frowned, but before he could comment, Hollis was adding, "We also have Bishop's latest profile of our killer."

"Latest?" Paris asked.

"He started revising the original as soon as we knew the next hunting ground would be so far from Boston. So different from Boston. Phis… well, one other thing I did get from Becky was that the killer had definitely escalated in his sheer brutality but in so doing took a pretty large leap as serial killers go, which is unusual. That alone required a revision of the profile."

Marc frowned. "A leap?"

"In the speed and degree to which he escalated in violence. The twelfth victim, Annie LeMott, was savagely beaten, and she was stabbed multiple times-but her body was left more or less intact. All of the victims in Boston were."

"But not Becky," Marc said. "And not Karen."

"Shit," Jordan muttered. And when everyone looked at him, added, "I guess we are sure Karen's dead too?"

"We're sure there are at least two victims," Marc confirmed. "And I'm willing to accept Hollis's word that Becky is one of them, unless and until DNA results contradict her. Karen's our only other missing person, Jordan."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just really don't want to have to be the one to tell Bob his wife's dead."

"A friend?" Hollis asked.

"Not a close one, though we went to school together." He shrugged. "Small town."

"With the traditional small-town grapevine?" she wanted to know, shifting the subject. Maybe.

It was Marc who said, "People around here tend to keep their business to themselves when it comes to outsiders, but that isn't to say that they don't know what's going on around them and talk about it among themselves."

"But they'll be slow to do anything like alert the media?"

"That's been the rule around here as long as I can remember. At least for most of the locals. But we have a crop of relative newcomers in the area, and I have no idea what their tolerance for media scrutiny would be. Some people do love the spotlight."

Hollis sighed. "Ain't that the truth. So we don't have much time before the news breaks."

"I'd guess not much, no." Marc shook his head and directed the conversation back a step. "You said this killer escalated to an unusual degree?"

"Yeah." Hollis frowned. "The time gap could explain the intensity of the escalation, at least in part. If he wanted to kill, needed to kill, but couldn't, for whatever reason. Sheer frustration could easily make a killer more savage."

"Assuming there actually was a time gap."

She nodded. "Always possible he's killed somewhere else and we missed the signs."

"But you don't believe that."

"No. We believe he's lain low all these weeks, that he didn't kill until he got his hands on Becky Huntley on or after September twenty-second, when she disappeared. Before that… maybe he was searching for a place like Venture. Or maybe he came straight here, because of that connection Dani suggested, and has spent all this time since his arrival getting ready."

It was Marc's turn to frown. "He didn't do much advance prep the first time, did he? Grabbed the women usually coming or going from home or work, in areas with little or no security."

Hollis nodded. "Yeah, he was like a vicious animal. Grab and run, and lucky enough or smart enough to time every grab perfectly. Never any witnesses, which means we haven't even the vaguest description of him."

"He could be anyone," Dani murmured. "We could walk right past him on the street and never know."

"Probably," Hollis agreed. "If monsters looked the part, they'd be a hell of a lot easier to catch."

Marc circled once again back to the point, saying, "But if he did spend all the time between the last murder in Boston and the first one here somehow getting ready, that's new."

"One of the many potential differences, yes."

"An important difference?"

"Bishop believes so. And I agree. Think about it. What he risks most in a smaller area with fewer people is discovery. He can't grab and then butcher a dozen victims in a dozen different locations over a short span of time, not in a place like Venture. He might be able to do that once, maybe twice if he's really lucky, but not more than that. He needs a base. Somewhere safe, somewhere isolated, somewhere he can do what he wants to do with little or no fear of discovery."

Dani stirred and said, "Like a warehouse. Like the basement of an otherwise deserted warehouse."

Hollis nodded. "Like a warehouse. When the universe offers you a signpost, you pay attention."

"But is that part of the trail we're meant to follow?" Dani's uneasiness grew. "Or something entirely separate?"

"Actually," Hollis said in a slow tone of realization, "it's an even more complicated question. Because Becky didn't say we were supposed to follow the trail. She just said someone was leaving us a trail to follow."

There was a long silence, and then Dani said, "And in my dream, we're walking into a trap."

Before anybody could comment on that, an older deputy tapped on the door and stuck his head in, addressing Marc apologetically.

"Something we thought you ought to know, Sheriff."

"What?"

"We got a call late last night from a young lady who suspected she was being followed home from work and that somebody had gotten into her locked apartment."

"Steal anything?"

"No, that's the weird thing. He left something behind. A. necklace. Shorty's looking it over now."

Marc frowned. "I take it she's sure it wasn't left by a boyfriend or something like that."

"She's absolutely positive, Sheriff. She's also shook up and not the sort to get that way without reason. A while ago when she opened her apartment door to leave for work, she found a dozen red roses leaning against her door-with a note that spooked her even more. She called it in, and this time the deputies responding decided you should talk to her."

Eyeing his deputy, Marc said, "I take it you were one of those deputies?"

"Yes, sir."

"You were out at the crime scene yesterday, weren't you Harry?"

"Yes, sir." With clearly forced calm, Deputy Walker added "I know Bob Norville, and I know Becky Huntley's parents And I really think you should meet Marie Goode and talk to her. I think maybe she's got reason to be scared."

Gabriel Wolf parked the Jeep well back from the abrupt end of the old dirt access road and got out. He didn't get too close to the edge, just close enough to peer over and note that a spring flood sometime in the past had changed the course of a wide creek and allowed it to wash out a long stretch of the old road.

It was no Grand Canyon but still a long way down to the sluggishly moving creek.

"Well, shit," he said. "Have to be close enough, I guess."

He got his binoculars from a large duffel bag in the backseat and returned warily to the best vantage point he'd been able to find overlooking most of Prophet County, at least without climbing a fucking mountain. This time, he not only kept well back from the unstable edge, but also in the dubious cover of a cluster of trees only now beginning to assume this year's muted fall colors.

He did not want to be seen up here.

He adjusted the focus of the binoculars and swept the distant area first, where the small town of Venture was visible, sprawling more than he had expected. It had once existed as a fairly important stop along the railroad from Atlanta heading north; the line had run through Venture and continued along the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, transporting cotton, tobacco, pecans, and whatever other crops and goods the state produced, as well as the stone and other minerals quarried farther to the south.

Gabriel studied what he could see of Venture, frowning a little. He'd seen small towns left by the wayside of progress, abandoned when railroads closed down lines and unwise timber harvesting practices left scarred hillsides and crops like cotton and tobacco failed or moved elsewhere, and this particular small town had either recovered from such economic hits long ago or else had never experienced them.

And yet… trains no longer even paused here, slowing a little as they passed Venture only because the line then wended its way into the mountains, where speed could be deadly. As far as Gabriel could see, there were no major industries in the area, barring one lone paper mill up on the river miles outside town.

Several tidy farms boasted dairy cows, some beef cattle, and other small livestock, and he'd noted at least three other farms where horses and riders were from all appearances trained in show jumping and cross-country eventing. Some timber was being cut to the west of the town, but not on a large scale despite the proximity of the paper mill. He spotted a couple of tobacco fields, but most of the agriculture he saw consisted of little more than backyard vegetable gardens intended only to supplement or supply much of the diet of the families that owned and worked them.

"Where's the money coming from," he murmured.

You're a suspicious bastard.

"Yeah. Yeah. It's my job to ask the tough questions."

Actually, it isn't. It's your job to find that warehouse. Or at least eliminate as many dead ends as we can.

Gabriel visually swept the area again, and sighed. "This used to be a major stop for at least two railroads, and one very large textile mill operated in the area for generations; there are abandoned warehouses, deserted buildings, and defunct storage facilities all over the damn place."

Defunct?

"Yeah, don't you like that word?"

I'm just wondering how come such a prosperous little town hasn't torn down all those abandoned buildings.

"It does give one pause, doesn't it?"

They don't seem to clutter up the landscape too much. Maybe that's why.

"If it ain't ugly, leave it be?"

Well, even demo costs money.

"You calling me a suspicious bastard again?"

No, I'm sharing your suspicion. But I don't know that it gets us anywhere.

"Now you're just being a pessimist." Gabriel continued to study Venture through his binoculars, sharpening the focus on the neat and very attractive downtown area. "Huh."

What?

He sighed and lowered the binoculars. "Either the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing-No, that's not it, that's never it, even when it looks that way."

What are you muttering about?

"I think we're dealing with that need-to-know shit again. We aren't alone in Prophet County."

Well, we knew that.

"I'm not just talking about Dani and Paris. Or Hollis Templeton."

Who, then?

"Somebody unexpected. Somebody who really shouldn't be here, not for this one."

Who do you-Oh. Oh, shit.

"Exactly," Gabriel murmured, raising the binoculars to his eyes once again to watch a surprisingly inconspicuous figure strolling along the quaint downtown sidewalk. "I guess he's taking the predicted threat to Miranda very, very seriously."