Killing Fear

TWELVE

Once Jim Gage and his two assistants left, Trinity felt alone and restless, even with a police car parked out front. She didn’t want to stay around the house, and finally showered-with the bathroom door locked and a chair propped against the knob-dressed, and went down to the television station. She’d put on an act around Will and the others. Truth was, she was scared. And she would be very, very careful. She didn’t want to end up dead.

But there was a story here, a potentially big story, and she didn’t want to get scooped. Theodore Glenn had given her something-she just had to figure out exactly what it was and how to use it.

As soon as she walked into the main offices of the television station where she’d worked for eight years, her direct supervisor, Charlie Boyd, rushed to her side. “Where’s the photo?”

“The police took it.”

“Damn, I told you not to give it to them.”

“I couldn’t withhold evidence, Charlie. You know that.”

He sighed, ran a hand through his thick hair. “I know, I know, but damn, I wish we had it as backup.”

“They’re not going to lie about it,” she said. “They may claim ‘no comment,’ but Will Hooper isn’t going to deny the picture exists. I scanned it high res, it should withstand scrutiny.”

“What else did he say?”

Trinity motioned for Charlie to follow her into her office. She had a small closet with a tiny window, just enough for a chair, desk, and computer, but it was all hers-she had earned the door.

Charlie put his hands up on either side of his head. “‘Award-winning reporter held captive by escaped convict,’” he said, dropping his hands. “How does that sound?”

“It would be bigger news if I were dead,” she said, trying to laugh it off, but her heart wasn’t in it. She kept replaying the conversation between her and Theodore over and over in her head.

“We have to get this on the air. ASAP.”

“The police don’t want to give him airtime. Detective Hooper thinks that will only encourage him. Charlie, he killed his own sister.”

Though Trinity pushed envelopes whenever and wherever she could, she also prided herself on maintaining a good working relationship with the police department since she specialized in reporting on crime and punishment. She’d covered every major trial, interviewed both killers and cops, and had an exclusive program with the district attorney himself, Andrew Stanton, which aired pre-prime time the first Wednesday of every month. That show alone had brought the attention of bigwigs in L.A., who’d offered her a show and more money if she’d sign a five-year contract. But she didn’t want to go to L.A. for five years, and they wouldn’t agree to a year-by-year, so she stayed put in a position where she could leave whenever an opportunity arose. And she was looking for one.

She wouldn’t go against Hooper’s orders to lay low on this, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do something. She had reams of paperwork on this case, access to the files, and interviews she’d conducted with detectives Hooper and Sturgeon, the victims’ families, and the strippers who had worked with the dead women. Then there was the trial transcript itself.

The only thing she didn’t have were the sealed records of what had happened in the judge’s chambers. She couldn’t simply trust Theodore Glenn’s word that evidence was tossed out because of police or lab error. But there might be someone else she could go to.

“You sent me that photo-a cop sleeping on the job when he was supposed to be watching a suspect? That’s news. I’m not sitting on it.”

“Charlie, I need a few days to pursue this story.”

“Then why did you send me the picture?”

“Because I knew I had to turn it over and I’d never see it again. This way, we have it for when we go big.”

“This is television, baby. We go big now, and make it bigger.”

“Yes, there’s a story, but the cops aren’t going to talk about one of their own. You know that. We have to dig deeper and then hit them all hard.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I should never have sent it to you.”

“Don’t clam up on me now, Trinity.”

“I’m not. I need to do some research, some more interviews. No one else has this, Charlie. No one is going to scoop me.” She hoped.

“You’re not going to try and contact Glenn, are you? The man is insane.”

“He’s not insane. Dangerous, yes. A sociopath, probably. But he knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m going to be careful. The police are watching my place, and Glenn isn’t going to try anything in broad daylight. Not with the Feds, the CHP, and the San Diego Police Department all looking for him. He’ll probably lay low during the day. He’s smart.”

Charlie raised a brow. “Smart, yes, in that he’s having you do his work for him.”

“But what if he’s telling the truth? What if he didn’t kill Anna Clark? It doesn’t make him any less a murderer, but it does mean that someone else got away with murder. And that doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Not to mention it would be the story of the year if you uncovered it,” Charlie said quietly.

“There’s that,” she agreed. She loved San Diego, but Charlie knew she wanted a national gig. She was good enough. Smart enough. Pretty enough.

She just needed something to make her stand out. And this story would do it. She was as certain of that as anything.

“All right,” Charlie agreed, “but you check in with me twice a day, do not attempt to contact Glenn, and do not do anything stupid. If he contacts you again, call the police. Watch your back, kid.”

“I’ve already gotten the lecture from the detective in charge,” Trinity said. “I don’t have a death wish. I’m not going to antagonize Glenn, and I definitely don’t want to see him again, but I can’t get this out of my head. There’s no reason for him to admit to killing three women, and not the fourth. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he wants to have the conviction overturned. If he was wrongfully convicted, that could happen.”

“But he admitted to me that he killed those three women.”

“I doubt it would hold up in court. Beyond that, you need to be doubly careful. You’re the only one he confessed to.”

Robin wanted to stay in bed all day, door bolted, gun under her pillow. Loaded. Or better yet, in her hand, with the safety off.

Fear ate at her. A real, physical, gnawing presence that started in her mind, slithered along her nerves, until she was nearly paralyzed.

Staying in bed felt safe, but it was also wrong. She couldn’t let Theodore Glenn destroy her independence. She couldn’t lock herself away until he was caught. What if the police didn’t catch him? What if he taunted them for years? Or he came to town for a few high-profile murders, and then went down to Mexico? He could be next door…or a thousand miles away.

For a year, she had danced for a killer, served him drinks, smiled and flirted, because it was her job. When she’d realized he’d killed her friends, she’d been physically sick. When she’d learned what he did to them, when she’d slipped in Anna’s blood and fallen on her body, she’d nearly lost her sanity.

One minute she had been safe in Will’s arms, the next minute she had walked into a waking nightmare.

Will had kissed her in the foyer of her apartment building. It was nearly three in the morning and they’d spent the last hour in the bar. She wanted him to come up, but at the same time she knew he had a job to do.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he said.

“I have an alarm. I’m okay.”

He frowned, touched her chin. “Robin-”

The dim yellow light made his eyes darker. He looked at her as if he really cared. As if, maybe, he loved her. The thought lifted her up. He knew she was a stripper, yet he treated her with respect and affection and intelligence.

He tucked her hair behind her ears and kissed her lightly, but with more intimacy than their frantic coupling in the bar earlier. She melted against him. “Good night.”

She felt him watching her walk up the stairs. She waved at him from the landing at the top, and he left, double-checking that the door that led in to the common entry was secure.

Maybe they had a future. There was something different about their relationship, something that Robin hadn’t had before. Powerful. Passionate. Special.

She unlocked the door, reached for the alarm to put in the code and reset it. The keypad was lit in faint green, so she didn’t need lights to see, but she wished she had left the kitchen light on or something. It was pitch-black with all the drapes pulled.

“Meow, meow, meow.”

Anna’s cat brushed against her legs. “I fed you early because I had to work, you just forgot, silly cat.” She picked him up.

Pickles was wet. Sticky. “Now what did you get into?”

She smelled bleach, and while her mind started to send her a warning, her first thought was for the cat, that he was going to get sick if he knocked over the bleach and inhaled too many fumes.

She took two steps forward feeling for the lamp she couldn’t see but knew was on the end table right there on the left of the door, but she tripped. The cat jumped from her arms as she fell, her hands falling into something sticky and wet. The smell. Why hadn’t she noticed the smell? It was foul, sickly sweet. Metallic-and bleach. Her chest tightened and she couldn’t breathe. She reached back to push herself up and touched a person. A hand.

Her stomach heaved as she fumbled standing in the dark. Someone was here, on the floor. A person. Blood and bleach. Blood and bleach. No, no, no!

She found the lamp, shaking so hard that she knocked it over. She ran to the door, feeling the wall for the light switch. Turned it on.

Anna. Her blood pooled on the hardwood floor. Her eyes were wide open, staring at Robin. Duct tape over Anna’s mouth. She was naked, red cut marks all over her body. One deep bloody slash across her throat. She was dead.

Robin flung open the door and screamed. She ran down the stairs, hoping Will was still there. In the back of her mind, through the pounding in her head, she heard the shrill shriek of her alarm.

The street was empty. Will was gone.

Robin ran to the bar and called 911. That’s where she remained, covered in Anna’s blood, until the police arrived.

“He killed her,” Robin told the first officer on scene. “Theodore Glenn killed Anna and you couldn’t stop him!”

But in the back of her mind, Robin couldn’t help but think that this was all her fault.

The phone rang and Robin shook herself out of her nightmare. They had finally built a case against Theodore Glenn and put him in prison. The police would catch him again. She held on to that hope.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, Robin.”

Theodore.

She slammed down the phone, acting on instinct and not common sense. She stared at the receiver. Damn, damn, damn! The police might have been able to trace the call. Maybe she could have learned something about where he was or what he planned to do.

“Call back, you bastard!”

Damn him. What had she done? Let her fear take control again.

Robin had met Theodore soon after he started visiting the club regularly. Back when it was still RJ’s, back when they stripped and danced and paid the house half their tips. But even then, she’d made enough money to put herself through state college and keep her mother from losing the small house that had been her grandparents’, but which her mother had taken a new mortgage on to pay for whatever she thought she needed.

Robin had just graduated from college, with honors in commercial art and art history, and she could have quit stripping. But there were two things that she valued, both of which cost money. Her dream to own her own house-a real home-and to be an artist. Paint supplies weren’t cheap, and she needed time and daylight to paint what she loved. She didn’t want to be miserable at a desk job or creating ad campaigns to sell more useless stuff, like all the junk her mother was continually suckered into buying.

But she couldn’t say she was happy stripping, either. Robin didn’t know what she could do to realize her dreams, and she felt trapped. Uncertain. And lonely. Especially after Sean left her.

That first night Theodore came into RJ’s, Robin knew something was different about him. Not a good different. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was that disturbed her, even when Bethany rushed up to her, flushed and excited.

Bethany was energized when her dance was over. She ran into the dressing room, her thong concealing little. Robin tossed her a silk robe and Bethany absentmindedly put it on, chattering, “He’s here again! Oh my God, Robin, he’s so gorgeous. And he tips so good.”

Robin frowned. “Are you talking about the guy you slept with last week?” Robin didn’t condone Bethany’s laissez-faire attitude about sex. At twenty-three, Robin was one of the oldest dancers, and she’d been working here for five years. She was the one who stood up to RJ when he was an asshole, she was the one who got raises for the girls and fought to reduce the house percentage of tips from fifty to a third. And she was the one to keep a watchful eye that the girls weren’t selling more than their dances.

Bethany was nineteen, beautiful, and had next to no common sense. She’d run away from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to L.A. when she was seventeen to be a star, got sidetracked to San Diego because of a jerk she met, and was practically homeless when she applied for a job at RJ’s. Robin had a soft spot for her.

“Bethany, I told you to be careful with the men you go home with. Most of these guys are okay, but you never know.”

“You have to meet him.”

RJ, a tall, skinny sixty-year-old man who looked eighty and had owned the club for thirtysome years, came in without knocking. “Robin, babe, you’re up and late.”

“I’m coming.”

“Move your ass!” He closed the door, unmindful of the women in various stages of undress.

Robin finished with her makeup as Bethany said, “He’s at table six. He’s over six feet tall-I love tall men-and really cute. Brown hair and the most incredible blue eyes you ever saw.”

Robin blocked Bethany’s voice, running through her routine in her mind. She was a dancer, an actress. She put on her public face: makeup accentuating her cat eyes, glitter adding sparkle to her dark red hair that she pinned up in what appeared to be loose curls, but which were held tight in place so as not to come undone during her vigorous, sexy dance.

Robin wasn’t the star-that was Brandi, who did extensive lap dances and played up to the audience. But Robin was technically the best dancer. She used her strength-her talent.

She couldn’t see the audience under the bright lights, which was more than fine with her. She danced her heart out, then left the stage. From the wings, she glanced at table six.

He stared directly at her. She couldn’t make out his features clearly, but he was attractive and well groomed. “An attorney,” Bethany had gushed, and Robin could see that.

She shivered. Even at this distance, his piercing blue eyes chilled her. He saw her looking at him, nodded his head. She turned away.

As soon as she had her cocktail costume on-that had been her last dance and she would wait tables for the rest of the night-Bethany pulled Robin onto the floor. Right to table six.

“Theodore,” Bethany said breathlessly, “this is my friend Robin. I just wanted her to meet you because she’s such a mother hen.”

Robin gave a reserved smile. Theodore extended his hand, and she accepted the gesture. His hand was solid and calloused, as if he worked or played outdoors. He was larger than she’d originally thought, solid upper body muscles, flat stomach, fancy clothes.

“Nice to meet you, Robin.”

“Likewise,” she mumbled, unable to tear her eyes from his. They unnerved her and she forced herself to keep the polite smile plastered on her face.

She didn’t like him. She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t find any flaw in his appearance or attitude, but she felt as if an entire army rippled under his perfect skin. The way he looked at Robin-with a familiarity even her few lovers hadn’t shown-deeply disturbed her.

“You’re an exceptional dancer,” he continued, a slight frown on his mouth telling Robin that he noticed her aloofness and did not approve.

“Thank you.” She bowed her head slightly, pasted on a brighter smile, and looked him in the eye. “I need to get to work. You understand. Have fun.” Robin hurried off.

Bethany left that night again with the creepy Theodore. Robin didn’t sleep well, and called her first thing in the morning. “Just want to make sure you got home all right,” Robin said, relieved.

“Of course, silly. Shhh.”

“What?”

“I have company. Whoops!” Bethany giggled. “Gotta go.”

Robin hung up, cold fear turning her stomach. She didn’t know why, she didn’t believe in premonitions or any of that nonsense, but something was wrong.

Over time, Robin’s fear dissipated. Theodore Glenn became a regular, always Wednesdays and Fridays. He dated a few of the girls, even Brandi, who was discerning about the men she slept with. Theodore Glenn was polite, smart, and attractive. He was a stripper groupie, and the girls all liked him. And even when he started going home with other women, Bethany never thought ill of him. By that time she had her sights set on another regular, an older man who Robin was certain was married. Bethany laughed that off as well.

Except for Robin, everyone liked Theodore Glenn. When he looked her way, she turned cold. Even if she couldn’t see him, she sensed his presence. Watching. Waiting-for what, she had no idea. She kept her distance and did her job and didn’t think too much about her initial reaction to Glenn until RJ called her in the middle of the night a year later and told her Bethany had been murdered.

Robin stared at the phone. “Dammit! It’s just another game to you, isn’t it? Call, you bastard.”

And even though she asked for it, when the phone rang Robin jumped.