Split Second

CHAPTER 7

Before the pizza or Gwen arrived, Maggie poured a second Scotch. She had forgotten about the bottle until she discovered it staring up at her, safely stored in the box—a necessary antidote accompanying the contents of horror. The box was labeled #34666, the number that had been assigned to Albert Stucky. Perhaps it was no accident that his file number would end in 666.

Assistant Director Cunningham would be furious if he knew she had copied every last piece of paper from Stucky’s official file. She would have felt guilty if each report, each document, each note had been recorded by someone other than herself. For almost two years Maggie had tracked Stucky. She had viewed every one of his scenes of torture and dissection, scanning his handiwork for fibers, hairs, missing organs, anything that would tell her how to catch him. She had a right to his file, considering it some strange documentation of a portion of her own life.

She had taken a quick shower after her unexpected trip to the vet. Her UVA T-shirt soaked in the bathroom sink. She might never be able to remove the bloodstains. The T-shirt was old, stretched and faded, but she had an odd attachment to it. Some people kept scrapbooks, Maggie kept T-shirts.

Her years at the University of Virginia had been good ones. It was there she discovered a life of her own outside of being her mother’s caretaker. It was where she had met Greg. She glanced at her watch, then checked her cellular phone to make certain it was on. He still hadn’t returned her call about the missing carton. He’d make her wait, but she wouldn’t let herself get angry. Not tonight. She was simply too exhausted to take on one more emotion.

The doorbell chimed. Maggie glanced at her watch again. As usual, Gwen was ten minutes late. She tugged at her shirttail, making certain it hid the bulging Smith & Wesson tucked into her waistband. Lately, the gun had become as common an accessory as her wristwatch.

“I know I’m late,” Gwen said before the door was fully open. “Traffic was a bitch. Friday night and everyone’s trying to get the hell out of D.C. for the weekend.”

“Good to see you, too.”

She smiled and pulled Maggie in for a one-armed hug. For a brief moment Maggie was surprised by how soft and fragile the older woman felt. Despite Gwen’s petite and feminine stature, Maggie thought of her as her own personal Rock of Gibraltor. She had leaned on Gwen and depended on her strength and character and words of wisdom many times during their friendship.

When Gwen pulled away, she cupped Maggie’s cheek in the palm of her hand, attempting to get a good look at her.

“You look like hell,” was her gentle assessment.

“Gee, thanks!”

She smiled again and handed Maggie the carton of longnecked Bud Light she carried in her other hand. The bottles were cold and dripping with condensation. Maggie took them and used the action as an excuse to keep her eyes away from Gwen’s. It had been almost a month since the two women had seen each other, though they talked on the phone regularly. On the phone, however, Maggie could keep Gwen from seeing the panic and vulnerability that seemed to lie so close to the surface during these past several weeks.

“Pizza should be here any minute,” Maggie told her as she reset the security system.

“No Italian sausage on my half.”

“Extra mushrooms, instead.”

“Oh, bless you.” Gwen didn’t wait for an invitation to come in. She took off to roam through the rooms.

“My God, Maggie, this house is wonderful.”

“You like my designer?”

“Hmm…I’d say brown cardboard is you, simple and unpretentious. May I check out the second floor?” Gwen asked, already making her way up the stairs.

“Can I stop you?” Maggie laughed. How was it possible for this woman to sweep into a place and bring a trail of energy as well as such warmth and delight?

She and Gwen had met when Maggie had first arrived at Quantico for her forensic fellowship. Maggie had been a young, naive newbie who hadn’t yet seen blood except in a test tube, and had never fired a gun except during training on the firing range.

Gwen had been one of the local psychologists brought in by Assistant Director Cunningham to act as a private consultant and to help profile several important cases. Even back then she had a successful practice in D.C. Many of her patients were some of the elite of Washington—bored wives of congressmen, suicidal generals and even one manic-depressed White House cabinet member.

However it was Gwen’s research, the many articles she had written and her remarkable insight into the criminal mind that had attracted Assistant Director Cunningham when he first asked her to be an independent consultant for the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit. Though Maggie learned quickly that the assistant director had been attracted to Dr. Gwen Patterson in other ways as well. A person would have to be blind not to see the ongoing chemistry between the two, though Maggie knew firsthand that neither had acted upon it, nor ever intended to.

“We respect our professional relationship,” Gwen explained to Maggie once, making it clear she didn’t want the subject brought up again, though this was long after Gwen’s stint as a consultant had ended. Maggie knew that Assistant Director Cunningham’s estranged marriage probably had more to do with their hands-off policy than any attempt to remain professional.

From the first time Maggie met Gwen, she had admired the woman’s vibrancy, her keen intellect and her dry sense of humor. Gwen refused to think inside the box and didn’t hesitate to break any of the rules while still appearing to be respectful of authority. Maggie had seen her win over diplomats as well as criminals with her sophisticated but charming manner. Gwen was fifteen years older than Maggie, but the woman had instantly become a best friend as well as a mentor.

The doorbell chimed again, and Maggie’s hand reached back and grabbed her revolver before she could stop herself. She glanced up the stairs to see if Gwen had witnessed her knee-jerk reaction. She smoothed her shirttail over her jeans and checked the portico from the side window before she disarmed the alarm system. She stopped and looked out the peephole, examining the fish-eye view of the street, then she opened the door.

“Large pizza for O’Dell.” The young girl handed Maggie the warm box. Already she could smell the Romano cheese and Italian sausage.

“It smells wonderful.”

The girl grinned as though she had prepared it herself.

“It comes to $18.59, please.”

Maggie handed her a twenty and a five. “Keep the change.”

“Gee, thanks.”

The girl bounced down the circular drive, her blond ponytail waving out the back of her blue baseball cap.

Maggie set the pizza down in the middle of the living room. She returned to the door to reset the security system just as Gwen came rushing down the steps.

“Maggie, what the hell happened?” she asked, holding up the dripping T-shirt, splattered with blood.

“What is this? Did you hurt yourself?” Gwen demanded.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, oh that. What the hell happened?”

Maggie quickly cupped a hand under the dripping T-shirt and grabbed it away, racing up the stairs to drop it back into the sink. She drained the red, murky water, tossed in more detergent and ran fresh water over the fabric. When she looked up in the mirror, Gwen was standing behind her, watching.

“If you’re hurt, please don’t try to take care of it yourself,” Gwen said in a soft but stern voice.

Maggie met her friend’s eyes in the mirror and knew that she was referring to the cut Albert Stucky had sliced into her abdomen. Maggie had slipped away into the night, after all the commotion had ended, and tried to discreetly dress her own wound. But an infection had landed her in the emergency room a few days later.

“It’s nothing, Gwen. My neighbor’s dog was injured. I helped take it to the vet. This is the dog’s blood. Not mine.”

“You’re kidding.” It took a minute for relief to wash over Gwen’s face. “Jesus, Maggie, you just can’t keep your nose out of anything that involves blood, can you?”

Maggie smiled. “I’ll tell you about it later. We need to eat, because I am starving.”

“That’s new and different.”

Maggie grabbed a towel, wiped her hands and led the way back downstairs.

“You know,” Gwen said from behind her, “you need to put on some weight. Do you ever eat regular meals anymore?”

“I hope this isn’t going to be a lecture on nutrition.”

She heard Gwen sigh, but knew she wouldn’t push it. They went into the kitchen, and Maggie pulled out paper plates and napkins from a carton on the counter. Each grabbed a cold bottle of beer and returned to the living-room floor. Already Gwen had kicked out of her expensive black pumps and thrown her suit jacket over the arm of the recliner. Maggie scooped up pizza as she noticed Gwen examining the open carton next to the rolltop desk.

“This is Stucky’s, isn’t it?”

“Are you going to rat me out to Cunningham?”

“Of course not. You know me better than that. But I am concerned about you obsessing over him.”

“I’m not obsessing.”

“Really? Then what would you call it?”

Maggie took a bite of pizza. She didn’t want to think about Stucky, or her appetite would be ruined again. Yet that was one of the reasons Gwen was here.

“I simply want him caught,” Maggie finally said. She could feel Gwen’s eyes examining her, looking for signs, watching for underlying tones. Maggie hated it when her friend tried psychoanalyzing her, but she knew it was a simple instinct with Gwen.

“And only you can catch him? Is that it?”

“I know him best.”

Gwen stared at her a few more moments then picked up her bottle by its neck and twisted off the cap. She took a sip and put the drink aside.

“I did some checking.” She reached for a slice of pizza, and Maggie tried not to show her eagerness. She had asked Gwen to use her connections to find out where the Stucky case was stalled. When Assistant Director Cunningham exiled Maggie to the teaching circuit, he had also made it impossible for her to find out any information about the investigation.

Gwen took her time chewing. Another sip while Maggie waited. She wondered if Gwen had called Cunningham directly. No, that would have been too obvious. He knew the two of them were close friends.

“And?” She couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Cunningham has brought in a new profiler, but the task force has been dismantled.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Because he has nothing, Maggie. It’s been, what? Over five months? There’s no sign of Albert Stucky. It’s like he’s fallen off the face of the earth.”

“I know. I’ve been checking VICAP almost weekly.” Initiated by the FBI, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program recorded violent crimes across the country, categorizing them by distinguishing features. Nothing close to Stucky’s M.O. had shown up. “What about in Europe? Stucky has enough money stashed. He could go anywhere.”

“I checked my sources at Interpol.” Gwen paused for another sip. “There’s been nothing that looks like Stucky.”

“Maybe he’s changed his M.O.”

“Maybe he’s stopped, Maggie. Sometimes serial killers do that. They just stop. No one can explain it, but you know it happens.”

“Not Stucky.”

“Don’t you think he’d be in touch with you? Try to start his sick game all over again? After all, you’re the one who got him thrown in jail. If nothing else, he’d be mad as hell.”

Maggie had been the one who had finally identified the madman the FBI had nicknamed The Collector. Her profile, and a lucky discovery of an almost indistinguishable set of fingerprints—arrogantly and recklessly left behind at a crime scene—were what led to the unveiling of The Collector as a man named Albert Stucky, a self-made millionaire from Massachusetts.

Like most serial killers, Stucky seemed pleased by the exposure, enjoying the attention and wanting to take the credit. When his obsession turned to Maggie, no one was really surprised. But the game that followed was anything but ordinary. A game that included clues to catch him, only the clues came as personal notes with a token finger, a dissected birthmark, and once, a severed nipple slipped into an envelope.

That was about eight or nine months ago. Almost a year had passed and Maggie still struggled to remember what her life had been like before the game. She couldn’t remember sleep without nightmares. She couldn’t remember not feeling the constant need to look over her shoulder. She had nearly lost her life capturing Albert Stucky, and he had escaped before she could remember what feeling safe felt like.

Gwen reached over and pulled a stack of crime scene photos from the box. She laid them out while she continued eating her pizza. She was one of the few people Maggie knew who wasn’t a member of the FBI and who was able to eat and look at crime scene photos at the same time. Without looking up, she said, “You need to let this go, Maggie. He’s chopping away pieces of you, and he isn’t even around.”

The images from the scattered photos stared out at Maggie, just as horrific in black and white as they had been in color. There were close-ups of slashed throats, chewed-off nipples, mutilated vaginas and an assortment of extracted organs. Earlier, with only a glance, she had discovered how many of the reports she still knew by heart. God, that was annoying.

Greg had recently accused her of remembering more details about entry wounds and killers’ signatures than she remembered about the events and anniversaries in their life together. There had been no point in arguing with him. She knew he was right. Perhaps she didn’t deserve a husband or a family or a life. How could any female FBI agent expect a man to understand her job, let alone something like this…this obsession? Was it an obsession? Was Gwen right?

She set the pizza aside and realized that her hands had a slight tremble. When she looked up, she saw that Gwen noticed the tremor, too.

“When was the last time you slept through the night?” Her friend’s brow crinkled with concern.

She chose to ignore the question and avoided Gwen’s green Irish eyes as well. “Just because there hasn’t been a murder doesn’t mean he hasn’t started his collection again.”

“And if he has, Kyle will be watching.” Gwen rarely slipped, using Assistant Director Cunningham’s first name, except times like now, when she seemed genuinely concerned and worried. “Let it go, Maggie. Let it go before it destroys you.”

“It’s not going to destroy me. I’m pretty damn tough, remember?” But she couldn’t meet her friend’s eyes for fear that Gwen would see the lie.

“Ah, tough,” Gwen said, sitting back. “So that’s why you’re walking around your own home with a gun stashed in the back of your pants.”

Maggie winced. Gwen caught it and smiled.

“Now, see, instead of tough,” she told Maggie, “I think I would have called it stubborn.”