Waking Nightmare (9 page)
Abbie turned away from the photos, but Robel failed to take the hint and follow suit. Big surprise.
“Looks like you’ve got hidden talents.”
Reluctantly, she turned back, following his gaze to the center picture, taken last summer at the shooting range on the grounds of the agency’s headquarters, in Manassas, Virginia. It showed her unsmiling face next to a paper human outline. Six holes were clustered in the vicinity of the heart. “Raiker insists we qualify as marksmen each year.” He was also adamant that his operatives be issued weapon permits from any law enforcement agency requesting their services. “I posted a personal best last August.”
“Rifle or handgun?”
“This was the handgun qualifier, but we have to qualify with both.” She gave a wry smile. “My prowess with a rifle is less impressive, but I passed.”
His attention had wandered to the next picture, and she felt the tension settle in her shoulders again. Forestalling the inevitable question, she said, “I want to thank you again for your help.”
“No problem.” This time when she started toward the back door, he followed. “You might try Stanley Glass when you’re calling tomorrow. They’re in the book. They’re quick and they won’t hose you for the work.”
“Good to know.” He stopped, his hand on the knob of the back door. Silence stretched, long enough to have her nerves jangling. Robel looked at the bag in her hand and his expression grew thoughtful.
Abbie sensed he was about to say something else. And more than anything at that moment, she wanted to avoid further speculation. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“If you need some personal time to come home and deal with the glass or security companies, just let me know.” He reached for the bag. “I’ll dump this in the garbage on my way out.”
“I can . . .” His hand brushed hers, heat transferring at the touch, and she nearly jumped. Her nerves were frayed and at that moment she would have given her very generous monthly paycheck to make him disappear.
“Good. Fine.” She relinquished the bag and stepped back, his inscrutable stare making her all too aware that she was flushing. “And I don’t need any time off. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Without another word, he went out the door, and she closed and locked it after him, feeling a little foolish. It would be easy enough for a prowler to remove the neat cardboard patch job and reach in to unlock the door. She pulled a chair from the kitchen table and wedged it under the knob, although she was fairly certain the trespasser wouldn’t be returning. At least not tonight.
Resolutely, Abbie walked back into the other room, intent on losing herself in work when a realization struck her. She was going to have to find a mall to do some shopping. With the exception of the one she was wearing, every dress shirt she’d brought with her had been ruined.
Frustration surged. As if the break-in wasn’t irritating enough, now she had to shop. And she’d rather be beaten than to spend hours looking at clothes. But of course, her intruder today had known that.
Inevitably, her gaze was drawn to the photos she’d replaced on the mantle. To the blond woman with the too bright smile standing arm in arm with Abbie.
“Callie?” Realizing she’d called the name aloud, she immediately felt foolish. The small home had been searched several times already. There was no one here.
But there had been earlier, and it had almost certainly been her sister. All the tension of the last hour settled in her temples, and they began to throb painfully. She hadn’t spoken to Callie for months, but she’d left messages. Forwarding addresses. She had no idea why Callie would reach out now, in this way, but she was almost certain that she had. The devastation to her wardrobe proved that.
Only Callie knew about her penchant for long-sleeved shirts and the scars they covered.
Only Callie would bare them, literally, for the world to see.
Chapter 5
The woman lying in the hospital bed knew all about scars. If Abbie hadn’t seen the photos taken after Amanda Richards’s attack, she’d find it hard to believe that the girl had already had two operations. From some newspaper pictures in the file, she knew it had once been an extraordinarily beautiful face.
Now it was a patchwork of seams and puckered, drawn skin, as if there hadn’t been enough flesh to reattach and the remaining skin had been pulled too tightly. One eye was noticeably lower than the other, giving her features an off-kilter look. Looking at her, Abbie was certain today’s was just one of a long string of surgeries.
She knocked on the open hospital door and the three occupants of the room looked toward her. “Hi, I’m Abbie Phillips, a consultant working with the SCMPD.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” snapped the woman sitting next to the bed. Even without an introduction, Abbie knew she was the girl’s mother. Her resemblance to Amanda’s newspaper pictures in the file was too strong for it to be otherwise. Rising, she turned toward Abbie. “You people have deplorable timing.”
“I asked her to come, Mother.” Amanda’s voice was pleasant but firm. “The operation isn’t scheduled until this afternoon. There’s plenty of time.”
“There’s no reason to upset yourself before surgery.” The older woman turned her back on Abbie, and reached over to smooth her daughter’s blond hair back from her ruined face. “Whatever this is about, it can wait.”
Amanda looked at the middle-aged man on the other side of the bed. “Daddy? You don’t mind taking Mother to the cafeteria for a while, do you?”
He hesitated, sending a steely look toward Abbie. But in the end, he managed a smile for his daughter and said, “Sure, honey.”
“Phil, really. I don’t think . . .”
Ignoring his wife’s protests, he rounded the bed, took her elbow, and steered her toward the door. “We’ll be back in twenty minutes.” Abbie knew it wasn’t her imagination that imbued the words with a hint of warning.
When the door had closed behind the couple, Amanda attempted a smile. Only one side of her mouth responded. “Sorry about that. They can be pretty fierce when it comes to me.”
“It’s parents’ jobs to be protective.” Even though some parents failed miserably at it. “I can’t blame them for objecting to the timing.”
“I’ll be out of it for days after the surgery.” Amanda hit the button to elevate the head of the bed more. “Pain meds have that effect on me. And I didn’t want to wait that long. I heard Grandpa Richards tell Daddy they’d brought in an expert, and I wanted to talk to you.”
It took Abbie a moment to make the connection. Mayor Richards. Someone, presumably Commander Dixon, was keeping the man informed. “I don’t know about the expert part, but I do have experience in these kinds of cases. I want to focus on the victimology pattern, and I have some questions that weren’t covered in the earlier interviews.”
“You mean figuring out why he chose me. Us.”
Abbie gave a slight nod. The girl was quick. “Exactly.”
Amanda indicated a chair next to the bed and Abbie sank into it, digging into her purse for her notebook. “I’ve thought about that. I have a lot of time on my hands these days,” she added without rancor. “After it happened, the police asked all these questions about the beauty contests I’ve participated in. I was crowned Miss Savannah last fall and I’m going to compete—I was supposed to compete—in the Miss Georgia contest later this year. My sponsor thought I had a pretty good chance. . . .” Her voice trailed off for a moment. Then, visibly collecting herself, she continued, “But I don’t think it had anything to do with the contest. Any of the contests.”
It had been a valid lead to pursue, one Abbie would have focused on herself, though it hadn’t yielded anything in the long run. “Why not?”
“Well, it’s not like one of the girls I beat out is going to do this to me,” she said matter-of-factly. “Though there were a couple vicious enough to arrange an accident for anyone standing in their way of the crown. And don’t even get me started on some of the mothers.” She shook her head. “But people surrounding beauty pageants are ninety percent female. And no women I know are capable of this. Or even of arranging this for another woman. I just can’t believe that.”
“But you did come into contact with men at the pageants,” Abbie pressed.
Amanda shrugged. “Sure. Sound engineers, emcees, some of the sponsors, agents . . . but what I’m saying is, I come into contact with guys all the time. I attend college here in town, and I see more men on campus every day than I do in the pageants.”
As the girl had said, she’d given this a lot of thought. “So let’s talk about those guys on campus. The notes say you recently broke up with a long-time boyfriend.”
“Chet didn’t have anything to do with this.” Amanda’s voice was sharp. “He’s not the kind of person who would deliberately hurt someone. I know the detectives have been all over him about this, and I feel bad about that. This isn’t his fault. And neither was the breakup. I just wanted to date other people.”
Which was enough incentive for some people to turn to violence. But Chet Montrose was alibied for the night in question. He’d been taking a chemistry final at the time Amanda had been snatched.
“Since this is a multiple offender and the other victims aren’t affiliated with the pageant or the college, I don’t think either is integral to his pattern.”
“Maybe he just saw me in the paper or on TV. There’s been a lot of coverage since my win, and as we geared up for the state pageant.”
Entirely plausible, Abbie thought, but that possibility led nowhere. “I have copies of your interview with the police. Detective Robel took you over the two weeks prior to the assault, your routine, normal hangouts. I’m going to ask you to think back further than that. Maybe a month or six weeks prior to the attack. Even two months. Can you think of places you might have stopped that you don’t normally?”
Amanda’s brows were furrowed. “Stopped for what?”
“Anything. Coffee. A different dry cleaners. A place to get pictures developed. A market you usually don’t shop at, or a mall you don’t often frequent.”
“Hard to remember that far back,” Amanda murmured, but it was clear from her expression that she was trying. In the end she was able to recall six or seven new places she’d stopped with friends, although she couldn’t be certain how long before the rape she’d visited them.
“How many people knew about your grandfather’s beach house?” Robel had covered the question in his interview, but something about the location of the rape still nagged at her.
Amanda shrugged. “Of my friends, you mean? All of them. I . . . had a key made a couple years ago. My grandparents don’t use it that much. I’ve had some parties there. You know how it goes. People I know bring people I don’t. Seems like my entire dorm has been there at one time or another.”
And even if they had only heard mention of a party, it would be easy enough to discover the home’s location, given the owner’s name.
“It all comes back to this, doesn’t it?”
Something in the girl’s tone drew Abbie’s attention. She looked up from the pad she was writing on. “What’s that?”
Amanda’s lips trembled before she attempted to firm them. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. Like maybe there’s some guy I never paid much attention to. Not someone I turned down for a date or anything. I told the detective about them. But I feel like it’s someone I’ve missed somehow. Or discounted. Like maybe I hardly even spoke to him or noticed him at all. And for a long time he harbored this resentment toward me because of that . . .” Her voice hitched.
Abbie could hear Amanda’s mother in the hallway. Their time together was almost up. “Well, there, see, that’s where you’re wrong.” She got up and fetched a Kleenex to hand to the girl, who wiped her eyes swiftly before balling the tissue in her palm.
“How do you know that?”
“None of the other victims are associated with beauty pageants or go to the local college. You aren’t the same age and you have little in common. But somehow you all came to this guy’s attention. Which tells me it probably isn’t something you did or didn’t do to someone you barely know. This guy is preying on women because they meet some criteria that only makes sense to him. And the sooner we figure out that criteria . . .”
Amanda’s eyes were no longer tear drenched. They looked cold and hard as she finished Abbie’s sentence. “The sooner you can catch the son of a bitch and put him away.”
A faint smile on her lips, Abbie nodded. “Exactly.”
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