Chris Carter - The Night Stalker

Roy didn’t follow, instead slumping himself deeper into the sofa, as if he could somehow escape the moment. He made no attempt to wipe away his tears.

Denise turned to face Hunter, and she looked like a complete different woman from the one who’d greeted him at the door minutes earlier. Her eyes were horribly sad.

‘How much did my daughter suffer, Detective?’ Her voice was low and hoarse, her words coated in pain.

Their eyes locked for a long moment and Hunter saw a mixture of grief and anger burning deep inside her.

‘The truth is that we don’t know,’ he finally replied.

With a trembling hand Denise brushed a strand of loose hair behind her right ear. ‘Do you know why, Detective? Why would someone do something like that to anyone? Why would someone do it to my Laura? She was the sweetest girl you could ever meet.’

Hunter held her gaze firmly. ‘I’m not gonna pretend I understand what sort of pain both of you are going through, Mrs. Mitchell. I’m also not gonna pretend this is easy. We’re after the answers to those same questions and at the moment I can’t tell you much because we don’t have much. I’m here because I need your help to catch who did this. You knew Laura better than anyone.’

Denise’s eyes never left Hunter’s face, and he knew what her next question would be even before the words left her lips.

‘Was she…’ her voice croaked as she fought the tears catching in her throat yet again, ‘… raped?’

Roy Mitchell finally looked up. His stare went from his wife to Hunter.

There were very few things in life Hunter hated more than having to hide the truth from grieving parents, but without an autopsy on Laura’s body, the best he could do was tell Denise and Roy that again he didn’t know. As a psychologist, he knew that the uncertainty of never knowing the answer to such a question would torture them for the rest of their lives, putting their marriage, even their sanity, in jeopardy.

‘No, Laura wasn’t raped,’ Hunter said with unflinching eyes and without an ounce of hesitation. Certain lies were worth telling.

The uncomfortable moment stretched until Denise broke eye contact with Hunter, returning her stare to the photographs on the desk. She picked up a small silver frame.

‘Laura was always talented, you know? Always very artistic.’ She walked over and handed Hunter the frame. The photograph showed a little girl of about eight surrounded by crayons and tiny pots of watercolor paint. She looked so happy and her smile was so contagious, Hunter couldn’t help but smile back, for a second forgetting that that little girl was gone and in the most horrifying manner possible.

‘In school, every year without fail, she was awarded an honors certificate in arts,’ Denise said proudly.

Hunter listened.

A sad grin threatened to part Denise’s lips but she held it back. ‘She only started painting professionally late on, but she’d always loved it. It was her refuge from all things bad. Every time she got hurt, she went back to the brushes. It was what cured her when she was a child.’

‘Cured her?’ Hunter’s expression tightened and his gaze bounced between Denise and Roy.

‘One day when Laura was eight, for no apparent reason, she had some sort of seizure,’ Denise explained. ‘She couldn’t move or breathe properly, her eyes disappeared into her head and she almost choked to death. It petrified us.’

Roy nodded and then took over. ‘We took her to four different doctors. Experts, they said.’ He shook his head as if irritated. ‘But none of them could diagnose what had happened. In fact, they didn’t have a clue.’

‘Did it happen again?’

‘Yes, a few more times.’ Denise again. ‘She went through every possible examination, including CAT scans. They found nothing. No one knew what was wrong. No one could tell us what was triggering her seizures. About a week after her last episode, Laura picked up a brush for the first time. And that was it. The seizures never came back.’ Denise touched the edge of her right eye with the tip of her fingers, trying to stop the new tear that had just formed from rolling down her cheek. ‘No matter what anyone says, I know her painting is what made them stop. It’s what made her well again.’

‘You said her seizures made her choke?’

Denise nodded. ‘It terrified us every time. She couldn’t breathe. Her skin changed color.’ She paused and looked away. ‘She could’ve died so many times.’

‘And the seizures simply stopped all together?’

‘Yes,’ Roy continued. ‘Right after she started painting.’

Hunter got up and handed the frame back to Denise. ‘Was Laura in a relationship?’

Denise let out a deep sigh. ‘Laura didn’t really get deeply involved with anyone. Another of her self-defense mechanisms.’ She walked over to the bar by the large bookcase. ‘If you read any of the articles about her and how she got her career started, you’ll read about her pain of being cheated on by her fiancé. She found him in bed with another woman. It destroyed her inside.’ Denise poured herself a double dose of whiskey from a decanter and dropped two ice cubes in it. ‘Would you like one?’ She raised her glass.

Hunter’s biggest passion was single malt Scotch whiskey, but unlike most, he knew how to appreciate its flavor and quality instead of simply getting drunk on it.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Roy?’ She faced her husband.

He shook his head.

Denise shrugged, took a small sip and closed her eyes as the liquid traveled down her throat.

‘To drown her pain, Laura went straight back to painting. Something that she hadn’t done for several years. By chance, a gallery curator saw one of her canvases, and that was how her new career started. But not before she suffered a great deal.’

‘From a broken heart?’ Hunter said.

Denise nodded and looked away. ‘Patrick was the one who insisted they moved in together after only four months,’ she continued. ‘He told Laura he couldn’t stand being away from her, that he loved her more than anything. He was one of those who had a way with words. A charmer who usually got what he wanted. I’m sure you know the type. And Laura believed him. She fell desperately in love with him and his seductive charm.’

‘You said his name is Patrick?’

Denise nodded. ‘Patrick Barlett.’

Hunter wrote the name down in his notebook.

‘Laura used to work in a bank. Patrick was a big investor. That’s how they met. She found out about his affair because that day she felt unwell just after lunch,’ Denise recalled. ‘Something she’d eaten. Her boss told her to take the rest of the day off and she went home. Patrick was in their bed with his slut secretary or PA or something.’ She shook her head. ‘For someone who was supposed to be intelligent, you’d thought that he would’ve at least gone to a motel.’ She chuckled nervously. ‘So much for loving Laura more than anything, huh? That was only three months after they’d moved in together. Since then, relationships became a thing of the past for Laura. She had flings, affairs, but nothing serious.’

‘Any recent ones?’

‘No one Laura thought was worth mentioning.’

‘So after Laura split from Patrick, was that it between them?’

‘For her, yes.’

‘And for him?’

‘Ha!’ Denise said with contempt. ‘He never let go. He tried apologizing with flowers and gifts and phone calls and whatever else he could think of, but Laura didn’t wanna know any more.’

‘How long did he carry on all that for?’

‘He never stopped.’

Hunter’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

‘He visited her exhibition last month and begged her to have him back yet again. She obviously told him where to go.’