Mariah Stewart - Last Words

“That stuff’s all crap, profiling.” Meyer made a dismissive noise. “What’s a profiler gonna tell me? This guy has anger issues? He doesn’t like women? Bunch of crap.”

Beck didn’t agree, but he let it ride.

“Well, in the meantime, till something breaks, it wouldn’t hurt for all of us to be extra alert. Keep as many cars on the street as we can.”

“Right. I’ll call around to the other local departments.” Chief Meyer paused, then suggested, “Maybe a bunch of us should get together some morning soon, maybe for breakfast. You know, a little informal meeting.”

“You just tell me where and when. I’ll be there.”

“Thanks, Beck. I’ll let you know if we turn up anything.”

“Appreciate it, Rich.” Beck hung up and stared out the window, trying to will Vanessa away from the tall blond, but the two women changed direction and headed toward Steffie’s ice cream shop across the parking lot from the municipal building. That’s right, Stef. Lure my sister with ice cream, then lay out all the dirty details, get a little sympathy, get her on your side.

Did women really do stuff like that? he wondered.

Nah. It was just a little paranoia on his part. Steffie hadn’t had one good word to say to Beck since he stopped dating her a few weeks back. He’d tried to explain to her that it wasn’t her, or anything she’d said, or anything she’d done. It just wasn’t working out, as far as he was concerned, and that’s just what he’d told her.

Steffie, this just isn’t working out.

There hadn’t been anything he could put his finger on. He just knew he didn’t feel the way he thought a man should feel about a woman he’d dated for several months. Then again, he doubted he’d ever feel that way about anyone. His track record wasn’t very good.

“Whatever,” he muttered, shaking it off. Now wasn’t the time to worry about what she was telling Vanessa. There were more important things to think about right now.

Like how to make sure what happened in Ballard and Cameron didn’t happen here in St. Dennis.

He’d call a meeting first thing in the morning, get all the officers in, part-timers included, and discuss the need to be a little more vigilant-hell, a lot more vigilant-until Colleen Preston’s killer was caught. And he’d see what they could do about putting together a team to search the waterfront area for any trace of Mindy Kenneher. Not that he expected to find anything, but still, it wouldn’t hurt. With the Harbor Festival behind him, he could spare a few hours to look through some of those old buildings down there near the cove. He certainly didn’t want to start a panic, but the towns were too close. What infected one could all too easily infect the others.

On his desk sat the stack of incident reports from the weekend. He thumbed through them, wishing they’d been more attentive to watching the crowd over the weekend. When a town has an open-house atmosphere like the one created by the Harbor Festival, anyone could wander in, blend in.

Even a killer.

Beck walked along the cobbled path that led around the cove to the harbor. The midday sun beat down on the back of his neck and he’d already undone the top two buttons on his shirt. He wished he was off duty, wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of cutoff jeans. It was that kind of day.

The phones had not stopped ringing since the increasingly lurid reports of Colleen Preston’s murder began to leak, and things had just gone downhill from there. By Beck’s estimation, over the past twenty-four hours, damn near half the population of St. Dennis had called in to the station asking if a mad killer was on the loose and wondering what Beck was doing to protect them. He didn’t blame anyone for being concerned-yesterday he’d called Vanessa and reminded her to be cautious on her date with Mickey Forbes-but the only thing he could tell anyone at that point was to take sensible precautions, not to go anywhere alone, and call the station if anything or anyone seemed suspicious. What else could he say?

He’d been up most of the night and the night before, unable to sleep, unable to escape the image of Colleen Preston’s sheathed body lying on the wooden porch. The horror of it was still fresh. The echoes of her heartbroken mother’s unceasing sobs still rang in his ears. As surreal as the scene had been, what ate at Beck now was the overwhelming feeling that there was something poised out there, someplace nearby, waiting to strike again. He felt it as surely as he felt the sun beating down on him, and the worst part was that he knew he was helpless to stop it. That sense of apprehension, that feeling that the other shoe would soon drop, made him restless, and the restlessness had driven him to walk.

He’d met with his staff at seven when the shift changed so that he could talk to everyone at the same time. He’d laid out the events of the past few days, describing with as little drama as possible what he’d seen on the porch in Ballard on Sunday night.

“Everyone’s saying that girl from Cameron…” Gus Franklin, his night-shift sergeant, said.

“I don’t want to assume anything, but I don’t like coincidences,” Beck had replied.

“If it’s the same guy, there’s likely to be more,” Garland had stated quietly. When all eyes turned to him, he explained, “We had something in Boston, not like this, not wrapping the women up like this guy did. But women in their twenties, just vanishing like that. It was like the victims just disappeared from their lives, like they’d been erased. They were just…gone. They all turned up in an old warehouse, lined up side by side like dolls across the floor.”

The room had gone silent.

“I can put in a few hours down around the cove,” Hal said. “Just poke around a little. We’re close enough to Cameron that if someone had something they wanted to hide, they might think one of those old buildings down there might make a good hiding place. You got a couple of properties down there, the owners haven’t been around in years. Just sitting on them, waiting for the values to go up. At least, that’s what Ham Forbes is telling me, and he knows real estate better than anyone else in town.”

“You might want to stop at his office later on and see what he knows about the individual properties. Might be worth getting a list of who owns what,” Beck said.

“Couldn’t hurt,” Hal agreed.

“I can stop out around the old boathouse on my way home,” Lisa told them.

“While I’m on patrol this morning, I’ll check out the old church on Christian Street.” Duncan stood in the back of the room. “And there are those abandoned shacks over behind the cemetery. I can make a quick stop.”

“All good suggestions.” Beck nodded. “Just keep your eyes open. And thanks.”

He’d gone from that meeting to one with the mayor and the chair of the town’s public safety committee, both of whom wanted assurance that none of the residents of St. Dennis were in danger from whoever had killed Colleen Preston, and possibly Mandy Kenneher as well. That Beck was in no position to give such assurance did not endear him to two of the more politically powerful members of the community. The fact that Christina Pratt, the mayor, had told Beck all he needed to know about the mentality of St. Dennis’s elected officials. He’d left her office and headed out the door. If ever he’d needed to walk off a pissy attitude, it was then.

Straight ahead was Singer’s Slips, the marina owned and operated by Lisa’s husband, Todd, and next to it, his boatyard and showroom. Hot and thirsty, Beck turned off the path and took the concrete steps down to the showroom.

“Hey, Chief, how’s it going?” Jay Gannon opened the door for Beck.