Mariah Stewart - Cold Truth

The recent killings were the main topic of conversation, much as she’d suspected they might be, but as the evening wound down, the chatter became lighter, less intense, more personal. Signaling Lucy by pointing to her watch, Cass made it clear it was past time to go. True to her word, Lucy said her good-byes and looped an arm through Cass’s.

“You are the best, you know that?” Lucy told her. “I had such a good time. It was fun to see everyone again, I don’t know why I didn’t keep in touch with those girls. Thanks, Cassie. I owe you.”

“Drive me home and we’ll call it even.” Cass tossed the car keys and Lucy caught them with one hand.

“Poor Cassie, hunting serial killers by day, being dragged around town by her selfish, loony cousin by night.” Lucy got behind the wheel of Cass’s car and slid the key into the ignition. “God will reward you for your good deed.”

“I hope it’s with a good night’s sleep.”

Here and there throughout the tent or around the bar, classmates had gathered to catch up with one another’s lives. Just inside the tent, a group of middle-aged men gathered at a round table. They’d spent most of the night talking about the old times, and doing a little catching up as well. Many of them had remained close enough to the shore towns to come back every summer with families of their own, often returning to the same houses in which they’d grown up. Some still lived in those towns. Others had left the Jersey coast to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

In groups of threes and fours, they struggled to be overheard above the music, which was loudest this close to the speakers.

“Howard, how’s your sister doing these days?”

“Hey, Ebberle, that your Corvette parked out there? You trying to recapture your youth, or what?”

“Did you see Debbie Ellis? Can we say face-lift ?”

“Check out the rock old Paulie’s young wife is sporting. You know he never gave Patsy a rock that big…”

He was standing halfway between the table and the bar, listening to some idle chatter, when he saw her, and his heart stopped beating in his chest.

“… so I said, listen, Hal, you can give me a better deal than that on this boat. You know she’s been sitting in dry dock for- Hey, buddy, you all right?”

His companion tapped him on the back.

“You’ve gone white as a sheet, like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The friend followed his gaze across the bar.

“You’re looking at Bob Burke’s girl there? Yeah, she’s a cop here in Bowers Inlet now. And a damned fine one, too. I hear she’s won all kinds of commendations. She’s living in the old Marshall place on Brighton, old lady Marshall left the house to her and her cousin.”

“She’s beautiful. She looks so much like her mother.” He somehow managed to get the words out.

“Oh, no, no. You’re looking at the other girl. That’s the cousin, Kimmie Donovan’s daughter. You must remember Kimmie if you remember Jenny. The Marshall sisters? They were some ten years, maybe fifteen years or so ahead of us, I don’t recall exactly. Kimmie married Pete Donovan… used to race cars on Sunday nights down on Lagoon Lane?”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“But you’re right, man, it’s unbelievable how much Kimmie’s girl looks like Jenny. It’s all that dark hair. Boy, she was a looker, that Jenny Marshall. Damned shame, wasn’t it, about her and Bob… they had another daughter who was killed, too. Bastard. Wiped out that whole family, or tried to. Cassie was lucky to get out of there alive, that’s for sure. Damned shame. I hope that bastard Wayne Fulmer rots in hell for what he did to that family. I heard he died about ten years back, still in prison. Stomach cancer, I heard. I hope he suffered. I hope he suffered real bad. He got off easy, you ask me.” The companion took a long swig of his beer.

“They should have turned him over to us, you know? We would have known what to do with that bastard, after what he did to Jenny and Bob and that little girl of theirs. Boy, that was a summer to remember, wasn’t it? First that wacko Fulmer goes nuts and all but wipes out the Burkes, then all those women got themselves killed. Damned Bayside Strangler.” He took another sip of his beer. “Hell of a thing for the town to be remembered for, isn’t it? And now it’s déjà vu all over again, like they say. I told my kid she goes no place without three or four other girls and a couple’a guys while we’re down here. You never know what this bastard is thinking…”

He’d been murmuring agreement. Yes, yes, of course, the man who’d been convicted of murdering the Burke family got off easy. Yes, yes, dying of cancer was too good for him. He should rot in hell. Yes, it’s crazy that someone’s going around acting like the Strangler. Yes, you can’t be too careful…

He barely heard a word, hardly knew what he was saying.

He said his good nights, then hurried to the parking lot. The last he saw of her was the sweep of long hair as she got into the car.

He stood in the shadows and watched her drive away, his heart pounding and his knees shaking, wanting her.

The car turned right at the stop sign and disappeared into the night. But it was okay, he told himself.

She wouldn’t be hard to find.

Rick Cisco wasn’t certain what he expected to find when he arrived at the Bowers Inlet Police Department, but it wasn’t the welcome he’d been given. Fresh coffee, fresh Danish, and a warm handshake from Chief Denver had made him feel as if he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. He wondered if there was something else going on in Bowers Inlet that he hadn’t been told about. Like Pod People taking over the identities of the locals. He couldn’t recall ever having been greeted as graciously by a local agency. Usually his entry into a case came by way of some pushing and shoving and was accompanied by grumbles and dirty looks. No one ever wanted the FBI involved in their cases.

He sat in the chair offered to him by the chief, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and he turned to see a tall slender woman with chin-length cinnamon-colored hair and uneasy cops’ eyes. She wore jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he suspected she might be the other shoe.

Chief Denver made the introductions. “Detective Cassandra Burke, meet Special Agent Eric Cisco. Agent Cisco will be working with you on the recent homicides.”

“Great.” She flashed a smile.

“It’s Rick,” he told her, wondering if the smile was for his benefit or the chief’s. He figured he’d find out soon enough.

“Cass,” she replied, the smile still in place. “Hopefully, two heads will prove to be better than one.”

“Chief Denver was just telling me that you’ve recovered very little evidence.”

She nodded, all business now, the smile history. “This is one wily little bastard. He knows what he’s doing, no question about that. We figure he watches his victims for a few days before he strikes; he always seems to know when his target will be most vulnerable. He seems to be choosing women who have a pattern of being out at night. He knows exactly where they will be, and at what time.”

“He took one woman right out of her own driveway,” Denver interjected. “She did shift work at a fast-food place and apparently was picked up just as she arrived home. A co-worker dropped her off in front of her house, but she never made it inside.”

“You checked out the co-worker?”

“An eighteen-year-old girl who was home within ten minutes of dropping off the victim,” Cass said.

“No one heard anything, saw anything?” Rick asked.