Mariah Stewart - Cold Truth

“Maybe so.” Denver ’s fingers tapped out an agitated rhythm on the desktop.

“You know, there have been a lot of social activities this week, Chief. Those four…” she pointed at the file she’d earlier placed on his desk with the faxes from FBI Agent Peyton, “they’ve been at pretty much all of them. I’ve seen them myself.”

“And what did you think, Phyl? You get strange vibes from any of them?”

“They’re all strange, if you ask me. But if you’re asking me if any one of them looked more likely than the others, well, no.” She rested an elbow on the edge of the desk. “Billy Calhoun, he’s still a loudmouth. Used to drive everyone crazy in school because he could get away with anything, his father being principal. And Jon Wainwright? He was always in the background, you know? Sneaking around. Kenny Kelly, well, as the son of a judge, he could have gotten away with murder back then. And Joey Patterson is still the goof he always was.” She paused, then added, “It’s funny, remembering how they were when we were in school. Everyone thought they were so cool. Now they’re all just middle-aged men with balding heads and expanding waistbands.”

The chief pretended to flinch. “ Lot of that going around these days, Phyl.”

“You wear your bald head well, Chief.” She smiled. “But if you’re asking me if there was anything about any one of them that gave me the willies, or made me think, ‘Yeah, this one’s the serial killer,’ I’m going to have to disappoint you. They all look normal. Just like everyone else.” She shook her head. “But that’s what makes it so scary, you know. Whoever he is, he looks as normal as anyone.”

“The beast is rarely marked on the outside,” he muttered.

“What?” she asked.

“Something Chief Wainwright used to say. The beast is rarely marked on the outside. Inside, he’s ugly and evil as sin. Outside, he looks like anyone.”

“Maybe that’s what makes him a beast.”

“I have a call in to the FBI; I’m asking for a few more agents. I need someone watching each of the four around the clock, see who goes where. I’ve tried surveillance with the few men I have, and I don’t have enough bodies to keep tabs on four people, twenty-four/seven. It’s impossible. Best I could do was to cover two of them. Not good enough.” He shook his head. “Obviously, not good enough. And I still have someone posted at Lucy Webb’s door around the clock. I can’t take the chance of leaving her unguarded.”

“Maybe if we work with the other PDs…” she began but he waved her off.

“I’m having a real problem with a couple of these departments. Except for Tilden, everyone seems to think they can handle this alone. Look to make a name for themselves, I guess. Dreaming about a book deal and an appearance on Good Morning America, maybe Letterman, for whoever brings this guy in.” His disgust at the prospect was evident. “And in the meantime, people just keep dying and disappearing.”

He shook his head.

“You know, if we’d known about some of these modern investigative techniques twenty-six years ago, we might have had him then. If we’d known how to lift fingerprints from skin, lift trace evidence, or even the profiling they do today, we might have gotten him.” Denver shook his head almost apologetically. “As it is now, we did everything right, as right as we could. Got the lab working, though why it takes so long to get results on some of these things is beyond me. Got the FBI in here right away. Got the profiler down here… we’ve got a sketch artist in to talk to Lucy Webb, see if we can get a picture of this guy. And another woman has still gone missing. Whatever we do from here on out, we’re still a day late, in my book.”

“That will be huge, the picture. We’ll have him, once we have his face. Especially if it’s someone local.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s two now. The artist is still with Lucy. Maybe in another hour or so we’ll have him ID’d. That should make you feel optimistic.”

“I’ll be optimistic when I have someone sitting in that back room.”

“What did the profiler say?”

“She believes he started this as a young man, that the Burkes were his first kills. That he was after Jenny, just unfortunate for Bob that he came home early that day, and that he didn’t expect the kids to come home when they did.” He tapped his fingers on the side of the glass. “Said that he hadn’t gone there with the intention of killing Jenny, that he thought she’d be waiting for him. That he was obsessed with her, and thought she felt the same way about him, but when she started fighting him, he went into a rage and killed her. That he keeps killing all these other women who look like her because each time he thinks maybe it will turn out right for him, but when it doesn’t, he ends up killing again.”

“Never saw that coming, back then. The killings all seemed so different.”

“That’s what we thought at the time.”

“Did she say anything else about him, anything that could give us an idea of what kind of person he might have been back then?”

“She asked if he had a record as a juvie. I told her that if any of these four”-he slid the list from the file and placed it in the center of his desk-“had gotten into any serious trouble, I’d have been the last to know. No rookie was going to be made privy to that sort of thing. But she-Dr. McCall-thought that was significant, any early criminal activities.”

“What kind of activities?”

“Stuff other than speeding and starting fights on the school grounds. She asked specifically about sex offenses. Flashing. Peeping Tom-type stuff. She said sometimes guys who engage in that sort of thing when they’re young graduate to more serious sex offenses later on.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t help her with that. I don’t know who’d’a known about it, if any of those boys had been up to stuff like that.”

“I did,” Phyl said softly.

It took him a moment to respond.

“What? You did what?”

“I knew.”

His eyes narrowed. “Phyl, what are you trying to say?”

“I know who the peeper was.” She picked up a pen that sat at mid-desk, reached for the list, and circled a name. She then turned the sheet of paper around for him to see the name she’d marked.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

He frowned. “How do you know?”

“I was the peepee.”

Denver ’s jaw dropped.

“Right.” She nodded firmly. “I’m the one he peeped.”

“First I ever heard of this.”

“I imagine it is. But as you said, as a rookie, you wouldn’t have been brought into it.”

“Son of a bitch.” Denver slapped his hand on the top of his desk.

“That’s pretty much what my father said at the time.”

“Is this the face, Lucy? Is this the man who attacked you?” Kendra Smith held up the sketch she’d made from the description Lucy had given her. It had taken well over two hours, and though she knew her subject was rapidly tiring, she needed to have every detail right before she left the hospital room. The devil’s in the details, as her mother used to say. When it came to creating a composite, the details were crucial. An accurate sketch could make the difference between catching a killer and accusing an innocent man. Kendra took her responsibility very seriously. Once she signed her name to the picture she’d drawn, there would be no mistakes.

“That’s him, yes. That’s him.” Lucy’s voice was almost nonexistent after a couple hours of speaking. Her throat was still bruised, but she’d insisted on completing the sketch as soon as possible.

Cass knocked on the partially closed door. “May we come in?”

“You’re just in time.” Kendra looked beyond Cass to speak directly to Rick. “We just finished.”