Michael Prescott - In Dark Places

And his answer: No. I kill girls like you .

"Jerk," she whispered.

"What was that?" Gabe looked up from his beer.

"Just amp; thinking of someone."

"Should I be jealous?" His smile told her that the idea was a joke. For a moment she wished she could make him jealous. She could invent a suitor, see how Gabe reacted. But she'd never been any good at games like that.

"No," she said. "It was this guy I met one time at Robin's office. This psychopath."

"You don't have to be a psychopath to see a psychiatrist."

Gabe handed her the beer bottle. She hesitated, then drank from it.

"I know that. This guy was, though. He's a serial killer. The one who killed high school girls. Justin Gray."

"Robin's trying to rehabilitate him ?"

"Seems like a long shot, huh?"

"The longest. How the hell did you meet him, anyway?"

She took another swallow of beer. "It was about a month ago. I got out of school early, hitched a ride with a friend. He dropped me at her office. I thought she'd be happy to see me, but she, like, freaked. Wanted to get me out of there before the guy arrived. She called a cab, but he got there first. They brought him in a prison van. In handcuffs, with armed guards and everything. And he saw me."

"He say anything to you?"

"Nothing much."

This was untrue. They had exchanged more than a few words in the waiting room of Robin's office, the killer named Justin Gray staring down at her from his height of six foot one.

"Well," he'd said with a cool smile, "what've we got here? Catholic schoolgirl on a field trip?"

The words had angered her. Without thinking, she snapped, "Shut up. You don't know me."

"I know the type."

"Well. I know your type."

"Meg" her mom began, then stopped herself. Clearly she hadn't wanted Gray to know her daughter's name.

"Meg, huh?" Gray said. "Short for Margaret? Marjorie?"

She ignored the question. "You don't scare me. I know all about you."

"Bullshit. You don't know nothing. I ain't exactly bedtime-story material for little girls."

"You're Justin Gray."

"Hey, you do know me. Cool. It's always nice to be recognized by a fan."

"You're a psycho. And you'll always be a psycho. I don't care what my mom does for you."

"That's enough," Robin cut in.

"Your mom?" Gray smiled. "Hey, what d'you know? Can't believe I missed the family resemblance. Here I thought you were just another screwed-up Angeleno getting her head shrunk."

"Take him inside," Robin said to the deputies.

"Stand aside, miss," one of the deputies told Meg, but she stood her ground, blocking their path.

"I don't need my head shrunk," she said staunchly. "I'm not crazy. You are. You kill women."

"No I kill girlslike you."

Her mom tugged at her. "Get out of the way."

"They weren't like me," she told Gray. "I would've killed you if you'd ever touched me."

Gray smiled at Robin. "She's a spitfire. I could have some big fun with her."

" Shut up !" Robin yelled, losing it. She pulled Meg away, and the deputies led Gray forward, into the office.

"Don't sweat it. Doc." Gray hadn't lost his smile. "Everything's copacetic."

Meg had never heard that word in conversation before, and she had been forbidden to use it ever since.

"So what's he like?" Gabe asked, leaning on the kitchen counter.

Meg shrugged. "Nutcase."

"Some of these guys can be pretty charming."

"Not him."

"He scare you?"

"No."

"It's okay to be scared, Meg."

"He didn't scare me. He pissed me off."

Gabe laughed. "Justin Gray pissed you off."

"Like I said, he's a jerk. Would've liked to"

"What?"

"I don't know, punch his face."

"I'm not sure I see you as the warrior-princess type."

"I was thinking more along the lines of vampire slayer."

"I don't see you that way either."

"How do you see me?" She felt her mouth slide into a seductive smile. She wasn't used to drinking beer. It was going to her head.

"I see you"he came forward and draped his arms around her waist"as a beautiful and sensitive young woman who shouldn't let a creep like Justin Gray get under her skin."

There was that word she loved to hear him say. Woman . She was a woman, whether her mother realized it or not.

A thought occurred to her. "Were you part of the serial-killer task force?"

"Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. I can tell you about the case, though, if you want to hear it."

"I do."

"On second thought, it might give you bad dreams."

"I don't get bad dreams."

"Well, you know the basics, I guess. Like how he specialized in abducting and killing teenage girls."

"How did he amp; do it?"

"Kill them? Execution style. Single gunshot to the head. Twenty-two-caliber round, mashed up so badly when it penetrated the skull that you couldn't even make a ballistics match. Death was instant. Cerebral pulpefaction, the coroner calls it. Midbrain disruption. Those are fancy ways of saying that the slug turned the victim's brain to ground chuck. Bang, lights out. She never even saw it coming."

It chilled her to hear him speak of murder so coolly, but she supposed all cops were like that. "At least it was quick," she said.

"At the end, sure. But he kept them prisoner for a while, about four, five hours usually, before the big sendoff."

"Did he amp; rape them?"

"Nah. No penetration."

"So what did he do with the girl during the four hours?"

"He's never said. Talked to her, maybe. Or maybe he just let her sweat. Big fun, huh? The clock's ticking, she's waiting, praying, and the time just crawls by."

She wasn't sure she wanted to hear any more, but if she asked him to stop, it would be a display of weakness. She never allowed herself to be weak around him.

"Why did he do it?" she asked. "Just for kicks?"

"If you want to know his motive, you're asking the wrong person. Even the shrinks can't figure out a serial killer. Well, maybe your mom can."

"Maybe I'll ask her."

"You should. I'll bet she's got a theory. Shrinks always have theories. And your mom's pretty sharp. She might have a handle on Justin Gray."

He reached out and touched Meg's long blond hair, stroked it.

"Bet he thinks about you in his cell," Gabe whispered.

"Stop amp;"

He drew back, studying her face. "Whoops. I shouldn't have said thatany of it. It's got you all worked up."

"I'm okay."

"You don't need to hear about that kind of craziness."

"I think I could use some craziness in my life. My boring, predictable, sheltered, overprotected life." She smiled up at him. "You know, as long as you're here and we've got the place to ourselves amp;"

"You're not worried about Robin?"

"She's a workaholic. Obsessive-compulsive type. Goes along with her paranoia. Won't be home till after dinner."

"She seeing Justin Gray today? That why she's working late?"

"No, today's Monday. She sees him on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She must have some other thing going on. She's always busy, you know. Always on the go."

"She should learn to loosen up." He kissed her. "Have some fun. Enjoy life." He kissed her again. "Stop and smell the coffee."

Meg giggled. "She really should. She doesn't know what she's missing. You know, my room's just upstairs."

"I'd like to see your room."

"I thought you would."

They left the kitchen together. Meg thought she'd been wrong to ask him if he had kids. His private life was his business. She didn't need to know anything about it. She didn't even need to know his last name.

Gabe was enough. It was the name of an angel. Wasn't it?

The sun was drifting lower in the western sky, caught in a mesh of utility lines and billboards, when Robin found Wolper in the coffee shop at Santa Monica and La Brea. Across the street, a jacked-up Monte Carlo had skidded over the curb and plowed through one wall of a comic-book shop. Copies of Batman and Spider-Man and Wonder Woman were scattered on the sidewalk, the four-color pages flapping in the breeze. A crew of young boys loitered at the edge of the crime scene, surreptitiously collecting the comics.