Gayle Wilson - The Inquisitor

“So…you’re saying he’s definitely going to kill again.”

And Merry Christmas to all, Jenna thought, realizing the trap she’d fallen into.

Still, there was very little that could be said in response to that question except the brutal reality. Despite the fact that hearing it was likely to inflame fears that had been rampant in the community even before today’s announcement, she really had no choice.

This was something else the killer would feed off of. Not only would the murders themselves give him a sense of power, so would the media attention they’d attracted, such as this interview, and the terror it would create.

She should have cut this kid off without answering his original question. Since she hadn’t, she could in good conscience now do nothing less than tell the truth.

“If he’s not caught. It may not be here. Not if the police get too close to discovering who he is, but…even if they do, he won’t stop killing. Not until he’s finally been taken into custody.”

“Or until he’s dead.”

Sean Murphy had already put his finger over the off button on the remote, when something made him hesitate. The reporter was busy closing out the segment, probably reiterating what the female psychologist had said. Nothing of what he was babbling about registered.

Sean was focused instead on the woman standing beside the interviewer, her hand clutching the collar of her coat as if trying to keep out the cold. It was clearly a defensive gesture.

An unconscious one? Or was it possible she was aware of how closely she matched the profile of the killer’s victims?

That was unlikely, he decided, since the local cops hadn’t yet publicly connected the latest three to the others. Maybe he should warn Dr. Jenna Kincaid that she met almost every one of the criteria the task force had put together over the course of the past four years of their investigation.

Late twenties or early thirties, Sean assessed. Tall and slender, with dark hair and eyes. Even her clothing, professional rather than provocative, followed the pattern the bastard had established with his first murder, which they now believed had been more than seven years ago.

His gaze having followed the line of the long navy coat down to the low-heeled boots she wore, Sean raised his eyes once more to the psychologist’s face. Her features were striking but not classically beautiful.

She wouldn’t draw every masculine eye, he acknowledged, but she’d find her share of admirers. The bone structure underlying that clear olive skin was too anatomically perfect not to attract attention. The discriminating would recognize it would be just that perfect when she was eighty.

And you’ve always considered yourself discriminating.

The image he’d been studying was suddenly replaced by an advertisement for a local car dealer. Sean punched the button, shutting off the television, before tossing the remote down on the bed.

He walked across his motel room toward its wall of glass, where he pushed aside the draperies to look out onto the interstate that paralleled the wide right-of-way just across the parking lot. The scene he encountered was depressingly winter-dreary, although the climate was generally mild.

The weather would make the killer’s hunting easier. More people outdoors than in the northern cities. Not that the bastard ever seemed to have a problem finding victims.

Maybe what Dr. Kincaid said was right. Maybe he was so charming the women made it easy for him.

He would have had to be something special to charm Makaela. His sister had been nobody’s fool. And unfortunately she’d had a lot of experience with phonies.

Apparently not enough to see through whatever ploy her murderer had used to persuade her to go with him.

Sean put his palm against the glass, using its coldness to fight the fury that flooded his brain whenever he thought of the things that had been done to his sister. They could still bring him wide awake, sweat pouring off his body, as he struggled against the nightmare images of what she’d suffered.

The press in Detroit were the ones who’d christened her murderer “the Inquisitor,” a name horrifyingly appropriate. Too soon the people in this town would learn what the others had about the maniac in their midst.

Unless the bodies were too decomposed to make them obvious, as the first two here had been, most law enforcement agencies now recognized those signature mutilations. The special agent on the FBI’s task force, the one who’d put Sean onto the Birmingham murders, had recognized them as soon as he’d read the description of the last victim.

Now that the locals had connected the three, they would be forced to take the next step and admit that these killings were part of a series, which, through the efforts of the Bureau, had been linked and credited to one man.

An unimaginably cruel and sadistic madman.

The cops here would add whatever information they had managed to uncover to the profile that was slowly, but relentlessly, being built. And when it was complete…

Sean’s hand closed into a fist that he slammed into the glass. The window shuddered in its frame, although the blow had not been particularly hard. It hadn’t been done in anger. It had been measured. Like a gavel pounded against a judge’s bench. Or a hammer driving a nail.

The last one in your coffin, you bastard. And as God is my witness, I’ll be the one who’ll put it there.

Long after the television screen had gone dark, he couldn’t get the psychologist out of his mind. After a while, he stopped trying, allowing her image to fill his head.

She’d been so perfect he had wondered—briefly—if the cops had put her up to that interview. After mentally reviewing the clip, something he was able to do with almost complete fidelity, as if he were watching a replay, he decided that what he’d seen hadn’t been a performance.

Her slight hesitancy and the care with which she’d worded her opinions made him believe she had really been speaking off the cuff. The expression on her face, although quickly controlled, had made it obvious that the reporter’s question about the murders had caught her off guard.

That’s what you get for trusting the media, my dear.

He smiled as he raised the wine he’d bought on his way home in a semitoast before he brought the glass to his lips. He grimaced slightly at the taste before setting it back on the coffee table.

He had thought the merlot would make the evening more enjoyable, easing his disappointment about how quickly the locals had tied these three victims together. Now that they had, he knew it would be only a matter of hours before they made the connection to the others.

His intent was always to break the pattern so that wouldn’t happen. But if he were able to succeed in that, then what would be the point of the entire exercise? Old habits die hard, he admitted with a smile.

As some of them had, fighting the sweet release of death until the very end.

At that thought, somewhere deep inside his body was a wave of sexual pleasure, so sharp, so pure, it literally stole his breath. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to relish both the feeling and the memories that had provoked it.

Instead of the faces of the women whose suffering at his hands had induced that remembrance, the image of Jenna Kincaid clutching her coat against the cruel invasion of the cold as she wept for the child he had been again formed behind his lids.

They’re helpless to prevent what is being done to them, often by the very people who should be their protectors.

It was rare that someone was able to articulate so clearly, so precisely, the nature of the injustice he’d suffered. That she had done so without knowing anything about him.