Tracy Montoya - Maximum Security

“So,” Brentwood began after they’d dispensed with the kind of pleasantries that usually made Maggie irritable. This time, however, they were a welcome delay of the inevitable. She really didn’t want to think about what that knife or that note meant just now.

But obviously, Brentwood wasn’t going to give her the reprieve she was craving. He placed the note, bagged in plastic, on the table and shoved it toward her. “Any idea what this means?” Sitting back, he batted his too-long brown hair out of his eyes.

She scanned the letter that had been impaled to her door moments before. Someone had scrawled Do you want to live forever? in heavy, uneven letters. Underneath was scribbled, S10 M0. Seemingly meaningless, but if she knew the Surgeon, the message was just as important as the words she knew well.

As soon as she saw the three men in black come through the door of the rotting cabin, she instinctively jerked against her bonds, the movement nearly exhausting what remained of her strength. A sharp pain shot through her wrists as the fishing line cut into her skin, and then she could feel something wet dripping down her arms. Her mind felt thick, ponderous, and it took her a few moments to comprehend that her wrists were bleeding.

She blinked, her eyelids closing and opening in the slowest of motions, and the three men before her coalesced into one. One man, with a neoprene ski mask on his face and a nylon stocking over his hair. One man with a starving, frenzied look in his too-bright eyes.

The springs of the rusty cot creaked as he climbed on top of her, and she heard the sound of metal sing against leather. Slowly, ponderously, she turned her head and saw the large hunting knife he held next to her cheek. With one hand, he looped a leather cord around her neck; the other brought the tip of the knife to the hollow in her throat.

“Do you wanna live forever, Maggie?” he whispered, and he trailed the knife down her breastbone, leaving a thin red line in its wake.

Lost in her thoughts, Maggie barely noticed as her hands jerked upward to clutch at her throat. At the sudden movement, Adriana sprang up from her perch on the sofa arm. “Maggie?” she said.

Maggie shook her head, coming fully back to the present. She waved her friend off with an apologetic smile. “That question—” She picked up the bagged note Brentwood had passed to her and tapped its shiny surface with a fingernail. “—was something the Surgeon asked me when—” She swallowed, trying desperately not to remember any more. “That night.” She trusted that Brentwood would know exactly what night she was referring to.

He did. He took off his tortoiseshell glasses and chewed on one of the bows while his right leg bobbed up and down like a sewing-machine needle. “You think he’s followed you from Louisiana to Monterey.” It was a statement, not a question, but she nodded anyway.

“I know how that sounds,” she said, handing the note back to him. It sounded crazy, that’s how it sounded. She knew it; he knew it.

James nodded grimly. “Serial killers don’t normally stalk across long distances. Especially not after a victim has gone into hiding.” His brow was furrowed in a look of concerned understanding laced with pity. He didn’t believe her.

“I’m no ordinary victim,” Maggie responded.

“You think he’s following you because of your books?” James asked.

Maggie had to admire the man. By now, most people would have passed into the “you flaming idiot” phase of the conversation. “In the criminal world, I’m something of a celebrity. You want to live forever? Just have Maggie Reyes write your story.” She got up and paced to the fireplace, focusing her attention on a photo of herself and her parents that rested on the mantle. She didn’t remember when it had been taken, but it must have been years ago; they were outdoors. Not to mention she hadn’t seen them for eighteen months.

“What you’re talking about is uncharted territory.” James said behind her. “According to the feds, the Surgeon is your basic organized lust killer. He’s smart enough to plan and cover his tracks, but he kills from compulsion.”

“No killer cannibalized his victims with the enthusiasm Jeffrey Dahmer had. No one put up a better guise of sanity than Ted Bundy. No one broke more of the profilers ‘rules’ than the DC snipers.” Maggie turned to face him. “They’re all uncharted territory, Detective Brentwood. And no one has ever tracked victims with the single-mindedness of the Surgeon.”

“So he’s communicating with you so you’ll write a book about him?”

Ah-ha. Now she was getting polite disbelief. Time to bring out the big guns. “The woman who was killed in Carmel—Abigail Rhodes. Did that look like an ordinary murder to you?”

Brentwood put his glasses back on his face and pushed them as far up his nose as they would go. His leg continued to keep time to some rhythm only he could sense. “I’m not at liberty to discuss—”

“Abigail had reported harassing phone calls to the police three days prior to her death,” Maggie broke in, recounting what she knew of the case. “The night of the murder, someone broke into her apartment. There was no sign of forced entry. She was quickly incapacitated by a blow to the head, then tied to her bed and stabbed repeatedly in an almost ritualistic fashion. You found no fingerprints, few fibers, and nothing that would let you point to a particular suspect with any certainty.”

James cleared his throat. “That was all in the papers,” he began, his manner still unfailingly polite.

“And here’s what wasn’t.” Moving quickly across the room, she sat on the edge of the chair across from him, the coffee table between them. “He used fishing line to tie her wrists and ankles. She was strangled, but that’s not what killed her. The cause of death was heavy blood loss due to several cuts on her abdomen arranged in a particular pattern resembling a grid.”

The detective’s leg stopped bouncing.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Maggie said. “He took something off her body—like a piece of jewelry or a scrap of clothing. It’s his trophy, Detective Brentwood. He’ll touch it and look at it and relive his crime over and over and over again. And when reliving it isn’t enough, he’ll find some other young woman and he’ll do the same thing all over again. Unless you’re there to stop him.”

Her macabre litany finished, Maggie sat back against the soft upholstery of the chair, feeling strangely tired. Ever since she’d read about Abigail Rhodes, she’d been so damn tired.

The detective stared at her for a long moment, then steepled his hands and brought them to his lips, resting his thumbs under his square chin.

“I told you she knew what she was talking about,” Adriana said behind him.

“Why is he so fixated on you? Will he come here?” the man finally said.

“Eventually,” Maggie replied. “He’ll kill me because he wants immortality.”

“Right,” James said. “Kill the woman who immortalized the Green River Killer, the Zodiac murders, Mohammed and Malvo, and you’d have yourself a hell of a biography.”

The three of them grew suddenly quiet, remaining motionless until Adriana started fishing inside her purse. The sound of crinkling wrappers broke the silence, and then Addy shoved a piece of gum in her mouth and began snapping away. She tossed the pack on the table. “Nerves,” she explained. “Help yourselves.”

James patted her knee gently and then turned his focus back to Maggie. “What about these letters and numbers?”

“I think he might be keeping score,” she replied. “Ten murders for him, no leads for me. In New Orleans, I was on the task force that was trying to catch him.”