Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [186]
“This is Stucky’s, isn’t it?”
“Are you going to rat me out to Cunningham?”
“Of course not. You know me better than that. But I am concerned about you obsessing over him.”
“I’m not obsessing.”
“Really? Then what would you call it?”
Maggie took a bite of pizza. She didn’t want to think about Stucky, or her appetite would be ruined again. Yet that was one of the reasons Gwen was here.
“I simply want him caught,” Maggie finally said. She could feel Gwen’s eyes examining her, looking for signs, watching for underlying tones. Maggie hated it when her friend tried psychoanalyzing her, but she knew it was a simple instinct with Gwen.
“And only you can catch him? Is that it?”
“I know him best.”
Gwen stared at her a few more moments then picked up her bottle by its neck and twisted off the cap. She took a sip and put the drink aside.
“I did some checking.” She reached for a slice of pizza, and Maggie tried not to show her eagerness. She had asked Gwen to use her connections to find out where the Stucky case was stalled. When Assistant Director Cunningham exiled Maggie to the teaching circuit, he had also made it impossible for her to find out any information about the investigation.
Gwen took her time chewing. Another sip while Maggie waited. She wondered if Gwen had called Cunningham directly. No, that would have been too obvious. He knew the two of them were close friends.
“And?” She couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Cunningham has brought in a new profiler, but the task force has been dismantled.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because he has nothing, Maggie. It’s been, what? Over five months? There’s no sign of Albert Stucky. It’s like he’s fallen off the face of the earth.”
“I know. I’ve been checking VICAP almost weekly.” Initiated by the FBI, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program recorded violent crimes across the country, categorizing them by distinguishing features. Nothing close to Stucky’s M.O. had shown up. “What about in Europe? Stucky has enough money stashed. He could go anywhere.”
“I checked my sources at Interpol.” Gwen paused for another sip. “There’s been nothing that looks like Stucky.”
“Maybe he’s changed his M.O.”
“Maybe he’s stopped, Maggie. Sometimes serial killers do that. They just stop. No one can explain it, but you know it happens.”
“Not Stucky.”
“Don’t you think he’d be in touch with you? Try to start his sick game all over again? After all, you’re the one who got him thrown in jail. If nothing else, he’d be mad as hell.”
Maggie had been the one who had finally identified the madman the FBI had nicknamed The Collector. Her profile, and a lucky discovery of an almost indistinguishable set of fingerprints—arrogantly and recklessly left behind at a crime scene—were what led to the unveiling of The Collector as a man named Albert Stucky, a self-made millionaire from Massachusetts.
Like most serial killers, Stucky seemed pleased by the exposure, enjoying the attention and wanting to take the credit. When his obsession turned to Maggie, no one was really surprised. But the game that followed was anything but ordinary. A game that included clues to catch him, only the clues came as personal notes with a token finger, a dissected birthmark, and once, a severed nipple slipped into an envelope.
That was about eight or nine months ago. Almost a year had passed and Maggie still struggled to remember what her life had been like before the game. She couldn’t remember sleep without nightmares. She couldn’t remember not feeling the constant need to look over her shoulder. She had nearly lost her life capturing Albert Stucky, and he had escaped before she could remember what feeling safe felt like.
Gwen reached over and pulled a stack of crime scene photos from the box. She laid them out while she continued eating her pizza. She was one of the few people Maggie knew who wasn’t a member of the FBI and who was able to eat and look at crime scene photos at the same time. Without looking up, she said, “You need to let this