Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [19]
“He doesn’t want to hurt them. I don’t think he can help himself.”
“If he’s someone you care about, if you’re worried for his safety, don’t be. We have procedures for this kind of arrest, we’ll take appropriate measures. Come on, this guy has killed seven girls. Give me his name. Let me solve this problem for you. You’re doing the right thing.”
“I don’t have all the answers,” the voice said, and for a moment, it sounded so plaintive, Mac nearly believed it. And then, “You should’ve caught him three years ago, Special Agent. Why, oh, why didn’t you guys catch him?”
“Work with us and we’ll get him now.”
“Too late,” the caller said. “He never could stand the heat.”
The connection broke. Mac was left in the middle of the parking lot, gripping his impossibly tiny phone and cursing a blue streak. He punched send again. The number rang and rang and rang, but the person didn’t pick up and wouldn’t until Mac was contacted again.
“Damn,” Mac said again. Then, “Damn, damn, damn.”
He found his rental car. Inside, it was approximately two hundred degrees. He slid into the seat, leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, then banged his head against the hard plastic three times. Six phone calls now and he was no closer to knowing a single goddamn thing. And time was running out. Mac had known it, had been feeling it, since the mercury had started rising on Sunday.
Tomorrow Mac would check in with his Atlanta office, report the latest call. The task force could review, rework, reanalyze . . . and wait. After all this time, that’s about all they had left—the wait.
Mac pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. Exhaled deeply. He was thinking of Nora Ray Watts again. The way her face had lit up like the sun when she had stepped from the rescue chopper and spotted her parents standing just outside of the rotor wash. The way her expression had faltered, then collapsed thirty seconds later after she’d excitedly, innocently asked, “Where is Mary Lynn?”
And then her voice with that impossible reedy wail, over and over again. “No, no, no. Oh God, please no.”
Her father had tried to prop her up. Nora Ray sank down on the tarmac, curling up beneath her army blanket as if that could protect her from the truth. Her parents finally collapsed with her, a huddle of green grief that would never know an end.
They won that day. They lost that day.
And now?
It was hot, it was late. And a man was writing letters to the editor once again.
Go home, little girls. Lock the doors. Turn out the lights. Don’t end up like Nora Ray Watts, who ran out with her younger sister for a little ice cream one night and ended up abandoned in a desolate part of the coast, frantically burying herself deeper into the muck, while the fiddler crabs nibbled on her toes, the razor clams slashed open her palms, and the scavengers began to circle overhead.
CHAPTER 5
Fredericksburg, Virginia
10:34 P.M.
Temperature: 89 degrees
“I’M READY,” Tina said two inches from Betsy’s ear. In the pounding noise of the jam-packed bar, her roommate didn’t seem to hear her. They were outside Fredericksburg, at a little hole-in-the-wall joint favored by college students, biker gangs, and really loud Western bands. Even on a Tuesday night, the place was jamming, the people so thick and the bass so loud Tina didn’t know how the roof stayed on over their heads.
“I’m ready,” Tina tried again, shouting louder. This time, Betsy at least turned toward her.
“What?” Betsy yelled.
“Time . . . to . . . go . . . home,” Tina hollered back.
“Bathroom?”
“HOME!”
“Oooooh.” Her roommate finally got it. She looked at Tina more closely and her brown eyes instantly softened with concern. “You okay?”
“Hot!”
“No kidding.”
“Not feeling . . . so well.” Actually, she was feeling horrible. Her long blond hair had come untangled from its knot and was plastered against her neck. Sweat trickled down the small of her back, over her butt, and all the way down her legs. The air was too heavy. She