Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [90]
“That isn’t standard procedure, obviously. Let me speak with him.”
“He’s all yours.”
Cray hoped the undersheriff and his deputies would move away, afford him some privacy with Walter, but none of them moved.
Gingerly he touched the big man’s arm. “Walter,” he began in his best professional tone, “why don’t you tell me what’s happened here.”
“Got arrested,” Walter said, his eyes hollow with fear.
“No, you’re not under arrest. There’s been a misunderstanding. A mistake. Now, why were you out driving around after dark?”
A pendulous thread of mucus dangled from Walter’s left nostril. With an equine snort, he sniffed it back.
“Following you,” he whispered.
“I see. That’s why you had your headlights off. So I wouldn’t see you?”
“That’s right, Dr. Cray”
“Now, why was it so important to follow me?”
“Because of Kaylie. I thought you’d go looking for her, like I—”
“Yes, I understand now.” It was imperative to cut off this dangerous line of discussion. “You asked me earlier today why the police had come by, and I told you about Kaylie. You were worried that I’d try to find her somehow. You were hoping to protect me.”
“Protect you.” Walter seized on these words, as Cray had hoped he would. “Yes, protect you, it’s all I wanted to do, just protect you, Dr. Cray.”
“That’s fine, Walter.”
“Because I know how dangerous she is.”
“Yes, fine.”
“She could hurt you. She tried to hurt—”
“That’s enough, Walter. We all understand you. You’re not in any trouble. You haven’t broken any laws.”
Wheelihan coughed. “Well, Doc, he was driving without his headlights.”
Doc again. Cray was growing tired of this man. “Write up a ticket,” he snapped. “I’ll pay it for him.”
Walter’s lip trembled in the prelude to another sob.
The undersheriff looked at the big man, then at Cray, then shrugged. “Aw, to hell with it. I’m just pissed off, is all. I thought we had her. As it turns out, probably she was never even here.”
“She was here. I—” I felt her, Cray almost said. I sensed her presence with the tips of my nerve endings. But he couldn’t say that. “I know her well enough to anticipate her behavior patterns. She came here tonight.”
Wheelihan looked dubious. “Well, if so, she’s gone by now. All this commotion would’ve scared her off for sure.”
“Unless she wasn’t on this road, because she never meant to follow me in the first place.”
“The house, you mean?”
Cray nodded. Of course. It would be the house. Now that he thought about it, the house was the only thing that really made sense.
She hadn’t come here to kill him. She wasn’t a killer, not really, though neither Shepherd nor Wheelihan knew it. She had come for evidence—hard evidence, conclusive, impossible for the police to ignore.
His trophies.
That was what she was after, crafty Kaylie. The faces of his victims, the totems he had collected during twelve years of nocturnal sport, which she hoped to find in his residence while he was away.
“Yes ...” he murmured, and then remembering he was surrounded by people, he added more loudly, “yes, she’ll try to break into my house.”
41
Security at the Hawk Ridge Institute was tight. The hospital compound was entirely fenced in, patrolled by a small but vigilant guard detail. The front gate was monitored by a guard in a gatehouse.
But the gate across Cray’s private driveway was not monitored by anyone.
Elizabeth had thought about that gate many times on the long nights when she watched Cray’s house. She thought of it again as she left her perch on the ridge and descended the foot trail to the fire road.
Her car was parked on the road, but she wouldn’t need it. She paused only long enough to stow her binoculars inside. Then she jogged down the winding road toward flatter ground. Had to hurry. She needed to be in position near the gate by the time Cray left for the evening.
When he departed, the gate would briefly swing wide, and for a few seconds the sealed perimeter of the institute would open just a bit.
She reached the main road, a strip of washboard gravel with no streetlights, illuminated only by the stars