The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [30]
“Bethie,” he tried one last time, “don’t you get angry, too?”
His ex-wife didn’t speak right away. Then she asked quietly, in a strange tone, “Pierce, do you think if someone gets an organ transplant, that maybe they get more than just the other person’s tissue? Maybe . . . maybe they also get part of the other person’s being, some part of her soul?”
“An organ transplant is a medical procedure, nothing more.”
“I thought you would say that.”
“Returning to Kimberly for a moment—”
“She’s angry, she needs space. I got it, Pierce. I’m not as dumb as you think.”
“Bethie—”
The phone clicked off. His ex-wife had hung up on him.
Quincy slowly recradled the cordless phone on its base. And that, he thought tiredly, concluded one of the more civil conversations of his day.
Five minutes later, Quincy sat down at the kitchen counter. The scrap of paper with Tristan Shandling’s name had been pushed aside. Now, he had out a fresh spiral notebook and three black ink pens. He pressed the play button on his answering machine.
Then he began the two-page list of all the nice felons who’d called his unlisted telephone number simply to wish him dead.
The light on his security panel indicated his system was fully operational and armed. He watched it for a long time, thinking of Kimberly, remembering Mandy.
Shortly, he went into the front room he used as an office. He dug through a stack of cardboard boxes marked Criminology: Basic Theories, until he found a small cassette tape labeled “Miguel Sanchez: Victim Eight.” The original tape sat in an evidence storage locker in California. This was Quincy’s personal copy, used in several of his classes.
He placed the tape in an old cassette recorder. He hit play. He sat alone in the dark, while his office filled with sounds of a young girl’s pleading wails.
Amanda Johnson, fifteen years old and eight long hours from death.
“Noooooooooo,” she cried. “Oh God, nooooooooooo.”
Quincy put his head in his hands. And he knew he was in trouble, because one month after his daughter’s funeral, he still couldn’t weep.
8
Motel 6, Virginia
“Who is Miguel Sanchez?” Rainie asked an hour later. She was propped up against the headboard of her mud-brown motel room, having just treated herself to a late dinner of pecan waffles at the nearby Waffle House. The Motel 6 had been highly visible from the highway and seemed as good a stopping point as any. Besides, at fifty dollars a night, no one could question her expense account.
She’d found the motel. She’d found the neighboring Waffle House. She’d eaten her waffles alone, thinking of Officer Amity’s take on the accident scene and wishing she didn’t have a chill. Then she’d wasted ten minutes watching other diners, burly, working-class men out with their girls. In some cases, tables crowded with entire families. She was three thousand miles away from home. Funny how nothing seemed that different.
She’d walked back to the motel knowing she should call Quincy and deliver a report on her day. Instead, she’d turned on the TV and perused the modern miracle of fifty-seven channels and still nothing to see. She told herself she didn’t have much to report, anyway. Besides, she didn’t want to seem anxious to hear Quincy’s voice. She wanted to ensure that she was treating this as business, purely business. Quincy the client.
There had been nothing good on TV. She had spent the day in a strange state thinking, this is where Quincy lives, and she had been anxious to hear his voice. She’d called. And it had taken her all of one second to realize that she should’ve called sooner. Quincy sounded tired, nearly flat, as if he had no emotions left. She had never heard him sound like that before.
“Miguel Sanchez was my first case,” he told her now. “Worked out of California in the mid-eighties, with his cousin, Richie Millos. They specialized in sadistic rape-murders of young prostitutes. Eight total. Sanchez liked