The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [126]
“Why are you so sure he’ll come?” Marion pressed no one in particular. “It’s the way you caught him the first time, so he knows it’s risky. Two, it doesn’t fit his pattern. JIM BECKETT WAS HERE or JIM WAS NUMBER ONE makes sense. JIM BECKETT WAS W? I don’t see how it can fit.”
“He’ll come,” Tess said.
“Because he’s deteriorating?”
“Because he always finishes what he starts,” Tess murmured. “Always.”
Marion sat back. “I guess I just don’t understand that kind of anger.”
“You can’t,” Quincy spoke up. “You’re a woman.”
When Marion tried to protest, Quincy waved her down tiredly. “I’m talking statistics, not chauvinism. Most serial killers are male. Maybe part of it’s hormones, but certainly it’s also behavioral. When men get angry, they are taught to lash out at others. When women get angry, they are taught to turn in on themselves. Quite simply, your mothers torment you and you become alcoholics or anorexics or suicide risks. You don’t become killers.”
His gaze slid to Tess. He spoke matter-of-factly.
“Beckett will come, Ms. Williams. And when he does, it will be bloody.”
MARION WAITED FOR her brother and Tess to return to their motel before she made her move. It was after six, but the war room showed no sign of slowing down. Phones were ringing, operators answering. Lieutenant Houlihan was yelling at some young officer while simultaneously crunching Tums. The mood in the building was stark.
She kept walking, looking for a vacant interview room or forgotten corner. Instead, she ran into Officer Louis, a straw-haired kid who looked too much like Richie Cunningham for his own good. He spotted her coming, froze, and gulped noticeably.
She’d run into him earlier that day. Perhaps someday he’d be a good police officer, but personally she thought he had the spine of a jellyfish. In turn, he seemed to view her as the human equivalent of a black widow spider, waiting to seduce him into answering her questions, at which time she would calmly bite off his head to complete the mating.
“I’m looking for Special Agent Quincy.”
Officer Louis couldn’t get the words out. He backed against the wall and pointed down the hallway. Shaking her head, Marion walked past him. His sigh of relief was audible.
She found Quincy sequestered in his own little space, surrounded by crime scene photos. He didn’t look up right away. She used the opportunity to glance at the color photographs. They didn’t appear to be from Jim Beckett’s files. Most of these victims were middle-aged women. They’d been carved up brutally by a serrated knife.
Quincy sifted through them one by one, as though he were shuffling a deck of cards. At long last he sighed, shook his head, and finally set them down, clearly not having found what he was seeking.
“Another case, sir?” she asked respectfully. She’d automatically assumed a cadet’s stance, legs apart, shoulders square, hands behind her back.
“Santa Cruz,” he muttered, his gaze still on the photos. “Can you believe that at one time Santa Cruz was the serial killer capital of the world with three active murderers? Now we have another there. It makes you wonder what’s in the water.”
He pushed back from the rickety table. Marion could see the exhaustion deeply stamped into his face. His hand was rubbing the back of his neck.
“And her?” Marion asked, suddenly feeling too unnerved to state her real purpose for finding him. She gestured to the framed portrait of a smiling brunette.
“Oh, her? My wife. I mean ex-wife.” He smiled ruefully. “Divorce came through a few weeks ago. I guess I’m still adjusting. I’ve always traveled with her picture, you know. Set it up in every cheap motel and overheated police station in the country. Now I find I can’t work without it. Silly, isn’t it?”
Marion shifted, even more discomfited by this personal insight. “Not really, sir. My . . . uh, my husband and I recently split as well. After ten years. It’s a big adjustment.”
“Hard to be married and be an agent.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
He smiled. “It is a platitude, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
They drifted into