Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [13]
Casual though their relationship might have been, there was still an air of unfinished business that nagged at Adam every time he thought of her. And over the past several years he had thought of her more frequently than he liked to admit.
And now here he was, in her house, alone in the darkened room below her own, listening to the soft sound of her feet padding on the floorboards, the light sigh of the bed as she sat upon its edge, the low music from overhead. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend it wasn’t her face he saw in his mind’s eye.
As he lay in the dark room of the old house, where the barest wisp of aromatic tobacco lingered in the air, and counted sheep to the faint sound of the Dave Matthews Band, he wondered if this trip had been such a good idea after all.
Chapter
Three
“Do you have everything you need, Ms. Smith?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Is the little boy here yet?” Kendra unpacked the file from her briefcase and placed it on the table that dominated much of the small kitchen that served the dining needs of the Deal Police Department. She was anxious to spend some quality time with their young witness and knew from experience that casual surroundings might help eight-year-old Max Spinelli to relax.
Alan Ford, chief of police of the village of Deal, Pennsylvania, population 3,517, nodded from the doorway. He’d requested the assistance of the FBI under protest from several of his detectives whose last homicide investigation was seven years past and had involved a couple of bikers just passing through. They hadn’t seen the need for outside intervention now that they had what appeared to be a bona fide serial killer in the area. Ford had expected the assistance to come in the form of a few agents. He hadn’t expected the FBI to bring in a compositor. After all, their own sergeant had drawn up a sketch and that looked pretty good. On the other hand, this woman looked pretty good, too, so who was Ford to question the FBI’s judgment?
The chief paused in the doorway and looked at Adam and asked, “By the way, why do you need a profiler?”
“What?” Adam looked up.
“A profiler. I’d heard that you specifically requested a profiler.”
“Well, when you asked for us to assist, there’d only been two killings, possibly related.” Adam leaned back in his chair. “Now that we have at least three, we have enough behavioral clues to start making appropriate inferences that can lead to a profile. She should be here soon.”
“She?” Ford’s eyebrows raised.
“She,” Adam assured him. “And for the record, she prefers ‘criminal investigative analyst’ to ‘profiler.’ ”
Muttering unintelligibly, Ford stuck his head out the door and called to someone down the hall, then opened the door wide enough for a frightened-looking young boy and his wary mother to enter the room.
“Max, Mrs. Spinelli, my name is Kendra Smith. I’m a sketch artist who occasionally works with the FBI. This is Agent Stark.” Kendra turned slightly in her chair to nod to Adam, who extended his hand to both Mrs. Spinelli and her son.
“Agent Stark, my son has already told Chief Ford everything he knows. A sketch of the man who”—she swallowed hard—“a drawing, a good drawing, has been made. I’m not sure I understand why Max has to go through this questioning again.”
“Kendra,” Adam deferred the response to her, for which she was grateful.
“I appreciate that you and your son have been so cooperative. But in a case like this—I’m sure you are aware that the suspect is being sought in connection with two other victims—we just want to be sure that the sketch that was released to the media is as accurate as it can be.”
“He told them everything he knows, and the artist drew a good picture.” Mrs. Spinelli frowned.
“The picture is quite well drawn,” Kendra chose her words carefully, “but it’s a mistake to believe that the