Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [20]
“Yes, that’s what I think. Now,” she brushed the subject aside and picked up a triangle of her club sandwich, “how do you think this guy is getting around as easily as he is?”
Chapter
Four
Adam stepped aside to admit Kendra into the sitting area of his hotel room. It was a little past two in the morning and they’d just returned from Walnut Crossing, where they’d spent the past nine hours speaking with the witnesses who had been the last to see Karen Meyer alive. As soon as they could, they would move on to Windsorville, to speak with possible witnesses relating to the disappearance of Amy Tilden. Keyed up after hours of interviews, neither of them could sleep.
Kendra took a seat on one end of the sofa, pulled a sheaf of notes out of her folder and asked, “What did you think of the police investigation in Walnut Crossing?”
Adam sat on the other end of the sofa, his long body angled to face her.
“I thought they did a good job, if not a great one. Which is what I told Mancini when I called in earlier this evening. By the way, he now has several more agents working with the state police to track the van and assist with the processing of the prints they found on some of the debris in the Dumpster where they found Kathleen Garvey’s body.”
“So sad. All Karen Meyer had done was go to a concert in the town square so that she could be there when her daughter played in the school band for the first time, then stayed to watch her son’s ball game. Those simple, selfless acts of a loving mother somehow put her in the path of a killer.”
“Founder’s Day.” Adam pulled the police report from the folder and skimmed over it, hoping to find something they might have missed. “The entire town was there.”
“The entire town, plus one,” she said pointedly. “One with a dark van parked at the farthest end of the lot, where the park begins. The park Karen Meyer would walk through to get home.”
“Doesn’t it ever strike you how crazy it all is? How one small thing—one tiny, random decision—can end up making the difference between life and death?” Adam said. “So many ‘if only’s.’ If only one of her children had gone with her. If only she’d accepted the ride home that her neighbors offered. If only she’d walked home on the main streets, or left earlier, instead of choosing to stay to see her son’s game.”
“No question it’s the same guy?”
“Not in my mind. We’ll know for sure once the DNA matches up, but in my mind it’s a given. Tossed by the side of the road where she’d be certain to be found.” Adam paused, then added, “Only thing different with Karen Meyer is that her clothes were damp, which has yet to be explained, since it hasn’t rained here in a week. But I’d bet everything I have that he’s been watching her, just waiting for the most opportune time.
“And watched her closely enough that he knew that whenever she walked home from town, she took a shortcut through the park. I think he was waiting for her. But if she hadn’t gone through the park that night, he’d have been waiting for her somewhere else at some other time. He wanted her. I think he just waited for her in the woods.”
“Like the Big Bad Wolf,” Kendra noted.”What do you think the autopsy will show?”
“Strangulation. He was a lot rougher with Karen than he’d been with the other two, but I think it was a strong emotion that he hadn’t planned on—anger, most likely—that drove him to want to hurt her.”
“Because she fought him?”
“I’m thinking that they’ll find traces of skin and blood under her nails, which the others did not have. Which leads to the question of why she would have been able to fight him, even unsuccessfully, when the other two showed no sign of a struggle.” Adam leaned forward and sorted through a stack of photographs that he’d taken from the folder marked TILDEN in wide black letters. “A question to which I believe I have the answer. . . .”
When he found the photo he was looking for, he pushed it to the center of the table, his jaw set squarely. Amy Tilden’s body lay on the shoulder of the road, surrounded by litter. From the folder marked GARVEY he removed