Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [48]
She is a clever thing though, he’d noted as he’d watched her speak with the press. Her sketches were so accurate. He shook his head, once again admiring her ability. Of course, he’d known just how clever she was.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel just a tad bit disappointed in her.
But wasn’t she a pretty sight, in her black-and-white checked suit, her hair—his mother used to call that color strawberry blond—swept up off her neck, that thin gold chain and the delicate cross that dangled from it and rested in the hollow of her slender throat.
The thought came to him so suddenly that it startled him, causing him to all but gasp.
Smiling, he put his feet up on the hassock and rested his arms over his chest, feeling quite smug and more than just a bit pleased with himself.
Now perhaps he’d see just how smart his Kendra really was.
Chapter
Ten
“You look exhausted,” Kendra said after they’d been seated in the small, pleasant restaurant overlooking a golf course, where spotlights glowed here and there to illuminate the greens.
“I am exhausted. Thanks for noticing.”
“Hard not to,” she smiled gently. “Dark circles under the eyes, difficulty concentrating . . .”
“My concentration is just fine.”
“Of course it is. You keep looking back at the specials listed on the blackboard there to see if maybe they’ve changed it from one minute to the next.”
“Very funny. I already know what I’m having.”
“What’s that?”
“Catfish.”
“Ugh. Bottom-feeders.” She pretended to shudder.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Catfish. They’re bottom-feeders.” She smiled and leaned forward to add, “And we all know what sinks to the bottom, don’t we?”
“Oh, and pray tell, what healthy little number will you be ordering?”
“I’m having the steak. Rare. Baked potato—lots of butter.”
“You need a vegetable,” he frowned.
“I’ll have a salad.”
He shook his head. “Someday, when your arteries are so clogged the blood can’t pass through, you’ll think of me and wish you’d have taken better care of yourself.”
“I do take care of myself.”
“Kendra, you eat crap.”
She grinned and looked up at the waitress who appeared to take their orders.
“How do you argue with a woman like this?” he asked rhetorically.
“I think a better question might be why,” the waitress winked at Kendra as she took their orders. She was still smiling when she returned with Adam’s beer and Kendra’s club soda.
“How can you lecture me on what I eat when you’re drinking beer? It’s loaded with carbohydrates.”
“Carbohydrates are my friends.” He sipped at the beer gratefully, hoping to wash away the dust from the crime scene and the tension of the afternoon’s interview. “And after the two days I’ve had, I need all the friends I can get. I earned this beer.”
“It’s been that bad, then?” she asked softly.
“As bad as anything I’ve ever seen.”
“The woman you found near the stream . . .”
“She was nineteen years old, and he slaughtered her. Brutally raped and slaughtered her.”
“That wasn’t the way he handled the other women, though. Why are you so sure it’s the same man?”
“He was there. We’ve established that. He was there with Karen Meyer, he killed her there. And there’s evidence to show that after he killed his second victim, he washed up in the stream afterward, then, his clothes still wet, carried Karen out of the park. Her clothes were still damp when they found her, from her body being held up against his wet clothes when he carried her. And the lab is testing her clothes and water from the stream for traces of marine life that might match.”
“You think it’s a mother-thing?” she asked. “I mean, except for this young girl, all of his victims were single mothers. Maybe he has a screwed-up relationship with his mother. Maybe he’s killing her. Maybe he thinks it’s okay as long as it’s done neatly.”
“Could be. It will be interesting to see what our profiler has to say when she joins us.”
“What do you think?”
“I’ve thought about the mother angle. All of his victims, with the exception, as you noted, of the young girl at the park, were all