Authors: Eileen Dreyer
Head Games (21 page)
“Do you know I pulled up my own psych records?” she demanded of Sasha as they were changing at end of shift eight hours later. “Anybody with a pass code could find out all about my past.”
Brushing her hair into a perfect pageboy, Sasha shrugged. “As any third grader with a TV could tell you.”
“I need you to teach me how to get those work records.”
“And we're looking for what, exactly?”
Molly smiled and leaned against the sink, her new sense of direction exciting her. “What is the point of The Game, Sasha?”
“The Game?” Sasha asked, now focused on lipstick. “To see who we can save, of course.”
“Uh-huh. And what about the ones we can't?”
Sasha's eyes met Molly's in the mirror. “You're playing The Game?”
“Nope. I'm taking it to the logical conclusion. What we know about serial killers is that the press always interviews the wrong person. They always get the neighbor, who saysâ”
“âBut he was always such a quiet man,'” Sasha responded in dramatically astonished tones.
Molly nodded. “They never ask the old juvenile officers, the teachers or social workers or psychiatrists. You and I know damn well which one of these kids is going to the big leagues, and we only see them in short bursts. They have an escalating relationship with psych and penal systems you can trace back like footsteps in the snow, and I'm going to follow them.”
Sasha had forgotten about makeup. “How's that?”
Molly shrugged. “Well, if he knows me, like everybody thinks he does, I might just find him in that computer system you're so hot about. I can double-check anybody's record for past psychiatric or work-related problems, notations that might indicate trouble with the law, prior violent or voyeuristic behavior, problems with women, that sort of thing. This guy's experienced. He's been there building his repertory for twenty years, maybe from Peeping Tom to rape to murder. His footprints will be somewhere in the computer, and the cops can't get in it without a search warrant.” Molly's smile was terrible. “I can.”
Sasha tilted her head in consideration. “You'll let me help.”
Molly's smile got bigger. “Actually, yes.”
Sasha finished with a flourish and the two of them headed out of the bathroom. “Where do we start?”
“I have a list I'd like you to take a look at,” Molly admitted. “All the guys I've known in my St. Louis jobs who are now at least thirty.”
Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Thirty? Why?”
“Average age at first human kill is twenty-one, although I really think that number's going to go down. This guy's proficient enough to have been doing it awhile. And a guy, because statistically, chop-shop killings just aren't a woman's signature, unless she's just trying to hide evidence.”
The two of them walked down a hall that was still hopping. “You have way too much information, if you ask me,” Sasha said.
“I have to,” Molly informed her. “I'm the one getting the body parts.”
“And an escort home again, it seems.”
There, lounging against the triage desk at the far end of the hall in Icelandic sweater and khakis, was the ever-smiling Frank. Just as she'd found him the last three shifts.
“He's trying to annoy me to death,” Molly informed her friend. “As well as he's doing, I may not last until we find out who my secret admirer is.”
“You have to be the only woman alive who'd consider that man annoying.”
“Why, Frank?” Molly demanded as she approached. “Why do you persist in harassing me?”
“You can harass me any time you want, honey,” a voice floated out of one of the rooms.
“I'll let you know!” Frank called back.
Molly wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run, because she had a terrible feeling that Frank was about to demand things from her she simply couldn't give. He was going to try and give things he couldn't.
She should have known better. His smile was knowing, even as those who looked on thought he was professing something wonderfully romantic. “Don't waste your maidenly nerves on me, Miss Molly,” he assured her. “You of all people know what I am. I trust you not to expect more, which is why I'm so comfortable doing this little extra for you. You know it's about all I can manage.”
She did. Frankâhandsome, deadly, driven Frankâwas no Prince Charming. Heck, he wasn't even Prince Charles. Somehow this bright, breezy, beautiful man had only been given a half cup of humanity, and he wasted it all on his children and his friend Joey. A little, perhaps, on her, when he could. It was all she'd ever wanted. All, in reality, she could handle. She needed Frank to be Frank. So she shouldn't regret it when he was.
Molly gave him a smile, which everybody on the hall misinterpreted. “All right, if you're going to be that way about it. See if I don't make you pick up the next bone.”
Sasha just shook her weary head and led the way up to the garage, where Frank regaled them both with lawyer jokes. It wasn't until much later as he walked Molly up the front steps to her house that he remembered to ask how her day had been.
“I evidently insulted Patrick again without knowing how,” she admitted, opening her front door. “So when he isn't at work or Sam's, he's taken to spending most of his time in his room calling his friends around the country. On my dime, of course. But he says that's necessary because I don't have the Internet.”
Frank was greatly unimpressed. “Uh-huh. Check the heirlooms.”
“You really don't trust Patrick, do you?” Molly asked.
The kitchen light was off, which meant Patrick hadn't come home yet. Since Sam's lights were still on Molly wasn't terribly worried. She punched in the numbers to turn off her alarm and led Frank into the house.
“I recognize him,” Frank said. “He's a sixteen-year-old me.”
Shucking her jacket as she walked through, Molly considered Frank. “I would have thought that would make you two bond.”
Frank's smile wasn't as bright as usual. “It wears better on me. Now, we going bone hunting?”
It was a joke, the same one he'd made for the last three nights. The same kind of joke that had propelled him to send the roses and hold her hand in the parking garage, scaring off the dark for her. Molly headed for the kitchen, ready to play along.
And then she realized what was wrong.
The house was silent.
Empty.
Molly knew where Patrick was. She just didn't know where Magnum was.
“If that boy has just left my dog out in the cold, I'll clock him,” she snarled, heading for the back door.
Magnum wasn't there either. Molly went straight from annoyed to scared. Magnum should have been waiting for her. He should have been barking in indignation. She couldn't see him. Without bothering to reclaim her coat, she opened the door.
“Magnum?” she called, her voice echoing off buildings a block away. “Honeyâ”
“Mollyâ” Frank protested, trying to head her off.
He never stood a chance. Molly had finally seen what she was afraid of. A large, dark body on the back lawn.
Silent. Still.
She stepped off the porch to run for him and almost put her foot right through a human skull.
The good news was that Magnum wasn't dead.
“Hamburger,” Frank decided from where he was crouched over the lump of matter he'd found within a few feet of Magnum's snoring body. “My guess would be that somebody stuffed sedatives in it, and your nottoo-bright watchdog gobbled it down.”
Molly, huddled and shaking on her small back porch, nodded blankly. “Should I call the vet? See what an overdose is? God, I'm not putting an Ewald tube down that dog's throat to pump him out.”
Even to her ears her laughter sounded way too shrill. She just couldn't hold her hands still.
“Call the vet,” Frank agreed. “Right after the police.”
The bad news was that the skull was real. Obviously human, painted a funny kind of marbleized gray with stars and circles circling the sides and back of the head, almost as if somebody considered it a doodling pad. And, of course, an address.
THIS IS FOR MOLLY BURKE
Right across the forehead, so it wouldn't be missed.
But this time it had come with a note.
And eyes.
Brown eyes.
Watching Molly in the dark from within those cavernous orbits.
Molly was sitting on cold concrete in her lab coat and scrubs holding the note she'd pulled from beneath the left eye with ungloved hands. Just like an amateur.
Hey
, she thought inconsequentially.
I defy any cop to stumble over this little treat in his own backyard and remember the rules of evidence.
, she thought inconsequentially.
I defy any cop to stumble over this little treat in his own backyard and remember the rules of evidence.
“Oh, God,” she moaned on a fresh shudder as she scanned the note. “He wants me to understand him.”
Frank looked up from where he'd been trying to shake her dog awake. “What?”
Molly couldn't take her eyes off the paper. Better than looking at the skull that seemed to be watching her, as if waiting for her to recognize something. “My little buddy has stopped relying on the post.”
Frank was alongside her in a flash to peer over her shoulder. “Boy, Mol, when you have an event, you really do it up right.”
Molly shook some more. “Shut up, Frank.”
What Frank did was ease her to her feet, leaving the skull where they'd found it at the edge of the porch like a left-over Halloween treat. “First we prevent frostbite,” he commanded. “Then we still have to call the police.”
“We have to make sure Magnum doesn't get to it,” Molly protested. “Magnum has a taste for eyes.”
She was laughing again, high and sharp.
“Magnum's not going to wake up till Tuesday. Come on, St. Molly the Morbid,” he coaxed, his arm around her as he guided her inside. “You're not that surprised.”
“I'm appalled, Frank. But hey, I'm glad you're having a good time.”
“I know you always try and make my visits special.”
And damn it, she laughed. Even more shrilly, a hair's breath from hysterics, but it was still laughter. She had a skull painted like a paperweight and accessorized with brown eyes in her backyard and a fresh love note from a psychopath, and she was giggling like a teen on a date. That is, she was giggling until she seized over and threw up in the grass.
“The evidence crew isn't going to like that, Miss Molly,” Frank admonished, pulling out the pristine handkerchief Molly should have damn well known he'd carry.
She wiped her mouth and struggled to regain her dignity. “I wasn't particularly wild about it either, Frank. Although I'm amazed you didn't take pictures to mark the occasion.”
“It will always be a fond memory, Mol.”
Molly grabbed the door rather than look back at all she'd left on the lawn. “Right after we call the police, get on the phone to Sam and see if he or Patrick heard anything.”
“You're sure Patrick didn't do this just to piss you off.”
“If it'd been beer cans and cigarette butts, I'd say yes. But he's been at Sam's since just after I left for work.”
And so he was. Of course, after that call, both he and Sam appeared in her kitchen, neither of them remembering a coat, and Sam suggesting tea for the humans and a blanket for the dog. By the time Dee arrived, the kitchen looked like a coffeehouse, but at least Molly had regained a measure of control.
“He came right up to the door,” Patrick was saying again in tones of outrage and dreadful fascination.
Molly knew how he felt. She wanted to bathe. She wanted to curl into a ball and become catatonic. She settled for pouring a little more Stoly into her tea. Hell, she let Patrick have some.
“I'm sorry, Molly,” Dee said by way of greeting, his large uniformed frame filling the doorway.
Molly got her tea mug to her mouth without spilling more than an ounce and tried to give a smile for her favorite policeman. “You didn't leave the damn thing, Dee.”
“Did you notice the lower jaw and teeth are missing?” Frank asked.
“That's to prevent identification,” Patrick assured him.
All the adults stared.
Patrick stiffened. “I saw it on
American Justice,
okay?”
American Justice,
okay?”
A skull, Molly thought again, squeezing her own eyes shut as if it would force out the image of those other eyes. Blank, staring eyes, delicate and sad, somehow. Such a small thing, pretty and exotic. Finally, truly, human.
Molly thought of the light, the spirit, the animation that had once made that skull such a miracle. The dreams carried in whispers, the triumphs touted in smiles, the small, petty jealousies compressed in pursed lips. All gone, now. Scooped out like a bad melon and then painted like a craft fair project. Left to communicate with Molly.
And for the first time, Molly forced herself to think past age and sex and death to the real question.
Who were you? What have we lost with your death? What terrible, despairing thoughts were your last?
Who were you? What have we lost with your death? What terrible, despairing thoughts were your last?
What should I see that I don't?
“Molly?”
She startled. “Sorry.”
Dee frowned. “I been trying to tell you the bad news. About the skull. The dispatcher spilled the beans.”
Molly felt the blood leave her face. “Over the air.”
Dee damn near dug a foot through the tile. “Big as life.”
Molly dropped her head into her hands. “Every camera truck in the state of Missouri will be on my block within the hour.” More tea. She needed more tea. Hell, forget the tea, she needed a good long slug from the Stoly bottle. “You'd better call your boss, Dee. I'll call mine.”
Not only every camera truck ended up blocking her street, but damn near every police car, most of them with their lights flashing so nobody could miss the show. Molly sat in her kitchen amid a growing pile of half-empty coffee cups and McDonald's wrappings and patted her dog, who was still groggy enough to not give a damn that dozens of strangers were stepping over him on their way by.
This time, even Winnie put in an appearance.
“You look all right,” she greeted Molly.
Molly didn't bother to lift her head from her hands. “It's a talent I have, Winnie. In fact, I've seen it on several evaluations. âNo matter what, Molly looks all right.'”
Winnie's eyebrow slid north. “You've been drinking.”
Leave it to Sam to go toe to toe with a woman six inches taller and forty years younger than he. “A little tea. For shock.”
Winnie looked down on that thatch of white hair and nodded. “You got some of that tea for me?”
Sam beamed. “What a question.”
Sergeant Davidson glided up from a chair like Taye Diggs with a badge. Winnie never looked at him as she took his place.
“You know Sergeant Davidson, Winnie,” Molly introduced them. “He's investigating me.”
Winnie ignored innuendo and introduction. “I hear we have no teeth.”
Molly flashed on that skull again, now safely hidden away in the evidence van. “But we do have a note.”
“Like the others?”
“Oh no. This one is different.”
Winnie paid attention. “How?”
Sergeant Davidson handed it over. Instead of noticing the evidence bag into which he'd safely sealed it, Molly noticed that his hands were manicured. Some cop.
Winnie read the message. And smiled.
Smiled
.
.
“Our friend is finally getting thoughtful.”
More than one head turned her way.
“That's certainly how I'd put it,” Molly retorted drily.
Winnie was completely unruffled. “We can reconstruct a skull. Even part of a skull. And the more words he puts on a page, the better our chances of finding out about him.”
Not so many words, Molly thought muzzily. More than usual, though. This time he'd said,
If anyone should understand, it's you. You SAW me
.
If anyone should understand, it's you. You SAW me
.
Volumes. Implied meanings Molly should have been getting, according to her friend. This same friend who had been telling her to drop dead for the last month.
Molly wanted another drink. All of that enthusiasm about digging into computer files to unearth a spider disintegrated like personal courage at the sound of a gunshot. This note put them right back on the “why” square, and Molly didn't want to sit there.
She didn't want a relationship with this guy, no matter what he thought. She didn't want to recognize him when they finally forced him out of the dark. She most certainly didn't want to know why he was so sure she should understand him.
And, God, oh, God, she didn't want to meet the girl that skull had been.
“I'm sure you'll tell me where the police surveillance was,” Winnie said to the detective.
Davidson actually flinched. “You'd have to take that up with my superiors, Doctor. That wasn't my responsibility.”
“Let them know for me that I'm convinced it's necessary now. Understand?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I don't imagine it occurred to any of them that serial killers tend to
return to the scene of their crimes to relive the experience,” she said in that “lecturing the illiterate freshmen” tone she got. “And that, quite possibly, our man might feel compelled to revisit my death investigator to witness the effect of his gifts.”
return to the scene of their crimes to relive the experience,” she said in that “lecturing the illiterate freshmen” tone she got. “And that, quite possibly, our man might feel compelled to revisit my death investigator to witness the effect of his gifts.”
Molly was more surprised than Davidson. That little speech was a long way from that “I don't know nothin' 'bout no serial killers” stance Winnie had taken until about two days ago.
“I'm not sure, ma'am,” Davidson grudgingly admitted.
“Or that, in fact, he might just be outside right now in the shadows watching us all careen around Ms. Burke's yard like the Keystone Kops?”
“There was a prowler in the area the other night,” Molly offered lamely. “An Officer Matthews took the report.”
Davidson straightened. With no more than a quick glance out the back window, as if verifying the allegation himself, he yanked out his cell phone and made for the front yard.
Left behind, Molly considered her boss in amazement. “You've been up late reading, haven't you?”
Winnie glared at her. “What makes you think you should have all the fun?”
Oddly enough, Winnie was the second person to make Molly laugh tonight. “I bet Donna Kirkland's pissed, huh?” she asked.
Winnie actually smiled. “Furious.
C'est la guerre
. Has this stirred any ideas in you?”
C'est la guerre
. Has this stirred any ideas in you?”
“Yes. A vacation in Hawaii. Maybe Tahiti. No, Tibet. I hear they still frown on freedom of the press there.”
Winnie waved off her objections. “You've been through this before. Stop whining.”
This time, it was Patrick who laughed. Curled up on the floor in the corner where he could watch the proceedings but stay out of the way. Wide-eyed and pale, as if this were too much for him, which Molly sincerely hoped it was. It was sure too much for her.
Of course, seeing him over there in his oversize khaki sweater and worn jeans made her realize that this was no longer the best place for him to be. Even if his parents weren't home, he should go there. He should go somewhere the press couldn't corner him. Another vote for Tibet, it seemed.
But she'd deal with that after the police cleared out.
“There is an upside to all this, Patrick,” Molly said abruptly. “After seeing what the cops have done to my kitchen, I have to admit that you aren't quite so messy after all.”
His head jerked up and Molly was even more unsettled. His pupils were dilated. His nostrils were wide, and he couldn't quite keep his hands still. Even so, he managed a grin that looked too tight. “See? Told you I'd make a perfect cop.”
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