'Certainly.'
Noah pulled the French doors closed behind them. Monsignor was coming down the steps from the second floor with a basket of dirty linens. Without a word Laurant took the basket from him and headed down to the basement again. She could hear her brother’s laughter and assumed the questioning hadn’t begun yet.
Pete acted as though he had all the time in the world. He started by asking Tommy if he missed playing football. Tommy was sitting on the edge of his seat, obviously tense and worried. Pete eased him into the discussion about the confession, and by the time their talk had ended, they had two more little bits of information that might prove helpful. The unsub had been wearing Calvin Klein’s Obsession. Tommy had forgotten about that. And, until now, he’d also forgotten about a click he had heard. He had assumed the man was snapping his fingers to get his attention. Pete suggested that the click was actually the recorder being turned on.
Pete ended the conference when he stood. 'When you return to Holy Oaks, I would rather you didn’t hear confession for a while.'
'How long is a while?'
'Until we’ve devised a trap to snare him.'
Tommy glanced at Nick and then back to Pete again. 'You don’t think he’s going to come back to confession, do you?'
'I certainly think he’ll try,' Pete said.
Tommy shook his head. 'I don’t see that happening. It’s too risky for him.'
Nick, who had been unusually silent until now, spoke up. 'He’ll see it as a challenge. He thinks he’s vastly superior to all the rest of us, remember? He’s going to want to prove it.'
'Tom, like it or not, he’s established a relationship with you, and I believe he’s going to want to keep you apprised of what he’s been up to,' Pete said. 'One thing I know for certain now,' he continued. 'This unsub is going to go to any lengths necessary to talk to you again. He wants your admiration, but he also wants your loathing and fear.'
'In many ways, you’re the perfect partner in his plan,' Nick told him.
'How do you figure that?'
'He wants someone to appreciate how smart he is.'
Tommy said, 'I know you think I’m being stubborn about this, but I gotta tell you I still think you’re wrong about this guy. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that he would try to contact me again. I’ve listened to your arguments and I know you’re experts…'
'But? 'Nick prodded.
'But you’ve forgotten why he came to me in the first place. He wanted absolution and he didn’t get it. Remember?'
Pete gave him a sympathetic look. 'No, he came to you because you’re Laurant’s brother,' he said. 'And he never wanted forgiveness,' he added softly. 'He was mocking the church, the sacrament, and he was mocking you, Tom, especially you.'
Tommy looked miserable. 'You do realize he almost got Monsignor McKindry in that confessional. I volunteered for the duty at the last minute.'
'Oh, he wouldn’t have gone to McKindry,' Pete said. 'He knew you were inside the confessional before he even walked into the church.'
'He probably watched you cross the parking lot and go inside,' Nick said. 'And if Monsignor had taken the duty, then he would have patiently waited for another opportunity.'
'Nick’s right,' Pete said. 'This man is organized and very patient. He’s put a lot of time and effort into stalking you and your sister.'
Something Pete had said earlier began to nag Tommy and he asked, 'What did you mean when you said he was giving us mixed messages?'
'I meant that he’s deliberately trying to make us run in five different directions,' he explained. 'In the tape he’s telling us he’s a stalker, maybe a serial killer. He’s telling us he’s just getting started, but then he implies that he’s been at it a long time. He says he’s killed one woman, but he’s hinted at the possibility that there have been others. He laughed, if you’ll recall, when he told you that he’d only hurt the women before Millicent. Now it’s our job to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.'
'In other words, it could all be lies or it could all be true.'
'Tommy, try to understand that with these creeps, it’s always about fantasies. Always,' Nick repeated emphatically. 'The fantasy is what is driving this unsub. It could all still be in his head, but we have to assume that Millicent did exist and that he tortured and killed her.'
'And now he wants to act out his fantasy with Laurant?'
Pete nodded. 'The situation is urgent. He needs a reason to talk to you again.'
'What are you trying to tell me?'
Pete’s eyes, he noticed, were edged with sadness now. 'If what he told us is true, then I’m certain he’s out there looking for another woman right now.'
'He said he’d try to find a substitute to replace Laurant… temporarily,' Nick said.
Tommy bowed his head. 'Dear God,' he whispered. 'And then he’ll want to confess his sins, right?'
'No. He’ll want to brag.'
Chapter 12
Tiffany Tara Tyler was a slut and proud of it. She’d learned a long time ago that she was going to have to relax her moral code of behavior if she was ever going to get anyplace in this cold, hard world. Besides, not being a prude had carried her a long way from the trailer park in Sugar Creek-she was wearing the proof. And nothing, not even a blown-out tire on her rusted 1982 Chevy Caprice, was going to get her down. She was riding high and feeling good, and all because she was as sure as shit that her life was about to undergo a radical change. Oh, she knew she was always going to be a Jezebel in her mother’s estimation-she’d decided her daughter was damned to the eternal fires of hell after she’d caught her in the bathroom with Kenny Martin-but Tiffany had made up her mind not to care a hoot what her crazy, old, worn-out mother thought of her anymore. She knew where her real talent lay, and she believed with all her heart that if she worked hard enough, she would succeed. Who knew? Maybe by the time she was thirty, twelve long years from now, she might even be a millionaire like that Heidi Fleiss madam she so admired because she got to meet all those famous movie stars. Tiffany bet they treated Heidi just like a star too, and maybe, after she finished having sex with them, they even took her out to dinner at one of those fancy, expensive restaurants.
Tiffany remembered the exact moment her life experienced an epiphany-she’d looked that word up in the dictionary after reading the article in Mademoiselle magazine. She’d been at Suzie’s Hair Salon, getting a perm that fried her already fried, unnaturally blond, frizzy, long hair. To take her mind off her painful burning scalp, she’d picked up the magazine and begun to read the article that was all but screaming at her, 'Know Your Assets.' The message couldn’t have been any more clear to her. Do what you’re good at. Change what you don’t like about yourself. And use your assets to get what you want. But, most of all, go for it.
She took every word to heart, and to this day she carried the stolen magazine with her wherever she went. It was always tucked inside her Vuitton rip-off bag next to the brand-new mobile phone she’d spent two whole hundred dollars on so she could get three months’ free phone service, as long as it was in the U.S. of A.
Tiffany liked to think she was gifted with ESP, and after reading that article, she could plainly see she was destined for great things. It was all going to begin happening for her in just two days’ time when she checked herself into the Holidome. The motel’s rates were a little steep, but it was worth it. The Holidome sat across the highway from the doctor’s office, and she wouldn’t have so far to walk after the surgery was done.
Because she’d bought herself the phone-she’d seen a picture of Heidi Fleiss with a mobile phone in her hand and figured it was an important asset every girl ought to have if she was going to go places-she was still shy two hundred dollars of the twenty-four hundred she needed to get her boob job. She was carrying all of the twenty-two hundred with her. She didn’t dare take the chance of hiding any of her money in the trailer, where her stepfather could sniff it out like a trained hound dog with his beet-red, twice-broken, alkie nose. He’d just go on another one of
