It was an instructor’s voice, he realized, but not
“And you remember all that when bullets fly?”
“Maybe not, and maybe one-handed or a different stance would suit the situation better, but this is the best, I think, for target shooting. And like with anything, practice enough and it becomes instinctual. Tuck your head down to line up the sight with the target. Try the two-liter bottle.”
He fired. Missed.
“A little more square, and with your feet pointed at the target. Aim a little lower on the bottle.”
This time he caught a piece of it.
“Okay, I wounded the empty Diet Pepsi. Do I get praise and reward?”
She did smile, a little this time, but there wasn’t any light in it. “You learn fast, and I have beer. Try it a couple more times.”
He thought he got the hang of it, and confirmed the hang of it didn’t particularly appeal to him.
“It’s loud.” He put the safety on, unloaded it as she’d shown him. “And now you have a bunch of dead recyclables in your yard. I don’t think shooting cans and bottles comes close to shooting flesh and blood. Could you actually aim this at a person and pull the trigger?”
“Yes. I was stun-gunned, drugged, tied up, gagged, locked in the trunk of a car by a man who wanted to kill me just for the pleasure it gave him.” Those calm blue eyes fired like her pistol. “If I’d had a gun, I’d have used it then. If anyone tries to do that to me again, I’d use it now, without a second’s hesitation.”
A part of him regretted she’d given him exactly the answer he’d needed to hear. He handed the Beretta back to her. “Let’s hope you never have to find out if you’re right.”
Fiona holstered the gun, then picked up a bag and began to gather up the spent cartridges. “I’d rather not have to prove it. But I feel better.”
“That’s something then.”
“I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t think about you driving up and hearing gunshots.” She leaned down, gave Jaws a body scrub. “You handled that, didn’t you? Big noises don’t scare you. Search and Rescue dogs need to tolerate loud noises without spooking. I’ll get you that beer after I pick up the targets.”
Odd, he thought, he’d learned her moods. Odd, and a little uncomfortable. “Got any wine?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll get the bodies. You can pour out some wine, and maybe use your sexy voice to score us a delivery. I feel like spaghetti.”
“I don’t have a sexy voice.”
“Sure you do.” He took the bag, walked across her makeshift range.
By the time he’d finished, she was sitting on the back deck, two glasses of red on the little table.
“It’ll be about forty-five minutes. They’re backed up some.”
“I can wait.” He sat, picked up his wine. “I guess you could use a couple decent chairs back here, too.”
“I’m sorry. I need a minute.” She wrapped her arms around the nearest dog, pressed her face into fur and wept.
Simon rose, went inside and brought out a short trail of paper towels.
“I was okay when I was doing something.” She kept her arms around Peck. “I shouldn’t have stopped.”
“Tell me where you put the gun and I’ll get it so you can shoot more soup cans.”
She shook her head and, on a long breath, lifted it. “No, I think I’m done. God, I hate that. Thanks,” she murmured when he pressed the paper towels into her hand.
“That makes two of us. So what set you off ?”
“The FBI was here. Special Agent Don Tawney—he’s the one from the Perry investigation. He really helped me through all of that, so it was easier going through all this again with him. He has a new partner. She’s striking —sort of like the TV version of FBI. She doesn’t like dogs.” She bent down to kiss Peck between the ears. “Doesn’t know what she’s missing. Anyway.”
She picked up the wine, sipped slowly. “It stirs up the ghosts, but I was ready for that. They traced the scarf, the one he sent me. It’s a match for the ones used on the three victims. The same make, dye lot. He bought a dozen of them from the same store, near the prison. Near where Perry is. So that squashes even the faint hope that somebody sent it to me as a sick joke.”
Fury burned a low fire in his gut. “What are they doing about it?”
“Following up, looking into, pursuing avenues. What they always do. They’re monitoring Perry, his contacts, his correspondence, on the theory that he and this one know each other. They’ll probably contact you because I told them you were staying here at night.”
She folded her legs up, drawing in. “It occurs to me that I’m a lot of work to be involved with right now. It’s not usually true—I don’t think. I’m not high maintenance because I know how to maintain myself, and I prefer it. But right now... So if you want to call a time-out, I get it.”
“No you don’t.”
“I do.” She turned her head to meet his eyes straight on, and now, he thought, there was the faintest light in them. “I’d think you were a cold, selfish bastard coward, but I’d get it.”
“I’m a cold, selfish bastard, but I’m not a coward.”
“You’re none of those things. Well, maybe a little bit of a bastard, but it’s part of your charm. Simon, another woman’s missing. She fits the pattern, the type.”
“Where?”
“South-central Oregon, just north of the California border. I know what she’s going through now, how afraid she is, how confused, how there’s this part of her that won’t—can’t—believe it’s happening to her. And I know that if she doesn’t find a way, if there isn’t some intersection with fate, they’ll find her body in a matter of days, in a shallow grave with a red scarf around her neck and a number on her hand.”
She needed to see something else, he thought. Control meant channeling the emotion into logic. “Why did Perry pick athletic coeds?”
“What?”
“You’ve thought about it, the FBI, the shrinks, they’d have a lot to say on it.”
“Yes. His mother was the type. She was an athlete, a runner. Apparently, she just missed being chosen for the Olympics when she was in college. She got pregnant, and instead of pursuing her interests or career, she ended up a very bitter, dissatisfied mother of two, married to a forcefully religious man. She left them, the husband, the kids—just took off one day.”
“Went missing.”
“You could say—except she’s alive and well. The FBI tracked her down once they’d identified Perry. She lives—or lived—outside of Chicago. Teaches PE in a private girls’ school.”
“Why the red scarf ?”
“Perry gave her one for Christmas when he was seven. She left them a couple months later.”
“So, he was killing his mother.”
“He was killing the girl his mother was before she got pregnant, before she married the man who—according to his mother and those who knew them—abused her. He was killing the girl she talked about all the time, the happy college student who’d had her whole life in front of her before she made that mistake, before she was saddled with a child. That’s what the shrinks said.”
“What do you say?”
“I say all that’s just a bullshit excuse to cause pain and fear. Just like whoever’s killing now uses Perry as a bullshit excuse.”
“You stand there because of what he did to you. Motivation matters.”
She set down her glass. “You really think—”
“If you shut it down a minute, I’ll tell you what I think. Motivation matters,” he said again, “because why you do something connects to how you do it, who you do it to, or for. And maybe what you see at the end of it—if you’re looking that far.”
“I don’t care why he killed all those women, and Greg, why he tried to kill me. I don’t care.”
“You should. You know what motivates them.” He gestured to the dog. “Play, praise, reward—and pleasing the ones who dole all that out. Knowing it, connecting to it, and them, makes you good at what you do.”
