If he knew that Frida was alive when he buried her, then the possibility of a criminal record only grew. A man didn’t start a criminal career by burying people alive. He worked up to it, or so it seemed to Faye, unless he was completely unbalanced. And maybe he was. If she were to play amateur psychologist, this act rose to the level of sociopathy displayed by the most famous serial killers. Ted Bundy. Danny Rollins. Aileen Wuornos. The BTK Killer. Jeffrey Dahmer. All of them had made a final misstep and been brought to justice, but not before killing scores of innocent people among them.
Faye looked at little Kali and tried to imagine walking away from her, knowing that there could be a Jeffrey Dahmer on the loose right here in her neighborhood. She couldn’t do it.
Kali hugged her knees tighter. “I’m scared, Faye. Aren’t you?”
Chapter Twenty-one
He liked women in dresses, because there was so much pleasure to be had from arranging the sumptuous folds of their skirts in the final minutes before he said good-bye and laid them in the graves he’d carved from the earth, just for them. Straight sides, flat bottoms, perfectly square corners—he was meticulous about the forever beds that he made for the women he loved, all of them.
And once he’d lowered them into those graves, he gave them the care and attention they deserved. He crossed their hands beautifully on their still bellies. He straightened their legs, even when they’d been broken, making sure their dainty feet rested side by side as he fanned their skirts about their battered thighs. Once, when he was young and brash and believed he could never be caught, he had taken the time to paint a dead woman’s fingernails, washing her face and applying fresh lipstick while he waited for the nail polish to dry. It bothered him still that Frida had lost a shoe in their flight toward her open, waiting grave.
The archaeologist, a woman who loved to interfere in the lives of children and the burials of their mothers, had surprised him and he’d had to flee. He’d been forced to throw Frida in her open grave and shovel hard.
Faye Longchamp-Mantooth was delicately formed, small and slender, and that was the way he liked his women. His attraction to women who wore their hair short was inconveniently weak. However, when he looked past the manly clothes she favored—olive drab work pants, button-up shirts styled for men, heavy boots—he could see that she had the large eyes and full lips that always caught his eye. If he needed her dead, and he was fairly certain that he did, he felt sure he could muster up the enthusiasm to make it so.
His enthusiasm would be more heartfelt if she were wearing the dresses he favored, and fate was going to fix that for him. Sylvia had announced to the world that the “doctor woman,” was taking little Kali to afternoon tea. The archaeologist was worldly. She had class. Any fool could see that Dr. Faye Longchamp-Mantooth would not darken the door of the four-star Chez Philippe in trousers.
He would be waiting for them outside the Chez Philippe, hidden in a faceless crowd. Then, after they’d sipped their tea and nibbled their party sandwiches, he would…what? Grab them both off the streets of Memphis or out of one of the city’s dark, lonely parking garages? Kill the child, too?
This was a problem. Killing a child was a line he had yet to cross. He had thought of it, of course. He was not immune to the premature charms of a girl who was rocketing toward womanhood but didn’t know it yet. Those premature charms had never driven him to action, but now the novelty appealed to him. In fact, he was surprised by his enthusiasm.
Had he been bored? He wouldn’t have thought so. There had been safety in repetition. Hunt. Stalk. Kill. Bury. He knew how to do these things and, as evidence showed, he knew how to do them without getting caught. Would adding a second victim, a very young one, to the mix change that? Could he do it?
He didn’t know, but the more he thought about the question, the more he wanted to know the answer.
Chapter Twenty-two
Kali walked out of the bathroom and past the dining room table where Faye, Sylvia, Walt, and Laneer sat. She didn’t speak, although she did acknowledge Laneer with just a slight wave in his direction. She was moving fast, but not fast enough to avoid being embarrassed by her great-great-uncle and her candy lady.
“So pretty…” Sylvia announced loudly. “Don’t she look pretty?”
Laneer nodded forcefully. “That’s my girl. She’s growing up.”
Kali was almost running as she stepped out the front door.
Sylvia picked up the backpack that Walt had brought. Peering inside, she said, “Is she wearing the barrettes you gave her?”
Smiling broadly, Walt said, “Yes, she is. And she’s carrying the little purse I brought her, too.”
“She could’ve thanked you,” Sylvia said, and the tone of her voice told Faye a bit of what it meant to be a child’s candy lady.
“She already did by using my gifts. It makes me so happy to see that she liked them.”
Sylvia snorted and muttered something about gratitude being seen and heard.
Faye rose and said, “I’d better get moving. There’s a girl with a very pretty new hairdo waiting in my car, and downtown Memphis is waiting to meet her.”
“Hold on.”
Faye felt a hand grab hers. She looked down and saw that it was Laneer’s. He rose slowly to his feet to speak.
“Did she talk?” he asked. “When you were on your walk, did my girl say
