“You mean because he keeps repeating himself?” Erin asked.
Wendy nodded. “It’s part of his personality,” she replied “He considers himself to be superior to everyone around him. And while he is bright -- he’s not as bright as he thinks he is. What he’s done here is he’s created a plan he believes to be flawless, the way an artist would paint his finest portrait or a composer would write his greatest symphony. It’s his masterpiece, that can’t be improved on, by him or by anyone. His proof? So far, it’s worked perfectly each time he’s used it. There’s no reason why he wouldn’t assume it would continue to work, again and again.”
“And what?” Dusty wondered aloud. “He thinks we’re too stupid to catch on?”
“I suspect it’s more that he thinks he’s smart enough to outwit you,” the profiler replied.
***
“Doreen, we’re leaving now,” Clare called up the back stairway.
“All right,” the housekeeper responded from the second floor landing. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”
It was just before nine o’clock on Saturday morning. “Let’s see, I’m going to drop Julie off at her class, run a few errands in town, and then swing around and pick Julie up,” Clare replied, thinking aloud. “So we’ll probably be back about one o’clock.”
“What do I tell Mr. Durant if he calls?”
Whenever Richard’s travel plans included being out of town for more than one night, he always made a point of calling home at least once, to talk to Clare and the children. Especially on this trip, the first he had taken since the stalker had come into their lives. And in fact, he had called three times yesterday, once after his plane landed in Birmingham, Alabama, again after he had checked into his hotel, and finally just before going to bed.
Clare was halfway out the door. “Tell him I’ll call him when I get home,” she said.
Although Julie Durant and her brother Peter looked a great deal alike, they couldn’t have been more different. While Peter was currently into baseball and video games, Julie was into horseback riding and art. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, she took riding lessons at a nearby stable, and on Saturday mornings, Clare drove her over to the home of a woman on Mercer Island who taught art classes.
“I’ll pick you up around noon,” she said turning off the road and pulling into the driveway of a picturesque little cottage that sat at the edge of Lake Washington. She gave her daughter a goodbye hug, pleased to feel, through her clothing, that at least some of the meat was coming back on the girl’s bones.
As time had gone by, and Clare had recovered from her injuries, and nothing else bad had happened, Julie had begun to come out of her self-imposed shell. She was allowing herself to smile again and pick up her life where she left off. Her appetite was returning, and best of all, she no longer felt the need to hover over her mother every minute of the day. Of course, neither Clare nor Richard had said anything to the children about the stalker.
Now, the girl scrambled out of the car, and Clare watched her trot up the front path and into the house before she very carefully turned the red BMW around and headed back down the driveway. She couldn’t help it, she always felt self-conscious when she drove the car, which was as little as possible. It wasn’t just because the BMW was so ridiculously expensive, but because it was such an in-your-face color that it fairly shouted ostentation. She longed to have her Camry back.
The trip to and from Mercer Island took the better part of an hour each way, but Clare didn’t mind the Saturday ritual. It gave her some extra one-on-one time with her daughter.
She turned out onto the main road and headed north toward the floating bridge that would take her back to Seattle. Another reason she didn’t mind the weekly excursion was that she really liked coming to Mercer Island. She especially liked the fact that, despite being a conduit for I-90, one of the major cross-country arteries, the island had managed to retain much of its pastoral charm. It wasn’t yet overbuilt, and lush foliage screened most of the homes that did exist from public view. The area was crisscrossed with narrow roads, like the one she was on right now, that either followed the curve of the water, or wound around wooded areas rather than plowed right through them, and no one seemed in any particular hurry to get anywhere.
Which was why she was not prepared for the black truck that suddenly loomed up behind her as she reached a particularly hairy series of curves in the road that wiggled around a magnificent stand of first growth cypress trees. Nor was she prepared for the truck to pull out into the opposite lane as if it intended to pass her on a part of the road that was clearly marked as a no-passing zone.
Thinking perhaps the driver was drunk, Clare slowed the BMW and waited for him to pass.
“Come on, there’s room, you can go by me,” she muttered.
Only he didn’t pass her, he didn’t even attempt to. In fact, he slowed down, too, apparently intent on staying in the oncoming lane and riding along beside her. Clare could see a car coming toward them around the curve up ahead, and
