CHAPTER 22
DIANE HINSON LEFT HER DOWNTOWN law firm as she nearly always did, at seven in the evening. She climbed into her late-model Chrysler Sebring and drove off. She picked up some carry-out dinner at a local restaurant, drove to her gated community, waved to the elderly guard inside-who carried no weapon and could have been easily overpowered by a couple of husky twelve-year-olds-and proceeded to her townhouse situated at the end of a pipestem street.
Things had been going well for Hinson this year. A newly minted partner at Goodrich, Browder and Knight, Wrightsburg's second largest law firm, she'd finally met a man she thought might be the one, a six-foot-three accountant four years her junior who liked to white-water raft and could beat her occasionally on the tennis court. She felt that any day he might pop the question, and her answer would be an immediate yes. She'd also brought a new client into the firm with billings well into the six figures that would add significantly to her personal income. She was thinking of moving into a single-family house. To do so with a ring on her finger and a husband to grow old with would be a dream come true for the thirty-three-year-old lawyer.
She parked her car in her garage and went inside. She placed her dinner in the microwave, changed into her running clothes and headed out. Three miles and a little over twenty minutes later she arrived back a little sweaty but barely short of breath. A decent middle-distance runner in college and dedicated amateur tennis player, she'd kept in excellent shape over the years.
She showered, ate her meal, caught a TV show she'd been looking forward to seeing, and received a phone call from her accountant beau, who was in Houston on a corporate audit. After some breathy promises of truly memorable sex once he returned home, she hung up, watched the late news, noted it was nearly midnight and turned off the TV. She stripped down to her panties in the bathroom, pulled on a long T-shirt she kept hanging on the door there and headed to bed.
She sensed the presence behind her, but before she could scream, the gloved hand closed around her neck, cutting off her wind and with it her voice. A very strong arm encircled her body, pinning both her limbs to her sides. Stunned, Hinson found herself being shoved facedown on the floor, unable to move or scream as a gag was placed in her mouth and her hands bound behind her with telephone cord.
As a criminal lawyer she'd defended accused rapists, getting some men off who should have gone to jail. She'd considered those professional victories. Lying facedown on the floor with a crushing weight on top of her, she steeled herself to be raped. With suffocating dread she knew that at any moment her underwear would be pulled down and the humiliating and painful violation would commence. Nauseous with fear, she told herself not to resist, let him have his way, and possibly she would survive this. She hadn't seen his face. She couldn't possibly identify him. He would have no reason to kill her. 'Please,' she tried to say through the gag, 'don't hurt me.'
Her plea went unheeded.
The knife plunged into her back, grazed the left side of her heart, was pulled free and plunged in again, tearing a two-inch gash in her left lung and slicing into her aorta on the way out. By the time it was over, a dozen wounds mottled her back. However, Diane Hinson was dead by the fourth.
The man in the black hood bent over her, careful not to step in the pool of blood forming on the carpet, and turned Hinson over on her back. He lifted her T-shirt, took a Sharpie pen from his pocket and drew a symbol on her flat belly. He made the same symbol on the wall behind her bed. He drew it large, since he didn't want anyone to miss it. The police could be such imbeciles.
He went back to the body and carefully unhooked the woman's anklet, the one he'd admired in the shopping mall parking lot, and placed it in his pocket.
He left the knife by the dead woman's side; it couldn't lead back to him. He'd pulled it from her kitchen drawer when he'd entered the house earlier. He'd been hidden behind the bushes in the darkness next to her garage door waiting for her to come home. When she opened the garage, he waited until she had gotten out of the car and gone inside. Most people closed the garage door on their way inside the house using the remote button near the door leading into the house. She'd never seen him slip inside.
He untied her hands and wedged her arm against a partially opened bureau drawer. He'd observed at the shopping mall that she wore a watch, so he hadn't bothered to bring one. He set the watch hands to where he wanted them and pulled out the stem, freezing it at that number on the dial. He said no prayer over the body. Yet he did mumble something about this being a lesson to keep one's ATM receipts.
He methodically went through the room looking for potential evidence of his presence but found none. Fingerprints and palmprints were out of the question. Not only had he worn gloves but he'd glued felt pads to each of his fingertips and palms. He slipped a small, handheld vacuum out of his coat pocket and ran it over the floor and under the bed where he'd been hiding. He did the same in the coat closet where he'd initially hidden, and continued that process on the stairs and finally the garage.
After that he took off his hood, slipped on a beard and hat and left out the back door. He made his way to his car, which he'd parked on a side road outside of the fancy gated community with its elderly, weaponless security guard. The VW started up. He drove fast but within the legal speed limit. He had another letter to write. And he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
CHAPTER 23
SEAN KING WOKE EARLY ON THE forty-foot houseboat that was parked at his dock. The rented houseboat
As he was paddling through the water thinking this, he looked up and saw her. He wasn't surprised, even at this hour. He often wondered if she ever slept. Could it be that his partner was really a vampire who happened to have no problem with sunlight?
Michelle was in her scull rowing with a skill, strength and intensity that King could only dream about. She was moving so fast that anyone unacquainted with the woman would have assumed her craft was under motor power.
He called out to her, his words carrying far over the calm waters.
'Time for coffee, or are you heading for the Atlantic this morning?'
She smiled, waved and headed over.
They drew their crafts up to his dock and secured them.
On the houseboat King fixed coffee while Michelle took out an energy bar from her fanny pack and started to devour it. She looked around the well-organized interior.
'You know, this boat's almost bigger than my cottage,' she observed between bites.
'And it's far neater, I know,' he said, pouring out juice and coffee.
It had been two days since their interview with Lulu and Junior. They'd reported back to Harry Carrick, who seemed pleased with their progress but had in turn informed them that the grand jury had, not surprisingly, indicted his client. They'd tracked down the man who had installed the secret drawers in the Battles' closets. He was elderly, retired, and seemed to have no earthly reason to break into his former clients' home. That had seemed a dead end until King asked him when Robert Battle had asked for his secret drawer to be installed.
The old man had looked a little uncomfortable at that. 'Don't like keeping secrets from folks,' he had said. 'Mrs. Battle is a fine lady, none finer in my mind.'
'So Mr. Battle didn't want her to know about it?' prompted Michelle when the old man seemed disinclined to continue.
'Sneaking in and out when she wasn't there, didn't like it, no, sir,' he said, avoiding directly answering her
