out, she goes back to Denver so you can focus on this case. She’s here two days max.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Deal.”
I opened the door and pointed to my bags. The officer who looked older by about three minutes nodded to his partner, who groaned but finally sauntered over to pick up my backpack. I grabbed the suitcase as I told Ralph the flight number I wanted Tessa on. It left Denver at 11:20 a.m. mountain time but because of the time change wouldn’t arrive in Charlotte until 6:16 tonight.
Boy Cop grunted, “What ’chu got in this thing? Bricks?”
“Climbing gear,” I said to him under my breath.
Then I told Ralph the ticket price.
I had to pull the phone away from my ear again.
The officer shook his head and followed me out the door. I turned my attention back to the conversation with Ralph. “You’ll need to have an agent from Denver accompany her. I don’t want her left alone for a minute. Not with this guy on the loose.”
“Great. Another ticket.”
“Ralph.”
“OK.” A sigh. “Anything else? Trip to Bermuda, maybe?”
“Hey, that’d be nice. Maybe later this winter.”
“In your prayers.”
Once I was convinced I’d be seeing Tessa in the evening, I ventured into the case. “So, any progress? Any word on Jolene?”
“Not yet,” he grumbled. “I was hoping we’d get video of our guy at the mall, but the cameras only cover the public access entrances, not the employee break areas where her keys were stolen from. We’ve got some people going over the footage, though, just in case.”
“Parking garage?”
“Nope. No cameras.”
“Figures.”
I unlocked the trunk of the car, and we hoisted my bags inside.
“Ballistics is looking at the bullet, but prelims don’t seem to match it with the guns registered to any of the security guards. Local PD is checking out all the guards. So far, two of them look interesting. One guy lives on the same street as Jolene. I thought I’d talk to him before coming back to Asheville.”
I nodded my thanks to the officers and slid behind the wheel of the rental car. They walked off mumbling to each other, obviously not happy to be playing Bellhop and Errand Boy this morning. “Hmm. Well, check it out, but I don’t think it’ll be him. There may even be evidence that points to the guy, but he’ll be cleared.”
“What do you mean?”
I flipped on my headlights and pulled into the slowly dawning day. “I don’t think our guy is stupid enough to go after a girl from down the block or get himself caught on video at the mall. He would have thought of all that. Besides, think big picture. This is just a piece of a complex puzzle. Just one in the series. Remember, predatory killers typically expand their hunting grounds on each subsequent crime; they don’t shrink it back toward their neighborhoods. But who knows. Talk to the guard. See what you can find out. By the way, how’s the guy who was shot?”
Ralph grunted. “He’ll survive. Might not ever speak again, though. If that bullet had gone any further to the right-”
I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed a pair of headlights.
“I know, I know.” The taunting words of the Illusionist echoed in my head: You and I both know I didn’t intend to kill him. “I don’t think he meant to kill the guy, Ralph. He might be a sharpshooter. Let’s have Sheriff Wallace follow up on that.”
I pictured Ralph nodding on the other side of the phone. “We tried talking to the girl who was with him,” he said, “but we couldn’t get much. She was really shook up.”
“Yeah. No kidding.” I merged onto the highway and shifted the phone to the other hand.
“She has no idea how the chess piece got in their car-we were able to get that much from her. Anderson’s wife was very forthcoming, though-Anderson’s the guy who was shot-turns out he’s an English professor at UNC. The girl is one of his students.”
“Wonderful.”
“He told his wife he was playing poker every Friday night. Apparently, it’s a regular thing.”
A pattern. Yes.
He knew that. The Illusionist knew they’d be there.
“The girl did mention that they’d start in the car and then move to the hotel down the block. She said it was what turned him on.”
“That’s a little too much information for me, Ralph,” I said. “But I appreciate your thoroughness.” After that the conversation lulled. We’d both said most of what we had on our minds. Ahead of me, even though the sun wasn’t up yet, the edge of the horizon was beginning to glow amber and red.
“That it?” he said at last.
The headlights followed me. Stayed four cars back.
There was one more thing.
I merged into the flow of traffic on the Blue Ridge Parkway. “The whole thing with the contact lenses, Ralph…”
“Yeah?”
“It troubles me. He’s linking the crimes for us.”
“Don’t the ribbons and chess pieces do that?”
“This is deeper. It’s something else.”
“Showing off?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. He stole the contacts from Jolene and then planted them on Mindy. He was cross- contaminating the crime scenes with evidence from a future victim. I’ve never seen that before.”
I accelerated, passed a few cars. Kept an eye on the rearview mirror.
Ralph was quiet for a moment; I figured he was chewing on everything. “But if it’s supposed to be a clue to his next victim, it’s not nearly enough to go on. I mean, stolen contacts?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think he wants us to stop the killings,” I said. “I think he wants us to know we can’t stop them.”
The car I was watching passed a few other cars. Stayed the same distance behind me.
“Look,” I said, “I’m heading to the federal building to pick up my laptop-I left it there when we rushed out last night-and then I’m heading back to look at Mindy’s crime scene again. The medical examiner placed the time of death somewhere between 8:00 and 11:00 a.m.”
“I never understood why it’s so important for you to see the crime scenes at the same time as the murder-”
“You notice things. Lighting, maybe. Usage patterns. You see what he saw. It helps me understand the context of the crime. Listen, Ralph, I think I’m being followed.”
“What?”
“A car. It’s been with me since I left the hotel. He’s not being obvious, though. Whoever it is, he’s experienced.”
“What do you want to do?”
“There’s a tunnel up ahead. I’ve got an idea.”
25
About a quarter mile ahead of me the road disappeared into a tunnel that bore through the side of a
