Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver

to the detective but apparently hadn't paid any attention to the lecture and, with psychotic persistence, explained how he and Kari loved each other and that it was merely a matter of time until they'd be getting married. On their last meeting Dale had looked Loesser up and down coldly and then began cross-examining him, apparently convinced that the cop himself had a crush on her.

That incident had so unnerved the detective that he'd convinced a commonwealth magistrate to allow a wiretap on Dale's phone.

'What happened?' Loesser now asked his assistant.

'She called him. Kari Swanson called Dale. About a half hour ago. She was nice as could be. Asked to see him.'

'What?'

'She's gotta be setting him up,' Harper offered.

Loesser shook his head in disgust. He'd been concerned about this very thing happening. From the moment in his office when he'd seen her eyeing the department's shotguns he'd known that she was determined to end Dale's stalking one way or another. Loesser had kept a close eye on the situation, calling Kari at home frequently over the past weeks. He'd been troubled by her demeanor. She'd seemed detached, almost cheerful, even when Dale had been parked in his usual spot, right in front of her house. Loesser could only conclude that she'd finally decided to stop him and was waiting for an opportune time.

Which was, it seemed, tonight.

'Where's she going to meet him? At her house?'

'No. At the old pier off Charles Street.'

Oh, hell, Loesser thought. The pier was a perfect site for a murder — there were no houses nearby and it was virtually invisible from the main roads in town. And there were stairs nearby, leading down to a small floating dock, where Kari, or someone she'd hired, could easily take the body out to sea to dispose of it.

But she didn't know about the wiretap — or that they now had a clue as to what her plans were. If she killed Dale she'd get caught. She'd get life in prison for a lying-in-wait murder.

Loesser grabbed his coat and sprinted toward the door.

* * *

The squad car skidded to a stop at the chain-link fence on Charles Street. Loesser leapt out. He gazed toward the pier, a hundred yards away.

Through the fog and rain the detective could vaguely make out David Dale in a raincoat, clutching a bouquet of roses, walking slowly toward Kari Swanson. The tall woman stood with her back to Dale, hands on the rotting railing, gazing out over the turbulent gray Atlantic.

The detective shouted for Dale to stop. The sound of the wind and waves, though, was deafening — neither the stalker nor his prey could hear.

'Boost me up,' Loesser cried to his assistant.

'You want —?'

The detective himself formed Harpers fingers into a cradle, planted his right foot firmly in the man's hands and then vaulted over the top of the chain link. He landed off balance and tumbled painfully onto the rocky ground.

By the time the officer climbed to his feet and oriented himself, Dale was only twenty feet from Kari.

'Call for backup and an ambulance,' he shouted to Harper and then took off down the muddy slope to the pier, unholstering his weapon as he ran. 'Don't move! Police!'

But he saw he was too late.

Kari suddenly turned and stepped toward Dale. Loesser couldn't hear a gunshot over the roaring waves or see clearly through the misty rain but there was no doubt that David Dale had been shot. His hands flew to his chest and, dropping the flowers, he stumbled backward and sprawled on the pier.

'No!' Loesser muttered hopelessly, realizing that he himself was going to be the eyewitness who put Kari Swanson in jail. Why hadn't she listened to him? But Loesser was a seasoned professional and he kept his emotions in check as he followed procedure to the letter. He lifted his gun toward the model and shouted, 'On the ground, Kari! Now!'

She was startled by the cop's sudden appearance but she immediately did as she was told and lay face forward on the wet wood of the pier.

'Hands behind your back,' Loesser ordered, running to her. He quickly cuffed her and then turned to David Dale, who was struggling to his knees amid the crushed roses, writhing and howling in agony. At least he wasn't dead yet. Loesser rolled Dale onto his back and ripped open his shirt, looking for the entry wound. 'Stay calm. Don't move!'

But he couldn't find a bullethole.

'Where're you hit?' the detective shouted. 'Talk to me. Talk to me!'

But the big man continued to sob and shake hysterically and didn't respond.

Sid Harper ran up, panting. He dropped to his knees beside Dale. 'Ambulance'll be here in five minutes. Where's he hit?'

The detective said, 'I don't know. I can't find the wound.'

The young cop too examined the stalker. 'There's no blood.'

Still, Dale kept moaning as if he were in unbearable pain. 'Oh, God, no… No…'

Finally Loesser heard Kari Swanson call out, 'He's fine. I didn't hurt him.'

'Get her up,' the detective said to Harper as he continued to examine Dale. 'I don't understand it. He —'

'Jesus Christ,' Sid Harper's stunned voice whispered.

Loesser glanced at his assistant, who was staring at Kari with his mouth open.

The detective himself turned to look at her. He blinked in astonishment.

'I really didn't shoot him,' Kari insisted.

Except… Was this Kari Swanson? The woman was the same height and had the same figure and hair. And the voice was the same. But in place of the extraordinary beauty that had burned itself into Loesser's memory on their first meeting, this woman's face was very different: she had a bumpy, unfortunate nose, thin, uneven lips, a fleshy chin, wrinkles in her forehead and around her eyes.

'Are you… Who are you?' Loesser stammered.

She gave a faint smile. 'It's me, Kari.'

'But… I don't understand.'

She gave a contemptuous glance at Dale, still lying on the pier, and said to Loesser, 'When he followed me to Crowell I finally realized what had to happen: One of us had to die… and I picked me.'

'You?'

She nodded. 'I killed the person he was obsessed with: Kari the supermodel.' Looking out to sea, breathing deeply, she continued. 'Last year, down in the Caribbean, I met this plastic surgeon. His office was in Manhattan but he also ran a free clinic in Haiti, where he was born. He'd rebuild the faces of locals injured in accidents.' She laughed. 'He was trying to pick me up, of course, joking that if I ever needed a plastic surgeon, give him a call. But he wasn't obnoxious and I liked the volunteer work he did. We hit it off. When I decided last month I had to do something about Dale I called him. I figured if he could make really deformed people look normal, he could make a beautiful person look normal too. I met with him in New York. He didn't want to do the operation at first but I gave him a hundred thousand for his clinic. That changed his mind.'

Loesser studied her closely. She wasn't ugly. She simply looked average — like any of ten million women you'd meet on the street and not glance at twice.

David Dale's terrible moaning rose up over the sound of the wind, not from physical pain but from horror — that the beauty that had obsessed him was now gone. 'No, no, no…'

Kari asked Loesser, 'Can you take these things off me?' Holding up the cuffs.

Harper unhooked them.

As Kari pulled her coat tighter around her a mad voice suddenly filled the air, rising above the sound of the waves. 'How could you?' Dale cried, rising to his knees. 'How could you do this to me?'

Kari crouched in front of him. 'To you?' she raged. 'What I look like, who I am, the life I lead… those don't have a goddamn thing to do with you and they never did!' She gripped his head in both hands and tried to turn it toward her. 'Look at me.'