The Last Victim Page 2

  Or she would die.

  Heart in throat, Charlie turned and fled back down into the basement.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fifteen years later, Dr. Charlotte “Charlie” Stone sat across the table from a devilishly handsome man with prison-cropped dirty blond hair, taking notes as he studied the cardboard rectangle she had just placed in front of him. Devilishly was the appropriate adjective, too: from all accounts, this guy was as evil as he was hot, and he used his outrageous good looks as bait to lure his unsuspecting victims to him.

  “A magician holding up two knives. That’s this here figure in the middle.” Michael Allen Garland tapped a blunt forefinger on the hourglass-shaped image that was a central component of the first card in the Rorschach inkblot test. The chain shackling his wrists clinked as he moved. His ankles were also shackled, and a chain around his waist was secured to a sturdy metal ring set into the wall. His short-sleeved orange prison jumpsuit was the only spot of color amidst the unrelenting gray of the walls and the poured concrete furniture, which consisted of the table and the stools on which they both sat. “These two things on the sides are closer looks at his fists clutching the knives. Right there is blood dripping off his hands.”

  “Um-hmm.” Charlie’s murmur was designed to be both noncommittal and validating, a reward to Garland for participating in the evaluation without signifying any type of judgment of his description on her part. Historically some ninety-five percent of test subjects identified inkblot Number One as a bat, a butterfly, or a moth. Garland’s atypical response was not unexpected, however. In the way her life tended to work, the best-looking guy she’d come into contact with in a long time was a convicted serial killer, and serial killers almost universally saw the world in terms of violence and aggression.

  “This here magician done killed somebody,” Garland concluded, looking up as he said it, his southern drawl pronounced, his sky blue eyes slyly gauging her reaction to his words. With his square jaw, broad cheekbones and forehead, straight nose and well cut mouth, the muscular, six-foot-three-inch, thirty-six-year-old Garland would have had no trouble picking up women in any bar in the country. Which he had done, at least seven times that the Commonwealth of Virginia knew of. He had slashed each of those women to death before being caught four years previously. Having been sentenced to death, he was now in the process of winding his way through the legal system. For the foreseeable future, however, he was an inmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison, the federal maximum security facility in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, with a Special Housing Unit (SHU) dedicated to some of the country’s most notorious criminals, of which he was one. A psychiatrist who was rapidly gaining national renown for her work studying serial killers, Charlie was conducting a forensic assessment of him and seven other serial killers housed in the facility. At the moment she was closeted with Garland in one of the cheerless cinderblock rooms in which such inmates typically met with their lawyers. Equipped with a panic button built into her side of the table as well as a security camera that was continually monitored set high up in a corner, the room was freezing cold even on this sultry August day and small enough to awaken her tendency toward claustrophobia. On a positive note, her office, grudgingly granted to her by the warden at the behest of the Department of Justice, which was funding her research, was right next door.

  “What about this one?” Keeping her face carefully expressionless, Charlie replaced card Number One with card Number Two. It was just after four p.m., and she would leave the prison at five-thirty. Dealing with Garland in particular always left her drained, and today was no exception. She was really, really looking forward to the run along the wooded mountain trail that led up to the top of the Ridge and back with which she typically unwound. After that, she would go home, make dinner, do a little yard work, a little housework, maybe watch some TV. After the grim surroundings in which she spent her workday, her house in Big Stone Gap was a cozy refuge.

  “Hell, it’s a heart,” Garland said after a cursory glance down. “A bloody one. Fresh harvested. Plucked right out of somebody’s chest. Probably still beating.”

  Once again he tried to gauge her reaction, which for the sake of her research Charlie was doing her best to conceal. The typical response was two humans, or an animal such as an elephant or bear. His deviation from the norm was interesting, to say the least. She would have been downright excited, and gotten busy hypothesizing that the administration of inkblot tests to at-risk youth might identify the potential deviants among them, if she hadn’t halfway suspected that Garland was coming up with his bloody interpretations at least partly to mess with her. Without commenting, she wrote down Garland’s interpretation.

  Resting his powerful forearms on the table, Garland leaned closer. “You married, Doc? Got any kids?”

  She met his eyes at that. From the glint in them, she knew she wasn’t mistaken about the enjoyment he was deriving from their interview. As one of maybe half-a-dozen women in the facility, she was accustomed to being the object of the all male inmates’ intense interest, with wolf whistles, catcalls, and lewd suggestions routinely following her progress whenever she was within view of the cells. Ordinarily she was able to tune it out, but this was a little different because Garland was not behind bars, was close enough despite his restraints to reach out and touch her if he’d wanted to, and exuded a raw kind of masculine magnetism that, if she hadn’t known precisely who and what he was, she might even have succumbed to, thus proving that despite everything she knew she was potentially as vulnerable as anyone else to a predator of this type. The answer to both his questions was no, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. This was her third meeting with Garland, and each time he had tried to charm her, to flirt with her, to make her aware of him as a man. Like many serial killers, he was outwardly charismatic, with a friendly, engaging personality that he could turn on and off when he chose. Add his looks to the mix, and it was a deadly combination. Stone cold killer was the last thing any unsuspecting woman would think if he started coming on to her. Dream lover was more like it. One of the things that made most serial killers so dangerous was their ability to appear normal, to blend in to the fabric of society, to seem just as well intentioned and harmless as the vast, clueless majority. It was almost like protective coloring, akin to the aptitude of a chameleon for taking on the hue of its surroundings to keep from being spotted. She had realized already that Garland was a master of it.

  “You know the rules, Mr. Garland.” Her tone was deliberately untroubled. Inside, where he couldn’t see, her heartbeat quickened and her pulse started to pick up the pace. It was the same kind of reaction, she imagined, that a snake handler might experience when confronting a spitting cobra. Instinctive respect for the creature’s deadly potential was felt on a bodily level. “We stick strictly to the test. Otherwise I end the session and have you escorted back to your cell.”

  Which was a six-by-eight windowless cube in which he was kept in solitary lockup for twenty-three hours a day. The days when he had an appointment with her were exceptions, allowing him out for the time they spent together, which was about two hours, plus the half hour or so it took him to be processed in and out of his cell, as well as his allotted exercise hour. Add to that the fact that she was a woman, and their meetings were a rare treat in what was for him a bleak existence, she knew.

  His broad shoulders shrugged. “Didn’t you ever just once want to break the rules, Doc? Say to hell with it and go for what you want?”

  He was studying her, testing her, trying to provoke her into a more rewarding response than the cool professionalism she had maintained so far.

  Not gonna happen. I know what you are. She had seen the autopsy photos of his victims, knew what he was capable of. She gave him a level look.

  “Last chance, Mr. Garland. We’re on inkblot Number Three.” Charlie replaced the card in front of him with another. “What do you see?”

  He glanced down, then up again to meet her gaze. “Whatever you want me to see, d
arlin’.”

  Charlie couldn’t help it. Her lips thinned and her eyes flashed with annoyance. Although Garland was sitting perfectly still, she could feel the pickup in his interest as her expression changed. Not a surprise. From the beginning she had sensed the intensity of his need for her to become flustered, or angry, or responsive in any way that went beyond the parameters of the doctor/subject relationship. Having spent much of her residency and the three years since immersed in the thought processes and emotions and worldview of serial killers, she knew what he wanted: a connection. She also knew how to react to deny it to him and did so calmly.

  “I can see we’re finished here.” Plucking the card from in front of him, she restored it to the stack on her side of the table and stood up, something that his restraints prevented him from doing, although he sat up a little straighter, watching her. His sheer physical size made him seem to take up way more than his fair share of the space in the room. As she closed her notebook, he slid a swift, comprehensive glance down the length of her body in a classic male once-over. When his eyes came back up, they gleamed at her. Charlie could feel the sexual energy he gave off, and was reminded once again that he was a dangerous man. “I’ll have Johnson”—the guard waiting outside the door, who as a security precaution every now and then glanced in at them through the tiny, mesh-lined glass window in the steel panel—“take you back to your cell.”

  “Ah, Doc, come on. I was just—”

  A knock on the door caused Garland to break off in mid-sentence. Charlie glanced around in surprise. Such an interruption had never happened before; the session ended when she opened the door to let Johnson in, as Johnson and everyone else who had any reason to be interested knew. But Johnson’s face was framed in the window even as he knocked again, more urgently. Raising her eyebrows at him, Charlie stepped away from the table to open the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Hey, Johnson, you really miss me so much you just couldn’t wait for Doc here to finish up?” Garland drawled before Johnson could reply. Tall, burly, and bald-headed, the forty-something guard cast Garland a look of loathing before focusing on Charlie.

  “Sorry, Dr. Stone, but there’s two feds here to see you. Warden just took ’em into your office. He told me to tell you you should join ’em and it’s urgent.”

  “Feds?” Charlie asked with a frown even as Johnson stepped inside the room. The heavy door closed and locked automatically behind him as she turned back to the table to gather up her belongings. Maybe someone from the Justice Department checking up on her? Although it had never happened before, given the state of the federal budget it was always possible. At the thought that her grant might be at risk, she felt a quiver of alarm.

  “Uh-oh, you been a bad girl, Doc?”

  It was all Charlie could do not to shoot Garland a withering glance, but she caught herself in the nick of time and managed to ignore him. Johnson, however, showed no such restraint.

  “Shut up, you,” he snapped at Garland, who replied with a one-fingered salute, which made Johnson’s face redden.

  “What kind of ‘feds’?” Charlie asked, as much to create a distraction as because she thought Johnson might actually know.

  “They’re from the FBI,” Johnson clarified, surprising her. That nullified her alarm about the grant—the FBI had nothing to do with that—but Charlie’s surprise ratcheted up a level.

  “If you want, I can wait here till you’re done and we can go on,” Garland said, smirking at her across the table. “I got to tell you, I’m really starting to feel them inkblots. No tellin’ what you might get outta me if we keep at it. Probably some real kinky stuff.”

  At that Charlie’s eyes collided with his, but she managed to refrain from replying. Maintaining the doctor/subject relationship was vital to her research, and it required that she keep control of the interview—and interviewee—at all times. Not always an easy task, considering that her size—five foot six, one hundred eighteen pounds, taut and fit but lacking any intimidation factor, even to a man far less imposing than Garland—and gender put her at a physical disadvantage, at least in the eyes of her subjects, whom she was pretty sure saw her as potential prey to their predator. To maintain control, what she mainly fell back on were classic conditioning techniques such as reward/punishment. Garland, she knew, considered their interviews to be prime entertainment. Ergo, cutting them short was punishment.

  “You can take Mr. Garland back to his cell,” Charlie told Johnson. Her choice not to reply to Garland directly was deliberate: more punishment. Garland’s eyes narrowed, his face tightened, and for an instant Charlie thought she caught a glimpse of the monster concealed beneath the good looks. A shiver of disquiet slid along her nerve endings. Once again her pulse quickened, although she made sure her reaction didn’t show. This guy feeds off fear, she reminded herself. She felt the barely contained violence in him instinctively, all the way through to the marrow of her bones. Caged and chained, he posed no threat, but if he should ever get loose—well, he was the kind of guy she wouldn’t want to find herself alone with in a dark alley.

  He’ll never get out of prison alive.

  Surprisingly, the thought didn’t make her feel any happier. With her notebooks and the inkblots now nestled in the crook of her arm, Charlie turned her back on Garland in a gesture calculated to demonstrate her lack of fear of him, and headed for the door.

  “Bye, now, Doc,” Garland called after her.

  His tone was pure insolence. Brows snapping together, Charlie opened the door and walked on through it as if she hadn’t heard.

  “You better shut your damn—” Johnson growled at Garland. The solid click of the door closing behind Charlie cut off the rest of Johnson’s words. With a little frisson of relief she put Garland out of her mind.

  Despite the fitful glow of the overhead fluorescents, the windowless hallway was as gloomy as a tunnel. The faint smell of mildew from the air-conditioning mixed unpleasantly with the odors of ammonia and sweat, and the usual prison sounds—the metallic clang of doors sliding open and shut, angry male voices calling out, shuffling footsteps—formed a constant, nerve-fraying backdrop. At the end of the corridor, the heavy mesh airlock-type double doors that kept this administrative area separate from the cell blocks were manned by a pair of guards. Her office was just a few steps away. Its door, which she always kept closed, was ajar. About twice the size of the interview room she had just left, her office was still just big enough for an L-shaped metal desk that held her laptop as well as various other tools of her trade, plus a tall black filing cabinet and two molded plastic chairs for visitors. The wall behind the desk was enlivened by a photograph of the sun rising over the Blue Ridge Mountains. In one corner stood an easel-style chalkboard with the names and MO’s of the murderers she was studying scrawled on it. Two men in dark suits stood with Warden Bill Pugh in front of her desk. One was studying her diplomas, which were mounted on the wall to the right of the door. The other was talking to the warden.

  “Dr. Stone,” Pugh greeted her. Although she knew he wasn’t happy about her presence in his prison—she guessed it was because she was just one more set of eyes to observe practices that would have had the country up in arms if they’d been carried out, say, on animals in a dog pound—he was, as always, polite. Charlie nodded in reply. In his fifties, average height, paunchy and balding, Pugh had a beaky nose and a small mouth. His eyes, which were the approximate color of his rumpled gray suit, were cold and watchful behind rimless spectacles. “You have visitors. They’re from the FBI.”

  “Gentlemen.” Charlie looked from one newcomer to the other in turn.

  “Special Agent Tony Bartoli.” The man studying her diplomas had turned as she entered. Now he smiled and held out his hand to her. He was tall, maybe six-one, lean, not quite as hunky as Garland but certainly handsome enough to make her take notice. On the plus side, he was probably not a serial killer, so maybe her life was looking up. Mid-to-late thirties, with well-groomed black hair,
brown eyes, and a healthy tan, which she registered because such a thing was a rarity around the prison. He wore a red power tie with his white shirt. His grip was strong and warm as they shook hands.

  “Special Agent Buzz Crane.” The other agent shook hands in turn. This guy, who looked a little younger, was about five-ten and slightly built, with a thin, sharp-featured face set off by a pair of black-framed glasses. His hair was a Brillo Pad of short brown curls. Behind the glasses, his eyes were the same bright blue as his tie. Together, the agents made the classic hottie/geek combination with which every female who’d ever spent a couple of hours in a bar or nightclub checking out the wares was familiar. Even as she released Crane’s hand she saw, from the corner of her eye, Garland shuffling past her office, his gait made awkward by the chain linking his ankles. Several inches shorter, a whole lot pudgier, and grim-faced, Johnson gripped Garland’s arm just above the elbow as he escorted him back to his cell. The clanking of Garland’s shackles caused the agents to glance toward the hall. With his wrists secured to the chain around his waist, Garland nevertheless managed to wave his fingers jauntily at them while his eyes sought and found Charlie.

  A little rattled by the intensity of that look, she glanced away without acknowledging him.

  “So what can I do for you?” she asked the agents, stepping past them to set the notebooks and inkblot squares down on her desk. When she turned back around, it was to find Garland nowhere in sight and both agents studying her. She knew what they saw: a slender thirty-two-year-old woman, dressed for the highly charged, all-male environment in which she worked. Her “uniform” was made up of black sneakers, black slacks, and a pale blue shirt, an outfit she had deliberately chosen to play down her femininity. Her white lab coat was buttoned up the front, and was loose enough to conceal the finer points of her shape. Her shoulder-length chestnut brown hair was twisted up in back and held in place with a large silver barrette. Small, silver hoop earrings and a man’s black watch were her only accessories. Her features were even, her mouth wide, her complexion fair, her eyes the deep blue of denim. The men she occasionally dated told her she was beautiful. Usually when they were trying to get in her pants, so she tended to disregard it.