Bait Page 3

  Yeah, and maybe she’d win the lottery too, but the way her luck had been running for the last few years, she wasn’t going to hold her breath in anticipation.

  Where was he? Her every sense was on quivering alert, but the darkness was impenetrable: She literally couldn’t see the hands splayed flat on the carpet in front of her face. Hearing anything was equally impossible over the air conditioner. Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest. Fear quickened her breathing until, afraid he might somehow hear the fast, shallow pants even over the rattling air conditioner, she deliberately deepened and slowed it. Her fingers, still hopelessly probing the scratchy carpet barrier that prevented her from going with her first instinct, which was to hide under the bed, encountered a smooth wooden stick: the pencil she’d been sketching with earlier. They closed around it convulsively. It wasn’t much, but it was the closest thing to a weapon she had.

  The darkness lightened fractionally. Glancing up, her gaze widened on a pinpoint shimmer of light that was reflected in the lamp’s base. He had switched on a flashlight, one of those small ones with the tiny beams. It was moving over the bed.

  Her stomach clenched like a fist.

  Move, she told herself fiercely. Scrambling into a low crouch, shivering with cold and fear, Maddie scuttled as soundlessly as possible toward the foot of the bed.

  The light went out. That could not be good.

  Thunk. Thunk.

  The bed shuddered twice in quick succession. Her shoulder was just touching the mattress, using it as a guide to get where she needed to go, and she felt the twin jolts. Maddie almost yelped with surprise as she jerked away. Pulse pounding so hard that she could barely hear the air conditioner over the panicked beat assaulting her eardrums, she backpedaled until she came up against the wall. Sucking in air, she gaped toward the bed without, of course, being able to see a thing. The sounds made her think of a fist slamming hard into the mattress. Once. Twice.

  Then, with sudden icy certainty, she realized that those sounds hadn’t been made by any fist. The acrid smell drifting beneath her nostrils told its own tale: a gun. A gun with a silencer. Someone possessing a gun with a silencer had just fired two shots into her bed.

  Into, as the shooter thought, her.

  Oh, God, oh, God ...

  Pure unadulterated terror threatened to reduce her muscles to jelly. It froze her in place, left her unable to move.

  The flashlight beam once again sliced through the darkness, playing over the bed. Maddie found herself staring in horror at the jumble of blankets and sheets. The light focused on the pillow where moments before her head had rested. A chocolate brown tuft that she recognized as Fudgie’s ear was just visible above the tangled covers. In a flash Maddie realized that the gunman, whoever he was, had mistaken that tuft for the top of her head. And he’d fired at it.

  All rational thought was swept from her mind as a hand in a black glove reached out to flip the covers down.

  Move!

  This time it was an internal shriek. Her body automatically obeyed. She catapulted away from the wall, panic giving wings to her feet as she bolted toward the narrow thread of light from the hall that just showed beneath the door.

  She already knew she had almost no chance.

  “Hey!”

  It was a man’s surprised exclamation. With all need for concealment past, Maddie shrieked for all she was worth as the flashlight beam swung around to follow her flight. There was a rush of movement behind her; horror turned her blood to ice water in her veins. He was going to catch her—but no, she was at the door. Her frantic fingers found smooth, cold metal: the knob. They closed on it ...

  Oh, God, it was slippery. Her hands were sweaty. She couldn’t turn the knob.

  A strong hand grabbed her shoulder, yanked her back. Maddie screamed like an air horn, twisting, kicking, fighting for all she was worth. He must have dodged, because her fists connected with nothing but air. Her bare toes did worse: They smashed painfully into his shin.

  “Help! Help!”

  Her screams still hung in the air as he slammed her against the wall. The back of her head hit the trim around the bathroom door so hard that an explosion of tiny white lights seemed to burst in front of her eyes. A gloved hand around her throat silenced her brutally even as it pinned her in place. Clawing instinctively at that choking hand, she only remembered the pencil—her weapon—when she felt it drop.

  Oh, God.

  Her nails raked harmlessly down the leather, then hit pay dirt as they ripped at the vulnerable flesh of his wrist.

  His gloved knuckles slammed into her right cheekbone so hard that she saw stars again.

  “Scratch me again, bitch, and I’ll rip your throat out.”

  Her eyes watered. Pain radiated from where he’d hit her. She couldn’t breathe. His grip tightened cruelly as he leaned close, pressing himself against her so that she could feel buttons and smooth cotton and the terrifying strength of the body beneath imprinting themselves on her flesh. She hung motionless in his grip now, stunned, terrified, as vulnerable as a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. His hand spanned her throat, fingers digging into the tender hollows below her ears. It hurt. Her cheek hurt. The back of her head hurt. But the pain was nothing compared to the surging tide of her fear. His breath, warm and stinking of onions, was hot on her cheek. His mouth was just inches from hers. She shuddered reflexively—then remembered the gun and went absolutely still.

  Where was it? He’d had it—he must still have it—somewhere. In a holster or ...

  He changed position, and she felt his free hand fumble at his waist. The hand he’d hit her with—his right hand—

  Is he going for his gun?

  The thought that he might be getting ready to shoot her, that at any second now she might feel the impact of a bullet ripping through her flesh and muscle and bone, made Maddie go weak at the knees.

  “There’s m-m-money in my purse,” she tried desperately. Her voice was a hoarse, halting whisper that hurt her bruised throat. A quick sideways glance told her that the door was close, so tantalizingly close. The glimmering line of light from the hall was maybe three feet away.

  “I don’t want your money.”

  His hand came up toward her head—oh, God—and then flattened on her mouth. A rubbery smell, a sticky strip molding her lips—duct tape. Shaking with horror, she realized that he was duct-taping her mouth shut. His touch almost tender, he smoothed the strip out, then applied a second one.

  It was then that Maddie knew, without a single remaining flicker of doubt, that he meant to kill her.

  Without warning a bright beam shone full in her face: the flashlight. It blinded her as thoroughly as the darkness had moments earlier. Flinching, shaking, light-headed with fear, she squinched her eyes shut and prayed like she had never prayed in her life.

  For the space of a couple of heartbeats, he did nothing while the light played over her face. He seemed to be ... looking at her.

  Terror popped her eyes open again just as the light went out.

  Maddie heard herself make a sound: a moan. No, a whimper, barely audible beneath the tape.

  “Scared?” There was the faintest hint of enjoyment in his whisper. “You should be.” His voice roughened. “Get down on your knees.”

  Fear surged like bile into her throat. She tasted the sharp, vinegary tang of it. His hand tightened around her throat, then shifted to the back of her neck, squeezing and forcing her down. It didn’t require much effort. Her knees buckled; she was dizzy, disoriented, literally sick with dread. The carpet felt stiff and prickly beneath her knees. Her hands splayed out over it, supporting her weight as cold sweat drenched her. The wintry blast of the air conditioner hit her damp skin, worsening her shivers, turning her as icy cold on the outside as she already was on the inside.

  Her single coherent thought was, Any second now, I’m going to die.

  From out in the hall, just faintly, Maddie thought she heard voices. He must have heard them too,
or felt her tense in response, because his hand tightened painfully on the back of her neck.

  “Don’t make a sound.”

  He was behind her now, leaning over her, his hand hard and controlling on the back of her bent neck, pushing her face toward the carpet. Even as the voices died away, even as her hands shifted automatically to compensate for the forced redistribution of her weight, the horrible vision of rape flashed into her mind.

  Please, God, please, God, please ...

  Her fingers touched the pencil just as her cheek grazed the fuzzy nylon of the carpet. Instinct took over, and her fist closed around the pencil in a death grip.

  “Stay still,” he whispered, leaning closer. There was the faintest of metallic sounds, and tremors of horror raced over her skin as she felt his right hand move. Instantly she visualized what he was doing: positioning the gun.

  To shoot her ...

  Galvanized, she gave it her last, best shot. Ramming the pencil up and back, she felt it thrust into something substantial, something firm but yielding, something that made her think of a fork sinking into meat ...

  He screamed.

  “Fucking bitch!” he howled, falling back.

  Just as quick as that, she was free. Rocketing to her feet, she hurled herself at the door, latching on to the knob with both hands and yanking for all she was worth.

  It opened. Light so bright that it was blinding spilled over her. With every last bit of strength she possessed, she leaped into the light. A single terrified glance over her shoulder as she fled told her that he was already coming after her, hauling the closing door open again, a huge dark menacing shadow lurching in horrifyingly swift pursuit.

  She ripped the duct tape from her mouth and screamed to wake the dead.

  THREE

  Friday, August 15

  What in hell does she have in common with the others?” Sam muttered, mostly to himself. Hands thrust into the front pockets of his jeans, seething with barely contained frustration, he was standing in an inner hall of the New Orleans medical examiner’s office, watching through a Plexiglas window as the county coroner, Dr. Lurlene Deland, made the initial Y-shaped incision in the body of Madeline Fitzgerald. His badge had been enough to grant him access to the autopsy. His grim-faced demeanor kept the flunkies who walked past from hassling him about the whys and wherefores of his right to watch. This time, he and Wynne hadn’t even been close, arriving at the crime scene—a Holiday Inn Express—just as the body was being loaded into the coroner’s van to be taken away.

  “Could be anything. Or nothing. You ever thought about that? Maybe he’s just picking victims at random. Playing with us.”

  Wynne was beside him, leaning heavily against the dull beige concrete wall, electing not to look through the window. Having just stuffed his face with half a dozen Krispy Kremes in a desperate bid to counter exhaustion with a blood-sugar rush, Wynne had turned green around the gills as soon as they had walked through the swinging doors that separated the office from the working area and the formaldehyde-based smell of the place hit him in the face. Sam had passed on the Krispy Kremes and was now heartily glad. Wynne was looking sick enough for the pair of them.

  “There’s something.”

  Sam watched as a thin line of blood marked the progress of Deland’s scalpel. Naked, waxy-skinned, the victim lay on a sloped metal table, the upper half of which was textured to keep the body from sliding; running water flowed along the table into a shallow tub beneath a grate at the lower end.

  To catch the effluvia, as another coroner had once told him.

  “Nothing’s turned up so far,” Wynne said.

  Sam grimaced. Wynne was right. Despite ongoing searches into each victim’s background, they’d uncovered no links between them. Nothing to connect them at all. Not even the serial killer’s special of age, sex, or race.

  “Something will. There’s a link, and we’ll find it and we’ll catch him. Sooner or later, he’ll make a mistake.”

  “I hope he hurries the hell up. This case is losing its charm real fast.”

  Sam grunted agreement. Christ, he felt bad. The bright fluorescent lights on the other side of the glass were giving him a killer headache. Or maybe it was the chronic lack of sleep. Or the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. Or maybe even the sheer damned futility of the effort. They’d spent the last week searching the country for the dead woman, desperately dissecting every clue as the asshole had called it in. The second one, Peyton, had turned out to be part of the name of the street on which the hotel stood. The third clue, Fitzgerald, proved to be the woman’s last name. The fourth was the link to the hotel: holiday. The fifth, called in just hours before the victim was killed, was no. As in New Orleans.

  Figuring that out had been enough to allow them to finally put the puzzle pieces together and find the woman. But it had not been enough to allow them to find her while she was still alive.

  Sam gritted his teeth against the curse words that crowded onto his tongue, and likewise battled an urge to rest his forehead against the sure-to-be-cool Plexiglas. A muffled version of “Satisfaction,” courtesy of a local goldenoldies station, played on the sound system. Pity he wasn’t getting any, in any shape, form, or fashion, he reflected. At the very least, he needed about six hours of uninterrupted sleep and a decent meal to feel halfway normal again. Sex would be good, too, but the way things were going that probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. A real, honest-to-God lead—now what he wouldn’t give for that.

  A lead would be the best pick-me-up of all.

  “Her ex-husband check out?” Wynne asked, clearly without much hope.

  “So far.” Working off background information on the victim given in the police report, Gardner had done the preliminary work, and Sam had gone over her report in the car on the way over. “At least, as far as anybody can tell at this point, he was where he said he was last night. Anyway, he’s a shift worker at GE. He might or might not have had reason to murder his ex-wife, but for the life of me I can’t see him roaming around the country, knocking random people off.”

  Wynne made a sound signifying disgust under his breath. “So what we got, basically, is nothing.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Beyond the transparent barrier, Deland was folding back the skin surrounding the incision. Turning the facts of the case over in his head for what must have been the millionth time, Sam watched without seeing as her hands in their thin, white surgical gloves wielded a pair of gardening shears to snip through the ribs. Below them, the internal organs glistened, still pristine.

  The only real damage had been to the victim’s head. Sam had watched as the coroner’s first, careful inspection of the victim’s scalp, skin, and body surfaces had all but confirmed this. Like the others, she’d been dispatched with two neat gunshots to the temple. A jar holding a single, deformed shard of lead that had failed to penetrate the skull waited on the wheeled metal cart at the coroner’s elbow. Later, as more fragments were recovered from the brain, they would be added to the jar.

  The pieced-together bullets would tell them nothing, Sam already knew. Every killing so far had been done using a different weapon. The killer was smart enough to prefer his guns, like his phones, disposable.

  Who the hell was this guy?

  Deland made a delicate movement with her scalpel, then lifted a bloody organ from the body with her two gloved hands and deposited it on a scale on the cart.

  “I need some air,” Wynne said.

  Sam glanced over at him to find that Wynne was now watching the autopsy in progress. His eyes were squinched half shut, his face had blanched at least two shades, and his lips were tightly compressed. Before Sam could reply, the big guy turned on his heel and strode back down the corridor. His sandals went slap-slap-slap on the slick tile floor.

  He was moving like he feared not making it to the john in time.

  Sam glanced back at the body on the tilted metal table, followed the proceedings for a few more minutes, and ga
ve it up. There was no absolution to be gained by watching, and no new knowledge, either.

  The truth was, he was almost too tired to stand up, let alone think. And he was bugged, big-time, by the fact that the killer had not made contact since calling with the last clue. Up until now, there had been a clear pattern: a partial name first, called in not long after their arrival at the scene of the previous murder. Then two or three random clues that only made sense in retrospect. Finally, a hint to the city was always last, called in just a few hours before the next killing occurred. This time, they’d had to scramble to hop a plane from Houston, where they’d been en route to interview a Madeline Peyton who worked for Fitzgerald Securities, one of at least a hundred Madelines on their list who met the parameters of the information they’d been given so far, when the last clue had come in and they’d pinpointed New Orleans. It was as if the killer wanted to make a game of it—to see if he could pull off the crime while Sam’s team raced to make sense of the clues, raced to locate the victim, raced to stop him. So far, the killer was winning. The stats were grim: FBI 0, Insane Bastard 5—no, 6 if you counted Tammy Sue Perkins, which, since she was dead and he had killed her, you had to do. With this last victim, they’d been a good two hours behind the killer. Sam had barely gotten a glimpse of the victim as she was taken away, just enough to know that she was a woman, dark-haired, attractive, and dead. The crime scene was her hotel room. Apparently, the attack had occurred as she slept.

  But why? Why? Why?

  Sam hated to admit even to himself that he had no clue.

  His last contact with the killer had come—he glanced at his watch; it was 9:17 a.m.—at five minutes until seven p.m. the previous day. That was more than fourteen hours ago. Before, the bastard had always called him within no more than an hour of Sam’s arrival at the death scene to gloat—and to provide the first lead to the next victim.

  This time there’d been no contact.

  Maybe, this time, there was no next victim? Maybe the bastard had gotten it all out of his system? Maybe the game was over?