know about the Gainesville Killer who slaughtered three University of Florida coeds and took out a boyfriend in the process. Give them some credit, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.
“The guy that looks like Freddie Kruger isn’t going to get anywhere close to these women,” she said.
I’d worked with detectives who focused on their convictions before, refused to back up and look wide.
“Look,” I said. “O’Shea said he dated lots of women. You talk to any of them?”
“A few.”
“He scare them?”
“No. They went out with him, had a good time on a date or two. Some he stayed friends with. Some he never called back.”
I concentrated on not even moving my chin. She was watching for “I told you so.”
“Maybe they weren’t what he was after,” she finally said.
“The missing girls have anything else in common?” I said. “Physically? Emotionally? Were they addicts?”
“No, goddammit! They were smart, lonely women who didn’t have close families and were bartenders, Max.”
I shut up and let her fume. She’d probably done this same dance with her supervisors half a dozen times. I could tell she was out there on her own on this one, obsessed. Maybe too much.
“The guy takes advantage of that loneliness, Max. The woman behind the bar is the one who runs the room and all the men who want a drink and a peek at her ass,” she said and I was getting uncomfortable with the way she was staring out at the sea. “I see him as a guy who doesn’t act like the others. He’s smart. It’s like a challenge to him. He’s nonthreatening, likable even. He brings their guard down somehow. Just like O’Shea.”
“And then what?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“Kills them for the thrill and disposes of their bodies without a trace? That’s kind of Jekyll and Hyde,” I said.
“Are you denying that O’Shea is a violent man, Max?” she said. “You saw him. You saw him boot stomp that guy last night. That was the two of you in the street, wasn’t it?”
I didn’t answer.
“You wouldn’t cripple a man like that, Max.”
“All right,” I finally said, turning my face to the water. “The guy’s got issues.”
I knew it was a bad choice of words when I heard it come out of my mouth.
“Issues? He’s got issues?” She stood up. “What? Are you defending him now? You guys have a few beers, relive old times and then go out and kick some ass together and become brothers in arms all of a sudden?”
I stayed in my chair, knew I hadn’t played it well.
“He knows you’re after him, Sherry,” I said quietly.
“I am after him, Freeman. And whether you help or not, I’ll still be after him.”
It is hard to storm away from someone in soft sand. But Richards was a woman with talent and she did it effectively.
I stayed on the beach for an hour after she left, watching people walk the water’s edge. The old shell hunter staring down into the sand who made a pouch for her collection in the folds of her long dress. The jogger with curls of gray hair on his chest and headphones clipped over his ears and his mouth moving to a song only he could hear. A young woman walking alone, her narrow shoulders down and her sunglasses pointed out at middle distance, not in a hurry, not with a purpose, her lips in a tight seam. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
I could sit here and let the blue drain out of the sky and the water. I could let Sherry Richards chase her obsession alone. I could let a man who had once saved me from a bullet twist in the wind. I could let the unknown fates of a number of innocent women remain just that, unknown. I could just listen, “no different than anybody else had done,” Richards had said. Even though I couldn’t change the world, “it’s worth it to k-keep trying,” Billy had said. But all the roads in this case led back to Philadelphia, a place I had run from long ago.
I sat and listened to the surf whisper and watched the light go out of the sky until the horizon disappeared. Then I got up and went into the bungalow and made some long-distance calls to voices I had not heard in years.
CHAPTER 10
I changed my plans the minute I walked out of the terminal of the Philadelphia International Airport. I’d have to stop somewhere to buy