a colleague. She was a phenomenon. A presence, a supposed genius endowed with perfect legs and startling green eyes. “Any time. First thing Monday morning?”
And with that, we were done with business. Not even past cocktails, and done. I searched for casual conversation unrelated to the missing women, but the cocktail was having an effect. My mind drifted, distracted by Stiles’s shoulders, his thick neck. I began comparing his Adam’s apple to the cherry in my drink, which was magically full again. I frowned, searching for a topic.
“Well,” I began. Good start. Keep going. “How do you like living in Philadel—” “You look upset.” “I do?”
“What’s on your mind?”
His bare chest, to be honest. Stop it, I scolded myself. There’s more at stake here than your starving libido. I thought of Tamara and felt ashamed of myself. “What’s on anyone’s mind, these days? The nannies. Everyone’s upset.”
He uncrossed his legs and straightened his back. “Of course.”
“One of the missing girls,” I went on. “I know her.”
He sighed. “A disappearance can be tougher to deal with than a death.”
I pictured Tamara’s shining eyes, recalled her musical laughter. I took another sip, felt the liquor slide, sear my throat.
“But—damn, there’s no easy way to say this. Zoe, you need to be prepared for the worst, here. Chances are slim to nothing that your missing friend—or any of those women—is still alive.”
Tamara’s eyes lost their shine; her laughter choked to a stop. I felt the stab of my teeth jabbing my lip.
Stiles leaned forward, his voice almost a whisper. “If it’s any consolation, I think we’ll solve this one. Soon.”
“Why do you say that?”
His eyes darkened. “Because he wants us to solve it.” He took a drink. “Sonofabitch might not know it, but he wants us to.” “He wants to be caught?”
“I think so. At least, part of him does. He’s getting bolder. More brazen. Leaving evidence. Daring us to find him.” He paused. “Do you think that finger was left on your walk by accident?”
“What?” I gripped my glass, needing something to hold on to. What was he saying? That the finger had been dropped in front of my house on purpose? “You mean it wasn’t?”
“Let me ask you.” He leaned forward so his face was close, his voice low. “You’re a therapist. You know Freud’s theory that there is no such thing as an accident.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Okay. Let’s back up. The abductions began several weeks ago. Since then, they’ve occurred more frequently, in increasingly open and more public settings. And the kidnapper’s leaving evidence now, whereas he didn’t at first. Consciously? Maybe, maybe not. At some level, he may be sabotaging himself because he wants to stop but can’t. Or he might just be carried away by his sense of invincibility. Either way, he’s accelerating, losing control. Getting sloppy. Making mistakes.”
“But to make more mistakes, won’t he have to take more women?”
Half his mouth twisted fleetingly. “He’ll definitely try. We’ve got a serial killer here, and as you know, those guys are pretty consistent.”
As I knew? What did I know? I’d taken a college course years ago on criminal psychology and read the textbook chapter about serials, but mostly what I knew about serial killers I’d learned from television. Detective shows. I knew, for example, that serial killers followed patterns in their crimes. I knew that some thought they were obeying a higher power who ordered them to kill; others believed their murders were altruistic, that they were eliminating “sinners” to cleanse the world. A third group simply got off on power. They got high, often sexually aroused, by having the power of life or death over their victims, terrorizing them, taking their lives.
“So what do you know about this one?”
He winked. Winked. “Read the report.”
I stared at the red orb in my glass. Now it resembled a blood clot.
“Look, for now, let’s just say he wants to be somebody. Someone famous. In the headlines. His ego’s been fed by the news coverage. He’s begun to think he can get away with anything. He’s getting arrogant. Soon, he’ll go too far and give himself away. Question is, how many more women will he kill first?”
It was a somber thought. “And the finger? You said it might not have been left accidentally.”
“Accidentally or deliberately—either way, where it was found still means something. At the very least, it means the guy was in the area. He didn’t just find his victim there; he also left a piece of her there after he