The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,102
my place.”
“That why he’s walking around naked while we’re on the phone?”
“Oh my God, you’re jealous? That’s so cute.”
“Get real. I’m just trying to look after you a little. Traditionally, Dan hasn’t been a good investment.” We were silent for a few moments. “You know, I was in the station when we brought in the guy who killed his boss at the tow company,” he said. “That’s the case you’ve been working for Haze, right? His pupils were bugging out, smelled like booze. He emptied into him twenty-three times. It’s gotta blow, working for the defense on a case like that.”
“Pays the bills,” I said. I didn’t like thinking about it.
“That’s why I wouldn’t want to go private, you know? End up working for the bad guys most of the time. When I retire from this, that’s it.”
“If I waited for an honest client, I wouldn’t be able to buy the groceries.”
“That’s my point,” Rauser said. “And why I couldn’t do it. So now that you know how little I got on Wishbone, tell me what you got.”
“I’ve been looking at the first victim.”
“Yep, I know. Anne Chambers.”
“I’ve been going through her journal, tracking down friends, people who signed her yearbooks, study partners, stuff like that.”
“And?”
“I’ve located most of them. Made a lot of notes. Her diary talks about seeing someone, but she didn’t name names. I showed Charlie’s picture to Anne’s mother, but she didn’t recognize him.” I handed him the file I’d put together. “Maybe something will jump out at you. I think I’ve looked at it too much.”
“Maybe. Or maybe there’s nothing there.”
I shook my head. “There are answers there. In her life. I’m certain of it. I just can’t see them. You want to get an arrest and conviction, find Charlie’s connection to Florida.”
“May not be an issue if we connect him to any more victims up here.”
“Promise you’ll look anyway?”
Rauser smiled at me and his gray eyes were clear as rainwater. “I promise. I’ll take it home with me and have a look before I crash, okay? Look, nobody wants cold cases open. The families never really get peace until we close.”
We were quiet for another minute, watching the pigeons, thinking about the dead. Rauser drank milky liquid from the melting ice in my cup.
“I met an old lady who lived near Anne and her parents down on Jekyll Island. Her mom said they used to hang out. A card reader.”
“She tell your fortune?” Rauser snickered.
“Not exactly. Well, sort of.” I flushed, suddenly embarrassed, remembering what she’d said. The po-lice man … love you.
Rauser was smiling at me, waiting. “And?”
“She said the last time Anne came to see her, she warned her that she was in danger.”
“Be easy to say now.”
“Be easy to say anything now.”
“You believe it?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. Really weird old lady, but I swear she knows things. She actually brought up Dan. She called him Mr. Fancy Pants, but—”
“That’s him.” Rauser laughed.
“She also said she felt the same vibe around me, which was pretty eerie given the whole car-wreck-hospital-stalking-bomb thing. But then she had said something about eating pussy, so I decided maybe she was just nuts.”
Rauser was nodding his head at me seriously and with absolutely no sincerity at all. He was fighting back a laugh and I knew it.
“It’s a long story,” I said lamely.
He picked up the plastic cup he’d already drained and started eating the ice. “She say you’re a closet case too?”
I rolled my eyes. “What is this obsession you have with my sexuality?”
“You’re flattered. Might as well admit it.”
I thought about something Grady had told me while we ate MoonPies at the service station. “Did you know that on New Year’s Eve in Brunswick, Georgia, they drop a big ole papier-mâché shrimp into a huge vat of cocktail sauce?”
Rauser just looked at me.
“It’s their version of the ball in Times Square.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Don’t you find that odd?”
“I find it odd that you give a shit,” Rauser said.
“It’s just very weird. Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“What are they supposed to drop it into?”
“I think you’re missing the point.”
“Tartar sauce?”
I gestured to my empty cup. “Why don’t you go get us a couple of those since you drank all mine?”
Rauser blew out air like cigarette smoke and said, “Ha! They oughta call this place Fivebucks instead of Starbucks. Besides, I am not standing up there ordering some pansy shit like that. Especially if I gotta say latte after it.”