The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,114

This here’s my girlfriend, Kate Johnson.” He was looking at me.

“Would you mind taking your guns off me? My name is Keye Street and I am not his girlfriend. I told you, I work for Jim Penland.”

The deputy patted me down and cuffed me. “Like Big Jim would hire a detective to find a damn cow.”

“I love you, Kate,” Clower shouted, and grinned at me.

“Check my ID,” I insisted, but the deputy pressed his palm against the top of my head until I folded into the backseat of the sheriff’s car.

“Now sit back there and keep your mouth shut.”

The other door opened and the sheriff unceremoniously pushed Clyde into the backseat with me. Clyde smelled bad. He looked at me and smiled. His teeth looked like a picket fence. “Whatcha in for?” he asked, and snickered. “Kate.”

“You smell like poop,” I said.

The sheriff shot me a look in the rearview mirror. “Not a peep,” he warned us, and we sank back into the seat, me and Clyde Clower, shoulder to shoulder, in the back of a Gilmer County sheriff’s car.

They did eventually look at my identification and Big Jim did convince them over waves of laughter that he really had hired a private detective from Atlanta to find Sadie the pet cow. I missed the reunion entirely, but Big Jim hugged me so hard he nearly crushed me before I started the drive back to Atlanta.

I’d made it as far as Canton, about an hour outside of town, when Rauser’s ringtone went off.

“The women I told you about, it all checked out, Street. Rape kits handled right. We’ll have DNA comparisons soon, and the composites after the attack look like our boy. And get this—one of the women said he used wire.” I knew how big this was. Ligature marks on the Wishbone victims always indicated he’d used wire, never fabric or rope. “So we were able to get a warrant for the wire. Never found it, but we found the knife under the mattress. Human blood on it is consistent with Melissa Dumas and Dobbs. Knife fits the wound patterns on the other Atlanta victims too. And if that’s not enough, we finally got the vehicle Charlie’s been driving. A Jeep Wrangler. Carpet fiber’s consistent with the fiber on Dobbs. He had it stashed in the garage at a rental house we found out he owns. Case is locked up pretty tight.”

I remembered the times Charlie had visited our office, about his little gifts, about watching him plant pansies in the planter outside our door. I couldn’t think of anyone who wouldn’t have opened the door for this man.

“But you’d already searched his place, Rauser. And you brought him in twice. He knew he was being watched. I don’t get why you wouldn’t have found this stuff the first time. Why would he keep the knife there? And where are his trophies—photographs, video, the stuff he’s pilfering from the scenes? And these are rape cases, not murder. Why would he leave living victims?”

“Both these women used the same tactic. They were completely submissive, offered to comply, pretended they enjoyed it. Then they prayed for an opportunity to get away.”

“I don’t get it,” I insisted. “It doesn’t fit.”

“Oh, come on, Keye. We got the knife and now we’re going to have his DNA and we’re going to pull that DNA evidence we collected at the Brooks hotel scene and connect him to that one too. Look, you knew something was up with him or you wouldn’t have been out there on his street that night. Your gut told you it wasn’t just Charlie forgetting his meds, and your gut was right. When are you coming home so we can go out for some grape juice? I’ll be a big man after the next press conference. Very in demand. I’m afraid you’ll have to call ahead.”

35

My days were once again consumed by nanny background checks and subpoenas and Tyrone’s Quikbail, long surveillance hours on Larry Quinn’s personal injury cases—all the things I’d once complained about. Getting so close to the violence again, to a violent serial offender, to something as sinister as the Wishbone murders, had put life in perspective for me. I knew now that I didn’t want to go back into the darkness.

But I still had the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. A sponsor of mine at AA once told me that that was a normal state for an addict. We learn to carry that

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