The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,130
and the DA, the police chief, they’d all love to keep their jobs. APD isn’t going to watch me, Keye. And if you’re trying to scare me with those two cops you have waiting, well, it’s not going to keep me up tonight.”
I laughed at her. “I was just thinking what it’s going to be like for you to trade in Helmut Lang for a nice little prison jumpsuit. I think they’re blue in Georgia. Be nice with your coloring. I love the idea of watching your life pull apart at the seams.”
“Then we really aren’t so different. You have an inner sadist just like I do.” Her eyes were steady on me.
“Let me ask you something, Margaret. Just to satisfy my own curiosity: Did you know you wanted to keep killing after you butchered your mother? Or did it happen when you met Anne Chambers? I saw this picture on your desk and it ate at me. They looked so much alike, your mother and Anne. And they were both artists. Is that why you needed to kill her?”
Margaret thought for a moment. I might have been speaking to her about afternoon tea. “To be frank,” she answered, “I knew I had something that hadn’t been quenched. I didn’t know until I met Anne what it was or that it was permanent. It was like having an itch without fully understanding what an itch is. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve really never had an opportunity to verbalize it. I’m not sure there are words for it.” She held her drink up in a mocking toast, then took a sip. “It is liberating, in a way, to try though,” she mused.
“Then maybe you’d like to make a statement on the record. Think how … liberating that would be.”
A light laugh. “I like you, Keye. I always have. You’re very smart and you’re funny. I’m devastated that you think I might hurt you. It’s no accident that you’re alive, Keye. I protected you, if you must know.”
“Protected me? You made sure the media went after me so I’d get kicked off my APD consulting gig. You rigged my car and I was nearly killed. And you shot my best friend.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Keye—it doesn’t suit you. You were not nearly killed. You had a lump on your head. And maybe, just maybe, you can open your mind enough to see that you’d have been safer out of the way. But you wouldn’t back off. And you take the most ridiculous risks. LaBrecque, for example—we both knew he was a thug. He hurt you and threatened you and you went back for more. Don’t you think he would have killed you that day at the lake house? Be grateful, Keye. I didn’t want you hurt.”
That’s why LaBrecque never fit in on the victims’ list. I remembered coming to Margaret that day with my bruised wrist. I remembered her concern. “What was the point of killing Dobbs like that?” I demanded. “And sending that package to me, was that about knowing my history with Dobbs?”
“I thought you’d appreciate the package, Keye. You would have preferred cutting it off yourself? And the lieutenant,” Margaret told me. “Rauser wasn’t about you. Everything isn’t always about you. I had a completely separate relationship with him before you started showing up at crime scenes.”
“Relationship? With Rauser? Margaret, get real. A bunch of crazy-ass letters to a cop doesn’t put you in a relationship. That’s your illness talking again. It tricks you, doesn’t it? It’s getting worse. Just so you know, Rauser didn’t take you that seriously. He considered you another irritating thug.”
A smile. “Sticks and stones, Keye.”
“If you ever get close to him again, I swear to God I will not wait for the police to take you down. If you can’t control that itch, Margaret, I’ll do it for you.”
“He’s no challenge anyway. Unless you’re into drool.” She checked her platinum watch, stood, and walked to the door, held it open for me. “Thanks for stopping in. If you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for a client.”
La la, la la.
A child’s song, without words. It went first high and then low. High-low, high-low. La la, la la. Over and over. Haunting and melodic. The tune never varied and little Margaret never tired of it.
She sat in front of her dollhouse humming softly. It was one of those big dollhouses and she had begged Santa to bring it for Christmas. A three-story dollhouse with