The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,25

No one would look twice at a guy staring at his phone. Half of Atlanta never looks up from their BlackBerry even to cross the street.

Anne Chambers had been killed in Tallahassee and Bob Shelby murdered in the Jacksonville area. Double-checking those dates with airline and rental car records made sense. Also, if the killer had relocated from Florida, there would be records. Check Motor Vehicles, Postal Service, IRS.

Breaking a neck is an unusual choice, especially for a serial. To break someone’s neck required some expertise as well. Martial arts studios, military service, med students … doctors?

And why are they opening the door? A repairman? A delivery person? Had APD checked uniform rentals and costume rental receipts in the days leading up to the killings? Were there any neighborhood disputes, local elections, anything that might have petitioners knocking on doors? Zoning board, real estate records. Read detective interviews with neighbors.

I leaned back in my desk chair and closed my eyes. What the hell was I doing? This carried too much risk. In some ways I felt I needed to relearn my years at the Bureau, redo them sober. It wasn’t remembering my craft that was the problem, it was knee-jerk issues, like someone who can’t talk on the phone without lighting a cigarette. I’d spent my years at the Bureau as an active but functioning alcoholic. I wasn’t even sure how to think about this, what to do with the emotions surrounding it, without a drink waiting at the end of the day. And yet here I was on the fringes of this investigation and I realized suddenly that I would know and discuss in detail with Rauser every scene this killer left behind. My heart would both ache and delight at each new discovery. I rolled my neck a few times, but the cables weren’t letting go. Just one drink would fix that. Just one. I was back in it, sucked back into the violence again. Damn you, Rauser.

I needed to move, physically move. “Hey, Neil,” I said from my office. I could see him at his desk in the main room. He didn’t budge. “Want to go to Southern Sweets?” No answer.

Southern Sweets, a tiny bakery in Avondale Estates, had things in their display cases you’d have to be made of iron to resist. “I’ll buy you cake. Come on, Neil. We’ll both feel better. Jump on DeKalb Avenue and we can be there in fifteen.”

Neil was one of my very favorite people to eat with besides Rauser. He was enthusiastic about food. Very. He smoked a lot of pot.

I saw him stir in his chair. “Cherry pie?”

“You got it,” I said, and grabbed my keys. “I was thinking old-fashioned chocolate or sweet potato cheesecake.”

Neil frowned. “Cheesecake is wasted on sweet potatoes. Might as well just smear some peanut butter on it. Cheesecake deserves something more sophisticated.”

“Riiight,” I said. I’d seen him standing at the refrigerator just last week dipping raw hot dogs into yellow mustard but decided not to bring it up.

10

The War Room was makeshift but organized. It had been thrown together quickly when FBI databases linked the four killings. Wound patterns, tool marks, scene staging all added up to the same signature, same killer, same knife. This one wasn’t an opportunist like Gary Hilton or someone who worked within strictly defined parameters like Wayne Williams—an ethnic group, an age group—and therefore likely targets could be protected. This one was different. Atlanta had never seen anything like it.

I stood at the door, unnoticed except for a nod here and there from familiar faces. Rauser was on the telephone, his back to me. The long table in front of him was littered with papers. Crime scene and autopsy photographs, numbered and dated, covered an enormous bulletin board. Pushpins marked the murders on maps of Georgia and Florida. Another board was devoted to leads, witnesses, interviews, detectives’ reports. Yet another was for the victims—candid shots of them in life. Elicia Richardson standing at an outdoor grill with a metal spatula in her hand, smiling shyly at the camera. Bob Shelby with his feet on a coffee table and a beer in his hand, shorts, shirtless and sunburned. Lei Koto with her son, Tim. The boy was holding a swimming trophy in his hands. Here they all were, laughing, playing, breathing. We’d put up family photos at the Bureau too. It was meant to remind everyone that these people hadn’t always been victims, that they were real people who’d