little packages of saltines. Sitting at the lunch counter next to my plate was a pistol on a paper napkin and a martini glass with a wishbone inside. In my dream, I understood the wishbone was significant, that it had been left as a warning, and I felt suddenly afraid.
I woke to a flight attendant asking if I wanted dinner. Her name was Barbra, according to a brass plate pinned to her navy blue blazer, and Barbra had gone a little heavy on the lipstick. Big, scary red lips are not what you want to see when your heart’s already doing a hundred and fifty.
“Decaf,” I answered, and flipped open my laptop. Dr. Shetty had a blast dissecting dreams. She’d spent days on the last one. I’d been riding a Twinkie into a brick wall. I decided to shoot her an email. It would make her day.
… And then I saw it. Something dropped in my mailbox just like the wishbone in the glass in my dream. I felt my throat tighten. The woman at my elbow wanted to know if I was all right. “Yes, yes. I’m fine,” I told her.
The style of the letter was unmistakable. The rhythm of it instantly told me its author was the same person who had been writing Rauser and torturing and killing.
And now in life as in my dreams, I felt danger draw very near. The letter was addressed to Rauser. My name appeared on the copy line.
Dearest Lieutenant,
You’re wondering why David was different, aren’t you? What I did with him, where I did it, how I left him. All different. And William LaBrecque. He was different too. Have you even begun to figure out how? Here’s what they had in common. Both were the kind of scourge that needs eradicating. Admittedly for very different reasons, but both a blight nonetheless. Really, you must be haunted by all this. What have the analysts told you? That MO changes, that motive changes, that we learn and evolve, that humans are multi-determined?
Your analysts know nothing about me and neither do you.
I’ve learned a few things, however. Let’s begin with your new consultant. I gave her LaBrecque. Did you know that? And what a thrill that must have been for the profiler to walk into. She was all alone out there on that land, in that cabin. I could have so easily come back for her. Ah, I have your attention now. What surprises you most? That I knew she was there or that I know about her FBI past? I saw you arriving together to find poor David. Why would a private detective show up at a death scene? I wondered. Now that was something to investigate. Does your task force feel the sexual tension between you? Does your chief or the mayor? I do. Do you get hot when she deconstructs my scenes for you? Do you talk about me in bed? Business and pleasure, Lieutenant. Really, you should know better.
You think I made mistakes with David, don’t you? Taking him to a public place and using him that way. Yet you found nothing in that hotel room. Don’t despair, Lieutenant. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. I am in no database. My DNA can do only one thing for you: give you some reference for the next one.
By the way, this Wishbone thing, the name, it’s absurd, don’t you think? Isn’t it so like the media to take something out of context without telling the whole story? What will they leap at next? W.
I leaned back and took a shaky breath. The woman in the seat next to me seemed to have disappeared, and it crossed my mind that as my anxiety and tension had increased, so had my body odor. I tried to do one of those quick under-the-arm sniffs without being too obvious. Perhaps she had gone in search of an open seat elsewhere. One could hope.
I looked back at the words on my laptop screen, the words of a psychopath. He’d made fun of the name given by the media, but he’d adopted the W as a signature. He was embracing this new identity.
What did the email mean? The point, I assumed, was to deliver two threats. First, a promise of more killing. My DNA can do only one thing for you: give you some reference for the next one. Second, a slightly more cryptic threat about something else. What will they leap at next? Was this about Rauser? Or