The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,61
doughnuts in cellophane. Rauser grabbed one out of her hands on his way out.
“Oh, you poor darling. You look just awful!” Mother exclaimed. She had a beaming round cherub face, Debbie Reynolds on prednisone. She set the coffee down and patted my hand. “Bless your little heart.”
Diane was smiling down at me. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked her.
“Not when my best friend is in a car wreck. Margaret’s fine with it. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been dipped in shit and rolled in cornflakes.”
Everyone laughed except my mother, who slapped my father’s arm and scolded, “My Lord, Howard, do you see what you’ve taught your children?”
“Jimmy doesn’t talk like that, Mother. Just me,” I said.
“Yes, but Jimmy’s gay,” Mother cried, and, inexplicably, hit my father again.
My convalescing came abruptly to an end two days later. Having found nothing more in my condition to cause concern, Piedmont Hospital was kicking me out. Weary of daytime television and Jell-O, I had decided to leave peacefully.
I was moving slowly, packing the few things I had into a small roll-on. My head ached, and the bite on my shoulder from the yappy accountant still burned. I slipped into the shorts, black sleeveless V-neck, and sandals that Rauser had thoughtfully retrieved from my apartment along with a few essentials—notebook, pens, toothpaste, hairbrush, underwear, and tampons. I hadn’t asked for the tampons, but Rauser assumed, as he always did, that when I appeared grumpy, I needed tampons. I decided to present him with a box of his very own the next time he so much as raised an eyebrow at me.
I brushed my teeth and looked in the mirror at the scrapes and bruises on my forehead, chin, cheeks, and arms. Had I rubbed elbows with the killer that night at the airport? Had I made eye contact, maybe even smiled at him?
I had been reading the Wishbone letters obsessively and I was more convinced than ever that the next murder would come soon. The killer was in a ramped-up state, writing, taunting, feeling invincible. And because I had appeared at a crime scene with Rauser, because I had been hired to help explain the killer, he was trying to pull me in too. He wanted to show me, and everyone, that we weren’t so smart after all.
Neil had delivered background files on Anne Chambers, Bob Shelby, Elicia Richardson, Lei Koto, David Brooks, and William LaBrecque. Six victims now that we could name. Six victims! Six human beings slaughtered to satisfy a psychopath’s appetite for blood. It made my heart ache. Reading the files, I trolled the information we had to piece together psychological sketches and risk assessments based on each victim’s lifestyle—friends, social gatherings, professional life, habits, even illnesses. Notes on three-by-five cards clung to the hospital wall with pieces of blue painter’s tape someone on the hospital housekeeping staff had turned up for me.
APD was not able to determine if I’d been followed from the airport the night the wheel came off my car and took off without me across the interstate. By the time the first officer arrived, followed minutes later by Rauser, it was all over. A civilian had seen the accident and pulled over to help me. The police, knowing they were there to intercept whoever might be following and intending me harm, assumed the worst when they found a man opening my car door. They forced the good samaritan to the ground on his stomach, cuffed him, and hauled him into the station, where he was questioned so thoroughly and for so long we are all certain he will never again commit a good deed. He said he saw the Impala swerve without warning and run off the road into the bridge railing. No one else had stopped, he swore, although several cars had shot by, not even slowing. He might have saved my life that night by stopping. I would probably never know, but I imagined the killer driving past the scene, disappointed by the presence of a do-gooder he hadn’t counted on.
The crime lab concluded that my left front wheel had been tampered with. Not surprisingly, they hadn’t found any physical evidence beyond the marks that suggested tampering with a tool that wasn’t made to fit the nuts on my wheel. No DNA. No prints.
We knew now that while the hourly parking decks at the airport are under constant surveillance, the long-term parking decks have cameras placed only in strategic areas—the entrance, the exit, the elevator