The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,74
recently to all the websites that usually recognized my computer—online banking, email accounts. Now I understood why. The tracking cookies had all been cleaned out.
Neil hesitated. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I figured you’d be pissed off, but I was using mine, so I let him use your desktop. Anyway, it was pretty harmless stuff. A Hotmail log-in screen, some news reporting sites.”
“You look at the sites? You remember the stories he was reading?”
“Nope.”
“Could he have been in my documents?”
“If he had more than half a brain, he could have, since you don’t password-protect your shit. What are you thinking, Keye?”
What I was thinking was about the email to Rauser with my name on the copy line, about feeling watched at the airport, about my dossier being delivered to a reporter. Why me? Because the killer knows me, that’s why. That’s why my appearance at the Brooks scene set off alarms and why I was copied on the next letter. Someone who knows me saw me there or saw the footage and suddenly I was too close. That’s why the killer had to then do anything possible to get me off the Wishbone case by trashing my reputation, by embarrassing me and the department publicly, by frightening me by loosening the lug nuts on my tire, sending the roses. Was this why Charlie needed to get to my computer? To find out if I had notes about the investigation and discover if he was a suspect? My pulse quickened. A tiny window flew open in my brain and I leapt through it.
Was Charlie capable of that kind of deception, the kind required to evade law enforcement for so long? To be successful, a serial offender must have the ability to disassociate entirely from their violent self and live an outwardly harmless life. Today, for the first time, I’d seen violence in Charlie. I’d seen his eyes. I’d seen sadistic pleasure in them, but his volatile impulsiveness was inconsistent with the organized killer I’d been profiling. And I couldn’t see the killer choosing Charlie’s lifestyle and façade for himself. I saw him as vain. He’d want to appear educated, successful. That wasn’t Charlie. Charlie elicited sympathy. But I knew too that an investigator must never attempt to sway an investigation in order to meet some theory. That’s something Dobbs would do. I had to be open to the evidence—whatever it was and whether I liked it or not.
I took a moment to reconsider the growing list of things that did make sense. Charlie had gained access to my computer with a ruse. He could have emailed my history in letters and documents for the last several years to himself and put together enough information to entice a journalist into doing more digging. He was the right height—the angle of the stab wounds at each scene put the killer at about five-ten. He’d bragged about his ability with a knife, a fishing knife. It would be serrated and about the right length. I’d seen him slicing figs with amazing dexterity considering his normal bumbling. The knife and the bragging fit. People trusted Charlie. He had enormous freedom and mobility. Who notices the brain-damaged guy who pedals around the city all day? Everyone and no one. I thought about William LaBrecque, about the rolling pin, about his shattered face, the bloodstain under his head, the edge characteristics of the pool. His blood had begun to react to the outside environment. Serum separation was taking place even though his body was not yet cold. This kind of thing sticks in your mind. Could Charlie have murdered LaBrecque, exhibited that kind of rage? Why? Had Charlie seen the bruised wrist LaBrecque had given me or read my notes about the incident at the church when I’d served LaBrecque with the restraining order? I knew an event like this—feeling the object of one’s preoccupation had been mistreated—could set off someone nurturing a love obsession. Was that what it was? Had Charlie’s crush on me turned deadly? Yes, I’d glimpsed something in Charlie today I hadn’t known existed—violence and jealousy. But even if he did kill LaBrecque, could he have killed the others? Why? Was I too close to see the motive? I thought about the aggression Charlie had displayed toward me today, the mobility in his job as a bike courier, his invisibility, his regular visits to the courthouse. He couldn’t have done what Wishbone had done on a bicycle. The area