drawer. Magazines—porn, hetero leather stuff, bondage, S/M. Under the magazines, a hardback written by none other than Jacob Dobbs titled The Criminal Behaviors of Serial Rapists.
I kept looking. I found the safe on the floor near the closet. A small one, eighteen inches deep, the kind you buy at an office supply store to protect documents. It was locked, of course. I moved it a little to check the weight. Heavy. I was running out of time. How long had I been here? Twenty seconds? Forty?
On the mattress, next to the laptop, I saw clippings from the AJC and the New York Times, Time magazine. All of them were about the Wishbone case. I rifled through them, desperate to get a feel for what was going on in this room, in Charlie’s head. And then I saw a shot from the Washington Post of Rauser and me walking toward the crime scene tape at the Brooks scene. The caption: Crime scene investigators approach another bloody scene associated with a serial murderer dubbed the Wishbone Killer. A circle had been drawn around us with a fat black pen. The words lying bitch!!! were scrawled over the picture in bright yellow highlighter.
Queasiness hit my stomach hard. I swallowed it back and stuffed the clipping in my pocket, then jiggled the laptop mouse. It asked for a password. No time. My phone vibrated. Rauser’s warning? Shit.
I felt for the Glock 10 I’d wedged in the back of my pants as I raced toward the front door, taking the stairs two at a time. The beeps on the alarm system had gotten closer together.
It’s odd what the brain registers when normal timekeeping stops. I remember thinking that there were no pets here in Charlie’s house. No family pictures, no art. Bare walls. And the television had been left on some true-crime station. A cop wannabe? A CSI freak?
And then the world exploded in my ears, a blaring, whirling siren accompanied by a loud male voice shrieking “Intruder! Intruder! Get out!” The alarm system blasted it all to the neighborhood. “Intruder! Intruder! Get out!”
I grabbed the doorknob and felt resistance, heard keys jingling. Through the peephole, I saw Charlie’s bike dropped on the front sidewalk, the bike I’d seen him ride away on.
I tore through the living room, pushed open the sliding glass doors, then remembered there was ten feet of solid wood fence without a gate. Intruder! Expletives I didn’t know I knew flew out of my mouth. Caged, I made a couple of stupid circles. Then I grabbed a heavy iron patio table and dragged it to the fence, scrambled on top and pulled myself up. It wasn’t pretty. My muscles were trembling. I needed to join a gym, really. The ground on the other side nearly knocked the wind out of me, but I kept moving as fast and far away from Charlie as I could, scrambled into my car and pulled out without lights, nearly sideswiping a Volkswagen. The phone in my pocket vibrated again.
“Hey,” Rauser said when I answered. “Great work. Discreet too.”
I pulled over near the Candler Park MARTA station and tried to stop trembling. My heart was still going great guns. Serve me right if I had a heart attack. “At least you’ve got a reason to go in now, right? You’ve got an alarm.”
“I don’t expect him to invite us in, do you? We’ll know in a second or two, but I’m not optimistic.”
“The things I go through for APD. And for what?”
“Uh-huh. Always thinking about everyone else. And maybe Hilary’ll come down here and give me a spanking.”
“Power types. Fascinating. This is why you’re always on CNN, isn’t it?”
Rauser was quiet for a minute. “That was some stupid shit, Keye. Jeez. Don’t do that anymore. I can’t protect you when you act crazy.”
“I don’t need protecting,” I reminded him, but my heart was still doing about one eighty-five.
“Hang on. We’ve got uniforms at Charlie’s door. They’re talking, talking, and just like I thought. He’s telling them everything’s fine and sending them away. He’s doing the brain-damaged thing.” I heard him hit his cigarette. “So, tell me what you got.”
“See, I knew you wanted me to go in there.” I smiled and, feeling calmer, pulled my car back onto the road. Rauser had never been a strictly by-the-book guy, but he was a good and honest cop. I wasn’t under the same restrictions. Not anymore. The private sector has its advantages.
I told him about Charlie’s town house,