The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,87

APD to stop this killer before he struck again? The question weighed on me. And another one too: Could Charlie Ramsey really be the cruel, bloodthirsty killer we called Wishbone?

He’d been so rough and so profane when he’d grabbed me in my office. How cold his eyes had been, his grip. I thought about the Brooks scene, then about finding Billy LaBrecque beaten to death, about Lei Koto’s child walking into a blood-spattered kitchen, about the wreck on the interstate, about Jacob Dobbs.

Fear as sharp as a switchblade stabbed at me. I didn’t want to be afraid for Rauser, for myself, for Neil or my family. I didn’t want to live that way.

Start at the beginning, I told myself. That’s where you always go on a case—back to the beginning.

I called my mother and asked her to take care of White Trash for a few days. The two had formed an alliance. White Trash accepts handfuls of Pounce and anything else Mother hands her, bumps her ankles, and consents to snuggle sessions. Mom disapproves of her name and refuses to use it. She calls her White Kitty or White One or Whitey.

I made some phone calls and cleared my schedule for the week and sloughed off as much work on Neil as he was willing to take. White Trash followed me to the bedroom and watched me pull out the suitcase. She fully understands it is a prelude to my leaving and she doesn’t appreciate this betrayal. She watched me steadily, her bright green eyes resentful slits.

I was headed south. The first two murders attributed to Wishbone were in Florida. A full victimology had been unattainable on Anne Chambers, the first murder on record. The files available from that time had been thoroughly reviewed, but Anne’s private life was still very much a question mark. If the murders began in Florida, there was a reason. Chambers appeared to have no link to our court system. She was the victim treated with the greatest cruelty and shown the most rage. Fifteen years ago a young woman had been brutalized, then sexually mutilated. The pattern was almost identical to Dobbs’s murder yesterday. Whatever this was, it had started in Florida. I needed to know why.

The peal of the front door buzzer did nothing to improve White Trash’s mood. She scurried underneath the bed. I went to the door in shorts, an old T-shirt, no shoes. When I stood on tiptoes to peer through the peephole, I found myself looking at my ex-husband. It was like licking my finger and sticking it into a light socket. I think my eyes even bulged a little.

Not once during our relationship had I looked at Dan and felt nothing. He always stirred something in me. What it stirred wasn’t always positive but it was always superconcentrated. I swallowed the cotton ball stuck in my throat and opened the door.

“Cold?” he asked, and gave me that sexy, impossibly white smile. I realized with great displeasure that my nipples were staging some kind of coup d’état over my good sense.

He handed me the flowers I’d already spotted behind his back, a bouquet of fresh-cut ones, bright yellows and purples and reds, no fillers. Dan actually knew flowers by name, had probably requested each one individually, possibly even supervised the arrangement. When we were married, he brought them home whenever he’d been unfaithful. Flowers became a sort of subspecialty for him; his specialty, of course, was bullshit.

I folded my arms over the insubordinate little traitors poking through my shirt, looked at him, looked at the flowers, then turned on my heel and returned to the bedroom.

“Listen, Keye, I know I wasn’t a good husband to you.” He didn’t follow me. He simply raised his voice so I could hear.

“You’ve done something horrible, haven’t you?” I asked. I was only half kidding.

“No, no. It’s nothing like that. I’ve just been thinking about things. Listen, I know I haven’t been there for you. I was a crummy husband and an even crummier friend. Hell, I’ve had trouble just being a decent man half my life.”

I was silent, waiting, cautious as I always am with Dan. White Trash, on the other hand, was fearless. Hearing his voice, she slipped out from under the bed, stretched, and sashayed out. She had always adored Dan. A minute or two later when I came back into the room, Dan was kneeling, stroking her back. He was wearing boot-cut Levi’s that fit him just right. His