The Inquisitor

Although that isolation could certainly be attributed to a normal give-and-take among colleagues or even to her proximity to the head of the table where Paul was still standing, it felt to Jenna as if something else were going on. Some kind of censure, perhaps, for the way she’d handled herself?

She pretended to be occupied with gathering up her notes and putting them into her briefcase. When she finished, she bent to pick up her purse. She straightened to find Paul watching her.

“Sheila said you had a visitor yesterday.”

She shouldn’t be surprised that her secretary had told someone what had happened. And gossip traveled as quickly in this office as in any other. She should have anticipated that and talked to Paul about it herself. Since she hadn’t…

“Some kook with an ax to grind,” she said, trying to remember how much of the conversation Sheila might have heard.

Nothing more than Murphy’s opening salvo, she decided. That in itself had been revealing enough.

“Narrow the field,” Paul suggested. “What kind of kook?”

“He’d seen the interview I did and wanted to berate me for being sympathetic to the killer.”

“Is that all?”

She hesitated, wondering if she wanted to give more validity to the man’s warning by mentioning it. She waited until a couple of people had moved away from where she and Paul were standing before continuing. She didn’t want an audience.

Beth Goldberg, the member of the staff Jenna was closest to, had stopped behind Paul, her brows raised. She was obviously wondering what was going on, and knowing Beth, also wondering if she needed rescuing.

Jenna tilted her head toward the door. A gesture of dismissal that Beth immediately recognized.

When the rest of the staff had also eddied toward the exit, she turned back to meet Paul’s gaze. He had propped his hip on the edge of the conference table, obviously prepared to wait until she spilled her guts.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. If she suddenly disappeared, she wanted someone to be looking for her.

And why in the world would you suddenly “disappear”? Stop buying into Murphy’s mind games.

“He claimed I was a match for the police profile of the victims.”

She realized that she’d managed to surprise Paul. The head of the practice was seldom at a loss for words, but the silence after her statement stretched for several seconds.

“I didn’t know they’d issued one.”

“Neither did I. Apparently, someone has. Maybe the FBI. Maybe it’s based on the murders he’s committed in other locations. I don’t think the police here are talking about it yet, but…” She took a breath, reluctant to put reality into words. “The pictures on TV this morning…” The images she’d worked so hard to dismiss last night were again in her head. “He could be right, Paul. They all had dark hair. And they were career women, not street people or prostitutes—”

“Stop it.” Paul took her elbow and shook it.

She hadn’t even realized she’d crossed her arms over her body. Or that her voice had risen as she’d repeated the things Sean Murphy had said to her yesterday.

“Just stop it,” Paul repeated, sliding his hand comfortingly up her arm until it rested on the top of her shoulder.

Despite the fact that the room was now deserted, he leaned nearer and lowered his voice. “First of all, we need to talk to the police. If there is anything to this profile business, we’ll deal with it. He could have been making that up, you know. You said he was a kook. Maybe he saw you on TV and decided to have some fun at your expense.”

“That’s not how I read him. I know that’s what I called him, but…” Unconsciously she shook her head. “He seemed serious. Deadly serious. He clearly didn’t like what I said in the interview, but I think his warning about the profile was genuine.”

That’s why it had bothered her so much. Whether the guy was right or not, he had believed what he said. And if he were as well informed as he appeared to be, then…

“I think I’d like to talk to the police,” she said, the words out almost before she realized she’d made the decision.

Paul nodded encouragingly, as if she were a patient who’d just made a breakthrough, before he released her shoulder and again took her arm. “Then let’s make the call and set it up.”

Jenna had told everything to the officer who’d taken her statement. What had happened in her office. That she believed Murphy had been waiting for her to leave the building last night. About his car pulling up beside her as she’d prepared to make her turn.

The policeman had barely seemed interested, making her decide halfway through that she’d wasted the afternoon. None of the murders had been committed in the jurisdiction of the small police department where her office was located. When he’d called, however, Paul had been told to send her there.

The three separate law enforcement agencies where the three bodies had been found were only taking calls that directly related to the murders. Whoever Paul had talked to obviously hadn’t believed that her call did, so she’d ended up telling her story to someone who didn’t seem to know any more about what was going on with the investigation than she did.

She’d attempted to remedy her own lack of knowledge as soon as she’d gotten home. Paul had insisted she have Sheila clear her schedule for the entire afternoon, so when she’d left the police station, she hadn’t returned to the office. Instead she’d picked up both the morning and evening newspapers and read every word they contained about the case.

Tonight’s had included a lot more information on the previous murders, as well as the FBI’s psychological profile of the killer. There was nothing in it she hadn’t already suspected. Maybe this wasn’t her field, but the fact that this guy had killed so often and still avoided detection gave plenty of clues as to the kind of person he was.

Exactly the kind Murphy had described. Smart. And in no hurry.

As for the victims…

The photos in the paper were grainy and too dark to distinguish details. Still, it was clear that the facts he’d laid out before her yesterday afternoon concerning the type of women the killer was attracted to were essentially correct. And if he was right about that—

It didn’t mean he was right about the murderer coming after her. To think that he would feel a compulsion to kill her because he’d seen her on television…

Talking about him. Dissecting him.

Jenna straightened, as if backing away from that double row of black-and-white pictures. When she did, she realized her back was stiff from the hours spent leaning over the coffee table where she’d spread out the newspapers.

With one hand pressed against her spine she reached down with the other and picked up the plate with her half-eaten sandwich. As she did, she glanced toward the front windows and saw that in her haste to read the news, she’d forgotten to close the blinds.

She must have reached over and turned on the lamp at the end of the couch at some point, but she hadn’t consciously realized it had gotten dark outside. She looked at her watch as she set the plate back on the coffee table and walked across to pull the cord. It was already after six.

Without thinking, she looked down at the next section of the complex, which stretched out across the mountain perhaps a hundred feet below her own. Her gaze had already traced across the cars parked behind those units, most of them familiar, when she noticed the black SUV in the row almost directly across from her apartment.

There were thousands of big, dark SUVs in this upscale neighborhood. She would swear that this one, however, had someone sitting in the driver’s seat. Someone—

She quickly stepped away from the window, hardly able to believe what she was thinking. Could Sean Murphy be sitting out there watching her apartment? Hoping she’d come out?

The policeman who had taken her story this afternoon had told her that if she had any more trouble with the man who’d come to her office she should call them. Paul had told her the same thing.

But what if it wasn’t him out there? What if she was seeing dangers where they didn’t exist?

She turned to look at the phone on the table at the end of the couch. And then her eyes flicked back to the newspapers still spread out over the coffee table.

Although the reporters had been careful about what details they’d released, there had been enough of them to leave no doubt the murdered women had suffered horrifically. Had one of them been suspicious and not called the cops because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself?

Jenna walked across the room and picked up the phone. She hesitated another second or two before she punched in 911.

As she waited through the rings, she looked back toward the window, but from this angle she couldn’t see the line of cars.

“Jefferson County 911,” a woman answered. “What’s your emergency?”