Mortal Fear

“I’ll buzz you. I’m going to call the Mill Creek P.D. right now.”

I get up from the halogen glow and walk down the hall to check on Drewe. She left the bedroom door open when she went to bed, a good sign. As she snores softly, I discern her face in the moonlight trickling through the window. Her mouth is slightly open, her skin luminous in the shadows. I don’t know how long I stand there, but the muted chirping of my office phone snaps me out of my trance and I slip quickly back up the hall to get it.

“This is Harper.”

“It’s bad, Cole.”

My blood pressure drops so rapidly I grab the desk to steady myself. “She’s dead?”

“Worse.”

“What? What’s worse than dead?”

“Rosalind May has been missing for fifty to sixty hours. That’s Rosalind with a D. Two nights ago she was dropped off at her home by a date at eleven P.M. Sometime during the night, she apparently let someone into her house or else voluntarily left to meet them. She hasn’t been seen since. In my experience that’s worse than dead. It means very painful things.”

“Oh, God. You think it was our guy? Strobekker?”

Baxter hesitates. “I don’t know. I’d say yes, but there’s one thing that doesn’t fit. One very big thing.”

“What?”

“Rosalind May is fifty years old. She has two grown sons. All the other victims were twenty-six or under.”

“Except Karin Wheat,” I remind him. “She was forty-seven.”

“Yeah. And one other thing.”

“What?”

“This UNSUB left a note. The police didn’t find it until last night. One of their detectives decided to poke through her computer—”

“There was EROS software on the drive?” I cut in.

“No. Just like the other cases. Anyway, this Michigan detective was poking through her computer, and he found a WordPerfect file he couldn’t read.”

“It was encrypted?”

“Not digitally. It was in French.”

“French? You’re sure the UNSUB left it?”

“You tell me. The translation’s about a paragraph long, but the end of it reads: ‘The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.’ Mean anything to you?”

The skin on the back of my neck is tingling. “Yes. I mean, I recognize the passage. It’s Henry Miller.”

“The porn author?”

“Miller wasn’t really a porn author. Not as you think of it. But that’s not important. The passage is from Tropic of Cancer.”

“How do you know that? Nobody here did.”

“Dr. Lenz must not be there. He would have known it.”

“You’re right. He’s out of pocket just now.”

“Tropic of Cancer is a classic of erotic literature. I’m sure it’s still in print.”

“Which means anybody could walk into a bookstore and buy one?”

“Probably not any bookstore. Not the chains. You’d probably find it in stores that cater to a literary crowd, or else in erotic bookstores.”

“Thanks. That helps.”

“What kind of killer leaves notes in French, Mr. Baxter? You ever see that before?”

“Never. The translator in Michigan said it was probably written by a highly educated French native. Very elegant, he said. I’ve sent it to a psycholinguistics specialist at Syracuse. He won’t be able to look at it before morning, though. The Mill Creek police aren’t telling the Press about the note, by the way. They’re using it to screen false confessions.”

“Hey, I’m not talking to a soul.”

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one,” he says, almost to himself.

“Why?” I ask, not admitting that I have the same feeling.

“The UNSUB has killed all the other victims at the scenes. Now he takes one away, no signs of violence. If this is our guy—and my gut tells me it is—he’s varying his behavior more than any killer I’ve ever seen. He could be starting to come apart, to lose control of what’s driving him. But I don’t think so. He seems able to choose whatever crime signature he wants, which means he’s not driven beyond the point of control. If you hadn’t called with Rosalind May’s name, we never would have connected this crime to the others. You understand?”

“Too well.”

“I appreciate the help, Cole. It’s nice to know someone at EROS realizes we’re the good guys.”

I say nothing.

“Talked to your friend Turner lately?”

“No. I mean, not directly. He sent me some email. Nothing important.”

Baxter waits. “Right.”

“What will you do now?”

“Pray he makes a mistake.”

THIRTEEN (#ulink_c3ed3918-360e-589b-aa03-3fee9b5631d8)

Dear Father,

The procedure failed.

That is not wholly accurate. I was prevented from finishing by an unrelated accident. As Kali brought out the patient, she showed signs of hysteria. Unlike the Navy girl, Jenny, who adapted quickly, this one seemed not to have settled her nerves since we took her. Kali told me privately that Jenny had attempted to calm and reassure May during the night (quite ironic, considering the respective fates that awaited them) but the older woman would not be comforted. I’d had to sedate her at gunpoint the first night to get her to sleep at all.