A Soul To Steal (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book One) (4 page)

“No, I just know how it goes,” he said. “When I came back here after working on the Hill...”

“You worked on Capitol Hill?” she asked.

“Yeah, for
Congressional Quarterly
,” he said.

“Nice,” Kate replied.

“I suppose,” Quinn said. “But when I got back here, it was kind of crazy. I had gone from a constant deadline to a paper that just seemed to take its time.”

“Hey, some of us enjoy our relaxation time,” Bill chimed in.

“Too much from the look of it,” Janus said, and patted Bill’s belly. Bill brushed Janus’ hand away with a look of bemused irritation.

Quinn barely acknowledged them.

“Anyway, it was a switch,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” Kate said, and tried again to size Quinn up. She had this nagging feeling that she knew him from somewhere and the more he talked, the more difficult it was to shake it. But she couldn’t place him to save her life.

“So Laurence said something about you coming from a daily paper and I thought I could relate,” Quinn said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”

“If you worked for a daily, why did you come down here?” Quinn asked.

That, my friend, is the million-dollar question, Kate thought. She was damned if she knew. Instead of saying that, however, she just smiled.

“I needed a change of scenery,” she said.

“So you came to Loudoun?” Janus asked. “Boy, did you take the wrong train to Clarksville.”

“You don’t like it here?” she asked him.

“Well, I do, yeah,” Janus said. “But I’m a loon, so I don’t think that tells you much. I guess I got my mates here and they pay me to take lovely photos. But I don’t know what anyone else sees in it.”

“You should be in tourism, Janus,” Bill said.

“I just mean it’s a pretty boring place,” he said.

“That wasn’t the impression I had,” Kate said.

“Oh, you just wait,” Janus said, picking up his turkey sandwich and biting into it. “Wait till you have lived here for six years. Then tell me how exciting it is.”

“It isn’t that bad,” Quinn said quickly.

“Then why did you move away, bucko?” Janus asked through a full mouth.

“I moved back, didn’t I?” Quinn replied.

“Why was that, anyway, Quinn?” Bill asked. “I always meant to ask.”

Quinn shot a dark look in Janus’ direction, who held up his hands in a ‘What did I do?’ gesture.

“Just didn’t like it there, I guess,” Quinn replied.

“I would have thought it would be exciting,” Kate said.

For a moment, she saw an odd look cross his face and then it was gone.

“Maybe it was too exciting,” he said, and appeared to want to leave it at that.

“Speaking of excitement,” Janus said, finishing off his sandwich even as Bill got up to get another. “I think you and I need to get going, right?”

Quinn looked at him blankly.

“Where?” he asked.

“I thought Buzz told you—we have to go see that coin-sorting place for the profile, right? Remember? I take the pretty photos and you write your boring article?”

“Oh damn,” Quinn said. “I forgot.”

He looked at his watch.

“We are supposed to be there in 10 minutes,” he said. “We’ll never make it.”

“You know, if you had just set your watch 3 minutes ahead, Quinn,” Janus started.

“Get stuffed,” Quinn said. “Let’s go.”

He looked apologetically at Kate.

“I’m sorry to run out on you, but duty calls,” he said. “We’ll see you back at base, right?”

“Sure,” she said.

“And sorry to leave you alone with Bill,” Janus said, watching as the portly photographer wandered back to the table with another sandwich. “Don’t let him get too fresh.”

“I won’t,” she smiled, and watched Quinn wave before they walked out the door.

As Bill sat down and began to munch on his sub, Kate let out a small sigh.

She wondered again just what she had she gotten herself into.

LH File: Letter #2

Dated: Oct. 5, 1994

Investigation Status: Closed

Contents: Classified

Dear Mr. Anderson,

I confess that I’m disappointed. I wouldn’t say angry—not yet anyway—but disappointed. When I chose you, it was with the expectation that you would make me famous. Instead, you appear to be cooperating with the police in covering me up. Since Ms. Verclamp’s death, I’ve seen two articles on her murder, not one of which has even hinted of my existence.

There is no good reason for this. It can’t be that you don’t believe I’m the killer. I gave you the precise location of her body and I’m told you made the call yourself to police after reading my first missive. So what’s the hold up? Did the police tell you that you would be interfering in an investigation? Did they say my letters would only panic the public? Nothing like a serial killer on the loose to get the blood circulating, right?

So you wrote two very drab pieces, the first on the death and the second a profile of the victim. Though the profile was touching—I note with pride you used my suggested color—the whole thing feels pedestrian. I wanted to make a big splash with my first kill and now everyone is probably assuming Ms. Verclamp had an angry boyfriend. They don’t even know I’m out here.

This makes me unhappy, Mr. Anderson, and I wish to warn you upfront that a second mistake of this nature will not be tolerated lightly. Consider this my second gift to you—I’m letting you off easy this time. I’m not threatening you, Mr. Anderson—I have no wish to see you harmed—but you must understand my position. I aim to make a name for myself, and see you as my partner. And right now, my partner isn’t pulling his weight.

Let’s hope things improve this time around. The next body is lying on the outskirts of Ida Lee Park, in the woods behind the tennis court. The police will identify him as Michael Weissman, a promising 16-year-old who attended Loudoun High School. So that police can be sure I’m the killer, I’ll offer the following tidbits. He wasn’t killed where his body is now located—and he tried to fight his attacker. He failed, of course, but I give him credit for trying. I stabbed him in the lower abdomen and watched as he tried to crawl away. He bled to death eventually, but I have to admit it took longer than I expected.

I’ll leave you to find out more about his background. We didn’t have much time to talk. Did he have a girlfriend? What did he want to be when he grew up? How hard do you think his parents will take it? I’m tempted to give them a call myself—that would really give you something to write about: “Killer Taunts Dead Boy’s Family.”

But perhaps that can wait. Fear is a contagious thing, but sometimes it’s best to let it spread slowly. I trust that in this next article, you will mention me properly. Feel free to quote from my letters to you—they are on the record, as always.

Oh, and you might want to get a move on. It’s only Oct 5
^th
, and I have a lot more killing to do before the month is up. I’d prefer it if my victims knew who was gutting them, so I’m trying to keep things slow until the word gets out. Please don’t disappoint me again. I promise you that you will regret it.

Yours Sincerely,

Lord Halloween

Chapter 4

“
As far as serial killers go, Lord Halloween was more flashy than scary. True, he terrified the area he haunted, but it seems impossible, when compared with some of the more famous killers of the 20
^th
century, that this person should stand out. Yes, LH murdered with impunity. Yes, LH tortured several victims. But his fetish with Halloween is so trite that I give him lower marks than many of his contemporaries
.
About the only thing that gives me pause is that he got away with the murders. Most killers secretly want to be caught. It’s clear LH didn’t.
”

—Arnold Cosgrove, “Stop Me Before I Kill Again: Serial Killers in History.”

Lord Halloween could wait forever. It was hard to say how long he had been standing alongside the road. He didn’t move or speak or show any other signs of life. He just stood there, looking in front of him. Patience was one of his virtues, he knew. Probably the only one.

He had waited 12 years. He thought that was long enough. There was some consideration, even as late as this morning, that he should wait one more year. After all, 13 had great significance among the superstitious. But everything was prepared and he didn’t have the heart to put away the tools of his trade for one more year. The truth, he knew, was that he didn’t want to wait another year—didn’t want to dream about this for another 12 months.

On the road, nothing stirred. Somewhere there was a faint rustling of leaves as the wind blew them around in the darkness, but everything else was still. He certainly did not move. He would wait for the right moment. He had waited this long, he could afford the time now. If today wasn’t the day, well…

He stopped himself. Today would be the day. His hands twitched with the thought of it and he smiled faintly. He stared out at the road. Today had to be the day. He felt it in his bones.

He waited in the darkness.

*****

Mary Kilgore felt the car sliding to the left and fought with the steering wheel to bring it under control. She felt a flurry of panic, fearing it would careen into the woods beyond the road. But just as that seemed inevitable and the trees loomed above her, the car suddenly came back to the right.

She pumped the brakes furiously and successfully brought the car to a stop. She sighed in relief at first, happy to be safe. But it occurred to her soon after that something serious had happened to her car and that she might not be able to get it moving again.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car. Certainly she hadn’t hit anything—there hadn’t even been a bump in the road. She wondered if it was the transmission, or engine failure and cursed herself that she didn’t know more about cars. That had always been Donald’s arena and now he was gone.

She sighed again and walked to the front of the car. Mary took one look at the battered front right tire, and even to her untrained eye, she could see what the problem was. The tire looked like it had come apart. She thanked her stars at least she had been able to bring her car under control before she crashed. But when was the last time she had changed a tire?

It took no time for her to think about Donald again. If he were here…

But he isn’t here, Mary told herself. He is not going to come to the rescue this time, or any other time. She felt a wave of self-pity coming on and struggled to throw it off.

She looked back at the road. It was deserted, of course. It was the very reason she had come this way—a short-cut to get to the Middleburg town meeting on time, for once. But now she wished she had stuck with her normal route. If she had, she could have flagged a dozen cars down. Right now, the prospect of any showing up seemed farfetched.

She went back into the car and pulled out her cell phone. She flicked it on and waited to see if she would get a signal. She didn’t. Instead, the phone simply displayed a message, “No service.”

“Damn,” she said. She tossed the phone back in the car and flipped the switch that opened the trunk. She would just have to hope that there was a jack and a spare tire in there. If not, she faced a long, lonely walk in the dark. In Loudoun, there was little to be frightened of, but she still shivered at the thought.

It seemed like just the other day she had read in the
Chronicle
about someone in Loudoun spotting a mountain lion near the area. What if she ran into it in the dark? What if some bear wandered down this way? Already, she had a disturbing sense of being watched, but dismissed it as paranoia.

The sooner she changed the tire, the better. To her surprise and immense relief, she found both a jack and a spare in the trunk.

“Damn you, Donald,” she said out loud again. “I can do this without you.”

The bastard was probably off with his 25-year-old tart right now.

She stopped herself. That was no help. She needed to stay focused. She returned to the front wheel with a sense of purpose. But as she walked, her foot scraped against something. Bending down, she saw that she had stepped on a nail.

“Crap.” The nail had caused the flat.

Then she saw two more nails on the road. Looking back, she could see a few more faintly glinting in the moonlight.

“Damn it,” she said. Someone had put nails out here. Probably some kid, she thought, and silently she cursed them. They could have gotten her killed. She wondered what kind of little punk had done this.

Mary was still bent over when she heard a sound on the pavement behind her. Wheeling around, she stared off into the darkness and saw nothing.

“Is somebody there?” she asked.

Maybe the kid was here to see what kind of results his prank brought.

“Show yourself, if you’re there?” she called again.

At first there was nothing. Just the sound of a faint echo of her own words. And then she jumped at a voice coming from behind her.

“Sorry,” the voice said. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”

She turned around to see a figure standing on the other side of her car.

“It’s okay,” she said, and smiled in relief. “I just…”

And her smile faded. He said he hadn’t meant to sneak up on her, but how was that possibly true? Hadn’t she heard him behind her a second before? Why hadn’t he called out? She looked around and saw nothing near them. Where was his car?

“It’s alright,” he said again, and took a small step forward. “Looks like you got a flat.”

“Yeah,” she said, although she looked at him warily. “Some kid put these nails here and I must have run over them…”

But the words dried out on her lips. Her tongue briefly flickered to the roof of her mouth as her heart seemed to spring directly into her throat. This was no kid.

“Yeah, you have to watch out for stuff like that,” he replied. She could see that he was smiling, but it failed to reassure her. To Mary, the smile appeared distinctly predatory, like some kind of cat (
a mountain lion
) that had found its prey. Instinctively, she took a step back.

“Yeah,” she muttered, and wondered if her fear was obvious.

He took another step forward and rested one hand on the hood of her car.

“Well, what do you say, let me see if I can help you with that,” he said, but he made no more forward moves.

She could see now in the faint moonlight that he had the other hand behind his back. It made her more nervous. She had no idea what to do. Should she run? Her brain was running through options but coming up blank. Panic was setting in.

“No, I’m okay,” she said, straining to keep her voice calm. “I just called my husband, Donald. He should be on his way.”

“Really? That’s great,” the man replied. “I’m surprised that you would get any reception out here. You know they’ve been debating putting up a cellular tower out here, but the damn environmentalists won’t let them. They say it would ‘mar’ the landscape, I think. I don’t know that much about it, of course. I don’t much care for that kind of news.”

Mary took another step back. She had hoped her ruse would cause him to back off. But it was obvious it hadn’t. The terrible truth finally clicked in: this was a trap. The nails, the dead-zone, the lack of any nearby help. She had a brief flicker of a memory of watching a mouse struggle on a glue trap near her stove. She had hated watching the thing slowly die, thrashing and screaming and begging for help. But she was that mouse now, she knew. And she was beginning to think her fate would be even worse.

“Well, it did,” she said, and sounded lame even to herself. “I was surprised.”

“Well, yeah, you would be,” he said. “I mean, you must have a great carrier around here.”

He took his hand off the car and took another step forward.

“Look,” Mary said. “I don’t know what you are doing out here, but…”

“Waiting for you,” he replied calmly, and the smile slipped from his face.

Now that the smile was gone, she found she wanted it back. In the light, he now looked blank and impassive and his eyes appeared dead.

“You put the nails here,” she said. It wasn’t a question. There was no need to ask.

He nodded and took another step forward. Mary took another back. She wished desperately she had taken her purse out with her. There was an old can of mace in it. As she was, she felt helpless.

“Well, I can’t leave
everything
to chance, can I?” he said.

“No,” she said, though she had no idea what he was talking about. “I suppose not.”

She looked briefly at her shoes. They were pumps, not exactly running sneakers.

“I mean, I was just lucky someone came this way, you know? Not many people bother anymore. Do you know why that is?”

She couldn’t bring herself to say anything.  Instead, she backed away again. Her face felt taut and she could feel pain all through her chest. Every muscle in her body had tensed now and she fought the urge to just run blindly into the surrounding woods.

“It used to be a great make-out area, you know?” he continued, taking another step forward even as she walked back. “The kids all came this way and pulled off the side of the road. Sure, it was a shortcut, but it was so dark out here. You could get away with anything and there would be nobody around to hear.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said, still trying to think of what to do.

“No, if you had, you probably wouldn’t have come,” he said. “Because you would have known what happened to them. You must be new to the area, Ms…”

“I’m not going to tell you my name,” she said.

“Pity,” he replied. “I’ll just have to read about it in the paper, then.”

“What?” she asked.

“When they find your body,” he said. “They won’t find it for a while, of course. But when they eventually identify you from your dental records, then I’ll see the name.”

“Oh, dear God,” she said, and was startled to find water running down her face. She was crying. She didn’t know a person could cry from terror.

“He won’t help you, my dear,” he said. “Anyway, I put a stop to kids coming out here. Do you have any kids, Ms. Soon-to-be-very-dead? They could have told you how. Twelve years ago—on this very night—I gutted two of them. I mean, I really went to work. Not the way I will on you. No, I was younger then, and didn’t have enough artistry.”

Mary was sobbing now, unable to help herself.

“Anyway, just one couple. That was all it took. And in 12 years, they never came back. I know because I waited to see. But they were smart enough to stay away. Too bad for you though.”

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t do this.”

She took another step backward.

“If you don’t put up a fight, I’ll make it quick,” he said. “I promise.”

“No, no, no, no,” she stammered out, and she felt another emotion now. She felt a kind of raw anger coming out of her. These men, she thought. For how many years had she put up with Donald? And now she was finally free of him and this guy comes along? It was unfair. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to die like this. She was supposed to go quietly in her bed, surrounded by grandchildren.

She felt the anger wash over her and was surprised by how good it felt. Anything that broke through the fear.

“If you do fight, well…” he said. “I’m out of practice, but I remember well enough how to inflict pain.”

She heard his words and felt a click in the back of her head. She wasn’t going to give in to the urge to run away. If she did, he would be on her in seconds.

Mary stopped moving back. The fear that had so flooded her had given way. Dim memories of her best friend, Gladys, teaching her a move from a self-defense class, flickered to life. And as she watched this man advance, a plan formed in her mind.

She had stopped crying. She was through crying. Instead, she quickly bent down on the ground and felt along the side of the road.

“Just what the hell do you think you are doing?” he asked, and he was moving, faster than she anticipated.

But not quite fast enough. Grabbing hold of gravel she had felt along the road, she threw it at his face as he approached. He cried out and stumbled back, putting his right hand to his head.