Deja Blue (16 page)

As the day wore on, each scene was revisited by Kunati and Orvison in Rae’s company, and as the day grew longer, less and less psychic ‘residue’ was discovered. Rae chalked it up to the fact that less such residue remained to begin with, but she didn’t expect the men to understand this. This same fact, however, made a great impression on Rae. It meant something important; it meant that killer and victim in St. Albans might well be far more connected than victims found at other locations. Else she was reading everything all wrong.

Still, even if she were spot on right, what that connection might be remained elusive. But it could crack this case; it could be the pivotal answer. An answer which lay in the life and times of Marci Cottrill. Every detail of her past must be examined; every story, rumor, remark out of her past must be scrutinized. Somehow, she held the key that would unlock the entire mystery. If I’m right, she cautioned herself.

Rae had little choice. She’d have to question Dr. Hatfield extensively about his sister’s history, habits, friends, relatives, indeed her entire resume while on the planet. She’d have to peel back every layer, no matter what it might reveal about the ME’s sister.

Once the locations were exhausted, Rae assessed the situation even further, and the idea that answers awaited at the first site had anchored her to a direction she felt necessary. Still, she gave this serious thought. It would take some nerve to do what she contemplated. But she must. Her thoughts on the matter were interrupted by Orvison as they drove back for the heart of Charleston’s downtown where the streets buzzed with life and activity natural to a city this size, and so in contrast to the death scenes she’d walked through.

With her mind on what she must do, Rae had only an inkling of an idea that the police radio in the car had crackled to life, that a dispatcher had called for the chief’s immediate attention.

“Did you get that?” Orvison asked her, realizing she’d been ‘somewhere else’ although right beside him.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “Get what?”

“They say that Amanda Winfield’s daughter, Carrie Winfield is at headquarters prepared to take any of our questions, you know, about her mother’s murder.”

“Oh, yes, definitely wanna talk to her. Her mother’s the odd one out.”

“Odd one out?” he asked. “I don’t think you wanna refer to her quite in those terms to the grieving daughter, Doc.”

“Sorry, don’t mean to be crude. In victimology training, one learns to work to find the links among those killed or raped, the victims of violence.”

“Sure, understood.”

“And so far, there’s been a great deal in common among the victims.”

“Their pets, their living alone, their ages, and their general appearance,” he supplied the examples. “So why did the killer change his target on the last victim?”

The question hung in the air between them. Orvison raced for headquarters

# # #

The stopover at police headquarters proved especially important, and Rae knew this the moment she saw the daughter, her little girl in tow. Carrie Windfield looked far more like the victims of this so-called, wannabe Sleepwalker killer than she did her mother, and Rae instantly decided that she—and not her mother—had been the intended target of murder the night the grandmother died.

She imagined a scenario in which the killer may’ve followed Carrie from the local Kroger or K-Mart to her mother’s house, where Amanda Winfield babysat the grandchild. The killer may well have mistook the residence for Carrie’s, perhaps moved too fast this time. In the dark bedroom, he’d killed not Carrie but Amanda. Or so logic insisted at the moment.

A handful of questions directed at Carrie about the final twenty-four hours of her mother’s life, and Rae’s imaginings came into the realm of fact.

“Chief,” Rae said, turning to Carl Orvison, “this woman needs to be placed in protective custody until we catch this creep.”

Both Carrie Winfield and Orvison, in unison, asked, “What?”

Rae explained her concern, and the details brought fresh tears to Carrie Winfield’s eyes. “I…you mean, I somehow caused this?”

“No…no, not at all. I am suggesting that while you were out shopping or involved in any number of innocent doings—like walking your dog—someone was watching.”

“My God.”

“Someone just over your shoulder, someone who is attracted to your general appearance, body type, skin tone, race.”

“What? What’re you saying?”

“Your general height, weight, color of hair, how you dress, wear your clothes, walk, hand gestures—who knows. Look, look, Carrie, and I suspect he followed you home—”

“Home? He knows where I live?”

“No, not your home—your mother’s, thinking it was your home. And he returned later that night, fully expecting, possibly even believing afterwards that he had indeed killed you.”

“And not your mother,” added Orvison to bring home the point.

The woman remained stunned, tripping over her words and thoughts at once, asking, “Wha-What am I to-to do? What can I do?”

Orvison assured her, “You and your child, Mrs. Winfield, you’ll be made safe until this maniac is captured and behind bars.”

If not killed outright, Rae added only in thought, knowing life in prison was too good for this monster.

Orvison called on two of his men to start procedures for a safe house and to escort Ms. Winfield to her house to pack a bag and some necessities and toys for the child.

“He’s going for an insanity plea even before he’s caught, Carl,” Rae said to Orvison as they went for Carl’s office.”

He didn’t answer.

Rae pursued him and persisted. “Don’t you get it? He believes he can win a seat in an asylum, serve a couple of years, be declared a ‘cured’ man and returned to society, a free man.”

“Not if I get a shot at the bastard first,” replied Orvison. “We sometimes get lucky that way in West Virginia.”

# # #

At the end of the day, Rae had returned to the Embassy Suites to pick up a few incidentals and necessities of her own—for the night in the haunted trailer out in St. Albans. Orvison returned two hours later, and she arrived at the death trailer by 10PM, prepared to spend a nigh, to hopefully learn far more for her troubles or else. She admitted, she didn’t know about the or else. What next might they pursue, should her overnight fail to net any results.

She did know that she’d have only the CRAWL mechanism to hold onto should things get shaky.

Rae was surprised to see that Kunati had returned with Orvison, and she felt less negativity coming off him; perhaps she’d made a favorable impression during the day after all. Else her determination to sit out a night in the first murder scene—a show of guts?—had impressed him. She couldn’t be sure. But Kunati complimented her on the wisdom of placing Carrie Winfield in a safe house, and the connection she’d made that pointed to the killer having targeted her and not her mother.

“Safe house was the Chief’s idea,” she informed him.

“Still, smart catch on the mother-daughter thing.”

Wow, she thought, a breakthrough with Kunati. It felt good.

The drive back to the trailer in St. Albans was quiet, the police ban creating an anthem for the solemnity of the moment. Rae sat in the rear once again, and when the darkness of the dead end trailer on Finch Lane became a reality, Kunati turned in his seat, stared at her, and said, “Are you sure, Dr. Hiyakawa, that you wanna do this?”

The man was at least courteous, and his concern seemed genuine. “What’s your concern, Detective?” “Such an undertaking…well, alone is not advisable.”

“Ahhh…you’re worried that hobgoblins will abduct me to another dimension?”

Orvison laughed at this.

“That I’ll fall into some psychic vortex or sinkhole?” she continued teasing.

Orvison laughed harder.

Kunati frowned at the frivolity. “My concern is what if he knows you’re here…alone?”

“How could he know?”

“You’re picture’s in every paper, and he could’ve seen you on the tube.”

“TV? Really, you think?” She smiled to let him know she was kidding. “I haven’t announced my movements. Have either of you?”

“No.” “No way,” added Orvison, “but thanks to all those cameras at the airport and at the Dunbar sight…well suppose Amos is right?”

“Right about what?”

“Suppose he’s been shadowing our movements,” said Kunati, “because he believes in what you do and fears you’re getting close?”

Orvison added over his shoulder at the wheel, “Real close, too close for his comfort?”

Kunati chorused the point. “Suppose he’s waiting to get you alone?”

She lifted her Smith and Wesson for Kunati to see. “And I know how to use it.”

“And if he gets hold of it before you?”

“I have a black belt in Jujitsu. Lucy Lu’s got nothing on me. Besides, I’m FBI trained.” She realized that she used the phrase FBI trained as a panacea for everything.

It was 11PM by the time she finally got Orvison and Kunati to agree that if her ‘experiment’ were to work, that she must work it alone, that they must leave. It’d taken all of her powers of persuasion to get the two would-be heroes out of the trailer and out of her hair.

Finally, from the tattered sash at the moldy, termiteinvested windowsill, Rae caught sight of the Charleston authorities cruising off down the grass and stone lane to find the main road. They had acted in the end like typical men, all gall and gallantry. They feared for the woman among them, weaker of the sex, in a kind of decoy situation, and they wanted her to know they were a phone call away. Wanted her to know that if she liked, one of them could remain behind with her. Wanted her to know she was safe, and that a man could make her safe, or at least feel safe.

For a moment there, she was unsure if she’d be able to convince the ‘boys’ that she didn’t need them hanging about, either one of them, and that this was something she needed to do alone. Orvison had even pulled his camera out, saying, “We really ought to have anything you do here on tape. It was one of the conditions of having you on the case.”

“Sometimes you’ve just got to put all the gadgets away, Chief, and go by instinct alone,” she’d replied. Then she held up the CRAWL palm pilot. “Besides, this will be activated.”

Kunati surprised her, saying, “Instinct, intuition…that’s good.”

Now she wondered if she’d been wrong, seeing the last of the cruiser’s taillights blink behind trees and fade in the distance, signaling that she was indeed alone on her lonely hill. Behind the house, stood a huge cratered section of massive black coal where the side of the hill had been carved out for the trailer home to sit on even land. As a result, in the night, the black backyard proved pitch dark.

Completely alone now and feeling it, she imagined how Marci must have felt living in isolation. She tried to get into Marci’s head before some maniac had used it for an anvil.

Earlier, she had stopped along the way to purchase a sleeping bag as she truly did not wish to spend the entire night in the victim’s bed. In fact, she didn’t plan on spending the entire night in the murder room at all. In fact, she didn’t intend spending the entire night in the dreadful trailer if she could help things along at the clip she wished. If so, she’d call for a taxi and leave soon after 3PM.

As calm and as brave a face as she’d put on it, Orvison had stopped on the stairs on his way out, grabbed her for a private moment, and had asked if she were sure she didn’t want him in the bushes. Again, she’d declined any ‘backup’ as he put it.

“The only backup I need right now can’t be here,” she’d replied, “and besides, I have my cell phone, and you’re both on my voice dial.”

“Dr. Hiyakawa, one of the victims got a photograph of him on her cell phone,” Orvison shared this news which had also been held back.

“You have a cell phone photo of the Sleepwalker?”

“Yes, but in the bad light, we couldn’t make anything of consequence out, but now…with your input, we know that the grainy green object in the photo didn’t get the face but rather a shapeless green form. Perhaps as you said, overalls or a uniform of sorts.”

After waving the men off, Rae spread open the sleeping bag across the floor in the living room area. She set the timer on her watch and slipped into the bag, keeping her clothes on. She needed sleep, but she also needed to be awake at 3AM. The one constant in all of these killings was the time of death. Hatfield had placed the time of death as at or around 3AM. One victim’s clock had been smashed by a hammer blow, stopped at 3:02 as she recalled. The so-called Sleepwalking Killer knew how to tell time, it would appear.

For now, Rae settled snugly into the sleeping bag with her cell phone at the ready, and she dialed home, hoping to talk to Nia. It rang and rang. She got no answer at the house. Odd, it was well past Nia’s bedtime on a school night. Where could she be? And why wasn’t Enriqui answering? A litany of horrors ran through Rae’s mind in answer to these two simple questions: Nia’s come to harm. She’s wrecked the car she wasn’t allowed to drive; she’s lying somewhere in a ditch, bleeding and in pain. She’s in a hospital, fighting for her life, the depression-calledNia’s life having overwhelmed her, the diagnosis an overdose of drugs, or would it be anorexia? Or a combination of both?