Molly decided she was an idiot. A raving, half-brained, self-absorbed fool. How the hell could she not figure Kenny would do this?
Because it didn't fit the profile. Killers like this didn't make grand gestures. They didn't change their signature just because a precipitating event made things suddenly worse. They shortened their cycle. They increased their violence. They lost control. They didn't get confrontational.
And yet, it seemed that Kenny had.
“I'm sorry, Kenny,” Molly said, backing her car out of the parking spot. “Really. I didn't mean for you to get fired.”
“Then you did finally figure it out,” he said quietly. “Do you remember me?”
This was all going way too fast. What was she supposed to do? Lie and stick it out? Tell him the truth and hope he didn't decide that enough was enough and blow her to hell just to do it?
Molly finally reached the overload point. Too many lives on her conscience, too many surprises and too much guilt. She went numb and stupid and silent when she should have been working her mouth like an Amway salesman.
Still, she had to do something. The parking garage was empty and the hour too late to expect help on the streets.
“I do remember you,” she said, praying. “You were such a quiet little thing. I ⦠I tried to help, you know.”
Her own personal apology to every child she'd lost to The Game.
“I know you did,” Kenny said, his voice deceptively reasonable. “It's why I'm going to take you to see Marianne.”
“That's good.”
Down one floor of the parking garage she drove, then two, the screech of the slow-moving tires echoing against all the concrete.
“You know, they're going to be missing me at home,” she said. “My dog hasn't been fed tonight.”
“Patrick will do it.”
“Who's going to take care of Patrick?”
Make them think of you as a person, the hostage negotiators said. Make sure you aren't faceless so it's harder to kill you.
“Patrick will end up just fine,” he said, his voice muffled by the backseat. “He'll go back to Washington and send Sam Hanukkah cards and go to school, just like you wanted.”
“He's not going to make it without help.”
“He'll be fine. I'm really sorry I mistook him for your baby. Johnny, wasn't it? I mean it. I didn't know.”
“It's okay. It's been a long time.”
And, bizarrely enough, Molly realized it was. She'd expected the usual rage, the dizzying grief that always accompanied Johnny's name. But it seemed that finally she'd found greater rage, deeper grief to eclipse it. Besides, whatever she had or hadn't done for her baby, she'd at least given him more care and comfort in his twenty-three days than this poor bastard had had his entire life. Than had any of the victims of The Game.
Counseling by psychopath. What a concept. Molly wanted so badly to laugh, to cry with the absurdity of the whole thing. She was still so distracted by it that by the time she reached the ground level she almost missed the sight of a tall blond woman checking something in her trunk.
It dawned on her so suddenly, she almost locked her brakes. Molly sneaked a look in the rearview mirror to see that Kenny was still below the line of sight. She took another look at the red Grand Prix to see the trunk lid up. She tried to ignore the geometric increase in her heart rate.
She already had one coworker in jeopardy. Should she risk two? Should she try and get Sasha's attention, flash her the ED's universal sign for distress?
“Is Marianne okay?” she asked, her hands suddenly trembling.
“Oh, yeah,” Kenny said, his voice like silk. “She's fine.”
“Good. That's good,” Molly said, willing Sasha to look up. To wave. Anything.
But Sasha seemed intent on whatever it was she was looking for in her trunk, and Molly wasn't sure how slowly she could go before Kenny would notice.
“We're about at the street,” she said. “Which way then?”
“Over to Highway Forty-four,” he said.
Please, Sasha. Please. Just look. Don't make me tap my horn and give us away. I've got a goddamn gun at my neck and a victim sitting somewhere on the spit
.
I've just met Kenny for the first time in twenty years, and it's not going to end well.
Just as Molly was pulling even, Sasha looked up. Molly lifted a hand and flashed her the peace sign. In the brief instant she could hold her friend's gaze as she swept past, Molly silently begged for recognition. For reaction. Sasha just lifted a hand in response and turned back for the driver's door. Molly surprised herself by damn near sobbing in frustration.
“Who's that?” Kenny asked.
“Another nurse from the ER.”
Work on keeping your voice level. Kenny's your friend. Kenny's all right. It's the rest of the world that's crazy, or you're never going to get out of this
. “We just walked out together. You can leave her out of this.”
She isn't your type.
Actually that almost made Molly laugh, thinking of a matchup between Sasha and Kenny. Sasha would make such mincemeat of him, all the other serial killers would end up laughing at him.
Adrenaline, Molly thought, struggling hard to focus. She was pumping with adrenaline and it made her want to giggle when what she needed to do was get help. When what she had to do was get Kenny to offer up Marianne like a game-show prize.
Molly checked her rearview mirror. Still no flurry of movement. No Sasha standing flatfooted in the middle of the lane trying to figure out what was wrong. And no Sasha following right on her bumper. Molly was alone, but Sasha was safe. And Marianne was still sitting somewhere in limbo waiting for Molly to show up.
Which meant that Molly needed to go to game plan two. Or three or
twelve. Hell, what did she know? One simply didn't make plans for the moment a serial killer chose to introduce you to his sport.
Except never, never get into the car in the first place. Oh well, too late for that. Besides, there was Marianne to think of.
“So, what's the plan?” Molly asked.
Her hands were sweating so badly they were slipping off the wheel, and her heart was slamming around inside her chest like a landed fish. She knew she should be subtle and manipulative. She should slide into Kenny's delusion and reinforce it so she could ease his secrets out of that muck like old artifacts from the ocean floor. Hell, she probably should have a tape recorder so she could get this for evidence.
But when she should have been coming to grips with the fact that she was finally faced with the boogeyman who'd been rustling under her bed for the last four weeks, all she could think about was Marianne. Marianne and, oddly, Johnny. The baby this monster had wanted to be.
“The plan?” Kenny asked. “There isn't a plan. I knew you'd want to come help your friend.”
Another rush of acid up her esophagus. Another dump truck load of guilt on her head.
“Why Marianne?” she asked, wiping her hand on her slacks.
“Because it would help me get close to you. I had it all planned out, ya know. But then ⦔
“But then I went and spoiled it all. I meant it, Kenny. I didn't intend to desert you like that. I'm afraid the truth is that I just didn't understand your messages quickly enough.”
Molly swung south onto Jefferson and headed for Highway 44, for the first time in her life, barely doing the speed limit.
She could smell him. Somehow, she'd never noticed before, or maybe he'd been more careful while he'd still practiced anonymity. But now, caught in a small car heading for disaster, Molly was caught by the almost feral scent in the air.
Gamy. Not quite human. Coming from the very quiet man who was finally poking his head up from the backseat, his hand still absolutely steady where it held the very cold little revolver at right angles to her carotid artery.
“You can't go faster?” he asked a bit petulantly.
“I've got a gun against my neck,” Molly said, wondering how the two of them could sound so reasonable. “It makes my driving a bit iffy. I don't think you want me to attract attention.”
Of course there weren't any police cars out there. Molly had at least hoped for a reporter waiting to ambush her on the way home from work. The highway was absolutely empty, though, as if everybody had pulled back to give her room.
She took another peek in the rearview mirror, and this time found Kenny there. Composed, quiet, his eyes flicking over the traffic. Nice eyes. Light blue, softened with long lashes.
Why hadn't she realized that before? He was actually good-looking. Square of chin and straight of nose. He should have caught women's attention. He should have been sketched in sharp, swift lines with solid shadows under his cheekbones and brow. But somehow he'd been softened into inconsequentiality, as if wearing a Romulan cloaking device to hide his threat.
Had other women seen the potential of his looks? Had he gotten them to adopt him, as some women would, certain they would be the ones to bring the butterfly out of this cocoon? Or had he traded on his innocuousness, so that they didn't notice the odd glint in those soft blue eyes?
“You want me to head for your house on Juniata, don't you?” she asked, trying so hard to sound calm and interested.
She wanted him to look at her. She wanted him to lock eyes with her so she could see what everybody had missed. What she had missed all those times she'd worked with him on the floor.
They'd had a serial killer walking the halls of their hospital, and the only way they'd discovered it was the keloid scarring he'd forgotten to cover at his neck.
There should have been more. But then, John Martin wasn't the kind of guy you wanted to look in the eye. John Martin may have counted on that.
“My grandmother's house,” he said softly, denying Molly that look now.
“The police searched it, ya know. They didn't find anything.”
“They won't. I made sure.”
Maybe, though, somebody would still be there, on the lookout for their
prime suspect in a series of grisly murders. Maybe somebody would see her in trouble.
Grand was so close, only an exit up. Molly swung off the highway south toward Reservoir Park. The traffic on Grand at this hour of the night was virtually nonexistent. Molly swung south past the park water tower. Past side streets with stately, rehabbed brick homes, silent and dark at this time of the night, the Christmas lights off, the only blinking lights the traffic reds that stretched down Grand. Molly had made it almost all the way to Tower Grove Park before she realized that Kenny was talking.
“ ⦠can't believe they didn't see me that last time. I came right up to your door, and there was a police car sitting out by the back fence. I figure they were shoving doughnuts in their faces and talking about blow jobs, ya know?”
She had to pay attention. She had to use whatever he said to her benefit. She had to reassert some kind of control before she just shook apart like an outhouse in a tornado.
“You have been amazing,” she said quietly as she watched the streets, watched for cops, watched for Kenny to give something away. “I mean, how many girls have you ⦔
God, what had she said? How subtle was that? Her statement was met by silence, she knew she'd screwed up already.
“Kenny?”
“You really don't know anything, you know,” he said, and Molly heard the first traces of anger in his voice. Still quiet, as if the anger were miles away. As if he were watching it through glass.
“I know I don't,” she said. “That's why I came along.”
“I figured you came for Marianne.”
“Well, yeah. That too. But I figured you really wanted me to understand, or you never would have contacted me in the first place. Where do you want me to turn?”
“Right up here.”
She followed his directions and found herself turning a block away from Juniata. “If the police are in this neighborhood they're going to spot my car, Kenny. I work with the ME's office, ya know.”
“It's all right.”
Anticipation. Molly heard it. She smelled it, laced into that otherworldly
scent of his, as if he put out some other species' pheromones. She wondered if any of the other women had smelled them? She wondered if they'd been this terrified?
Probably not. Probably not until he'd drugged them to the point they couldn't move and then brought out the toys.
Molly's heart rate was way past aerobic, and she was having trouble coordinating the clutch. Just how smart was she? She knew perfectly well what Kenny was, and she was deliberately driving to his place.