The One That Got Away (4 page)

The second she was on the streets, she plugged in the headphones to her iPhone.

He tailed her down Fillmore, lagging only a half block behind her as he watched her cut her way through the world. Her self-absorption always allowed him to stick close without any fear of being spotted.

He’d started these surveillance missions after her second visit to the shelter. The first time, he’d put her behavior down to that of a mean-spirited person, but her return put her on his radar. This was a woman with contempt for the world and everyone who lived in it. That kind of behavior deserved to be punished.

His observations had unearthed a few interesting tidbits. Urban Paws wasn’t the only animal shelter she visited. She tormented the animals at most of the shelters around the city. On weekends, she liked to hit the clubs and steal from wallets and purses left out in the open, then get drunk on the take. She let any guy who showed her the slightest attention fuck her. She worked at one of those cheap jewelry boutiques in the Westfield Centre. His estimation of her was that she was a despicable human being who got her kicks from tormenting small animals and making people miserable. He wondered how she’d feel if someone tormented her. He’d made his decision. It was time for her to learn something about respect. He thumbed the knife in his pocket. It had been eight months since he’d left his mark on someone, and he would again tonight.

“See you later, Laurie,” he murmured to himself.

Other than a couple of kids making fools of themselves and someone trying to use a stolen credit card, Zoë’s shift at the mall was quiet. The downside of that was it gave her plenty of time to replay everything Jarocki had said during their session that morning. She knew he was challenging her, forcing her to examine her behavior and her mental mindset, but she didn’t like it. Jarocki made it sound so simple: event A resulted in behavior B, and if behavior B wasn’t modified, it would lead to result C. She wasn’t a machine. She was a person and far too complex to be pigeonholed, as Jarocki had pointed out.

Am I, though?

Completing her final walk through of the mall before she clocked out, she looked at her workplace with fresh eyes. Had she really chosen this place because it was the most dangerous mall in the Bay Area? Had she become a rent-a-cop just to put herself in harm’s way? Was it all done to punish herself? That theory made her sound so shallow and childish.

She didn’t buy Jarocki’s psychobabble. She had taken the mall-cop job for good reasons. People treated her differently when she returned to UC Davis after the abduction. A label had attached itself to her—victim. Everyone knew what had happened to her, and that event redefined her in their eyes. She had to get away from it. She could have switched schools, but she wanted to start over and do something as different from her PhD as she could get. Mall security was it. She had also found the job attractive because it didn’t require any qualifications or life commitment. She protected the mall one day at a time. When her shift ended, so did the work. You moved people on when they needed it, and if you caught someone stealing, you handed them off to the cops. No fuss, no muss, no strings. There was no mental conspiracy to harm herself. She believed the job was one that wouldn’t tax her, and truth be told, she liked the idea of punishing those who broke the rules. She knew what Jarocki would say to that.

She thought about Jarocki’s cop suggestion. He’d picked that up from her. They’d talked a few times about what she wanted to do with her life, and she’d mentioned law enforcement. She wanted to stop people like the man who’d abducted her and Holli. It wouldn’t make up for leaving Holli behind, but maybe she could prevent others from being victimized.

Could she really become a cop? It would take years. She didn’t have the time for that. She needed instant gratification. Also, she didn’t know how long her interest in it would last. Jarocki prattled on about PTSD being a passing phase. She could quite easily lose the desire to fight crime herself, so following the cop angle would be a total waste of time for everyone.

She smiled at the thought. She’d use that argument on Jarocki the next time he pulled that one from his psychologist’s arsenal.

She went into the staff locker room and changed out of her stiff, barely comfortable uniform. She clipped her pants onto a hanger. They managed to maintain their shape, whether she was wearing them or not. That was polyester for you.

In her own clothes, she slipped unnoticed from the mall. She rode home on her aged motorcycle. The VW had to go after the event. It had brought back too many memories. It was just another of those life adjustments she had to make. She never called what had happened “her escape” or “attempted murder.” She hadn’t escaped, not really. And she didn’t like to remind herself of how close she’d come to death. She always thought of it as “the event” or, if she felt brave, “the abduction.”

The motorcycle was efficient in the rush-hour crush from Richmond to San Francisco. While everyone sat in endless rows of traffic, she could lane split. She made it home to her apartment complex before 8:00 and jumped into the shower. She spent the next hour doing her hair and makeup before squeezing into a cherry-red cocktail dress, which rode the rail between sophisticated and slutty. It was short enough and plunging enough to show off her assets, but cut conservatively enough to be flattering. The night was cool enough for nylons, but she went without. She wanted people to see her bare skin.

She called for a cab. No drinking and driving for her. Besides, a dress and heels didn’t work well with a motorcycle.

While she waited for the taxi to arrive, she checked herself out in the mirror. She looked good in the dress. Seeing how good she looked pleased her. If she wanted to get Jarocki-technical about things, looking good boosted her self-esteem, and wasn’t that a good thing?

The therapist was wrong about her. She didn’t hit the town to put herself in danger or reinsert herself into the same situations that had led to her abduction. She went out to have fun. Plain and simple. She was alive, and that was worth celebrating at least once a week and twice on holidays.

Her cell phone rang. The cab was outside. She told the driver she’d be down.

She checked herself out one last time. She smiled. She was dressed to kill.

CHAPTER FOUR

Laurie Hernandez was dead. She dangled from her wrists, her body slack, her head canted forward. Beck shined a light on her face. Her expression was peaceful. Gravity took hold of a strand of bloody spittle, pulling it toward the ground. She had no doubt bitten through her tongue. He’d put her out of her misery after a couple of hours of punishment, with a thrust of his knife to her heart. He wasn’t a monster.

The abduction and punishment had gone perfectly. He’d snatched Laurie Hernandez after work. She’d been so absorbed with her cell phone, she hadn’t noticed him following her on BART and on the street. He knew her route home. It had been easy to just walk up on her, tranquilize her with an anesthetic pilfered from Urban Paws, stash her in a Dumpster while he got his Honda Pilot, and then transport her to his skiff to drive out to the pier. Every step had been planned and calculated.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

No reply came from the dead woman, but he thought she had learned. She said she had while he flogged her, but most of them did. They were willing to say anything just to make the pain stop. But there always came a point, usually just before he ended the punishment, when the sinner either confessed to their crimes or remained defiant. In Laurie Hernandez’s final minutes, she’d begged for forgiveness for all she’d done.

She’d almost thanked him when he put the whip down and stood before her, placing the knife over her heart. She had surprised him. He’d expected a fight with thrashing, kicking, and screaming. Instead, he got only surrender. She just closed her eyes, and he drove the blade home with a hammer blow to the butt of the knife.

“People are unpredictable creatures,” he said and stretched to pat her cheek with his gloved hand.

He left Laurie Hernandez to hang while he got down to the important business of cleanup and disposal. When he’d lived in the open country near Bishop, it had been easy to operate. Bishop had afforded him the isolation, time, and space to be casual with the housecleaning. Here in San Francisco, he had to be more precise and refined with his punishments. These were skills he needed after the debacle in Bishop. Losing one of the two party girls he’d collected there was a mistake that he was lucky to have gotten away with. The city wasn’t so bad, though. San Francisco was a city with benefits. While the desert was his friend before, the ocean was his friend here. He could simply bundle Laurie Hernandez up and sink her body out there. If she ever washed up, the water would have done its damage, leaving no ties back to him.

And while the city was short on open space where he could work in relative privacy, it did have reconstruction projects. The waterfront was going through a big change with many of the piers under redevelopment. It amazed him how many of these sites went unsecured at night, with no security patrol and often no more than a chain-link fence and lights for protection. But these people forgot one thing—access from the water. It wasn’t hard for him to drift in on a skiff and work in relative quiet. This was why he’d chosen Pier 25 as his new workplace. It was intended to be an arts and entertainment center after the America’s Cup tournament. He got a thrill out of handing down his punishment in this place, knowing full well that dozens of construction workers would be literally covering his tracks and destroying the crime scene the following morning.

He pressed a gloved hand to Laurie’s chest and tugged the knife free with the other. Little blood escaped from the wound, courtesy of her dead heart, but what there was dripped onto the plastic sheeting he’d placed over his work area. He bagged and double bagged the knife in Ziplocs and placed it in his backpack. He crouched before the whip on the tarp. In its half-coiled state, in the dim light, it looked like a dead snake. He liked its unassuming nature. It was little more than a length of braided leather, but it possessed the power to devastate the human body. Just ten lashes wrecked most people. It was an elegant device. He picked the whip up, carefully coiled it, and placed it inside another bag. There was no disposing of this. He would clean it and ensure it was ready for the next offender.

Other than the plastic sheeting and the cuffs, the whip and knife were all the equipment he required. He liked the efficient setup. It was uncluttered. Clean. Simple. It was the way he lived his life, and the way others should live theirs. He believed you should go through life causing other people as little inconvenience as possible. Sadly, that wasn’t the attitude these days. The world needed a mirror held up to itself to teach it a lesson. Laurie Hernandez was that mirror.

It was time to take her down, wrap her up in plastic, and send her to her final resting place. He had her raised up on a simple block-and-tackle rig he’d found at the job site. He shined a light across Laurie Hernandez’s back and buttocks. The whip had done its job. Each lash was an open wound. Skin gone. Flesh exposed. Nerve endings raw. He was impressed with his handiwork. He’d gotten good coverage with little overlap. Impressive considering he’d flogged her more than forty times.

He’d always tried to be precise with the lashings, ensuring each one connected with virgin skin. Once the whip did its damage, there was no advantage of retreading on torn-up real estate. After forty strikes, there was little chance of finding untouched flesh.

A sudden noise from the entrance of the construction site caught his attention. It was the slap of a footfall on concrete. It bounced off the skeletal steel structure. A laugh followed. More footfalls.

People. Was it someone returning to work? Was it security? Had he misjudged the place? No. He’d watched this site for two weeks before selecting it. He caught a glimpse of movement in the distance. It was a couple kids, hoodies covering their heads. Beck dropped to a crouch behind a steel column.

His heart galloped in his chest. It didn’t matter who his intruders were. He couldn’t be found. He had to go.

He looked up at Laurie Hernandez. There was no time to take her with him. He’d have to leave her. He snatched up his backpack, which had the knife and all her possessions in it, and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t run. He slipped into the shadows and cut a path back to his skiff. His movements were silent and precise as he clambered down the cat ladder to the dock and untied his bow rope. It made the noises of his gate-crashers all the easier to hear. They were screwing around—looking for mischief and not finding it. Their plans would change when they discovered Laurie Hernandez. It would be a tough lesson for them as well as for him. Some nights didn’t go your way.