Twelve
The sun was beating down. What a poor excuse for a January. Too hot, especially after all the fun in the snow only a few days ago. She laid back against a plastic chair someone else had set out a long time ago, watching with her eyes while trying to look still and resting. Her big, dark glasses helped with that a bit, since hopefully nobody would see the minute motions of her eyes.
She heard someone approaching, but kept a watch out anyways, not bothering to look. Whoever was doing these murders was ballsy, but not this ballsy. There must have been two hundred people in plain view. He'd have been caught by the time he made it to the end of the sand.
"Erin Russo?"
His voice made her turn even as she had planned on pretending she hadn't heard him. He sounded like honey tasted, sweet and dark and everything in between.
"Craig Hutchinson?"
He hadn't dressed for the beach, but that just put her at an advantage. She was putting herself on display for him. Taunting him with her body, to an extent, and if he thought they were there for a swim the effect wouldn't be as distinct.
"Yeah, that's me. You want to get something to eat?"
"Where were you thinking?"
"I don't know this part of town," he confessed. "You got any recommendations?"
That was a surprise. A guy like this, he wasn't killing because he was losing his goddamn mind. That was why they hadn't caught him yet. The guys who thought it all through, they made plans. If you tried to mess with their plan, they would make a new one before they followed through.
Yet, this guy had come here with no particular plan except wearing a heavily-padded motorcycle jacket and looking like he could train with any of the guys down the beach, and could probably outrun all of them. She filed that knowledge away for later.
"Oh, sure. There's a Coney Island right at the edge of the beach. It's pretty good."
She rolled out of the chair and picked up her purse. It was heavy with the weight of her gun, but she didn't show that she felt the extra weight. She'd put it in the middle to try to get rid of as much blocking as she could. If she was lucky, he wouldn't even know it was there until the moment she pulled it on him.
"This way." She started to walk, and he walked beside her, his boots leaving deep impressions in the soft sand.
"You come around here often?"
"Not often enough," she said. Play a role. She wasn't Erin Russo, workaholic police detective, but that didn't mean she wanted to be Erin Russo, beach rat, either. "It's only a few miles from my apartment, but I'm usually working too much."
"I hear you on that," he said. His voice sounded gregarious, but his face didn't show anything besides squinting at the supposed-to-be-winter sun.
"But I'm between contracts right now, so—the beach it is, I guess."
"That's cool. What do you do for work?"
She'd spent a long time thinking about the answer to that question. She wasn't going to hope for another Roy-type where they didn't bother to ask, and unlike that time, there was a very good reason not to mention her real job.
"I'm a photographer," she said. She'd bought a camera once, paid almost six hundred dollars for a pretty nice one. It was still sitting in the padded case she'd bought with it. It had three photos of handsome dogs she had seen walking past the apartment building on the memory card, a few photos of her sofa, and nothing else. "I mostly do magazine shoots."
"Oh yeah? What magazines?"
"Bridal magazines, mostly. Just easy stuff."
"Cool," he said, but Erin could tell that he wasn't really interested. That was exactly what she'd hoped. That he wouldn't want to hear too much about her job when she dropped that little tidbit. So his disinterest fit perfectly.
"I'm sorry, how rude of me. What do you do, Craig?"
He looked tired. Bored, even. "I work on bikes, mostly. Sometimes I do a little car repair on the side, but it's not often."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." He didn't elaborate, just tapped his thumbs on the table where they'd been seated and looked around for a waitress. "What's takin' her so long, you think?"
They hadn't seen anyone, so there was no reason to assume that it was a her, and they'd only been seated a little less than a minute, so it hadn't been that long. Jumpy or entitled, pick one. She wasn't sure which it was, but it was one of those.
Erin frowned. She was liking this guy less and less by the minute, but she wasn't there to like him. She was there to get close to him and figure out what he had to do with her sister's murder. It was hard to imagine that her sister had seen anything in him at all. Then again, maybe he was on-edge. She could think of a few reasons.
If she was generous, he might be upset that he couldn't reach her sister. Might be trying to find a way to broach the subject with her without sounding insensitive. That would make about anyone edgy. 'Hey, have you seen that person who looks identical to you lately?' Yeah, right.
If she wasn't generous, maybe he was filled with nervous energy because she was exactly that. Identical to the woman he'd just killed. It wasn't often you got to have your cake and eat it, too. He would eat his cake twice, if he got the chance, but that was a special treat for anyone. For serial killers, from what she'd been told, it was a hundred times worse. It was all about repetition. About chasing that first high, and each one was less than the last.
But a repeat, she'd be irresistible. The one that might actually be able to compete.
He pinched his lips together. "You want to get out of here?"
She shrugged. It had been a couple minutes. Longer than it should have been, anyway. "Sure."
She followed him out. She had taken her car, but she didn't raise a fuss when he took her over to a motorcycle. He stepped over it and it hummed to life as he handed her back a helmet that fit snugly enough to hurt her ears.
"Get on!" She could tell he was shouting, but it was only about loud enough to hear clearly.
"Where are we going?"
"Where do you want to go?"
"I've got an apartment a quarter-mile away. I could mix us something to drink." She didn't realize how loud she was shouting until her chest started to hurt a little with the effort.
"Sounds great. Give me directions while we're moving."
Erin had to jump a little to get herself properly situated on the back of the thing, and her bare feet pressed against the textured rubber of the pegs felt odd. She took extra care to keep her knees spread a little too wide, to avoid the hot pipes on her thighs. It pressed her lower onto the bike, and opened up her mound to grinding hard against the seat, the low vibrations of the bike sending spikes of pleasure through her that she would have rather done without. She needed a clear head to get this guy. She wrapped her arms around his waist, surprisingly thin compared to his relative bulk, and squeezed tight.
"You ready?"
She had better be, because she was already in way too deep.