Twenty-five
Her house was full of people and noisy tools and machines. Now her front yard was full of people and noisy tools and machines.
She couldn’t defy her brother, Xander, and her own common sense and take off to the forest or down to the shoreline for quiet. For a couple of hours she made the best of it by taking pictures of what was essentially demo—just like the interior—while Lelo uprooted old woody shrubs and ugly tree stumps she’d simply stopped seeing with a massive chain attached to a massive tractor.
The sounds of a wood chipper, of chain saws, of trucks, joined the sounds of nail guns and saws.
Tag loved every minute.
Eventually she escaped inside, popped in her earbuds, and drowned out most of it with music.
The tap on her shoulder had her nearly jumping out of her chair.
“Sorry,” Mason apologized.
“God! I didn’t know you were back.”
“You couldn’t hear a plane land on your deck with this noise—and with Lady Gaga blasting in your ears.”
“Lady Gaga, and others, help me tolerate the rest.” But she took out the earbuds and paused her playlist. “Did they—the autopsy?”
“Yeah. There’s not much more I can tell you. She hadn’t had any food, any water, since about eight, nine o’clock Friday night. That’s consistent with Marla. The same type of blade was used on both. No prints, no DNA, no hairs but her own, that’s also consistent. He’s careful. Anyway, I’m going to work outside on the deck for a while, take advantage of the sun. I’m heading to Seattle tomorrow, and surprise, they’re calling for rain.”
“I don’t know how you can work outside with this noise.”
“My great powers of concentration. These are nice.” He nodded toward the photos on her screen. “These were taken in the forest just west of here?”
“Yes. I was just checking downloads and orders. And I think I’m going to do more notecards—nature shots. They tend to sell.”
Wanting his company just a bit longer, she began to scroll. “This one, then no, no, yes. This one. Then . . . maybe this.”
“Hold that. That’s a—what do you call it?”
“Nurse log.”
“Right, right, because it nurses other stuff. Moss and mushrooms and lichen.”
“And the younger trees. I love how they grow out of it, the way—in this one—their roots wrap around the mother.”
“Pretty cool.” With a hand light on her shoulder, Mason leaned in a little more to study. “When did you take that?”
“Oh, this one’s been up for a couple weeks. Got some nice hits, decent downloads. I figured I’d crop it a little more, and it would make a nice notecard, for a variety set of eight.”
“Yeah, I can see that. I like it. Anyway, I’m going to get to work, let you get back to your own.”
She’d barely started up before someone tapped her shoulder again. At least this time she didn’t jump.
“Sorry.” Kevin gave her shoulder another pat. “I wanted to ask if you’re ready for us to move you into your studio space.”
“It’s really ready for that?”
“It’s really ready, and we can start working in here again first thing tomorrow.”
“Then I’m ready. Let me shut down, unplug and all that.”
“We can start hauling out the supplies, the mat board deal, and the rest.”
“I need those worktables I bought. Downstairs storage.”
“Already brought them up, and everything you had marked for the studio.”
“I need to let Jenny know I’m ready for the desk whenever she can get to it.”
“Oh, she knows. I keep her up-to-date.”
“I’d better get moving.”
“Jeez, almost forgot.” As if jogging his own memory, Kevin tapped the side of his head. “Lelo and his dad need you outside. We’ll get things moving for you.”
“All right.” She shut down, unplugged.
Taking the back stairs, she hurried through the house, out the front.
There were questions about colors, heights, naturalizing, grass seeds. She had to switch gears from studio space to curb appeal. While she answered, debated, questioned, she reminded herself how glorious it would feel to head into summer the following year with it all done, with the quiet surrounding her like a gift from God.
Switching gears again, she went back in, up the stairs. Found it odd that the door to her studio space was closed, and the crew nowhere in sight.
She opened the door and froze.
The desk she’d first seen piled in Cecil’s barn stood gleaming, facing out as she’d wanted, with the leather chair she’d bought and stored behind it. Her computer, her in and out boxes, her desk lamp sat on it, along with a little squat vase of wildflowers.
Her tools, equipment, supplies were all arranged just as she’d diagrammed—and the sliding barn door on her new storage closet stood open to show everything inside organized on shelves.
The walls, a warm cognac, made a rich backdrop for some of her framed prints.
Jenny stood, her hands clasped between her breasts, all but vibrating beside a grinning Kevin.
“Tell me you love it. Please, please love.”
“Oh my God. I . . .”
“Say the words first. Say you love it.”
“Of course, I love it. I’d be crazy not to love it. You finished the desk. You didn’t tell me.”
Now Jenny threw up her arms in a V. “Surprise!”
“It’s—it’s exactly what I wanted. It’s more than I’ve ever had. I’ve never had a work space like this. It’s always been on the go, or jury-rigged.” More than dazed, she wandered. “Oh! The floors! The floors are done in here.”
“That was a trick.” Kevin’s grin just widened. “Shows you how the original wood’s going to come back just right. I thought, hey, let’s get it done in here—takes longer, but you won’t have to haul out again when we do the rest of the floors. It’s done.”
“Not done,” Jenny corrected. “She needs a nice love seat over there, a table—a comfortable thinking spot. And an accent rug, pillows, a throw. And—you’ll find what you want. But you love it.”
Incredibly moved, Naomi brushed her fingers over the petals of the wildflowers. “I’ve never had anyone go to this much trouble for me, outside of family.”
“We’re family now.”
Eyes welling, she looked over. “Jenny.”
Jenny flew across the room, grabbed her up in a hug, swayed, bounced, wept a little. “I’m so happy. I’m so happy you’re happy.”
“Thank you so much. So much. You’re the best.”
“I am!”
Laughing now, Naomi drew back. “Both of you.”
“We are! We were worried Lelo wouldn’t be able to keep you outside long enough for us to finish, but he did.”
“That’s what that was all about.”
“We’re the best, the sneaky best. I have to go.”
“I’m driving her back home.”
“He’s worried about me even being in the car by myself. Everybody’s so worked up . . . but we’re not going to think about that now.” Blinking at tears, Jenny swiped a hand through the air, erased sad thoughts. “You’re going to sit down in your new chair and bask.”
“I absolutely am. Thank you. Both of you. All of you.”
Alone, she did just as Jenny told her. Sat and basked. Then got up and looked at everything.
Then, forgetting the noise, she gave herself the pleasure of working in her own space.
With Tag apparently preferring Mason’s company, and all of her tools and supplies exactly where she wanted them, Naomi lost track of time in the best possible way. The productivity and the pleasure of working in a settled, organized space told her she’d been making do far too long, sacrificing all this for the pick-up-and-go she’d felt necessary.
No one chased her, she thought, but her own ghosts and neuroses. Time to put it all away, time to believe instead of doubt that the past was over and done.
She had a home, and in it, she’d watch summer roll in, then feel the change in the air, then the light change as fall painted the world. She’d have fires lit when winter blew, and be there, just be there when spring bloomed again.
She had a home, she thought again as she added the last of the new stock to her page. She had friends, good friends. She had a man she . . . All right, maybe she wasn’t entirely ready for what she felt for Xander, but she could be ready to see what happened tomorrow, or next week or— Maybe a week at a time was all she could be ready for in that department.
But it was a hell of an improvement.
Most of all, she was ready to be happy—all the way happy. To hold on to what she had, what she was building for herself.
Now it was time—past time, she realized as she noted the time on her computer—to go down and put a meal together.
She took the back stairs, reminding herself to hit her list and pick out the lighting for that area, and, singing the Katy Perry that had been in her earbuds when she’d shut down, she all but danced into the kitchen.
To find Mason at the counter, laptop open, maps spread out, coffee steaming, a couple of legal pads scattered among the work debris.
“Hey. I thought you were working outside in the sunshine.”
“I needed more room.”
“I see that. No problem. I have enough room here for the shrimp farfalle I have in mind.”
“I asked Xander to pick up pizza. He’s on his way.”
“Oh.” Already in the fridge, she paused, glanced back. “That’s fine, if you’re in a pizza mood, and saves me the trouble.”
Closing the fridge, she switched modes, decided they could eat on the deck. “Where’s the dog?”
“He wanted out. Everyone’s gone for the day.”
“So I see—or rather hear. I worked later than I’d planned. You have to see my studio space.” The thrill of it bubbled through her. “It’s finished, and it’s awesome. I’m going ahead with that darkroom space—in the basement. I don’t do film that often, and Kevin said the plumbing would be easy down there. So it would be really quiet, out of the way, and make use of some of that space.”
She turned, found him watching her quietly. “And I’m babbling while you’re working. Why don’t I take this outside, let you finish up in peace?”
“Why don’t you sit down? I need to talk to you about something.”
“Sure. Is everything all right? Of course everything’s not all right,” she said, shut her eyes for a minute. “I’ve been so caught up in my own space, my own work, I forgot about Donna and Marla. Forgot about your work.”
She sat at the counter with him. “It didn’t seem real for a little while. Donna’s funeral’s the day after tomorrow, and Xander . . . It’s the second funeral since I’ve been here, the second terrible funeral.”
“I know. Naomi—”
He broke off as the dog raced in from the front, danced in place, raced back again.
“That would be Xander and pizza,” Naomi said, started to rise.
“Just sit.”
“You found something.” She put a hand on his arm, squeezed. “Something about the murders.”
She swiveled in the stool when Xander came in, tossed the pizza box on the counter by the cooktop.
“What do you know?”
“Let me start with this. Naomi, this is the picture you took in the forest just west of here. This nurse log.”
She frowned at the image he brought up on his computer. “That’s right. Why did you download it?”
“Because this is one I took yesterday, when Donna’s body was discovered.” Carefully cropped, he thought, as he toggled to it. “It’s the same log.”
“All right, yes.”
“Donna’s body was dumped just off the track, beside this log. It’s an eight-minute trek into the woods—and that’s without carrying a hundred and fifty pounds. It bothered me right off. Why take her in that far? You want her to be found, why take her so far in—put in that time, that effort? Why that spot?”
“I don’t know, Mason. Wanting a little more time before she was found?”
“No point to it. But this place, right here.” He tapped the screen. “It has a point. You’ve had that photo on your site a couple of weeks.”
The chill skipped along her skin. “If you’ve got some wild idea he . . . this photo inspired him or factored into where he left her, it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, I’ve got a dozen photos up I took in that area.”
“He had to pick one.” Face grim, Xander studied the images.
“It’s just a weird coincidence,” Naomi insisted. “Disturbing, but a coincidence. I barely knew either of the victims. I’ve only been in this area since March.”
Saying nothing, Mason brought up another photo—one she’d taken of the bluff—then brought up another side by side. “Yours, and the crime scene shot. Up on your site, Naomi, for a couple months.”
And that chill seeped in, dug into her bones.
“Why would anyone use my photos to choose where they left a body? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.”
“Stop it.” Clamping a hand on her shoulder, Xander spoke sharply. “Stop it and breathe.”
Annoyance at the tone shoved the weight off her chest. “It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”
“And doing what he did to Marla and Donna does?”
“No, no, but that’s—that’s a pathology, right?” She appealed to Mason. “I know enough about what you do to understand that. But I don’t understand how you could take these pictures and begin to think this killer is, what, a fan of my work?”
“It’s more.”
Xander had both hands on her shoulders now, and though they kneaded at the tensed muscles, she understood that another purpose was to keep her in place.
“What’s more?”
Mason took her hand a moment, squeezed it, then brought up another image. “You took this shot in Death Valley in February. I had the locals send me the shots from the body dump.”
He brought it up, heard her breath shudder out. “The victim was midtwenties, white, blonde, lived and worked in Vegas. High-risk vic—stripper, junkie, hooker. It didn’t pop on Winston’s like-crimes search because the locals charged her pimp—who’d been known to tune up his girls—with the crime.
“In January, you took this in Kansas—Melvern Lake. The body of a sixty-eight-year-old female was left here.” Again, he brought up the matching shot. “She lived alone, and as her house had been broken into, things taken, they put it down to robbery gone south.”
“But it was the same,” Naomi said quietly. “What was done to her, the same.”
“There’s a pattern. You flew home for Christmas.”
“Yes. I left my car at the airport. I didn’t want to drive that far for the week I’d be home.”
“A shot you took in Battery Park, and the corresponding crime scene photo. Another high-risk vic. Working girl, junkie, early midtwenties. Blonde.”
“Donna wasn’t blonde. And the older woman—”
“Donna wasn’t his first choice. Neither was the older woman. It’s a pattern, Naomi.”
The cold, a jagged ball of ice, settled in her belly. “He’s using my work.”
“There are more.”
“How many more?”
“Four more I can connect through the photos. Then there are the missings, missing from areas I’ve been able to track you to through the photos. I need the dates—the dates and locations for the last two years. You keep track.”
“Yes. I don’t blog about a place until I’ve left it—I’m careful. But I keep a log of where I was, what date I took what shots. On my computer.”
“I need you to send them to me. If you’ve kept a log further back, I want that, too.”
She focused on Xander’s hands, hands warm and firm on her shoulders. “I have a log from when I left New York, from when I left six years ago. I have everything.”
“I want everything. I’m sorry, Naomi.”
“He didn’t just stumble onto my site and decide to use my photos. He’s following me, either literally or through my blog, or my photos. How far back have you gone?”
“Those two years so far.”
“And you think it’s longer.”
“I’m going to find out.”
“He’s not following, he’s stalking.” When her shoulders only went stiffer under his hands, Xander turned her around on the stool. “You’ll handle it because you have to. She’ll handle it,” he said to Mason without taking his eyes off Naomi. “He’s been stalking you for at least two years. His preferred victim is blonde because you are. And they’re all you. That’s what your brother’s not saying.”
“It’s a theory, and I need more information.”
Xander flicked a glance at Mason, barely a heartbeat. “You’re trying to ease her into it because you’re worried she’ll break. But that’s not the way for you, is it, Naomi?” His gaze met hers, held her. “You’re not going to break.”
“I’m not going to break.” But a part of her was trying desperately to shore up the cracks. “He . . . He takes them, and he keeps them at least for a couple of days so he can rape them, torture them, gratify himself. After he’s beaten them and raped them, kept them in the dark, cut them, choked them, kept them bound and gagged, he strangles them.”
She drew a shaky breath, then another, steadier before she turned to Mason. “Like our father. Too much like our father now, too much like it to say there are other cruel, sick men who do this. He’s killing like Thomas Bowes, and following me, the way I followed our father that night.”
“I believe he’s studied Thomas Bowes—he may have written to him, visited him, and I’m pulling that line. I believe he’s studied you. He’s here, and for the first time that I can verify, he’s killed twice in the same place.”
“Because I’m in the same place.”
“Yes. From what I’m putting together, he’s evolved. His method, while not exactly the same as Bowes’s, has mimicked it.”
No coincidence, no excuses, she ordered herself. The facts stood clear and straight. She had to face them.
“Why hasn’t he come after me? The others are what you call surrogates; why hasn’t he come after me? There have to have been countless opportunities.”
“Because then it’s over,” Xander said, shrugged. “Sorry,” he said to Mason. “It’s what makes sense.”
“And I agree. I still have more to do, more to analyze, but I can tell you I’ve got enough to have convinced Chief Winston and the coordinator of the BAU to send a team here. This unsub is smart, organized, mission-oriented, and tenacious. But he’s also arrogant—and that arrogance, using those particular sites for his dump spots, is going to break this open. We’re going to stop him, Naomi. I need the data from you. It’s key.”
“I’ll go up, email you the files.” She slid off the stool, went up the back steps without another word.
“She’s telling herself she can’t have this.” Mason lifted his hands to encompass the house, the life. “Not now. What Bowes is, what she tried to leave behind, came here with her.”
“Yeah, she’s telling herself that. She’s wrong.”
With a nod, Mason started to get up, sat back again. “You go. The torch passed while I wasn’t around. And we both came from him. She needs somebody who doesn’t carry that.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
—
She sat at her desk, her beautifully restored desk in her beautifully designed studio. A space that, less than an hour before, had made her so happy, so hopeful.
Had she really told herself, really believed, the past was done? Never done, she thought now. Never over. The ghosts never exorcised.
And once again a killer’s life twined and twisted with hers.
When she heard footsteps, she opened her computer, began to bring up the files.
“It’s going to take me a few minutes,” she said, very, very calmly when Xander came in.
“I got that.” He wandered, measuring the space, the look and feel of it. “Swank, but not fancy. That’s a hard note to hit.”
“You should go down. You and Mason should get to that pizza before it gets any colder.”
“Nothing wrong with cold pizza.”
“There’s nothing for you to do here, Xander.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You need another chair in here. How else is somebody going to hang out and bug you when you’re working? Why don’t you spit out what’s circling around in your gut. I can figure some of it anyway.”
“You want me to spit it out? Start with if I hadn’t gotten it into my head I could stay here, live here, Donna would still be alive.”
“So, straight to the cliché?” He shook his head. “I thought you’d do better. That’s not even a challenge. If you’d moved on, how many others before somebody like your brother finally clued in on the pattern? And what are the chances anybody but him would’ve seen the connection with your photos?”
“I don’t know the chances. But obviously the chances of me being connected to a serial killer for the second time are really good.”
“Sucks for you.”
Shock snagged her breath. “Sucks for me?”
“Yeah, it does. It sucks for you that some lunatic’s out there obsessed with you and emulating your fuck of a father. But you’re not the reason, you’re the excuse. The reason’s inside this sick bastard’s mind, just like your father’s reasons were in his.”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter: excuse, reason. It doesn’t matter what’s in their minds, what drives them to kill. It matters that for the first twelve years of my life I grew up in a house with a monster, and I loved him. It matters that where I spent those years is now best known as Thomas David Bowes’s killing field. It matters that what I grew up with followed us to New York until my mother killed herself rather than live with it. It matters that it’s followed me, leaving death behind, ever since.”
She wouldn’t weep. Tears were useless. But fury, full-blown fury, felt righteous. “It matters that I tried to convince myself I could have what the majority of the human race has. A home, friends, people I care about. A damn idiot dog. All of it.”
“You have that, all of it.”
“It was—is—a fantasy. I got caught up in it, let myself believe it was real, but—”
“So what, you’ll pack up, take off, sell this place, dump the dog?”
The fact stood clear, she thought again. “Sometimes people have roots so corrupted, they shouldn’t try to plant them.”
“That’s bullshit, and it’s weak. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, I’ll give you a pass, but that’s weak. You’ve got better than that, baby.”
“You don’t know what I’ve got, baby.”
“Hell I don’t, and because I do, I know you’re not going to let some son of a bitch send you running.”
He put the palms of his hands on her desk and leaned toward her. “I know what I’ve got, and I’m damned if I’ll let you run. You’ve got what you need right here, and you’re going to stick.”
She surged to her feet. “Don’t tell me what I’m going to do.”
“I’m telling you. You’re going to stick because what you want, what you need is right here. What makes you happy is right here. You need me, and I make you happy. And I fucking well need you, so you’ll stick.”
“It’s my life, my choice.”
“Screw that. You want to try to run, I’ll just bring you back.”
“Stop telling me what to do. Stop yelling at me.”
“You started it. Maybe you haven’t worked it through your system, pulled it free from the I’ve-got-bad-blood excuses you fall back on, but you’ve got feelings for me.”
“How can you say things like that? How can you minimize this?”
“Because you overinflate it, so it’s easy to stick a damn pin in it. Because I’ve got feelings for you. I’m in fucking love with you, so you’re going to stick. And that’s it.”
She took one stumbling step back, went pale.
Xander rolled his eyes. “Cut that out and breathe. Yell back. You don’t panic when you’re pissed. And maybe I’d have done that with more class if I weren’t pissed right back at you.”
Or maybe not, he thought, but either way.
“Sunlight in your hair. Morning light. You’re standing there, working on a piece of plywood, sunlight all over you, and I feel like someone kicked me off a damn cliff. So you’re not going anywhere, just check that off the list.”
“It can’t work.”
“You should try to balance out that Pollyanna attitude of yours, season it with some cynicism. It has been working,” he added. “For both of us. I know what the hell works and what doesn’t. We work, Naomi.”
“That was before . . .” When his eyebrows lifted, she dragged a hand through her hair, tried to find level ground again. “Can’t you see what’s going to happen? I pray, and I’ll keep praying Mason’s right. They’ll find him, they’ll stop him. And I’ll hope with all I have they do that before he kills again. But when they do find him, it’ll all fall apart again. Me, my father, whoever this maniac is, all tied together. And the press—”
“Oh, fuck the press. You’ll stand up to it.”
“You have no idea what it’s like.”
“You’ll stand up to it,” he repeated, without a hint of doubt. “And you won’t be alone. You’ll never have to be alone again. You can count on me.”
“Oh God, Xander.”
When he crossed to her, she tried to back away, shook her head, but he simply grabbed her, pulled her in. “You can count on me. And you’re damn well going to.”
He tipped her head back, kissed her more gently than he ever had. “I love you.” Kissed her again, drew her in, just held. “Get used to it.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“You don’t know until you try. We’re not going anywhere, Naomi.”
She felt herself breathe in, breathe out. “I’ll try.”
“That’ll do.”