“What?” Regis looks confused.
“He wasn’t looking for another victim when he found Beth Ann. He came upon her place by accident. But the need was so strong, and the opportunity presented itself—he couldn’t resist.”It spurts out of me like a balloon deflating. I grip Regis’s door and sigh. My eyes meet his. “He’s losing control. Slowly, incrementally, but still. He’s going to make a mistake soon. You need to know what to look for, or you might miss it.”
Regis stares at me like I’ve just confessed to killing Beth Ann myself. After a moment, he relaxes.
“Look, I don’t know what this is, this thing you’ve got. Maybe it’s a gift, maybe it’s all bullshit. But I know you’re not a liar. I know you believe it. I have some time this afternoon. I could take you to one of the spots, but it would have to be just between us. Understand? I wouldn’t even consider this if I wasn’t so desperate to catch this bastard—if he wasn’t so good.”
I glance back to the café. I shouldn’t leave Myrtle to tend the guests alone. Not when she’s feeding. No matter what she says or how long she’s managed without me, but if I can convince her to close early, I can leave without worrying. “Can you come back around four?”
“It’s a date.”
THE SIGNPOSTPROCLAIMSTRAILHEAD & PARKINGin golden autumn lettering. Beside it, a matching bit of police tape is lying on the ground. Regis bends to scoop it into a pocket. An old road stretches before us, linear, parting the trees like a plow has been driven through the forest. The air is nippy, bright, laced with a smell I can’t place—old paper and ash.
“The fall colors will arrive soon,” he says to me.
I look up to see browning leaves, speckled and dry, ripening to sunny yellows with orange frill. “Aren’t they here?”
He laughs. “No. This is just a primer. In another couple of weeks, you’ll think you fell into a Willard Leroy Metcalf painting. It’s like fireworks going off all over these mountains.”
I walk over to the sign and place my finger in a groove, running it along the grain. It swings gently with the pressure. “Where are we?”
He squints. “About ten miles out of Malone. This is where we found the last victim.” He points down the trail. “She was there a ways. Not out in the open like this but in plain view for anyone on a hike.”
I turn away from the sign and step to the center of the trail, staring down it. I can feel him here, the Strangler, like a memory. He hunches over this place, an umbrella of fog. It belongs to him now, he thinks. This road and these trees. The night when it happened. He’s made it his. I see the trail leading before me like an arm, an extension of the man, his lost appendage. He leaves a little drift of his essence behind at every one—a time stamp, something he can follow back. It pours into me like wine, feeding me what I need to know. I see a glimpse of her—short hair, brightly colored windbreaker, a tube of lip balm in one pocket—and then I get my first real glimpse of him, a burst of movement from the edge of the trail like a mountain lion pouncing on its prey, so fast I can’t distinguish anything in the poor light.
“She came late in the day,” I say out loud.
“Yes. How did you know?” He steps toward me, studying my face as I stare down the dirt tracks striping the earth.
I glance upward. “Because he took her at night. The moon was almost full. She was visible between these trees. That’s why he chose this trail. It’s wide here; he could see easily without being seen.” I take a step, wait, take another. Slowly, I make my way down the center of the trail until I feel his energy dissipate. I step back into it, like crossing a fence, and turn to face Regis. “She came late, and he watched her pass. He took her on her way back to her car. By then it had grown dark. He likes the cover in this region. The way people trust the landscape even when they shouldn’t. The beauty puts them off their guard. It makes his job easier. He could kill a hundred women out here and people would still show up to these trails. They can’t resist what nature has wrought. It’s a playground for him.”
Regis lifts a hand to his head. He looks troubled, as if I’ve saidsomething incriminating or nonsensical, eyes narrowing, mouth tight. “You got all that from taking a few steps?”
I can feel the killer’s appreciation for this spot like a rug burn. It is etched into the land around me, the leaves, the cool brushes of air. A flame ignites in my chest, like hunger, sex, adrenaline, but it’s none of those. It is its own fuel, an acute drive bordering on pain, the need is so great. I want to bite down on my knuckle until the taste of blood, warm and metallic, fills my mouth. If Regis weren’t here, I’d scream. I’d tear my clothes off and race down this trail, frothing at the mouth. The nearness of the Strangler incenses me. To step where he stepped—the hunt dilates my veins, a flood of instinct. “Do you believe me now?” I ask Regis. “That I can help you?”
“I believe that you have a… an ability. Some kind of knack for this. I don’t know what it is. I’m willing to listen, though.”
I nod. There’s a turkey vulture circling overhead, gliding on invisible hoops of sky, blotting out the sun in lazy turns. Its wings are scarecrow straight, a boomerang returning to the same point again and again. Something died here since the woman. “So, what can you tell me?”
“Tell you?” He looks confused.
“He doesn’t use his hands,” I say frankly. “What is he strangling them with?”
His eyes jump from mine. “Parachute cord. He ties it like a tourniquet using a stick so he can tighten the loop with one hand. It gives him total control over the victim.”
I nod, press my lips together, scent the air around me like a bloodhound.
Regis continues. “We assume because he’s using his hand forother things.” He looks like he’s bitten into something foul.
The truth floats around me now, the smell of his sweat. “He masturbates,” I blurt with enough objectivity to curdle milk. “He holds something around their necks with one hand while he gets off with the other.” My lack of squeamishness inculpates me. I seethe way Regis’s brows rise with alarm, the part of his lips at my uncanny criminal insight. I’m a far cry from the nervous woman he questioned that day in the café.
“Yes, that’s true. But we never find any biological evidence at the scene,” he informs me.
“You mean semen?”
Regis turns a funny coral color across his nose and cheeks, a wave of strawberry passing under his beard. “He likes to clean up after himself. Which is why we think he’s chosen such out-of-the-way locations like this one, so he can take his time, tidy up the crime scene without risk of being interrupted. But it’s like you said—something has changed since Beth Ann’s murder. Something pushed him, tipped him over the edge just enough that he abandoned his usual penchant for planning and order.”
I know what that something is. My allure has been at work all right.
