As the Crown Vic up ahead indicated for the next off-ramp, his heart sank, and a bitterness fouled his mouth. He followed the Vic as it turned off the highway and into the cracked parking lot of the Foxy Club and Motel. The red Xs pulsed into the wet night with a promise of hot adult entertainment.
He drew alongside the curb across the side street from the lot. He watched the vehicle park. From this aspect he couldn’t make out the plate, so held out hope that he’d made a mistake, that somehow the car was not hers ... but then the door opened, and she got out.
Fuck.
Maddocks watched as she strode toward the motel office. A few minutes later she exited the office and made for the club door. She spoke to the bouncer outside, and he let her in. A strange hot stab seared through Maddocks’s chest. He punched the dash of his Impala, hard, and swore again, his mind, his body, every inch of him humming with memories of their own liaison in that motel room for which she’d just gone and paid up-front. And now she was in there hunting for a conquest. Within a half hour she could be banging her victim in that room, on that bed.
He fisted his hands around the wheel, debating whether to go in there and haul her out. Or ... go in there and take her to that room himself. A kind of madness swirled around and around and around inside his skull along with the firestorm of sexual frustration consuming his body. He bit down on it all, rammed his Impala into gear, and he hit the highway, driving home too fast, trying to outrun his feelings. And yeah, his burning jealousy. His anger at her for doing this, knowing at the same time it was really none of his bloody business.
Angie’s nerves zipped and fizzed like loose electrical wires smacking wet ground. Since she’d tasted Maddocks’s kiss, the shape of her lust had changed. It had grown into a bloodthirsty and fanged thing deep inside her chest, inside her belly, and it had driven her here, to her hunting ground in search of relief she knew she might not find. Not this time. Not after that kiss.
The words of the forensic shrink, Grablowski, drummed through her brain as she scanned the dance floor.
His hunting zone is where his desire for anonymity and his desire to operate within his comfort zone meet ...
The parallels unsettled her deeply, because this washercomfort zone, just far enough out of town, but not too far. Anonymous enough at this hour of a weeknight. And here she was herself escalating in some way. Devolving.
The barkeep grinned at her as she took a seat at the bar. “The usual?”
She nodded. But there was nothing usual about this night, she thought as he placed a vodka tonic in front of her. The barkeeper was shirtless tonight—apart from a black bow tie around his thickly corded neck. He’d oiled his torso, and his muscles rippled like a beautiful animal under his tan-bed skin. She inhaled deeply, trying to appreciate the view, trying to erase the sensation of Maddocks’s torso under her palm, his wet shirt ... the glorious taste and feel of him. The need in his eyes. The barkeep turned to reach for a bottle, and she saw that heart-shaped pieces of fabric had been cut away to expose his butt cheeks. Christ. She looked away.Find your conquest. Get this out of your system. Go home. Sleep. Start again tomorrow.
Angie scanned the crowd. Not very busy. Tonight the club theme was in tribute to a rock star who’d overdosed, and as the disco ball spun it sparked purple light over dancers who moved like sick lovers, pelvises grinding to the slow, seductive songs. The lyrics were about making love ... about beingengaged with a kiss, the sweat of your body covering mine ...
Angie shook herself and reached for her drink, sipped. But even the taste of her drink was off tonight. She stilled as a man at the far end of the bar caught her eye. Tall. Dark blond. Awesome body. Defined jaw. Nice wide mouth. Pale ice-blue eyes that reminded her of an Alaskan malamute. Her pulse quickened, and she inhaled slowly. This was the one. She took another sip, staring directly at him over the rim of her glass as she swallowed. Her brazen attention snared his interest instantly, and he began to make his way over.
This was the ritual—pick a victim. Feel the soft rush of power as he came over to do her bidding ... but the power feeling didn’t come tonight. Again, Grablowski’s words snaked through her brain.
We all have what is called a paraphilic love map, and these love maps begin to develop shortly after puberty. But the sexual predator, clinically speaking, has developed a love map where his lust is attached to fantasies and practices that are either socially forbidden, disapproved of, ridiculed, or penalized. And his fantasies usually involve aggression, domination, control. He becomes aroused by mere thoughts of sexual aggression ...
She shook herself again, but she was unable to obliterate the echo of Grablowski’s words inside her skull, or the echoes she could suddenly see so starkly within herself, or the unease that these thoughts brought—because there was nothing weird inherchildhood that could have made her this way. It was something that had evolved later, after her disastrous affair, and she’d come to like it. Need it.
The song changed to something more upbeat as her victim neared.
“Hey.” He leaned his hand on the bar, slightly to the side, his body shadowing hers, just like Maddocks had done that night. “What’re you having?” He nodded to her drink.
Angie looked up into his eyes. So ice-cool pale they almost seemed inhuman.
A chill trickled down her spine.
She suddenly placed both hands against the edge of the bar counter, gathering herself, and then she quickly pushed herself back off her stool. “Thanks, but I’m with someone.” And with that, she navigated through the crowd and shoved out of the doors into the dark winter wetness. But as she made for her Crown Vic, frustration ripped at her, and she kicked violently at a garbage can along the side of the wall with her steel-toed biker boot. Not once, but several times, kicking her anxiety out of her system as the hollow sounds of crumpling metal clunked and crashed into the night.Fuck fuck fuck.Tears burned. She ached.Sheburned. For her fix. Like any goddamn junkie. But having been with Maddocks had rendered her incapable. He’d stolen her one avenue of release.
And he’d replaced it with the beginnings of a yearning for something, someplace that she knew she couldn’t go ... he was making her ache for something more. Making her want to be a person she didn’t know how to be.
CHAPTER 43
THURSDAY, DECEMBER14
It was late afternoon when Maddocks pulled up with Pallorino outside Saint Auburn’s Cathedral, adjacent to the Catholic-run Saint Jude’s Hospital. And yes, from here on he was going to think of his temporary partner as “Pallorino.” He would work with her on closing this case, then she could return to sex crimes, and he’d have nothing further to do with her.
They’d come to observe Drummond’s funeral service. As Grablowski had noted, the type of offender they were hunting was likely to follow media, revisit his crime scenes, and he was statistically inclined to attend events like this in order to bask in the penumbra of his handiwork. They also planned to talk to the priest afterward. Ordinarily, this would be the time that the college choir rehearsed at the cathedral, but on this Thursday the choir would instead be performing at the service, to honor one of their dead members.
For the better part of the day, he and Pallorino had been skirting each other and avoiding eye contact as they’d handled paperwork and discussed theories, notes, and evidence. Maddocks had also met privately with Buziak and a trusted prosecutor to see whether they might have reasonable probable grounds to obtain DNA samples from Jayden Norton-Wells and Zach Raddison, who both had black hair, and who were both persons of interest. It was going to take more than they had to get a DNA seizure warrant that would hold up down the road in a court. Especially given the high profiles of the young men and their families—and the fact that Joyce Norton-Wells was the province’s top prosecutor. They needed solid evidence, and they needed to have everytcrossed andidotted before taking this forward.
Hopefully the forensic analysis that was starting to come in from the Thetisby Island crime scene might yield them additional ammunition.
He and Pallorino had, however, ascertained that both Jon Jacques Senior and Junior, Zach Raddison, and Jayden Norton-Wells all carried valid pleasure boat operating cards—proof that they were knowledgeable at least in part about watercraft and potentially able to navigate local waters and islands. All had access to vehicles.
Still, it was tough to see any one of those four fitting Grablowski’s profile of a lone-hunting, sadistic, psychopathic sex killer. Yet all were clearly hiding something.
