Kill Me Once Read online

  Authorities quickly traced the number to a stolen car that Ramirez dumped a short time later. When they lifted his fingerprints from the vehicle, the Night Stalker’s downward spiral began in earnest.

  Ramirez was buying groceries at a family-owned convenience store in Los Angeles a week later when he noticed his picture on the front page of the newspaper. Several patrons – including the husband of one of his earliest victims – immediately recognised him and the chase was on from there. It didn’t last long.

  Nathan shook his head in disgust as he made his way as calmly as he could over to the murmuring crowd that had gathered in the street around the flashing blue lights.

  ‘What in the hell happened in there?’ a pretty young Latina asked him.

  Nathan took a deep breath and raised himself up to his full height. He glared down at her menacingly. The young woman’s eyes widened in horror as her stare ran over the length of his body.

  Do it, bitch. Do it now. Say the words I need you to say.

  And she did.

  ‘There’s blood all over him!’ the young woman screamed.

  A stunned silence hung in the air before several large men in the crowd suddenly reacted, angrily coming for Nathan with murder in their eyes. But he was ready for the assholes, had been the entire time, every muscle in his body corkscrewed and ready for action, the painful memory of all those hill repeats still carved deep into his powerful thighs.

  In the blink of an eye he exploded right past their outstretched hands and knifed his way down the alleyway at the side of the building. Reminding himself to control his breathing, he unbuckled the leather sheath from his belt and jammed it hard into his sock before tearing away the breakaway athletic pants to reveal the clean jogging pants underneath.

  The hours of intense physical training paid off handsomely as he easily left the would-be heroes eating his dust. But just to be absolutely certain, he continued running through backyards and hopping over fences for the next twenty minutes, periodically lifting his stare to the sky to see if the LAPD had a chopper in the air. They didn’t, of course. Incompetent fools.

  When Nathan was finally out of breath, he stopped behind an abandoned old warehouse at the west end of town and lifted the cap off his head to mop at his heavily sweating brow with one muscular forearm.

  His sides ached as he quickly stripped off the bloody shirt and tossed it to the ground. The grey undershirt he’d been wearing beneath was ringed with sweat but otherwise bore no evidence of the brutal murder he’d just committed.

  No one had caught him. They hadn’t even come close. A little goddamn discipline was all it had taken to get the job done right.

  Panting as he leaned over and supported his weight on his trembling thighs, Nathan dropped the baseball cap to the ground. The fierce AC/DC logo glared up at him. After a moment, he smiled down at it.

  Success.

  Two hours later the taxicab dropped Nathan off at the cheap motel. The high was still with him as he walked back into his room. His body felt light, tingly, like flames were licking his skin.

  As he settled in for the night, he rewarded himself for his flawless performance by slowly masturbating to the memory of Mary Ellen Orton’s delicious terror. The others liked to take physical souvenirs from the scene – which was about the stupidest thing you could do in a situation like this – but all he needed were the graphic mental images he’d collected on the night.

  The colours exploded in his mind in a rainbow of light. The whites of the old woman’s terrified eyes. The purplish bruising from where he’d punched her hard in the face. The silver flash of his sharp knife. But none of the colours were as truly beautiful as the fluid that had sprayed forth from between the old woman’s legs.

  Blood red. His very favourite colour of them all.

  His body gradually stiffened as the erotic images played in his mind. A moment later, he ejaculated hard all over his well-muscled stomach.

  Nathan lay in bed for a long while after that, idly tracing the sticky semen across his ripped midsection with one long finger. Exhausted, satisfied, he finally rose to clean himself up. As the steaming shower water poured down over his body, he steeled himself to resume the hunt.

  He was proud of himself for knowing exactly how to lure his target into his web. The thieving little bitch who had stolen his life wasn’t the only expert on serial killers out there, after all, and starting with tonight’s festivities his actions were sure to draw her to him like a fly drawn to honey. Once she pieced together all the little clues he’d been leaving for her over the past three months, he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

  Nathan sighed contentedly as he slowly drifted off into a dream-filled sleep with a satisfied smile playing across his full lips. He knew she was out there somewhere, just waiting for him.

  Hell, he could almost hear the stupid little bitch begging him to come back into her life.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A splitting headache.

  That was your reward for killing two beers and a bottle of Jim Beam by yourself.

  It had taken most of the night to erase the gruesome images of Jacinda Holloway’s mutilated corpse from her mind. But Dana had kept at it, finally drinking herself into enough of a stupor to pass out at four o’clock in the morning.

  In her dream, the man with the sharp silver knife and strange brown eyes has come to visit her again. She is four years old and he is standing over her bed in the dead of night, just like he always does. Reaching down, he softly strokes her silky blonde hair as she sleeps.

  Lost in that confusing middle-world somewhere between sleep and consciousness, Dana mumbles something to him, imagining it is her father, James, who is standing over her bed to protect her from the monsters in her dreams.

  But the man in the room with her is not her father. The man in her room is someone different.

  The very monster of her dreams come to life.

  The jarring sound of the telephone jolted Dana awake. She groaned as her eyelids slowly fluttered open and she realised her head was throbbing like a jackhammer. Jim Beam might have been just dandy to hop into bed with, but he sure as hell wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to wake up with the following morning.

  Dana winced at the excruciating pain in her temples. Her drinking was really starting to get out of control now. She’d never been a complete teetotaller, of course, but neither had she drunk like this since her college days.

  Bright shafts of early-morning sunlight streamed through the bedroom window and stabbed her brain through her eyeballs. The intense hammer-party going on in her skull right now was enough to make even the soft sound of the answering machine clicking on feel like a gun blast exploding in her tender ears.

  Hello. You have reached Dana Whitestone. I am unable to take your call right now, but if you leave a detailed message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you, and have a nice day.

  Beep!

  The voice on the other end of the line slapped her in the face like a bucket of ice water. ‘Dana, it’s Gary Templeton. Just got word on Jacinda Holloway’s autopsy. You’re not going to believe this. Call me back as soon as you possibly can.’

  Her heart kick-started by a dizzying rush of adrenalin, Dana removed the handset from its plastic cradle and quickly punched in Templeton’s number.

  He answered on the third ring. ‘Templeton here.’

  ‘Gary, it’s Dana. What’s up?’

  Templeton blew out a slow breath. ‘Just heard back from the coroner,’ he said. ‘There’s no way of putting this nicely, so I’ll just come out and say it. Apparently the broom handle was used to shove little plastic letters up into Jacinda Holloway’s uterus. You know, the letters with the magnets on the back? The kind you put your kid’s picture up on the refrigerator with?’

  Dana sucked in a sharp breath and reached for a notebook sitting on her nightstand. ‘What were the letters?’ she asked, fully awake now.

  Templeton quickly ticked them off. �
�An N, an L, a G, a B, two A’s and an I.’

  ‘Any idea what they mean?’

  ‘Not a clue. Just heard back from the coroner about ten minutes ago and I haven’t had time to process it yet. Probably spells out a word, I would imagine. Which one, I have no idea.’

  ‘Were the letters all the same colour?’

  Templeton seemed surprised by the question. ‘No, as a matter of fact they weren’t. Most were different. One for each colour of the rainbow. Two red ones. Why?’

  ‘No matter.’ Dana’s mind cleared. ‘Get court orders to exhume the other four bodies,’ she said. ‘I want complete autopsies on all of them, Gary. I don’t care what you have to do. Pull strings, call in favours – just get it done as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Dana thanked him and switched off. In her notebook, she began rearranging the letters. After ten minutes the only two combinations that made any sense to her were ‘NAIL BAG’ and ‘BAG IN LA’.

  Which was to say they didn’t make the least goddamn bit of sense at all.

  She’d resisted making the call many times since she’d moved back to Cleveland, wanting to prove she could go it alone, but perhaps now was the time to ask one of the sharpest minds in the FBI for help.

  She picked up the phone again and punched in the number for Crawford Bell in Washington DC. She desperately needed whatever help she could get before another little girl died a gruesome death. And they’d been a good team once.

  He picked up after five rings. ‘Bell here.’

  After a brief exchange of ‘how are yous’ Dana got straight to the point. Crawford wasn’t one for small talk and this wasn’t a social call. She filled him in as quickly as she could on what Templeton had just told her.

  ‘They’re significant, otherwise the killer wouldn’t have left them like that,’ Crawford said. ‘Let me think.’

  Dana heard him scribbling on a pad on his end.

  ‘No, I’m not having any luck,’ he said after a short pause. ‘My brain isn’t as sharp these days as it used to be. What do you think the letters mean?’

  ‘No idea,’ Dana admitted. ‘I’ve tried everything. The only two things I can come up with are NAIL BAG and BAG IN LA. And what does that tell us? Zip.’

  Crawford let out a shocked breath. ‘Holy shit, Dana. It can’t be a coincidence. Wait a minute.’

  She heard him moving papers around as though he was looking for something. Then, ‘Here it is. Look, I think you should come down here to DC,’ he added unexpectedly.

  Dana shook her head. What was he talking about? ‘Absolutely not, Crawford. I’m in the middle of a case, with little if anything to go on. I really can’t afford to take time out to go down there.’

  ‘I know, but it would be easier to discuss the case face to face. Besides, there’s someone here I think you really need to meet.’

  ‘Crawford, I’ve told you – I don’t have time—’

  He cut her off. ‘Dana, it’s important. You should meet him.’

  ‘Who’s that, then?’ she asked reluctantly. Crawford seemed serious so she might as well hear him out.

  ‘Jeremy Brown,’ Crawford replied. ‘He works out of LA but flew in this morning to pick my brain about a murder out there last night. Just so happens that the killer tacked a plastic bag to the wall at the scene, Dana. Could be connected. Probably is.’

  Now he had her full attention. Dana couldn’t believe her ears. ‘NAIL BAG and BAG IN LA,’ she said. ‘He was pointing us out to LA. It’s the same guy.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Crawford said. ‘So can you come down to DC to meet Brown? I think you should.’

  Dana winced again at the headache pounding away at her temples, and not just from her hangover. She thought for a moment as Crawford waited impatiently for her answer. Things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated, but could she really spare the time to go to DC? Templeton was good. He could cover for her. This could be a crucial lead or a blind alley but there was only one way to find out. And if Crawford felt she should go, she probably should – he wasn’t in the habit of wasting people’s time, least of all his own. It might be a slightly odd request, when she could easily speak to this Jeremy Brown on the phone, but she’d take the risk. She had to. She flipped her cellphone open and punched in the number for American Airlines. Although the feds had access to the Department of Justice’s forty-million-dollar Gulfstream V, it sure as hell wasn’t based in Cleveland. Like most of her colleagues, Dana had to use her own money to purchase tickets through one of the commercial airlines the government had contracts with and submit receipts for reimbursement later.

  ‘Booking my ticket now,’ she told Crawford. ‘I’ll be down there tonight.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  In Nathan’s dream he is seven years old again.

  It is 1961 in West Virginia, and he and Jamie Hufford are playing with Matchbox cars in her parents’ sweltering barn.

  Once a month their parents would get together for Bible study – fellowship, they called it – and the kids were allowed an hour to themselves. Neither were permitted toys of any kind, of course – the devil’s playthings, their parents called them – but the last time they’d been together he and Jamie had found a plastic bag filled with rusted-out miniature Chevrolets, Jeeps and pickup trucks hidden in the woods along the edge of her rural property. They’d immediately stashed the bag in the barn and made a solemn vow never to tell another living soul about their sinful discovery.

  The temperature in the barn could soar past a hundred degrees in the middle of August, like it was now, and the sweat would pour down their faces as they played. Old farming equipment and an antique drum used for storing heating oil littered the inside of the structure like enormous skeletons in a dinosaur graveyard.

  Dusty rays of sunlight streamed down through the slats in the barn’s roof as Nathan quickly wheeled a 1957 Chevy around an old wooden toolbox. ‘You’ll never catch me, coppers!’ he shouted. ‘All the money from the bank is mine!’

  Jamie brushed her sweaty blonde hair out of her face and chased the Chevrolet with a boxy police car missing its rear-left wheel. She was an extremely thin girl with very bad teeth, and her sundress was dirty and tattered. As usual, no shoes covered her filthy feet. ‘The good guys always catch the bad guys,’ she giggled. ‘We’re taking you to jail, mister!’

  The patrol car was catching up to the Chevy fast, so Nathan wheeled it around the toolbox twice more before blasting into overdrive and rising to his feet. His right foot slipped on something hidden beneath the hay.

  ‘Caught you!’ Jamie squealed, slamming the police cruiser hard into the Chevrolet in Nathan’s hand to underscore her point. ‘Now it’s time for you go to jail, buddy!’

  Nathan ignored her and swept his foot over the hay.

  A book of matches.

  ‘What is it?’ Jamie asked, following his gaze down to the floor of the barn.

  Nathan gritted his teeth. Why in the hell did girls always have to be so goddamn stupid? ‘What do you think it is, dummy?’ he snapped.

  Jamie frowned. After a moment, her lower lip began to tremble and tears filled her eyes. ‘Don’t call me a dummy, Nathan. Don’t call me a dummy or I’m telling on you.’

  Nathan felt his stomach lurch. Jesus Christ, girls were so goddamn sensitive too. But when it came to his parents, getting told on was a fate worse than death, so he quickly switched gears.

  ‘No, don’t tell on me, Jamie,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it. You’re not a dummy. But seriously, don’t you know what this is?’

  The little girl rolled her enormous blue eyes at him. ‘Of course I know what it is, dummy. It’s a book of matches. And we better go tell that we found them or we’ll be in big trouble for sure.’

  Nathan sighed. Leave it to a girl to ruin what was obviously going to be a very good time. Stupid, sensitive and then stupid again – that was what girls were. No matter how long he lived, he knew he
would never understand them. It was almost like they were from a different planet or something.

  ‘We can’t tell them about the matches because we didn’t tell them about the cars,’ he explained patiently. ‘If we tell them about the matches they’ll just know we have the cars and we’ll get a whipping twice as bad.’

  Jamie didn’t look so sure. ‘We’ll get it three times as bad if they catch us,’ she countered.

  Nathan forced a smile and reached out a hand, placing it on her bare shoulder. ‘They’re not going to catch us, Jamie. I promise.’

  He paused while the plan formed in his brain. ‘I’ll tell you what: let’s see if the matches work first. If they work then we’ll go tell that we found them. But if they don’t they’ll just be mad we bothered them in the first place.’

  Jamie chewed on her lower lip while she thought it over. It did seem to make sense. ‘OK,’ she agreed finally. ‘But how do we do know if they work or not?’

  Nathan leaned down and plucked the matchbook off the floor. ‘I’ve seen the preacher lighting the candles in church before. I’ll try and do it the same way.’

  He pulled out a match and scratched it against the rough strip on the back cover. The head of the match disintegrated in little bits of red.

  The second match didn’t work either, but produced a sulphur smell that tickled Nathan’s nostrils in a pleasant way.

  ‘P.U.,’ Jamie said, holding her nose.

  The third match flared up briefly before burning out. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the burned paper.

  ‘Well?’ Jamie asked impatiently. ‘Do they work or not?’

  Nathan tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. As much as she annoyed him, though, he couldn’t risk getting told on. He hadn’t had a whipping in a week now, and he wanted to keep it that way. ‘I think they work,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure yet. We’ll have to light them all at the same time to find out for sure.’