Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

Right, Kendra thought, remembering the dead young mother she’d just seen inside. A real cool guy.

She pulled out her phone and displayed one of the sketches Bill Dillingham had drawn of her and Pauley’s attacker. “Did he look like this?”

“Mmm, sort of. But not really.”

She flipped through the alternative sketches he’d done, and Gorham had similar responses to each. She made a mental note to have Bill draw one with a wig and a fake beard and show it to this guy later.

“You had a rental contract with him, right?” Perry said. “Did you have it witnessed by a notary, or happen to get a copy of his driver’s license or maybe even a thumbprint?”

Gorham tugged on his shirt, which was a size too small for his ample frame. “Uh, no. None of those things. Sorry. I just downloaded a property rental agreement from the Web.”

Back inside the building, there were raised voices that were unmistakably urgent and excited. Perry turned. “What’s going on in there?”

After a moment, one of the forensics techs stuck her head out the door. “Detective, you should come see this.” She turned to Kendra. “You too, ma’am.”

Kendra was surprised to be summoned alongside Perry, but she followed him back into the walk-in cooler, where the forensics techs and photographer had cleared a path for them. The corpse’s gold locket was now open on her chest, probably after being examined and photographed by the crime scene investigators.

“Oh, my God,” Perry whispered. He stood in front of it for a long moment.

“Are you going to let me see?” Kendra said.

“I really don’t know.”

“What are you talking about, Perry?”

He looked dazed as he finally stepped aside to allow Kendra to see what was causing all the fuss. She bent over to look at the locket.

There, Kendra saw a picture of herself.

Her breath left her as she straightened and backed away. “What in the hell—?”

“He knew you’d see it,” Lynch said.

She turned. Lynch was now standing behind her.

Perry nodded. “He’s toying with you. He knew we’d have you out to take a look, wherever he decided to drop her off.”

Kendra looked at the photo again. “This is my head shot, the one I use for academic conferences. He could have gotten it anywhere.” She shook her head. “As if I didn’t think he was a sick bastard already.”

Lynch rubbed her arms. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

They turned and left the building.

They walked in silence most of the way back to the car before Lynch spoke. “How are you doing? Okay?”

“Yes. I mean, it’s disturbing, but it’s not as bad as a maniac trying to kill me in my garage.”

“An interesting perspective.”

“Some days, you just gotta see the glass as half full.”

As they drove away from the factory, Kendra looked back at the crush of squad cars, forensic vans, and television news trucks. “Did it occur to anyone that maybe they should keep things quiet and just watch and wait from one of these buildings across the street? The Bayside Strangler was definitely going to come back here to get his victim and take her to display somewhere. It was his MO.”

“You’re right,” Lynch said. “But you don’t realize how incredibly difficult it is to keep a secret like this in a big-city law-enforcement agency. Especially in this age of social media and so-called citizen journalists. It will be interesting to see how long they can keep your locket photograph a secret.”

“I understand, but they may as well put up a neon sign that says BAYSIDE STRANGLER, STAY AWAY! I’m kind of sorry I told them where to look. You and I could have found it and set up our own stakeout.”

“True, but there’s no guarantee he would lead us to the Morgan sisters. I’m rather hoping he can’t.”