Читать книгу The Night Serpent - Anna Leonard - Страница 9

Lily stared at the phone, not quite believing what she had just heard. Did he know how obvious that line of bullshit was? He had to; she could practically hear it in his voice: “Laugh at me, but laugh with me.”

“Agent Patrick…”

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. He was far too appealing, and her thoughts had been far too depressing. Against her better judgment, she said yes.

“Great. Nothing fancy—maybe there’s a local Italian around here, a mom-and-pop place you could recommend? I’m craving ziti.”

She knew exactly the place, and on a Tuesday night, it shouldn’t be too crowded. “I’ll pick you up in—” she looked at the clock on her desk “—twenty minutes?”

“Great. I’m at the Veis Hotel, over on—”

“I know where it is. Budget central—nice to know our tax dollars aren’t going to Jacuzzis and wet bars.”

He snorted into the phone. “Hardly. I’ll see you in twenty.”

She hung up the phone and stared down at the pile of bills she had been paying. Or trying to pay, as her thoughts had been more on this afternoon’s scene than what she owed Visa and the electric company. “You. Are insane. And this is a terrible idea.”

Ten minutes later she had gone through three different outfits, finally settling on a pair of black slacks and a dark red sweater, with her favorite boots with the heels that made her feel not quite so short. Jeans were fine for shelter work, but even a casual dinner with a good-looking guy seemed to call for something a little more. Or at least something not covered in cat hair.

She stared in the mirror, giving herself a once-over. A rub of blush over her cheekbones, and eyeliner and that was it. The look was casual, not too much effort, but looking good. Grabbing her keys off the hook by the door, she was in her car and on her way before she could second-guess herself.

Lily Malkin wasn’t much for impulsive actions. She felt more comfortable on her own, when she could control the situation, and not have to do anything other than what she wanted. Her father called her selfish, but among all the men she had dated—and the few she had loved—Lily had never met anyone that she honestly felt that she could relax with; that she felt could accept her for who she was.

Probably because she was never quite sure who that was. An insomniac, not-quite-cat-phobic, detail-oriented female with trust and responsibility issues, to start. In short, a mess. On her own, Lily could deal with it. Bring someone else into the equation, and there were too many variables. Too many ways things could go wrong. So control was important.

After graduating from college, she had gone into banking because she wanted a job that would allow her to interact with people, but from a safe distance, and would allow her to leave the job at the office. Being a bank teller was perfect. She had moved to Newfield after a lot of thought, choosing it for low cost-of-living and a pretty environment.

Even working at the shelter had been part of a longterm planned goal. Tired of having responses to stimuli she could not control, she had finally gone to a therapist who helped her gain the courage to stop avoiding cats, and face the discomfort. It had worked, but the process had been slow, steady, and under her control every step of the way.

She was having dinner with this man because…

Lily knew the reason. Because she couldn’t get the image of those kittens out of her mind, and he was the only way to get answers about who would do that sort of thing. And why.

If she could help him find this guy, then maybe this feeling of depression, of helplessness and failure, might go away.

It had nothing to do with the way his eyes were so dark, or intense. Really. It was all part of the long-term plan.

“And if he suggests dinner in his hotel room, you are out of there, federal agent or not,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her reflection looked dubious, and she laughed at herself. Right now, she was so tired she’d probably fall asleep in the middle of anything, anyway.

To her relief, he was waiting outside the hotel’s lobby when she pulled up, talking on his cell phone. He saw her and waved, then closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket. He had a slim leather briefcase with him, she noted, and when he slipped into her Toyota she noted there were a number of color-coded files sticking out of it. This really was going to be a working dinner, then. Lily almost laughed again at the wash of disappointment she felt.

They were seated quickly; as expected, the little Italian restaurant wasn’t busy, and they had the corner to themselves. Patrick put the file on the table next to him and quickly buttered a bread stick. “Sorry. I’m a carb addict, if there’s one thing I can’t resist it’s fresh bread.”

“It is so unfair. Guys can eat anything and not gain a pound.” Casual, almost stupid chitchat. They were doing it to keep from thinking about what they had seen that afternoon. Or at least, she was. If she could not think about it, she could keep it from being so real. If it wasn’t real, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.

I’m sorry, kittens, she thought again, feeling the wave of helplessness move through her. There was nothing she could have done, and yet she felt overwhelmed by the feeling that she was supposed to have done something, somehow prevented this.

He protested the implied slur in her words. “Pound, shmounds. This particular guy has to keep up with the FBI regs for fitness. They don’t let us relax until after we have seniority behind a desk. That’s why we’re all so anxious to get promoted.”

She laughed, almost more than what the joke was worth. He glanced at her quickly, looked at the menu, then looked at her again, those dark eyes toned down for once. “Lily. Before we talk about anything else…I’m not a practicing psychologist, but it’s okay to be upset. What you saw…most people never run into that kind of violence, and that’s good. Nobody ever should, whether it’s directed at them or someone or something else. And when you do see it, you shouldn’t be unaffected. It’s not healthy, or human, to be unaffected. Even us tough federal-lawman types.”

She toyed with the corner of the menu, rubbing it between two fingers. “I know. It’s just…how do you sleep? After things like that?”

He gave the faintest shrug, barely a jerk of his shoulder. “I catch the people responsible. Or I do my damnedest to try, anyway. That is why I need to pick your brains. I think you can help me.”

She pursed her lips, weighing his words. “All right.”

Something she hadn’t even known was knotted inside her eased with those words. She only meant to agree to having her brain picked in exchange for dinner, but somehow it felt as though it was more.

Is this it? she wondered. Is this the thing I’ve been feeling I need to do? That easy? She doubted it. But it was something.

They placed their orders, and Lily ordered a glass of wine—“None for me,” Patrick said regretfully. “I’m technically on duty. On the plus side, that means I can expense this, so eat up!”

There was something about him, despite his practiced charm, despite his intensity, that almost made Lily forget her original discomfort. Almost. He cared about what he was doing. That made him likable. The fact that he was likable made her even more cautious. Charming men were men with agendas and ambition. Men with agendas and ambition were not to be trusted. It wasn’t any one bad experience that had drummed that into her, although it was proved, more often than not. No, that knowledge, that wariness, was born in her, it sometimes seemed.

This wasn’t a date, she reminded herself, wondering at his pleased smile at her choices. It was, as he said, a business meeting. Over food. So what if he had an agenda?

Everyone wanted something. Everyone had a secret. Even her.

“So why is the FBI investigating this?” she asked again, taking a bread stick for herself.

This time, unlike earlier that day, he answered her.

“The FBI normally gets called in for certain things. Kidnappings, bank robberies, crimes that cross state lines or involve national issues…This…isn’t really one of them.” He cracked a crooked smile. “Except it falls in that gray area of ‘might be of interest.’Courtesy of the twenty-first century and modern paranoia, just about every investigated crime gets entered into a national database. Mostly they just sit there, unless there’s something in them that triggers an alert somewhere else. In my case, I look for tags that indicate animal-abuse cases.”

He waved the remains of his bread stick at her, as though lecturing. It should have been annoying, but wasn’t, mainly because his intensity was so real, and focused on a thing, not her. Whatever it was that he did, it meant a great deal to him. She admired that.

“Animal abuse is—it’s one of the things we’re taught to look for in the background of suspects. I’m working on a particular theory that, if I can prove it, could lead us to a way to identify and stop potential killers. So, if a police department reports a notable case of animal abuse it pings on my radar. If there are certain elements to the case, I follow up.”

“Certain elements?” The waiter came with her glass of wine and his soda. Lily nodded her thanks, but kept her attention on Patrick.

“A level of ferocity, or indications of repetition. Something that suggests escalation.”

“That whoever it is, is getting ready to move on to something bigger,” she guessed. “Like humans.”

“Exactly. Abuse, especially of cats, is considered one of the ‘terrible triad,’of indicators that’s often found in the background of a serial killer. That, and arson, are historically two of the major warning signs of serial killers before they turn to human targets. It’s almost as though they’re trying to vent themselves on weaker beings, or—by some theories—are working up their nerve to go to the next level. Nobody really knows for certain. It’s an inexact science.”

Lily was horrified, but fascinated. Everyone knew about serial killers, of course—even if you never watched the nightly news, you had to have heard of Silence of the Lambs. But she had never realized that there was a pattern, or a science, to it. Or that cats were so very much a target.

“And you try to find them before then. But how do you know that they’re going to go to people next?”

“I don’t. Most of the time they don’t, either. But if I can stop them before that line is crossed, that’s all that matters. Law enforcement isn’t all about punishment. It’s about being a deterrent, too.”

She nodded. It made sense. “So this one incident brought you out here?”

He hesitated, taking a sip of his soda before responding. “No. Not the one. This goes no further than this table, Lily.” He paused until she nodded her agreement. “Three years ago in the next town, there was a couple of scattered cases—cats being cut open and left, like some kind of sacrifice. By itself, that’s nothing, unfortunately. Wannabe Satanists, or just one kid with a cruel streak, or even a budding coroner who wanted to start small. They wouldn’t even have been entered in the system, except there was a small media fuss.

“And that was nothing, until now. The reason they called me is that here have been two incidents prior to this in the past two months. All involving cats. All young males. None of them quite so…formalized as today’s offering. Whoever this guy is, assuming it’s the same guy from three years ago—he’s working out a pattern that satisfied him. If it was him three years ago…he’s on an evolving scale, an escalating one. And that’s a major danger sign.”

“So you think…” She shuddered involuntarily. “You think we have a baby serial killer right here in Newfield?”

She’d had nightmares about that; not often, maybe three or four times, but unlike most of her dreams they tended to stay with her even after she woke: of women dying, one after another, in terribly bloody ways. She hated those dreams, all the more so for never being able to figure out what caused them or how to prevent them.

“No.” He shook his head, almost as though he regretted that lack of serial killerage. “The indicators I’ve seen so far suggest that he hasn’t crossed that line. I’m not sure that’s the direction he’s going in, either. His pattern is…Different. Odd. Intriguing.”

Lily cocked her head and studied him. “You find strange things intriguing, Agent Patrick.”

He accepted the jab with self-aware good humor. “Nature of the job, Ms. Malkin.”

The conversation was interrupted by the delivery of their meals, and the resulting pause to sort things out.

“No,” he said again once they started eating. “I don’t think he’s a serial killer. The specifics line up—cats, violence, repetition. That’s what pinged on my radar. But seeing it—the feel of it is all wrong.”

“Intriguing?”

“To a person with my background, yes. Serial killers have a variety of reasons for acting the way they do, by their standards. The files—” and he made a gesture with his fork to the file at his side “—the first two cases, and now this one, they don’t show the kind of…passion normal to a serial killer’s buildup. This was…”

“Restrained.”

He looked at her with surprised respect. “Yeah.”

Lily didn’t know why she had said that, but when she thought about it, it was true. The violence had been contained, the cats carefully tended, the scene almost designed, like a stage set…

Going back there made her insides queasy again, so she changed the subject. “So what’s the third thing? You said there was a—terrible triad? You said two, so what’s the third?”

“Bed-wetting.”

Lily stared at him. “Bed-wetting.”

“It shows up often enough in established serial killers that it’s considered an indicator, yes.”

She wasn’t going to laugh. It wasn’t funny. “But not a crime.”

“No, not a crime. We don’t investigate anyone on the basis of soiled linens.”

“I’m not laughing,” she told him.

“Nobody ever does,” he assured her, his dark eyes creased around the edges with humor. “Joking is frowned on in the FBI.”

Lily ate a few bites of her veal, letting the moment pass intentionally, and then looked up at her companion. “All right. You said you wanted to ask me something about the case. About the cats?”

He took a bite of his own ziti, chewed and swallowed before responding. Good table manners, she noted. Another point in his favor, were she keeping any sort of list. Which she wasn’t.

“Yeah. About the cattery that you said he had. You work in a shelter—it looks like you have a full house there?”

“Always. Females, unless they’re fixed, breed regularly even when they have kittens already. Even if you could stop every stray from breeding tomorrow, there would be more cats in shelters than we could ever find homes for.”

Lily felt guilt once again for not adopting one or two of her own. She had the room, and Lord knew she had gotten over her fear…but something held her back from bringing them into her own home. She still needed that distance, the place to retreat to, in case things went wrong.

“So why was he breeding them, if there are so many out there to adopt?”

“For color.” No hesitation in her mind now, not after what Patrick had told her. “He—we’re assuming a he?”

“For now.”

“All right. He used spotted tabbies with white paws, all seven of them. The cats before, they were spotted as well?”

Patrick nodded. “According to the files the cops gave me, yes. Not all of them had the white paws, though. That was new.”

“The spotted markings are common enough, but not so much so that you could find seven of them, all about the same age—not kittens, but less than two years old, I’d guess. And to find three…three batches of seven? The combination of color and age, there’s no way he could assume he was going to find them all at the same time. So it makes sense he’d try to breed them himself.”

“That was my thought, too. This guy, whoever he is, wasn’t flying off the cuff. He has an agenda. There was planning here, at least a year’s worth to be breeding his own litters. More, since the first incident was two months ago, and the cats were about the same age.”

“But why?” Why would someone do something like this? Why use cats? Why cats of that specific type? “And God, how could he breed cats, raise them and then kill them?”

Patrick poked his fork at the mound of ziti on his plate, and then looked up at her, his dark eyes now shadowed by more than exhaustion. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

Then he leaned back and smiled at her, clearly changing mental tracks. “But enough. You’ve confirmed what I suspected, and may yet be useful to the investigation, so this meal is hereby considered a justified expense. Therefore I’m not going to do anything right now except enjoy the lovely company, the excellent food and the fact that I’m not cooped up in a hotel room watching reruns of Fox shows I didn’t like when I first saw them. And I insist that you do the same, just to keep me company.”

Lily flushed, but smiled at him, and went back to her veal piccata, hyperaware of the fact that he was watching her every move, observing her the same way he had observed the crime scene. Charming, but ambitious, she reminded herself. Be careful.

“So. You volunteer with cats and work in a bank. And, occasionally, help out the local cops and wandering feds. What else does Ms. Lily Malkin do?”

Lily didn’t play games, was what she didn’t do. “I bake. I work out to burn off the calories I put on from baking. I sleep as much as humanly possible. I like modern art and Delta blues, an occasional glass of wine and really scary movies with buttered popcorn. I have no siblings, my father lives in Seattle where I grew up and my last relationship ended amicably. Anything else?”

He blinked, visibly thinking over her words. “No, I think that about covers everything, and then some. Your turn.”

She didn’t have to think about that at all. “What does the T stand for?”

“The letter T,” he said easily, and she smiled reluctantly in return. Oh, charming. Very, very charming. But she still wasn’t going to play.

Lily turned off the beeping alarm even before she turned on the light as she came in through the garage. Once the condo was plunged back into silence, she slipped her shoes off at the door, dropped her bag on the dining-room table and shuffled to the narrow spiral staircase that led to the bedroom. She had lived in a studio apartment when she first came to town, but on her morning run one day she had passed the row of town houses under construction and, on a whim, stopped in at the builder’s office. Three months and most of her savings later, she had closed on her town house, and two months after that she had moved in.

It was the first place she had ever owned, the first real home she’d had since leaving her father’s home for college sixteen years before. Her dad had choked up when she called to tell him the news. Her dad was a little weird: “not married? No problem, honey, you’ll find someone some day. But this endless string of living in apartments? That can’t be healthy!”

The condo wasn’t large—a kitchen, living room and dining room downstairs, and a bedroom and bathroom upstairs—but it was all hers. Her refuge.

She stripped as she went into the bathroom, tossing her clothing into the hamper and turning on the shower. The two glasses of wine at dinner, plus a hot shower, might be enough to let her get to sleep—and stay asleep until the alarm went off. If she was lucky, and fate was kind, she might not even dream.

Or if she did, maybe they would be the hot and sexy kind. Lord knows, she had enough material to work with tonight.

“Don’t get so caught up in secret-agent-man fantasies that you forget to finish paying those bills,” she told herself, pulling her hair into a scrunchie and knotting it. She was on shift at the bank from ten to four, and if she didn’t get everything into the mail in the morning, it would bother her all day.

The mirror was starting to fog, and she rubbed a spot clear to check her skin.

“Holy shit!” she shrieked, spinning around.

There was nothing there, of course. She had known there wasn’t going to be anything there. It wasn’t possible that there was anything there—the alarm had been on, no windows had been open. There was no way a cat could have gotten in.

There was no way she could have seen, reflected in that tiny corner of the mirror, a cat sitting on the shower ledge behind her, watching her with wide, rounded green eyes.

Mrrrrrai?

And there was no way she could hear the plaintive query of a cat, echoing off the tile of the shower, over the sound of the water and the rasp of her own breath.