Laurant was nervous and apprehensive about meeting the doctor, and she hoped it didn’t show when Nick pulled her forward to introduce her.
He shook her hand, insisted she call him Pete, and then said, “Why don’t we go sit down and figure out what we’re going to do.”
Instinctively she looked at Nick. He gave her a quick nod, and she followed Tommy into the living room. Morganstern stayed behind to speak to his agents. He spoke to Nick first, but in such a low voice, Laurant couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he turned to Noah, and whatever he said to him so startled the agent he suddenly burst into laughter.
“God will strike me dead, sir.”
“And lose one of his trusted soldiers? I think not,” Pete responded as he led the two men into the living room. “Besides, I’m fully convinced God has a sense of humor.”
Pete placed his briefcase on the table and flipped open the latches. Nick dropped down on the sofa next to Laurant, and Noah stood behind his superior, acting like a sentry, with his arms folded across his chest.
“I was wondering, sir, if you’d found out anything significant from that profiler you assigned to the case,” Noah said. “What was his name, Nick?”
The doctor answered the question. “His name is George Walker, and yes, he does have a few ideas that can help us. Nothing concrete unfortunately.”
“Don’t profilers figure things out from crime scenes?” Tommy asked. “I read somewhere that that’s how they get their information.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Pete agreed. “However, there are other ways too.”
“Like the tape?”
“Yes.”
“Tommy, will you please stop pacing around and sit down,” Laurant said.
Her brother motioned for her to move closer to Nick and then sat down on her other side. He didn’t know quite how to phrase the question he wanted to ask, and so he decided to be blunt.
“Exactly why are you here, Pete?”
“We’re very happy that you’re here,” Laurant interjected so that the doctor wouldn’t think her brother was as rude as he sounded. “Isn’t that right, Tommy?” she added as she nudged him in the side.
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Pete knows I appreciate his help. We go way back, don’t we?” he asked the psychiatrist.
Pete nodded. Tommy turned to Laurant to explain. “I called Pete a couple of years ago about a troubled kid I was trying to help. It was out of my league, and Pete helped get him into a treatment center. That was the first time I used my connection through Nick, but since then, Pete’s come through for me with three other difficult cases. You never say no to me, do you?”
“I try not to,” Pete answered. “I came here today to sit down with you, Tom. I wanted to review what happened in the confessional.”
“You’ve heard the tape,” Tommy reminded him.
“Yes, I have, and it’s been very helpful with the investigation. However, it doesn’t tell me what you were thinking while our unsub was talking. I’d like to take you through it again.”
“I’ve told Nick everything I remember. I’ve gone over it at least ten times.”
“Yeah, but Pete will be asking different questions,” Nick said.
“Okay. If you think it will help, I’ll go through it again.”
Pete smiled. “Noah, why don’t you and Laurant wait in the other room. Nick, I’d like you to stay.”
Laurant followed Noah to the door then turned back just as Pete was opening his briefcase. “Pete? When you’re finished, may I have a word in private with you?”
“Certainly.”
Noah pulled the French doors closed behind them. Monsignor was coming down the steps from the second floor with a basket of dirty linens. Without a word Laurant took the basket from him and headed down to the basement again. She could hear her brother’s laughter and assumed the questioning hadn’t begun yet.
Pete acted as though he had all the time in the world. He started by asking Tommy if he missed playing football. Tommy was sitting on the edge of his seat, obviously tense and worried. Pete eased him into the discussion about the confession, and by the time their talk had ended, they had two more little bits of information that might prove helpful. The unsub had been wearing Calvin Klein’s Obsession. Tommy had forgotten about that. And, until now, he’d also forgotten about a click he had heard. He had assumed the man was snapping his fingers to get his attention. Pete suggested that the click was actually the recorder being turned on.
Pete ended the conference when he stood. “When you return to Holy Oaks, I would rather you didn’t hear confession for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Until we’ve devised a trap to snare him.”
Tommy glanced at Nick and then back to Pete again. “You don’t think he’s going to come back to confession, do you?”
“I certainly think he’ll try,” Pete said.
Tommy shook his head. “I don’t see that happening. It’s too risky for him.”
Nick, who had been unusually silent until now, spoke up. “He’ll see it as a challenge. He thinks he’s vastly superior to all the rest of us, remember? He’s going to want to prove it.”
“Tom, like it or not, he’s established a relationship with you, and I believe he’s going to want to keep you apprised of what he’s been up to,” Pete said. “One thing I know for certain now,” he continued. “This unsub is going to go to any lengths necessary to talk to you again. He wants your admiration, but he also wants your loathing and fear.”
“In many ways, you’re the perfect partner in his plan,” Nick told him.
“How do you figure that?”
“He wants someone to appreciate how smart he is.”
Tommy said, “I know you think I’m being stubborn about this, but I gotta tell you I still think you’re wrong about this guy. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that he would try to contact me again. I’ve listened to your arguments and I know you’re experts . . .”
“But?” Nick prodded.
“But you’ve forgotten why he came to me in the first place. He wanted absolution and he didn’t get it. Remember?”
Pete gave him a sympathetic look. “No, he came to you because you’re Laurant’s brother,” he said. “And he never wanted forgiveness,” he added softly. “He was mocking the church, the sacrament, and he was mocking you, Tom, especially you.”
Tommy looked miserable. “You do realize he almost got Monsignor McKindry in that confessional. I volunteered for the duty at the last minute.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t have gone to McKindry,” Pete said. “He knew you were inside the confessional before he even walked into the church.”
“He probably watched you cross the parking lot and go inside,” Nick said. “And if Monsignor had taken the duty, then he would have patiently waited for another opportunity.”
“Nick’s right,” Pete said. “This man is organized and very patient. He’s put a lot of time and effort into stalking you and your sister.”
Something Pete had said earlier began to nag Tommy and he asked, “What did you mean when you said he was giving us mixed messages?”
“I meant that he’s deliberately trying to make us run in five different directions,” he explained. “In the tape he’s telling us he’s a stalker, maybe a serial killer. He’s telling us he’s just getting started, but then he implies that he’s been at it a long time. He says he’s killed one woman, but he’s hinted at the possibility that there have been others. He laughed, if you’ll recall, when he told you that he’d only hurt the women before Millicent. Now it’s our job to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.”
“In other words, it could all be lies or it could all be true.”
“Tommy, try to understand that with these creeps, it’s always about fantasies. Always,” Nick repeated emphatically. “The fantasy is what is driving this unsub. It could all still be in his head, but we have to assume that Millicent did exist and that he tortured and killed her.”
“And now he wants to act out his fantasy with Laurant?”
Pete nodded. “The situation is urgent. He needs a reason to talk to you again.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
Pete’s eyes, he noticed, were edged with sadness now. “If what he told us is true, then I’m certain he’s out there looking for another woman right now.”
“He said he’d try to find a substitute to replace Laurant . . . temporarily,” Nick said.
Tommy bowed his head. “Dear God,” he whispered. “And then he’ll want to confess his sins, right?”
“No. He’ll want to brag.”
CHAPTER 12
Tiffany Tara Tyler was a slut and proud of it. She’d learned a long time ago that she was going to have to relax her moral code of behavior if she was ever going to get anyplace in this cold, hard world. Besides, not being a prude had carried her a long way from the trailer park in Sugar Creek—she was wearing the proof. And nothing, not even a blown-out tire on her rusted 1982 Chevy Caprice, was going to get her down. She was riding high and feeling good, and all because she was as sure as shit that her life was about to undergo a radical change. Oh, she knew she was always going to be a Jezebel in her mother’s estimation—she’d decided her daughter was damned to the eternal fires of hell after she’d caught her in the bathroom with Kenny Martin—but Tiffany had made up her mind not to care a hoot what her crazy, old, worn-out mother thought of her anymore. She knew where her real talent lay, and she believed with all her heart that if she worked hard enough, she would succeed. Who knew? Maybe by the time she was thirty, twelve long years from now, she might even be a millionaire like that Heidi Fleiss madam she so admired because she got to meet all those famous movie stars. Tiffany bet they treated Heidi just like a star too, and maybe, after she finished ha**ng s*x with them, they even took her out to dinner at one of those fancy, expensive restaurants.
Tiffany remembered the exact moment her life experienced an epiphany—she’d looked that word up in the dictionary after reading the article in Mademoiselle magazine. She’d been at Suzie’s Hair Salon, getting a perm that fried her already fried, unnaturally blond, frizzy, long hair. To take her mind off her painful burning scalp, she’d picked up the magazine and begun to read the article that was all but screaming at her, “Know Your Assets.” The message couldn’t have been any more clear to her. Do what you’re good at. Change what you don’t like about yourself. And use your assets to get what you want. But, most of all, go for it.
She took every word to heart, and to this day she carried the stolen magazine with her wherever she went. It was always tucked inside her Vuitton rip-off bag next to the brand-new mobile phone she’d spent two whole hundred dollars on so she could get three months’ free phone service, as long as it was in the U.S. of A.
Tiffany liked to think she was gifted with ESP, and after reading that article, she could plainly see she was destined for great things. It was all going to begin happening for her in just two days’ time when she checked herself into the Holidome. The motel’s rates were a little steep, but it was worth it. The Holidome sat across the highway from the doctor’s office, and she wouldn’t have so far to walk after the surgery was done.
Because she’d bought herself the phone—she’d seen a picture of Heidi Fleiss with a mobile phone in her hand and figured it was an important asset every girl ought to have if she was going to go places—she was still shy two hundred dollars of the twenty-four hundred she needed to get her boob job. She was carrying all of the twenty-two hundred with her. She didn’t dare take the chance of hiding any of her money in the trailer, where her stepfather could sniff it out like a trained hound dog with his beet-red, twice-broken, alkie nose. He’d just go on another one of his drunken sprees, which always ended up in jail. If he didn’t find it, her mother certainly would. She was always snooping through Tiffany’s things looking for more damning evidence to prove her daughter was still a whore. Then she’d feel it was her duty to donate all the cash to that screaming redemption preacher she watched on television all the time. No, Tiffany didn’t take any chances with the hard-earned money that guaranteed to change her future. She had it all with her and all in cash. She’d divided the money in half and stuffed eleven hundred dollars into each one of her size 32AA Wonderbra cups, which weren’t doing anything remotely wonderful for her figure, as flat-chested as she was. New boobs were going to change all that, of course. She was sure of it.
Going for it and changing what you could change—that’s what success was all about. Like most eighteen-year-old girls, she had big dreams. She had always been very goal oriented, and big boobs were an integral part of her future plans. She’d never told anyone, not even her best friend, Louann, that her biggest dream of all was to be the centerfold in Playboy magazine. Penthouse was a step down, and so was Hustler, but she’d settle for either one of those centerfolds too. All the men in Sugar Creek read those magazines—well, they didn’t really read them. They took them into the bathroom with them so they could get off while they gawked at na*ed women, and she just knew their eyes were going to bug right out of their heads when they saw her in all her na*ed beauty smiling coyly out at them with her new size 36D boobs.
She didn’t have any idea what kind of money could be made in centerfold work, but it had to be a lot more than she was making now lap dancing. She was never the customer’s first choice, and she knew it had to be because she was so flat-chested. Vera, one of the other girls, always made three times what she did in tips, but then Vera was full-figured, and the men liked to burrow their faces in between her enormous boobs. Tiffany had had to supplement her income by giving blow jobs out back, behind the Dumpster. She was real talented with her mouth—just ask any of the boys back in Sugar Creek, or for that matter the doctor who was going to give her new boobs. He’d been so impressed with her skill, he’d reduced the price of the implants. Tiffany guessed she’d have to impress the doctor again to get a further discount of the two hundred dollars she was lacking, and if he balked about it, she’d just have to threaten to have a chat with his prim little wife, who had been sitting a couple of feet away at the front desk answering the doctor’s phone while Tiffany was inside the cubicle lathering up the good doctor’s privates. One way or another, she was going to get her new size 36D boobs in just two days’ time.