LITMIR.BIZ

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sorry, Mom. God. I’m sorry.”

      His mother gave a twisted smile. “It’s okay. Of course you’re upset.”

      He saw in her eyes that he’d hurt her. As, he realized, he’d intended. And he didn’t even know why he’d lashed out.

      “Mendoza…” He hated the taste of the bastard’s name in his mouth.

      “Is still at Salem.” The Oregon State Penitentiary was in Salem, Oregon’s capital.

      “A friend of his…”

      “That’s a possibility we’ll pursue.”

      “But not a very good one.”

      She didn’t have to answer. Of course, it was unlikely one of Ricardo Mendoza’s friends would commit a crime this savage, and why? What was the motive?

      For the first time, Will was thinking like the attorney and prosecutor he was.

      “What’s the point? What’s this scum trying to say?”

      “I have no idea,” his mother admitted. “Maybe nothing. Maybe this guy just liked the idea. Thought wiping out her identity, metaphorically, by replacing it with a crude symbol of masculinity was funny.”

      “Like he’s saying, ‘In your face’?” Will asked.

      She spread her hands. “Maybe he thought a jockstrap sounded like a handy murder weapon. Hard to trace, wouldn’t hold fingerprints well, and, hey, you could carry it around in your pocket without exciting suspicion. You’re on your way to the gym. What’s the big deal?”

      “Have you ever before or since read or heard of a woman strangled with a jockstrap?” he asked.

      “No,” she conceded.

      “Here we are. Small town. Not all that many murders, and ninety-nine percent of those are your garden-variety shoot-the-abusive-husband type. Biker brawls. Not the work of serial killers.”

      They’d speculated back then that Gillian’s murder was too “sophisticated” to be a killer’s first. The savagery coupled with the care taken displaying the body, had seemed to be the work of someone who’d done this before. On the other hand, Mendoza had also done unbelievably stupid things: he was seen leaving the bar with Gilly, his skin was beneath her fingernails and his semen was found in her body. Evidence of grandiosity and disorganized thinking, everyone said. He’d felt invincible, never thought he’d be suspected. So what if he’d talked to Gillian in the bar? She’d talked to other men, too. Maybe he hadn’t realized anyone at the bar could name him. It didn’t matter—he’d been convicted on DNA.

      “So what are the odds that, just coincidentally, we have a second killer with the same idea?”

      She didn’t have to answer.

      “Are you going to talk to Mendoza?”

      “Maybe. We’ll concentrate on her movements yesterday first.”

      “She told me where she worked.” But, damn, he couldn’t remember.

      “She was a hairstylist. She had a chair at Mountain High Salon.”

      Beth made a sound. They all turned.

      “Was she tall and blond? With a mole on her cheek?” She looked from one of them to another. Pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, no! She cut my hair the last time. And Steph’s been going to her. I should have recognized the name! I hate to tell Steph. Oh, that poor girl.”

      “I’m sorry,” his mother said, uselessly.

      “Does Jack know yet?”

      “No. He hasn’t called, and I figured there’s nothing he could do, not tonight. I’ll page him in the morning.”

      Will’s mother and Detective Giallombardo ate then, both gobbling as if they couldn’t remember their last meal. He knew from experience that his mother would be lucky to snatch a few hours of sleep tonight. She’d spend tomorrow talking to everyone who’d know anything about Amy’s last day. Meg Patton was dedicated. Just…sometimes soft, in his opinion. Wanting to do the opposite of whatever her bastard of a father would have done. She and Aunt Renee both had seemed to spend their careers trying to bury their father’s legacy as Elk Springs police chief.

      The two women left, Will’s mom promising to keep him informed. Then, he and Beth rehashed what they knew, Beth clearly upset.

      “That poor, poor girl,” she kept saying. “She was your age?”

      “A year younger.”

      “Twenty-eight, then. Only twenty-eight.”

      He finally persuaded her to go to bed, in part by heading for his own. With the house quiet and dark, only his bedside lamp on, Will sat up against a heap of pillows and tried to read, but kept finishing the same page without remembering a word.

      He was tired, but at the same time wide awake. Antsy. Feeling as if he should do something. Fight or flight. Will recognized that he was in shock, reliving the hours after Gilly’s body was found, when a thousand, if onlys and I should haves had run crazily through his mind as if he were on crack. Replay, replay. Change the ending. He’d kept trying, over and over, until he was crazy and slammed his fist into the wall. He hadn’t even noticed he’d broken bones for a while, the pain nothing, nothing, compared to the agony in his chest.

      His book fell to the bedcovers, forgotten. He couldn’t shut out the memories, the horror.

      Amy, face alight when she saw him, waving in delight. “Will! Over here!” Gilly laughing up at him, staring at him with hate that in his imaginings became terror. Her face, Amy’s face, one and the same.

      Pulling himself back from the abyss, Will tried to remember how well Gilly and Amy knew each other. They hadn’t become friends—nothing like that, but Amy was certainly part of the crowd he’d introduced Gilly to. They had looked a little bit alike. Both five-eight or -nine, leggy, boyishly slim, naturally blond. Neither blue-eyed. Gillian had had pale, almost sea-green eyes, Amy… He couldn’t quite picture them. Brown? He flashed on Trina Giallombardo’s brown eyes, assessing, accusing, judging, because he’d lost it with his mother. Angry at her intrusion, he shook his head and returned doggedly to his struggle to see Amy Owen. No. Not brown. Flecks of yellow and green.

      Dead. Because, like Gillian, she was tall and blond and willowy? But their killers weren’t the same man. Couldn’t be the same man. Mendoza was guilty, guilty, guilty. Scum who had no business hitting on Will’s girlfriend in the bar, becoming enraged because she’d rejected him, raping, murdering, taunting.

      Had Amy been chosen precisely because she looked like Gillian? A copycat crime required a copycat victim. But who in hell would imitate something like this? Could Elk Springs really have spawned two monsters? Copycat monsters?

      It made no sense. None of it made sense. Gilly’s murder by a man who’d hot-wired cars and fenced stolen goods but never committed a violent crime. This one now, six years later. Why six years? Why now?

      Why two women Will had known? A stranger, killed exactly like Gillian, would have been bad enough, but Amy! Less than a week after they met again, talked about old times, flirted a little.

      He went cold. Was that why she’d been chosen? Because he knew her? Because he’d flirted with her? Because, like Gilly, she’d once meant something to him?

      But that made no sense either. He’d dated her a few times. Kissed her. Had sex with her once—after they’d both had too much to drink at a party. So what? He’d dated and kissed a dozen girls or more in high school. Slept with several. Had a couple of girlfriends who lasted months. One nearly a year. He knew Nita and Christine both were still around. Why not one of them? Why Amy? Opportunity? Just because in a small town there were only so many look-alike blondes?

      Why? God, why? he begged, even as he knew he’d get no answer.

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