“You all watch TV. You know that a serial killer is likely to be drawn to the media coverage of his crimes, right? He wants the attention. He wants to know what’s being said about him.” She strolled down the center aisle, her eyes scanning the crowd on both sides. “He wants to sit here-or stand-and feel superior to everyone in this room, especially the chief and his department. To me. To you. Right now, he’s hanging on my every word. He wants me to tell you how very smart, how very clever he is.”

She stopped in the aisle and looked around. The room had gone silent again.

“Well, he is very smart. Very clever. The profiler and I were saying just this morning that he’s not like anyone we’ve seen before. The way he kills is unique. He really has his act together. He’s highly organized and he very carefully plans every aspect of his crime from the abduction to the torture to the disposal of the bodies. I suspect he’s as organized in every aspect of his life.”

“Chief Beck didn’t say anything about the victims being tortured.” A woman several rows to Mia’s left said loudly.

“What would you call being held captive for an indefinite period of time, shackled, repeatedly raped, then when he’s finally done with you, when he’s taken everything you have, including your dignity and your will to live, he wraps you in cellophane starting at your feet, until your entire face is covered so that you fight for even your last dying breath?” Mia said more sharply than she’d intended. “If that isn’t torture, I don’t know what is.

“Something else-he’s very sophisticated; the fantasy he’s living out is highly evolved. He’s a very confident man. Maybe owns his own business. And he’s bold. It takes a very bold man to do what this man does. There’s a high degree of risk here, taking the entire operation into consideration.”

As Mia made her way back to the front of the room, she made it a point to meet and hold the gaze of every man there. She was looking for a challenge.

“If he’s so smart and he’s so sophisticated, why did he leave that girl’s body on her front porch?” someone asked. “And it doesn’t seem so smart to me to leave a dead body in the police chief’s Jeep.”

“After a while, I suspect he needed to brag a bit.” Mia smiled. “Genius needs to be recognized.”

“So he’s showing off?” a young woman in the front row asked.

“Exactly.” Mia nodded. “For all his intelligence, all his sophistication, he is, at heart, a show-off.”

She’d reached the podium and returned the microphone to its stand.

“There’s one other thing about him that we know for certain,” Mia told the silent crowd. “The man we’re looking for is a sadistic coward. He has to tie his victims down to control them. He gets the greatest sexual satisfaction from torturing his victims. That’s what he gets off on. He fantasizes about how he can dominate his victims, how he can degrade them through various sexual acts, and then he lives out his fantasies. He makes sure their death is a long, drawn-out affair. It’s slow and deliberate and he savors every second of it. By then, he’s humiliated them, he’s stripped them of everything, and he’s kept them restrained so that he has total control over them. But without those restraints-without the duct tape and the chains, and the hours he forces them to spend alone-without those weapons, he is nothing but a weak little man. He’s a coward. He can only be satisfied by tying a woman up and raping her.” She looked around the room and added coolly, “Can you think of anything more pathetic?”

She stepped back from the microphone and nodded to Beck before walking down the center aisle and out the door.

17

Mia sat in the Adirondack chair, her legs stretched out straight in front of her, her head resting against the hard wooden back. She closed her eyes and listened to the waves lapping at the shore, and felt almost as if she were being rocked to sleep. Not that she wanted to fall asleep out here, on the wide lawn behind Sinclair’s Cove, but it was a restful moment.

She’d made one stop on her way out of town before driving to the inn from the meeting in St. Dennis.

“I’d like a room,” she’d told the pleasant young man behind the desk when she arrived.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid we’re booked to the rafters.”

“Mr. Sinclair said there’d be a room for me.”

She frowned. She hated the thought of having to drive back to Connor’s house now. She was tired and feeling worn out.

“Oh.” The desk clerk reached under the counter and pulled out a small slip of paper. “Agent Shields?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sinclair called earlier and asked that we re fresh one of the cabins for you. He said to apologize that we could not accomodate you in the main house.” He handed her a key on a long leather circle. “Last cabin on the left as you go around the back of the building. May I take your bags?”

“No apologies necessary. And I only have a few bags.” Just the ones under my eyes, one from Bling, and, oh yes, the one holding the bottle of Pinot Grigio on the passenger seat of my car.

“Please let me know if you need anything,” he told her. “We have breakfast starting at seven, though we can make arrangements for coffee and muffins earlier, if you like.” He smiled. “A lot of people come for the fishing and they like to get an early start.”

“No fishing for me,” she promised, “and hopefully no early start.”

She turned toward the door and noticed the portrait hanging over the fireplace. Following her gaze, the clerk told her, “That’s the late Mrs. Sinclair. Pretty lady, wasn’t she?”

“Mr. Sinclair’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to her?”

“She drowned four years ago.”

“What a tragedy,” Mia said.

“It really was. She was really nice.” He lowered his voice. “A little on the bossy side, but we all liked her anyway.”

“How did she drown?” Mia would have expected someone who lived on the water to be a strong swimmer.

“Boat overturned. She took one of the small out-boards to do a little crabbing and stayed out too long. Who knows how that happened. Storm came up real fast and she couldn’t get back in. Mr. Sinclair took it real hard. He’s been raising the kids-Danny and Delia-on his own. Doing a good job, too. They’re nice kids.”

The desk phone rang and he excused himself to answer it. Mia thanked him for the key and went through the lobby to the front porch. After parking her car in the lot, she walked around the back of the inn and followed a cobbled path to the last cabin.

There were lights on, both inside and over the front door. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she was at the right place. But it was definitely the last cabin. She slipped the metal key into the door and pushed it open.

Her cabin was almost identical to the one in which Holly Sheridan had stayed at the opposite end of the row of similar structures. The small front room contained a white wicker sofa, a matching chair, and an end table that held a tall ceramic lamp, the base of which was a seagull with its wings half opened. A basket of fruit, cheese, and crackers was on a tiled tray had been placed upon the coffee table. A fairly new television sat on a stand in the corner and a neat pile of current magazines was stacked on the end table.

Next to the tray something lay folded inside white tissue paper. She slipped a finger through the tape and pushed aside the paper to find a navy blue T-shirt with a silk-screened image of the inn. A note on the tray from Daniel Sinclair welcomed her to the inn and apologized that the only shirt they had was an extra large. “We give them out to all our guests,” the note informed her, “but last week we had a sorority reunion and went through all the smalls and mediums.”

Mia held up the shirt in front of her. It was indeed large, but it was a nice gesture. She refolded the shirt and took it into the bedroom and left it on the foot of the double bed, which had been turned down. She peeked into the bathroom and found fresh towels and two water glasses, along with the obligatory soaps, toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash.