Kendall looked down, feeling the man’s pain swell to the point where it was palpable. She wanted to argue with him about what Skye’s mother felt. She was sorry for her too. Her daughter was dead, and whatever had transpired between them would never get resolved.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no business presuming how anyone felt. That’s between them.”
Cullen looked hard at her.
“That it is,” he said.
“A bay view will be fine,” Cullen Hornbeck said as the Holiday Inn Express clerk slid a plastic key card across the front desk. She was a chubby girl, a brunette with lively brown eyes that she accentuated with a heavy application of mascara. She was younger than Skye and by no means a ringer for Cullen’s daughter, but the front-desk girl’s very aliveness taunted him. Picked at him. She tilted her head as she watched the hotel’s newest guest complete the requisite paperwork. She smiled a friendly smile.
“Canada, huh?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He noticed that the girl wore braces and had three holes pierced into each ear.
Skye had had braces when she was fourteen.
Skye had two…or was it three holes in each ear? How was it that he couldn’t be sure?
“My mom goes up there every six months to get the aspirin with codeine. Can’t get it here.”
Cullen didn’t say a word.
“We have free continental breakfast tomorrow at six. If you’re looking for dinner tonight, the Chinese place across the street is pretty good. Try their rainbow pot stickers and sesame balls.”
“That sounds good,” he said, knowing that the idea of any food whatsoever was the furthest thing from his mind.
His hotel room door secure, Cullen threw his suitcase on the bed and turned on the shower. He turned on the TV, louder than he would need to hear it, but not so loud as to be a nuisance to the other guests. He drew back the bedspread and dropped onto the pillow. He thought of how his daughter had always felt hotel bedspreads and pillows were full of “cooties” and that no one in their right mind would touch his or her bare skin to either. Deep within the folds of the poly foam, he began to scream. At first there were no words but the guttural cries of a man who had lost everything.
Finally, the pillow consumed his grief, keeping his words tucked inside.
“Skye, no! Please come back to us! Come back to me!”
Sam Castile knew the value in “mixing it up,” as he liked to call it when it came to dealing with the women he stalked, used, and discarded. The only method that was off limits was gunfire. Even the most inept police department had access to labs that examined the lans and grooves of a spent bullet. Ballistics ensured that a killer could be traced. That is, of course, if the gun could be found and matched to the killer. Certainly, he could have stolen a gun. But even that upped the ante for the risk of detection. So many killers in the Encyclopedia of Crime that he kept on the shelf with other, less useful books had been caught because they’d committed another crime.
Ted Bundy had been pulled over on a traffic violation in Salt Lake City. He’d attempted to elude police by driving through stop signs. With his headlights off! When he finally gave up, cops found an ice pick, handcuffs, and a pantyhose mask in the vehicle.
The serial killer’s traveling kit.
The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, screwed up his string of fourteen murders in the L.A. area when he was traced to a Toyota stolen from some restaurant goers in the city’s Chinatown. It was, Sam thought, a stupid move. If Ramirez had kept his focus, he’d have been able to keep his string of murders alive.
No killer likes to be told when they are finished doing what they do best.
Aileen Wuornos, who took it upon herself to rid Florida of purported philandering husbands and male abusers by killing the men she picked up for sex, was another one who could have prevailed if she hadn’t been so careless with her associated crimes. She was traced to a stolen car belonging to a dead man. Pawnshop receipts for victims’ belongings were mottled with her fingerprints.
Kill for sport or to make a point, not for money, stupid bitch!
So there he sat, thinking of what he might like to select from his smorgasbord of murder. What would be the most memorable way to steal the life from someone? What would fuel his desires? How would it play back when he remembered? Would it make him hard? Or would it merely frustrate him because there were not enough aspects to conjure a decent erotic fantasy?
Who would it be?
Chapter Thirty-one
October 8, 9 a.m.
Port Orchard
Lighthouse publisher Tad Stevens scurried out of his occasional office and stood under the YOU AUTO BUY and LET’S GROW REVENUE banners that had been plastered on a nearby wall to motivate the long-suffering advertising staff.
“People, I need your attention. People, I need your attention now.”
Mr. Stevens, as he insisted on being called, was the owner of the half dozen small papers that made up the struggling chain that caught the ad revenue and news crumbs that the Seattle papers apparently deemed too insignificant. Mr. Stevens was a remarkably neat man with a small frame, soul patch on his chin, and rimless glasses that held the DG logo of Dolce & Gabbana at the right temple hinge. He lived alone with his two Pomeranians, Hannity and Colmes. Editor Charlie Keller, for one, insisted that everyone in the newsroom show the publisher respect.
“Whenever he’s in the office, be nice,” Charlie had instructed them. “When he’s gone, you can call him dipshit if you like.”
No one had a problem following Charlie’s lead.
“People, no one likes the idea of capitalizing on tragedy. But that’s what papers do better than any entity other than maybe police departments and the medical profession,” Mr. Stevens said.
Let’s not forget the lawyers, Serenity thought.
“We have a golden opportunity to kick some ad revenue and readership butt, team.”
Golden opportunity? I’d like to kick someone’s butt, she thought some more. But it isn’t a reader’s or an advertiser’s.
The publisher went on, his enthusiasm swelling: “It appears a serial killer might be at work right here in our own backyard. We’ve got the dead woman in Little Clam Bay and what’s her name…the brush picker.”
Jesus, do you have to be gleeful? Two women are dead. This isn’t the biggest thing to hit Port Orchard since the Wal-Mart went in.
Serenity wanted to say something but stayed quiet. Not something she was particularly good at, either.
“We need to be tough,” he said. “We need to own this story. We need to sell our expertise as the local paper with its hand on the pulse of a major case. If this serial killer case gets the kind of traction I’m thinking, we’ll be able to sell photo rights to media outlets across the country.”
He looked over at Serenity but didn’t say her name.
“There will be opportunities for all of us. TV interviews. Maybe even a book. But our focus now is claiming this as a Lighthouse exclusive.”
Next he lowered his impeccable DGs and looked over at Travis Janus, the backup sports reporter who also did the paper’s Web site.
“TJ, let’s think out of the box on this. We need to enrich the content that we have up now. I’d like to see photos and docs pertaining to the case. If you need content to connect the dots, Serenity will help out.”
Serenity nodded, but knew that TJ wouldn’t ask her for anything. The Web was his bailiwick. He didn’t take advice from anyone. Supposed computer experts never do.
“You see this?”
Steven Stark, sweaty from his early-morning run from their place to Manchester’s boat launch and back, handed Kendall the morning’s edition of the Lighthouse. Cody was at the table waiting for a pancake and Kendall set down the spatula.