Laura looked away from him, as if she did not want to see the expression on his face. As if she couldn't meet his eyes. “I just... you know I have my ways.”
“We're back to that again, are we?” Nate asked, only just holding back from making the words come out as a growl. “Hiding things from me?”
“I'm not hiding things from you, Nate,” she said. “I just know that you're not going to like the answer.”
He could have pressed it, right there. He should have. If it was anyone else, any other topic, then the good cop inside of him would have asked. Got to the bottom of things.
But something about her tone, the way she said it and the way she wouldn't look at him, made him stay quiet. He mulled over her words in his head. He wouldn't like the answer, whatever that meant.
He hoped it didn't mean what he thought it meant. But he couldn't see how it could mean anything else.
It meant that she had already told him how she knew, and he hadn't believed her.
But it was ridiculous, wasn't it? To believe something like that? Psychic visions - they didn't exist in real life. This wasn't a TV show. They weren't caught in some high-budget Hollywood movie. This was real life.
It wasn't possible. What she was telling him could not be real.
And yet, how could she possibly have known to come here if she didn't find any physical evidence pointing her in the right direction?
He knew Laura. He knew that there was no way she would hide evidence if she'd found it. Not even to make herself look better. If there was a photograph, then it would be solid evidence for an upcoming trial. If she had any inkling of who the killer was, she would be telling him, trying to track the guy down.
So if she didn't have any evidence, and she didn't know who it was and wasn’t trying to track them down, then…
It only seemed to leave one possibility.
A possibility that Nate just could not accept.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He was parked further down the street, like he always tried to be. The further away you were from the location you were actually going to, the less likely it was that someone would connect you with it. His favorite thing was to park outside of a residential property, making it look as though he was simply visiting the people who lived there. Or perhaps that he was the homeowner himself.
It was a simple trick, and yet it was effective. People didn't usually ask what you were up to. Except for the homeowners themselves, and then it was simple to say that you were visiting a neighbor. Not that anyone had ever actually asked. He just held the excuse ready, in case it ever came up.
But it was the fact that he was parked down the road that had saved him in this case. When he had his tools with him, he would park a little closer, because he didn't want anyone to see him carrying the duffel bag. When he had the wood for the platform, or the bound victim, he would park as close as possible and then immediately move the car right afterwards to make sure that he was as far away as he could be. There were degrees of risk involved in each position, of course.
On this occasion,
he had neither tools nor victim to carry, so he'd parked a good distance down the street. He just wanted to check on things, make sure that everything was working. He liked to carry out a test run of the platforms before actually bringing someone in, making sure that they were set up correctly. This was all very DIY, and even though he had managed to master most of the techniques involved, it wasn't like he had any real training in this area.
So, he had parked down the street and walked with his hands in his pockets, strolling like he was just enjoying a walk in the neighborhood. That’s how he was able to stop some distance away, taking in what was happening while remaining in the shadows himself. That's how he was able to get away without being seen.
He had not expected anyone to find this place. It had been boarded up for long enough, and no one in the local neighborhood even seemed to look at it anymore. It was just one more eyesore, one more failed business that had gone the way of history. People didn't notice it anymore.
But someone had found it. He wasn't sure how. There were any number of ways it could have happened, he supposed. Perhaps it was just a case of a group of teenagers trying to break into a place in order to find somewhere to drink, and then discovering the platform. By now, there were a few details of the deaths that were just starting to leak out to the press. He had read a few of the articles himself. This thing about the platforms, it had been mentioned. They didn't have pictures yet, but they could write about their construction in a little detail.
So, anyone who went into the abandoned grocery store and looked around and saw the platform might think to call the police. That could have been it.
But it was only one possibility.
The other possibility, the one that he didn't really want to think about as he watched the police milling around the front of the store, was that they were somehow on to him. That they had worked out what he was doing, where he was going.
Maybe it was pure luck. If he was a cop, and he'd found two people hanging by the necks in abandoned locations, he supposed that he would start searching in abandoned locations as well. He'd known full well that as soon as he started doing this, the pressure would ramp up very quickly. They would be hunting for him. That was why he had spent so much time beforehand preparing everything.
He had already picked out the victim for this place. He knew who should have been hanging from the ceiling in that grocery store tomorrow night. He was going to have to change his plans, go for one of his backup locations. After putting in some of the preparation already it was a real shame - but what could he do, except accept it? This place was burned. The police knew about it, they were here. They weren't going to let him back in. Even if he tried it, he would inevitably be caught. They were bound to keep this place under surveillance even if it looked like they had moved on.
He turned, his hands still in his pockets, and continued that casual stroll back towards his car. He could be just another local in the neighborhood, someone out to clear his mind at night. On the way somewhere, perhaps. And once he was in the car, he was just one more traveler on the road, one more person driving past the grocery store without so much as glancing at it. He didn't need to look again. He had seen enough. The presence of the marked police car around the front had told him everything he needed to know.
He went over what he had left inside in his head, thinking about it carefully. The wood, which he had constructed into the platform. The mechanism. He didn't think he had left any tools, and when he got home, he would check very carefully to be sure that he hadn't. If it was only the platform itself, he didn't think they would be able to trace it back to him. Oh, and the rope, of course. But he handled everything with gloves even when he was putting it together, for safety’s sake. He should still be able to continue going on a little longer.