The Seventh Victim (Texas Rangers 1)

What Raines had done was of no interest to him now. “My doctor is top notch.”

A cynical smile curved the edge of full lips. “This doctor might be good, and she might think she’s different and smarter than the rest, but she’s not. I’ve seen more doctors than I can count, and I’ve talked to countless cops. I suffered a concussion during the attack and don’t have memories to share; otherwise I’d have shared them years ago.”

A dozen questions condensed to one. “What’s the last image you do remember before the attack?”

She slowly shook her head from side to side. “I don’t want to answer your questions. Now get off my property, Sergeant Beck.”

The abrasive clip in her voice thinned his patience. Deliberately, he kept his voice even and precise. “I came all this way to see you.”

“You’ve wasted a trip, Sergeant Beck.”

He managed a smile that didn’t feel the least bit friendly. “This visit was a courtesy because I did not want to put you out, ma’am. But I have come here for answers.”

Her hand tightened around the gun barrel. “You have come to the wrong place. I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“I could detain you and drive you into Austin, where we could have a more formal chat.”

“Cops . . . so predictable,” she muttered as she rubbed her temple with her fingertips. “You’ve no cause to take me anywhere.”

“Ma’am, you are a material witness in an active murder case, and I have every right to take you into Austin.”

“I don’t remember.” She sounded weary.

“Appears to me you haven’t even tried that hard.”

She tipped her head back as if struggling for patience and control. “If I had any detail I would tell you. I really would. But I don’t.”

“It’s in this morning’s paper.”

“I haven’t had the chance to read it.”

“Then I suppose you haven’t read about the woman in San Antonio?”

“The paper never said how she died.” And at his questioning look she added, “I do read the papers, Sergeant.”

The Austin paper and television stations had spent several days covering the unknown San Antonio body, trailing the story through the discovery and the identification. When the leads had run dry, the articles had stopped. “We don’t know how she died, but believe she was dressed in white.” He rested his hands on his belt, the heavy leather creaking. “She’d been exposed to the elements. Sun and animals took most of her away.”

Tension flattened her lips. “There was no mention of any of that in the paper.”

“That was deliberate on the part of the local police. They don’t want to show their cards until they have to.”

The pink he’d seen in her cheeks when she’d come out of the woods had faded. “The first woman’s name was Lou Ellen Fisk. Mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“What about Gretchen Hart? She’s the one that died yesterday morning.”

“No.”

Her clipped, almost defiant answers shortened his temper to breaking. She wanted to stay out of this game. Wanted him to walk away. Not happening. “You remember having that man’s hands around your neck? Remember what it’s like to have your wind slowly cut off?”

Her eyes widened. Fear and then anger shot back. “Is that supposed to shock a memory from me? Or make me go rushing to your doctor? Because if it is you’ll have to do better than that.”

“I got two dead women and I expect a little help from you.”

She sighed her frustration. “All I remember is waking up in a hospital room. My throat burned, and I could barely talk. I remember my face and neck were bruised and my eyes were so bloodshot it was hard to see my pupils when I looked in the mirror. The doctors said the Strangler just about crushed my windpipe. My voice is still hoarse today because of the attack.”

Imagining her face battered and bruised cooled the fire in his belly. “Any idea how you got away?”

“I was told someone passed by and saw what was happening. I must have blacked out by then, but I’m told the guy and his girlfriend called the cops and my attacker ran away.”

“Where were you attacked?”

“If you’ve spoken to Mike Raines then you have more details than me.” Impatience nipped at each word.

When he had a spare moment he’d read the Raines files cover to cover. “I want to hear what you have to say, ma’am.” His tone remained cool, even.

“There’d been a party, and I’d had too many drinks. I took a cab to my apartment, and I remember putting my key in the lock. And then my next memory starts in the hospital.”

“The other Seattle victims were killed by the highway.”

“It was in all the papers at the time. All women, including me, were thinking twice before heading out on Route 10. It never occurred to me that he’d be in my apartment building.”

He dug into his own memories of the crime. “The other victims had police records.”

She rubbed the side of her neck with her hand. “And I did not. Yes, I know. Some of the cops were certain I was lying and went to great lengths to dig into my past. In the end, they found out what I told them they’d find: one speeding ticket, which I got when I was sixteen. What I know is in Detective Raines’s files.”

“Except who attacked you. That detail is locked in your head, Ms. Church.”

She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “The key is gone, sir. There is no way to reach the memories. Now I need to ask you to leave. I’ve got to be in town in less than an hour.”

“You have a show opening, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Photographs?”

“Yes.”

He dropped the shells in his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of Polaroids taken of the body at yesterday’s crime scene. “They look like this?”

She took the pictures and glanced at crime scene images of Gretchen Hart. Immediately, her face paled and she swayed before she handed him back the images. “You’re full of nasty questions and tricks.”

He suffered no remorse. “Thought if you could see firsthand what I’m dealing with you might be more open to helping me.”

“Get off my land, Ranger. I have no more to say to you.”

He slowly tucked the pictures back in his breast pocket. “I’ll leave for now, Ms. Church, but you are gonna see me again. That I do promise you.”

Gripping the shotgun by the stock, she turned toward the house, her dog following.

As she reached for the front door, he said, “If the Seattle Strangler is active again, don’t you find it a bit odd that he’d take up his work only twenty or thirty miles from where his last victim lives? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never put much stock in coincidence.”

She turned partway toward him, unwittingly giving him a view of her slim neck. “You’re assuming it is the Seattle Strangler. I am not.”

Tension rippled through his body. “It’s a solid assumption.”

She hesitated as if a blast of frigid air cut up her spine and then vanished with her dog into her house.

Lara Church wasn’t the timid artsy type he’d expected. She had steel running down her spine. Getting her help wouldn’t be as easy as he’d hoped. But in the end he would get it.