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  Will glanced at his watch. He started to pace to try to work out the tension that was coiling every muscle he had into a tight ball, but each second that passed with Angie not showing her face only served to make it worse.

  She always did this. She always put herself right in the middle of trouble and did not give a damn that Will suffered the consequences. As long as he had known her, Angie had pushed people as hard as she could, constantly testing their limits. It was a game that would get her killed one day, and then Will would be the one sitting on the couch, some other cop the unlucky bastard who had to hold his hand and tell him that she had been found strangled, beaten, raped, murdered.

  The girls had been trash-talking, but Will noticed they’d turned quiet. He heard a rustling from the woods and Angie came out, flashlight in her hand.

  She looked at Will, then the girls, then back at Will. Her mouth was set, her eyes lit with fury. She turned on her heel, heading back into the woods, and Will followed her.

  “Stop,” he said, trying to keep up. “Would you just stop?”

  She wouldn’t listen. All he could do was follow the beam of her flashlight.

  About twenty feet into the woods, she turned on him. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Her tone was sharp as a knife.

  “I’m just your brother paying you a call.”

  Angie looked over his shoulder and Will followed suit. He could clearly see the girls standing in front of the liquor store. They made no attempt to hide their interest.

  She whispered hoarsely, trying to keep her voice down. “This is the wrong fucking place for this, Will. Lola already thinks something’s up.”

  He shoved John Shelley’s rap sheet in her face. She did a double take when she saw the photograph, and he could have sworn her eyes softened.

  “Read it,” he ordered. “Read it to me so that I know I’ve got it right.”

  Angie shined the flashlight on the first page. He saw her eyes moving, reading the words. She looked up, said, “Will,” like he was being unreasonable.

  “Read it.”

  She held the flashlight under her arm, training the beam on the first page, then flipping to the second and third.

  Finally, she looked up again. “So?”

  He wanted to shake her. “Did you read what it says?”

  Taking her time, she turned back to the first page and read aloud in a bored tone, “ ‘Jonathan Winston Shelley, six-one, one hundred ninety-five pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Prior record: theft by taking. Received May 10, 1986, Coastal State Prison, maximum security, special offender’s wing, age sixteen. Paroled July 22, 2005, age thirty-five. Registered sexual offender, pedophile.’ ” She looked back up, repeated, “So?”

  “Read the last page,” he said, meaning the part he’d printed out from Caroline’s e-mail. Shelley’s rap sheet had been brief, just listing the highlights of his crimes, but the records Caroline had found filled in all the blanks in horrid detail.

  “Read it,” he demanded.

  She didn’t want to. He could tell that from the steely way she glared at him.

  He asked, “You want me to read it for you?”

  “I only get an hour break for supper.”

  He snatched the pages from her hand, tried to find the right section. He was so angry that the words kept reversing on the page, their shapes morphing one into the other. He tried, “Ca …” Will felt a knife-sharp pain in the front of his temple. God damnit, he knew at least two of the words. “Jonathan Shelley.” He tried to pick out another one. “Drain. No, he—dead. He killed—”

  Angie put her hand over his. She tried to take the report but he wouldn’t let go. “Come on,” she coaxed, gently, pulling the pages from his grasp.

  Will clenched his fists as he stared at the ground. Christ. No wonder she couldn’t stand to be with him.

  She spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”

  He wanted to sink into the ground, just magically to somewhere else.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I read it before.”

  “I know you did,” she told him, taking his hand again. “Look at me, Will. I’m sorry.”

  He could not look at her.

  “You want me to read it out loud?”

  “I don’t care what you do.”

  “Will.”

  He knew he was sounding petulant, but couldn’t stop. “I really don’t.”

  The flashlight had fallen to the ground and she reached down to pick it up, still holding on to him. She shined the light on the pages and read, “ ‘On June 15, 1985, Shelley sexually assaulted Mary Alice Finney, a fifteen-year-old white female, then removed her tongue with a serrated kitchen knife, resulting in her death. In addition, Shelley made several deep bite marks in the victim’s flesh and urinated on the body. Shelley’s bloody fingerprints were found at the scene and on the body. The murder weapon was found in Shelley’s bedroom closet. Known drug addictions: heroin, cocaine.’ ”

  “Angie,” was all he could say.

  She was silent, letting a couple of cars pass before she said, “Remember I told you that Michael Ormewood came by here that one time?”

  He was sick of hearing about Ormewood. If he never heard the man’s name again, Will would die a happy man.

  Angie said, “He told us to look out for a recently released sex offender named John Shelley. He said he was really a bad guy and to stay away from him.” She looked down at the rap sheet. “Michael went to Decatur High School. He must have grown up in the area.”

  “Did you manage to ask him about his childhood years while you were going down on him?”

  “Do you want me to go down on you, too, Will? Is that what this is about?”

  He slapped her hand away. “Stop it.”

  She told him, “I read his personnel file.”

  “You’re real interested in Michael for some reason. Why is he different? What makes him so special?”

  “You’re not listening to what I’m saying.” She was talking to him like he was a child and he did not like it. “Michael went to Decatur High School, so he must have lived in the area. He was a few years older than John, but he would have heard about the crime. He would have known the details about the tongue. Why didn’t he mention it to you? Why didn’t he say, ‘Hey, this reminds me of something that happened about twenty years ago right down the street from me.’ ”

  Will was too upset to even consider the question.

  She said, “John told me that someone was blackmailing him.”

  Will laughed. “You think that Michael Ormewood knows there’s a guy out there raping and murdering women, taking out their tongues, but instead of arresting the doer, Michael’s blackmailing him? For what? What could John Shelley possibly have that Michael Ormewood would want?”

  “How do you explain Michael telling me to look out for John Shelley? How do you explain his not mentioning this same thing happening to a girl in the same neighborhood where he grew up?”

  Will tried to make her see reason. “How do you explain the other girls?”

  “What other girls?”

  “Last year, two girls were sexually assaulted by a man wearing a black ski mask. Both of them had their tongues bitten off.”

  Her lips parted in surprise.

  “John Shelley’s been out seven months,” Will told her. “Both girls lived thirty, forty minutes away from here.” She was silent, so he added, “Julie Cooper’s fifteen. The other girl was only fourteen. What do these crimes have in common? What’s the link here?”

  Angie said, “You know perps have their way of doing things. Why would he deviate? Why would he cut off some and bite off the others? Why would he go from little girls to a grown woman?”

  Will recalled Michael’s answer to this question, but he did not share it with Angie.

  She asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about the other cases before?”

  “When, Angie? Over dinner? Maybe when we were holding hands, taking a long stroll in the park?”

/>   “You could have told me.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Who knew you’d end up screwing around with a convicted pedophile?”

  Her head jerked up. “I haven’t slept with him.”

  “Yet.”

  Angie gave a heavy sigh.

  “Here’s an indisputable fact: Shelley raped and killed a fifteen-year-old girl. He cut out her tongue.”

  “He’s not …” She looked back at Shelley’s photograph. “Whatever he did, he’s not that guy anymore.”

  “Julie Cooper was fifteen,” Will told her. “He raped her in an alley behind a movie theater. He bit off her tongue.”

  Angie shook her head.

  “Anna Linder was fourteen. They found her in Stone Mountain Park the next day. She was holding her tongue in her hand like a security blanket. They had to pry it from her fingers.”

  Angie still did not respond.

  “Cynthia Barrett, Angie. Cynthia Barrett was fifteen.”

  “Michael’s neighbor.”

  Will shrugged. “So what?”

  “Tell me this: How do they know each other? How did Michael know to warn me off him in the first place?” She indicated the liquor store with an angry wave of her hand. “You weren’t there when he did it. There’s something between them. Michael hates the guy.”

  “What else am I missing here?” Will asked. “Because what it sounds like to me is that you’re so pissed at Michael Ormewood that you can’t see straight. Why is that, Angie? Why can’t you get this asshole out of your system?”

  He could see the fury in her eyes, knew she was remembering the millions of times he had asked her this before.

  Her voice was eerily calm when she said, “Did you ask Michael how old his wife was when he met her?” She didn’t let him respond. “She was fifteen, Will. He was twenty-five.”

  “Did he rape her and bite out her tongue?” Will asked. “Because, unless he did, I don’t see why that makes a bit of difference.”

  “I’m telling you, John didn’t do this.”

  “I’ll ask him myself when I bring him in.”

  “No.” She grabbed his arm as if she could physically stop him. “I’ll do it.”

  Will could only stare at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “The minute you put those cuffs on him, he’s shutting down.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He’s a con. Of course he’ll shut down. He won’t so much as fart until his lawyer shows up, and then the lawyer will tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  “You’re not going to control this.”

  “What’s the charge? Jaywalking?” She raised her eyebrows, as if she expected an answer. “You can bring him in for questioning, but what do you have? You can search his place, but what are you going to tell the judge when you ask for the warrant? ‘He did it twenty years ago, Your Honor, so maybe, probably, possibly he could have done it again now?’ ” Angie crossed her arms. “Last time I checked, unless you’re the president of the United States, you need some kind of evidence to throw a guy in jail.”

  Will did not answer because he knew that she was right.

  “Do you have John’s fingerprints on anything? Any witnesses? Anybody who saw anything?”

  Jasmine, Will thought. Maybe she saw something. If she did, she was probably at the bottom of a lake right now.

  Angie summed it up: “No forensic evidence, no witnesses and no case. You’re right, Will. Let’s go out and arrest him right now, why don’t we?”

  “He could be stalking his next victim,” Will said, not adding that Angie could very well be the next woman he set his sights on.

  “If you arrest him now, you’ll have to kick him in twenty-four hours, and if it is Shelley who’s doing this, then he’ll know you’re on to him and he’ll go so deep underground that you’ll never find him again.”

  “What do you propose I do? Wait until another girl is raped? Maybe murdered?” Will pointed out, “He could already have his next victim right now, Angie. What if he’s got Jasmine? Am I supposed to sit around while she’s counting down the minutes left in her life?”

  “He’ll talk to me. He doesn’t know I’m a cop.”

  “What is it with this guy, Angie? Why won’t you see him for what he is?”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t judge men based on what they’ve done in their past.”

  “Is that supposed to hurt me?”

  “Let me talk to him,” she pleaded. “You can watch his house until morning, make sure he doesn’t go out. If he’s got that little girl, then he won’t touch her without you knowing. I’ll go to the car wash tomorrow morning and sit him down and talk to him.”

  “You think he’s going to confide in you?”

  “If he’s innocent …” She nodded. “Yeah. I can make him talk.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  “Then you’ll be there.” She actually tried to tease him. “You’ll protect me, won’t you, Willy?”

  “This isn’t anything to joke about.”

  “I know.” She was looking over his shoulder again, watching the girls. “I need to get back to work.”

  “I don’t like this,” he said. “I don’t like any of this and I don’t want to do it.”

  “That’s nothing new for either of us, is it?” She put her hand to his cheek, brushed her lips against his. “Go away, Will.”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  FEBRUARY 10, 2006

  7:22 AM

  John sat on a stool at the counter of the Empire Diner. He had walked in the door ravenously hungry, but for some reason when his food came, he could only bring himself to take a few bites. Nerves had his stomach in a death grip as he waited for his life to begin.

  He had spent most of the night with Kathy and Joyce, trying to come up with a plan of action. Kathy wanted to go to the police, but if there was one thing the Shelley children could agree upon, it was that you could not trust the police. Michael would never talk. He was too smart to leave himself open. John’s credit report might raise some questions, but the answers could very well come back and bite John in the ass. In the end, they had decided that Joyce would use her contacts at the county records department to try to find out where Aunt Lydia was living. Uncle Barry had only been married to her for a few years before he died, and they hadn’t been able to find anything under the Carson family name. There had to be a trail somewhere. Once they found it, the Shelley children would confront Lydia about her role in framing John. She had obviously confessed her sins once before. They would not give her a moment’s peace until she confessed them again—this time on the record.

  As far as John’s own confession went, he had not told his sister and her lover everything that had happened. He’d been as honest as possible up to a point. He had not told them about Michael’s next-door neighbor. The thought of what he had done, the depths to which he had sunk, made him sick. All this time, John had believed Michael was the animal, but in that one moment when the opportunity had presented itself, John had been just as sadistic, just as vengeful as his cousin. Was this what Emily had fought for? Was this why his mother had spent hour upon hour writing in her notebooks, so that her little Johnny could get out of jail and mutilate a fifteen-year-old girl? For the first time in his life, John was glad his mother was gone, glad that he would never have to look into her beautiful eyes and know that she was looking at someone who was capable of such atrocities.

  “Top you off?” the waitress asked, but she was already filling John’s mug with coffee.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  The door opened and he glanced up into the mirror behind the counter to see Robin standing with her hands on her hips, looking around for a table. The restaurant was fairly busy, so she didn’t notice him staring.

  John fought the urge to turn around. He wanted to call her over, point to the empty stool beside him and li
sten to her talk. Too much was going on now, though. He had blood on his hands, guilt in his heart. He looked back down at his mug, staring into the murky liquid, wishing it could show him his future. Would there ever be a woman in his life? Would he ever find someone who knew what had happened to him, what he had done, and not run away screaming?

  “Hey, you.” Robin slipped onto the stool beside him. She was dressed differently. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual hooker garb.

  “Hey,” John returned. “Off the clock?”

  “Yeah,” she said, turning over her coffee cup and signaling for the waitress.

  Something else was different about her, but John couldn’t pinpoint exactly what that was. It had nothing to do with the way she was dressed or the fact that she wasn’t wearing a pound of makeup. If he knew her better, he might say that she was nervous.

  She said, “You ever think that you just hate your job? That maybe you should just run away from home and never look back?”

  He smiled. He had considered running away from home the whole time he was at Coastal. “You okay?”

  She nodded, then gave him a sly smile. “Are you stalking me? First the hospital and now this.”

  He looked around. “You own this place or something?”

  “This is my regular breakfast hangout.”

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “Just looked like a good place to sit awhile.” He’d had money in his pocket for the first time in forever and he’d wanted to treat himself.

  She said, “I lied to you.”

  “About what?”

  “My first kiss,” she said. “It wasn’t my little brother’s best friend.”

  He tried to make a joke of it, even though his feelings were hurt. “Please tell me it wasn’t your little brother.”

  She smiled, poured some cream into her coffee. “My parents were speed freaks,” she said. “At least my mom and whoever it was she was banging were.” Robin picked up her spoon and stirred the coffee. “The state took me away from her when I was a kid.”

  John didn’t know what to say. He settled on, “I’m sorry to hear that.”