The chief tipped the photos back into the manila envelope and handed everything across the desk. “Detective,” he said, raising a hand to stop me from leaving. “Be careful.”
I pressed my lips together. Being careful was the last thing on my mind.
Ramone Wilkes’s face stared at me every time I blinked. When I slept. When I dreamed. The man was a monster who belonged behind bars, and that’s where I would put him again—no matter what it took.
Chapter 3
The drive to LaCrosse took me two hours and six minutes, a bit faster than expected, especially seeing as I stopped twice—once for a cup of coffee, the second time to relieve myself of the cup of coffee. The third time I stopped was a mile from the crime scene. That last stop was because my hands were so jittery I could barely hold the steering wheel straight.
I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in park. I sat staring at my fingers, willing them to work. Willing my foot to press the gas pedal and continue to the waiting investigation.
Three blocks away sat the handiwork of a man who’d come closer to killing me than anyone since, or anyone before. Worse was the look in his eyes when he’d done it. Loving, affectionate even. He loved it—the kill, the fear, the desperate desire of his victims to reach for life, even as he stole it from them.
I shuddered. I’d had to complete hours of therapy after I’d last seen Wilkes. Then had come his trial, my testimony... and the nightmares had started all over. It’d been the way he looked at me in court—hungry, excited—as if he’d known the end hadn’t arrived.
The letters started after that. Long, involved ramblings that bordered on love notes. He’d promised he’d see me again, that our courtship hadn’t yet ended.
Apparently, he’d been right.
With a jerk, I pulled back out onto the road. I ignored the honk of a truck that swerved out of my way to avoid a collision. I felt the sweat pooling on my forehead, the dampness under my arms. I was a wreck.
My phone rang. I hit answer and turned on speaker. “Rosetti.”
“Kate.” It was Jimmy, and he sounded serious. “I just talked to the chief.”
“Sorry for taking off on you this morning.”
“You’re in LaCrosse.” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “You should have taken me with you.”
“Don’t be stupid. The Feds asked for me,” I said, adding a joking lightness to my voice. “No need for you to get a headache working with them, too.”
“It’s Wilkes, isn’t it? The chief didn’t confirm. But I saw the look in his eyes.”
My throat felt scratchy. “Looks like it might be that way.”
“Stay out of this, Kate. Come on—use your brain.”
“I’m just checking it out, doing a favor for the suits. Maybe it’s not him.”
The silence on the other end of the line was all consuming.
The truth was that Jimmy had been the one to find me on the verge of death. He’d been there when one of my colleagues had shot Wilkes in the shoulder and saved my life. Jimmy had been the one to untie my wrists. He’d seen me at the mercy of Wilkes. He’d seen it all, and still, he’d kept it quiet, out of the reports as much as possible.
And that was why, despite Jimmy’s lackluster enthusiasm for the job and his somewhat light-hearted countdown to retirement, he remained my partner. He had my back. Always.
“I’ll call you later,” I said. “I’m just pulling up at the scene.”
“Kate—”
“Oh, man,” I breathed.
“What is it?” Jimmy asked sharply. “Kate, get out of there. Come home.”
“It’s not that,” I said, throwing the car door open and lifting the phone to my ear, turning it off speaker. “It’s him.”
“Wilkes?”
“No,” I growled. “Russo.”
I stared at the group of federal agents swarming the small, single-family home tucked into the college town. There was one man in particular everyone seemed to swarm—a man dressed in a sharp suit with a windbreaker over the back spelling out FBI in bold letters.
“You scared me,” Jimmy said. “What’s wrong with Russo? I thought the two of you were friends.”
“We were,” I said. “That is the problem. I gotta go.”
“Call me later.”
I hung up on Jimmy and stomped my way through the yard to where the suits had gathered. The sidewalks were devoid of snow in this part of town, with only small mounds of dirty white visible in clumpy patches on the grass.
I marched up to where Russo was speaking in low tones with a woman who looked like she belonged in a shampoo commercial, not an FBI windbreaker. I tapped Russo’s shoulder and waited until he turned around, his eyes widening in surprise.
“Claire, can you give me a minute?” he murmured to the pretty blonde.
Claire nodded and backed away, but not before giving me a top to bottom scan that had me wondering if there was more going on between the female agent and Russo than I’d initially suspected.
“Don’t look so shocked,” I said. “I heard I was asked here by name. I should have known you’d be involved.”
“Kate.” Russo smiled, dropped the clipboard in his hand down to his side. “It’s nice to see you.”
“The circumstances are unfortunate,” I said, dodging his gaze. “I take it you’ve heard about my experience with Wilkes?”
“To a certain degree.”
I glanced toward the house. “And there’s enough evidence here to point to him?”
“I wouldn’t have made you drive two hours on a wild goose chase.”
“Is that right,” I said dryly. “For some reason, I’m not convinced.”
“Now, Kate, I thought we ended on good terms. I’m not going to have to win you over from scratch, am I?”
“Depends,” I said, my eyes landing on Claire before flicking to the house. “What do you have on Wilkes?”
Russo’s eyes followed mine to Claire, then to the house. A thin smile landed on his lips when he turned his gaze back to mine. “Not a whole lot, hence the reason I called you over.”
“How’d you hear about my history with Wilkes? We’re not exactly in the TC Task Force’s jurisdiction.”
“We ran specific details through the system—”
“You mean, the victim’s lack of teeth.”
“That,” Russo admitted. “Along with the age and gender of the victim and location. Didn’t get that many pings for someone removing an entire set of teeth perimortem. Cross referenced that with killers who were still alive, and I was more than a little intrigued to see that one Ramone Wilkes had escaped from prison late last night.”
“I thought it was this morning?”
“Last night,” he said. “We didn’t catch wind of it until this morning.”
“Just enough time to travel up here.”
“Just being the key word. It doesn’t leave a whole lot of flex time before he started killing,” Russo said. “He must’ve had a car waiting. He would’ve hit the road and traveled overnight. What brought him here, specifically?”