Dear Maggie. Brenda Novak

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      NICK STRETCHED OUT in his chair, crossed his legs at the ankle and closed his eyes. He wanted to photograph Maggie Russell. He wanted to dress her in a white sundress that fell off the shoulder on one side and see her through his lens, laughing and barefoot, her thick auburn hair blowing in the wind, her eyes slanting up at him.

      It would have to be evening, he decided. That was when the light would be perfect and he’d be able to capture her nearly flawless skin in a warm, gentle glow. The dusting of freckles across her nose, and her mouth, slightly larger than most women’s ideal, added to the earthy beauty of her face. The sun behind her would provide just enough of a shadow to hint at the shape of her body, naked beneath the cotton dress. And he’d shoot her on a beach, where surf the color of her eyes crested in the background and shimmers of heat rose from the sand beneath her feet.

      Somehow Maggie Russell managed to combine innocence and vulnerability with an incredibly high dose of sex appeal. The effect was very intriguing. And he could capture the essence of it on film; he knew he could. Someday he’d put her photograph on the cover of the coffee-table book he hoped to publish—when he had the time to pursue his love of photography more seriously.

      Right now he had to get back to work. The FBI’s Ogden field office hadn’t sent him to Sacramento to pose as one of the Tribune’s staff photographers so he could waste his time lusting over the beautiful female reporter he was here to protect. The owner of the paper—someone Nick had met just once—was the only one the bureau had clued in to his true identity and purpose. Besides heading the small task force assembled by the Sacramento P.D., Nick had the added burden of performing at the Trib in a manner convincing enough to fool the photo editor who was his boss, his co-workers and everyone else, which meant he had to make the most of every minute.

      Sitting up, he reached inside his desk for the file that contained the coroner’s report on the victim found in the Dumpster almost a week ago. He’d studied it exhaustively, but every time he read it, he hoped he’d find something he’d missed before. Something that would illuminate the series of brutal murders that had started along the eastern seaboard almost four months ago, then traveled to Missouri and Colorado and finally the west coast.

      The victim’s name was Sarah Ritter. Her death brought the body count to seven. A Caucasian woman in her mid-thirties, she was attractive in a professional, polished way and held a master’s degree in English from the University of California, Davis. She’d taught second grade at an elementary school in the suburbs, had a three-bedroom, two-bath tract house, two children, a dog, and an insurance salesman as a husband.

      Unfortunately, she’d also been brutally attacked, raped and stabbed, her body tossed in a Dumpster. How she’d gotten from her house, nearly twenty miles away, to Midtown, was a mystery.

      Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. Why her? The other six victims were younger, including the Seattle reporter. Three were single, one had a live-in lover, the last was separated from her husband. All were in their mid-twenties. What had specifically attracted the murderer to these women? What put them at risk?

      It certainly wasn’t accessibility. These were difficult murders to commit. The victims hadn’t been living on the street. They weren’t drug addicts or prostitutes. They had homes and jobs, and some had families. Beyond that, they had no obvious connection to each other—they didn’t belong to the same book club, graduate from the same school, attend college together or correspond for private or professional reasons. As far as Nick could determine, they didn’t know each other at all. The only thing they had in common was the fact that they’d become victims of the same murderer.

      Random targets, except Lola Fillmore, the reporter in Seattle. That had been personal.

      Nick shuffled through another file and came up with the letter that had brought him to Sacramento in the first place. Received at FBI headquarters almost a month ago, it had been printed on regular copy paper by a standard Hewlett-Packard DeskJet. Nothing of particular note there, at least nothing that was going to help him. But the letter itself shed some light on the psychology of the killer.

      April 13th

       Seattle, Washington

      “Dear Sirs, or should I say Madams? Welcome to the investigation. For all the challenge local police have given me, I assume most forces are now run by a bunch of women, but be that as it may, I’ve decided to let you join the fun. I’ve tired of Seattle and all its blasted rain—makes working out of doors rather miserable, if you know what I mean—and have decided to move to California. But where? Los Angeles is entirely too big. With all the different jurisdictions, etc., it would be too easy for local law enforcement to bungle the investigation, and it’s certainly no fun outwitting one’s opponent so easily. I considered San Francisco, but no one would much care if I murdered women there, now, would they? They have no use for the fairer sex, anyway. So I think Sacramento is the place. River City, isn’t that what they call it? Well, we shall soon see what the river turns up.

      Catch me if you can…

       Dr. Dan

      Dr. Dan was famous for his letters. He sent them to local law enforcement, taunting their failed attempts to catch him. He sent them to the FBI, bragging about his superior intellect. And when the police and FBI kept them from the press, he started writing to newspapers, hoping for headlines. He’d sent two letters to Lola Fillmore at the Seattle Independent, right before he killed her.

      Fortunately, as far as Nick could tell, no one at the Sacramento Tribune had received such mail. Yet. After what had happened in Seattle, his instincts told him it would come, and he guessed Maggie Russell would be the recipient when it did. The Trib was the major newspaper in town, and she was the only female cop reporter on staff.

      He shoved the letter back into the file and went for the profiler’s report instead. Ms. Lalee Wong, one of the FBI’s best, had analyzed the letter, along with all the others, and deemed it genuine. But she hadn’t come up with as much as Nick would have liked. She said the perp was a man, probably fairly young, most likely short and balding, with sexual hang-ups to spare.

      No surprises there.

      Dr. Dan’s utter contempt for women, evident in the letters but even more in the violent and cruel nature of his killing, fueled his murderous rage. Perhaps he’d been abused by his mother or a strong maternal figure in his youth. Perhaps his wife had left him.

      Or maybe he’d killed her, Nick thought. There could be another body out there. Maybe more than one. Most serial killers didn’t go from zero to sixty in a matter of days. They started slowly, usually with animals, and built up from there.

      Skipping further down the report, Nick skimmed the final paragraphs. Wong doubted Dr. Dan was truly a doctor, but she hadn’t ruled out Daniel as the man’s first name. She felt certain he was educated, most likely to СКАЧАТЬ