Lethal (Small Town Secrets Book 1) Read online

  Less than two hours, and he would be briefing an emergency task force assembled to find Dryden. Two hours to come up with ideas on where Dryden had gone and proactive strategies for luring him into the open. Better get to work.

  Hesitating at the door, Trent glanced back to where Risa sat at one of the pink cubicles, her eyes riveted on her hands, folded in her lap. Her complexion was still ghostly, but at least she’d regained a little color since she’d seen the mutilated photo of her sister.

  Or maybe it was just a change in the lighting.

  At least Trent didn’t have to wrestle with letting Rees see the files waiting in the conference room, testaments of Dryden’s evil. There was nothing she could tell him about those that he didn’t already see every night when he closed his eyes.

  “How do you like your coffee, Special Agent?”

  Trent looked up into the kind, blue eyes of the small town police department’s dispatcher. The moment they’d entered the stations and he’d met Oneida Perkins, he’d decided the strapping blonde would be a good person to have on his side. A jack- of-all-trades type, she seemed to be practically bursting with competence. In everything, maybe, except making coffee.

  He took another breath of the burned coffee scent hanging in the air. “Thanks. But I’ll have to pass.”

  “Hmm. First FBI agent I’ve met who doesn’t down the stuff the way Packer fans guzzle beer, but okay…”

  “Trying to reduce my stress level.”

  “And foregoing coffee works for that?”

  “Not really, but it gets my doctor off my back.”

  “Good to hear someone is off your back. Cassidy in there seems to be eager to climb on.”

  Trent gave her a careful smile.

  “No worries,” she continued. “The chief is on your side. And I’ll take good care of your lady there.”

  “Risa? She’s not my lady.”

  “As a profiler, I suppose you know all about denial, huh?” Oneida let out a snort, then not waiting for an answer, she bustled to where Risa sat, her skirt swishing with each purposeful stride. “How do you like your coffee?”

  Trent turned away and forced himself to enter the conference room.

  Cassidy didn’t look up from the file he was studying, but a second man immediately sprang to his feet and crossed to the door.

  “Special Agent Burnell?” Tall, broad shouldered, and with gray at the temples, the man thrust a hand forward, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners with a smile. “Schneider, sir. Jeff Schneider. I’m Lake Loyal’s Chief of Police. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”

  Trent shook Schneider’s hand, a warm, strong shake. The varied responses he received from local law enforcement personnel never ceased to amaze him. Much of the time his presence was met with skepticism or even downright contempt, as with Cassidy. But then there were some who saw federal agents in a much more positive, even glamorous light. Schneider must be among the latter group.

  “Honor to meet you, too, chief.”

  “Please, call me Schneider. Or Jeff. My department has only half-a-dozen full-time officers, including me. Working on getting more. But if there’s something we can help you with, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Quit pumping Burnell’s hand like some damn bootlicker and sit down. We have work to do.”

  Schneider shot Cassidy a grin so false it cracked at the edges. “Schettler’s ran out of strawberry rhubarb pie again, Cassidy? Is that why you’re such a damn asshole?”

  Cassidy grumbled, something unintelligible, then reburied his attention in the file.

  Great. As if Trent didn’t have enough problems. Now he had to worry about a couple of feuding local cops.

  Once they were all seated, Cassidy spoke, not looking up. “Where is your profile of Dryden?”

  “There is no written profile,” Trent said.

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t want a comprehensive written report leaked to the press. Too many factors could be misconstrued, sensationalized.”

  “You think one of us is going to leak it?”

  “He didn’t say that, Cassidy.” Schneider glanced Trent’s way. “Right?”

  Trent grabbed one of the file boxes and dragged it toward his side of the table. “It’s policy. Not aimed at any specific agency.”

  “Better not be.”

  Trent did not have the patience for this. Unfortunately, when stakes ran high, so did human emotion. And as hard as cops tried to set themselves apart, him included, they were all human.

  “We want to be able to choose what details to release,” he said with as much patience as he could muster. “Details that will make the serial offender nervous. Make him take unnecessary risks. Or force him into the open. If reporters get their hands on a written report that contains the entire profile, we lose that ability.”

  “Makes sense,” Schneider said.

  Trent focused on Cassidy. “Do you have a media office set up?”

  “In Baraboo.”

  The county seat was a fifteen or twenty-minute drive from Lake Loyal. Close enough that the press wouldn’t complain too much, and yet far enough away to give law enforcement some breathing room. “How about space for the task force?”

  “We have a few empty cubicles,” Schneider volunteered.

  Trent eyed the small town police chief. “I appreciate the offer, but this station isn’t going to be big enough.”

  “I’ll have Oneida call the area churches. Bet they’ll let us use some space. Fellowship rooms and whatnot.”

  “Better get on that,” Cassidy said, making a show of checking his watch. “And you’d better get your memory up to speed, Special Agent.”

  Trent picked up the stack of photographs he’d glanced through in Dryden’s cell. “I’ll be ready.”

  While Schneider found space for the task force and Cassidy started sorting crime reports, Trent flipped through the pictures. The wedding shot of Dryden and Nikki. The seductive poses of Farrentina Hamilton.

  He set the photos back on the table and reached for the closest box of old case files. He plucked a file from the box, flipped open the manila folder and leafed through the contents. His fingers closed over a stack of crime-scene photos.

  One of the coeds Dryden murdered stared back at him with unseeing blue eyes. He remembered her name. Ashley Dalton. A twenty-year-old with two younger sisters and an interest in biochemistry. Her mutilated, naked body glowed white in the photographer’s flash. Her torso, sliced down the middle and dressed the way a hunter dresses a deer carcass. Her long, blond hair tangled around her face.

  He snapped the folder shut and reached for another, the haunting details of Dryden’s crimes rushing back to him. Rushing back to him, hell. They had never left. They were as much a part of him as his pounding heart, his straining lungs, his racing mind.

  The woman in the second file was Dawn Bertram, a grad student studying psychology. A beautiful girl, Dawn had green eyes, not blue. But the rest was the same. The hunter fantasy. The long, blond hair that framed her lifeless face.

  That was what didn’t add up about the photos of Farrentina Hamilton. Her brunette hair. Ed Dryden preferred blondes.

  Cassidy leaned toward him across the table. “What do you see, Burnell?”

  Trent pushed the crime-scene photos toward him. “All of Dryden’s female victims were blond. It was a big part of his signature. He killed blondes. Only blondes.”

  Schneider took his seat at the table. “What, was his mother blond or something?”

  “Not his mother.”

  “Wife?” Schneider asked.

  “A few months after his mother died of cancer, he married a blonde. She was in college when they met. A year or so into their marriage, she gave birth to twin girls and suffered from several medical problems, as did one of the children. At that point, she was unable to see to her husband’s needs.”

  “Let me guess,” Schneider said. “That made him angry.”

  “He began acting out
his violent fantasies on women who looked like his wife.”

  “That’s twisted.”

  “It made him feel powerful, in control. Power and control he didn’t have in his normal life. Every time he killed a blond college student, he could fantasize that he was asserting power over the wife who he believed was rejecting him.”

  “Until he got around to finally killing the wife?”

  Trent could almost smell the hot tang of blood mixing with the scent of spruce trees and blooming lilac bushes. He’d never failed so spectacularly. And for that, he’d never forgive himself.

  “And that’s when you caught him, right?” Schneider continued. “After he killed the wife?”

  Trent nodded.

  “So if his whole thing was killing women who looked like his wife, he wouldn’t be turned on by a brunette,” Cassidy said.

  “No.”

  “How about men?” Chief Schneider asked. “Like Murphy driving the garbage truck?”

  “He’ll kill men to get something he wants, to further his goals.”

  Schneider nodded. “And he kills women for pleasure. Got it.”

  Cassidy studied the crime-scene photos and the snapshots of Farrentina Hamilton side by side, tapping his pen on the table. “Didn’t I read something in one of the Hamilton woman’s letters about coloring her hair? Maybe she dyed it blond for him.”

  Trent skimmed through the letters until he found the one Cassidy was referring to. He read aloud. “As you can see, I colored my hair for you, Ed. The red lingerie looks nice on a brunette, don’t you think?”

  “But that sounds like she dyed her hair brunette for him,” Schneider said. “Not blond.”

  Trent stared at the files littering the table. A serial killer didn’t change his signature. The emotional need his crime fulfilled was always the same, crime after crime. He might change his modus operandi as he learned more efficient ways of committing his crimes, ways he could avoid getting caught. But he didn’t change the emotional satisfaction, the sexual charge he got out of the act. With every hunt, every kill, Dryden dominated the wife he felt rejected him. The wife with long, blond hair.

  “The sequence of this hair color change is important,” Trent said. “Are there any other photos? Any of Hamilton as a blonde?”

  Cassidy flicked through the stack of photos they’d found in Dryden’s cell. He handed a photo to Trent then resumed his abuse of the table top. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Schneider leaned over the table to get a glimpse of the photo.

  In the picture, Farrentina Hamilton’s platinum blond hair flowed over her shoulders. She wore a trendy suit, the style outdated by current 1996 standards, and she looked appreciably younger than she did in the lingerie shot.

  Trent didn’t know what to make of this. Dryden couldn’t have changed his signature. But if he hadn’t, why had he asked Farrentina Hamilton to dye her hair brunette?

  Like Risa, Nikki was a natural brunette, but she had colored her hair blond for as long as Trent had known her. He picked up the wedding picture and the mutilated picture from the table. In both photos Nikki’s hair was platinum and arranged in ringlets falling to her shoulders. If Dryden’s preference had changed to brunettes, why had he married a blonde only thirty days ago?

  Trent jutted to his feet and walked to the door.

  Risa was perched on the edge of her chair. “Find something?”

  “We need your help.”

  Rather than wasting time with a satisfied snort or an I-told-you-so smile, Risa scurried across the reception area and through the door he held open, as if afraid his request had a time limit. She slipped into one of the empty chairs.

  Trent closed the door and circled the table. “Has Nikki changed her hair color recently?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “What’s going on, Trent?”

  Cassidy’s pen ceased tapping. “Dryden seems to like brunettes now.”

  Risa stared at the table top. She looked as if she might be sick.

  “What is it, Rees?” Trent asked.

  “Something Nikki told me.”

  “What?”

  “She said Dryden wanted her to be herself. He loved her just the way she was. Including her natural hair color.”

  Trent could almost hear Dryden whispering those words to Nikki, his voice thick with false charm. He had a talent for sensing what someone wanted to hear and delivering just the right words in just the right tone.

  Cassidy leaned forward across the tabletop. “But she didn’t dye her hair back. Why? She didn’t buy it?”

  “She bought it fine. Was almost giddy with how much he loved her. She just liked being a blonde.” Risa turned to Trent. “He told other women the same thing?”

  It wasn’t exactly a question. Risa knew the answer. But Trent nodded anyway. “He asked Farrentina Hamilton to dye her hair brunette too.”

  “The woman in the red lingerie?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “A killer doesn’t just up and change his signature. It doesn’t make sense. Unless…”

  Obviously Risa was thinking along the same lines as Trent, so he finished the thought. “Unless hair color was never really part of Dryden’s signature.”

  “You think that’s the case?” Cassidy asked.

  Trent looked at Rees’s long brunette hair, shining under the fluorescent lights. Hair that had once flowed through his fingers and puddled on his pillow. Hair that smelled of lavender. “Tell me about your interviews with Dryden.”

  “My interviews? What about them?”

  “Did you say anything to Dryden that he could have misconstrued? Anything that made him angry?”

  The jolt that ran through Rees’s body was unmistakable.

  “What was it, Rees?”

  She drew in a slow, deep breath. “About four months ago I published an article in an academic journal.”

  “An article about Dryden?”

  “I didn’t use his name.”

  Schneider held up his hands. “Wait. You’re saying you wrote about him in a psychology magazine?”

  “Yes. In general terms.”

  “How would he get something like that in prison?” Cassidy asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your sister?”

  “I don’t know,” Risa repeated. “Probably. And he figured out he was the subject.”

  “How did he react?” Trent asked, although he had a pretty good idea.

  “I only visited him once after that. He refused to speak. Just stared.”

  “There’s something else.” Trent prompted.

  “That was when he started writing to Nikki.”

  It made a horrible kind of sense.

  Dryden’s wife was dead. Her humiliation was over. And instead of clinging to the fantasy of killing her over and over, he had moved on.

  He’d found another woman who’d humiliated him.

  He’d focused on her, obsessed about her.

  He’d manipulated women who looked like her.

  And now that he was free, he would play out his game—kidnapping, letting his victim loose in an isolated forest, hunting her down, slitting her from neck to pelvic bone, and gutting her like a deer. With each woman he killed, he fantasized he was asserting his power and dominance over the woman who’d humiliated him—the true target of his hatred.

  And this time, Ed Dryden’s true target was Rees.

  Nikki

  The man lived alone, although Nikki wasn’t sure what it would have meant if he hadn’t. Or maybe she just didn’t want to know.

  It didn’t take long for Eddie to take what he wanted from the man’s house and load it into the sedan parked in the garage. Food, of course. A few bottles of booze. Street clothes from the man’s closet. A toothbrush, floss, and mouthwash.

  He gave Nikki time to shower off the blood. It was spraying off easily enough, but she still didn’t feel clean. The engraving in her locket was more difficult to manage, blood
deep in crevices. She hoped it hadn’t soaked into the tiny photo she kept inside, but she couldn’t check under the shower stream. And really, she didn’t have the heart to look.

  When she stepped out of the spray, Eddie was waiting. She grabbed a towel, dried off, and wrapped it around her body.

  Eddie yanked it off and tossed it on the floor.

  “I’ve thought about seeing you naked for so long. I can’t have you covering up that beautiful body. Not yet.”

  Nikki looked down at herself and shuddered. Blood no longer tinted her skin, but she couldn’t help feeling that it was still there, like a cattle brand seared into her flesh.

  That man had died.

  She still couldn’t believe that man had died.

  And Eddie was the one who…

  No, no, no. It didn’t make sense. He was still Eddie. Her Eddie. And the way he looked at her, touched her, spoke to her… he appeared to be as in love with her as before.

  Maybe more.

  “Why… Why did you do it?” Nikki finally asked, unable not to.

  “What?”

  “Kill that man?”

  “I did it for you.”

  “Me?”

  “He was going to hurt you, baby.”

  Nikki shook her head. She remembered the man staring at her. Wanting her. She remembered him asking her if what Eddie was offering was real, if it was okay. “Hurt me? How?”

  “Where do you think I got the knife? It was his. That was all him. I wanted to share something beautiful with him, something amazing, and all he could do… There are people out there who want to destroy everything that’s good. I couldn’t let him.”

  Nikki tried to remember what had happened. It had been dark outside the car, and the dome light had been so bright. She must have missed seeing the man pull out the knife.

  The knife.

  “Wasn’t that my knife?” Nikki said, confused. “You know, the one you said I should keep in the car for protection?”