A Necessary Evil

CHAPTER 54

Washington, D.C.

Gwen Patterson stood at her office window staring out at the Potomac River. Harvey lay next to her desk. Every move she made alerted him, his head up, those watchful brown eyes searching her out, checking on her. Maggie usually complained about his overprotective behavior, but Gwen continued to find it rather endearing and comforting. She wasn't sure how she would have managed any of this without him.

She had canceled all of her appointments for the day and had already hired a temp who would be here at eight o'clock tomorrow morning when she could resume her business and get on with her life. Tomorrow everything would be back to normal.

Nothing would ever be normal again. Why did she bother trying to fool herself?

A knock at her office door startled her.

"Sorry," Julia Racine said, staying in the doorway, apologetic enough that Gwen realized she must still look as bad as she felt. "No one was out front." She stated the obvious as her excuse.

"I decided to close for business today," Gwen said without leaving her perch at the window. "It seemed the least I could do, considering my office assistant was recently decapitated" She knew her morbid sense of humor was simply a coping mechanism. She wasn't sure if Racine would see it that way.

"I talked to Maggie earlier. She asked me to check on you."

"Did she? I didn't realize that was a service the District police department provided." Morbid sense of humor followed by flippant remarks. Was she losing it? Surely she should be able to tell. She was a medical professional, after all.

"Also, I had a few more questions," Racine said, inching her way farther into the office, but keeping her distance.

"Of course you have more questions."

"You mind?"

"Would it matter if I did?"

"I could certainly come back later," Racine told her, still patient, to the point that Gwen might have to call it polite as well. And Gwen wondered what else Maggie may have told the young detective to eke out such patience. Or was this simply some new interrogation tactic Racine was testing out on her?

"Now or later, nothing will have changed." She turned from the window and came into the room, continuing to stand, but waved at a chair, inviting Racine to sit.

Racine took time to pat Harvey, giving him a rub behind the ears before she chose the chair next to him. By now he recognized Racine and had started to identify her as one of the good guys. Gwen wasn't convinced that that was such a good idea. But maybe she should trust Harvey's instincts. The dog hadn't been wrong yet.

"There's something you're not telling me," Racine said, but it didn't look as if she was going to try to force it out of Gwen. She sat back, and instead of waiting for some explanation or confirmation she went on. "At first I thought maybe it was something about your assistant. Maybe something you were afraid would damage her good name, her reputation. You know, embarrass her family." Racine paused and Gwen could feel the detective studying her, perhaps searching to see if she had struck a chord or gotten anywhere close to the truth. "Finding her in her own home was very different from all the others. It didn't feel right."

Gwen leaned against her desk, suddenly very tired again. "Dena wasn't like the others," she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"No," Racine agreed with a knowing calm. "With Dena he knew he could leave her in her home because he knew someone would come looking for her. With the other three victims we had to wait until he told us where to find them. I kept thinking that was the big difference, and yet, it wasn't really all that different."

Another pause, as if Racine was testing her. Gwen crossed her arms and held the young detective's stare without flinching as Racine continued. "The owner of a construction company told us where we could find the first victim. Funny, I called him this morning and asked how he had found her, but he said he hadn't. He told me that a woman had called and tipped him off. Ironically a woman and her dog found the second victim in the park while out walking."

Racine glanced down at Harvey. "But she declined to come in and file a report. Then last week when we found Libby Hopper on the banks of the Potomac it was because a woman had called in the exact location, but she used a stolen cell phone and we couldn't trace it. Dena Wayne was left in her own home. I thought that seemed totally out of character for this killer until I realized that it was actually a woman… a woman and her dog who had, again, found the victim."

Racine sat quietly now, holding Gwen's eyes as if she could see the truth within them and didn't need anything more to corroborate her wild theory.

"Sounds like you think you have it all figured out," Gwen finally said without any sort of admission. "Too bad things aren't ever as simple as they seem."

"No, they usually aren't."

"His instructions also came with subtle threats." Gwen said it in such a whispered tone she hardly recognized her own voice.

"I wondered if it might be something like that. You were afraid he'd hurt you." Racine nodded but her eyes never left Gwen's.

"No. Not me. Always someone else. Someone close to me. It would have been easier if it were me," Gwen had been threatened before. She considered taking those risks just part of the job. "I thought I might be able to outwit him," she added.

"But in the meantime he was making you an accessory to his murders."

"Yes, I suppose he was," Gwen said. "But not anymore."