daiquiri. Morris took a sip and had to admit it was better than any beer he could’ve ordered.
“A shame Brie isn’t co-starring with you,” Morris said.
Stonehedge made a face at that idea. “They wanted her, but Brie’s tied up for the next two months. Probably better that we’re not acting together. Competition’s not the best thing for actors in a relationship. But we’ll be seeing each other. Next week she’s flying to Munich for a promotional event, and I’ll hop over for a visit and take advantage of the beginning of Oktoberfest. But enough about that. How about yourself? Any interesting cases?”
“Mostly run-of-the-mill insurance fraud work.” Morris had grabbed another piece of wood-grilled lamb and fed it to a grateful Parker. “The most interesting of which was a stolen coin collection I closed last week. The collection was appraised six months ago at one point two million and was supposedly stolen three months later in a home burglary. It turned out that the owner had sold off the collection to several private buyers and then staged the burglary. What he really bought for himself was a grand larceny charge.”
“You’re right. Sounds pretty run-of-the-mill.”
“You can say what you’re really thinking. Boring.”
“Well, yeah, compared to hunting serial killers.”
“After that psycho Jason Dorsage, I’m fine with boring.”
“You say that now, but just wait until you’re chasing after your next serial killer. Knowing my luck, it will be while I’m in Ireland, and I’ll miss all the fun. And—” The actor abruptly stopped talking and snapped his fingers to get Morris’s attention. “Hello? Are you still there? Morris, buddy, you faded on me, like you went away somewhere deep in your head.”
“What?” A hard grimace tightened Morris’s lips into a thin line. “Just a random thought. Nothing worth mentioning.”
Stonehedge had been right, and Morris was lying now. It was more than just a random thought that had distracted him. In fact, he was so distracted that he had fed Parker another piece of lamb without realizing he had done so, and the bull terrier didn’t mind this absentminded lapse.
He hadn’t thought about the Nightmare Man murders in years, but something caused a disturbing fact about those killings to resurface in his mind. Maybe it was because of what Stonehedge had been talking about, or maybe something else had triggered it, but whatever it was, it occurred to him that October second would be the seventeen-year anniversary of when the last killings started.
The Nightmare Man had never been caught. When the first set of killings happened thirty-four years ago, a witness had described the killer as a man in his late forties. Even if the Nightmare Man was still alive, he’d be close to eighty now, if not older.
Still, Morris couldn’t help feeling a sense of dread knowing what might be coming in only a week.
Chapter 3
Culver City, 1984
The killer known as the Nightmare Man entered the bedroom and saw that Mary Beth Williamson was sleeping on her stomach. He got a pair of socks from a dresser drawer and forced them into her mouth so she wouldn’t be able to scream. Before she could sputter awake and realize what was happening, he flipped her on her back and tied her wrists and ankles with nylon rope. He then used a razor-sharp hunting knife to cut off her cotton pajamas.
As she lay naked in the semidarkness of the room, her eyes met his, and he could see first fear and then defiance flooding her eyes. That would change soon enough. Once he started pulling off her fingernails there would only be a desperate pleading for him to stop. Later, she’d be lost completely in her pain. He sorted out the contents of his gym bag, picked up the needle-nose pliers, and went to work.
The other night he had watched Live and Let Die on video with his wife and sons. For his money, Sean Connery was the only true Bond, but the movie’s title song had stuck in his head, and as he used the hunting knife to carve away thick pieces of Mary Beth’s flesh, he found himself absently singing the line “When you got a job to do you got to do it well.” So true.
Later, when he was using a cigarette lighter to heat up the end of the thin metal rod that he used to brand his victims’ wounds, he caught the look in her eyes. She was no longer pleading for him to stop but instead was desperately trying to ask him a question. Why her?
It was a good question, because he could’ve picked thousands of other women in LA. So why her? Opportunity was one of the reasons. Her husband was an intern at Cedars-Sinai, and when the killer had gotten into their house three weeks ago using the spare key that they kept hidden in a fake rock, he found the husband’s work schedule and knew the husband wouldn’t be getting off work until eight in the morning. The killer had also used the opportunity to break the latch on one of the windows in the spare bedroom, so even if the wife started using the chain door locks while her husband was gone because of the Nightmare Man, the killer would be able to enter the house without making any noise. But the truth was, he’d have little trouble getting into any house or apartment, and it wouldn’t much matter if he found a husband or boyfriend in bed with his victim.
So why her? Mary Beth Williamson was twenty-eight. On the plump side, but pleasingly so, as the killer’s mother might’ve said. Medium-length brown hair, pleasant enough face, a curvy and attractive body even with the added thirty pounds she carried. The killer had spent time watching her. He knew she worked as a nurse and that she appeared to be a pleasant and friendly woman. The killer had to admit there was really no particular reason why he chose her. It was just bad luck on her part, plain and simple. But what would’ve been the point of telling her that?
Chapter 4
Los Angeles, the present
Lori couldn’t help smiling when she realized why her new dog—a male—had been named Lucy. It had to be short for Lucifer.
“That wasn’t a nice thing to do to you,” she told the dog. “How can anyone expect you not to live up to a name like that? But we’re changing things. Brian at the shelter had a most excellent idea, and so I’m changing your name from this point on to Lucky. How do you like them apples?”
The dog cocked his head and looked at her as if she were crazy. He was a scary-looking animal. Ugly, too, with his thick, blocky head and the whites of his eyes a yellowish-red color as if they were oozing blood and pus. None of that mattered to her. Quite the opposite, she was beginning to find a certain beauty in his scary ugliness, and after a somewhat standoffish first hour together, they’d been getting along just fine. The bacon-flavored treats she gave him helped, as did the two hot dogs she bought him at the Santa Monica pier. But what really sealed the deal was that the dog sensed she felt safe with him. Even more so, that she needed him. If the unknown boogeyman that she believed existed broke into her apartment while she slept, Lucky would protect her. She knew in her heart that was true, and because of that she already felt a deep affection toward the dog, even though he’d been in her life less than three hours. She stopped to hug him tightly around his thick neck. Lucky groaned as she did this, but otherwise tolerated it, and she broke out laughing when she saw what could only be described as a look of embarrassment contorting his face.
They’d been walking along a pathway on the cliff that overlooked Santa Monica State Beach. She had wanted to tire the dog out before she brought him to her apartment, and the mission seemed to have been accomplished. Lucky had been moving more sluggishly the last few minutes and began using a stalling tactic of sniffing each bush and tree they came across for what seemed like an excessive amount
