Private Affair(76)
“You mean the name?”
The confirmation, Olivia thought. Then she heard Shane say, “Right. But it’s not who you think.”
Chapter 23
Today the man who had killed Claire Lowden was calling himself the Masked Avenger because the name amused him. He’d always given himself clever names. In high school and college, he’d been the Wonder Boy. Sometimes he was the Bondage Master. Other times he was the Business Whiz. For this mission the Masked Avenger worked best. Not that he was avenging wrongs against society like Spider-Man or some dumb superhero from a comic book. This was his own private vengeance. Only it hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. He had come to Olivia Winters’s house thinking he would leave a dead woman behind and take Olivia with him. He’d killed Claire, the weak one. But she was only a means to an end.
He slapped his hand against the steering wheel. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Olivia and that son of a bitch of a private detective had vanished. They could have left the area, but he didn’t think so. They were too hot to track him down. But they couldn’t go back to Olivia’s house because it was a crime scene. He laughed. And also a wreck, what with that broken window and the stink from the smoke bomb all over the place. Which probably meant that they were staying in a hotel or motel in the county.
He’d cruised the parking lots of all the likely places, and he hadn’t seen the bastard’s SUV.
He wanted to scream, but he had to keep himself under control. When he realized his hands were shaking, he gripped the wheel, centering himself. Forcing the panic down, he took a couple of deep breaths. Everything was under control again. He’d hit upon a better approach—using the cops.
He’d started by calling the police station on a burner phone and saying he had some important information about the murder at the Winters’ farm. He’d been in the vicinity, and he needed to talk to the police about what he’d seen. They’d put him through to the detective investigating the case who had answered the phone, “Archie Hamilton.” As soon as the guy had identified himself, the Masked Avenger had hung up.
He smiled to himself. Once he’d gotten the guy’s name, he’d gotten his picture too. Then he’d parked down the street from the police station with the local and national reporters staking out the place.
When Hamilton left, he would follow him, hoping for a lead on Winters and Lyon. And if not, he’d find out what the fat guy knew.
Meanwhile, he pulled his cap lower over his eyes, eased back the seat of his car, and relaxed as he thought about the string of murders he’d pulled off—starting with that dumb prostitute down in Baltimore. It always helped him relax to think about his successes. The misfire at the Winters’ farm was only a temporary setback.
He’d get Olivia. And Brian Cannon would be next.
His mind drifted back to the Baltimore whore. When he’d taken her and her friend to that cheap motel, he’d been the Bondage Master. He wasn’t even sure now that he’d intended to kill her. Maybe he’d only wanted to see how far he could go. But once he’d gotten his hands around her throat, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from squeezing harder and harder.
The guy who’d gone to Baltimore with him had been scared—especially after the other girl had gotten away and stolen their money, to boot. The Masked Avenger had assured his partner the girl wouldn’t tell on them. And he’d been right about that. There had been absolutely no blowback. It was his first murder success. And the whore must have left town, because he’d never seen or heard of her again—even though he’d tried to hunt her down.
He hadn’t worried that his friend would tell anyone what had happened that night. The guy had been just as guilty as the Avenger—at least according to the law, and he wasn’t going to screw himself up for something another guy had done.
Knowing he could kill without getting caught had energized the Avenger. But he hadn’t done it again for a few years, not until after college. Then finally he’d gotten tired of paying off Patrick Morris. Patrick was blackmailing him, not because he knew about the Baltimore murders but because he knew about the stuff that had gone on at the cabin near the dam. He’d threatened to talk, and the Avenger had fixed his furnace so it would dump carbon monoxide into the guy’s house.
A year later, he’d gone after Gary Anderson to settle an old score. Gary had ruined the party that night at Brian’s. It was appropriate to make him pay for that.
He’d lain low for a few years, enjoying his cushy lifestyle and thinking that what had happened in high school would stay in high school. And then he’d been jolted by an email about the ten-year reunion . It had brought back memories.