(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(52)
“In the report ya e-mailed me ya used names from previous files.”
“Yeah, Michelle and Leona.” I nod, not opening my eyes. “The scenery in Ashley’s mind was moving fast, and I needed some anchors. I used Michelle and Leona because they reminded me of who I was and that I wasn’t Ashley. Anyway, the other roommates moved into the room together, and Ashley ended up in a room with Stephanie and the cat. Finally Stephanie wears her down and gets Ashley out on the town with her. Both get completely trashed off their ass. Our guy, Mr. X, met Ashley that night. He brought her back to his place, under the guise of being friends with her roomie, but the roomie wasn’t there. She apparently left the bar with a professor friend of our guy’s from another college and ended up leaving school permanently.”
“Ya think it’s possible Stephanie was murdered to create a backstory for Mr. X? If Steph were gone Ashley wouldn’t have known that Mr. X wasn’t a friend of hers. He could claim a friendship with Stephanie, and she wasn’t around to verify the truth or lies.”
I nod. “I would assume as much. We should be dragging the harbor for the girl. We know he likes drowning them. He put Ashley into a river, after all.” I sigh, trying to find my place in my thoughts again. “Anyway, Ashley ends up dating this guy, Mr. X, and no one knows him. He uses the whole I’m a teacher, we can’t be seen together. After many dates and what I would consider a serious amount of self-control on Mr. X’s part, he takes her to the cabin on the mountain. This is where things shift for me. I felt like this was abnormal behavior for him, from a profiler’s standpoint. I think our guy liked her and didn’t want to hurt her. I think he wanted it to go somewhere, and I think he liked having her there and her not knowing about the girls under the garage.”
“Jesus!”
“Right! It’s a power thing, though, huh. He has her there, swooning over him, but really he has a harem under the stairs.” I shake my head, reliving that little bit of weirdness. “But our guy isn’t a normal guy, he’s American Psycho mixed with Norman Bates. He’s crazy, so he can’t even have normal sex with her. The date goes from sort of awesome to quite revealing about his personality. He has some kinky, weird masturbating-dominator action.”
“Is that the clinical name for it? I have noticed ya use a lot of technical terms in this.”
“We aren’t here for my winning conversation, Angie. The transcribers fix it for me, adding the technical words on the report.” I lift a middle finger, but maintain my focus. “Anyway, I believe Mr. X makes the decision to kill Ashley over Christmas, but she still has a spot in his heart. I think at first he honestly tried to figure out a way to fix things with her, stalking her and watching her, wishing he hadn’t revealed his kinky weirdo within. She sees him stalking her once, and they have real sex in the Jeep, and he panics like a weirdo. Of course then he realizes his insanity is obvious and he can’t do normal, so he breaks things off, driving away like a nut. I think he looked back at his reaction, knew it wasn’t sane, knew she had to be thinking ‘what the fuck’ about it. And while I believe he started the whole thing wanting to keep her safe, I would say the voices got to be too much. The paranoia of what she must think of him got to be too much. He connected his craziness to the missing girls, so he assumed she might also. That’s when he ended up taking her the night she got drunk with the old roommates, the lesbians, from school.”
I can hear her writing. “Is there anything else ya can see in the beginning before the abduction that might help us nail down who he is?”
I shake my head. “Dash and Rory fucking around with the recording—so Dash wouldn’t have hurt feelings—messed with Mr. X. It rotated between Dash as the bad guy at the beginning, and Rory being my brother, to Rory being the bad guy. Even little things found their way in there—his accent and love of Ireland. Idiots. Leave that in there too; let them get in shit for it.”
She sighs. She’s clearly as pleased as I am.
“Mr. X’s ability to cook and his gentlemanly behavior was all Derek; I don’t think that happened. I think he tried, but he was mediocre at best.”
She flips and shuffles papers. “Okay, and post-abduction?”
I roll my head a little, taking a deep breath. Something dawns on me, and I crack an eyelid. “Why are you doing this?”
She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “The little stunt with messing with ya meant Rory isn’t allowed to be part of this debriefing, and the people who turn this whole fecked-up mess into a file are still managing the site. I suspect they will be at that site for at least six months. They found another set of caves being dug out. Mr. X was midconstruction on more cells. He was a greedy fucker, if ya ask me.”