Page 122 of The Whispering Girls

He posed as one of the Echo Forest police officers.

FIFTY-FOUR

Sunday 2355 hours

Katie looked at her watch. It read almost exactly midnight, which seemed fitting for what she was about to do. The wind changed direction. The setting seemed to become even darker around her and there seemed to be whispers everywhere. She continued to inch forward until she could almost hear the killer breathing.

She slowly retrieved her weapon from her hip holster and cautiously aimed it at him.

“Put your hands up!” she yelled.

It caused him to freeze and slowly raise his hands.

“Drop your weapon, Officer Clark!”

He complied.

Katie moved in closer. She wanted to see his face and hear what he had to say before he was arrested and brought in. Still her Glock remained trained on him and she was prepared to use it if necessary.

Clark slowly turned. His face remained neutral and it was difficultto read him.

“How long have you been killing young women?” she said. “It will never feed your needs.”

“You’re the expert, Detective, you tell me.” There was a snide tone to his voice.

“It’s over. You’re not going to hurt anyone else. And your game of playing Jack against the chief is over.”

He chuckled. “You’re so naïve.”

“Tell me this. When you took the job here did you know about the chief’s murdered wife?”

“Of course,” he said. “I do my homework, to leave nothing to error. I would never immerse myself into a police department if I didn’t know the dark secrets or the skeletons in the closet.”

“I suspect that you don’t have a sister either?” she said.

“You’re correct, Detective. Tami Clark was just a girl I had met and was starving for any type of acting job.”

“Her boot. Nice touch.”

He laughed, never taking his eyes away from Katie.

Katie was suspicious that he was so completely calm. “You were going to use that murder to pit the chief and Jack against each other throwing suspicion—all the while the town thinks there’s a serial killer on the loose.”

“Something like that.”

Katie despised the arrogance and high-mindedness of Clark. She had picked up on some of it when she worked with him. “Your mother didn’t love you enough and your father thought you were worthless. That about sum it up?”

“You’re like all the rest. Cops, detectives, psychologists, and the behavioral science unit all follow the same playbook: the serial killer recipe. There’s never any deviation. Every person who kills is different from the next. Pathetic.” He shook his head.

“You must’ve flunked out of the FBI Behavioral ScienceUnit.”

Clark’s face turned dark and his eyes remained fixated on Katie.

“I knew I would find your trigger. So the murder fifteen years ago must’ve been inspiring to you and you figured no one would be able to solve these crimes too.”

“First, I didn’t have a mother and father. I was an orphan. No one wanted to adopt me, so I spent my young life living in group homes—several, one right after the next. That was an education, watching behaviors and learning how to survive. Watching what made people tick. Their fears, dreams, and what someone would do or not do. I would continually see the beautiful children, especially pretty little girls, get adopted,” he said. “As for me, I was brutalized, bullied by older girls who humiliated and laughed at me as they pulled off my pants leaving me vulnerable and alone for everyone to see. No to mention beaten, deprived of food, and ultimately forgotten. No one ever cared about me. This was my way of paying it forward, leveling the playing field, to the way it should be. Getting rid of every one of those bitches who think they’re better than me… Everything about them was incorporated into my totems. It was like their calling card for everyone to see who they really were. It set everything straight. I will never be bullied or laughed at again… ever. My childhood was taken from me. And now I’m taking theirs.”

As sad as Clark’s story was and the fierce hatred in his eyes, it made Katie that much more determined to take him into custody, where they could potentially study him. If a police officer or FBI agent could become a serial killer, then some of the experts’ hypotheses needed to be updated and studied further. “Put your hands behind your back,” she said.