The Watcher (The Bigler County Romantic Thriller Series) Read online

  Copyright © 2011 Jo Robertson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 146113613X

  ISBN-13: 9781461136132

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61397-632-6

  Review Quotes

  Riveting and suspenseful, Jo Robertson’s debut THE WATCHER is not to be missed! THE WATCHER will grab you by the throat and keep you turning pages until the pulse-pounding final page. If you like Lisa Gardner or Nora Roberts, you’ll love Jo Robertson!

  - Jeanne Adams, RT nominated author of Deadly

  Little Secrets and Deadly Little Lies

  NY Times Best Selling Author Brenda Novak says of THE WATCHER, “Debut author Jo Robertson’s romantic thriller will leave you breathless. You’ve never met a serial killer quite as sinister as this one. Or a hero and heroine who have so much to lose.”

  Award-winning author of Romantic Suspense Loucinda McGary says, “THE WATCHER will keep you up all night with its finely drawn characters, taut suspense, and the creepiest villain ever!”

  Acknowledgments

  While it doesn’t take a whole village to birth a book, it certainly takes a whole family, whether a family of genes or a family of choice. In my case many thanks to my very large family for their creative ideas, unfailing support, and decisive opinions: My husband Boyd (otherwise known as Dr. Big), my daughters – Shannon, Kennan, and Megan, my sons – Lance, Robb, Tyler, and Rand. Love you all!

  Special thanks to my critique partner Loucinda McGary, aka Aunty Cindy, and all the wonderful women writers of The Romance Bandits.

  Special kudos to Shannon Spicer for telling me when the story sank and when it soared. And to Megan Banks for being an amazing copy editor.

  Dedication

  For my longtime friend and teaching partner, Kelly Kerns, who believed long before I did.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Review Quotes

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Preston, Idaho, Fifteen Years Ago

  Prologue

  The girl was pretty in a fresh, outdoorsy way.

  The bounce and tangle of her yellow hair fascinated the boy-man. When she bent to ruffle the dog’s fur and attach the leash, the frisky animal danced away from her. Finally looping one end around her hand, she set off, long legs stretched before her as she matched her stride to the dog’s pace.

  With her free hand, she clutched the coat front that covered a dress the color of buttercups, and she wore black strappy shoes made for church, not a brisk walk. Early winter wind whipped her dress up and blew hair across her eyes.

  But he knew their color well. Her eyes were as vivid as the violet blood of an eggplant’s skin. The deep purple of the pansies his grandmother grew in boxes beneath the kitchen window. The flowers woven in his mother’s hair in a faded picture he’d once seen.

  The brilliance of that color made him notice the girl several months ago as she stood outside the Cavalier Store on Ramsey Avenue. Juggling a carton of milk in one arm and her school books in the other, she nearly bumped into him. When he reached to steady her, those flashing eyes narrowed in the challenging way of teenage girls.

  Under the force of her scowl, he touched the sparse hair above his lips, the sprinkling of zits across his chin. She didn’t say a word to him, but her eyes darkened with irritation.

  Why the hell was she mad at him? He’d only tried to help.

  A familiar wash of shame flooded over him, his face burned, and he ducked his head to slink away. After a block he risked a backward glance to find the girl balancing her load, oblivious to his existence. She’d forgotten him already. He clenched his fists at his side and hurried away.

  She wore her soccer uniform that day, and he figured out she’d be at practice on the high school soccer field after school. Every day until the season was over.

  During daily practice, the grassy edges of the field were deserted, so he’d found a good hiding place some distance from the field where he watched the players through his binoculars. The rocky outcropping banked up to several scrub pines, and his dusty green outfit camouflaged him from the coach.

  His body tingled with a secret thrill as he spied on her. He never got tired of watching her race down the soccer field, her toes teasing the ball in front of her, the sudden right turn she made before she slammed the ball into the goal. Her slender legs were surprisingly strong, the muscled sinews tightening beneath the skin.

  Panicked that he’d lose track of her when the season was over, he followed her home after one soccer practice. He discovered the isolated farm where she lived with her parents and a giant chocolate retriever named Shamus. He hunkered beside an outbuilding that night and watched her as she completed household chores. She worked energetically and sometimes seemed to be everywhere at once. Her quick, lively movements stimulated him in a way he didn’t understand.

  When the lights went out in the farmhouse, he hunted for a place to camp out in the woods, his bedroll and backpack hidden in the dense forest. He ate his food cold from tin cans and drank from the creek, this outdoor lifestyle familiar to him by now.

  He waited nearly a week to make his move. On a late Sunday afternoon, he saw the parents drive away in a battered pickup without the girl. Silence descended on the farm in the near darkness. She’d been left alone.

  This was his opportunity.

  The dog now pulled the girl along after him, straining at the leash. The animal must weigh at least a hundred pounds, almost as much as the girl. That could be a problem.

  The boy-man trailed the girl and dog as they made their way down to the creek bed. She let the dog tug her forward along the water’s edge. Her voice reached the boy-man where he watched from a grove of aspen trees, their bendy white limbs dipping down to cover him.

  He glanced through the gloom toward the farm house. How long before her parents returned? How long after that before they missed her? He kept upwind of the dog and hurried after the girl, his heart drumming a staccato beat in his chest. He’d never found a purple-eyed girl before.
r />   It was a sign.

  The cabin was rank with the coppery smell of blood. The boy-man hovered over the girl’s body, his hair slick with perspiration, his eyes dilated with excitement and fear. He pressed his ear against her chest, listening for a heartbeat. Nothing. He held his finger under her nose, searching for the moist sign of breathing, pinched the nostrils closed. No movement, no reaction.

  She was dead.

  His heart thumped like a bass drum in his ears. He’d seen a dead body once. At his mother’s funeral. He had reached into the casket to touch her hand, surprised that it was as rubbery-hard and cold as a mannequin.

  The girl’s body was still warm and soft, her face was blotchy from crying, and the blood on her arms and stomach made her look like she was sick or sleeping instead of dead.

  He frowned at her features. Using water from his canteen and a dirty rag, he washed her face. The blood smeared to a pinkish color like an artist who’d used too much water on the canvas.

  With his thumb he pulled one eyelid open and quickly stepped back. The eyes were now a cloudy, dull color, where before they’d been brilliant, the irises tinged black at the edges. Their glittering color had excited him.

  Disappointment furrowed a deep ridge between his eyes. What now? He looked helplessly around the cabin, shuffled from one foot to the other.

  He picked up the shoes, dress, and underwear from the wood floor where he’d tossed them earlier, removed the strips of rawhide from her wrists and ankles, and pushed her arms to her sides. Then he spread the clothing on top of the body and pushed the tips of her toes inside the black shoes.

  Better. The bright yellow dress looked cheerful against the blood-spattered mattress. The golden color matched the girl’s hair and was pretty in spite of all the rips in it.

  He stood back to examine his work. Blood had started to ooze through the front of the dress. He lifted the hem of her dress, removed the panties, and stuffed them in the pocket of his heavy hooded parka.

  Something to remember her by.

  Morning light filtered through the thick canvas window covering. He’d been here all night and didn’t have much time left. He wished it had lasted longer. He wished he’d – well, next time, he promised. Next time, he’d pick the right girl.

  He looked around the rough cabin again in momentary confusion as the enormity of what he’d done swept over him.

  What if they caught him?

  No, no, they wouldn’t find her until the snow melted, not even then unless someone happened to check out the abandoned cabin. If they didn’t find her quick, the animals would burrow their way in, and there wouldn’t be much left to find.

  He closed the door and secured the sturdy padlock. As he trudged off through the Idaho hills, his boots sank through the snow’s crusty top. The snowmobile was four miles east of the cabin, hidden beneath a cluster of low-hanging scrub pines.

  Icy flurries stirred around him. By the time anyone looked in this area, his tracks would be hidden beneath a fresh snowfall. The boy-man breathed easier now and continued his march to the snowmobile while exciting pictures raced through his mind. Removing the thick glove on his left hand, he fingered the trim at the edge of the cotton panties.

  Placer Hills, California, October, Present Day

  Chapter One

  Detective Benjamin Slater pushed back from his desk in the Investigations Division and snagged his badge and gun from the center drawer.

  “Let’s roll, Bauer,” he directed his partner, who sat opposite him, feet propped on the desk as he struggled through the convoluted language of a forensic report.

  “What’s up?”

  “The girl whose mother reported her missing last week?”

  “The Johnston girl.”

  “She turned up.”

  “Man, I hate when that happens.” Turning up meant dead in police parlance.

  “Yeah, well, we’re lucky to have discovered a body at all. Usually teenagers that age are runaways and never get found. Even if they do come from upper-class families like the Johnstons.”

  Bauer was already pushing his long arms into a plaid jacket and scurrying after Slater in the dingy corridor. “What do we know so far?”

  “Some kids fooling around at the lake stumbled on a body in the rock shallows. Probably a recent dump.”

  “This is the part I really hate.”

  “You shouldn’t be in homicide if you hate finding bodies, Bauer. It’s part of the job.” Slater shot him a contained smile that didn’t quite reach his serious gray eyes.

  “Are we sure it’s her?”

  “The responding officer says he memorized her picture, has a daughter same age.”

  “Oh, man,” Bauer repeated, double-stepping to keep up with Slater’s long strides.

  The ride to Beale’s Lake took less than fifteen minutes. The partners drove in silence, Bauer riding shotgun, folding his lanky form into Slater’s old Chevy. Slater’s sunglasses hid his eyes and his fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel. In the nine months Bauer had been Slater’s partner, he learned the man didn’t take kindly to unnecessary chatter.

  Teenager Jennifer Johnston had been reported missing by her parents the previous Wednesday afternoon. Now it looked like the case was officially a homicide.

  By the time Slater and Bauer arrived, Deputy Jason Durand, the first responder at the scene, had secured the perimeter with bright yellow crime scene tape. Fortunately, there were no people at the lake on this cold fall day except for the teenagers who’d stumbled upon the body at approximately 4:30 this morning.

  After getting the names, addresses, and brief statements from the three boys and four girls, Durand had advised them to return to their homes. He cautioned them not to talk to each other or anyone else about their discovery until they’d been contacted again by a member of the sheriff’s department.

  An experienced deputy, Durand had done a good job of keeping the teenagers from tramping on any possible evidence at the scene. “They totally freaked at the sight,” the baby-faced deputy explained, pointing to the spot where the body lay. “Came just close enough to realize she was dead. One of the boys used his cell phone to call 911. Claim they didn’t see or hear anything unusual.”

  Each of the teens would have to be re-interviewed, but according to the officer, they’d been at the lake since 10:30 the previous night, a Sunday. Why the hell, Slater wondered, were kids out all night on a school night? Didn’t they have parents?

  They’d built an unauthorized fire on the beach, discovered the body when they’d wandered to another spot in the early hours of the morning. The kids were scared to death, and as afraid of getting caught for violating park rules and curfew as they were of finding a dead body.

  Even from his position on the slight embankment overlooking the shore, Slater knew if the teenagers had gotten closer to the naked body, they would’ve run like hell. The fine sand at the water’s edge hugged the corpse, and the icy water turned it a deathly color more startling than the brick-colored blood.

  Slater looked over to where the medical examiner, a slim, pale-faced man of sixty with a shock of white hair, had finished his preliminary examination and was jotting down notes. The crime scene photographer hovered nearby.

  The medical examiner or the crime scene techs rarely arrived at the scene before the detectives did, but the dispatcher had tried Slater at home first, and when she couldn’t reach him, she’d contacted the M.E.

  Slater felt a grumble rise in his throat. He was persnickety about his crime scenes. Evidence brought to a crime scene was as important as what’d been left, and he didn’t need more trace evidence to sift through. But it looked like Durand had been thorough in protecting the crime scene for only the meticulous M.E. and the technicians had penetrated the inner perimeter.

  Dr. Wilson caught Slater’s eye and evidently anticipated his question because he called out from where he stood beside the morgue wagon. “Before you ask, Detective, the answer is perhaps by late t
omorrow.”

  Slater nodded and made his way toward the shore, turning his attention to the girl’s body. He glanced side-ways at his partner, who’d turned a sickly shade of gray. The next moment Bauer dashed to the rocks at the lake’s edge and threw up his breakfast.

  Slater was sure the body belonged to Jennifer Johnston because he’d studied her high school graduation picture often enough, and the blond hair was unmistakable. Nevertheless, her parents would make the ID official. Slater was very much interested in seeing their reaction first-hand.

  While Bauer hovered over the rocks, clutching his stomach, Slater knelt to study the body. Although he showed only detachment, inside he felt a whirlwind of disgust, anger, and grief at what’d been done to the girl. But he’d learned the hard way not to give in to emotion.

  The partially clothed body looked as if it’d been flung carelessly beside the water like a malicious child would toss a broken doll away. The girl lay half in, half out of the shallow water, her torso facing away from the shore. Her left leg bent oddly, clearly broken, and her right arm flung outward toward a rock cropping. Her hand rested palm upward, fingers splayed in mock supplication. Her face turned downward into the crook of her left shoulder, and her pale blond hair, sodden and twined with weeds, covered her face.

  Slater glanced at Matt’s sallow face. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s just – ” Bauer wiped at his mouth with a white handkerchief.

  “Forget it. Happens to everybody at least once.” Slater resumed his inspection.

  Durand had photographed the scene and sketched the grid, the crime scene technicians had already processed the area and gathered evidence, and Dr. Wilson had made a preliminary exam. Slater wouldn’t disturb any trace evidence now. He reached to grasp the girl by the shoulders and forced himself not to think of her as human.

  The body, whitish-gray as a fish’s underbelly, had moved through rigor mortis to flaccidity, no putrefaction yet, but Slater knew the rigid cold of the water could’ve slowed down the process. A safe estimate was she’d been dead between twenty-four and thirty-six hours.