Free The Ivy League Killer by Katherine Ramsland Page A

eight minutes and his hands kept cramping. When it was done, he raised himself to look at the smooth skin of her small, lifeless body.
    His hands tingled from the difficult exertion. His heart pounded. This was his sacred moment, the supreme sense of power. He basked in the afterglow. But it flew by too fast. Reality closed in, and now he had a dead body to get rid of. He dragged it over to the swampy pond and shoved it in. When it sank out of sight, he got back into his car and drove a short distance to his home.

    Tammy Williams
Victim
    When Tammy failed to come home as expected, her father reported her missing. Detective Michael Malchik, with the State Police Major Crime Unit for Eastern Connecticut, acquired her file. He didn’t wait long to start looking. Nothing about this girl suggested a runaway, especially after her pocketbook turned up on the side of the road.
    Once Malchik had a case, he wrestled with it every waking moment. He’d lay notes out on his living room floor, and if he failed to solve it after viewing everything, he’d start over. Meticulous and absorbed, he’d mentally examine a case from every angle, asking himself what he’d missed. It was often some small detail, he knew, that tipped a mystery toward a solution. At 36, Malchik had the look of a California surfer. He was confident, too, and whenever he spoke about his achievements, he could rub coworkers the wrong way. As he said, if you can really do what you say you can, then it’s not bragging. In fact, Malchik had often proven himself. He hated to fail.
    Yet in Tammy’s case, he barely generated leads. He’d found someone who’d seen her struggling with a white male on the side of Route 6, but Malchik could take this no further. No one had seen a car, and even the description of the unknown male was too vague to be useful. Still, Malchik was certain that Tammy had met with foul play, so he kept the case within reach on his desk. He did not realize that in the days that followed, Tammy’s killer revisited the body dumpsite several times to masturbate and relive his experience.
    www.crimescape.com

Chapter 3: Misplaced Trust
    Just two months later and three hours west, over the state line into New York, the same man who’d attacked Tammy went looking for another target. With an IQ in the superior range, he knew enough about investigations to launch an assault in an area where no one knew him. But sometimes the need to kill overcame him and he acted on impulse. Young girls were best, he’d discovered, because they were so gullible. They let strangers pick them up. He cruised through Middletown, New York, a straight shot on Interstate 84 from where he lived, until he spotted Paula Perrera.
    Paula’s friends knew she often hitchhiked to get to her house in the country, but she always assured them that she’d never get into a car with anyone who seemed creepy. The slender teenager, just 5 feet tall with curly blond hair, trusted her instincts. She’d
know
a rapist or killer if she saw one.
    A friendly girl, Paula was active in her church youth group. She suffered from depression at times and disliked being teased, but she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to harm her. She had plans. She was going to be a chef one day. Her life would work out just fine.
    So just after she passed an auto shop on Route 211, Paula got into a car with a man who offered her a ride. He was friendly. He wore a suit. He acted normal. One eye seemed a little off behind his oversized aviator-style glasses, but that wasn’t his fault. As they drove, Paula chatted freely with him, directing him where she wanted to go. Instead, he pulled onto a side road. She didn’t understand. Then she did. The sudden change in his face told her all she needed to know. She’d been wrong about her instincts. He wasn’t nice anymore.
    He pulled into a remote spot and ordered Paula out of the car. Trembling and scared, she obeyed. His next instruction, delivered in a cold voice, was