Free RAINEY DAYS by R. E. Bradshaw Page B

school. When she dismissed them, some of them tore away to waiting parents, but most hung around to get a hug from their teacher. Katie smiled at the children and gave them each a special moment of her time. Katie Wilson appeared to love her job.
    Katie did not go home after school. Instead, she drove to a bookstore on Chapel Hill Boulevard. Rainey could not follow her in, because she had been seen yesterday. She was still kicking herself, in the ass, for that one. Katie appeared in a window in the café section, sipping coffee, and eating what looked like a bowl of soup. She read a book while she ate, once pausing the spoon just inches from her partially opened mouth, as what she read captivated her attention. When she finished eating, Katie left the bookstore and drove to the strip mall near North Miami Street, in one of the most crime-prone areas, in the city of Durham.
    Rainey found a parking place where she could watch Katie through the storefront window. She used her digital camera to take periodic shots of the cars and people who came and went. While she waited, Rainey brought up the file containing copies of the notes and pictures on her laptop. Her training told her the wording in the notes was a key factor in figuring out who this guy was. The perpetrator spoke of fate and destiny, in some form or another, in each note. He believed in a fantasy he conceived, as a predetermined future. The powers that be had put Katie Wilson here at this time and this place, just for him. In his twisted mind, he must fulfill whatever the fates have destined for him.
    Rainey scribbled her thoughts on a legal pad, checking every few minutes to see that Katie was still hard at work molding minds. She noted the grammar and style indicated the author was educated, probably at least some college education. The note from June, “Is it now the time when destiny is ours to hold?” sounded like a quote Rainey had heard before. She typed it into Google and the results came up Paul Martin.
    She wondered aloud, “Who the hell is Paul Martin?”
    The name went into the search engine resulting in two likely candidates for the quote. It was either a hockey player or the former Prime Minister of Canada. Rainey decided it was probably the politician. She noted no contractions in any of the messages and the order of the words suggested formality in the writing, an affect probably. If the guy was not educated, he wanted people to think he was.
    The sky was overcast, with storms moving up from the south. The cloud cover had lowered the temperature into the low seventies and a steady breeze was keeping the humidity at bay. Rainey had her windows down half way and could hear the winos and young bloods talking loudly and laughing, down at the other end of the strip mall. She kept an eye on them and noticed on several occasions that they were watching her as well.
    “They probably think I’m a cop,” she said to herself, knowing the black Charger was a favorite with law enforcement.
    Rainey turned back to the legal pad. She began formulating a list of characteristics of the unknown suspect in this particular crime. She had established that he probably had at least some college education. The guy was following Katie at all hours of the day, as evidenced by the pictures. He must have a job that allowed him to be unaccountable for large blocks of time. Since Katie had to be in her mid thirties and most victims are in the same age range of their assailants, he was probably thirty-five to forty-five years old.
    Rainey had seen him, she was sure, so she knew him to be athletically built, about six foot two or three, about two hundred and twenty-five pounds. She had not seen his face, but assumed he was probably average or better than average looking. He was able to move around Katie without being noticed, so he could blend in. Not only could he blend in, Rainey believed, Katie and JW probably knew him. No stranger could have gotten that close to Katie, unless