Free Twisted by Jay Bonansinga Page B

his pocket and looked at the display. It was a Virginia prefix. Grove snapped it open. “What, Tom?”
    The section chief’s gravelly voice: “I can’t think of too many other profilers who would storm out of a meeting on me like that.”
    â€œWhat do you want from me, Tom?”
    â€œYou really think this perp is trying to lure you into a trap of some kind?”
    Grove sighed. “What do you want me to say?”
    â€œAnd you don’t think it’s too early for you to be traipsing off on a case?”
    Grove climbed into his rental car and sat behind the wheel for a moment with the phone pressed against his ear. “Like I said, I don’t have a choice. This case chose me. ”
    Geisel was silent a moment. “You’re going to use yourself as bait, aren’t you?”
    â€œTom—”
    â€œDon’t answer. I don’t want to know, I don’t.”
    â€œI’m going to find this guy, Tom, and when I do, I’m going to take him down. Simple as that.”
    After another pause: “Ulysses ... this perp ... first of all, he killed your friend. That’s a conflict of interest, and that’s grounds for reassignment.”
    Grove gripped the phone a little tighter. “Is this conversation coming to an end?”
    â€œI didn’t say I was going to reassign you. But this thing has got to be kept off the books. I don’t assign my profilers to vengeance jobs. Besides, you’re a consultant, you’re not Tactical. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
    Grove stared at the windshield, the water droplets on the outside surface looking like diamonds in the pale light. “What do you want me to do?”
    â€œIt’s up to you. We never had this conversation. This is your deal.”
    â€œI hear ya.”
    Geisel’s voice got sharp and hard then. “And if I find out you found this guy, and you didn’t call in Tac for backup, I will personally see to it that you spend the autumn of your career as a traffic guard. Comprendé?”
    â€œAnything else?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œI gotta go, Tom.” Grove started the car. “I’ll call you at home in a couple of days.”
    â€œUly, wait!”
    Grove paused before snapping the phone shut. “What is it?”
    The longest pause of them all now.
    Geisel’s voice returned at last, soft and low: “Go catch this son of a bitch.”

PART II
    The Killing Jar
    These who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.
    â€”Old Testament, Hosea 8:7

5
    At O’Hare, Maura County bought a ticket to San Francisco, then waited in one of airport’s innumerable coffee kiosks, perching herself on a sad little plastic stool, composing a note to Ulysses Grove in her head. It wasn’t going to be easy. There was so much she wanted to say to him, so many bittersweet feelings. She had started the note a dozen times in her head on the flight from New Orleans to Chicago but simply had not been able to come up with the right words.
    She didn’t want to hurt him.
    At last, she opened the little spiral notebook that she carried with her at all times. It was the same dog-eared, salmon-colored Mead notebook in which she had recorded her nightmares at the behest of her therapist. She had been keeping the dream journal ever since the Sun City fiasco.
    Getting kidnapped by a deranged, psychotic serial killer was bad enough. The physical trauma alone had necessitated weeks of treatments and convalescence. Maura had been subjected to three full-blown blood transfusions, countless stitches, and a metal pin surgically inserted into her knee where the cartilage had been violently torn away. She had walked with a cane for nearly three months. But that stuff had been the easy part. It gave her something to write about in her articles and books, and something to talk about in interviews.
    The hard part was the psychological scarring. It seemed to come out of