Last Words by Mariah Stewart Page A

Beck was his seeming dismissal of her.
    She wasn’t used to being dismissed.
    Pushing aside her personal feelings, Mia searched her phone’s listing of numbers, found the one she wanted, and hit the call button.
    Maybe I should remind him that he was the one who called me into this case
, she thought as the number rang.
Okay, maybe not me specifically, but he did call the Bureau looking for help.
    “Hey, Will, hi, it’s Mia again. Let me give you a different fax number for that information I just requested.” Voice mail had picked up and she read off the number of the fax machine in the conference room. “I hope you got this message before you left for the weekend.”
    She decided to make good use of the few minutes she had to herself. She’d wanted to make a few notes regarding the case, so she took a small notebook and a pen from her bag and began to write a list. At the top went the interviews she’d already requested from Beck, followed by photos of the crime scenes, including the car where the last victim had been left. She’d want to walk Beck’s neighborhood at night and she’d want to see the victims, if possible. And she wanted to listen to the tape. Most of all, she wanted to hear the voice of the man who’d devised such a unique method of disposing of his victims.
    She paused with the pen in her hand. It was more than merely a means of disposal, she knew. Wrapping his victims in clear plastic was about control and it was about his need to be up close and personal with their death. He wanted to see, to smell, to experience every emotion, every labored breath, every bit of the struggle of his victim as he wound the plastic closer and closer to her face. The sheer terror as the film covered first her mouth, then her nose, the horror in her eyes, all most likely aroused him unbearably, probably to the point of climax.
    She wondered if the plastic wrap had been tested for semen.
    But of course, the killer had hosed down the victim that had been left in Beck’s car. Still, there could be some traces inside the folds of plastic. And what about the one left on the porch of her family’s home? She made a note to check that everything that came in contact with both victims had been tested for traces of semen and sweat, including the Prestons’ porch steps and decking.
    That, too, was telling as far as this killer was concerned. It hadn’t been enough to make Colleen Preston suffer. He had to make certain that the people who loved her the most saw firsthand just what she’d gone through.
    “Could it be personal?” she murmured aloud.
    “What?” Beck stood in the doorway. Mia hadn’t heard the door open.
    “I was just wondering if the fact that the killer left the first victim—”
    “Colleen Preston,” he reminded her.
    “Yes, thank you. Colleen Preston. We should use her name. I was wondering if maybe the killer left her for her family to find because there’s some personal connection. Some reason he’d like to rub their face in it.”
    “In the fact that she’d been killed?”
    “In the manner in which she’d been killed,” Mia corrected him. “He wanted them to know he’d had total control over her body and her life and her death. He wanted them to know exactly what he’d done to her. He wanted them to see just how much she’d suffered. How vainly she’d gasped for air. How terrified she’d been. And that he’d orchestrated it all.”
    She stood and began to pace.
    “Why else make the tapes? Why let them hear her last words, if not to taunt them?”
    “Because he’s a sick son of a bitch.”
    “Oh, that he is. But this goes deeper than just being sick. This has a personal edge to it.”
    “You could be right about that. Right now, we need to take a drive.”
    “Where to?” She slid her bag off the back of her chair and grabbed her notebook and phone from the table, then followed Beck into the hall.
    “Sinclair’s Cove. It’s a bed-and-breakfast about a mile outside of town.