Both detectives looked contrite.
“Sorry,” Detective Wolfe said.
“To answer your question,” Detective Allen continued, “based on the journal, it looks like he first met Ms. Cardin after an incident at a grocery store. He was a witness and was interviewed by the police officers at the scene. Of course, nothing about him stood out as being off, so he wasn’t detained or even looked at twice.”
Taylor leaned forward in her seat. “Was that when the two guys got in a fight over a parking spot?” she asked.
The detective looked down at the notes in front of her and nodded. “Yes.”
“I remember there were a bunch of people who were interviewed,” Taylor said. “I don’t recall anyone being creepy or anything, though.”
“Well, Mr. Williams wrote in his journal that he’d found his next ‘plaything’ that day. He went on and on about how perfect you were, that since you wouldn’t be able to recognize him, he could mess with your mind. He was planning to pretend to be several different people once he got you in his basement.”
Taylor felt sick. She wanted to claim Brett’s plan wouldn’t have worked, that she’d have known she was being tortured by the same person. But honestly, Taylor wasn’t sure how she would’ve reacted or what she would’ve thought. If he’d changed clothes, maybe worn a hat, she wouldn’t have known she was being tortured by just one man, over and over.
She closed her eyes in humiliation.
As if Eagle knew what she was thinking, he squeezed her hand and told the detectives, “Taylor knew he was the man who’d been stalking her. She refused to get in his car as a result.”
“How?” Detective Wolfe asked.
Taylor opened her eyes and looked at the man across the table. She saw only curiosity in his gaze.
“The way he smelled,” she admitted. “I noticed it after he sat next to me at the dementia care center. And it makes sense now, because he was caring for his mother at home. Bleach, disinfectant, and urine,” she clarified. “That, and I also recognized his car from the time he rear-ended me. I guess he figured since I couldn’t remember faces, I wouldn’t recall his car, either, but that old Cadillac didn’t exactly blend in.”
“I’m impressed,” the detective said. He glanced briefly at his partner, then back at Taylor. “And you said that you believe he pretended to be a maintenance man to get into your apartment, and that he delivered a pizza, too, right?”
Taylor nodded.
“You’re very lucky,” Detective Allen said. “He wrote about both incidents in his journal. He’d planned to grab you when you let him into your apartment, but your boyfriend was on the way.”
“What else did he do?” Taylor asked, not really wanting to, but unable to not know.
Detective Allen looked down at her notes. “Looks like he mostly followed you for a couple of months after he met you. A lot of fantasizing about what he was going to do when he finally got you back to his house. Let’s see . . . he talked to you at the post office, at the library . . . you know about the fender bender. He paid for your food when you went through a drive-through one day. He was actually inside, and he told the cashier he wanted to pay for your meal, but to say it was the car in front of you. It looks like he also saw you and a friend having lunch at a diner, and he paid for that meal too.
“There are quite a few references to your boyfriend, how irritated he was that you’d started seeing more of him and spending nights away from your apartment. He bitched that it took him so long to find out who he was. Seems clear that dating Mr. Trowbridge made it harder for him. He didn’t want anyone to see him interacting with you and possibly remembering him.”
Taylor couldn’t believe that literally all the times she’d thought strangers were simply being nice, it had been Brett. That he’d been . . . what had he been doing? Not really messing with her mind, since she hadn’t known he was the one behind the gestures. She supposed he’d simply been enjoying the thrill of the chase and reveling in the fact that she had no idea he was watching her.
“As I said,” the detective went on, “you were very lucky. But you did everything right when he did finally decide to make his move. You didn’t allow yourself to be put in his car. Sometimes it’s best to be docile and let a kidnapper feel as if they’re in control, to wait for the perfect time to run, but in this case, fighting back was absolutely the right thing to do. You gave your boyfriend time to recover from the accident and come after you.”
“I never even saw him following us,” Eagle said. “One second we were the only ones on the road, and the next he’d run into us. I didn’t see him come up on us because of the curves in the road.”
Taylor knew he still felt horrible about that. He’d been the one to suggest taking the scenic route, which had made things so much easier for Brett. He would’ve made his move at some point over the weekend anyway—there was no doubt about that—but taking the road through the forest, one that wasn’t well traveled, had given him the chance to wreck their car and attempt to snatch Taylor.
“We suspect that he’d honed his surveillance skills enough that he was very good at stalking,” Detective Wolfe said matter-of-factly.
It was Taylor’s turn to squeeze Eagle’s hand. He’d been beating himself up for getting knocked out and not being able to prevent Brett from taking her out of the car. But the officers at the scene had said if it hadn’t been for Eagle’s driving skills, they both could’ve been killed in the accident.
“Anyway, I know you already know this,” Detective Allen said, “but there will be no charges for Williams’s death. It was obviously self-defense, and”—her voice lowered—“you saved the city and state a lot of money, because now we don’t have to put him on trial. The families of his other victims will finally get closure. Williams put extensive notes in his diary about where he buried each woman—we think so he could go back and relive everything he’d done to them. It’ll be a long time before the families can process what happened, but thanks to both of you, they can finally put their loved ones to rest.”
Taylor wasn’t so sure learning your wife, sister, or daughter had been killed by a serial killer would make anyone feel better, but she supposed it was preferable to not knowing anything at all about where they’d disappeared to or what had happened to them.
Detective Wolfe went on, “Williams apparently went out in the middle of the night and buried his victims in various wooded areas around the city. And he buried them deep; it would’ve been years before they were ever found, if they were ever found.”
“What will happen to his mother?” Gramps asked from his position against the wall.
Taylor jumped. She’d completely forgotten the other three men were standing behind her.
“We haven’t been able to find any kin,” Detective Wolfe said. “For now, she’s in the hospital, but she’s going to have to be moved soon. There’s a place on the west side that takes in indigent people who have little money and no one to care for them.”
Taylor could tell just by his tone that the home probably wasn’t very good. Even though she hated Brett Williams with every cell in her body, his mother hadn’t known what he’d been doing, and she was ultimately one of his victims as well.