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Peace on Earth.
Except not tonight. Despite the Jack Daniel’s and the long, hot bath she’d promised herself, Jenna knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Everything would run through her head like a videotape on high speed. All she’d read or heard about the murders. The descriptions of the victims. What Sean Murphy had said.
Those were the things that would reverberate over and over again. The accusation that she’d fed the killer’s fantasy of his own importance. That she’d been sympathetic. The troubling claim that she fit the victim profile.
She took a breath, knowing none of this was getting her anywhere. She needed to get inside, lock the door and try to forget it all. There was nothing else she could do tonight.
As with most of the other things she’d worried about during her life, this would all look better in the morning. She’d have that talk with Paul and get his advice, which she’d always found to be both reasoned and knowledgeable. Until then…
Until then she would do her best to put Sean Murphy’s words out of her head, refusing to give them—or him—any more control over her life.
Four
“We’ve seen the tip of this iceberg in the questions that were thrown at Jenna. We should all be prepared to be asked about that same kind of information concerning serial killers, particularly this one. Background, psychological profile, predictions. We’ll be questioned by the media and by whomever we’re standing beside at the next Christmas party. And we damn well better be prepared to answer them.”
Although Paul hadn’t looked in her direction, the fact that he’d prefaced his admonition with a mention of her interview made Jenna feel that his comments had been directed at her. Responding that way was just what she’d thought yesterday—paranoid. She was simply the first to be ambushed. It could have happened to any one of them.
And would any of the others have come across as being sympathetic to a serial killer?
The fact that she’d gotten so little sleep last night wasn’t helping her put this into perspective. She shouldn’t be so worried about the opinion of one man. And as far as she knew, that was all Sean Murphy’s warning amounted to.
“Unless someone has something else…?” Paul waited, allowing the silence to build. “Okay, then, I guess it’s back to the salt mines. Have a good day. Or at least try to.”
People began to rise from the table, the casters on the heavy leather chairs moving silently over the thick carpet of the conference room. Several people began conversations with those seated around them. Not one of them met her eyes or tried to include her.
Although that isolation could certainly be attributed to a normal give-and-take among colleagues or even to her proximity to the head of the table where Paul was still standing, it felt to Jenna as if something else were going on. Some kind of censure, perhaps, for the way she’d handled herself?
She pretended to be occupied with gathering up her notes and putting them into her briefcase. When she finished, she bent to pick up her purse. She straightened to find Paul watching her.
“Sheila said you had a visitor yesterday.”
She shouldn’t be surprised that her secretary had told someone what had happened. And gossip traveled as quickly in this office as in any other. She should have anticipated that and talked to Paul about it herself. Since she hadn’t…
“Some kook with an ax to grind,” she said, trying to remember how much of the conversation Sheila might have heard.
Nothing more than Murphy’s opening salvo, she decided. That in itself had been revealing enough.
“Narrow the field,” Paul suggested. “What kind of kook?”
“He’d seen the interview I did and wanted to berate me for being sympathetic to the killer.”
“Is that all?”
She hesitated, wondering if she wanted to give more validity to the man’s warning by mentioning it. She waited until a couple of people had moved away from where she and Paul were standing before continuing. She didn’t want an audience.
Beth Goldberg, the member of the staff Jenna was closest to, had stopped behind Paul, her brows raised. She was obviously wondering what was going on, and knowing Beth, also wondering if she needed rescuing.
Jenna tilted her head toward the door. A gesture of dismissal that Beth immediately recognized.
When the rest of the staff had also eddied toward the exit, she turned back to meet Paul’s gaze. He had propped his hip on the edge of the conference table, obviously prepared to wait until she spilled her guts.
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. If she suddenly disappeared, she wanted someone to be looking for her.
And why in the world would you suddenly “disappear”? Stop buying into Murphy’s mind games.
“He claimed I was a match for the police profile of the victims.”
She realized that she’d managed to surprise Paul. The head of the practice was seldom at a loss for words, but the silence after her statement stretched for several seconds.
“I didn’t know they’d issued one.”
“Neither did I. Apparently, someone has. Maybe the FBI. Maybe it’s based on the murders he’s committed in other locations. I don’t think the police here are talking about it yet, but…” She took a breath, reluctant to put reality into words. “The pictures on TV this morning…” The images she’d worked so hard to dismiss last night were again in her head. “He could be right, Paul. They all had dark hair. And they were career women, not street people or prostitutes—”
“Stop it.” Paul took her elbow and shook it.
She hadn’t even realized she’d crossed her arms over her body. Or that her voice had risen as she’d repeated the things Sean Murphy had said to her yesterday.
“Just stop it,” Paul repeated, sliding his hand comfortingly up her arm until it rested on the top of her shoulder.
Despite the fact that the room was now deserted, he leaned nearer and lowered his voice. “First of all, we need to talk to the police. If there is anything to this profile business, we’ll deal with it. He could have been making that up, you know. You said he was a kook. Maybe he saw you on TV and decided to have some fun at your expense.”
“That’s not how I read him. I know that’s what I called him, but…” Unconsciously she shook her head. “He seemed serious. Deadly serious. He clearly didn’t like what I said in the interview, but I think his warning about the profile was genuine.”
That’s why it had bothered her so much. Whether the guy was right or not, he had believed what he said. And if he were as well informed as he appeared to be, then…
“I think I’d like to talk to the police,” she said, the words out almost before she realized she’d made the decision.
Paul nodded encouragingly, as if she were a patient who’d just made a breakthrough, before he released her shoulder and again took her arm. “Then let’s make the call and set it up.”
Jenna had told everything to the officer who’d taken her statement. What had happened in her office. That she believed Murphy had been waiting for her to leave the building last night. About his car pulling up beside her as she’d prepared to make her turn.
The policeman had barely seemed interested, making her decide halfway through that she’d wasted the afternoon. None of the murders had been committed in the jurisdiction of the small police department where her office was located. When