Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel) Read Online Free PDF

"I didn't think you'd like today's paper."
    "Why?"
    He shrugged.
    "Why didn't you think I'd like it?" she asked again.
    He didn't meet her gaze. "I just didn't."
    "No, Billy. You had a reason. What was it?"
    Billy cringed. "Some crazy guy killed another kid."
    "A serial killer?" she asked.
    He eyed her again.
    "Do they think it's a serial killer?" she pressed.
    He gave a curt nod and turned his back, flipping on the radio to end her questions. He tuned to his favorite jazz station and hummed along.
    Casey paged through the GQ Billy had brought, using her knuckles to turn the pages. Since she'd left the Bureau, Casey hadn't been interested in the outside world. While Amy and Michael had been living there, they'd tried to entice her with the evening news or the paper.
    But everything about it reminded her of what she'd had—and what she'd lost. She pushed Amy from her mind. Having her daughter grow up without her was one thing she forbade herself to think about. She could handle memories of that night, Leonardo's voice, even the pain, but she couldn't think about the way she had pushed Amy and Michael from her life.
    Billy's methods of drawing Casey back into reality had been much more successful. Though she knew they were ploys, she had to respect his ingenuity. At first, he brought the paper and kept it sticking out of his bag. Every few days, he'd watch the news while he folded laundry. But he only did it when Casey wasn't in the room. If she came in, he turned it off. Not abruptly as though it were forbidden, but always with some comment about the "crazies," or "stupid show," or "don't we have problems enough."
    When he was on the phone, she would catch snippets of news from his conversations or from the radio while he cooked. Eventually, she lost interest in the novels she'd been devouring, growing hungry for real news.
    Now she couldn't help but wonder what this local killer was doing. For years, she'd been enthralled with multiple serial offenders, studied them. It had been her life. The attack had killed that. But recently she felt the tentacles of her old life begin to puncture her fear and wrap around her again.
    Billy leaned against the sink and dried his hands.
    "Tell me about it," she said.
    He glanced down at the magazine and furrowed his brow. "What?"
    "This crazy fuck killing kids."
    He shook his head, waving her off.
    She pulled a piece of paper from a notepad on the counter. "I'm serious."
    His eyes widened.
    "Tell me, damn it," she snapped, smacking her pen on the table. She gripped it in her left hand, the way she had practiced, and poised to write.
    Billy pulled a chair back and sat, crossing his foot over one knee. For more than a month, he had been trying to get her to tell him about her work for the Bureau. But she hadn't wanted to. It hadn't interested her. Suddenly, now, it was starting to.
    "What do you want to know?"
    "Start with the criminal act—everything you can remember."
    "The criminal act?"
    "Seven steps to profiling," she explained, shoving aside her own excited reaction at having an opportunity to explain what she had done as a profiler. She had loved it. "First step is evaluation of the criminal act—he killed children—how? What weapon did he use? That sort of thing."
    "Okay, let's see."
    She looked at the paper. "But not too fast. This left-hand shit is a royal pain in the ass."
    "Nicely put."
    "I was putting it politely. Do you want to hear the bad version?"
    "That's not necessary." He crossed his hands in his lap and nodded. "Okay, let's see. He's killed two kids so far."
    "Male or female?"
    "Two girls."
    "Race?"
    "One was white, one was black."
    Casey wrote as quickly as she could move the pen. "Doesn't sound like the same guy."
    Billy looked down at her notepad. "Why not?"
    "Not usual to have different races, especially not in child killings." She rolled her hand. "Keep going."
    "Well, maybe the papers are wrong."
    "How old were they?"
    "The kids?"
    She glared.
    "Oh, let me think.