Page 44 of Heartbreak Bay

It’s so strange talking to him; my skin crawls every time I do it,because he sounds so normal. His patients love him. He’s got high marks on all the ratings sites. And he wouldn’t blink as he killed you, if it came to that. I don’tthinkDave’s ever killed anyone, though he’s hurt plenty of people. He’s a controlled kind of sociopath, one who understands how to work within the rules, even if he can’t really, emotionally, comprehend why the rules are there.

But I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley either. Bad enough meeting him in this isolated motel room.

“MalusNavis,” I say. “He’s on the LA boards. You know him. You replied to him and gave him the wanted-poster template.”

Dr.Dave’s smile gets wider. It makes him look a lot less normal. “And? It was a public service. That bitch has been left alone for a while. Time to heat things up, don’t you think?”

“What do you know about MalusNavis?”

“Not a lot, if you’re asking for personal details. But he’s ... let’s say, exceptional. I’ve had some interesting private chats with him. His ideas are extraordinary.”

I feel the hair raise on the back of my neck. I’ve seen what Dr.Dave posts in public. What he says in private chat must be unimaginably worse. “He give you any contact info? Any hint where he’s from? Anything?”

“Not really. If I had to guess from his grammar and syntax, I’d say he’s college educated or very well read. He’s got money, that’s obvious from some of the discussion points; cost doesn’t seem to be an issue for him. And I think he’s from a coastal area.”

“Why do you think so?” I ask.

He sounds smug when he answers. “Why, Sam, I’m sure you’ll work that one out if you try hard enough. And you’re right not to sleep on this one. I’d place a nice-size bet that he’d very much like to do something nasty to your girl. Notseeit done. Actually do it.”

I flinch at the pleasure in that last part. “Anything else you know? Don’t hold out on me. You know there will be consequences if you do.” There have been. I’ve hurt him before. He needs to believe I’ll keep on doing it, or I’ll move from the predator to prey column.

His smile disappears like it’s been wiped off a whiteboard. What’s left is only really human in its basic form and function. Dr.Dave doesn’t possess empathy, or if he does, it’s so stunted and malformed that it serves no real function beyond making him cautious. “He’s bad news,” he says. Quite a statement, given who I’m talking with. “Don’t take him lightly. He’s ... dedicated. And she’s hardly his first project.”

“Who else?”

“Work that part out. You have the pieces. I put it together; so can you if she hasn’t fucked your brains out.” The scorn he puts onsheis obvious. Gwen is, to him, a thing. An object he would very much like to see hurt, just for the simple entertainment of it. I’m not sure he thinksof the kids as even that. They barely exist to him, except as tools to hit Gwen with.

This bastard’s got children of his own. Three of them, according to his website. His wife is pretty, glossy, and I’m sure she’s absolutely terrified of him. But leaving him would probably be even worse for her. He doesn’t like losing to me, but hereallydoesn’t like women.

“Spell it out for me,” I say. “Why did he look into Tammy Maguire?”

“Because she’s easy pickings,” he says. “Why do you think?” He says it like it’s blindingly obvious; it isn’t to anyone but a true sociopath. From what Gwen’s told me, the woman she first knew of as Sheryl Lansdowne seems like a predator herself.

A house cat is a predator, I realize. But it’s also prey to a pit bull.

He seems impatient now. “It’s late. Are we square, Sam?”

“No,” I say. “But I won’t be looking to hurt you unless you step out of line. Not just with me. Withanyone. I mean it, Dave. Play nice.”

“Of course,” he says, and there’s that smile again. “And you should also try being nicer. It’ll get you a lot further than your threats.”

No, it won’t. Not with him. And we both know that.

He opens the door and leaves. Before he closes it, he says, “I hacked your credit card, by the way. The room’s on you.”

I don’t know if he actually did. His lies read as true, every time. I’ll just ask at the office on the way out.

I need a long, hot, disinfecting shower. Instead, I check the room for any nasty surprises, and he doesn’t disappoint me. Tucked under the bed is a thick stack of horrific child pornography—movies, crudely printed magazines, photos. It’s deeply disturbing stuff.Christ.Even in this place, they’d call the cops on that. And of course he’d put the room in my name.

I grab a plastic trash bag from the bathroom and shove it all in, then check the rest of the room. He hasn’t bothered with anything else that I can tell.

I head straight for my truck, toss the bag in the bed, and call the office. Dave, thankfully, was lying; he’d paid cash for the room. Just another of his little mind games. I’m much more worried about the shit he’s left me with; I can’t just dump it. So I drive outside K-ville to a lonely road, build a small fire, and start tossing the filth on top of it once it’s burning briskly. I break the DVDs. I rip apart the videotapes. I tear the magazines. Destroying it feels better.

As it all burns, I take out my phone to do a quick search. Dave taunted me about having plenty of clues to put together. So I start doing that.Malus Navisrefers to a navigational beacon. So that’s why he said our stalker probably lives on the coast. Though which coast, and in which state ... who knows. But Dave’s suggestion is sound: I need to look closely at MalusNavis’s public posts and see what they can tell me. Maybe they can give me some directional hints, after all.

I take a deep breath and slip back into the emotional torture that is the Lost Angels site.

It doesn’t take me long to see it. MalusNavis’s language is spare, measured, but in a way it’s as inexorable as an avalanche. He never seems to have much emotion about what he’s doing, but he does have an enormous interest in the concept of an eye for an eye. I find him posting on several different boards—Tammy Maguire is one, but he’s also interested in other names. I write them down. Not all the people he’s been interested in are female; most are names I don’t recognize. Some barely rate a mention, even on a board obsessed with crime.

---