Man, this was the second time in his life he'd been in this situation. And the first ...
No reason to think about his mother's murder. Not on a night like tonight.
Stepping into the shower, he closed his eyes and let the spray fall down his head and shoulders and face. Soap. Rinse. Shampoo. Rinse.
He was standing in the steamy, wet heat when he felt the draft: Sure as if someone had opened the window by the toilet, the blast of air shot over the top of the plastic curtain and brushed across his skin. Goose bumps came when called, popping out across his chest and shooting down his legs and back.
The window hadn't been opened, however.
And this was why he'd removed the glass wall of the shower and covered that built-in mirror over the sink. Those two things had been the only changes he'd made to the house, and the unimprovement had been for his own sanity. He'd been shaving for years without his reflection.
"Get the f**k away from me," he said, closing his eyes and keeping them that way.
The draft swirled around his legs, feeling like hands roaming over his flesh, going higher, fondling his sex before hitting his abdomen and his pecs, up to his neck ... his face... .
Cold hands ran through his hair -
"Leave me alone!" He threw out his arm and shoved the curtain aside. As warm air greeted him, he bore down at his core, trying to kick the intruder out, kill the connection.
Stumbling over to the counter, he braced his arms and leaned down, breathing hard and hating himself, hating this night, hating his life.
He knew damn well that it was possible, if you had multiple personality disorder, for a part of you to break free and act independently. Sufferers could be completely unaware of the actions their body had taken, even if it involved violence -
As that headahe started kicking his temples like tires again, he cursed and dried off; then pulled on the flannel shirt and NYPD academy sweatpants he'd slept in the night before and left on the back of the toilet. He was about to go downstairs when a quick glance out the window held him in place.
There was a car parked across the street about two houses down.
He knew every vehicle in the neighborhood, all the trucks, vans, SUVs, sedans, and hybrids, and that shadow-colored, late-model American nothing-much was not on the list.
It was, however, exactly the kind of unmarked that the Caldwell Police Department used.
Reilly was having him surveilled. Good move - exactly what he would have done in her position.
Might even be her in the flesh.
Hitting the stairs, he hesitated at the front door, drawn to go out in his bare feet, because maybe she, or whoever it was, had some answers from the scene... .
With a curse, he pulled himself out of that bright idea and headed for the kitchen. There had to be something to eat in the cupboards. Had to be.
Pulling them open and finding a lot of shelf space and nothing more, he wondered exactly what grocery-fairy he thought had magically come and delivered food.
Then again he could just throw some ketchup on a pizza box and chow down. Probably good for his fiber intake.
Yum.
Two houses down from Detective DelVecchio's, Reilly was behind the wheel and partially blinded.
"By all that is holy ..." She rubbed her eyes. "Do you not believe in curtains?"
As she prayed for the image of a spectacularly naked colleague to fade from her retinas, she seriously rethought her decision to do the stakeout herself. She was exhausted, for one thing - or had been before she'd seen just about everything Veck had to offer.
Take out the just.
One bene was that she was really frickin' awake now, thank you very much - she might as well have licked two fingers and shoved them into a socket: a full-frontal like that was enough to give her the perm she'd wanted back when she'd been thirteen.
Muttering to herself, she dropped her hands into her lap again. And gee whiz, as she stared at the dash, all she saw ... was everything she'd seen.
Yeah, wow, on some men, no clothes was so much more than just naked.
And to think she'd almost missed the show. She'd parked her unmarked and just called in her position when the upstairs lights had gone on and she gotten a gander at the vista of a bedroom. Easing back into her seat, it hadn't dawned on her exactly where the unobstructed view was going to take them both - she'd just been interested that it appeared to be nothing but a bald lightbulb on the ceiling of what had to be the master suite.
Then again, bachelor pad decorating tended to be either storage-unit crammed or Death Valley - barren.
Veck was obviously the Death Valley variety.
Except suddenly she hadn't been thinking about interior decorating, because her suspect had stepped into the bathroom and flipped the switch.
Hellllllllo, big boy.
Ifont sio many ways to count.
"Stop thinking about it ... stop thinking about - "
Closing her eyes again didn't help: If she'd reluctantly noticed before how well he filled out his clothes, now she knew exactly why. He was heavily muscled, and given that he didn't have any hair on his chest, there was nothing to obscure those hard pecs and that six-pack and the carved ridges that went over his hips.
Matter of fact, when it came to manscaping, all he had was a dark stripe that ran between his belly button and his ...
You know, maybe size did matter, she thought.
"Oh, for chrissakes."
In an attempt to get her brain focused on something, anything more appropriate, she leaned forward and looked out the opposite window. As far as she could tell, the house directly across from him had privacy shades across every available view. Good move, assuming he paraded around like that every night.
Then again, maybe the husband had strung those puppies up so that his wife didn't get a case of the swoons.
Bracing herself, she glanced back at Veck's place. The lights were off upstairs and she had to hope now that he was dressed and on the first floor, he stayed that way.
God, what a night.
She was still waiting for any evidence that came from the scene, but she'd made up her mind already about Kroner's injuries. There were coyotes in those woods. Bears. Cats of the non - Meow Mix variety. Chances were good that the guy had come walking through there with the scent of dried blood on his clothes and something with four paws had viewed him as a Happy Meal. Veck could well have tried to step in and been shoved to the side. After all, he'd been rubbing his temples like he'd had pain there, and God knew head trauma had been known to cause short-term memory loss.
The lack of physical evidence on him supported the theory; that was for sure.
And yet ...
God, that father of his. It was impossible not to factor him in even a little.
Like every criminal justice major, she'd studied Thomas DelVecchio Sr. as part of her courses - but she'd also spent considerable time on him in her deviant-psych classes. Veck's dad was your classic serial killer: smart, cunning, committed to his "craft," utterly remorseless. And yet, having watched videos of his interviews with police, he came across as handsome, compelling, and affable. Classy. Very non-monster.
But then again, like a lot of psychopaths, he'd cultivated an image and sustained it with care. He'd been very successful as a dealer of antiquities, although his establishment in that haughty, lofty world of money and privilege had been a complete self-invention. He'd come from absolutely nothing, but had had a knack for charming rich people - as well as a talent for going overseas and coming back with ancient artifacts and statues that were extremely marketable. It wasn't until the killings had started to surface that his business practices came under scrutiny, and to this day, no one had any idea where he'd found the stuff he had - it was almost as if he'd had a treasure trove somewhere in the Middle East. He certainly hadn't helped authorities sort things out, but what were they going to do to him? He was already on death row.
Not for much longer, though, evidently.
What had Veck's mother been like -
The knock on the window next to her head was like a shot ringing out, and she had her weapon palmed and pointed to the sound less than a heartbeat afterward.
Veck was standing in the street next to her car, his hands up, his wet hair glossy in the streetlights.
Lowering her weapon, she put her window down with a curse.
"Quick reflexes, Officer," he murmured.
"Do you want to get shot, Detective?"
"I said your name. Twice. You were deep in thought."
Thanks to what she'd seen in that bathroom, the flannel shirt and academy sweats he had on seemed eminently removable, the kind of duds that wouldn't resist a shove up or a pull down. But come on, like she hadn't seen every aisle in his grocery store already?