almost standing, her right leg came forward and she kneed him hard in the groin and whirled him around using both hands.
He first doubled in pain from the blow, then lost his balance and found himself on the ground on his back. She had deftly twisted him off his feet.
He instantly regained his balance, however, reaching for something lodged under his left pant leg and turned back toward her catlike, swinging his right arm as he did so. The awkward, bumbling fool of minutes ago had disappeared. The cast, obviously fake judging from the maneuvers he was now making, had fallen off. Stacey saw a new object in his right hand: a large bowie knife. No time to run. When he shifted his weight forward, she took a step back with her left leg and swung her right one as a soccer player might, snapping it quickly as it connected with the man’s wrist. The wrist hit the top part of the doorframe. The man screamed in pain as the knife went flying into the air. Stacey kicked him twice more, once in the throat and once in the jaw. He fell back into the front passenger seat as the knife landed harmlessly in front of her.
She stared at it for a moment. It had an unusual handle. She’d seen the design before in one of her classes—a grotesquely carved figure popular in the Middle Ages called a gargoyle.
The fight was not over, however. The man reached for something again, this time under the passenger seat.
It’s a gun! Stacey thought. There was no time to stop him. She could take a chance and try to knock the gun out of his hands, but the element of surprise was gone. The better decision was to run, and she started at full speed toward College Avenue, a block and a half away. There would be plenty of people on the avenue. She ran with total abandon as if the bullet were already in the air and she needed to distance herself from it. But the bullet never came. And when she finally took a look back, her attacker was nowhere in sight. Still, she kept on until she reached The Swamp, a popular bar and restaurant in town.
“Please call the police!” she said to the bartender, a woman not much older than herself. “A man just tried to kill me. I think he’s still after me.”
Chapter Two
I want you to do me a favor,” Detective Danielle Jansen said to Stacey. They were sitting in one of those sterile interrogation rooms in the Oakville Police Department: white walls, metal desk, four metal chairs. Stacey felt a little like a suspect who was being interrogated although Detective Jansen was very nice.
“What?” Stacey asked.
“This will be a little hard because of what you’ve just been through, but I want you to close your eyes and bring up the image of the man who attacked you. Can you do that?”
There was another person in the room with them, a sketch artist the department had borrowed from Dade County for a few weeks. He was sitting off in the corner with a sketchpad on his lap. And behind the window that looked into the room were seven men: another detective from the Oakville Police Department, two detectives from the Apache County Sheriff’s Department, and four FBI agents.
“I’ll try,” Stacey replied. It had been a long day already and she was tired. When the attack came, she had acted forcefully without thinking. Now, after learning who her attacker might have been, she was a bundle of nerves. It was going to be difficult to bring that man back to life in her mind. She closed her eyes.
“Can you see him?” Detective Jansen asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you see his eyes?”
“Yes.”
“What color are they?”
“Blue, I think.”
“Are they large or small?”
“I’d say large.”
“What about his eyebrows—can you see them?”
“Not really. I mean, he’s got eyebrows but they don’t stand out.”
“What about his nose?”
“It’s straight, almost pointy. Not big.”
“That’s good, very good. What about the lips?”
“Thin.”
“Chin?”
“It doesn’t stick out or anything.”
“Ears?”
“Can’t see them. His hair is covering them.”
“You said he had long blond hair—is it straight or curly?”
“Curly.”
“And his beard—is it full?”
“No, it’s kind of stubbly, not very long.”
“How about his teeth?”
“Can’t see them.”
“Anything else? A mole maybe, or a scar—something that will help us identify him?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay, Stacey, you can open your eyes.”
Stacey took a deep breath. It hadn’t been so bad. The sketch artist came over and showed them the face