by Jenna Kernan
When he came back, she snuggled into his arms.
“Why did you divorce?” she asked.
He stiffened, clearly taken off guard again. Then he sighed.
“My wife was fed up with me, my distractions, absences. I missed I don’t know how many family dinners, most of my son’s football games and all the school awards ceremonies. He won a writing contest. Missed that, too. She started calling me Detective MIA. She told me that if she was going to live alone, she might as well be single. Then I got suspended during the internal investigation. That was the last straw for her. The whole thing blew up and she asked for a divorce.”
“I see.” She stroked his bare chest, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat. “Do you still love her?”
He made a rumbling noise, the vibrations rippling through her cheek, now on his bare chest.
“Not for a long time. I stayed for him. The divorce, lawyers and court appearances killed what little we had left.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m sorry for my son. But not about ending our marriage.” He toyed with a strand of her hair. “Besides, if not for that, I’d have never met you.”
She smiled and nestled closer as he rhythmically brushed her shoulder with the tips of his fingers. Her eyes closed and she slipped into sleep again, rousing several hours later to the sound of Demko speaking to Molly and the dog’s toenails clicking on the tiles as they headed for the kitchen.
A glance at her phone told her she needed to get up if she was to have time to get home and change before driving to the office.
She gathered her clothing and carried them into his bathroom. After a pit stop, she dressed, tugging at her damp bra and panties. Back in the bedroom, she discovered Demko sitting on the rumpled bed dressed in his boxers and a tight white undershirt that revealed his strong, muscular arms.
Demko smiled and stepped forward to greet her, dropping a kiss on her that curled her toes. He drew back, meeting her gaze.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Yes. It is.”
He glanced behind her. She felt the change in his body as he tensed, going from relaxed to alert, his attention on the window.
“Something is happening,” he said.
Nadine turned. “What?”
“I hear activity on the street.”
The violent knocking at the front door jarred them both.
“What the hell?” said Demko, already heading into his walk-in closet.
The doorbell chimed from the other side of the house in sequence with the app on Demko’s phone. He returned wearing jeans and dragging on a navy-blue Police Athletic League T-shirt. She’d never seen him in jeans and thought he should wear nothing else from now on because his ass was spectacular.
“I’m about to arrest somebody,” he muttered, glancing at his phone, which gave him a view of whoever intruded. Molly followed her master as the two headed toward the front door. Nadine retrieved her sandals. Molly had shredded the back strap of the left one with her sharp teeth. She carried them with her as she hurried after Demko.
Out in the foyer, Demko stood with the door half opened before a crowd of people.
“There she is,” shouted a woman in a fuchsia dress. She thrust a microphone past Demko into his house. “Dr. Finch, is your mother helping you profile? Does Sarasota have a serial killer?”
Sixteen
Two more minutes of fame
Clint Demko was the picture of calm at his front door as he told the reporters to get off his lawn. Meanwhile, Nadine cowered in the dining room as they shouted questions.
“Detective Demko, how long have you and Dr. Finch been together?”
“Detective? Did you know about her mother, Arleen Howler?”
From the window, Nadine peered out between the blinds at the news vans lined up, with satellite dish antennas deployed. The news crews blocked the drive and both of their vehicles.
How will we get out of here?
Nadine was too numb to cry. Every terrible hidden part of her horrific past was now out there. Front-page news and the lead on the evening reports. Everyone around her would soon discover, if they hadn’t already, that her mother was a monster.
She’d lived this before, suffered the curious looks, suspicion and pity, interrogations by police and covert surveillance by neighbors. Nadine had had her dirty laundry aired out and she hated it.
Now, after more than a decade, and after she had gotten an education, job, home and a few friends, she found herself right back where she started, holding a bloody trash bag outside their double-wide trailer.
Just like that, she was Nadine Howler again. How long before they discovered who Detective Demko was?
Demko threw the dead bolt. A moment later, the knocking and ringing resumed.
Nadine peeked out through the blinds again. Likely, they were already broadcasting. Belatedly she realized that she must be visible, because some of the reporters hurried toward her, negotiating the narrow gap between the window and his bougainvillea bush. She heard their shouts through the glass.
“Dr. Finch, could you answer a few questions?”
“Dr. Finch, how long have you known a serial killer was preying on Sarasota’s citizens?”
“Nadine, did your mother give you any words of advice?”
“Nadine!” Demko’s voice was harsh. “Step back.”
He motioned from the hallway and she followed him and Molly to the bedroom.
Now both his cell phone and the doorbell rang. He glanced at his screen. “Shit. I have to take this.”
Demko headed into the bathroom as she retreated to the guest bathroom to clean up before heading to the kitchen, ignoring the noise from the door. Molly followed her there and looked hopeful as Nadine made coffee.
Down the hall, she heard the shower flick on and then off again in record time, followed by the buzz of an electric razor.
“You want your breakfast, darling?” she asked Molly. “I don’t know what you eat.”
Nadine changed the water in Molly’s bowl and opened the refrigerator, finding half a loaf of high-fiber bread and giving Molly a slice, then made toast.
The doorbell punctuated more pounding on the door. Molly continued to growl and give an occasional “woof.”
Demko returned, fully dressed, his hair now wet.
“Coffee?” he asked.
It was hard to concentrate with the reporters hammering like woodpeckers.
“Can you do anything about that?” she asked.
“My guys are en route. They’ll push them back to the street and make sure my car isn’t blocked. They’ll get video of us leaving, but no audio.”
Nadine buttered her toast with more care than necessary, enjoying the scraping sound of the blade on the charred outer layer. Meanwhile, Demko fixed Molly’s breakfast and two mugs of black coffee.
She offered the toast and he took it, passing her one of the mugs.
This gave her an odd sense of normalcy amid chaos. As if they were having a quiet breakfast in a space capsule as it hurdled, nose cone aflame, through Earth’s atmosphere.
“You going home or to the office?”
“Will the press be at my house?”
“I would assume so.” He lifted the mug, taking another swallow. “You can take your car, or I can get one of my guys to drive your car over to your lot later on.”
“That sounds good.” But then they’d get images of them leaving together. Was that preferable to separate cars? Who was she kidding? It made no difference.
“The story, plus the evidence from Robins, and the brass can’t deny the possibility that we have a serial killer. Maybe we can get the FBI in here.”
“I thought you said you can handle it.”
“Yeah. I said that. I said that exactly. I just got this job. So, when the chief of police, my new boss, tells me I can handle it, I handle it. But I knew this one was different. That’s why I asked for you.”
“Hmm.” She wa
ited, but he said no more. “Juliette told me they won’t let her enter the cause of death on the autopsy report until she gets the tox screening back, which can take weeks.”
“Deniability,” he said.
“Tourist season.”
They lifted their coffee mugs in a mock salute and drank in unison. The knocking stopped at last.
“Clint,” she said, trying out his first name and finding it felt odd. “About last night.”
“It was wonderful.”
“I don’t do that often.”
“Then I’m a lucky man. Lucky you didn’t shoot me, lucky you brought me to that DA and lucky you like to swim, along with other things.” His grin was delicious and made her tingle all over.
“Was it a mistake?”
“Not in my book,” he said, and kissed her on the temple. Then he refilled his coffee and hers.
They sipped in silence a moment. He glanced at her sandals, now resting on an empty stool.
“Molly?” he asked, fingering the ragged strap.
“Yup.”
He sighed and drained his mug.
“How did you hear about this job?” she asked.
His mouth went grim. “Why?”
“Seems an unlikely coincidence. My hire and yours and Juliette’s. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I do.” He snorted. “I met someone at a conference. She mentioned an opening.”
“Dr. Crean?”
Demko nodded.
“She’s done work in the prison system, interviewed and tested hundreds of serial killers. She would know your mother and possibly you.”
“Did she interview your mother?”
“I don’t know. But Crean couldn’t have hired Dr. Hartfield. She’s a county employee.”
He set aside his empty coffee and glanced at the entrance, aware of the disconcerting silence.
When he spoke again, it seemed he spoke to the door. “Crean was on my interview committee.”
“But why would she want this?”
“What about Osterlund?” said Demko.
Nadine took a minute to place the name. “The head of personnel? What about him?”
“He is responsible for countywide hiring. He makes the final decision,” he said.
“But does he? The chief of police would have the real final decision for your job, and Crean is in charge of the Criminal and Forensic Psychology staff. Pathology? I’m not sure. Is that director of operations for the county?”
“Crean serves as criminal psychologist for some of District 12. I know she covers DeSoto,” Demko said.
“But Crean doesn’t do the hiring there.”
“Neither does Osterlund.”
“Think there are more of us?” she asked.
“Maybe. You have any other new hires?”
Nadine thought back to Tina, their shy office assistant.
“Receptionist. Tina Ruz.”
“You think she has someone to visit at Lowell?”
“I don’t know. But she’s a new hire. So, maybe.”
“Let’s have a look.”
Demko used his laptop to search the database for Tina Ruz for wants and warrants. He used the known associates and then leaned in, like a hound catching the scent.
“Bingo.”
“What?” asked Nadine, leaning over Demko’s laptop to see what he had found.
“Christianna Jacinda Ruz. Known associate in federal prison,” he said, pointing.
That prickling at her neck returned. Juliette and Demko both had incarcerated parents. Now she could add Tina to that list. She took a stab.
“Mother or her father?” Not her mother, she thought. Please, not her mother.
“Her mom is a convicted felon. Yvette Jewel Ruz.”
“All four of us have mothers in prison.” She squinted at the name, which looked familiar.
Demko stopped reading from the computer screen and gave her a serious look. “We’re being played.”
“What do we do about that?”
“For now, I’d like to keep it to ourselves,” he said.
“Rethink that. The press will figure this out and when they do…” She used her hands to simulate the explosion that would follow.
“Maybe. We need to get out in front of it. But you understand, whoever did this is living inside our house and powerful enough to hire or at least influence the hiring choices of our city and possibly our county government.”
That could be the mayor, the chief of police, a city councilor. Nadine’s mind reeled with possibilities. She pushed aside her coffee, knowing that a third cup would give her a stomachache and make her as jittery as a cat locked in a dog shelter.
“I haven’t been here long enough to know who to trust,” he said. “So for now, I don’t trust anyone.”
He glanced back to the screen and Yvette Ruz’s photo. Yvette was an older, more haggard version of Nadine’s office assistant. But unlike Tina, Yvette’s eyes were cold, dead and angry.
“Why do I know her?” she asked.
“Because it was a terrible case that got as much news coverage as we will.”
His phone vibrated across the counter. The lock screen said that the caller was the chief of police.
“You going to get that?”
“I’m in the shower,” he said, and scrolled through the record for Yvette Ruz.
“She helped plan an elderly woman’s kidnapping in Fort Lauderdale, her neighbor. The widow made the mistake of telling Yvette that she didn’t know what to do with the four hundred thousand dollars left to her by her husband.”
It was coming back to Nadine, along with a rising sense of dread. “This isn’t the case where they buried an old woman?”
He nodded. “Alive.”
Nadine remembered now. Six or seven years ago, she thought, but time was funny when you weren’t serving a sentence. You lost track.
“She and a co-conspirator dug a grave before they captured her neighbor, then they beat and tortured the seventy-year-old woman to retrieve her personal information.”
“Pin numbers,” she said, recalling.
“Social Security numbers, bank account locations, everything they needed to go on a spending spree and hit up the ATMs. Then—”
“They buried her.”
It was no worse than what her mother had done. Was it? No, but it was still terrible.
She recalled Tina’s big doe eyes and her nervousness as she tried to please. All her insecurities and hesitancy took on new meaning.
This was what people would soon do to her, re-evaluating, applying the fresh information to what they already knew about her. Judging. Distancing. Looking at her like something familiar and benign turned dangerous. She had become a recalled crib discovered to cause the deaths of multiple toddlers.
And Tina made the third person in her circle who had a convicted murderer as a parent. She now considered someone else.
“What about Nathan Dun?”
“Who’s he?”
“A court officer. He asked me out.”
“Not illegal.”
“But he knows about me. He told me we had a lot in common.”
Demko began a new search.
“I did that already,” she said, pointing at his computer. “His father killed his wife and his young daughter, then drove to the bank that held his home mortgage and shot and killed six people.”
“Spree killer,” he snarled as he continued working his database. “Says here that Arthur Dun left two surviving children, Anthony and Nathan Dun.” He continued scrolling. “Anthony has a record, time served for sexual assault. Nathan pops only for a single car accident. Driver error. No charges.” He searched known associates and she sat cradling her empty coffee cup.
Molly had given up trying to extract anything else from her empty bowl and retrieved a knotted rope. She sat under Demko’s feet, half under his stool as she gnawed away.
“No known associates with a criminal record.” He sat back and pushed the laptop away. �
�I’ll have a chat with him, anyway.”
Someone had brought them all together in some sick form of a fishbowl and, lo and behold, a serial killer emerged to turn up the heat.
“What should we do?” she asked, afraid again.
“Listen, in light of what you believe is possible concerning our hiring, I’d ask you not to share the similarities between these crimes and your mother’s murders with anyone. Not yet. The media will be doing that soon enough. Right now, it gives us an advantage because the killer can’t be sure what we know.”
“All right,” she said. “Are you still going to tell the chief?”
“Yes. Because we need the Feds.”
“Who has access to my profile?” she asked.
“You and me.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it, for now. It’s my investigation.”
“Good.” But she felt uneasy. Why was that?
“I’m going to take you to the station to speak to Truman. He’s the detective handling your break-in. Don’t tell him the connection to the garbage bag. Okay?”
She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.
Seventeen
The drawing board
Crean was waiting for her when she reached work. One look told her that her boss was pissed.
“My office, Dr. Finch.”
Her supervisor stormed past reception. Nadine followed, shuffling in her torn sandal.
“I got a call from the mayor’s office this morning about my new hire and Detective Demko making the news.”
“Yes. That was unfortunate. I’d had a break-in.”
“I’m aware. A hotel would have been a better option.”
Nadine remained silent, waiting for the rest.
“Nadine, I don’t blame you for not wanting to go back to your apartment after the break-in. But you could be fired for violating our county policy. So I would highly recommend that you do not schedule any more sleepovers with Detective Demko.”
Her face flamed. This was none of Crean’s business, but good advice, nonetheless.