by Mia Sheridan
But wouldn’t she have told her friends? They’d all been interviewed and none had mentioned a boyfriend or a hookup of any kind during the months surrounding her abduction. Was it because they didn’t know, or hadn’t considered it important like Aria Glazer’s roommate? He’d need to interview them again, especially now that circumstances had changed. She wasn’t just missing, she was dead. Murdered in a heinous fashion.
His eyes again moved to the description of the sex from February 8, just a short time before she’d disappeared after leaving a campus bar earlier than her friends because she had an exam the next morning. She’d never made it back to her dorm. Never been seen again, until her body had turned up in that abandoned basement.
Sex on PMs desk, so hot. W. almost caught us. Oops.
Desk. Having a desk was not an oddity, especially on a college campus. Every student had a desk in their dorm or apartment. But . . . Miriam’s Wednesday night sex partner was obviously a secret—she hadn’t told her parents or her friends. And someone had almost caught them. Caught. W. Wife? The man’s wife had almost caught them? What if the affair was not with one of the students in the English Lit class, but with the teacher? PM. The Professor. Professor who?
That morning, Zach had requested class schedules from the university for both Miriam and Aria. He checked his email, but still hadn’t received anything. He’d need to call again and put a fire under their asses. How hard could it be to pull up an old class schedule? But in the meantime . . . Zach pulled up the Internet, looking up the English Literature professors at the University of Cincinnati. He scrolled, spotting the Wednesday night class that Miriam must have taken the semester before. It was still held during the same times, five to seven.
Taught by Professor Vaughn Merrick. PM. Professor Merrick?
Zach’s heart thumped, that sixth sense that he was onto something zinging through him.
He looked up her roommate’s number and dialed it quickly, his leg tapping with impatience as he listened to it ring.
“Hello?”
“Shannon Edwards?”
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Copeland with the Cincinnati Police Department.”
There was a pause. “About Miriam?”
“Yes.”
“It’s awful.” He heard a catch in her voice. “It doesn’t feel real,” she whispered as if it wasn’t, but if she talked too loudly, it might be.
“I know. I understand. I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Edwards.”
“Thank you, Detective. I answered lots of questions about Miriam when she disappeared. Is there something else? I’m heading to class and—”
“I know, and I may need to set up a time to talk again, but for now, I just have a couple of quick questions if you can spare three minutes.”
“Yes, okay.” He heard hurried footsteps and pictured her walking quickly across campus, her cell phone pressed to her ear.
“We’ve found evidence that Miriam may have had a regular Wednesday night hookup with someone. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”
“A hookup? No. Miriam wasn’t seeing anyone regularly from what I knew. And Miriam wouldn’t have lied about that. We talked about everything.”
“Would she have kept this from you if it was a professor?”
“A professor?” The footsteps stopped.
“Are you familiar with Professor Vaughn Merrick?”
Shannon was quiet for a moment and then she laughed softly. “Yeah, the whole female student body is. He’s hot. But . . . I think he’s married.”
“Could that be why Miriam didn’t mention it?”
“I mean . . . I guess. I . . . I don’t know. There are rumors . . .”
“What kind of rumors?”
“You know, about his office hours, how if you flirt with him, you might get lucky on top of his desk. I thought . . . I thought it was just talk, you know? Because he’s hot. Just . . . girls talking.”
You might get lucky on top of his desk.
Sex on PMs desk, so hot.
“Thank you, Shannon. I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.”
After he’d hung up, Zach sat back in his chair for a second before picking up the phone again and calling Aria Glazer’s roommate.
She picked up on the second ring. “Tessa? This is Detective Copeland, we talked—”
“I remember you, Detective.” Her voice was slightly breathy.
“I have a quick question about the classes Aria dropped before she went missing.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Did she take classes on Wednesday nights?”
“Yeah, she did. Mondays and Wednesdays.”
“Do you happen to remember the classes she was taking?”
Tessa sighed. “Two science classes, I know that. Aria wanted to be a nurse someday and they were part of the requirement.”
Science, not English Lit. Still, she had been on campus the same nights as Miriam Bellanger, even if they hadn’t been there during the same semester. One may have been having an affair with her English Lit professor, the other had a secret relationship with someone who might have gotten her pregnant.
Zach struggled to connect all the puzzle pieces swirling in his mind. There were too many similarities forming between the two most recent victims for it to be a coincidence. Did any of this have anything to do with Josie’s case?
Zach did another quick search on Vaughn Merrick, pulling up his profile on the college website. He’d worked at the University of Cincinnati for almost twenty years. He’d taught there when Josie attended classes.
Holy hell.
He needed to go talk to Professor Vaughn Merrick right away.
And he needed to talk to Josie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Zach knocked on the door of the beautifully refurbished older home in Hyde Park where Professor Merrick lived with his family. He waited, but the house was silent from inside and when Zach leaned forward, cupping his hands around his eyes so he could see into the dim foyer beyond, it appeared to be completely empty. Confused, he stepped back.
“They don’t live there anymore,” he heard called from behind. Zach turned, noticing the blonde woman in the driveway next door handing a grocery bag to a pretty, young black woman who looked to be in her late teens or very early twenties. The young woman disappeared into the house, her arms laden with groceries as the older woman, also holding a couple of bags, hit a button on her key fob and the rear door of her SUV began to close.
“Do you know how long ago they moved?” Zach asked, descending the steps of what had apparently previously been the Merrick house and walking toward the neighbor.
She balanced one of the bags on her hip. “They moved a few weeks ago.”
“Did you know them well?”
She gave him a semi-suspicious look, obviously wondering why he was asking questions. He removed his badge. “I’m with the Cincinnati Police Department. I just have a few questions for Professor Merrick.”
“About those missing students?”
“In relation to that, yes. I’m hoping he can shed some light on a few questions that have come up.”
“Awful case. I hope Vaughn can help. Anyway, to your question, yes, I knew them really well. We’d lived next to each other for almost two decades. Their girls used to play with mine.” The woman nodded up to her house where the young woman was waiting on the porch.
“Do you need me to grab those, Mom?” she called.
“I’m good.” She smiled up at her daughter. “If you’ll start unpacking, I’ll be up in a minute to help.”
“Okay,” her daughter said, shooting Zach a smile and disappearing into the house.
“A shame,” the woman said, shaking her head, the look on her face suddenly serious.
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“Their divorce. I knew they’d had ups and downs, but I thought they were doing really well these last couple of years.” She shifted the bag in her arms. “Their
older daughter got engaged, the younger one attends college out of state. They were out on the porch some nights having cocktails. I thought they were in a good season of life, you know?” She sighed. “I guess you never can tell what’s going on inside someone’s home unless you’re in it. Do you have children, Detective?”
Zach was taken aback for a second by the seeming change in topic. “Uh, no. Not married.”
The woman smiled warmly. “Well, once you do, you’ll see that family life is full of all sorts of complications, unexpected challenges.” She frowned again. “You have to work to grow together, not apart.” She shot what looked like a disappointed look at what had once been the Merrick family home and was now an abandoned shell, not unlike their broken family, or so it sounded like.
“Mom, are you coming?” her daughter yelled from her porch again.
The older woman waved at her, looking back to Zach and laughing softly as she rolled her eyes. “I’m being summoned. I have their forwarding information, so let me run inside and get it for you.”
“That’d be great, thank you.” He watched as the woman jogged up her front steps, saying something that made her daughter laugh as she thrust the bags at her jokingly. Zach smiled. He liked this neighbor of the Merricks. Maybe it was her warm smile, or maybe he identified with what little he’d seen of this family. He’d been adopted too, knew what it was like to be the odd man out among a gaggle of blondes and redheads. His parents and siblings, who he loved dearly, had never made him feel that way, but he’d been a kid like any other kid. He’d struggled through that uncertain time when differences feel like strikes against you rather than assets.
Even standing there in the driveway, he could feel the affection these people had for each other, and it reminded him of his own family. A wave of gratitude filtered through him when he pictured Josie’s mother’s house. He didn’t know a lot about his birth mother’s situation, other than she was young and impoverished. He didn’t know if he’d have grown up in a circumstance like Josie’s, but he knew for sure he’d have had less opportunity. He was grateful to everyone involved in gifting him with his life, including the woman who’d birthed him and made the loving choice to give him up.
The blonde woman jogged back down the steps, holding a piece of paper out to him. “I’m Dawn Parsons, by the way.” She smiled. “I jotted my number down on there as well if you happen to need anything else.” She shrugged.
“I appreciate that very much. Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he gave Dawn a wave as he turned toward his car, connecting the call.
“Copeland.”
Zach listened, a pit in his stomach gaping wide as he gripped the door handle, pulling it open harshly. “I’ll be there in ten.”
As he pulled away from the curb, his head swam. Holy Christ. What the fuck did this mean?
**********
“Who found the body?”
“Neighbor,” the cop who’d first arrived on scene said. “Said she comes over to sit on the porch and have a smoke some nights with the deceased. There was no answer tonight, but when she tried the door, it was unlocked. She came in, found the old lady splayed out in the living room.”
So she’d been expecting someone. Had she unknowingly called come on in to a sadistic killer when he’d knocked on her door? He nodded toward the house where the dead, mutilated body that had been described to him still lay prone on the floor. Josie’s mother.
“Thanks,” Zach said, seeing the first criminalist arriving and donning gloves he’d had in his car. “Will you tell the neighbor to stay put? I’m going to need to interview her before I leave.”
“Will do.”
Zach waited for the criminalist, a guy named Barry, who he’d worked with a time or two, and they both put booties over their shoes before entering the house together. The house smelled the same as it had that morning, only now there was the additional scent of burned flesh. Other than the body on the floor, things looked about the same as they had earlier. No signs of struggle. Nothing out of place other than a TV remote on the floor, batteries next to it as though it’d been dropped. He came up next to the body as Barry began opening his kit. “Jesus,” he murmured.
“Not a pretty sight,” Barry agreed. He picked up his camera and began taking photographs of the body from different angles.
The woman who Zach had met that morning was staring blindly up at the ceiling, tongue lolling, eyes bugged out, tiny circular burns over every area of her face. It appeared that someone had used a cigarette to burn her flesh. “Pre- or postmortem?” Zach asked, pointing at her scarred face.
Barry lowered the camera, considering the woman. “See the blood on that one by her eye? And the pus on a few of the burns on her cheeks? Indicates she was alive when burned.”
Christ.
Zach hadn’t entertained nice thoughts about this woman, but no one deserved to die this way.
“She must have screamed,” he murmured.
Barry pointed to what looked like a kitchen towel partially balled up on the floor next to the body. “Might have been used as a gag. I’ll have it tested.”
Zach nodded, hardly wanting to picture Diana Stratton’s last moments. But it was his job. If he was going to do it well, he had no choice. The challenge was to move the images aside when he closed his eyes to sleep at night.
He glanced around. There was a full ashtray on the coffee table that he knew would be tested to determine if any of the cigarette butts had prints from someone other than Diana Stratton.
For some reason, Detective Pickering’s words about the profile of the killer came back to him: Know this, detectives—you will likely only find what he wants you to find.
Barry used his gloved hand to open Diana Stratton’s bathrobe. “It’s not just her face that’s burned either.” He bent, shooting the camera between her legs. “Same burns on her genitals.”
Zach felt ill. “Signs of sexual assault?”
Barry tilted his head, looking more closely. “It’s hard to tell with the burn trauma. Cathlyn will have to determine that.”
“Cause of death?”
Barry lowered the camera. “Wouldn’t have been the burns, as excruciating as those would have been.” He stepped forward, squatting next to her head, using a gloved finger to push her lower eyelid down. “Petechial hemorrhages and lots of them.” He then moved the high neck of her robe, exposing her throat. “There you go. Strangulation.” Zach peered at the angry red impressions. He knew Cathlyn would look at the bones in the neck and other factors before he’d have a definitive cause of death, but it sure the hell looked like Josie’s mother had been strangled.
Strangled.
Not starved. Not shackled.
“Can you check her right thigh?”
Barry pushed her robe aside to expose the top of her right thigh, Zach’s stomach dropping. Casus belli. The words were crusted with dried blood, an enraged declaration of guilt carved into the thin, wrinkled skin.
What the fuck did this mean?
Footsteps sounded behind him and he turned to see more criminalists entering the room. They’d be here for a while, going through this house that Josie had cleaned just that morning. The whole scene felt surreal in the aftermath of the time he’d spent sitting in the chair by the window as he’d listened to the old woman say cruel and insensitive things to her daughter.
He needed to interview the neighbor next door.
And then he needed to go tell Josie her mother was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The pounding above her ceased and Josie went outside, putting her hands on her hips as she squinted up at Jimmy who was on her roof with a now-empty box of shingles.
He smiled down at her and then maneuvered his large body around, descending the ladder carefully, tool belt clanking gently with his movement. He hopped off the bottom rung and wiped his hands. “All done. You had some rotting wood that needed to be replaced.” He nodded his head t
o the box of shingles. “I added some new shingles and now you’re back in business. You can put those pots and pans away.” He turned toward the ladder and began lowering it, lifting it away from the house.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, gratitude making her chest feel tight. She didn’t need a new roof. This man had fixed it with only minimal materials and several hours of his labor. “What do I owe you?”
“Not a dime,” he said, holding the ladder beside him as he began walking toward her back shed. “I would have been here anyway. I was glad to keep busy.”
She hurried to catch up. “All right, but I insist on paying you for the shingles and the wood.”
He entered the shed, depositing the ladder on the hooks it had originally been hanging on. “Nah, I had that stuff lying around. Glad to get it off my hands.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “I thought you told me you were fixing up a boat.”
“I am.”
“Boats don’t have shingled roofs, Jimmy.”
He grinned. “See, totally useless to me.”
He turned and started walking toward the house. Josie huffed out a breath. She knew he was lying. He’d bought those shingles—the exact same ones that were already on the roof—before he’d gotten there and she knew it. Sunshine spread through her as she watched Jimmy amble toward her porch. He turned toward where she’d come to a stop. “Get inside now. I’m tasked with keeping you safe.”
Josie laughed as she caught up to the big frog of a man with the heart of a prince.
But just as Jimmy was opening the door, they heard a car approaching and turned to watch Zach pull into her driveway. Josie’s heart did a little leap in her chest as he got out, watching as he moved with that masculine grace of his toward where they stood.