by Lisa Jackson
“I’m still workin’ on that, “Bentz admitted.
“Do you think it’s someone so devoted to this ‘John’ that she would do his bidding?”
“Or it could be someone who hates Samantha Leeds. Someone who’s jealous of her, either personally or professionally, or someone who thinks she was wronged by her, as if she took away an old boyfriend, say the first Mrs. Jeremy Leeds or maybe the current one who doesn’t like her husband’s ex’s getting so much attention, a coworker she’s stepped on while climbing to the top, or a rival like Trish LaBelle over at WNAB, the rival…I’m not sure.”
“Or ‘John’ could have paid someone,” Melinda thought aloud. “You think the call from Annie was recorded, right? So he could have hired a woman off the street to make the tape and say she was Annie.”
“Now you’re sounding like Montoya. With him every crime is about money.”
Jaskiel curved an eyebrow upward. “It usually is you know, Rick. Not all of us are noble idealists.”
“None of us are,” he corrected her. “Not around here.”
“No?” She laughed and seemed suddenly more feminine, less imposing. “Maybe you’re right, but it seems to me I’ve heard the hoofbeats of Rocinante echoing through the halls, and they usually stop right about here.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Montoya asked as he breezed in, looking cool as ever despite the heat.
“Never mind,” Bentz said.
Jaskiel threw Montoya a look. “Don Quixote’s steed.” “Jesus, how do you know this shit?” Montoya asked. “I read,” she replied. “And this is something you should remember, it’s part of your Spanish heritage.” “Yeah, like I care.”
Bentz explained, “And she does crossword puzzles and watches Jeopardy.”
“When I have the time. Speaking of which”—she checked her watch—“I’d better get ready for the fourth estate.” She flashed them her most-practiced smile. “Wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”
“Better you than me,” Bentz said, as she disappeared.
“You ready to rock’n’roll?” Montoya asked.
“Just about.” He handed Montoya the composite.
“This our man?”
“In theory.”
“Shit, he could be anyone.”
“I’m having the computer tech take some photos of the men in Samantha’s life and Annie Seger’s life, those with type A blood, which, unfortunately is most of them, then I’m going to have the computer compare them. It should narrow the field.”
“Let’s hope,” Montoya said without a lot of enthusiasm.
“Let’s go.” Bentz snagged the paper from Montoya’s hand, then reached for his sidearm and his jacket. He wasn’t looking forward to telling Samantha Leeds about the dead girl, but it was better she hear it from him rather than on the five o’clock news.
Priscilla McQueen Caldwell wasn’t happy to see him, not one little bit.
Ty didn’t care. He figured that as long as he was in Houston, he should check out everyone associated with Annie Seger. Many of her friends had moved away, but Prissy was still in town, living less than a half hour from the airport, and Ty was standing on her front porch while the late-afternoon sun beat against his back. “I don’t know why I should talk to you,” she told him, blocking the doorway to the interior of the small bungalow littered with toys. Over her shoulder he caught a peek of a playpen and infant swing, but no baby. Probably napping.
“I’m just trying to find out about Annie. You were her best friend. You knew that she was pregnant, and you probably knew that the baby wasn’t Ryan Zimmerman’s.”
“What does it matter now?” Prissy asked, the screen door propped on one shoulder.
“I think she was murdered.”
“There have been those old rumors flyin’ around for years, but nothin’s ever come of’ em,” Prissy said, squinting up at him. Wearing a pink shorts outfit, sandals and a necklace with a gold cross, she was a pretty, petite woman with honey-colored hair scraped back in a ponytail. “You know it’s funny, first Ryan calls out of the blue, and the next thing I know is you’re here on my doorstep talkin’ ‘bout Annie.”
“Ryan called you?”
“Sure he did. Didn’t you know? He and I were going together when Annie set her sights on him, and that was that.” The corners of her pert little mouth turned down. “That’s the way it was—whatever Annie wanted, she got.” Prissy folded her arms over her chest and inside a baby began to fuss.
“But you still remained friends.”
“Well, not right off, but eventually. Ryan got into drugs and turned away from the Lord.”
“So you gave him to Annie with your blessing.”
“I didn’t give him anything. But it turned out okay. I met Billy Ray in church and we just hit it off. Got married after I graduated.” She checked her watch. “Now, lookit, I don’t want him know in’ I talked to you. He didn’t like it much when Ryan called, and he’s got hisself a temper.”
“Why did Ryan call?”
Priscilla rolled her expressive eyes. “Well, that just about took all. He wanted me to meet him somewhere—come down to New Orleans. He and his wife broke up and he lost his job and he was lonely and wonder of wonders, he thought of me.” Her smile was cold. “Now he needs me. I told him to forget it.”
From the interior a baby started to cry.
“Uh-oh, Billy Jr. is wakin’ up. I really got to go.”
“Did Ryan leave a number?”
“Nah. I think he was rentin’ some motel by the month until he could get hisself on his feet…but I’m not sure “bout that.” The baby began to wail. “Look I gotta see to him.”
Ty grabbed her hand. “You would be doing Annie a favor if you could help me out with this,” he insisted. “Who was she involved with besides Ryan.”
“I really don’t know. It was some big, dark secret,” Prissy said. “I thought it probably was some married guy, like a friend of Dr. Faraday’s, because she was real worried about it and then she got pregnant and couldn’t tell her folks. They would’ve killed her.” Just as the words left her tongue, Priscilla seemed to realize what she’d said. “Oh. I didn’t mean they would really kill her, but you know, Estelle would have had a fit.”
The baby began to wail loudly, and Ty released Prissy’s hand. “If you ever want to talk about this, give me a call.” He slipped a card from his wallet and tried to hand it to her, but she wouldn’t take it.
“I won’t,” she insisted. “Look, Annie was my friend, okay? I liked her a lot, even though she ticked me off about Ryan. But as far as I’m concerned, she got real messed up, couldn’t face her parents or Ryan about the baby and committed suicide. I won’t call you. Ever. Billy Ray wouldn’t like it.”
She slipped inside, and Ty left his business card tucked in the frame of the screen door. There was a chance that she’d change her mind, though he thought it was mighty slim.
“But you haven’t actually spoken to Peter or seen him,” Sam’s father said.
He’d returned her call, but his voice sounded defeated and tired.
Inwardly she cringed as she cradled the receiver between her head and shoulder, then opened a can of cat food and scooped out the tuna/chicken feast for Charon, who was crying loudly and swarming around her bare feet. “No, I haven’t personally talked to him yet, Dad, but the fact that Pete sat down and had a conversation with Corky is encouraging.”
“I would love to have a word with him,” William Matheson said wistfully.
You and me both, Sam thought, but bit back her anger. “Let’s think of this as kind of a breakthrough,” Sam said, accentuating the positive. “No one that I know of has seen or heard from him in years, and he actually approached Corky in the bar.” That was stretching the truth a little. Corky hadn’t said that Peter initiated the conversation, but her dad needed encouragement. “Now, listen, if I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.” She rinsed the empty can in the sink, then tossed it into the
trash.
“I suppose I could check with Information in Atlanta. They might have his number.”
“They might.” She didn’t think so.
“But it’s probably unlisted. It was when he was living in Houston.”
Sam froze. She’d been pulling the trash from beneath the sink, but now she slowly straightened. “Wait a minute. When was he in Texas?”
“Years ago. I had that private investigator looking for him and he found him down not far from where you were living at the time.”
“Are you telling me that Pete was in Houston and you knew about it but you never told me?”
“I’m not sure it was him, it could have been another Peter Matheson. I never got through, and you…well, you were going through so much with the divorce and that Annie Seger mess.”
Which is happening again.
“I didn’t think you needed the added stress of knowing that he was in the same town and never called. Besides, as I said, I’m not even sure it was Pete. The pictures I saw of him weren’t that good, and he was always looking away or wearing a hat or sunglasses or something.”
“He was there when I was? And you didn’t tell me…Jesus, Dad, even if it wasn’t the right Peter Matheson, don’t you think you should have let me know?” She couldn’t believe her father’s duplicity. This was just so unlike him. “In all these years, whenever you and I talked you always asked about Peter and never once mentioned that he could have been in Houston.”
“What would have been the point?” her father asked, his voice bristling defensively. “Whether he was fifty miles from you or five hundred or five, what difference did it make?”
“Dad,” she said firmly, “I wasn’t even sure he was alive.”
“Neither was I. As I said, I’m not even sure it was our Pete.”
Our Pete. He hasn’t been our Pete in years. But there was no reason to argue. Sam quieted her hammering heart and finished the phone call. Her father was right. So what if Pete had been in Houston? He didn’t know Annie Seger…couldn’t have. She was just a high-school kid, and Houston was a huge metropolis that stretched for miles and was filled with hundreds of thousands of people.
But, if Pete had been in town, why hadn’t he contacted her? With all the publicity about the Annie Seger suicide and the phone calls to the station, he certainly would have known Sam was not only living there but in the middle of the controversy and tragedy of Annie’s death. Where was Peter when the press was hounding her, when the police were questioning her, when Annie’s family was accusing her of everything from making a public mockery of their young daughter’s problems to greed to malpractice?
It might not have been him, she told herself, as Charon hopped onto the kitchen table and began washing his face. But there was a chance Peter had been there, just as he’s surfaced once again, nine years later, when Annie Seger’s name had come up again.
There was just no point in thinking of what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. She was replacing the handset into the recharger when it jangled in her hands, startling her.
“Probably Dad apologizing,” she told the cat. “Now,get down!” She pushed a button on the handset and brought it to her ear. “Hello.”
“Samantha.”
“John’s” cold voice caused her blood to congeal.
Stay calm. Find out more about him. “Yes,” she said, and glanced through the kitchen window. Across the street Edie Killingsworth was digging in her yard and Hannibal was romping through the grass, as if nothing evil, nothing sinister were happening. “Why are you calling me at home?”
“There’s something you should know.” Oh, God. “What’s that, John?” she asked as she saw a police cruiser roll into her drive. If she could just keep the stalker on the line.
“I just want you to know that I kept my promise.”
“Your promise?” she said and her heart squeezed in fear. The threat. He kept his threat. “You mean the cake. I got it.”
“No, there’s something else.”
“What?” she asked, dread filling her heart.
“I made a sacrifice. For you.”
“A sacrifice. What sacrifice?”
Click.
The phone went dead.
“What sacrifice?” she screamed again, fear shooting through her. “What the hell are you talking about, you bastard?”
But he was gone.
“Damn!” She slammed the receiver into its cradle. Through the window she watched Detective Bentz and his partner Montoya climb out of their cruiser. Their faces were set and hard as they walked toward the front door. She flew into the foyer, threw the bolt, and stared at the two men as they climbed onto her porch.
“What’s happened?” she demanded, looking from one sober face to the other.
“I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news,” Bentz said, and she could barely hear him over the hammering of her heart. “It’s about one of your clients, a girl by the name of Leanne Jaquillard.”
“No,” she whispered, her knees starting to fail her, her lungs squeezing tight. She propped herself against the doorframe, and the noises she heard, Bentz’s voice, Hannibal’s yapping and a mockingbird singing seemed far away, from a distant place, hardly audible over the buzz of denial echoing through her brain.
“She’s dead,” Bentz said. “Murdered last night.”
“No!” she said, destroyed inside. “Not Leanne. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.” Tears flooded her eyes and her fists clenched in impotence.
“We think she was killed by the same man who’s killed two other women, the man who phones you at the station and calls himself John. Ms. Leeds? Samantha…are you all right.”
“No,” she forced out again. “He just called. That murdering son of a bitch just called and told me he’d made a sacrifice, that it was my fault for not atoning…oh, God, no, no, no!” she said, fighting the urge to break down altogether, sobs building within.
“There’s more,” Bentz said kindly, touching her arm, gently guiding her back into the cool foyer.
“No…no…” Leanne had tried to contact her, had even called. “It can’t be. She called here, she was looking for me…I can’t believe, I mean, there must be some mistake.”
“No mistake,” Bentz said, as Montoya closed the door behind him, shutting out the blistering sun and sultry heat.
“You said there was more,” Sam said, wrapping her arms around her middle.
“Yes. She was pregnant.”
Just like Annie. “Oh, God, no…not again…” Bentz drew in a deep breath as Sam sank onto the bottom step of the stairs. “She was wearing a red teddy when she was murdered. You said you were missing one, that it could have been taken, so I’d like you to come down to the station and see if it’s the same.”
Sam dropped her head in her hands and let the tears drizzle down her cheeks. Leanne was dead. And she hadn’t been able to reach her, hadn’t been able to help. “John” had murdered the girl, as well as others.
Bentz sat on the step next to her. “Are you all right? I know this is a shock, but I’m sure your life is in danger, and I wanted to warn you. Samantha, do you understand, this man is dangerous. He’s killed three women, possibly more, and we think that you might be his ultimate target.
” At that moment the phone began to ring.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Answer it,” Bentz said, and Sam forced herself to her feet. The policemen followed her into the kitchen as she picked up the receiver.
“Hello?
“Sam?”
“Ty.” She nearly dissolved into a puddle on the floor and sank against the kitchen counter.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Sam?”
“It’s Leanne…one of the girls I work with. He killed her, Ty, and he called me and told me he’d made a sacrifice and the police are here…and I have to go down to the station and…” She took a deep breath, tried to pull herself together.
“Stay put,” Ty said. “I’m still in Houston, but I’m on
my way to the airport. I’ll be back in a few hours. The police are there? Stay with them, don’t go out. Jesus Christ, I should never have left. He killed the girl?”
“And some others, I…I haven’t talked to the detectives yet, they just got here,” she said, regaining a modicum of her equilibrium. “But Leanne…oh, God…and she was pregnant…just like Annie.”
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and then swore again. “Hang on, Sam, I’m comin’ home. Just hang on.”
“I will,” she said before hanging up and turning to find both police officers looking uncomfortable and out of place in her kitchen. “Now…could you please…just tell me what’s going on?” She swiped the tears from her eyes, but still felt numb inside. Leanne…oh, God, how could he have killed Leanne?
They sat around the small kitchen table and Bentz explained his theory that John was a serial killer, that somehow he was linked to Annie Seger, that Sam was his ultimate target. “We’re not here to scare you, just tell you what’s going on. I’ll talk to the Cambrai police about extra patrols, we’ll have someone watch the house and the station and we’ll put tracers on all the phones, here and at the office.” Guilt crossed his dark eyes. “We should have done it earlier, but we hadn’t connected him to the murders. We have two eyewitnesses, one a hotel clerk, the other a girl we think he tried to assault who got away. They came up with a description.” He reached into his pocket, unfolded a piece of paper, and slid it across the table. “Do you know this man?”
Staring at the sketch, Sam felt cold as death. The drawing was clear, but the features weren’t defined. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to marks on the drawing of the suspect’s left cheek. “A scar?”
“Scratch marks. The potential victim who got away clawed at him.”
“Good,” Sam said as she stared at the composite. “I—I don’t think I know this man,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “This guy could be anyone.”
“With Type A positive blood. We’re double-checking.” Charon, eyeing the detectives warily, had hopped onto Sam’s lap and she petted him absently as they talked. They questioned her about phone calls, had she seen anyone lurking around? Had she been approached? Was her alarm system working? Did it scare intruders off, or was it connected with a service? All the while the sketch was on the table, staring at her through dark glasses. He seemed familiar and yet not.