It was difficult to say what Vine was proudest of, his muscles or the gaudy, multicolored tattoo of a hummingbird on his left forearm. Besides his eyes, the tattoo was the only other thing that moved. He was continually flexing his forearm.
Nerves? Sam wondered.
Was this the media’s Alphabet Killer, or just some self-centered narcissist in love with his own reflection? Sam caught the man studying himself in the room’s one-way mirror.
What had Celia seen in him? Or had she just used Vine, the way she had used everyone else who crossed her path? He had a feeling it was most likely the latter.
Sam sat in the chair opposite his suspect, scrutinizing Vine in silence. He was in here alone with a possible serial killer despite the fact that Zoe had asked to be included in the room when he questioned Celia’s ex-boyfriend.
Under the circumstances, the best he could do was to allow her to view the interview, as this procedure was whimsically referred to, through the one-way window. She was a civilian and unless she was Vine’s lawyer, she couldn’t be in the room when he was conducting the interview.
After the lengthy pause, Sam began with an observation based on the notes written in Vine’s file—after some creative digging, one had turned up. Vine’s name had been misspelled.
“You seem to live well,” Sam observed.
Johnny Vine grinned, turning his tanned, handsome face into something just short of bordering on wicked. “I do okay.”
Sam tapped the file on the table between them. “Yet it says here you have no steady source of income. What is it exactly that you do, Mr. Vine?” Sam asked.
The deep blue eyes met his unflinchingly. “I’m an entrepreneur.”
It never ceased to amaze Sam how criminals managed to dress up what they actually did in an effort to make it sound legitimate.
“You mean you’re a drug dealer,” Sam corrected.
“I mean I’m an entrepreneur,” Vine repeated, the smug smile on his lips never wavering.
“It says in here,” Sam indicated the file with his eyes, “that you were busted and charged with dealing in narcotics.”
Johnny leaned back in his chair, tilting on two of the four legs. “It should also say there that the charges were dropped. Besides, that’s all ancient history,” he told Sam, dismissing the allegations with a condescending wave of his hand. And then his eyes narrowed. “What’s this really about?”
Sam didn’t bother to preface his statement. He wanted to see Vine’s reaction—how good an actor was this man? “Celia Robison was murdered last weekend.”
Vine responded as if he’d just been told a news item about someone he hardly knew rather than someone he would have supposedly dragged away in a jealous rage from her own wedding.
“Yeah. I heard about that. Too bad.”
Sam felt his temper surge. For two cents, he would have wrung the man’s neck and felt as if he’d done society a service.
But he liked his job and doing something like that would definitely cost him his badge. He was supposed to protect and serve, not mete out justice, no matter how well-deserved he might think it was.
So he reined in his temper and continued the questioning in a deceptively calm voice. “Rumor has it that you did it.”
Vine looked completely unfazed by the accusation. “You and I both know rumors are a dime a dozen, Detective. Besides, she was killed— When did you say it was?” he asked, cocking his head as if it would make him hear the answer more clearly.
“I didn’t,” Sam said pointedly, then answered the man’s implied question. “She was killed Saturday morning, between ten and ten fifteen.”
Vine made a show of taking in the information. “Narrow window,” he commented.
Sam’s eyes narrowed as he struggled to curb his loathing. “Too narrow for you to crawl out of.”
That was when Vine laughed. “Sorry to disappoint you, man, but I’ve got an alibi. I was in Vegas last weekend, trying to work up a little business. And you know Vegas. Cameras everywhere. I’m sure if you go through enough footage, you’ll find me on it, every minute of that narrow window.” He was fairly gloating as he gave the information.
“Which casino?” Sam demanded, his voice low, dangerous. Vine’s laugh was getting under his skin in the worst way.
Vine pretended to think over the question. “All of them,” he responded flippantly. “Lady Luck doesn’t stay put, you know,” he added glibly. “Can I go now?” Vine wanted to know. “Seeing as how you’ve got nothing to hold me on.”
“You can go,” Sam growled the response. “Just don’t leave town.”
“I don’t plan to, at least not for a while.” His reply was fraught with insolence. “By the way, tell Celia’s little sister I said hi,” he told Sam, nodding toward the mirrored wall. “I figure she’s standing back there, seeing as how she’s probably the one who told you about me.”
Sam’s response was immediate. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think I can do detective work on my own?” he asked Vine with more than a trace of cynicism.
Vine didn’t answer yes or no. Instead, he said, “I think you utilize people, same as me, Detective.”
With a dismissive nod, Vine rose to his feet. The jeans that clung to his body had seen better days, but his hand-tooled boots were brand new and buffed to a high gloss.
He looked like a faux cowboy in search of a song, Sam thought. To each his own.
One hand on the doorknob, Vine paused to say, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Detective, but I hope not to see you again.”
“We’ll see how this plays out,” Sam responded. “I can have someone walk you out,” he offered.
The path from here to the front exit was not straightforward. The last thing he wanted was to have Vine wandering around in the halls.
“Don’t bother. I know my way around here,” Vine assured him.
Which, Sam thought, contradicted the notion that the man had last been charged a long time ago. Someone had covered for Vine, probably in exchange for some free drugs, Sam surmised.
“He’s got an alibi?” Zoe came into the room the moment Vine had walked out and crossed the hall. Her distress was right there on her face for everyone to see.
“He says he has an alibi,” Sam stressed, then pointed out, “Big difference.”
Sam was obviously not going to take Vine’s word for it, she thought. That left only one path to take as far as she could see.
“Does that mean you’re going to send someone to the casinos in Las Vegas to review the videos on their security cameras?” It seemed like a huge project from where she was standing.
He’d thought of that and dismissed it. That approach was far too labor-intensive.
“No, I’m going to have Trevor pull some strings and have Vine’s photograph circulated around the casinos to see if anyone remembers seeing him. If any of the employees at a specific casino say yes, then I’m going to have Trevor requisition the videos—or have them run at the casino using a facial recognition program.”
She grinned at him. Maybe things were coming together after all. “It’s good to know people.”
“When they’re the ‘right’ people,” he corrected pointedly.
Taking out his cell phone, Sam lost no time in getting in contact with his brother.
Trevor picked up after the third ring.
“I need a little interdepartmental cooperation,” Sam told the oldest of his siblings.
“What’s up?” It was obvious Sam had gotten his attention.
Sam explained the problem to him and succinctly stated what he needed done. He didn’t have the kind of authority which allowed him to cross state lines with the investigation. Of course, he could ask for cooperation, but that was such a subjective thing that Sam felt it best to hand this part of the inve
stigation into the murder over to his brother. This was, after all, considered part of a serial killing spree and as such, belonged in the hands of the FBI.
Trevor listened quietly to the narrative, then said, “Send me this suspect’s picture and I’ll have someone here get started with the search.”
“Thanks,” Sam said, unable to elaborate his feelings any further than that.
“Hey, what are siblings for?” Trevor responded just before he terminated the connection.
For a while there, after Trevor had turned eighteen, there’d been some resentment among the others that the oldest of their family didn’t attempt to get custody of the rest of them, thereby springing them out of the hell that had made up their county’s foster care system.
But looking back now, Sam could see what Trevor’s dilemma had been. One eighteen-year-old, without any real visible means of support, suing for custody of six other kids. Trevor would have been laughed right out of the courthouse.
But at the time all he and the others knew was that they had been abandoned—again—this time by their own sibling. It had been a very difficult thing to come to terms with.
“Trevor’s on it,” Sam told Zoe as he put away his cell phone.
“You don’t think Johnny’s the Alphabet Killer, do you?” Zoe guessed. Although she didn’t want to, she was harboring the same sort of doubts she saw in Sam’s eyes.
Sam shook his head as he walked out of the interrogation area with Zoe and back to where his desk was located.
“No, I don’t. These women were handpicked because of their looks and their names. In all likelihood, they were probably stalked by the killer. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find any connection between them or between each of them and Johnny. But his connection to your sister,” he concluded, “is obvious.”
“What about the alibi?” she wanted to know, hoping that fell apart. If it did, it would be that much easier to nail Vine.
“Right now, it’s just a lot of talk. He probably thought we don’t have the manpower to disprove his story and until we do, for all intents and purposes, we have to view it as true.”
“But you do have the manpower,” she said excitedly. “You have Trevor.”
“Fortunately for us,” Sam acknowledged with a nod of his head. Reaching his desk, he looked down at the stack of papers that looked in imminent danger of falling over and scattering. “Look, I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on that has nothing to do with your sister’s murder or the serial killer. Why don’t you go home and see about catching up on some of your own things?” he suggested. “And I’ll get back to you.”
She looked at Sam doubtfully, thinking he was just trying to brush her off. She supposed she couldn’t really blame him. After all, she represented a momentary lapse in his judgment, a quick fling at best, but now it was time for him to get back to the rest of his life and he was politely sending her back to hers.
Zoe reminded herself that she’d gotten more than she had hoped for. And, okay, she’d hoped it could go on until this murder was wrapped up, but not everything turned out the way a person might hope it would, she reminded herself.
So, silently vowing to put up a good front and not suddenly turn into a clingy woman that would make Sam regret the time they’d had together, she nodded, agreeing with his suggestion.
“Okay, sure,” she replied, willing herself to sound upbeat even if it was the last thing she felt. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“Zoe,” he called after her as she started to walk toward the hall.
Part of her wanted to keep on walking, to at least cling to that dignity and exit, head held high. But that might seem petulant.
And besides, she could no more pretend to ignore his voice than she could turn into the swan she longed to be, so she stopped and looked at him over her shoulder, waiting for him to say something more.
“Yes?”
“I will get back to you,” he repeated, this time with an assurance in his voice that there was no way she could miss.
Zoe believed him.
She smiled then and said, “Okay.”
And this time, as she turned and walked away from the office, she didn’t feel as if she was walking away from the best moment of her life and back into the sidelines again.
Though he lowered his head as if he was getting back to the work he had mentioned, Sam watched as Zoe left the room. The set of her shoulders told him that she’d believed him.
Sam smiled to himself.
He knew he shouldn’t have said anything, that he should have just let her keep walking, in effect out of his life. But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it, to let go the way he knew he should because it was best for her. She was too good to be mixed up with the likes of him. Someone like Zoe deserved a man who wasn’t haunted by his own set of demons, who actually believed in things like love and happiness.
If he was truly a decent man, he reasoned, he would have let her go.
But while he was striving to do his best to achieve that status, to actually be a decent man, Sam found that he needed something to give light to the darkness in his life.
And Zoe was that light.
He wasn’t strong enough to let her go. At least, not yet.
The best he could hope for, for her sake, was that she woke up on her own.
In the meantime, he told himself, if he didn’t get to this stack of paperwork that just seemed to be multiplying on its own at an alarming rate as it sat there on his desk, he was never going to be able to get out of the police station before the next New Year’s Day.
With a sigh, he got started, daring himself to see just how long he would last at this.
* * *
Zoe drove to her house humming.
She knew very well that she shouldn’t be getting her hopes up, but she couldn’t help herself. Sam had told her he’d get back to her. There was no reason for him to say that if he hadn’t meant it, so what that told her was, if nothing else, this wonderful interlude in her life—she wasn’t foolish enough to think it was something more than that—was going to go on for at least a little while longer.
With any luck, she suddenly thought, Sam might even stop by tonight.
The very thought caused an excitement to take hold of her.
She needed to swing by the market, she thought. In case Sam did stop by her place, she wanted to have something special prepared for him and there was almost nothing in her refrigerator. She hadn’t felt like eating since the murder.
She had no idea what Sam’s preferences were when it came to food, only that, like most Texans, he liked meat. Using that as a basis, she figured beef stew with a slew of vegetables was a safe bet. So that was the first thing she bought, along with a six-pack of beer. If Sam didn’t come by tonight, the beer would keep indefinitely and the stew could last for several days before it needed to be eaten or thrown away.
Zoe put her plan in motion.
She made her purchases, along with a few extra things, and was on her way home within an hour. She was fairly pleased with herself and looking forward to cooking, something she always looked forward to. Cooking, creating something from scratch, relaxed her.
Feeling extra hopeful and energized, she pulled up into her driveway.
She had a penchant for trying to unload her car in one full swoop and today was no different. So, with her arms filled with grocery bags, she made her way to her front door.
Creatively balancing the bags, she unlocked her door, went inside and then pushed the door closed using her back.
Home, she thought with a smile.
It was exactly one second before she actually focused on her surroundings, and one and a half seconds before she saw that her house had been ransacked.
Just like Celia’s had.
Chap
ter 16
Like a woman caught up in a nightmare, grocery bags still pressed against her chest like protective shields, Zoe walked into the center of the living room. She looked around her in utter disbelief.
Only a few hours had passed since she’d been here.
How could all this have happened so fast?
Everything in sight had been upended and either torn apart or thrown aside. Whoever had turned Celia’s condo upside down looking for something had taken their search here.
Judging by the absolute blitzkrieg appearances, since everything looked as if it had been ransacked, whatever they were looking for, they hadn’t found it.
But what was “it”?
What could they possibly think she had here in her house? Did they think Celia had hidden something here to keep it out of their hands?
Zoe couldn’t begin to sort any of this out. The first step to recreating order and getting to the bottom of all this was to call Sam. Sam might be able to tell her something if she pressed him about it.
She knew that as a rule, Sam didn’t volunteer things readily, but this wasn’t some casual exchange she wanted to have with him, wheedling information out of him to satisfy some sort of curious bent she had. This was serious.
Very serious, she thought, looking around again.
It was then that Zoe realized she was still holding on to the bags of groceries she’d brought into the house, holding on to them as if they could somehow provide her with a buffer against whatever it was that was going on here. She needed to put them down somewhere, out of the way.
When she turned to put the grocery bags down on the sofa, that was when she suddenly became aware of it.
Aware of the feel of cold metal pressed against her temple.
Aware of the low, growling voice that angrily demanded, “Where is it? Where’s the key?”
Doing her damnedest not to tremble, she took a step back to find herself looking down the muzzle of a midsize handgun.
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