“The bodies weren’t moved—Garcia was, but not far, and he was the smallest of the three victims. If I’m right, and the victim willingly got out of the car and was hit from behind—suggesting they didn’t know their killer. Most physically fit women can use a hammer, and a mallet or sledgehammer like Ash is researching would provide far more force and damage to the body. I’m not saying the killer is a woman, but until we know more we can’t rule it out.”
“And the beating was a punishment? Why not just shoot him in the head and be done? Why not shoot him in his car and leave him? He’s still dead.”
“That’s a really good question,” Lucy said, “and it’s bothered me from when I started looking at this case after the second murder. Cause of death on the first two victims was the gunshot to the head, not the beating, though it was severe. It looks like the beating was a message. Like you said, punishment of some sort. But still controlled, because there has been no evidence that the killer used his fists or feet on the victim. Just the hammer, in a controlled manner, on all three victims.” Though she would definitely want to talk to the medical examiner about any inconsistencies, no matter how small. “The one thing that really doesn’t make any sense is why the duct tape? Why take the time to put it on then remove it minutes later?”
“To stop the man from screaming? While Standish was in a remote area, James was not—the golf course parking lot he was in was right across from a shopping center with a movie theater.”
“Makes sense, at least for James.”
“My big question, punishment for what?” Jerry mused. “Seems if we figure that out, we’ll find the killer.”
“Which brings me back to my theory. These victims were specifically targeted. They connect—maybe not to each other, but to the killer. A slight, a theft, an old grievance—and now that the killer has gotten away with three murders, he—or she—will be emboldened and want to try for four. And my guess? Sooner rather than later.”
Jerry headed back to the conference room, and Lucy followed. “Well, Agent Kincaid,” he said, “you make a compelling argument, and you sure know how to put on a show.”
She wasn’t positive he was giving a compliment, so she simply shut the door and waited.
“I can certainly buy into your theory,” he said, “but I don’t think we can make any assumptions at this point. There are too many unknowns.”
“That’s why we need to sit down with the first two wives again and not only go over what happened in the days and weeks leading up to the murders, but dig deeper. Look at any lawsuits these men may have been party to—or their families. Small claims on up. Accidents. Accusations. Anything is fair game.”
Jerry sat down and looked at her time line on the whiteboard. “Married men under forty living in San Antonio,” he mumbled. “That’s a mighty big group.”
“Looking at the Standish murder—it’s hard to picture that it was the first time for the killer.”
“You think there’s another victim we haven’t found?”
“Not with this MO. Something like this would have popped in one of the databases, it’s too specific to miss. Though maybe you can tag someone to look for similar, not identical, crimes in Texas and surrounding states.”
He smiled. “I already have someone working on it.”
Lucy wasn’t surprised. “Good, because less than five minutes to beat a man half to death then shoot him in the face, then having the wherewithal to remove the duct tape and make sure you have all your weapons—is bold. Five minutes, then the killer leaves. A first-timer? Possible. But not likely.”
“I agree with you there. To look a man in the eye and shoot him in the face? Yep, the killer had a purpose. Damn cold-blooded.”
“Intentional. Planned. Cold and bold.” He looked at her oddly, but Lucy ignored it and continued. “I read the ballistics report—it was clean.”
“Yep. The gun hasn’t been used in a crime. A thirty-eight, could be revolver or semi-auto. If it was a semi-auto, the killer was calm enough to collect his brass. Either way, both are very common handguns.”
“When do we talk to the widows?” Lucy asked. “I want to give Marissa Garcia a day or two to process, because I don’t think we’ll get anything out of her right now. But the others—Susan Standish and Teri James—I have questions.”
“Are they so pressing that we need the answers today?” He looked at his watch. “It’s after four on a Saturday. I don’t just want to show up at their homes without specific information to share. We need to wait until we have the autopsy, at a minimum, and officially connect Garcia to the others.”
She didn’t want to wait, but he was right—there was nothing pressing they needed to know today. “What time is the autopsy?”
“I’ll find out and call you, fair?”
She nodded.
“Then Monday—Susan Standish is a teacher, so I don’t want to disturb her until after classes. I’ll reach out and suggest we meet at her house late afternoon Monday?”
“Okay. And James?”
“Teri James—she owns her own business, an accountant like her husband. I’ll contact her Monday morning and find a good time to meet.”
“What about the daughter? We should talk to her—she’s a teenager, right?”
“Fourteen,” Jerry said. “She was away that weekend at a sports clinic. Volleyball, I think. Left Friday afternoon. The wife said she and James were going to drive up to Austin watch her play Saturday morning. Poor kid—we had a deputy drive up and get her. The wife was in shock, didn’t think it wise to let her drive.”
Lucy felt for the young teen. “Losing family to violence is so damn hard.”
“Did you lose someone?”
She hadn’t been thinking of her own loss—her nephew Justin, who had been her best friend when they were little, had been killed when they were seven. It had impacted everyone in the Kincaid family, but as a young child Lucy had been partly shielded. In some ways it was worse because she knew that Justin was gone, that someone had killed him, but she didn’t know the details for a long time because her family refused to talk about it.
Today she was thinking of Sean’s son Jesse, who had lost his mother a little over two months ago and was still having a difficult time processing what had happened leading up to his mother’s death, and the stress of the aftermath.
“Lucy, did I say something wrong?”
“We’ve all lost someone we love. My stepson’s mother was killed this summer. Jesse’s thirteen, it’s been harder on him than he’s admitted.”
“I’m sorry,” Jerry said with sincerity. “How about this—I’ll reach out to the two widows, and we’ll talk to them on Monday, at their convenience. Since you want to view the autopsy, I’ll meet you at the ME’s office tomorrow—” He held up his phone. “—they just sent me a message that Garcia is scheduled at noon.”
“I’ll be there.” She looked the files and notes she’d spread out. “Is it okay that we leave this here?”
“Yeah, leave it. I’m going home, too. I’ll walk you out.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Saturday Evening
Lucy was glad to be home.
This was supposed to be her weekend off, but because this killer was her case, she had to respond to the crime scene. Last year she wouldn’t have minded at all—she loved her job, and had a tendency to be a workaholic—but now that Jesse was living with them, and Sean was home so much of the time, Lucy wanted to be home, too. Even with everything that had happened over the summer, there was a sense of peace in their house that Lucy craved.
Bandit, the golden retriever she and Sean had adopted while on their honeymoon last year, bounded into the kitchen to greet her. He was two years old and still acted like a puppy half the time, though Sean had done a terrific job training him.
“What a good boy,” she said and scratched him. He immediately turned and ran back down the hall.
Bandit was Sean’s dog through and through, and when Sean was home Ban
dit stayed close.
She grabbed a bottle of water and walked down the hall. Sean was in his office. He immediately got up when he saw her and pulled her into a hug. “I missed you today,” he said and kissed her.
“It’s good to be home.” The tension ebbed from her body. She sat down on the couch in his office. Sean sat next to her and played with her hair. “Where’s Jess?”
“At the boys’ home. He’s staying for dinner, I’ll pick him up at eight.”
Sean had helped St. Catherine’s Boys’ Home since its inception to provide a safe place for a group of orphans Sean, Lucy, and Sean’s brother Kane had rescued eighteen months ago from a violent drug cartel. Jesse had been spending a lot of time over there, and Lucy thought it was good for both him and the others.
“He seemed preoccupied last night, and then I left before he was awake. Is everything okay with school?” Jesse had started his eighth-grade year at a new school in a new city after losing his mother. Lucy didn’t think he had fully grasped the magnitude of his loss.
“One day at a time,” Sean said. “I don’t want to push him too hard.”
Both Lucy and Sean had dealt with loss and understood grief, and the one thing that they both knew was that everyone processed grief at a different pace. Losing a parent, like losing a child, was a particular minefield that took love and patience to navigate.
“Are you sure spending so much time with the boys is okay?” Sean asked.
“Of course,” Lucy said. “Why do you think it wouldn’t be?”
“He just seems to want to spend more time there than here.”
“Maybe seeing how each of the boys dealt with their own traumas is helping him come to terms with what happened to him.”
“He doesn’t talk to me. I mean—he does, about school and video games and soccer—but not about what happened, not about how he’s doing, you know? He just says he’s fine. And I know he’s not.”
“I haven’t had a lot of one-on-one time with him since you both got back from California.” Jesse’s grandfather had done everything short of filing a lawsuit to claim custody of Jesse, and Sean and Jesse had spent two weeks in August working through whatever the powerful and wealthy Ronald McAllister tossed at them. “Maybe he thinks he needs to be tough around you, that he needs to pretend everything is fine. Put on a good front.”
“You think he needs to be all macho tough guy around me?”
“The Rogans are all macho tough guys,” Lucy said, trying to lighten Sean’s mood. She put her hand on his face. She loved him so much and hated when he was in emotional pain. He harbored guilt about what had happened to Madison, even though none of it was his fault. He’d promised Madison and Jesse that they would be safe in this house, and the one place Sean felt safest had been breached. It had taken a dozen trained mercenaries to take the house, and only after the occupants had been drugged. But Sean didn’t see it that way.
“Maybe I should ask Kane to talk to him.”
“No,” Lucy said emphatically.
That surprised Sean. “Did he say something to you? Do something?”
“Nothing like that. I love Kane, you know that, but your brother is black-and-white in everything. I know exactly what he’d say: Jess, I’m sorry about your mom. She made some bad decisions and unfortunately, those decisions ended up getting her killed. That’s not on you. And then Jesse would feel like the very real grief he’s experiencing makes him somehow weak or childish and he’d bury it deep, and that wouldn’t be good, either.”
“You certainly know my brother.”
“Kane’s a rare person who can compartmentalize his grief and pain. He deals with it the only way he knows how, and for him it works. But it doesn’t work for most people, and it won’t for Jesse. However, don’t discount your concerns. Maybe there’s something else going on with him that he’s not talking about, at least with us. Maybe he feels like he can talk with one of the boys. He and Michael got off on the wrong foot when they first met, but last time I saw them together they were two peas in a pod. Michael lost his mother, too. All those boys did—either to death, to prison, or to addiction. If there’s anyplace Jesse can heal, it’s there.” She leaned over and kissed Sean.
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I am—but we still need to be here for him, to let him know that he’s safe and that he can tell us anything—when he’s ready.”
He pulled her into his lap and kissed her again. “I love you, Mrs. Rogan.”
“Ditto, Mr. Rogan.”
“You know, we don’t have time like this much anymore.”
“Time like…?”
“Alone.” He kissed her neck, then behind her ear. “Want to go upstairs and make out?”
She almost laughed, then adjusted her position, straddled him, and unbuttoned her shirt. “Like you said, we’re alone.”
* * *
Jesse looked at his watch. He’d never worn a watch before, but his uncle Kane gave him this totally cool military watch with a compass when he came to visit over Labor Day weekend and Jesse hadn’t taken it off since. It was even waterproof.
“Michael, it’s getting late.”
It was nearly five thirty. They had to be back at St. Catherine’s not a minute past six thirty for dinner. The last thing Jesse wanted was for Sister Ruth to tell his dad that he was late, because then Jesse would have to tell him what he and Michael had been doing all day.
“I told you to stay away.”
“And I told you to shut up.”
Michael glared at him, his expression hard and serious. If Jesse had met Michael two years ago, he would have avoided him at all costs. He looked mean and hardened, like he’d seen everything bad in the world. And he probably had. But Jesse knew him, and he wasn’t scared.
Well, he was a little scared. Not of Michael, but of what Michael might be capable of when those he cared about were threatened. Lucy and Sean had told him some of what Michael had been through, and Jesse had picked up on a lot more over the last month. Michael would do anything to protect the boys at St. Catherine’s, whom he called brothers. He was the oldest, and by far the strongest in every way—physically and emotionally. He was almost fifteen but seemed so much older and wiser than any kids Jesse knew.
They were both worried about Brian, another boy who lived at the boys’ home, who like Michael was a freshman in high school. He’d been acting odd, though that in and of itself hadn’t been much of anything. Everyone could get moody. But Jesse and Brian were on the same soccer team, and after practice this week Jesse had seen Brian talking to an older kid—maybe in high school, but he looked older. When Jesse asked him about it, Brian said he was a kid from school—but Jesse had the distinct impression that he was lying.
More than once, Jesse wished he’d gone to his dad instead of Michael, but now that they were in this, Jesse couldn’t rat him out. Michael made a good point: If Brian was caught doing something illegal, he’d be kicked out of St. Catherine’s. Father Mateo had a zero tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol.
“I’ll find out what’s going on and fix it,” Michael had said. “We keep this between us for now, okay?”
Jesse had agreed, but still wondered if he’d done the right thing.
So far they didn’t know what Brian was doing or if there was anything wrong, but he’d lied to Sister Ruth about a conditioning practice late that morning. Jesse covered for him—he almost wished he hadn’t—and sought out Michael. They went to the practice field, but Brian wasn’t there. It took them hours to track him down to this shithole neighborhood, and they still didn’t know what he was doing here.
Jesse knew that if they didn’t leave soon, they’d be late, and Jesse didn’t want to lie to Sean. He was kind of worried about his dad because of what his grandfather did last month. All the games and manipulation and threats. In the end Grandfather gave in—but it was a battle, and Jesse had to promise to spend one month every summer in Orange County with him, and Sean agreed that his grandfather could
visit with notice whenever he saw fit. Jesse loved his grandfather, but he was also angry with him for pressuring his mother into not telling Jesse anything about his father. And his reasons were stupid.
Sean said he was fine, but he always looked sad, even when he was smiling. Jesse didn’t want to add anything to his plate right now, and trouble with one of the boys at St. Catherine’s would be a heavy weight. He could talk to Lucy, and maybe he would, but one, she was an FBI agent, and two, she probably wouldn’t keep it from Sean. Which would then add to his problems. The last thing Jesse wanted was to hurt his dad.
Jesse hoped he and Michael could figure this out and no one but them would have to know anything.
They were sitting in a sketchy park in the middle of the block surrounded by two-story apartments interspersed with tiny houses that had seen much, much better days. Michael was tense, on alert, watching everyone who walked through the park with a clear, narrow gaze. This was gang territory, and being here was dangerous.
“You really shouldn’t have come,” Michael said to Jesse. “You stick out.”
“Because I’m white?”
“Because you’re too clean.”
Jesse looked down at his faded jeans and generic gray T-shirt. His mother would have had a coronary if she’d seen him dressed like this—she was the poster child for presentability.
Thinking about his mom made him shiver, and he tried to push her out of his mind. He was so angry about what she’d done … but he desperately wanted her to be alive. He missed her. He missed the way she cut the crusts off his sandwiches, the way she would come into his room in the middle of the night, when she was going to bed, and look at him. He always knew she was there. She’d put a hand on his arm, pull the blankets up if it was cold, or open the window if it was warm. She knew everything about history and proofread all his school papers for him. She never missed a soccer game, and even though she was always dressed impeccably and never socialized with the other parents, she cheered louder than anyone when he made a goal.
“Hey,” Michael said.
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