Unforgivable

by Laura Griffin

  The most common color around.

  “And did you see anything similar between this victim’s injuries and the one from three weeks ago? The one from the motel room?”

  “Aside from the fact that they both had their hands bound with duct tape and were sexually assaulted? No. In the motel-room murder, the cause of death was manual strangulation, and the assailant left behind semen. As for your more recent victim, Ashley Meyer, she was killed by blunt-force trauma to the head. After she sustained the forty-two knife wounds, all shallow. In other words, he didn’t stab her to death, he hit her with something heavy, maybe a wrench or a tire iron, something like that. Also, her assailant used a condom, which left traces of lubricant but no semen. I believe she died indoors on a carpeted floor, then was moved from the scene and dumped off the bridge. She landed facedown, which was how the hikers discovered her.” The ME checked his watch. “Any other questions, Detectives? I’m needed in the morgue.”

  “These fibers,” Jonah said. “Did you send them to the lab?”

  “Of course. They’re at the Delphi Center, along with the other trace evidence in this case.” He stood up and handed Ric a copy of the autopsy report.

  “Thanks for your help.” Ric took the report and headed for the door. “Oh, and one more thing. In the Meyer case, did you remove the duct tape from her wrists at autopsy? The tape was cut through in three different places.”

  Froehler stiffened. “Absolutely not. I would have used a single razor cut in order to preserve the integrity of the binding. Her hands were bagged separately when she arrived here.”

  Ric shot Jonah a look. Sounded as if the crime-scene techs had screwed up right under the lead detective’s nose.

  They made their way back down to the main floor of the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office. Hays County wasn’t big enough to have its own ME, so San Marcos cops had to work with TCMEO in Austin. It was a nice facility, but the half-hour drive was a pain in the ass.

  A cold gust hit them when Jonah pushed open the door.

  “So, what do you think of his theory?” Ric asked, taking his keys from his pocket as they approached the unmarked police unit parked at a meter in front of the building.

  “Froehler’s?”

  “Yeah. That the murders aren’t connected.”

  Jonah pulled open his door with a squeak and slid into the passenger seat. “I think he’s right. These two cases, I don’t know, don’t fit or something. The crimes seem totally different to me.”

  “Except for the duct tape, the timing, and the sexual assault.” Ric reached behind his seat to slide the report into an accordion file that was growing fatter by the hour. He started the engine.

  “Lot of rapes involve duct tape,” Jonah said. “That’s why the bindings are important. Perps have a certain way of doing it.”

  Ric flashed him a look, and Jonah knew he was telling his partner something he already knew. But he was thinking out loud here.

  Ric pulled onto Sabine Street. “I get the same feeling. First crime, pretty straightforward—prostitute killed in a motel room. Maybe she tried to shake down her john or something, he got ticked off. Or maybe he didn’t want to pay. Ashley Meyer was a college student, clean record. Plus, it seems like her killer was pretty amped up. The knife wounds. The blow to the head. A lot of emotion there.”

  “I’m getting that, too. Seems like a different MO.”

  Ric shook his head. “This case is gonna drag. And I really want to focus on the Hannigan shooting before that trail gets cold.”

  Jonah glanced at him. “You think it’s a straight-up robbery that went south?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Jonah hesitated, then decided to throw it out there. “How well do you know the DNA doc?”

  Ric shot him a sidelong glance. “Mia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know her fine. Why?”

  “You notice we haven’t looked at her? Not even as a long shot?”

  Ric blinked at him. “You’re saying Mia Voss could have offed Frank Hannigan? What are you, on crack?”

  Jonah trained his gaze on the road.

  “Are you fucking serious? Why would she do that?”

  “I didn’t say she did.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying what I said. We haven’t even looked at her. We got no eyewitnesses saying what really happened on that road out there—”

  “Besides Mia,” Ric cut in.

  “Besides her, yeah, and you haven’t even teed up the possibility she might be involved. Frank was a cop. He had enemies. How do we know there wasn’t some kind of setup?”

  “The woman got shot. Was that part of the setup, too? And what about the surveillance video?”

  “Stranger things have happened. Anyway, I’m just saying it’s possible. But we haven’t even looked at it, because we took everything she told us at face value. And I’m wondering, why did we do that?”

  Ric’s expression hardened. He didn’t like Jonah bringing this up, but that was too bad. This was a murder case. A cop murder. And the lead investigator had allowed himself to get distracted by a nice pair of breasts. Ric wasn’t approaching this with nearly his usual objectivity.

  “Hey, I like her, don’t get me wrong,” Jonah said. “She’s squeaky clean, as far as I know. But we haven’t even talked about it. And it’s not like you to ignore an angle.”

  The car got quiet. Jonah was right, and Ric knew it.

  Ric’s phone buzzed, and he looked grateful for the distraction as he dug it out of his pocket. Jonah stared out the window as they passed a strip of fast-food joints. He’d logged six miles that morning before coming in. Now it was after three, and he was about to eat his arm.

  “Say that again? I can’t understand you.”

  Something in Ric’s tone had Jonah’s head turning.

  “You’re going to have to talk slower. You’re not making sense.”

  A woman’s high, tinny voice came through the phone and filled the car. Jonah couldn’t make out the words, but she was upset.

  “All right, calm down. Which zoo?” He waited a beat, then swerved into the left-turn lane. “And who is Sam?”

  Ric spotted Mia standing beside a huddle of uniformed men near the ticket booth at the zoo entrance. She wore a powder-blue ski vest and had her back to him, but he recognized her strawberry blonde ponytail. She was jabbing her finger in the air and arguing with a man about two heads taller than she was.

  Only one of the uniforms was SMPD. The other three people, all dressed in khaki, looked as if they worked for the zoo. No wonder she was pissed.

  “Call now!” she was saying as he neared the group. “What good does it do to wait?”

  A rookie whom Ric had met only once glanced up and sent him a bail-me-out-here look.

  Mia spun around. “Ric!” She rushed forward and grabbed his arm. “Your brother. In San Antonio. He’s FBI, right?”

  “Yeah. What—”

  “Call him.” Her blue eyes swam with tears as she looked up at him and clutched his arm. “We need that team. That rapid-response team. What’s it called again?”

  “CARD?”

  “Yes. Call your brother. Call CARD. We need an AMBER Alert, something.”

  “Back up a sec.” Ric pried her hands from his arm and held them in his. They were icy cold. “What exactly happened?” He decided not to point out it might be a little early to call in the FBI’s Child Abduction and Rapid Deployment Team.

  “Sam is missing! We’ve looked everywhere. He’s not here!” She shot an accusing look at the huddle of officials standing nearby. “Why won’t someone do something?”

  “Let’s calm down, okay?” He knew instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. She jerked her hands free and glared up at him, and he rushed to cut her off. “I need a description, Mia. What is Sam wearing?”

  The question seemed to focus her. She took a deep breath. “A green fleece jacket. With a hood. And
blue jeans.”

  Ric took out his phone and dialed Jonah. Mia watched with anxious eyes as he relayed the info.

  “How tall is he?” Ric asked her.

  “About four feet.”

  “What about a hat? Gloves? Mittens?”

  “Black mittens.”

  “And what’s he wearing under the coat?”

  “A red T-shirt,” she said. “With a baryonyx on it.”

  “A who?”

  “A dinosaur. From Dawn of the Dinosaurs. His favorite movie.” Her voice broke as she said this, and she bit her lip.

  Ric relayed the rest to Jonah, then clicked off.

  “Was that your brother?”

  “My partner,” Ric said. “He’s at the construction site next door. There’s some equipment parked there. Does Sam like bulldozers?”

  Her eyes widened. “He does.” She cast a frantic look over her shoulder. “You think he might have gone—”

  “Jonah’s checking. Let’s keep looking here, though. Where were you when you last saw him?”

  “The petting zoo. I was buying food. We’ve searched everywhere, but—”

  “Let’s search again.” Ric nodded at the patrol officer. “Dispatch call you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “See if you can get another unit out here.”

  “They’re already on the way. I’ll walk the trail again.”

  The uniforms dispersed, and Mia briskly set off toward the petting zoo.

  “He wouldn’t run off like this. He just wouldn’t. There’s something wrong.”

  “Where’re his parents?”

  “My sister’s in San Francisco on a business trip. I left her a message.”

  “And the dad?”

  “Who the hell knows? Or cares? The guy’s a shit.”

  Ric looked at her. He’d never heard her curse before. “There a custody situation?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, my sister does everything. Sam’s dad doesn’t give a damn about him.”

  She sounded strong, but when they got to the barn, she stood beside the food dispenser, and the tears threatened to spill over.

  “I just stepped over here for a minute. Maybe two. I fed in my quarters and filled a cup with food …” Her voice trailed off as she turned and searched the animal pen. There wasn’t a single child in it. Maybe they’d cleared the kids out to look for Sam.

  Ric tromped around the barn. He checked behind hay bales and water troughs, looked for open gates. He scanned the horizon and noticed the steel crane towering over the line of trees to the east. If Jonah was having any luck at the construction site, he’d call. Not that it would be very lucky if he did. If the boy was at that job site for this long, he’d probably either hurt himself or been hurt by someone else and left there.

  “What’s his favorite animal?” Ric asked.

  “He likes the tigers.” Mia shook her head. “We already checked there. They even put the animals inside and looked through their entire enclosure. Nothing.”

  Ric glanced across the trail at the reptile house, which was closed for renovations and surrounded by yellow tape. “What about snakes? Did you—”

  “The zookeeper checked.”

  “How about the snack bar?”

  Mia gazed down the trail. “We’d just had hot dogs for lunch. I promised him a hot cocoa later, but—”

  Ric grabbed Mia’s arm as a kid emerged from the back of the reptile house. Green jacket. Red hair. He stepped between two orange barricades and blinked up at the sun.

  “Sam!” Mia rocketed across the trail and dropped to her knees in front of him. She yanked him against her and hugged him to her chest.

  Ric tipped his head back and breathed a sigh of relief. This was why he wasn’t cut out for parenting. Your whole life could go to shit in a heartbeat.

  He walked over to Mia, who was checking Sam’s head as if he had a fever. The kid looked fine to Ric. Maybe a little baffled by the tears streaming down Mia’s cheeks.

  “Are you okay? Really?” She hugged him again and again as he stood there nodding numbly. “Oh my God, Sam, you scared me to death! What were you doing in there? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Another nod. “I was looking at the python. It’s still in there, even though you said it was closed. There’s a boa, too. And a gila monster.”

  “We were very worried about you.” She shook his shoulders. “You can’t just run off like that. I had no idea—” She stopped in mid-sentence and stared at him. “What’s on your mouth?”

  Sam looked at his feet.

  “Sam? What have you been eating?”

  “A Snickers bar.” It was barely a whisper.

  “Where did you get a Snickers bar?”

  “The man gave it to me.”

  “What man? Who?”

  “The man in the reptile house.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Mia eased shut the door to her guest room and crept down the hall. She heard a car pull into her drive-way and peeked through the blinds to see Ric getting out of his pickup. She’d known he would come. Something about the grim set of his jaw when they’d parted ways at the emergency room had told Mia he’d be back tonight.

  She pulled open the front door so he wouldn’t wake Sam with the bell.

  “How is he?” Ric wiped his mud-caked boots before stepping inside. Whatever he’d been doing the last four hours, it had been outdoors.

  “Sleeping.” She closed the door behind him and locked it. “It took three bedtime stories and an epic Shel Silverstein poem, but he’s finally out.”

  “And how are you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  He stood in her front hallway, gazing down at her, probably trying to read whether she was lying—which she was.

  She turned and walked into the kitchen. Ric’s boots scuffed over the pecan plank floor as he followed her.

  “You talk to your sister yet?”

  “She called while we were in the ER. She spoke with the SANE nurse and the social worker. Both assured her there’s no sign of sexual contact or any other kind of contact besides the man handing him the candy bar.”

  “Who was the sexual assault nurse?”

  “Connie somebody.” Mia pulled the lid off a pot of soup and stirred it with a ladle. Steam rose, and the aroma of chicken and rosemary filled the kitchen. “I have her business card. She said I could call her if anything comes up. But she really thinks we got the full story. The man didn’t touch him.”

  “Sounds like a harmless encounter.”

  Mia slammed the ladle down and whirled around. “Harmless men do not lure boys into dark buildings with candy bars! How can you even say that?”

  “I didn’t say the guy was harmless. He probably isn’t. I’m just saying Sam got lucky today.”

  Mia folded her arms over her chest and looked at the floor. She felt so much frustration, so much anger, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She was angry at herself for turning her back on Sam. She was angry at some sick pervert for targeting him. She was angry at her sister for accusing her of being careless and self-absorbed.

  “Hey.” Ric stepped closer and stood there, hands on hips, until she met his gaze. “This isn’t your fault.”

  She looked away.

  “Really. You didn’t make this happen.”

  “I didn’t prevent it from happening, either, did I? Thank God I’m not a mother. I’d be a disaster.”

  “You’d be great.”

  “Yeah, right.” She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose, suddenly feeling sick again. Every time she thought of what could have happened, she got queasy. Way too many children’s clothes and stuffed toys and blankets had come through her lab, all tagged with case numbers and bar codes because the items were evidence in some horrendous case.

  “Come here.” Ric pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. Every muscle in her body tensed. He’d never held her this way, despite all the times she’d wanted him to. His leather jacket felt cool
against her cheek. His arms felt strong. He smelled like outside and man, with a faint hint of fabric softener. She curled her arms around his waist and tried to relax. This was just a friendly hug. Or maybe not. She didn’t know, but it felt good.

  He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Everybody screws up. That’s what sucks about parenting. No matter how much you want to, you can never get it all right.”

  She pulled back. “You have a—?”

  “Ava. She just turned twelve.”

  She stared up at his bottomless brown eyes and felt a twinge of sadness. She’d never imagined he had a child. He’d never shared that with her, and she’d never asked. God, they didn’t know each other at all, did they?

  She stepped back.

  He leaned against the counter and watched her, and her gaze darted to his hand before she could stop herself.

  “We got divorced eight years ago,” he said.

  Mia had a million questions, but she didn’t ask any of them. Maybe she’d ask later. Or maybe not. She wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “Something smells good.” He nodded at the stove. “What is that?”

  Her Southern manners kicked in, and she got two bowls down from a cabinet. “Chicken noodle soup.” She started ladling. “Sam had it for dinner.”

  “Is he sick?” Ric pulled out drawers until he found the silverware.

  “No, I just decided to make it.”

  “Homemade soup. I didn’t know you cooked.”

  “I love to cook.” She scooped some extra chicken chunks into his serving, then turned to put their bowls on the table and caught him staring at her breasts. His gaze met hers, and she felt one of those sparks again.

  “Cooking’s like chemistry.” She ferried the bowls to the table. “Only more forgiving, not as precise. Plus, it’s relaxing. I cook when I’m nervous.”

  “And organize spices.”

  “That works, too.” She pulled two beers from the refrigerator and used the hem of her Duke University T-shirt to twist off the tops before plunking them on the table.

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Bud Light drinker,” Ric said as they sat down.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know. You strike me as more the microbrew type.”