“What do you think happened?” Ric asked.
“As I told the sheriff, read the report.” He glanced in the direction of the body, and something in his eyes changed. “But if you want my first guess, blunt-force trauma. Someone smashed that girl’s skull in. Repeatedly. But if you quote me on that, I’ll flat-out deny it.”
Froehler picked up his bag of gear and trudged off to his car.
“He’s done already?”
“Until the autopsy,” Ric said. “He got here an hour ago. We got a late invitation.”
“From who?”
“The sheriff. He knows about the Meyer case, gave the chief a heads up.”
They started walking toward the lake, and Jonah tried to ignore the bitter wind. The temperature had dropped again, and Froehler’s hunting getup wasn’t looking like such a bad idea now. Jonah scanned the area, but it was tough to see much. Only a small patch near the lake had
been spotlighted.
“Same MO?” Jonah asked.
“No.”
“Knife wounds? Duct tape?”
“Didn’t see any.”
Their boots made a slurping noise as they neared the water’s edge. They stopped near a huddle of investigators in white jumpsuits.
Jonah looked at Ric. “So, why are we here?”
“See for yourself.”
The bloated corpse lay facedown in the mud. Her arms were spread out on either side of her, but her ankles had been bound with rope and fastened to a cinder block. Jonah pictured someone tying her up like that and was struck by the utter coldness of it.
“Notice anything?” Ric asked him.
“Besides the hair?”
“Yeah.”
The victim had long blond hair, like Ashley Meyer’s, but so did a lot of women. He kept looking. One of the crime-scene guys stood up, obscuring their view, and Jonah was left with the grotesque afterimage of the swollen body.
“Well …” It was the first thing he’d noticed, so he tossed it out there. “She doesn’t look that bad, considering.”
“Considering she’s been in the water? Yeah. That’s what I noticed, too.”
They were standing on a slope covered with mud and plants. “They just drain the lake?” Jonah asked.
“River authority opened the flood gates Sunday, lowered it about six feet. We’ve had below-freezing temperatures since then. Helps narrow the timeline.”
“How long’s Froehler think she was underwater?”
“Wouldn’t commit. But he said probably not more than a day. Two, tops.”
“Santos.” A deputy waved them closer, and they stepped into the halo of light.
Jonah noted the gray skin, the slimy debris tangled in the hair. A weight settled over him. Every victim he saw made him think of someone’s parents. Ric looked on with a stony expression, maybe thinking about his own daughter.
“You were asking about knife wounds?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing on the torso,” the deputy said.
The body-removal team rolled the victim over and onto a sheet. Jonah clenched his teeth and forced himself to look at her face, her body. His gaze stopped on her hands, which had already been bagged for transport in order to preserve whatever evidence might be trapped under her fingernails.
“What about the hands?” Ric asked, following the same train of thought. “Any cuts? Defensive wounds?”
“That’s what I was going to tell you,” the deputy said. “Her hands were sliced up good.”
After just a few hours of sleep, Ric went in early to work on the only solid lead he had in Frank’s murder investigation: a scrap of brass no bigger than a kid’s thumb.
But the shell casing got him nowhere.
The Fort Worth detective who’d worked the case was dead. The case files were in storage, and it would take at least twenty-four hours to send someone into some basement closet to drag them out. And the one person who had any primary knowledge of the case—a beat cop who had been a rookie at the time—was out sick.
Ric cursed as he hung up the phone, but the sight of his partner’s six-four frame charging across the bullpen lifted his hopes.
“You’ve got something,” Ric said when Jonah stopped at his cube.
“Damn right I do.”
“Tell me it’s about the Hannigan case.”
“The motel room murder. Maintenance guy at the motel just ID’d the last man seen entering her room from a photo lineup. We’ve got a suspect, and he’s got a rap sheet.”
Ric leaned forward as Jonah slapped a photo array onto his desk. “Which one is he?”
“David Corino, a.k.a. Spider. He’s a pimp out of San Antonio.”
“Spider? Where do they come up with this shit?”
“Hell if I know.”
Ric studied the mug. The DOB beneath the picture put Corino’s age at twenty-six, but he had the teeth and face of an old man.
“Looks like a tweaker. What’s on his sheet?”
“Just what you’d expect,” Jonah said. “Couple of busts for possession. Did a two-year stretch for burglary. Most recently, he got caught up in a raid on a meth lab down in Bexar County. Prosecutor gave him a pass to flip on some of his buddies.”
“And he’s running girls, too?”
“Looks like. And meth. Remember the victim had some onboard at the time of her death?”
Ric sat back in his chair. “Any chance we can link him to Ashley Meyer?”
“Highly unlikely,” Jonah said, confirming Ric’s first take. “He’s got an alibi for the time of her murder.”
“You already talked to him?”
“Not yet, but I made some calls. Day after Christmas, they sacked him up on those drug charges. He was a guest of the Bexar County taxpayers until two days ago, when he decided to flip.”
“Takes him out of the running for the Meyer homicide,” Ric said. “Even if the ME got the time of death off by a day or two, it still wouldn’t work.”
“So, if this guy pans out, we were right,” Jonah said. “The murders aren’t related.”
Ric’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “Santos.” He listened carefully, then stood up and grabbed the jacket off the back of his chair.
“Where’s the fire?”
“That was Rachel,” Ric told him. “She’s got Mia Voss sitting in her conference room waiting to talk to us about the Meyer investigation.”
“Why can’t she talk to us here?”
“I don’t give a shit where she talks to us. Sounds like we’ve got a break in our case.”
Rachel Patterson swept into the conference room wearing a pinstripe suit and a mantel of confidence befitting a prosecutor with a ninety-percent conviction rate.
“Detective Macon, glad you could make it. Where’s your partner?”
“Should be right behind me. He had a call come in—”
Ric walked into the conference room and nodded at the district attorney as he tucked his phone into the pocket beneath his gun holster. His gaze slid to Mia, and her stomach did a nervous dance.
“Good, you’re here.” Rachel placed a legal pad at the head of the conference table before pulling out a chair and sinking into it. “Let’s all have a seat, shall we? I have to be in court in twenty minutes. Dr. Voss?” The prosecutor’s ice-blue eyes settled on Mia. “You have something for us?”
Mia cleared her throat. She felt Ric’s and Jonah’s gazes on her as she folded her hands together on the faux-wood table. She’d spent much of the past twelve hours mentally rehearsing what she planned to say, and she was determined to do it with a steady voice.
“I’m here about the Ashley Meyer case.”
The prosecutor’s brows arched. Mia shifted her attention to Jonah, then Ric. An expectant silence filled the room.
Mia zeroed in on Rachel, because she couldn’t stand to look at Ric.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. My mistake, actually.”
“What sort of mistake?” Rachel asked.
“It has to do with the evidence. The physical evidence. That you all sent to the laboratory for testing.” Oh, God, she was already fumbling her speech, and she’d barely started.
The prosecutor’s gaze narrowed sharply. “What happened?”
Mia’s pulse raced. She fought the urge to swallow. She forced herself to make eye contact with the district attorney as she said the words. “I seem to have lost it.”
“Lost it?” She leaned forward on her elbows.
“Misplaced it, actually.”
Rachel blinked at her, and Mia realized it was the first time she’d seen the prosecutor taken completely off guard. “Which evidence did you lose?”
“All of it.”
Rachel’s mouth dropped open. Silence hung in the air. The only sound was the faint trill of a phone from an office down the hall.
“We sent three separate bags.”
Mia’s gaze veered to Jonah, who was eyeing her hostilely with his arms folded over his enormous chest. If not for the business attire, he could have been a bouncer at a bar.
“That’s correct,” she said.
“How do you lose three separate bags?” he wanted to know.
“I’m not sure.” Mia glanced down at her hands, clasped in front of her. Her knuckles were white. She forced herself to loosen her grip. “But they went missing earlier this week, and I’ve looked everywhere.”
“When?” This from Ric, who was watching her steadily with those brown-black eyes.
Mia’s throat went dry. “Excuse me?”
“When did it go missing? You told me you went in Sunday to have a look.”
Mia nodded. She’d expected this to come up. “I did a preliminary examination of everything Sunday and jotted down some notes on which procedures I planned to use. That was in the afternoon. I thought I returned everything to the refrigerator afterward.” Mia’s shoulders tensed as she came to the next part. “But it could be I only thought I’d returned everything, and somehow I forgot. Maybe I left it out, and it got mixed in with the trash.”
“You mean it got thrown away?” Rachel looked appalled.
“I’m not sure. It’s possible. I was tied up in court most of the day Monday, and I don’t remember seeing it. Yesterday afternoon, I went in to start swabbing and testing, but I couldn’t find anything.” She forced herself to stop talking and allowed the silence to stretch out. Don’t say more than you have to. Nervous blather was the downfall of many an expert witness. Rachel had taught her that. Mia found it absurdly ironic that she was using the prosecutor’s own technique to deceive her.
If, in fact, she was deceiving her. Rachel’s blue eyes were cool and calculating as she sat back in her chair.
“Any chance a coworker has it? Maybe some other scientist?” Jonah asked.
“No.”
“Don’t you people have controls for this sort of thing?” Rachel’s tone was clipped. “How do you misplace critical evidence in a murder investigation? You’re supposed to be a world-class forensic lab.”
“We are.”
“You’re not!” She slapped a hand on the table, and Mia jumped. “Do you realize what this does to our case? Even if you manage to find the evidence, there’s time unaccounted for. The chain of custody is ruined.”
“I realize that.”
“Do you realize Ashley Meyer was twenty-one?” Rachel demanded. “Do you realize she had her skull crushed by some sick pervert who also sliced her to ribbons? Do you realize the best chance we had of finding out who did that to her and bringing that person to justice was contained in the three bags of evidence you carelessly misplaced?”
Mia’s stomach cramped. She felt her cheeks heating with every word. And when the words stopped, she felt an impossibly heavy weight settle on her shoulders.
“I realize that, yes. And I take full responsibility.” Her voice wasn’t steady now. Neither were her hands. She tucked them into her lap and wiped her damp palms on the tops of her thighs as she waited for more. “I also realize that time is of the essence in a case like this. I wanted to make you aware of this as soon as possible.”
Rachel snorted. “Very helpful of you, thanks.” Then she leaned forward and jabbed a finger at her. “This isn’t over. I’ll be calling your supervisor to discuss the ramifications of this.”
“I understand.”
Silence returned as the prosecutor shot daggers at her from across the table.
Mia made herself wait, although she wanted nothing more than to sprint from the room. She couldn’t look at Ric or even Jonah. She kept her gaze on Rachel in case there were any more arrows to absorb. But she seemed to be out, at least for now. Mia rose to her feet and, with an unsteady hand, collected her jacket and purse from the back of the chair.
“I hope you realize what this means.” Rachel shook her head. “I specifically requested you for this task because I knew we were dealing with a challenge here, and you have—or you had—an impeccable reputation. Not anymore. This incident is a disgrace to both you and your laboratory.”
Mia folded her jacket over her arm and waited for more. But Rachel just sat there, glaring at her.
Mia looked at Jonah, who seemed disgusted. And once more at the prosecutor, who seemed irate.
Finally, she looked at Ric. And it was his Arctic stare she felt burning into her as she quietly left the room.
CHAPTER 10
Mia stared dazedly at the screen above the bar, still not sure how she’d ended up there. She’d gone back to work. She’d continued the charade of a normal day, all the while waiting for the anvil to drop on her head. It hadn’t. Then she’d driven home and let herself into a cold, dark house.
She’d never minded living alone before, but lately, she’d been afraid of even her own shadow. Paranoia? No. Someone had been watching her. Someone had tried to hurt her. Someone had targeted her family. Any rational person would feel afraid.
Very few rational people would do what Mia had done about it: go out drinking with Sophie in the pathetic hopes that with the right amount of alcohol, the nightmare that had become her life would somehow go away. And that was how she’d gotten there, she realized. She’d ditched all rational thought and decided to numb her brain at a cheap sports bar. As ideas went, it wasn’t great. But she was going with it.
“You okay?”
She felt a hand on her arm. Sophie had taken a break from her new friendship with Vince Moore to check on her status.
“Fine.”
“You seem blue tonight. And you look kind of pale.” Sophie tipped her head to the side. “You’re not getting that flu, are you? God, you’ll be out for days.”
“I’m fine. Really.” Mia looked over Sophie’s shoulder. The young detective was popping peanuts as he watched whatever game was on and pretended not to be listening to every word. “Do you guys want to leave?” Mia said it in a barely audible whisper. “I can get a ride home if—”
But Sophie cut her off with a slight shake of her head. She wasn’t leaving with this guy. And Mia wasn’t going to get stranded looking for a ride. It was the first good news of her entire day.
Sophie glanced over Mia’s shoulder. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
Mia turned around, and even that one drop of good news evaporated as Ric walked into the bar. Mia’s stomach fluttered while he scanned the crowd, then settled his attention on her. She felt the urge to run, but he pinned her to her stool with that black-eyed gaze as he homed in on her like a missile.
“Hi, Ric.”
He ignored Sophie’s cheerful greeting and focused solely on Mia. “We need to talk.”
His tone was dark, and she decided to match it with glib. “We do?”
“Not here.”
She looked him up and down. He wore jeans and his black leather jacket, which told her he was off for the night and this was personal, not business. Maybe.
Mia shrugged. “It’s going to have to be here. I’m in the middle of a drink.”
He picked up he
r Bud Light and downed the last sip. Then he pulled out his wallet and tossed a twenty onto the bar.
“You’re finished. Let’s go.”
Mia stared at him, and he clamped a hand on her arm.
“Now.”
The intensity in his eyes sent a hot current through her. He wasn’t going to back down. There was no escape this time. She’d known they’d have it out sooner or later, but she’d hoped to be better fortified. Emotionally drained and with several drinks in her, she was at a disadvantage—which was precisely why he’d hunted her down, she felt sure.
Mia slid off the stool.
“Uh, hello?” Sophie’s hand closed around Mia’s arm. “Going someplace?”
“I need to talk to Mia.” Ric spared Sophie a glance.
“I didn’t ask you.” Sophie turned to Mia, her eyes filled with concern. Mia could see why. Ric looked pretty ticked off right now. He looked dangerous, actually. But he wasn’t a danger to Mia, and she knew she had to talk to him.
“It’s okay,” she told Sophie. “I’ll catch a ride with Ric. See you tomorrow, all right?”
She wove her way through the crowd and out of the bar, acutely aware of Ric’s hand curled possessively over her shoulder. For Vince’s benefit? Mia wasn’t sure. The guy seemed to have hit it off with Sophie. Maybe the message was intended for Mia.
She shrugged him off the second she got outside and pulled on her coat. It was the sleeveless ski jacket again, but she’d brought a scarf.
Ric walked in silence beside her, his hardened gaze trained on the front row of the parking lot where he’d managed to find a space for his oversize truck.
He jerked the passenger door open without fanfare. Mia climbed in. As he went around to the driver’s side, she leaned her head back against the seat and briefly closed her eyes. She could get through this. If she could handle a seasoned district attorney, she could handle a cop.
The leather seat creaked as he slid behind the wheel and started the truck. Without a word, he switched the heat to high and shifted the vent to face her.
“Where the hell’s your coat? It’s twenty-five degrees out.”
“This goes better with jeans.”
He shot her a disapproving look, then rocketed backward out of the parking space.
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