Tracy hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Her murder had been clinical and cold.
Judy hadn’t killed anyone, he was as sure of that as the pope was Catholic. But she’d perverted the course of justice and made him believe, however briefly, he’d fulfilled his vow.
Okay, Archer. Do the job.
He needed to find out exactly what time Callie and Rafael had been in the Student Union, and he needed to request polygraph tests for each of the Sizemores and Rafael Domenici, and a psych evaluation while he was at it. He scrubbed a hand over his face and glanced at his watch. Ewan would be tucking his kids in bed and making sure his wife didn’t choke to death on her own spit. That left Nick with a lot of legwork and not a whole lot of chance to sleep.
He picked up the phone and dialed Susie. The dial tone droned in his ear and after thirty seconds he laughed. He’d imagined her sitting home waiting for him to call. What an ass.
Water hit her with a blast. Susie reared to her knees, shocked into consciousness as another wall of water crashed over her head and sent her under. The current gripped her body and started to drag her out to sea. Dela’s face flashed through her mind—dead at the surface, blood on her lips from a ruptured lung. Susie choked back the panic rushing through her limbs as she scrambled for purchase.
She clawed harder into the sand. It anchored her enough so that the next wave thrust her forward. She would not die in the sea. She would not let that giant entity suck her up and spit her out like flotsam. She staggered to her feet and whirled in a disoriented circle. The moon was gone. So was her flashlight. Mist cloaked the beach in an icy glaze, visibility reduced to a few feet. Confused, she oriented herself to the waves and stumbled out of the water.
Wet clothing clung to her body like saggy skin. The wind seemed to come direct from the Arctic and stabbed into her skin like knives.
A cry came out of the darkness and Susie froze. Was it an animal? Or a woman crying for help? Survival instinct had her crouching in the sand like a beast. Lightheaded, she spread her fingers on the cold sand, restrained a whimper as yet more icy water soaked her skin.
Silence echoed through the sea mist as if someone or something listened attentively. Hysteria and panic welled up, the pounding of her heart resounding through her ears like drums. Desperately she drew in one slow deep breath, and then another. She ignored the way her heart fluttered and the panic eventually receded. The woozy sensation stopped whirling inside her head. The cry came again and she looked around, trying to stare through the fog.
Was it a wild animal she’d heard? Maybe the fox they’d seen on the road the other night? Or could it be Emily out for another deranged ramble?
Susie swallowed, torn between the need to go home and get warm, and the knowledge she should check to see if Emily was hurt.
But the last time the fog had crowded the shoreline Tracy Good had been bludgeoned to death. Fear crawled over Susie’s body like scarab beetles and she couldn’t shake the terrible sensation that someone was watching her.
Even though Judy Sizemore had confessed to murder and was in jail, adrenaline warmed her muscles, readying her for flight as she edged through the fog in the direction of home. Because maybe Judy hadn’t killed Tracy? Or maybe Jake was angry enough with Susie to stage a copycat murder to get his wife out. Or maybe Nick had been right and it really had been Jake all along. The hairs on the nape of her neck sprang to attention and she silently scanned the darkness. Tingles shot along her spine as she heard something moving in the night.
Fight or flight? The age-old response to fear.
She wobbled slightly and gripped her head as more dizziness hit. She felt as fragile as a brittle star. Fight wasn’t an option and she didn’t think she’d get far with flight either. There was another option. Concealment. She held absolutely still, hardly drawing breath as she cowered in the sand and tried to disappear.
Nick cut through the Mercat Wynd onto Market Street and strode along the pavement as cars rumbled over ancient cobbles. Students were out playing, but not in the numbers that hailed a weekend. A young couple, arm in arm, gave him a wide berth as he approached, the woman’s eyes flickering over him nervously. Nick caught sight of his reflection in a shop window and didn’t blame her. He hadn’t shaved in days, his shoulders were hunched and his fists armed and ready.
Tomorrow was Halloween and he’d fit right in.
Briefly he wondered where Susie was. He’d try her number again in a few minutes.
A couple of boy-racers tailgated along the street, suspensions bouncing dangerously close to the stone cobbles. A memory hit. Being taught to drive by a priest who’d spent most of the time swearing and praying to God Almighty for safe deliverance.
Nick had always ragged on Father Mike. Why was he so worried about dying if he really believed in Heaven? Father Mike had replied that if he survived Nick’s adolescence without committing murder, he would have passed God’s ultimate test and be fast-tracked to a halo and wings.
Nick grinned.
A car alarm went off, jolting him back to the present. His eyes narrowed, but the owner pressed his key fob and jogged to catch up with his buddies.
Nick was back to square one in the investigation. An aide was going through the security camera data from Market Street, looking for Callie Sizemore and Rafael Domenici. He crossed Greyfriars Gardens and looked up at the poorly lit concrete block that had been the students’ domain since 1973. The building was never going to compete with the grandeur of the rest of the town, but students didn’t give a damn about the décor when they were dancing at the Friday night bop.
A bouncer stood on the door. She was beefy, but only came eye-level with his chest. Her hair was cut in a flat-top and if she wasn’t a dyke he’d eat her dungarees.
“ID,” she demanded, unsmiling and professional.
He pulled out his police badge in one hand, alumni card in the other. “Take your pick.”
Her brows lifted and her lips rose in a smile that made her plain face pretty. She waved him inside to wait, checked another couple of student IDs while he stood and absorbed the scent of sour beer and disinfectant over the subtle hint of vomit. Plastic skeletons dangled from the ceiling, witches and spiders crept over the walls.
A camera covered the main doors—exactly what he’d been hoping for.
The bouncer turned to him, earrings piercing her right ear from tip to lobe. “What can I do for you?”
“Were you working last Saturday night?”
The light danced off her hair as she dipped her chin. “I was.”
Nick pulled two color photos out of his pocket. “Recognize either of these two?”
She took the picture of Rafael. “Yeah. God’s gift to women.” One side of her mouth turned ugly. “He pinched my ass, and I would have decked him, but he moved fast. Next time.” Her eyes glinted retribution.
“The girl?” he prodded.
Her mouth thinned into a sneer. “Yeah, she’s the same. Another delusional piece of work.” She handed back the photos. “They were both here on Saturday night, and Friday night too, I think. Not together as far as I know, but I only work the front door.” She shrugged and waved three more students inside.
“Can you still get out the other door?” Nick nodded toward an entrance at the end of the car park that was locked from the outside.
“You can get out.” Her eyes lifted. “But they can’t get in without me seeing them.”
He didn’t need to ask if it were possible to have sex in this place without being spotted. The building was enormous with different levels and offices, closets and storerooms. Dougie had once scored with a German exchange student in the bathroom stalls. The romance of it. Leanne would kick his ass if she ever found out.
He glanced up at the surveillance camera. “Do you have the security tapes for last weekend?”
“Sure, but I need to check with my boss before I can hand them over.”
“No you don’t.” He handed her a warrant.
&nbs
p; “You came prepared.” She shot him a grin and shouted to someone to come and take over for her.
Nick followed her dungarees through the building and up the stairs. A shiver ran over his shoulders as he recalled walking these same halls with Chrissie when they’d gone to buy her air-ticket to go to South Africa. She’d been so excited to be going abroad…so vivid, so blindingly special. A few months later she’d walked out on him and he’d let her. Jake had seduced her and shattered the fairytale Nick had been living.
Anger churned in his stomach. He was so close he could taste the answers like ink on his tongue. He’d promised to bring Chrissie’s killer to justice. But for the first time he wondered, what was he going to do if he couldn’t get results? What if he found out who killed her—and he believed he already had—but couldn’t prove it? What sort of man would he be if he just let it slide?
Chapter Eighteen
Susie staggered up the soft-sided dunes, the sand shifting beneath her feet, making her trip. Her flesh was numb with cold and beginning to burn. Her breath came in hoarse gasps through her raw throat. The fog dissipated as she climbed farther up the shore away from the sea. She risked a glance behind her, but there was no one there, no sinister figures. She stood and slammed straight into a hard male chest and screamed in terror.
“Merda! Dr. Cooper, stop, stop!” Rafael grabbed her shoulders. “Calm. What is the matter?”
Susie tried to rear back, gulping for air as Rafael’s grip dug into her triceps. “I was running. I fell and hit my head.”
Suddenly exhausted, she dropped her forehead in her palms and leaned against him for support as energy flowed from her limbs in a rush. His arms engulfed her, supporting her weight, and she was grateful.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was thready.
“I needed to speak to you about the detective.”
“Nick?” Trying to clear her vision, she blinked. Remembering Emily might be lost on the beach, she jerked out of Rafael’s arms and took a step toward the Heathcote cottage. “I need to check on Lily’s mother.”
“I just see her.” He grabbed her elbows, put his thumbs under her chin and angled her face to the moon that had reappeared from behind the mist. “She is fine, but you, I think, are not.” He swung her up into his arms and she grabbed his shirt, her head whirling like a Catherine wheel on the Fourth of July.
Rafael carried her over the dune and set her on the gravel lane running between the cottages. His handling was clinical, not intimate or inappropriate the way he’d acted before Tracy Good had been murdered. Stars twinkled against midnight velvet, but Susie was pretty sure it was her eyesight and not the solar system.
“Thank you,” she said, grabbing on to his arm as she swayed.
“Nenhum problema.” Those usually laughing eyes were flat, the mobile mouth a slash of formality.
But she didn’t care as long as she could get warm and change into dry clothes.
“I have made errors in my life, Dr. Cooper.”
“Susie,” she corrected. She could barely concentrate on what he was saying, but she was glad his conscience had picked this precise moment to bring him out here because she didn’t know if she’d have made it otherwise. “Call me Susie and we can talk later.”
He half carried her along the footpath and she was grateful to see her cottage with Rafael’s car parked outside. She wanted to get home, sink into a hot tub and succumb to misery.
“Were you on the beach?” she asked. They were almost at the door. She could taste safety, Percocet and solitude.
“No, I just get there when I find you. Give me your keys.” He held out his hand as they crunched along the gravel path.
Susie grappled at her chest and realized the lanyard with her keys on it was missing. It must have fallen off when she took a head dive into the rock.
“I must have lost them.” Her voice got all high-pitched as if she was about to cry. She glanced toward Lily’s cottage, but remembered Nick had swiped the spare set she kept there. Stupid tears flooded her eyes.
Rafael hugged her and maneuvered her to the passenger side of his car. “I take you to the hospital. They check your head, sim?”
Susie laughed, wiped the tears from her eyes. She needed her head checked all right. And she’d contact Nick in town and get her keys back. It would be okay. Everything would work out. Rafael grabbed a blanket from the backseat and draped it over her shoulders.
“You need to se secar…merda. I no find the words.” He waved his hands in frustration. “Get dry.”
Susie frowned at her wet clothes, her brain sluggish. “But I don’t have any clothes.”
He tucked the blanket carefully over her lap, ran around the car and jumped in the driver’s seat. “No worry. I know where to get some.” The headlights came on when he started the engine. He slammed his foot on the accelerator and the car jerked forward with a machinegun spray of grit. Susie should have been scared. As it was she just smiled.
Hospital lights never flattered, but right now Susie Cooper looked like the It girl for battered women. The absence of makeup was glaring, her skin pallid except for a massive bump on her forehead.
Lily pressed her lips together and swung her legs beneath her chair. She’d needed to get out of the house, even if the hospital’s A & E at midnight was not her idea of a good time. She’d left her mother in a drug-flavored sleep, but she needed to get back soon just in case she woke up. They’d been here for hours. She might have been sympathetic if she hadn’t been choking on her own personal humiliation. Why had she kissed Nick? How could she ever face him again? Hot nausea roiled through her belly whenever she thought of losing him.
Rafael sat beside her, muscles on show in a form-fitting T-shirt, his beautiful bronze skin looking warm even though it was freezing outside. He was annoyed with her too. She’d got him into serious bother with the police. Damn. Nothing in her life was going right. Her eyes felt gritty when she closed them.
“I’m sorry I lied to Nick and got you in trouble.” She covered her mouth with her hand, not used to being wrong. When she opened her eyes Rafael was staring down his nose at her with an expression as frigid as a clear arctic day. Flirty-boy was gone, replaced by a stone-faced Adonis with a social conscience. He turned back to watch Susie as she answered more questions at the A & E desk, like some Labrador pup watching its master.
“Look.” Lily’s voice rose in temper. “I lied because I didn’t think you killed Tracy.” No reaction. He went on ignoring her, so she raised her voice even more. “And I’m sure you didn’t rape that girl in Brazil.”
Heads jerked in their direction as he swiveled around. “Merda, Lily! Why you say that?”
Most of the girls she’d known at fourteen would have found Rafael highly fuckworthy. But he hardly needed the reassurance of words when hot and hungry eyes followed him everywhere.
“Tell me what happened,” she urged him.
His eyelids drooped and he slouched back against the uncomfortable chair. “De noite todos os gatos são pardos.” He laughed, but it was a small bitter sound. He translated the idiom. “At night all cats are gray.” He shrugged again, searching for words. “It is easy to make mistake.”
“Did you know she was jailbait?”
His eyes flashed like the sun glinting off the ocean. “Não. Her mouth was much, much older.” Anger faded into a dissolute edge.
“Was she a hooker?”
Rafael’s eyes crawled over her with a slow probing look that wasn’t at all flattering. She shivered.
“In Brazil, girls can be sold into prostitution by their parents. Others do it to eat.” He looked toward Susie. The stubble darkened his jaw, turning the boy into a man. “I no go with prostitutes, but I make one mistake and the last three years have been the diabólico.” His eyes jabbed her. “And it was only after I meet you I figure out what was wrong with me.”
“What?” Stunned, Lily met his gaze. What could she have taught a guy like Rafael Domenici?
&
nbsp; His voice dropped to softness. “I use sex as punishment.”
Lily stiffened, but Rafael touched her cheek in a petal-soft caress.
“Not physical punishment. But inside me.” He picked up her hand and pressed the palm to his heart. “Every time I had sex it was for revenge, not because I wanted it, but because I needed to get rid of the—” he lifted his hands in the air, still holding hers as he searched for the right words, “—anger? Pain? Merda.”
Lily bit her lip and pulled her hand away, glad she hadn’t succumbed to the obvious temptation of Rafael’s red-hot Brazilian flesh.
“I had no one to trust. No friends. Until you.” Rafael’s eyes shone with sentiment, and Lily swallowed and looked away.
Susie sent them a punchy smile from across the waiting area, leaning against the desk wearing black sweats that reached her calves and a hooded sweatshirt with Black Sabbath plastered on the front. Lily winced. She’d been acting like a bitch because she’d screwed up her own relationship with Nick and wanted someone to blame. The problem with Susie was she was so bloody nice Lily wanted to kick her.
She sighed. It wasn’t Susie’s fault Nick had given Lily grief. Knowing Nick’s M.O., Susie Cooper was heading for a nosedive into heartbreak any day now. Lily had been dumped by enough lesser men to know it stung. That’s why she usually did the dumping herself. And why it was better she and Rafael stayed just good friends.
Susie wobbled unsteadily toward them and Lily stood. “I should have brought my car.” She frowned because now Rafael would have to drop her back home and it was late and he looked knackered.
“You take my car.” He put a hand on her shoulder, his fingers absently massaging her tense muscles. “Dr. Cooper can stay at my house tonight and we find her keys amanhã. Tomorrow.”
Sea of Suspicion Page 21