by Diana Palmer
“He’s just a helpless old cat,” she said.
“No need to explain. I used to have a cat, myself.”
“What happened to it?”
He didn’t like the memory. “I had to give it away. I was transferred to another city and the apartment didn’t allow cats.”
“That’s sad.”
“There was a little girl next door who loved cats. I gave it to her.”
She wanted to know about him, about his past. But she sensed that he was very much like her; he didn’t talk about himself.
She was noticing other things. He smelled of a nicely masculine aftershave. He smelled of soap, too. He was a fastidious man. His shirts were always starched and pressed, his boots highly polished. His skin was olive tan, and his eyes were dark and mysterious. He had high cheekbones and a sensuous mouth.
The thought embarrassed her. She hadn’t thought of a mouth being sensuous before. And she was having some odd sensations because of the way he was holding her, so that one of her breasts was almost flattened against his broad chest. Her heartbeat accelerated, and her breath came unsteadily past her lips.
He felt those reactions in her with an odd sense of pride. She was afraid of men but she was vulnerable with him.
He carried her into the house and put her down in an easy chair. “Do you have an Ace bandage?”
She gave him a wide-eyed look. “And what would I be doing with an Ace bandage?” she asked reasonably.
“Good question.” He eyed her calmly. “We could manage with some gauze and adhesive tape, I suppose.”
“Nobody normal uses that on cuts,” she pointed out. “We have Band-Aids.”
He pursed his lips. “We could use an old pair of panty hose.”
“I don’t wear…”
He held up a hand. “Please. I have problems discussing women’s underthings.”
At first she took it seriously, and then she saw the twinkle in his dark eyes and she started laughing.
The action made her face glow, emphasized the softness of her gray eyes and the beauty of her perfect skin and pretty mouth. He found himself staring down at her helplessly. Her hair was up in a high ponytail. He wanted to take it down and see if it felt as silky as it looked.
“Well, you’re going to have to come home with me,” he said. “I’m sure Miss Turner can find something to bind your ankle with.”
“I’ve only just come back home,” she pointed out.
“And Wilbur has to be fed.”
He shrugged. “I’ll feed Wilbur.”
“I suppose I could leave him inside,” she began. “I just bought a litter box…”
He left her in midsentence to attend to the old tomcat, who came right in when he opened the front door and led him to the kitchen.
HE HELPED GRACE into his car, leaning over her to fasten her seat belt. He noticed her breathing changed as he came close, and his gaze suddenly dropped to meet hers in the glare of the top light. It was like lightning striking. His dark eyes narrowed and fell to her full mouth, lingering there until he heard a faint gasp come out of her throat.
He had to force himself to stand up. He closed her door and moved around the car, reciting silent multiplication tables to himself as he got in beside her and started the car. It really had been a long, dry spell, if this frumpy woman was arousing him, he told himself.
He carried her into the house, pausing to ring the doorbell and wait for Miss Turner to answer it. He looked down into Grace’s face and felt his arms involuntarily drawing her closer. She shivered, once, and her hands stole up around his neck as she met the open curiosity of his gaze.
His chest rose and fell heavily. His jaw tautened. He looked at her mouth and felt an insane fever to take it under his and devour it.
Grace didn’t understand much about men, but even in her innocence she felt the heat and sensuality of that look, and her body responded to it helplessly.
“Playing with fire, little girl,” he whispered gruffly.
The tension in his deep, velvety voice rippled through her like liquid fire. Her hands tightened behind his neck. She actually lifted toward him in the few explosive seconds before the sound of the front door opening split them quickly apart.
“What in the world…!” Miss Turner exclaimed when she saw Grace being carried.
“She tripped while she was chasing a coyote with a stick,” Garon muttered, brushing past her with Grace. “I need an Ace bandage.”
“I’ll go get one. I keep them for the men,” she murmured, retreating as he headed for the living room. “Somebody’s always spraining something. Chasing a coyote?!”
“He was trying to eat my cat,” Grace called.
“He’d throw him right back up,” Garon returned as he put her quickly down on the sofa. “Your cat looks like five miles of rough road, and he stinks.”
“He does not!” she exclaimed.
“Well, you can take my word for it that nothing sane would try to eat him,” he retorted.
He put his hands in his pockets and stared down at her with confusion. She was wearing baggy jeans and that same pink sweatshirt. He wondered what she’d look like in black lace and silk. He blinked, hard. Where had that odd curiosity come from?
Miss Turner was back in a flash with the bandage. She handed it to Garon. “Are you planning to repair her and take her home, or is she staying?”
Garon knelt at her feet, opening the elastic bandage. He looked up at Grace with a fever of hunger. He didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t fight it, either. “She’s staying,” he murmured, lifting her foot onto his thigh. “For a few days, at least.”
“But, my job…”
“I’ll phone Judy at the florist for you, Grace,” Miss Turner said, delighted.
“You can’t work if you can’t walk,” Garon agreed. “Just a couple of days off your feet should do the trick. Rest, ice packs, compression and elevation. RICE,” he added, smiling. “We’ll take good care of you.”
She didn’t even have the will to resist. She wanted to be with him. It was going to end in tragedy, she knew it. But she couldn’t help herself. “Okay,” she said.
He smiled to himself. Fevers were best allowed to burn themselves out, he thought, and refused to think any deeper than that.
HE WENT TO WORK the next day, leaving Grace propped up in bed with plenty of reading material and Miss Turner for company. The ice packs had reduced the swelling, and the rest was helping as well.
“I feel much better,” Grace told the older woman.
“A couple more days and you’ll be walking,” was her reply. She smiled. “I think you’re getting to the boss,” she added on a chuckle. “Only a week ago, he’d have had Coltrain admit you to the hospital.”
“He just feels sorry for me,” Grace said, not getting her hopes up. “That niece of Mrs. Tabor’s brought food to the house,” she said. “She told me that she’d worried I was some sort of competition until she saw me. She was very insulting.”
“You should tell the boss.”
“No,” Grace returned. “I couldn’t. She must have something going with him.”
“An invitation to a party,” Miss Turner replied. “He may find her interesting, but she isn’t the proper sort of companion for a man in his position. Law enforcement types tend to be extra conservative. She’s being gossiped about all over town, and not in a good way. The woman’s a nymphomaniac. She doesn’t even stop at married men.”
“What do you mean?”
“They say she made a play for Leo Hart, and Tess walked right up to her in Andy Webb’s office and told her she’d tar and feather her if she ever made a move on her husband again. Andy’s still laughing about it.”
“What did she say?”
“There was nothing she could say. Tess was furious, and she didn’t lower her voice any, either. I wouldn’t say the woman was embarrassed, exactly, but Calhoun Ballenger was walking past the office when Tess said it, and he gave the woman a look that meant tro
uble. She got out of Tess’s way real fast.”
Grace couldn’t resist a smile. Redheaded Tess was a tiger when she lost her temper.
GARON AND MARQUEZ had gone together to the outskirts of the city to interview, among many others, a witness who said he saw a shadowy figure take the child out of her house late one night. Garon had a BlackBerry, like Marquez’s. It came in handy here.
“Couldn’t swear to it,” the witness, Sheldon, told them. He lived next door to the child who had been abducted. “But he looked sort of like a drifter I saw near the computer shop in town. I write software,” he added in a lazy tone. “The man was tall, thin, completely bald on top. Middle-aged. He looked dirty. And he limped.”
“Could you see the child?” Garon asked.
He shrugged. “He was carrying something. It could have been a bundle of clothes for all I know. I was up late. I went to the kitchen for water, and there he was. It wasn’t until the next morning that I heard the child was missing. I did tell the police.”
“Yes, we had the patrolman’s report,” Marquez replied. He gave the man a long, steady scrutiny, noting his gloves. “Why do you wear gloves in the house?” he asked.
“I had an accident when I was a child,” the man replied, his eyes growing cold. “I have scars on them. People stare.”
“Sorry,” Marquez said.
“Can you type like that?” Garon queried, noting how very white the wrists were above the gloves.
“Yes, they’re kid leather, very thin.”
“Well, thanks,” Garon said, putting away his BlackBerry.
“Anytime,” he replied, rising from his chair. He was a tall, timid sort of man who seemed to like the best computers money could buy. He had two, a base computer and an expensive laptop. He said he had a girlfriend, but he lived alone in the small apartment complex just inside the San Antonio city limits.
“How long have you lived here?” Marquez asked.
“About a year,” he said. He smiled pleasantly. “I don’t stay one place much. I get restless. And my job is portable. All I really need is a post office.”
“Well, thanks again. If you think of anything else, give us a call,” Marquez added, handing him a business card.
The man looked at it curiously. “Sure. Sure I will.” He smiled oddly. “How’s the case coming? Any leads?”
“We’re hoping you might have given us one,” Marquez said.
“I can see how you’d need help finding this guy,” he remarked. “You cops aren’t required to have much education, are you? I was invited to join MENSA.”
MENSA, the organization for geniuses. Garon gave the man an odd look. “Were you?”
“Hey, I might only have two years of college, but the Fed here—” Marquez indicated Garon “—he’s got a degree.”
The man stared at Garon without blinking. It was disconcerting. “Fed?”
“Sure,” Marquez said. “He’s FBI.”
“I…I didn’t know they’d called the Bureau in on this case,” the man stammered.
“We requested his help,” Marquez said. He didn’t say why.
The man looked less confident. “Well, of course, the FBI would have experts on serial murder,” he murmured, almost to himself, “and you’d need one for this case.”
Garon frowned. “Why do you think this case is a serial killing?”
The man laughed hollowly. “No reason. It’s just, there was a very similar case in the papers last year sometime. That was a child, too. It was in Texas somewhere. Two of them would make it serial, wouldn’t it?”
Garon stared at him. “We’re not prepared to call it that just yet.”
The man was all smiles as he walked them out. “Anything more I can do, I’ll be here. Just ask.”
Marquez and Garon left, walking slowly back to the Bureau car that Garon had driven here in. The man watched them leave, waving again as they got into the car and pulled away.
“I don’t like him,” Marquez said suddenly.
“Why not?”
Marquez shifted, adjusting his seat belt. “I don’t know. There’s something about him. Something not right.”
Garon gave him a curious look. “How long have you worked homicide?”
“Four years. Why?”
Garon smiled to himself. “You carry a gun with you when you empty your trash can.”
Marquez’s eyes widened. “How the hell did you know that?”
“You keep one by the bed, one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen and you wear a spare in an ankle holster.”
“Who’s being investigated here?” the younger man demanded.
“I’m right. You know I am.”
Marquez made a rough sound in his throat. “They aren’t catching me off guard,” he said firmly.
“You need to work in another area for a while,” he commented. “Too many homicides will burn you out.”
“And you’d know this, how?”
“I was in the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, and then in SWAT,” he said. “I wanted something to keep my mind busy. But I saw too many dead people. I woke up one night with a victim sitting in the chair beside my bed, asking why I didn’t shoot before the kidnapper did. The victim had been a hostage.” He shrugged. “You can work homicides too long.”
Marquez laughed hollowly. “I guess so.”
“But don’t ask for a transfer until we solve this case,” Garon added. “I think you’re right about the murders being related. He’s good. He’s very good. He put the body in a field near the road, where it would be found easily. He wanted her found. If your crime scene investigator was right, she’d been tortured for some time. That means the killer has to have a place where he feels comfortable keeping a child bound, without fear of discovery. It also means he’s cocky. He thinks he’s smarter than we are.”
“Did you ever do profiling?”
Garon shook his head. “We have professionals who do that. But I’ve read the crime scene report and talked to the parents. I’ve worked serial killings before. This guy is a sadistic killer. He likes to hurt children. He gets off on their pain.”
“Organized or disorganized?”
“Organized, definitely,” Garon replied, stopping at a red light. “He took time to dress the child and even put her shoes and socks back on. He posed her at the site where she was found. He tied a red ribbon around her neck. In fact,” he added grimly, “she was likely strangled with the ribbon.”
“You think there’s a connection to the Palo Verde case?”
“Yes, and also to the Del Rio case two years ago.”
“That would make three similar child murders in three years,” Marquez said.
He nodded. “And that makes it serial murder. We’re going to drive over to Del Rio right now,” he added, making a turn. “If we can’t get anybody to talk to us on the phone or via e-mail, we’ll just drop in for coffee.”
“I’ll bet you they drink instant,” Marquez muttered.
“I’ll bet you’re right.”
In fact, they did. There was only one policeman on duty when they arrived, and he was responsible for every facet of policing.
He apologized for not answering their calls. “We’ve had a clown calling the office day and night to report ghostly apparitions,” he muttered. “The guy’s got two screws loose and every time we ignore him, he threatens us with his family’s lawyers. They’re rich, his family.” He shook his head. “It was better when we had the voodoo guy, trying to put spells on us by sticking pins in a G.I. Joe doll.”
Garon smiled despite himself. “We want to know what you’ve got on the child killing year before last.”
He frowned. “Now that’s a funny thing,” he said. “No, I don’t mean the killing was funny. There was this guy, said he was a reporter for one of the east Texas dailies. He asked to see the file on the murder. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, to have a little publicity. Might turn up a suspect. I had a call, so I left the guy with the file and told him I’d be right back. I had
to work an accident, and wait for the state police because there were injuries. By the time I got back to the office, the reporter was gone. The phone started ringing. The file was on the desk, so I just stuck it back in the cabinet and answered the phone.” He sipped coffee. “Next day, I wanted to take another look at the case, so I pulled out the file. It had ten sheets of blank paper in it. No evidence, no crime scene photos, no nothing.”
“Damn!” Marquez grumbled.
“I know, it was naïve to leave the guy alone with the file. But I figured I could track him down. I phoned every daily in east Texas.”
“He didn’t work for any newspaper,” Garon figured.
“Apparently not.”
“What was in the file?” Marquez asked.
“Crime scene photos, trace evidence, swatches of the child’s underwear.”
Garon frowned. “Nothing else?”
“Not really.”
“Did you have negatives of the photos?”
“No, but I figured the photographer would, so I phoned him.” He shook his head. “He’d had a fire in his studio and all the negatives were gone.”
Garon and Marquez looked at each other curiously. It was some coincidence, those two mishaps.
“You’re sure there was no other evidence?” Marquez persisted.
The police officer pursed his lips. “Well, yes, there was the long piece of wide silk ribbon he used to strangle her…”
“Ribbon?” Garon asked quickly. “What color?”
“Why, it was red,” the officer replied. “Blood-red.”
7
GRACE WAS SITTING IN the living room watching the news when Garon came in, tired and hungry. It was obvious that he didn’t work an average eight-hour day. In fact, FBI agents were expected to work ten-hour days, and they were paid accordingly.
He sat down in his big armchair. “What a day,” he said heavily.
“You’re still working on the little girl’s murder?” she asked.
He nodded. “That’s all I’ve done today. But my squad is trying to track down a team of bank robbers who carry automatic weapons. And on my desk, waiting, are a drive-by shooting, a gang murder, a supposed suicide and an attempted murder that the victim’s spouse hired a hit man to commit.” He glanced at her with a weary smile. “She had the bad luck to solicit an FBI agent to do the dirty deed.”