Perfect Girls: An absolutely gripping page-turning crime thriller

by Alison James

  ‘Rachel,’ Rob’s voice was gentle but very firm. She found herself picturing him talking to his children. He was probably a great father. ‘Rachel, I’ve handed the case over to the FBI. And if we can’t make this Ethan Rowe link stand up, then it’s looking like whoever filled in for Phoebe’s job on that commercial has no relevance to her killing. We’re back to the evidence against Wyburgh, and treating the murders as unconnected.’

  ‘But you know the same DNA was on the lipstick in Tiffany’s apartment,’ Rachel pleaded. ‘That proves the two cases are linked.’

  ‘Only if the DNA testing was one hundred per cent accurate, and on a potentially contaminated sample like the lipstick, we can’t be sure. Very occasionally, DNA results are wrong.’

  ‘Rob, can’t we at least have this conversation face to face in Washington?’

  ‘Rachel… I’d be happy to see you; you know I would. I’m just not sure it would achieve anything. I think we’ve reached the end of the road on this one.’

  Rachel screwed her eyes tight and counted to three to slow her breathing. ‘I’m heading back to DC tomorrow anyway, so please just think about it. Okay?’ She hung up before he could refuse her again.

  * * *

  After a shower and some food, Rachel felt calmer. She sat down with her laptop and composed an email to Mike Perez in the hope that he, at least, would still be willing to help her. Then, after checking the time in London, she did something she had been wanting to do for a while. She video-called Brickall.

  He was at home in his flat, eating pizza and watching a Champions League match.

  ‘Well, well, look who the digital cat dragged in.’ He muted the TV, but continued eating the pizza. ‘How’s life being AWOL?’

  ‘There’s no WOL; that would imply ‘Without Leave’, you moron. I’m on leave.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Brickall took another bite of pizza, sword-swallowing the long, greasy strands of mozzarella.

  ‘What’s that?’ enquired Rachel. ‘Let me guess – ham and pineapple with extra chilli?’ Brickall’s love of spice was extended to the blandest of foods.

  ‘Quattro formaggi, actually. With extra chilli. Hang on a minute.’ He vanished from shot and reappeared with a can of lager.

  ‘How are things?’ Rachel asked. ‘Have you seen Shaun Rawlings again?’

  Brickall shrugged. ‘Not recently. But that doesn’t mean anything. I’m just trying not to think about the little scrote… So what’s going on over there? You’d only be phoning me if you wanted something. And if you’d cracked the case you wouldn’t want anything. So you can’t have cracked the case.’

  He leaned back and swigged from his can, looking pleased with this analysis of the status quo.

  ‘I’m bloody close actually. I’ve managed to narrow the potential field of perps from the population of one of the biggest countries in the world to a handful.’

  Brickall frowned. ‘How the fuck did you manage that, Prince?’

  ‘Hold on, let me send you a visual aid.’ She took a photo of the family tree and sent it to him from her phone. ‘This will help you make sense of what I’m talking about.’

  She ran through the familial DNA match with Ethan Rowe, and her encounters with the female relatives she had found so far.

  ‘So it’s not Rainey – about to give birth. Or Harland – overweight, a bit of a cripple and dead plain. Or Kaydance – in prison during the critical time period.’

  Brickall consulted the family tree. ‘Brianna?’

  ‘She’s a teenager. Hardly seems likely she could pull off something like this.’

  Brickall nodded. ‘Probably, but look at her anyway.’

  ‘I wondered if Lynette, Norma’s allegedly childless daughter, had a baby no one knows about. I’ve asked my contact at the LAPD to check.’

  ‘More cousins seem a possibility. Raymond Rowe could easily have siblings. Any number of them. So there could definitely be female cousins on the dad’s side. Or he could have had other children we don’t know about, given he was putting it about a bit.’

  Rachel dropped her chin onto her hand with a sigh. ‘True. Problem is, it will take time to trace them and they could be anywhere. Realistically, I can’t do much about it in less than forty-eight hours.’

  ‘And you’ve got to be back for your promotion board next Tuesday,’ said Brickall cheerfully, tearing a chunk off his pizza. ‘So basically you’re stuffed.’

  ‘Thanks a lot. Very validating.’

  ‘Seriously though, Prince –’ Rachel was sensitive to his changed tone of voice. Thanks to their long-standing partnership she could tell when Brickall’s brain was engaged – ‘If you phoned me because you want my advice—’

  ‘It was hardly to admire your face.’

  ‘What does your gut tell you?’

  ‘To talk to Harland Rowe again.’

  ‘Well listen to your gut; that’s what you always tell me. She’s told you a load of porkies to keep you away from her sister. Who is a criminal. Why, that’s what I’m wondering. Is there someone else with links to both of them that she’s shielding?’

  ‘I might as well. She’s just up the road from where I am now. I don’t need to catch another bloody plane.’

  ‘She’s hiding something: that much is obvious. Maybe something she knows about cousins on her father’s side of the family? At the very least, before you get your arse back here you need to try and find out if that’s the case.’

  Rachel nodded slowly. She had been thinking the same thing; she just needed to hear someone confirm her hunch.

  ‘So do what you can, and at least you have a chance of returning with some questions answered. And when you become a Detective Chief Inspector, this will all be a dim and distant memory.’

  ‘Thanks, Mark.’

  ‘And don’t be late on Monday morning or Patten’ll have yet another baby. And not in a good way.’

  There was a strangled electronic gurgle as he cut the connection.

  A few seconds later, an email alert appeared on her screen.

  From: Mike Perez

  To: Rachel Prince

  What a smart cookie you are, Prince-ess. I’ve been through a heap of birth records, and it turns out that Lynette Starling did indeed have a daughter, twenty-six years ago. The baby was given up for adoption. Now known as Melody Burr, and living in Colorado Springs. So she would also be Ethan Rowe’s first cousin. Hope this helps. Sincerely, Mike.

  Colorado Springs. That rang a bell. Something Paulie had said the first time she visited CasaMia. Heather Kennedy had used an address there. Excited, she ran a Google search on Melody Burr.

  About 295,000 results.

  This was someone who was hiding in plain sight. And someone whose exposure instantly ruled her out. Melody Burr’s Instagram account announced her as a ‘Plus Size Model and Body Positivity Icon’. A stream of images spilled onto the screen, of a stunningly pretty redhead with huge blue eyes, blowing kisses and seducing the camera. There she was in a burlesque corset, a fifties prom dress, even naked apart from a coyly draped sheet. And she must have weighed getting on for 300 pounds.

  She moved on to searching for Rainey’s younger sister Brianna, but all she found was an unremarkable teen’s social media activity, full of dental retainers, Snapchat flower crowns and torrid crushes. From the banal commentary posted by her and her friends, this was no sociopathic criminal.

  Rachel snapped her laptop shut and lay back on the bed with her eyes closed. She was too disheartened to email Perez and thank him, even though his help had been invaluable throughout her wild goose chase. The light was fading outside; another day almost over. There was just Friday and part of Saturday left before she went back to London. She could give up now and try and enjoy the rest of her time. Drive to Washington and do some sightseeing, with or without Rob’s help.

  Or she could listen to her gut.

  She grabbed her bag and headed out to the car park.

  * * *

  The apartment bl
ock was peaceful, as the residents settled in for their evening. The parking lot was almost full, and there were lights on in most windows. A faint murmur of TV sets was carried out on the evening breeze, along with the smells of dinner cooking. The lobby area was quiet, the doorman gone, leaving a security light on in his booth.

  Rachel walked up the fire exit stairs, not wanting the pinging of the elevator bell to announce her arrival, and tiptoed the length of the corridor. There was light visible under Harland’s door, and the almost imperceptible sound – more a sense – of someone moving about. She pressed the button to the right of the door and heard the electronic ‘ding-dong’ inside. There was no response, although the moving stopped. This time she rapped smartly on the door. Nothing.

  ‘Harland!’ she called. ‘It’s Rachel Prince. I need to speak to you.’

  As she had anticipated, she was ignored.

  ‘Please, I need to ask you some more about Kaydance.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Why did you lie to me?’ she shouted, slapping the door for good measure. It was solid, with no handle, only a couple of heavy duty deadlocks. As a police officer, assessing front doors became second nature, and this would need either a battering ram or a set of keys. Without either, all she could do was head for the elevator.

  There were two women in fitness gear waiting to get in when it arrived on the ground floor. They were engaged in animated chat about their recent trip to the gym, smiling briefly at Rachel as they passed her, then continuing their conversation. Once the elevator had gone, the lobby was deserted. Rachel peered through the glass entrance doors, but could see no one heading into the building.

  Moving quickly, she tried the door of the security booth. It was locked. Of course. Her twenty years in the police force had pitted her against hundreds of locked doors. She pulled her Swiss Army knife from her bag and selected the reamer tool.

  You need two things to pick a lock, her old sergeant had told her when she was a rookie constable. A straight pin to poke at the tumblers and a tension wrench to twist the plug to the shear line. He had shown her how a reamer, which was designed to stitch leather, would act as a pin, while the hook tool would act as a wrench. She had carried a Swiss Army knife with her ever since.

  This was a flimsy partition door, and the lock a basic one, so it took her no more than twenty seconds. The drawer under the desk was also locked. As she reached for her knife again, a man walked in through the lobby door. He was distracted by his phone screen long enough for Rachel to duck down below the front window of the booth. From her squatting position, she prised the locked drawer open, and once he had gone, clambered to her feet again. The drawer was full of spare keys, but they were all jumbled up, and the paper labels attached to them so faded they were hard to decipher. It was going to take time to sort through them, so Rachel crouched out of sight on the floor and used the torch on her phone to help her read the faded pencil marks.

  Eventually she found it. 714. Harland’s apartment. She switched off the torch, closed the door of the booth and used the reamer to lock it again. Then she sauntered out of the lobby and walked to where her car was parked. If Harland Rowe wouldn’t open her door, then Rachel would have to do it herself.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  She’s back. The smug British cop.

  She called round a couple of days ago looking for Kaydance. Kaydance? Don’t make me laugh. As if she could pull this off. The girl’s way too dumb, and too flaky. Anyhow, she came back to the apartment demanding to talk to me. I pretended not to be in. Not that she was fooled by that, but it bought me a little time. Time to think about how to handle things when she comes back. Which she will.

  Time to decide what to do with her.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Rachel’s plan for Friday was the essence of compromise.

  She would check out of the hotel, stow her luggage in the car and make a last detour to the apartment complex in an attempt to probe the undiscovered branches of the Rowe family tree. Just for her own satisfaction. And to do as Brickall had instructed; follow what her gut was telling her.

  Then she would be content to admit that Rob was right, and that this was the end of the road, and she would hit the interstate to Washington DC in readiness for her flight the following evening. She would return to work and go through her DCI promotion assessments, having first feasted on the generous helping of humble pie which would no doubt be served up by both Brickall and Patten. There was a point at which a wild goose chase became less wild and more goose, and she had reached it.

  She already knew from the helpful doorman that Harland left at 8.55 every morning, so Rachel reasoned that if she arrived soon after 9 a.m., apartment 714 would be empty but there would be enough commuter footfall through the lobby for her to blend in. She left her bag in the boot of the car and took just her phone and the spare keys to Harland’s apartment.

  Sure enough, there were several people waiting to talk to the doorman about Amazon packages and dry-cleaning deliveries when she entered the building at 9.10, so nobody paid any attention as she called the elevator and went upstairs.

  ‘Hello?’

  She called out as she unlocked the door, but as expected there was no reply. The apartment was as bland and orderly as the last time, and smelled of cleaning fluid and air freshener. In the kitchen, the breakfast dishes had been cleared and the counters wiped down. The dishwasher was sloshing quietly, and the tumble dryer hummed. Rachel went into Harland’s bedroom. The bed was made with starched blush-pink linen, smoothed and plumped like a hotel bed. There was nothing on the bedside tables, and only a hairbrush and a tube of hand cream on the dresser. The closet was half empty, with just a modest collection of elasticated waist trousers, tops and cardigans in size XL. A beige padded anorak hung alone in a corner, with a pair of sensible fur-lined boots on the floor below it, and a small black suitcase on the shelf above it. The en suite bathroom had white sanitary ware, counter and tiles. Off-white towels and bathrobe. Basic brands of shampoo and face cream, one toothbrush. Like Phoebe’s apartment, it was giving nothing away.

  Like Phoebe’s apartment.

  To her right as she came out of the bedroom there was a guest bathroom, opposite were the doors to the living room and kitchen, and to her left there was another door. The second bedroom.

  She opened the door and stared.

  The room was a mirror image of Harland’s in layout, but the antique iron bed was covered with a gaudy quilted bedspread in burgundy satin. The dressing table was crowded with make-up, brushes, hairspray and jewellery. Several pairs of high-heeled shoes lay discarded on the carpet and there were clothes draped on the bed. This was not Harland’s room. So whose was it?

  Rachel sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed and examined the clothes. A green sequinned miniskirt, a sheer chiffon blouse, a strappy black dress with cut-out panels, all US size 6. The beauty products on the dresser would not have disgraced the collection of a professional make-up artist. There were highlighter powders and bronzers, palettes of shimmering eye shadow, primers, false lashes and hairspray; all premium brands. And a lipstick in a rose-gold tube. She twisted it up and stroked a slash of colour against her inner wrist. Orangey red.

  Tangier Nights.

  Her heart hammering in her chest, Rachel went into the walk-in closet. More clothes; sexy, glamorous size-6 clothes. Baskets full of plunging Victoria’s Secret bras and matching wispy knickers. Court shoes and strappy sandals and high-heeled boots neatly lined up against the wall. In the far corner of the top shelf there was a large black lacquer box. Rachel took it down and lifted off the lid, then stumbled back against the shelves, her head swimming with shock.

  Inside there was a keyring in the shape of a metal P. P for Phoebe.

  She waited for the pounding in her chest to subside a little and looked inside the box again. A Padres baseball cap. A framed photo of Melissa Downey and Clayton Hill. A pair of burgundy Valentino T-bar courts.

  There it was: al
l of it. The key was the spare that Matt Wyburgh had given to Phoebe, the cap – from Tiffany’s local team – worn by the killer on CCTV, a photo from Melissa Downey’s apartment and the shoes. Rachel took them out and examined them. Size 9. They almost certainly belonged to Talia Schull in Boston, she of the lucky escape.

  Here was her incontrovertible proof. Harland was linked to whoever carried out the CasaMia killings. But she wasn’t operating alone, and the size-6 accomplice couldn’t possibly be her sister Kaydance. It wasn’t Rainey, or Brianna or Melody. So who the hell was it?

  Rachel waited for her breathing to calm and her detective instincts to kick in. She pulled out her phone from her trouser pocket and took photos of the souvenirs, and the lipstick, then placed the box back on the shelf. Something propelled her back to Harland’s closet, only this time she took down the black suitcase and opened it. Inside were bottles of Citranox, Tevlar suits, latex gloves.

  Slamming the case shut, she dialled Rob’s number, fingers still trembling.

  ‘I promise I’ll pick up next time…’

  He did not pick up.

  She dialled again, and again, and again; the last time leaving a message demanding he call her urgently. Then she went into the living room, where she remembered seeing a laptop on the desk. It was password protected, naturally.

  She phoned Mike Perez, and he answered on the second ring.

  ‘It’s not even the weekend yet, and you’re already—’

  She cut across him. ‘Mike, this is urgent. I’m at Harland Rowe’s apartment.’ She was speaking like a speeded-up recording, trying not to waste time. ‘And I’ve finally found the evidence. Real, not circumstantial, and—’

  It was Perez’s turn to interrupt.

  ‘Slow down.’

  ‘I’ll explain later, but for now can you tell me how to get past the password protection on a laptop? Quickly.’