She nodded. “I can see that. Except...doesn’t it bother you?”
“No, my memories are mostly good ones, you know. Dad never let me into the house until it had been cleaned up.”
Gabby remembered. She had a vague memory of staying in a hotel, something their family never did. Summer vacations were spent camping. She couldn’t remember how long they’d been in the hotel, but she thought at least a week, on top of her hospital stay. Now she guessed the crime scene tape had stayed up for a few days, and afterward...she didn’t remember Dad leaving her and Ric, so maybe he’d hired someone to eradicate any remaining evidence of his wife’s gory death. Still, wouldn’t you think he’d have been reluctant to go home?
She sure was. She’d had hysterics when they’d first returned home. The flash of memory startled her. She’d forgotten her terror.
“Where were you when Mom was killed?” she asked. “Were you in a sports camp or something?”
He flinched, then croaked, “No.” He put down his fork. “That’s...the worst part for me. I guess I never told you. Dad never knew.”
“Told me what?”
Shame infused his voice. “I didn’t want you to know.”
Unnerved, she waited.
“I was supposed to be home. Do you remember Paul Olsen?”
Supposed to be home. Suddenly short of breath, Gabby couldn’t help wondering. If Ric had been there, what would have changed? If the killer had known someone else was in the house, he might not have come in at all, or he might have left without hurting her mother.
Hurting. There was the king of euphemisms.
Or he might have killed Ric, too. Her noisy, nearly hyperactive brother would never have instinctively hidden, the way she did.
Ric reached for her hand. “Gabby?”
“I...” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
He repeated himself.
“Paul was blond, right?” she asked him.
“Yeah, that was him. Still is, actually. I was at his house, but Mom had told me to be home for lunch. Only, we got this great idea and rode our bikes to the river with a couple of other guys who sneaked away, too.”
Her eyes widened. Her eight-year-old brother hadn’t been banned from crossing the street, like she was, but he’d had strict limits. The river was at least a mile from home, and to go there without adult supervision...
“You’d have been in so much trouble.”
“Yeah.” He rolled his shoulders. “We got back to Paul’s, and his mother fed us lunch. She thought we’d been down the street at Jeff’s. Mom hadn’t even called. I thought she’d forgotten.” His eyes closed. “She didn’t call because she was dead.”
And Gabby might still have been huddled in terror in the utility room. She had no idea how long she’d stayed there before she found the courage to slip out the back door and run to old Mrs. Soriano’s house, knowing she was practically always home.
Also, Gabby hadn’t had to cross the street to get there. Mrs. Soriano lived on the same side and the same block.
“I’m sorry.” Ric’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His hand squeezed Gabby’s hard. “I’m sorrier than I can ever say. If I’d been there, like I should have been—”
“You’d probably be dead, too,” she said bluntly. “You feel guilty? Get real. You wouldn’t have had the sense to hide, and you were old enough to be the kind of witness the police couldn’t dismiss.”
“You think they dismissed you?”
“I know they did.”
“I...” He didn’t move for a long moment. He might not even have breathed. “I guess I always thought—”
“It wouldn’t have happened if you’d been there.”
“Yeah, or I could have hit the guy with my baseball bat or—” He stopped. “I had a lot of fantasies. I always did something. Mom lived, and I could have been a hero, except I’d sneaked away to break all the rules.”
“Oh, Ric.” Tears prickled in her eyes. “You have no reason to feel guilty. You couldn’t have stopped what happened. And think how much worse it would have been if Dad had lost you, too? If I’d had to watch—”
“Yeah.” Her big brother cleared his throat. “I never thought about that. I was a kid. I guess... I never got past that.”
“I don’t think I ever did, either,” she admitted, hating the way her voice broke. “A part of me got stuck in that moment.”
His eyes were wet, too. “I’ve been, too, except for me it was a different moment. It was when Mrs. Olsen saw all the police cars and an ambulance with their lights on, and decided they were on our block. She didn’t say it was my house—she probably couldn’t tell from her front porch. She tried to stop me, but I tore away, jumped on my bike and rode as fast as I could, but when I got there, a police officer grabbed me and told me I couldn’t go in. Dad must not have been there yet, or he was and I just didn’t see the car, so the officer finally drove me back to the Olsens’ house and made me promise to stay there.”
“I was at Mrs. Soriano’s.” From his nod, she saw that he knew that. “By then, I was curled into a shaking ball. I remember rocking and rocking and—” Gabby swallowed. “She tried so hard to reach me, but I think now I was somewhere else.”
“You spent a couple of days in the hospital, you know,” Ric said slowly. “It took that long before you could talk, tell the cops what you’d seen. Even after...” He frowned. “You didn’t really talk much. Before that, you were kind of a motormouth.”
“I was, wasn’t I?”
“Were you again? I mean, after you went home with Great-Aunt Isabel?”
Gabby shook her head. “I think it was years before I relaxed enough to really talk. Aunt Isabel worried—” She shook her head.
“I’ve been a butt, haven’t I?” His gaze was somber. “I wanted you to make it better, but arresting the killer wouldn’t really have made anything better, would it?”
“In a way, it would have. I’ll bet you were scared he’d come back, weren’t you?”
Rapidly shifting emotions on his face didn’t surprise her. Finally his mouth twisted. “Yeah. I never told anyone, but...yeah.”
“Also,” she said more practically, “I wouldn’t have the problem I have now.”
“You mean, having someone out to shut you up? Probably not.”
That was almost funny...but not quite.
* * *
A SINGLE DRIP fell from the man’s elbow. Her eyes followed it to the floor. Then came another, and another. Drip, drip, drip, drip. Was it raining in here? She turned her face up to the ceiling, then cringed.
Can’t move, can’t move. He’ll see me.
His arm rose and fell. Liquid sprayed upward, a fountain, only the water was a vivid red color. That was why those drips were red. Why the rivulets were scarlet against the black-and-white checkerboard floor. It went on as far as she could see. Now it was threaded with red, as if she could see its veins. Did floors have veins? she wondered.
Then she quit wondering anything, because he was turning. His eyes met hers, and horror flared to life inside her—
* * *
GASPING, GABBY BOLTED AWAKE. Oh, God—that had been the most vivid nightmare she’d had in ages. The colors... Yet it was fading already, even as she tried to hold on to it.
The floor, veined like the human body. He saw her.
The vivid shade of red.
He hadn’t really seen her. Gabby felt sure of that, or he’d have killed her, too. Dreams were most often nonsensical, combining bits and pieces of recent events or thoughts or fears, but a nightmare could also warp memories.
Dripping. What had been dripping in the dream? She was almost grateful the nightmare was slipping away. All these years, and they kept returning. Not always the same, but she knew, she knew, they were about Mom’s murder.
Shuddering
, she rolled onto her back. Her nightgown felt like a boa constrictor squeezing her. Her teeth actually chattered when she sat up to untangle the fabric. It felt chilly here in the room, probably because she was sweating and her nightgown was damp. Maybe she should just get dressed. She couldn’t imagine falling asleep again.
Gabby looked at the glowing numbers on the clock. 4:37. She’d be exhausted later in the day if she didn’t get some more sleep...except it wasn’t like anything would stop her from going to bed early tonight.
Her eye fell on the black slab of her phone lying on the end table. She’d spent a lifetime suffering the nightmares and their aftereffects in silence. Even at five and six years old, after she’d gone to live with Aunt Isabel, Gabby had never cried out aloud, never slipped from her bed to sneak into her aunt’s for comfort. She remembered telling Ric that it took years for her to be able to chatter at all normally. From the minute she’d told herself she had to be quiet in the utility room, she couldn’t make a sound, she hadn’t been able to relax and think, It’s okay now. It wasn’t okay.
Since coming back to Leclaire to get to know her brother and face her fears, she’d discovered nothing was okay. The killer was still here, not two steps away. His hands wouldn’t still be bloody—they’d look like anyone else’s—but she saw the dripping, as if out of the corner of her eye.
Blood. That’s what had been dripping.
Her arms wrapped herself as tightly as she could manage while she resisted the pull to pick up the phone. For the first time in her life, she wanted to hear someone else’s voice.
Jack’s.
She wanted his arms around her, too. She wanted him murmuring reassurances even as rage underlaid every word. He’d keep her safe.
But she didn’t reach for the phone. Couldn’t. He’d talk to her, she knew; come to her, if that’s what she wanted. But letting herself rely on someone else would only weaken her. In a few days or weeks, she’d leave town, and be alone again.
Once she was far away, these maddening nightmares would recede again, become only occasional. This one had been so shockingly real only because, thanks to Ric and even Jack, she’d been remembering.
She should be celebrating. This was the biggest reason for her visit. Those memories were coming back to her, just as she wanted.
And they were every bit as horrifying as she’d feared.
* * *
BY SATURDAY, Jack had cleared enough of his other cases to focus solely on the Ortiz murder. Given the window of opportunity, he checked out every scrap of information available from Evidence, excepting the victim’s slashed, blood-soaked garments. Those, he didn’t need to see. If he found a viable suspect, that might change; DNA recovery and tracing had come a long way, and he couldn’t imagine that the killer hadn’t cut himself, too, given his frenzy. Chances were excellent that tiny spots of blood that weren’t Colleen Ortiz’s would be found. At the moment, that wouldn’t be helpful. Sure, the DNA could be entered into online databases to search for a forensic hit or even offender match—but Jack didn’t believe for a second that this killer would be found there. He hadn’t been a wandering serial killer. Colleen had known him.
The murder weapon wasn’t here, either, presumably because the killer had brought it with him and taken it away when he was done. No knife with the right kind of blade had been missing from the Ortiz kitchen.
Most of this, he’d already accessed on his computer, but it was past time to look for holes in the original investigation. He was determined to dig deeper, starting with anything that hadn’t been included in reports. Tapes of interviews had been transcribed, but he’d listen to them anyway. There could be a scrap of paper with a forgotten bit of information from a phone conversation. He wanted to see who, besides his father, had been even briefly considered to be a suspect. Why hadn’t there been other witnesses? Hadn’t a single neighbor within earshot of what had to be terrible screams been home?
He plunged in, impervious to the comings and goings and voices of surrounding coworkers.
After the murder, of course, neighbors at least a block in every direction had been canvassed.
Nobody had seen the killer come or go. Except for a couple of seniors, people in the nearest houses had been at work, kids in summer camps or daycare. The old lady Gabby had run to didn’t have good vision, and had been five houses away. The old guy next door—the same one who snatched Gabby from the path of the speeding car—had been napping. He’d heard what must have been the screams and was only annoyed, figuring they came from the teenagers at a house behind him who had been playing loud music, partying, yelling and generally making a nuisance of themselves that summer while their parents were at work.
The greatest mystery was how the killer had left the house without leaving a trail of blood and bloody footprints. He hadn’t gone out through the garage, thank God, because if he had he’d have passed through the utility room and been inches from the little girl hiding under a sheet. Instead, he must have used the back door.
Speculation at the time—and Jack wouldn’t argue—was that the killer had parked at the side of the house. Raul Ortiz owned a small utility trailer kept in the backyard, hidden behind gates in the fence. But a dirt lane from the street led to those gates. The killer’s vehicle would have been a lot less visible there, unless the old man next door had looked out the window in his garage—which he hadn’t.
But why hadn’t the guy left bloody footprints on his way out? Some remnants of blood were found in the kitchen sink, but not in large quantities. There was no hint he’d gone upstairs or taken a shower.
Jack brooded over the problem for a few minutes. Something like coveralls was the obvious answer. A Tyvek suit, hood off when he entered, pulled over his head to protect himself from blood spatter as he stabbed the victim. Or even the kind of coveralls workers sometimes wore, paired with rubber boots, say. Strip it all off, bundle it into a plastic bag, and walk out.
But Gabby had said the man wore blue. Had both the coveralls and the clothes he wore beneath been blue?
Frowning, Jack continued.
A woman named Margaret Vaughn had lived across the street from the Ortiz home. She’d been shopping the afternoon of the murder, but she’d reported seeing a man in a blue uniform ringing the doorbell the day before the murder. He’d caught her eye mainly because he wasn’t carrying a clipboard, a package or any equipment, and he’d knocked after there was no response to the doorbell. Even then, she didn’t think anything about it; his van was parked in the driveway, and she’d been sure it had a business name emblazoned on the side. Cowan something, she thought.
If Margaret Vaughn hadn’t witnessed Jack’s father on the Ortiz doorstep, his life wouldn’t have been ruined.
How could Jack blame her, though? That was exactly the kind of tidbit that led to arrests.
He perused notes from multiple interviews, mostly with other men who’d been at the house previously. The investigators had favored friends of Raul and Colleen. They’d spoken to an insurance agent who’d come out to give them a quote. One of the detectives commented that Raul seemed to handle most repairs around the house. The furnace seemed to be an exception.
Finally, Jack plugged in the tape player he’d borrowed from the tech gurus and began listening to interviews. He jotted notes on what his father said in several interviews then. It had stayed consistent. How much of it would Dad remember now?
Only then, with deep reluctance, did he pop in the tape labeled Gabriella Ortiz #1.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hearing the small, high, faltering voice made him feel as if he’d swallowed battery acid.
Jack couldn’t help noticing that Gabby sounded even younger than she’d actually been, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Reverting after trauma was a typical response in a child, one that investigators should have kept in mind.
The first interviewer, a detective named
Scott Hudson who was long since retired, had tried to sound sympathetic, but Jack suspected he didn’t have any children of his own, because he wasn’t good at it.
“Mommy looked so scared,” four-year-old Gabby whispered. “I didn’t know why.”
“Was the man already there when she looked scared?”
Silence. Jack’s gaze dropped to the transcript, where someone had noted: (Nodded)
“Did your mommy let the man in through the front door?”
(Confusion)
“Did you see the man come into the house?” A hint of irritation was creeping into Detective Hudson’s voice.
“Uh-uh. I heard Mommy yelling. Like when she’s mad at Ric.”
“Your brother.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you hear what she said?”
“I... I don’t know.” Gabby was whispering again.
“Can you try to remember?” Hudson asked more aggressively.
“She said ‘What’re you doing here?’”
“That’s it?”
(Hunched. Teeth chattering)
Jack paused the tape, rolled his head, then his shoulders. He’d seen her hunch over like that. That time at the restaurant. Her teeth weren’t chattering, but...damn. That wasn’t hard to picture.
Hudson pressed her harder about what she’d heard and got nothing. Finally, he shifted to, “What did the man look like?”
The chattering teeth could be heard on the tape, unless Jack was imagining things, followed by a tiny whisper. “I don’t know.”
He finally extracted from her the information Jack already knew, that the man had blue pants and shirt.
By that time Gabby was crying. Hudson had to give up.
Bothered by something he couldn’t put a finger on, Jack rewound the tape. In attempting to get a description, the detective said, “The man must have walked right by the doorway into the utility room. Close to you.”
(Shaking)
“You could see what he was wearing.”
Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 45