Killing Jane: An Erin Prince Thriller

by Stacy Green

  “Will found her?” Carmen still held Erin’s hand. “He’s a nice man. I’m glad he found her and not some stranger. She cared for him.”

  Erin glanced at Beckett. “How serious were they?”

  “Bonnie focused on school. But he treated her really well, and she liked being with him,” Carmen said. “I could tell when he came over to meet us. Did he tell you?”

  “He did.” Erin delicately picked at the scab they’d apparently pulled off. “But he seemed to be under the impression Bonnie and Sarah were close.”

  “My brother and I had a falling out years ago.” Neil Archer’s voice sounded like gravel. The grief on his face transformed to simmering anger. “We don’t speak to them. We certainly don’t hold it against Sarah, but after the argument, the girls didn’t spend time together. It’s been years since they saw each other.”

  “I’m just trying to piece together as much of Bonnie’s life as possible.”

  If Bonnie had reconnected with her cousin, she hadn’t told her parents. She was in her mid-twenties and probably far wiser than her years. She didn’t have to tell them everything about her life. And judging from the hostility seeping through Neil, she wouldn’t have told him about her cousin.

  “Can you tell me about the falling out?”

  He glared at Erin, big hands flexing. “It’s a personal matter that happened years ago. There’s no need to discuss it. I assure you it had nothing to do with what happened to my daughter.”

  Erin decided not to push the issue—for now.

  “What about the drug use?” Beckett changed the subject. “How long did she use before getting clean?”

  “She’s been in and out of rehab since she was fifteen,” Carmen said. “She was date raped. And she just couldn’t handle the trauma.”

  Erin’s insides turned cold. Her breath shortened, and the room suddenly blazed red.

  Beckett glanced at her, a question in his eyes.

  She ducked her head. There’s no time for this. And it’s all in the past.

  Beckett turned back to the Archers. “Is there a possibility someone from her old life turned up and she tried to help them?

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Neil Archer said. “Bonnie is—was—the kindest girl. She had so much compassion. She hated seeing anyone in pain, and she wanted to help people. That’s why she wanted to be a teacher. She wanted to teach at-risk children. She’s a helper.” His voice broke again. He covered his face and unsuccessfully tried to mask his sobs.

  Carmen released Erin’s hand and wrapped her arms around her husband.

  Erin bowed her head, and she and Beckett let them cry together. The grief became an entity, taking over the house with the strength of the meanest demon. It lodged in Erin’s throat, her glands swelling as she fought off tears of her own. She needed to see her daughter.

  “Can you give us names?” Beckett handed Carmen his notebook when she finally caught her breath and pulled away from her husband. “Write down anyone you can think of that Bonnie used to know. And anyone she’s mentioned recently associating with. Any new friends at school.”

  Carmen’s knuckles turned white from her tight grip on the pen.

  Erin still believed the crime was about rage and passion and something else she had yet to figure out. She looked over Beckett’s shoulder when Carmen handed back the notebook. Three names, none of them Jane.

  “You’re sure this is all of them? Bonnie never mentioned a friend named Jane?” She didn’t look at Beckett, but she felt his eyes on her.

  “After she finished rehab, Bonnie completely started over,” Carmen said. “She kept her circle of people very tight. And she never told me much about the people in her past life. Those are the only names I know.”

  Beckett tucked the notebook into his pocket. “This is great, thank you.”

  Erin stood up, unable to sit any longer. The couple’s grief made her legs twitch. She wanted to hold Abby, smell her sweet scent. Crawl into bed with her and never let go.

  “Did Bonnie have any interest in history, specifically true crime?”

  “No,” Carmen said. “Why?”

  Erin hated to say the words. The couple already knew their daughter’s murder had been brutal. But mentioning Jack felt worse than showing them a crime scene photo.

  “Bonnie never talked about studying Jack the Ripper, maybe for a school project?” Beckett asked.

  Carmen Archer’s face twisted into an expression barely resembling a human. “Oh my God. Was she cut up like that?”

  “It’s just a question.” Beckett’s mournful voice only made Carmen cry harder.

  Neil stared as though he didn’t quite believe the news yet.

  Their pain made Erin feel helpless. Nothing she had to say would make Neil and Carmen feel any better. She set her business card on the end table. “Please call me if you think of anything else.”

  Carmen continued to sob, so Erin directed her question at Neil. “Mr. Archer, did Bonnie have anything valuable other than her television and purse? Did she have jewelry or an expensive camera or anything someone could pawn?”

  The man’s glazed eyes shifted back to them.

  Erin would never forget his stricken face.

  “Her laptop. It was a cheap eleven-inch but vital to her. That’s about it.”

  “Can you tell us the brand?” Beckett asked.

  “Dell. But she had a Wonder Woman sticker over the logo.” He covered his face with his hands, shoulders shaking.

  “Thank you,” Erin said. “We’ll let ourselves out.”

  “Wait.” Carmen Archer staggered to her feet like a drunk needing to find a bed. She went to the long table in the hall and dug around in a drawer. “Bonnie makes fun of me for still getting my pictures printed off. I like the feel of the pictures.” She swayed a little and then handed the picture to Erin. “I want you to know what she looked like in life. This was taken a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Thank you.” The picture fractured Erin’s heart. Bonnie had been a beautiful, vibrant girl. Her cornflower eyes danced, her smile genuine. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Erin shivered, the coldness unrelated to the crisp fall air. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.” Beckett fell into step next to her. “I know we’re doing our job, but I always feel like a bastard when I talk to the family.”

  The sound of Carmen Archer’s guttural crying reverberated in Erin’s head. She doubted the memory would ever fade. “Thanks for being the one to mention the Ripper.”

  Beckett leaned against the bumper of Erin’s car, expression contemplative. “So you’ve gone from thinking this killer may be a woman to believing her name is actually Jane?”

  Erin wished she had an explanation for the acidic worry leeching into her nervous system. “I don’t know what I think.”

  Beckett held up a slender finger. “Our killer likes Jack the Ripper. He’s either not interested or not capable of copycatting Jack’s crimes. But he carved the message into the rafter to pay homage to his inspiration.”

  “And then he got sloppy and left part of his research notes,” Erin finished. “I’m reading too much into the name.”

  “Bonnie’s killer planned her murder.” Beckett’s low voice matched the worry churning through Erin. “I have a hard time believing he was sloppy enough to accidentally leave that paper. He expected us to find it. But the question is whether or not he’s telling us who he—or she—truly is or if he’s leading us in circles.”

  Erin’s pulse throbbed in the back of her skull, the sensation feeling in sync with the firing of her frayed nerves. “I can’t get Jane out of my head.”

  “Don’t.” Beckett pushed away from the car and stretched. “Keep her as a possibility, because whoever did this has a taste for blood.”

  His unspoken words hung between them. If she and Beckett couldn’t find the killer, another woman would end up as a victim. And another murder meant another message.

  Beckett started walking toward his car but abr
uptly stopped. “What do you know about the BDSM scene around here?”

  Erin couldn’t resist. “You and Lucy looking to join?”

  “Not quite.” The tips of his ears turned pink.

  “Honestly, not a lot,” she said. “That’s one of the few groups you don’t see a lot of in sex crimes. Ironic, I guess.”

  “It’s a culture where pushing boundaries is acceptable as long as both partners are willing. Probably a lot healthier attitude toward life and sex than the general population has if you think about it.”

  He made a good point, Erin conceded. “There are a few clubs, mostly nightclub types. My brother’s not into BDSM, but he’s an expert on the D.C. underground,” she said, unlocking her car. “I’ll see whether he has any idea where to start. But we’ll probably have to show Bonnie’s picture around. Which may or may not get us anywhere. I’ll keep trying Sarah Archer. I hate to deliver bad news over the phone, but we might have to.”

  A yawn burst from her chest. “I’m calling uncle for tonight. You know where the medical examiner’s office is?”

  Beckett nodded. “I’ll meet you there in the morning. And maybe we’ll get lucky and wake up to hear Bonnie’s laptop has been found with our killer’s picture front and center.”

  “Keep dreaming.”

  Erin quietly slipped through the back door of the Arlington house she shared with her brother and her daughter. Both of them slept like the dead—a gene Erin hadn’t inherited. She normally tossed and turned, her noisy brain never ready to stop telling her a story.

  East of the hub of the District and less than a ten-minute walk from historic Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon, Erin’s modest home sat on a quarter-acre corner lot in the Aurora Highlands area. Built in the early 1900s, the little gray house resembled a carriage house, its location perfect for a young child. The Highlands felt more secluded than many of the other neighborhoods Erin and Brad looked into, almost like a little town hiding in a metropolitan city. Their sister—and their parents—didn’t understand their desire to live within their own financial means rather than sucking off the trust funds. Erin gave up trying to explain the desire to be self-sufficient a long time ago. Living like a commoner—as her sister so eloquently called everyone who wasn’t from a wealthy, politically connected family—made Erin happier than she’d ever been.

  She moved silently through the cozy house. The heavenly aroma of Brad’s homemade pasta sauce lingered. Erin breathed deeply and then whispered a curse when her stomach growled. She tiptoed up the stairs, careful to avoid the squeaky spots. Abby had the little bedroom to the far left. Anyone who broke into the house would have to encounter her and Brad before getting to her daughter.

  As usual, Abby’s covers rested in a ball around her long legs. A multitude of stuffed animals took up half the bed, the book she must have fallen asleep reading spread out over her small chest. Four American Girl dolls lay on the floor in various stages of undress, all watching Erin with their lifeless eyes. She shuddered and started for her daughter, longing to put her arms around her. But Abby sighed in her sleep, rolling over and knocking the book onto the floor.

  Tears in Erin’s eyes. She loved this little miracle more than she could articulate. What if something happened to her? What if someday, Erin became the broken parent clinging to a police officer after they told her Abby was dead?

  She rubbed the tears away in a desperate effort to banish the idea, leaning down to gently kiss her daughter’s temple, breathing in the scent of the vanilla cookie bath soap she loved. Erin picked up the book and set it on the nightstand and then quietly crept back downstairs to poach some of the leftover pasta.

  There’d better be leftovers.

  She settled down at the kitchen table with her pasta and her laptop and phone. Department-issued phones meant investigators could use them to take crime scene pictures, but the quality sucked. Dissecting the photos would likely have to wait until tomorrow when Maria emailed copies.

  Erin bit into a spicy tomato, shamelessly moaning at its goodness. She tried to focus on the meal, but her thoughts raced ahead to the morning and to Bonnie Archer’s autopsy.

  Erin had only attended one other postmortem. The victim died of a single gunshot wound to the chest, so the procedure was straightforward. She had little hope of the medical examiner finding anything useful in the mess of Bonnie’s remains.

  The floor above her head creaked, followed by the sound of steady footsteps. Erin listened as her brother descended the home’s steep staircase and made his way into the kitchen.

  Naturally, he turned on the light and blinded her.

  “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

  Erin shielded her eyes. “Because it’s 3:00 a.m.”

  Brad ran his fingers through his already wild blond hair. He was the older twin by nine minutes, and the physical similarities ended there. Erin had dark, curly hair she kept shoulder-length, and she walked a fine line between voluptuous and needing to lose a little weight. She might hit five-five with the right pair of shoes. With his blue eyes and toned figure, her twin brother resembled a Ken doll. The boys always liked him better than Erin.

  “You look like shit.” Brad snagged a penne noodle from her bowl. “How bad was it?”

  “Really bad.” Her throat suddenly closed. The evil energy from the attic suddenly pulsed through Erin as though some tiny bit had latched onto her during the crime scene investigation. “Brutal.”

  Brad made a face and put the noodle back in her bowl. “Please tell me you have a suspect.”

  “We have some leads but, so far, nothing concrete.” She pushed the remaining pasta away, suddenly nauseated. “This guy cut her up while she was alive.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the cleaver.

  “Holy hell.” He sat down next to her, and Erin leaned against his shoulder.

  “Brad, whoever did this is a special kind of monster. This girl suffered, and he stood around and watched. Which means he’ll do it again. Beckett and I need to find him before that happens.”

  “Beckett?”

  “My new partner.” Erin sat up straight and opened her laptop. She considered a web search for Beckett and the Weston case, but she didn’t have the mental energy. And she didn’t need her inexperience to shine brighter next to the guy. She quickly logged into Facebook and searched for Bonnie Archer. No profile. Will Merritt’s was set to private, same as Sarah Archer’s.

  Her brother perked up. “What’s he like? Is he single?”

  “He’s fine so far but hard to read. He’s definitely competent.” She shook her head. “He’s taken and straight. And I thought you were seeing someone.”

  Brad picked at his manicured nails. “He’s still not ready to own his sexuality, and I don’t know whether I have the time or patience. The guy’s thirty-five, and this is the age of gay rights. Own it and forget about it.”

  “It wasn’t so long ago you were afraid to tell Mom and Dad,” she reminded him. “So watch out because you sound like a hypocrite.”

  “Totally different. Dad saw me as a problem to his political connections and his business. Scott’s parents are divorced, and he’s bi-racial. It’s not like they haven’t had their share of prejudice. He’s just not ready,” Brad said. “And I can’t change that. It’s got to be his decision.”

  Erin’s joints popped as she retrieved the picture of Bonnie from her bag and sat back down next to Brad. Prescription drugs didn’t affect the teeth and skin like meth or heroine. And her straight teeth could be attributed to good dental care as a kid. But her bright smile obviously came from whitening products. Not a cheap grooming habit.

  “Is that her?” Brad asked. “So pretty.”

  “Yeah.” She prodded him in the ribs. “As for your guy, have some sympathy.”

  “I do,” Brad said. “And don’t act like I’ve got it easy. Dad still doesn’t love the idea, and if it weren’t for you, we probably wouldn’t even be talking.”

  “Maybe.” E
rin couldn’t believe their father would be so cold. When Brad came out as a young adult, Calvin Prince had been shocked and then worried about how his mostly Republican clients would take the news. But eventually, Erin and her mother convinced him to accept it, and Erin liked to think her father would have come around on his own.

  Of course, their older half-sister patronized Brad, making a show of supporting him while talking out of the other side of her mouth about how it affected her social and political standing. Her two-faced attitude had been the cause of one of the first of many blowouts among the siblings. And Calvin stood up for Lisa, allowing his guilt to override his common sense. She was a selfish narcissist whose main interest in the family revolved around money. But Calvin would never see the truth.

  “We notified her parents.” Erin closed the laptop, suddenly exhausted again. “I thought getting out of sex crimes would be better, but after tonight, I’m not sure. Their pain was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

  He wrapped his arm around her. “You had to get out. Dealing with rape victims ate you up inside.”

  Because she was a hypocrite. Laughable since she’d accused her brother of the same thing. But she hadn’t wanted her family involved. The daughter of Calvin Prince as a rape victim? Her father’s reputation and power as a major defense contractor for the United States extended around the world. He counted the last three Republican presidents as personal friends. The local media would have jumped on her story. Her peers who already begrudged her for being a Prince and a woman would have loved the story.

  Brad stood up and yawned. “The best thing you can do right now is sleep. You can’t kick ass without rest.”

  She rolled her eyes, but he was right. “How did Abby do? Did she pass out quickly?”

  “Oh yeah.” He locked the back door. “Grandma and Grandpa’s gigantic mansion always wears the poor kid out.”

  Erin followed him down the hall. “Thanks so much for taking care of her. I’d be screwed without you.”

  “You need to get screwed. How long has it been?” Brad took the stairs two at a time.