by DJ Erfert
“Hello to you, too,” Kate said, pushing upright and walking over to the tight group. “I’m on assignment.”
Lucy’s empty stomach took a sudden nosedive and came up queasy. “What, exactly, is your assignment?” She noticed Kate’s eyes hadn’t given her more than a casual glance, but she’d been studying pretty much everything else, including the sky.
“You.”
Lucy groaned.
“Oh, stop the whining,” Kate said. “I finally get a chance for a little field work again, and you make a big deal out of it. Do you begrudge me time out of the office?”
“No, of course not.” Lucy stretched her neck to the side far enough to crackle her spine.
“And I already know your secret.”
Lucy slid her gaze around at the three women and the extra large man. Each one of them knew her as well as Johnny did, and they weren’t scared of her. “I … guess, this is acceptable.”
“Lucy,” Kate said leaning closer, “you weren’t being given a choice.”
“Am I being restricted where I can go?”
“Nope.” Kate waved her arm in a sweeping motion toward the fire truck. “I’ll follow you whenever you’re ready to leave. I’ll have the good doctor’s car in view.” She turned on her high heel and left.
“This might be fun,” Junie said lightly.
“Lucy …” Johnny slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “We’ve got to get going. Engine 60 has been back-filling our station for us, but now that we know you and Junie are okay,”—he lifted her hand and kissed her bruised palm—“or reasonably okay, we don’t have a legitimate reason for staying.”
Lucy moved her lips closer to his, and Johnny went the other ten percent, pressing his mouth onto hers. She didn’t let it go as far as before, not with her friends standing so close. “I’ll keep you updated,” she whispered.
“Take care.” Johnny let her loose and walked away with Dusty close at his heels.
Lucy slid her phone open and hit call on the entry with the number she recognized. It rang only twice. “Hello, Officer Banks? This is Lucy James. I’d like to meet with your Detective Bauer. Would you help me?”
~*~
The massive lobby of the L.A. police department echoed with the clicking of their heels against Mexican Saltillo tile floor. It sounded like rapid gunfire to Lucy’s ears. She kept glancing around at the others in the lobby. Her imagination made most of them out as criminals coming in to get some sort of business done. Or maybe they were victims of crimes, and they needed help—like her. Then she spotted a man staring at her. His youthful smile spread across his face as he moved toward her. It took a moment before she recognized him.
Lucy reached out her hand. “Officer Banks.” He grasped her hand in his and shook it.
“Hello, Lucy. Please, call me Dale.”
“I will.” Lucy turned and motioned toward her companions. “This is Sunny Rhodes, Junie Brockway, and Kate Laurence. They thought I could use some, uh, moral support.”
“Nice to meet you, ladies,” Banks said. Then to Lucy, “I’ve already spoken to Steve—Detective Bauer, and he’s waiting for us in his office. Follow me.”
It was interesting having a personal bodyguard. Lucy noticed that Kate had kept a discreet distance behind her while they drove through the city, as well as now, inside the PD building. She only stepped closer to Banks as he approached, and had let him pass after Lucy greeted him by name. Talk about protective.
Banks swiped a keycard in a lock and opened a heavy door. “This way, then turn to your left.”
Wide busy hallways of a large city police department made Lucy homesick, in a way. While she was at ASU, she spent a week doing a ride-a-long program with the Phoenix police as part of her Criminal Justice degree. She’d enjoyed it, but she’d been too young at graduation to carry a gun, so she went with the CIA instead.
“Lucy,” Banks said, stepping up next to her. “Would you mind if I stayed during the interview?”
“Uh—” She took a quick look over her shoulder at Junie. The response was a slight raise from one perfectly tweezed eyebrow. Not much help. “I guess that would be okay, Dale, but I want you to understand that everything that we talk about with your detective needs to stay strictly top secret.” He grinned at the secret agent term.
“Yes, ma’am.” He pushed open a door and peeked his head inside. A moment later, he pushed the door open wider.
Lucy stepped inside a large office as a man dressed in a suit very similar to Kate’s was coming around a cluttered desk. She scanned the room. The walls were covered with clutter too. Okay, maybe not a mess, exactly, but pictures and papers with names, and maps, and other pieces of information were tacked up, covering most of the wall space.
“Miss James? I’m Detective Steve Bauer,” he said reaching out to her.
Lucy grasped his strong hand and felt the power behind his grip. “Thank you for seeing me, Detective Bauer.”
“Not a problem.” His eyes went to the other women and he waited.
“These are my friends.” As she introduced each woman, they shook his hand, with Kate approaching him last. Kate also studied him the hardest—possibly because she was still protecting Lucy. Or it might have been because he was attractive. Taking a second look at the detective, Lucy noticed he didn’t have the typical languid office position look about him. Instead of the overweight, belly-over-the-belt buckle look a man gets from sitting behind a desk, his body looked athletically trim. The dark hair he kept short had the barest sprinkling of gray around the temples.
“Please sit,” Bauer said motioning to a couple of chair. “Dale, could you find two more chairs for the ladies?”
“I’m fine,” Kate said, moving to the wall closest to Lucy. She leaned her shoulder against the only obvious bare spot. Lucy noticed she found a place where she could not only watch the door leading into the office, but she had an unobstructed view of the detective, too.
“I’m good, too,” Sunny said. “The exercise is good for me.”
Lucy rubbed her temple and sat down. She didn’t care if the others chose to stand.
“Miss James,” Bauer said, “I understand you’re looking for a report on a murder that happened twenty-nine years ago?”
“Yes, Detective. I, uh …” Lucy looked over at Banks. “Were you briefed at all?”
“Yes, I was, but I’d like you to tell me, in your own words what you saw, and then we’ll work forward from there.” Bauer pushed his dark brows together slightly and leaned his elbows on his desk, weaving his fingers together. Lucy felt like she had his undivided attention.
“My dream—my nightmare—is always the same. I’m in the living room of a strange house, and I’m alone, at first. I look up and see a neon sign high on a wall separating the kitchen from the living room. It has a big bear sitting in a canoe, smiling and holding a bottle of beer. I can even read the letters on the sign—Hamm’s Beer—and its colors are brilliant and mesmerizing.”
“Lucy,” Junie said, “You were only six months old. Children that young can’t read.”
“And they shouldn’t be able to remember things either,” Kate said. “But she can.”
Lucy continued. “The walls of the house were a bright white, while the carpet was a dark green with a deep sculptured texture that felt uneven and rough under my palms and knees.” She rubbed her hands together. “I went toward the noise coming from down the end of the long hallway. I … watched my mother yell with her hands balled into fists and her faced distorted in rage. Her lavender tie-dyed t-shirt stood out against the light wall, and her skirt swung as she paced a short distance into the hall. Her long blond hair was straight, and she had,”—Lucy touched her forehead—“bangs. I couldn’t see who was just inside the doorway of the bedroom, but it was a man, and he had a deep voice that was … familiar somehow. And he was very, very angry. He kept shaking his fist in front of her. His fist.
“Suddenly my mother stopped yelling, and she loo
ked surprised—surprised that he had a knife in his hand. She shook her head and a moment later she screamed as the knife came down. Her lavender shirt turned a bright red. He didn’t stop even after she slumped to the floor.” Lucy sat up straight and stared into the hazel eyes of the detective—her heart beating like maracas. Recounting the details scared her as much as having the nightmare. “This is usually when I wake up screaming.”
“Her neighbors called 911 last night,” Banks said.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Junie said, resting her hand on her arm.
Nobody but Johnny knew the particulars about that part of Lucy’s past. She nodded at her friend.
“Okay,” Bauer said. “You said that the house this happened in wasn’t your home.”
“That’s right.”
“Who found you?”
Lucy took in a deep breath wondering what conclusion the detective would come to when she told him, “My father did. He raised me. He had to have found me, right?” The detective’s brows pinched tighter.
“And you believed it was in Phoenix?”
“I thought so.”
“Okay, we’ll go ahead and run the name again.” Bauer swiveled his chair sideways and scooted under the desk with a desktop computer, and began typing. “And your mother’s name was Sara Kelly James?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know for sure your parents were married?”
Lucy gasped like she’d touched a hot stove. She never thought of that aspect of her mother’s life. She always assumed her mother would be married before having a baby. “I—my father never told me otherwise.” He continued to type.
“Did you ever think to ask?”
Shaking her head, Lucy whispered, “No.”
“Lucy,” Kate said, “the birth certificate you submitted before we hired you had James as your last name.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But that can mean that her mother put on the father’s last name when filing for the certificate after she was born,” Bauer said to Kate. “Do you know your mother’s maiden name?” he asked Lucy.
A wave of dizziness made the bump on Lucy’s head throb. “Spencer.”
“Lucy, are you okay?” Junie asked quietly.
Sunny immediately lifted Lucy’s wrist and found her pulse point. “I knew I should’ve made you come to the infirmary first. Your heart rate’s up.”
“She’s had a rough morning, and now she’s getting upset,” Kate said. “What do you expect? Leave her alone, doctor.”
Bauer waited and watched. He’d stopped his search and was staring at Lucy instead of using his time to find her mother’s killer. “Did you find anything, detective?”
“No, ma’am.” He leaned back in his chair. “Could it have happened in a different city, perhaps?”
“I … don’t know. I guess it’s possible.” A firm hand pressed onto her shoulder. The support she was getting from her doctor helped. “How can you find out where she was murdered if you don’t know a city?”
Bauer turned to his computer again. “There’s a program administered by the FBI that specializes in murder cases. It’s called Violent Crime Apprehension Program. And since it’s a cold case, it could be entered in, and her report should show up.”
Lucy leaned forward and watched the screen change in rapid succession until the FBI ViCAP program settled on the screen.
“Okay. I’ll input Sara Kelly James and put in Spencer as an alias.” Bauer hit enter and leaned his palms against the desk’s edge. Thirty seconds later he said, “Nothing. If there had been an arrest, it still would have been here and marked closed.”
“It doesn’t look like it was reported,” Lucy said sullenly.
Kate stepped around the desk and came up behind Bauer. “Expand the search, detective. Use the year Mrs. James was killed. That would be 1988.”
“I can do that.” Bauer went back two e-pages and filled in the event date.
Kate leaned over the chair, next to Bauer’s head, and softened her voice when she said, “And change the name to … Jane Doe.”
CHAPTER TEN
Lucy blew out a short breath, but she didn’t question Kate’s instinct. Her investigative abilities were impressive. Maybe she should’ve asked her to look into the murder to begin with.
Bauer made eye contact with Lucy for several moments before doing as she said. Lucy leaned closer to get a better view of the screen. So did Junie, and Sunny, and even Banks moved to where he could watch what came up with the search. The minute the computer took to fill the request seemed like forever.
“We got twenty-six hits from across the U.S., and sixteen of those were in Las Vegas, Nevada.” Bauer looked over at Lucy. “Vegas is only six hours from Phoenix.”
Lucy stayed quiet. It was hard to think. She raised her gaze to Kate.
“That would be a good city to start with, but first narrow the search a little. We know Sara was killed with a knife—”
“A switchblade,” Lucy whispered with her hand around her throat. “I saw him shaking his fist at her, and then I saw the blade—just appear out of nowhere. It must have been a switchblade.” Her father gave Lucy her switchblade when she was sixteen.
Bauer typed and waited. The screen changed. “It brought up six victims classified as Jane Doe.”
“But there were four additional women who were killed with a knife, possibly a switchblade, and they were identified,” Kate said, shifting her sight from the screen to Lucy.
“Reading from the synopsis, they all have close to the same physical descriptions,” Bauer said. “They could have been killed by the same man. The method was almost identical. Each report will have a picture attached. The identified women will have a nice picture of them before they were killed, but the rest are going to be post-mortem—”
“After they died,” Sunny whispered to Lucy.
“Are you sure you’re up to this right now?” Bauer asked. “You look pale.”
“She was in a car crash an hour ago,” Junie said, rubbing Lucy’s hand. “And she bumped her head.”
“I’m fine.” She covered Junie’s hand with her own. “I need to see this. I need to get this done so I can get on with my life,” Lucy said. She pushed her shoulders back with determination. “Please. Go ahead. Bring up the first photograph. You said there are six women who were killed the same way as my mother?”
“Yeah,” Bauer said.
“So if we find who murdered my mother, then we might find who killed those other women too?”
Junie gasped loudly. “You think your mother was a victim of a—a serial killer?”
Kate stood up straight folding her arms across her ribs. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Banks said in agreement. “It does.”
“If,” Bauer said, “her picture is among the six.”
“Or one of the identified,” Sunny said.
“What?” Lucy asked, craning her neck to look over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Lucy, but you’ve always assumed your mother’s name was Sara James, but if that wasn’t true, and she had a different last name, then she might be one of the other women whose body was identified.” Sunny told Bauer, “Pull up the pictures of the identified women first, just in case. Don’t make Lucy go through the crime scene photos if she doesn’t have to.”
Bauer nodded and tapped on the keyboard. The screen changed and settled on four photos of women with their names, addresses, and family information beside them. They were all young with long straight hair. Bauer sat back and rubbed his chin as he read.
“She’s not there,” Lucy said, disappointment sinking into her chest. It would have been so much easier if her mother had been unmarried instead of a Jane Doe.
Kate bent over the chair and leaned one hand against the armrest and draped her other arm over the back. “Did they check into that?”
“Check into what?” Junie asked.
“There’s a detective’s name attached to t
he files, but they’re still unsolved,” Bauer said. He turned his attention to Lucy again. “The four identified women were all married to servicemen on active duty.”
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Sunny said.
“Lucy, was your father in the military?” Kate asked.
“I—I don’t know.” Her head began to pound. “I need an aspirin.” She looked up at Sunny.
“I left my medical bag in the car.”
“I have ibuprofen in my purse,” Junie said, opening her handbag. “Someone bring her water.”
“I’ll get it,” Banks said, turning.
“I’ve got some in my fridge,” Bauer said, pointing to the corner of the office. Banks went to the small dorm fridge and took a Dasani water from inside, twisted off the top, and handed it to Lucy.
“Should we continue, Miss James?”
“Call me Lucy.” She nodded. “Please, let’s find my mother.” She took another swallow of water before setting the bottle on his desk.
“Okay.” He turned and typed to the next file. “This will be Jane Doe number one.” He hit enter, and a report flashed onto the screen along with two color photos of a dead woman. One picture was taken as she was found, and the second was a close up of her face, obviously taken on the morgue slab after she’d been cleaned up.
“She doesn’t even look eighteen,” Junie said, her voice softened with sadness.
“Her hair is as long and straight as Lucy’s,” Kate said.
“But Lucy isn’t a blond,” Banks said.
“That’s not my mother. Let’s move on.”
“Here’s number two.” Bauer clicked to the next file, and the picture was replaced by another report, with an equally gruesome picture of a young woman lying in her own blood, along with the close-up shot.
“She had long hair, too,” Kate said. “It’s a dirty blond.”
“She’s young, like the others,” Junie whispered. “And she was pretty.”
“That’s not her either,” Lucy said. “Please pull up the next one.”