See How She Runs (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 2)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  By the time he reached the source of the shout, several dark shapes were already clustered around the girl and had her illuminated in the converging beams of their flashlights. Ill-dressed for a cold, rainy night, she huddled in a shivering ball, but she was alive, staring dazedly at her rescuers. One had already wrapped her in a space blanket.

  Sean unzipped his slicker and lifted his shirt to pull out his Glock. He aimed it high and well-ahead, pulling the trigger twice in the pre-arranged signal.

  Then, after holstering his own weapon, he stooped and picked up the Colt that lay on the ground beside the girl. Which, thank God, she hadn’t used.

  Sean raised a shout, “She’s okay! Just wet and cold!”

  Like an echo, it continued on in each direction, down the ragged line of search and rescue people. “Okay! Wet and cold.”

  As pissed as he was at Arianna Keezer for putting the people who loved her through this, Sean still felt knee-buckling relief.

  Her father had another chance. He wouldn’t have to spend a lifetime damning himself.

  *****

  Sean’s body jolted hard enough to give him whiplash. What the hell—? That could not possibly be his phone.

  It was. He’d had it on vibrate as well as ring, so it gave an emphatic little bounce on the bedside stand. He blinked a couple times to bring the lighted numbers on the clock into focus. 4:13. Unlucky?

  He groped for the phone, stabbed it with his thumb, and cleared his throat. “Holbeck.”

  “Sorry, Detective, I know you were up late last night.”

  More like this night, he thought grumpily, recognizing the dispatcher’s voice.

  “Deputy Walker asked me to call. She has a body. She says the throat was cut. And, um, you’re up next.”

  Wonderful. “Location?” Sean asked.

  The address was in one of the many small ocean-front communities that contracted with the sheriff’s department for law enforcement. This one, unfortunately, was as far away from Cape Trouble as it could get without being in the next county north.

  “All right,” he said, still groggy enough to sound drunk. “Tell Walker I’m on my way. It’ll probably be half an hour.”

  Call over, he swung his feet to the floor, groaned and scraped a hand over his face. When he went out the door five minutes later, he was unshaven but dressed and carrying instant coffee in a travel mug. Unlike earlier, a crescent moon added some silver to the landscape before a scudding cloud covered it while he watched. He let the salty night air wake him up as he walked to his Subaru, parked in the driveway since he had yet to figure out what to do with all the crap piled in the garage.

  He pushed the remote to unlock, but paused before opening the car door. Except for the constant, background murmur of the surf, the night was quiet enough for him to hear an intermittent, mechanical hum he knew came from his next-door neighbor’s house. One window glowed softly, through and around drawn blinds. Did that damn woman never sleep?

  She gave him something to ponder as he drove, wending his way through town to the highway. He liked mysteries once he had enough clues to become confident he’d arrive at an answer. Too bad all he knew about Emily Drake was that she was beautiful, she kept really strange hours even by his standards, and she rarely emerged from her house, which, like his, was one of the aging cottages in old town Cape Trouble. To all appearances, she lived alone, although just the other day he’d heard the old guy who lived across the street call, “Feels like spring, Mrs. Drake,” when she ventured as far as her mailbox.

  She’d smiled and waved at Gus Rumbaugh, which was more than she did when she set eyes on Sean. For him, any nod she gave in answer to a greeting was distinctly chilly.

  What had become a familiar frustration every time he thought about Mrs. Emily Drake finally kicked his brain into gear, and finally back to business. A slit throat? Burris County, situated on the Oregon coast, had a population of not much over 25,000 people. Murder was unusual and, when it happened, typically was either a domestic or the result of a drunken confrontation in a tavern. Like anywhere, they had exceptions; one doozie was the discovery last summer that Cape Trouble held the burying ground of a serial killer who’d been active for twenty-something years.

  Odds were this would turn out to be a domestic. Except cutting someone’s throat… That’d be a hard thing to do if you were intimate with the victim. A stabbing, sure, usually with a knife grabbed from the kitchen counter. A gunshot, fists, those were weapons used when a husband or wife lost it. Cutting a throat would have to be more calculated.

  He frowned. No point in reasoning ahead of the facts. Sean checked the names attached to that address – Francis and Rita Lowe – and otherwise concentrated on the narrow, winding Pacific Coast highway which on this stretch clung to a cliff-edge. Every once in a while, that sliver of moon reappeared and let him see a shimmer of seafoam breaking on rocks a stomach-plummeting drop below. Once he’d had to repel down the cliff along this stretch to reach a car that had plunged through the guard rail.

  From long practice, he blocked the memory of what he’d found at the bottom.

  He didn’t quite make it in a half hour, but close. Sean found the house, no problem, a fancy place in a development he’d driven through before of nice homes on half acre or more lots. In daylight, all would have spectacular views and some were oceanfront. He didn’t need to see the house number, not when light blazed from the front windows and a marked sheriff’s department car sat in the driveway.

  As he walked up to the porch, the sound of a woman sobbing rose over the ever-present roar of the surf. It was like a metronome: inhale air, exhale wail.

  Ringing the doorbell, Sean wondered if anyone else was here besides the deputy. Please no kids, he thought with unusual fervency.

  The minute the door opened and he saw Rebecca’s face, he winced. “She have a relative or friend who can come?” he asked in a low voice.

  One of only two women deputies with the sheriff’s department, Rebecca was about his age, he thought. She looked like the runner he knew she was. Along with working patrol, she had been trained as the department negotiator. He’d seen her in action, and knew her to be good. Rebecca had a natural warmth. Everyone liked her.

  He’d never seen her look haggard or so grim. “I wanted you to see the scene before I let anyone else in the house,” she said.

  “All right. You started a log?”

  “I did.”

  Sean took the notebook she handed him, scribbled his own name and the time, and stepped inside. The woman sitting on the sofa with her hands over her face appeared small in the midst of a vast living room that swept into dining room and kitchen. Sean was made instinctively uneasy by the vaulted ceiling and huge open space with walls of windows, most without blinds or drapes. The wife seemed oblivious to his arrival.

  “Bath in the master bedroom,” Rebecca murmured. “Mrs. Lowe woke up, her husband wasn’t in bed with her. Bathroom was dark, which puzzled her as he usually turned on the light when he went in to take a leak. Uh, not her words.”

  Sean nodded his understanding.

  “She called his name, didn’t get an answer, but decided to use the bathroom herself before she went looking for him. It wasn’t her habit to turn on the light. She tripped over something.”

  Sean grimaced.

  “Remembering that made her start to cry. I haven’t gotten anything else coherent out of her.” That even Rebecca hadn’t been able to calm her was bad news.

  “Okay. It’s a good start.”

  “She’d turned the light on,” the deputy said to his back.

  Sean felt sure she wouldn’t have touched anything but the doorbell and the comforter she’d found to wrap around Mrs. Lowe, but Sean would have to ask eventually. Right now, he just wanted to get a look. The sobs were like fingernails on a blackboard, creating a desperate need to silence them.

  He snapped on gloves before he reached the hall. Place appeared to have three bedrooms, a linen closet and a se
cond bathroom. He edged open each door, turning on lights and taking a cursory look. He couldn’t imagine anyone lurked, but better safe than really sorry. He was relieved to see that one bedroom was probably set up for guests, and the other was a home office. So one blessing: no terrified kids.

  The master bedroom was vast, too, with the kind of deep carpet that made him feel as if sand was sucking at his feet. King size bed, covers rumpled on both sides. A dresser and an armoire. Two additional doors, both partially open. Behind one was a walk-in closet as big as his kitchen.

  The bathroom…well, even with his experience, it was hard to look past the naked body slumped over the tiled rim of the Jacuzzi tub. The angle of the hairy lower legs looked wrong – probably because the wife had knocked them askew. The arms and head hung down, allowing the blood to run into the tub. And, man, the knife had bitten deep enough to damn near decapitate this guy. He’d been forced to kneel and bend forward, Sean thought. Mess minimized. The killer might even have gotten away without being sprayed.

  Or maybe not. Sean watched a drop fall from the faucet. A few seconds later, another. It might be a chronic drip, the kind a homeowner put off having fixed. But it might also be that a stranger didn’t know how tight that handle had to be turned.

  He wouldn’t have let more than a gentle stream run for fear of awakening the wife, but that would be adequate to wash off his hands, rinse some blood off his forearm. Who knew?

  He had taken the time to dip a probably-gloved finger into the blood and write three large letters on the tiled wall: BCD. Maybe it was only that they were written in blood, or the way it smeared and dripped, but Sean thought the breadth of the letters, the slashing strokes that made them, projected more rage than the skillful slice of the knife across the victim’s throat. Was the killer signing his work, or were those three letters supposed to mean something?

  Sean took another look at the picture as a whole and shook his head. He’d never seen anything like this before. An assassination.

  Squatting, he leaned forward far enough to allow him to see the face in profile, at which point he swore. Oh, damn. He knew this guy.

  *****

  In unison, everyone gathered in the living room gusted sighs of relief when the EMTs ushered Mrs. Lowe out the door. For a minute, nobody said anything. Sean’s ears still rang, and he could only imagine how Rebecca felt after her prolonged exposure.

  They’d tried to call a friend of Mrs. Lowe’s and gotten no answer. She had no family locally. Sean assumed she would be sedated and admitted to the hospital for the night.

  At least he hadn’t had to do a notification. The dead had done it for him.

  The ME was currently in with the body, and Major Crimes Lieutenant Wilcynski had summoned state crime scene investigators who had immediately gone about their business. Another detective, Jason Payne, had showed up not long after the lieutenant, who’d barked, “What the hell are you doing here?” Sean hadn’t heard the answer.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash where a photographer worked, and a minute ago he’d watched a tech fingerprinting the French door that led from the master bedroom out to a small deck to the side of the house. A square of glass had been neatly cut out to allow the killer to reach in, unlock and open the door. Unbroken, the glass that had been removed sat on the decking to one side. They suspected it had been done earlier. Mrs. Lowe had said dully that she’d never opened the drapes that day and therefore wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Okay.” The lieutenant turned his very dark eyes on Sean. “What did you get out of her?”

  Wilcynski was new to the department, replacing the fat-ass who had finally retired. The sign on his desk said B.J. Wilcynski, inspiring ribald speculation as to what the B and the J stood for. He had informed everyone he was fine with being called BJ or Will. Or – he’d paused - lieutenant. So far, Sean stuck with lieutenant.

  Wilcynski was maybe five years older than Sean’s thirty-two. He’d admitted to having been a sergeant working homicide for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, most recently in Compton, known for high crime. Rumor had it that something bad had happened, or that he’d burned out, or he’d been fired, or was madly in love with a woman who lived up here. Take your pick. He wasn’t saying. Sean suspected he’d been referred here by Adam Rostov, a detective also from the L.A. area who had been in Cape Trouble a few months ago, trying to keep a woman alive. Otherwise, what were the odds?

  All Sean knew for sure was that Wilcynski was sharp, professional and experienced enough Sean didn’t mind serving under him.

  Sean didn’t know Jason Payne well, either. He’d joined the department something like four or five months ago. Detectives didn’t partner here; there weren’t enough of them. He was fresh out of uniform, that Sean did remember, but he seemed to be catching on fine.

  Now Sean repeated what Rebecca had gotten out of Rita Lowe as a sequence of events, then the results of his own, difficult conversation with her.

  “She said her husband had an upset stomach after dinner. He took some antacids before bed. She was vaguely aware he’d gotten up a couple of times. Once she heard him crunching on some more antacids. Sounded like she’s a pretty heavy sleeper, though. Certainly didn’t hear anyone coming in the back door. Thinks she might have heard someone talking quietly, but she didn’t pay any attention. Apparently Frank took calls sometimes at night and it wouldn’t have been unusual for him to go in the bathroom so as not to wake her. Anything louder - a shout or thud – she’s sure she’d have heard.”

  “What’s your take on her?”

  “She didn’t do this,” he said right away. “I didn’t get any undertones. I think she was really worried about him when she realized he must have gotten up. Her shock looks genuine to me.”

  “Not to mention her hysteria,” Rebecca muttered.

  Wilcynski’s mouth twitched. “Thank God for sedatives.”

  Amen. “This looks like a professional hit. I can’t imagine we’ll find fingerprints.”

  The lieutenant grunted. “Come daybreak we’ll search for the knife in case he tossed it, but that doesn’t seem real likely either.”

  They all turned when the ME appeared. Sean knew Dennis Yates, balding but fit. He’d almost have to be, with the hours he had to stand during his workday, Sean figured. As small as Burris County was, they were lucky to have their own medical examiner, and one who was actually a doctor. The hospital in North Fork, the county seat, was a decent size, and he was their pathologist. Sean had had longer conversations with him than he’d ever had with two of the other three cops from his own department who were present. The only one he’d spent any time with was Rebecca Walker in her role as negotiator.

  Yates tended to be direct. “I’m going to say time of death was between one and two. 911 call was 3:37, right?”

  Rebecca nodded. “I was fairly close by, got here at 4:00.”

  The ME nodded. “Bruises on his cheeks pre-mortem. A hand closed hard over his lower face, presumably to keep him quiet. The blade was sharp, non-serrated.”

  “Butcher knife?” Sean had seen the wooden block of knives on the kitchen counter. Personally, he kept his knives out of sight. Why advertise an assortment of weapons to an intruder?

  Yates frowned. “Possible, but I’m thinking hunting or military surplus. Something with a four, five inch blade. Sharper than most people keep their kitchen knives. I can tell you more once I have him cleaned up on the table.” He shook his head. “I know this guy.”

  “We all know this guy,” Sean muttered.

  His lieutenant’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t. I take it he wasn’t well liked?”

  “What can I say? He was a defense attorney.” The name hadn’t rung a bell because he knew the victim as Frank, not Francis. Sean had been cross-examined by him in court half a dozen times or more. “He was no worse than most. It’s just...the possibilities for who could hate him are almost limitless. Somebody he failed to get off? Or who he refused to defend? A witn
ess he shamed? A victim who didn’t get justice thanks to him succeeding in getting the scumbag off? Someone who didn’t like the bill he sent? A family member of any of the above?”

  “The wife should know if he’s received any recent threats,” Payne contributed.

  “He has a partner in his practice, too. A woman.” Sean didn’t like her any better. The last time he’d met her in court, he wondered how any woman could defend a rapist. And the odds of her answering questions openly, even given that her partner had been murdered and you’d think she might be scared? Zero. He predicted she’d fight to the death any attempt they made to get a look at client files.

  The ME excused himself, but paused when Sean raised a hand.

  “I don’t want the fact that he wrote letters in blood to get out. Let’s keep the message to ourselves.”

  “Agreed,” the lieutenant said.

  “Nobody talks to me anyway,” Yates said, and departed.

  Wilcynski let Rebecca go, too. Then he turned to Sean.

  “BCD. What does it mean?”

  “First thing I thought of is Burris County Sheriff’s Department. But he left out the S, and what sense does that make anyway?”

  “Birth Control Device,” the photographer called from the kitchen.

  Wilcynski grunted. “I guess death is one form of birth control..”

  “Battlefield Command Detachment,” Jason threw out. When the others looked at him, he shrugged. “I was Army.”

  “I’ll look it up online,” Sean said. “God knows, in the age of acronyms, it probably has a hundred meanings.”

  “You were involved in looking for that missing girl, weren’t you?” the lieutenant asked.

  He nodded. Scratches on his hands and face stung.

  “Then go home and catch a few hours of sleep. I want you to stay primary on this, which means you need to be sharp. I’ll stay here until the CAU people are done and then I’ll check on Mrs. Lowe at the hospital. If she’s awake, I’ll talk to her, then the partner. We can’t rule out this being entirely personal, but I’ll get started on a warrant for his office.”