by V. K. Sykes
Amy crouched beside her. “Fina, I know you never like to estimate time of death prior to autopsy, but can you give us an off-the-record guess?”
The investigator’s smile revealed a glorious set of straight, white teeth. Amy, who had an overlap between two of her bottom teeth, had always felt slightly envious of Fina’s Colgate grin.
“Only for you, my friend, will I do an in-the-field TOD guess. The body’s nearly in full rigor, but it’s not yet in her toes. Given that, and since it was a warm night, I’d put time of death between six and ten hours ago. But, like you said, it’s mostly guesswork at this stage.”
“So, between eleven p.m. and three a.m.,” Amy said.
“More or less, but you know you can’t hold me to that.”
“I’d never try. This wasn’t the murder scene, was it?”
“No,” Fina confirmed. “The body was dumped here later.”
Amy checked the victim’s tanned wrists and forearms. The hands looked like the victim had gotten a manicure recently, with the nails long, perfectly shaped, and gleaming with a deep pink polish. “I don’t see any defensive wounds. No indication the girl put up a fight when she was taken.”
“No,” Fina agreed as she looked across the body at Amy. “I’d be surprised if she was raped. There was no rage in this murder, Amy. The killer took his time to form those letters. They’re almost perfect.”
Amy grimaced. “Absolutely. This guy is methodical, and ice cold. He executed this woman.”
And if they didn’t catch the bastard soon, she had no doubt he would strike again.
5
* * *
Thursday, July 29
9:00 a.m.
As he passed through the sliding doors of the Children’s Hospital, Luke’s mind flashed to yesterday’s encounter with the cute little detective and how he’d been drawn to her so quickly. Disconcertingly so.
Of course, he’d always been partial to French women. It went all the way back to when he was nineteen, visiting his sister, Kate, who was working in the Paris bureau of an international press syndicate. He’d sown a few wild and cherished oats with a spectacular Parisienne who’d responded with generosity to his fumbling American advances. His appreciation for the stylish and sexy Françaises and Québécoises had not waned in the intervening years, and Amy Robitaille was right up there with the best of them. Slim and toned, with great breasts that filled out her white dress shirt, the petite, raven-haired detective with the husky accent had immediately latched herself to his imagination.
And the icing on the cake? Kellen Cramer was her boss, which meant that Luke knew exactly where to find her. Maybe it was karma or some bullshit like that, but he intended to find out if the sexy cop was as attracted to him as he was to her. His instincts told him yes.
Smiling, he made his way to the bank of elevators on the other side of the lobby. As he rode up to the fifth floor, he forced himself to clear Robitaille’s image from his mind. He wasn’t here to daydream. The brave kids who were stuck in this hospital—some of them dying by inches—deserved his full attention. The last thing he should be thinking about was a woman, no matter how enticing.
Luke took his visits to children’s hospitals seriously. Now that he’d retired from playing and had the time, he’d become a regular at Fort Lauderdale Children’s. Especially the heart unit. It wasn’t a photo op to him, like it was to some celebrities. That was why Robitaille’s casual assumption had stung. These kids meant a lot to him, especially since he had no family to call his own.
He got off the elevator at the fifth floor and strode toward Alicia Trent’s room. He was anxious to see how the little girl was feeling after the battery of tests her cardiologist had scheduled for yesterday after he left. She’d been okay then, but his gut tightened a bit as he wondered what kind of shape she’d be in this morning.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, smiling at the stick-thin figure in the bed as he strode through the open door. Dr. Anna Halperin, one of the unit’s cardiac surgeons, stood beside the bed, holding Alicia’s delicate wrist. The doctor nodded a greeting as he went around to the other side.
Alicia gave him a weak grin and pushed herself up on the mound of pillows behind her back. “Hi, Luke.”
He put his hand over her little fist and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Did those tests wear you out, honey?”
Alicia sighed, giving him that long-suffering look he knew meant she was okay. “Oh, I managed,” she said gravely.
“I knew you would. Alicia Trent is one tough cookie.”
“She certainly is,” Dr. Halperin said, smiling.
“And smart, too,” Luke added. “Are you up for another quiz today?” Still holding her hand, he extracted a notebook out of his pocket.
“Luke always asks me baseball trivia, Doctor Anna,” Alicia said, responding to the look of surprise on the doctor’s face. “So far, my record is one hundred per cent.”
Dr. Halperin shot Luke a tentative smile. “Well, then, don’t let me hold you back.”
Luke guessed she didn’t know yet that Alicia was a walking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge—a fact he’d discovered on his first visit with her. The little girl had a photographic memory, and could match knowledge with the most die-hard adult fan. He’d never met a smarter kid, or a nicer one. And somehow that made her situation seem all that much worse.
“Like I said, I’m going to make the questions harder every time,” he warned, “so you’d better be on your toes. Ready?”
“Ready,” she said, knitting her brow in concentration.
“Okay, name the player that holds the record for the most consecutive hits with no bases on balls.”
“Oh, that’s a pretty easy one,” she said with a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “Walt Dropo, twelve hits in a row.”
Luke slapped his forehead, only half kidding. “Wow, you got it. Do you remember his team, and maybe even the year?”
“Detroit Tigers, nineteen fifty-two.”
“Right again. I guess that one was too easy,” he lied.
“Give me a really hard one,” she said, scrunching up her thin face. Despite her illness, her round, chocolate brown eyes had a playful sparkle.
“Okay, you asked for it. This one’s going to stump you for sure.” At home, he’d pored for a long time through the three-inch thick book of baseball historical data to come up with this doozy. “Who was the last player to lead his league in strikeouts for the season, but had less than one hundred? Name, team and year.”
Alicia pinched her eyes shut for about three seconds. “Harry Anderson, Pittsburgh Pirates, nineteen fifty-eight.”
Luke figured his eyes must be close to popping out of his head. “Bingo,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I think I’m going to have to go back into the eighteen hundreds to stump you, Alicia Trent. Are you sure you’re only seven? I think you’re really about twenty-five, and just a little short for your age.”
Alicia broke into a high-pitched giggle while Dr. Halperin chuckled.
“You know very well that I’ll be eight next month, Luke,” Alicia finally spluttered.
“How do you know so much about baseball, Alicia?” the doctor asked.
The little girl’s giggles turned into a wheeze as she struggled for a moment to suck in a breath. Halperin watched her carefully.
“Daddy used to take me to spring training games. Sometimes we went to Miami to watch the Marlins, too. Daddy had a lot of baseball books and almanacs. When I read them, I always remembered everything.”
“Do you have a favorite player?” Halperin asked.
Alicia rolled her eyes. “Luke Beckett, of course. He could do everything, and people said he was always nice to everybody, too. He hit four hundred and sixty-five home runs and one thousand, five hundred and sixty-nine RBI’s in eleven major league seasons for the Montreal Expos and Washington Nationals. I know he’s going to be elected to the Hall of Fame the first year he’s eligible.”
Luke felt his face redden. “Honey, that’s
sweet, and I love you for saying it. But I’m yesterday’s news. Who’s your favorite active player?”
“Oh, Giancarlo Stanton,” she said, without hesitation. “He came here the last time I was in the hospital and brought three other Marlins players.” She plucked a little book from her bedside table, holding it open for Luke to examine. “Look, he signed my diary.”
“That’s so cool,” Luke replied, smiling down at her. “I think you’re going to grow up to be Commissioner of Baseball someday, young lady.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, though, he could have kicked himself for being so brain-dead. Alicia’s heart condition was life-threatening. Maybe she wouldn’t be around long enough to have a job, or a husband and kids of her own.
Luke struggled against the sudden upwelling of anger tinged with sorrow. It was eerily similar to the feeling he sometimes experienced when he thought about his sister. But he was there to cheer up Alicia, not to be a gloomy bastard. He forced a smile and picked the conversation back up.
He talked baseball with Alicia for a few more minutes, making a point to draw Dr. Halperin into the discussion as much as he could. When the doctor announced that she had to be leaving, he promised Alicia he’d be back in a day or two and followed Halperin out into the hallway.
“Doctor, can you tell me anything more about her prognosis?” He knew Alicia had congenital heart disease, but couldn’t seem to pry much information out of anyone.
Halperin’s face went carefully blank. “Luke, I’ve really said all I can, especially since you’re not a relative. You know she’s been in and out of hospital since she was a baby. Hopefully, sometime very soon, if she gets stronger, we’ll be able to do another surgery. It’s a difficult procedure, though. I won’t sugar coat it.”
“I’m sorry I said that dumb thing about her being Commissioner of Baseball someday. I’ve been around this hospital long enough that I should have known better.”
“No need to apologize. It’s not wrong for Alicia to think about growing up. She needs to have hope for the future.”
“That doesn’t sound too good to me,” he said, rubbing an ache in the back of his neck that had sprung out of nowhere.
“Right now, she needs to recover further from this latest setback, and gain more strength before we operate. We’re going to try a new medication we hope will help.”
Luke hadn’t felt this angry and frustrated for a long time, and he wasn’t exactly sure why. He’d been visiting the kids at this hospital for years, and a lot of other children’s hospitals, too. He’d met his share that had terminal and life-threatening diseases. Why was Alicia Trent’s situation affecting him so much?
“I understand. Thanks, Doctor.”
The elevator pinged and the doctor held the doors open as she met Luke’s gaze. “She really treasures your visits, you know, so I hope you’ll be able to keep them up. I’d hate for her to be disappointed, because I’ve seen it happen too many times to these kids and it really hurts them. Alicia has no one, after all.”
Luke’s gut took a sickening dip again. No one. He knew exactly how that felt. The three people he’d loved in this world were all gone. And with his sister dead, he knew he’d never have a niece or a nephew. “I know. Right now, she’s a ward of the state. And that totally sucks.”
“Indeed,” Halperin said, finally letting the door close.
God, how much was one little kid supposed to take?
“Doctor, nothing short of a Cat Five hurricane is going to keep me away,” he shouted through the nearly-closed doors. “You can count on it.”
6
* * *
Thursday, July 29
9:05 a.m.
Amy glanced up as Jenn Ryan’s blue Taurus screeched to a stop on the narrow park road. Ryan practically tumbled out of her car, ducked under the tape, and marched straight toward the corpse. DeSean Washington, the junior detective who rode with her, fell in behind, but stopped momentarily to sign into the scene. Amy noticed that the other member of their squad, Adrianna Scarpelli, had arrived just before them, and was deep in conversation with Sergeant Knight.
Ryan looked ready to breathe fire. “A word, Robitaille,” she snapped, beckoning imperiously with her index finger.
Amy groaned inside, rolling her eyes just enough to send a message, but she followed Ryan to a clump of trees bordering the lake. Right on her heels, Poushinsky and Washington hurried to catch up. Obviously, Ryan wanted to talk out of range of Sergeant Knight’s hearing.
“I don’t like to be interrupted while I’m working, Detective,” Amy ground out as they came to a halt beneath a towering oak.
“It looked like you were done there,” Ryan snapped. “Cramer gave you a nice head start.”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know it was a race.”
“And I didn’t know Cramer would be stupid enough to make you lead on this case,” Ryan said in a bitter voice. “Jesus, I can’t believe he’d go outside the system to give a serial killer case to a junior detective.”
“Maybe it’s because Robitaille actually closes cases,” Poushinsky inserted sardonically.
Amy bit back an impolitic laugh and kept her gaze fixed on the other woman. “If you’ve got a problem, Jenn, why don’t you take it up with the captain?”
“You don’t deserve to lead this investigation,” Ryan lashed out. “I was up next. I earned my detective shield when you were still doing push-ups at the academy. You shouldn’t be jumping over me to get a case like this.”
“I’m not jumping over anybody,” Amy said coolly. “You know the bosses sometimes break rotation for certain cases. Get a grip, Jenn.” She started to turn away.
Ryan grabbed her shoulder. “If Tommy Black was still commander, something like this would never have happened.”
“Interesting you should say that. Haven’t I heard you singing Captain Cramer’s praises for the past couple of months?” Amy brushed Ryan’s hand off her shoulder. “All of a sudden now he’s a jerk?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Robitaille.”
“For God’s sake, enough!” Amy pulled herself up so her heels were slightly off the ground. Even so, she was still two inches shorter than Ryan. “You don’t want to mess with me, Detective.”
Anger pulled Ryan’s finely-molded features into a sneer. “Well, listen up, Robitaille. You may be lead on this one, but don’t forget who you’re dealing with. I’m not going to take any orders from you if I think they’re stupid, and I won’t have any qualms about going to the sergeant or even the commander if I have to.”
“Whatever,” Amy scoffed. “But don’t go anywhere right now before checking with me. I’ll have something for you and DeSean shortly. In the meantime, maybe you want to take a look at the body—if you’re through beating your chest.” She pivoted on her heel and walked away.
Amy strode to the gap in the park fence and back, taking a few minutes to cool down. Then she returned to take a final look at the body. But as hard as she focused on the crime scene, she couldn’t shake her frustration with Ryan.
Calice. That’s all she needed. A knockdown drag-out with the biggest pit bull on the Floor.
Amy had known Ryan was up for the next case, and had been sure there’d be a shit storm when Cramer named her as lead instead. Ryan had ragged on her ass for years, practically from the day Amy took off her deputy’s uniform and hung a detective’s shield on her belt. For the senior detective, everything seemed to come down to a competition, whether it was about who got the high profile cases, or who Tom Black, and now Kellen Cramer, seemed to be favoring at any given moment.
Ryan thought of herself as the top detective in Palm Beach County, and for damn sure the top female cop. Though she wouldn’t come out and say it, she’d made that clear to Amy in dozens of little ways. Jenn Ryan resented her, and that wasn’t going to change any time soon.
And now she’d be giving Ryan orders. Good luck with that.
Growing more irritated with herself b
y the second, Amy motioned to Poushinsky that it was time to head back to the station. Not a lot could be done until they learned Jane Doe’s identity.
“So far, everything looks the same as Lakeland,” Poushinsky said. “The carved message. The posing. The ligature marks. But in Lakeland it was like he wanted to hurt the victim—the way he cut her face. This girl looks pretty much untouched except for the message and the ligature marks. Gotta wonder what made him slice one up but not the other.”
Amy had been mulling over that very question. “The one in Lakeland pushed his buttons somehow, and this one didn’t?”
“Amy, Pushy,” Sergeant Knight interrupted, calling out from over by his car. She and Poushinsky headed there quickly.
“A guy named Matt Noble just called HQ to say his wife’s missing. He’s a Jupiter Hammerheads player. The duty officer got the description.” Knight looked down at his small notebook. “Twenty-two, blond, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes. Five-eight, one-twenty, a red rose tattoo on her lower back.” He looked back up. “It all fits.”
Amy sighed. “Bingo.”
Tabarnak . She had known in her gut that the victim might turn out to be a ballplayer’s wife, but she’d refused to dwell on the possibility. She couldn’t help thinking of her baby sister. M.L.’s husband, Justin Wilson, was a local ballplayer, too. As far as she knew, M.L. didn’t have any connection to the murdered women, and their husbands played on different teams than Justin. Still, the coincidence made Amy’s skin crawl.
“The wife’s name is Carrie,” Knight continued. “Noble claims he spent the night in Viera with his team. Said he called his wife really early this morning, every fifteen minutes over an hour. Then he asked one of his neighbors to knock on their door. Nobody answered, but the wife’s car was still in the driveway. The neighbor tried again later, thinking maybe she was in the shower or something, but she still didn’t answer.”
Swallowing the acid taste of old memories, Amy could well imagine the husband’s growing panic and fear. Jesus. She hated this part. “I’ll take his number, Sergeant.”