by V. K. Sykes
The voice turned menacing. “What you said at that press conference is a fucking lie, you little bitch. They’re not senseless and reprehensible murders.”
She knew Poushinsky would call Communications. They’d try to get the location of the caller, but the guy was probably using a burner cell phone that he’d dump so there was a good chance it wouldn’t matter.
She drew in a deep breath, slowing herself down. “Is that right? Well, I guess you would know a lot more about that than I do. What would you call them, then?”
“They’re about justice, Detective. And freedom. Believe me, they’re the farthest thing from senseless.”
“Justice and freedom, huh?” Her nerves jangling, Amy lingered over the words. She had to keep him talking. “Hmm, you’ll need to educate me on that, because I have to admit that it sounds like total bullshit to me.”
The man sucked in a noisy breath. “Please tell Luke Beckett that I’m really disappointed in him.” He hung up.
Amy carefully placed the phone back in its cradle. What the hell did Beckett have to do with this guy?
Poushinsky bounded over. “We’ll have the number in a minute, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. He probably used a pay phone or a burner.”
Amy stood, trying to shake off the adrenaline racing through her body.
Poushinsky’s phone rang and he grabbed it. Amy moved to his desk, listening as he spoke to the communications officer. “Dispatch patrol there immediately,” he said. Then he gave the description of the suspect provided by Mrs. Ledingham.
“Where?” Amy asked impatiently.
“The airport. Pay phone on the arrivals level.”
Ten minutes away. But it might as well be hours, since the killer would be long gone before they could establish any kind of perimeter blockade. “Patrol will check for witnesses,” she said, “but let’s get CSU over there to dust all the phones for prints.”
He arched his brows. “Okay, but you gotta believe our boy’s not that dumb.”
“We’ll cover all the bases, anyway.”
Amy went back to her desk while Poushinsky called the Crime Scene Unit. A couple of minutes later he came over, leaning his lanky frame against the divider. “So, what did the asshole say, anyway?”
Amy grimaced. “Asshole is right. He reprimanded me for the terminology I used, saying the murders weren’t senseless and reprehensible. That they’re about justice and freedom.”
Poushinsky screwed up his face. “Justice and freedom? Sounds like some right-wing nut job.”
She pondered that for a moment. “No, it had a different feel to it. Like those words had a special meaning for him. But it confirms he’s got an agenda. And he’s not stupid. He kept the call to four or five sentences.”
Her partner looked frustrated. “Anything else?”
“He called the murders his little double play.”
“What a tool,” he said with a disgusted shake of the head.
“But if he murdered Shannon and Rist as well as Noble, why wouldn’t he have called it his triple play?”
Poushinsky frowned, obviously puzzling it through. Then he nodded. “In baseball, a double play happens really fast. Maybe he thinks he’s being cute—bragging about how fast he can kill.”
That made Amy want to puke, but she supposed it was possible.
“And he said one more thing,” she added. “He told me to tell Luke Beckett that he’s disappointed in him.”
Now Poushinsky looked stunned. “You think he actually knows Luke?”
“I doubt it. He’s probably just a fan—that’d be my guess. And if so, our job just got a whole lot harder.” She glanced back toward Sergeant Knight’s office. “I’d better brief Will. And Cramer, too, if he’s still here.”
“Good idea. Want to grab some lunch after? I could eat a whole freaking steer.”
“Let me see how I feel in a while. Right now, I think I just might never want to eat again.”
25
* * *
Saturday, July 31
1:10 p.m.
After briefing Knight and the captain—Cramer via his cell—Amy grudgingly acknowledged that she’d have to eat or she wouldn’t make it through the rest of the day. But she didn’t want to leave her desk. Rationally, it was a million to one shot that the killer would call again. But if he did, she wanted to be there.
When Poushinsky had offered to make a run to Subway to pick up a couple of sandwiches, she’d gratefully accepted. She’d managed one bite of her tuna salad when the deputy on the desk rang to tell her Matt Noble was downstairs, demanding to see her. Sighing, she rewrapped the sandwich and stuffed the remains into the kitchen fridge on her way down to meet him.
Amy stopped cold as she opened the door at the bottom of the stairs. Noble stood in the waiting area, red-faced and practically drenched in sweat, as if he’d run all the way from Jupiter to HQ.
“Look what the fucking bastard sent me.” Holding onto an envelope, he shoved a photo towards her. The picture had been cut apart, but even if she hadn’t seen the cut she would have immediately known exactly what it was Noble clutched in his hand.
She instinctively took a half step back and held up her hand for him to stop. At least Noble had used his head and put on a pair of light leather gloves.
“Come with me, Mr. Noble.” Leading him upstairs, she ushered him into one of the small interview rooms on the Floor.
“Call me Matt, for Christ’s sake,” he growled as he stalked into the room.
“Please sit down, Matt.”
He folded his bulky frame into one of the chairs, then laid the photo and the envelope on the table before he took off his gloves. Telling him to wait, she rushed to her desk and grabbed a pair of latex gloves from the box in her drawer. She snapped them on, grabbed an evidence bag, and returned to the interview room.
Noble stared at the picture, bleakness carved onto his rugged features. Dark circles surrounded his reddened eyes and his short hair stood up in a nest of spikes. He wore stained gray sweat pants and a black and teal Jupiter Hammerheads tee shirt that hung low on his body. A powerful and unpleasant male scent assailed Amy’s nostrils.
His appearance didn’t surprise her. After Ariane was killed, Amy hadn’t left the house for two weeks except to attend her twin’s funeral mass. Within a couple of days, she’d probably looked even more disheveled than Noble.
She sat down across from him, but before she looked at the photo one other matter had to be addressed. “Matt, has anyone told you yet that the wife of one of your teammates was found dead this morning?” She gentled her voice. “I’m sorry to say she was murdered.”
Noble jerked so hard that the back of the chair slammed against the wall. “What? You’re fucking kidding me!”
“I’m afraid not. The victim has been identified as Ashley Rist.”
“Jesus, God,” Noble moaned, looking even more distraught. “Ashley. Tyler.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Aw, Jesus.”
“The team has cancelled its next series. The players are probably back in Jupiter by now.”
He stumbled to his feet. “I gotta go call Tyler.”
Amy stood and moved around the table, placing a hand on his arm. “Please, just a few moments. I need to ask you a few questions first, and then you can call Mr. Rist.” She gently patted his arm until he sank down into his chair.
She remained standing, carefully picking up the photo by the edges. It had been shot on a sunny day at Disney World, on a little bridge with the Cinderella Castle in the background. A happy-looking Matt had his right arm lopped off at the shoulder—an arm that had obviously been around his wife’s back. Carrie’s body had been carefully excised from the chest up, similar to the Shannon-Kasinski photo Detective Smith had shown them.
Swallowing her anger, Amy slid the photo into the evidence bag.
“I’ll bet the son of a bitch did the same thing to Kasinski,” Matt said, his voice cracking. “And probably Tyler, too.”
“We hope the lab will be able to pick up at least a partial print,” she said. “You were smart not to contaminate it.”
“I touched it a little with my bare fingers when I pulled it out of the envelope.”
Amy picked up the envelope. It was plain white, in the size normally used for greeting cards. Noble’s address had been printed in shaky block capitals. The killer had probably used his off hand. The postmark indicated it had been mailed in Jupiter yesterday.
“He pulled it out of one of our albums,” Matt continued. “Carrie made up one from our week at Disney World in January. She never liked looking at pictures on the computer, so she always had prints made of her favorite shots. As soon as I saw this, I went and checked the albums. There was an empty space where this one used to be.”
His voice thickened with anguish. “I’ve got about a million scenarios of what could have gone down swirling around in my head. She had sex with some guy, and then he drugged and killed her? And some time during all this, he rummaged through our photo albums and stole a picture that he cut up and sent back in the mail? Jesus, that’s completely fucking insane.”
The last thing Amy would do was speculate with the victim’s husband. “Matt, you said your relationship had some ups and downs but that you guys were okay. Yet, from where I sit, your wife having sex with another man while you’re out of town tells me things weren’t all that okay.”
He dropped his face into his hands and pressed the tips of his fingers hard into his forehead. “What do you want from me?” His muffled voice was forlorn. Right now he reminded her more of a lost little boy than a macho pro athlete.
She hated to do it, but she flipped off her nice guy switch. “The truth, Matt,” she said, sharpening her voice. “You knew Carrie was screwing around on you, didn’t you? That’s what you two were fighting about that day.”
His head jerked up and he glared at her. “No! Goddamn it, no.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You might as well be straight with me now. We’re going to find out, anyway. Help us save time so we can catch Carrie’s murderer before he kills another innocent woman.”
He stood and turned away from her. For a moment, she was sure he was going to march out the door. But as he reached for the handle, he hesitated.
“Okay, I had my suspicions,” he admitted, turning around. Now he simply looked worn down. “When I was on the road, sometimes I’d call her in the middle of the night. Usually after I’d had a few beers. Anyway, she hated that I did that. Said I was checking up on her. But I’d do it anyway, because I just didn’t trust her anymore. A couple of times the phone rang until the voice mail came on. I called again a few minutes later and she answered and said she’d been sleeping and hadn’t heard the ring. I knew that was a crock.”
The taste of bile rose in Amy’s throat. Noble and his wife were so young, and already their marriage had turned into a wasteland of resentment and distrust.
She shook free of her jaded thoughts. “If, and I emphasize if, she was involved with another man, do you have any idea who it might be?”
He shook his head. “No. But I always figured if she stepped out it would be with one of the guys at work.”
“At the tax office?” Carrie had been a clerk at the county tax office for the past six months.
“Yeah.”
“She mention anyone’s name to you?”
He snorted. “Like she’d talk about who she was screwing.”
Amy knew differently. Cheating spouses often dropped the names of their lovers, either deliberately or inadvertently. “Sometimes people do.”
“Well, I don’t remember anything like that, anyway,” he snapped.
He was flagging. Amy knew it was best to stay silent and let him keep talking.
“You think the guy she was with Wednesday night killed her?” he asked. “And killed Ashley and the woman in Lakeland, too? Why the hell would he do that?”
Amy shook her head. “We’re not drawing any conclusions yet. But we’re looking for connections between your wife, Krista Shannon and Ashley Rist.”
“Like I told you, I’m sure Carrie didn’t know Kasinski’s wife,” Matt said. “She never mentioned that name to me. But, yeah, she knew Ashley. She’s a Hammerhead wife. The wives all know each other.”
“How well? Did they get together often?”
“Not one-on-one, at least not as far as I know. There were some team get-togethers. A few barbecues—that sort of thing. Carrie went to some of my games, and she’d talk to the other wives. They always sit together. But I don’t think she and Ashley were really friends.”
“Never went to lunch, or for coffee? Maybe shopping? Nothing like that?”
He shrugged to say he didn’t know.
Amy had to struggle to keep the frustration from her voice. “Anything else you can tell me?”
He thought for a couple of moments. “Sometimes Carrie would stop in at Chester’s. That’s the bar across the street from the stadium. Some of the guys hang out there after the game. She and Ashley would see each other there once in a while.”
Amy made a mental note. A tenuous connection, but a connection nonetheless. “The Palm Beach Cardinals share Roger Dean Stadium with the Hammerheads. Do they share that bar, too?”
Noble nodded. “Yeah, but we’re not normally there at the same time. We usually only play them three times a month. Other than that, we’re out of town when they’re at home, and vice-versa.”
“Do you know if Carrie ever went to Chester’s when you were out of town?”
He hesitated and looked away. “She never mentioned it.”
But Noble clearly had his suspicions. Maybe the bar was more than just a tenuous connection. Maybe all three women had hung out there at times.
“Do you remember any player on the Hammerheads or the Cardinals, or on any other team for that matter, who seemed particularly friendly toward Carrie or Ashley, or seemed interested in one of them?”
His mouth opened and closed a few times before he answered. “Carrie liked to flirt a little sometimes, even though it pissed me off. But if it had been anything blatant, believe me, I would have noticed. I never felt threatened. Not by players.”
“Did she ever travel with you? To the Lakeland area, specifically?”
“Never. She didn’t have much time off. Besides, it would have been a distraction for me to have her on a road trip.”
I’ll bet it would. Matt Noble was probably no more faithful to his marriage vows than his wife had been. “Okay, Matt. I think we’re done, unless you have anything more you want to tell me. Or ask.”
He shook his head. “I guess not.”
Amy reached around him and opened the door. “We appreciate your help. Call me if you think of anything else that could be helpful.”
After she escorted Noble to the lobby, she returned upstairs to her desk and studied the photo again. The killer had taken pains to carefully excise Carrie from the picture. The edges of the cut were so clean she guessed the cutting instrument had been something like a very sharp box cutter, or possibly even a scalpel.
A scalpel to slice photos and carve up the bodies of beautiful girls, both actions brutally cold and precise. And lethal injection drugs to kill. What the hell were they dealing with here?
Calice. She’d read a lot about serial killers, but this guy might just deserve a book all his own.
26
* * *
Saturday, July 31
1:15 p.m.
Though it was only two days since Luke had seen Alicia, he was glad to be back at the hospital for another visit. He’d missed her bright face and clever, engaging personality. She was only a little girl, and yet he felt she was a kindred spirit. Like her, he’d lost all the people close to him, and they both knew all about tragedy. At least he hadn’t had to face a life-threatening illness on top of it. But Alicia never complained. The little sport had so much heart it humbled him.
He’d wanted to head down to Fort Lauderdale to see her
yesterday but the Polk County excursion had taken almost the whole day. And then he’d been unable to resist the temptation of talking Robitaille into dinner, although his plans for her had taken an unexpected and unwelcome turn. Little Detective Intense was clearly pissed off, too, since she had made a point of hanging up on him this morning. Well, she’d get over it. He’d make sure of that.
But that would have to wait. Right now, Alicia Trent needed him.
As he passed the nurses’ station, he renewed his vow to spend some time with the little girl every day—or at least every day that he could—until she had her surgery. And even after that, he’d continue to see her as often as possible, in hospital or out. He couldn’t solve global warming or defeat terrorism, but by God he was pretty sure he could make that little girl’s world a bit brighter.
Still, the murder case weighed on his mind, and his thoughts constantly turned to the possibility—hell, the likelihood—that the nut job would soon claim another young woman’s life.
And then there was the revelation at the press conference that Robitaille’s sister was married to a Florida State League player. He’d seen her shoulders go up when the reporter dropped that bombshell, seen the tension pull her body tight. But what could she do? Camp out twenty-four seven at her sister’s house? Other than that, he didn’t see how Marie-Louise Wilson would be any safer than Carrie Noble or Ashley Rist had been. What a burden for Robitaille to carry on top of everything else.
When Luke reached Alicia’s door he stopped before going in, deliberately shifting his mind away from Robitaille and the investigation. The little girl sat cross-legged on top of the sheets, her eyes closed and her skinny body swaying to whatever was on her iPod. Luke stood still, watching her, a sudden rush of emotion catching in his throat.
Finally, she opened her eyes and spotted him in the doorway. Luke wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything as bright as the grin that lit up her face. Her chocolate brown eyes might still be hazy from all the medications, but that toothy smile was full of life and promises of mischief.