by Kylie Brant
“Did Hidalgo ever leave anything at your place?” The question had Ryne’s attention moving back to the interview room. “Maybe give you something to keep for him?”
“Like what?”
Holmes never seemed to lose patience. “Maybe a sealed box, or a package of some kind. Articles of clothing. Tapes.”
Geneva shook her head and said, half-bitterly, “He never spent a dime on me while we was together, other than to pay for drinks when we went out. And he never gave me nothing else either.”
“Maybe he left something at your place without asking. Hid it in a closet, under a bed.”
The woman gave a short laugh. “I live with two other women, and there’s about as much privacy as a shoe box. There’s no place you can hide something and not have someone stumble over it. Believe me, I’ve tried. This one bitch, Greta Marko, she won’t stop wearing my clothes, right? So I tried putting my best stuff away, kinda like hiding it, like you said, and she—”
“Can you verify Hidalgo’s whereabouts on any of these dates?” Holmes’s question interrupted the woman’s growing ire, and had Ryne’s attention sharpening. But Rivera seemed unsure. A calendar was produced and the woman flipped through it desultorily. Juarez’s attendance record at the Valu-Mart had already been pulled. Given his hours, even on days he’d worked, he could have still managed assaults on each of the days in question. Some of the time lines would have been tight, but it was manageable. His second job cleaning up at Shorty’s provided no alibi. The owner and other employees had already been questioned, but no one else worked while he was there.
Which meant the man needed to come up with someone else who could alibi him on the days in question. It was clear the woman in the interview room was going to provide him with little help.
“You’re sure of that?”
Rivera nodded her head emphatically in response to Holmes’s question. “We first started seeing each other the end of April. The last time I was with Hidalgo was middle of June. The eighteenth. I took him to my niece’s baptism. Believe me, my family wasn’t impressed. It was then I decided to drop him for good.”
“How about this date in May.” He tapped the calendar page. That would be the date of Amanda Richard’s attack.
The woman shrugged. “Can’t say for sure. We usually only seen each other on weekends, but sometimes we’d get together on weeknights, too. Not often, though, because he had that job at Shorty’s, and he usually had to go there.”
Though the detective continued awhile longer, Rivera had nothing else of import to tell them. Ryne headed back to his desk when the interview concluded, his mood dark. He may as well call the DA now and get it over with. Unless something else transpired in the next few hours, Juarez was going to be a free man.
As she hurried across Colombia Square, Abbie easily identified Tracy Sommers. The woman was sitting on a park bench waiting for her staring fixedly at the fountain. When Abbie had called to set up this interview, Sommers had insisted on meeting her somewhere outside. When asked for a suggestion, Sommers had come up with this place. From the plaques she’d passed on some of the statues, Abbie knew the area was historic, but wondered what significance it held for Sommers. It was even more humid than usual today, and though the bench the woman had selected was in the shade, Abbie could already feel her shirt dampening.
“Mrs. Sommers?” Abbie smiled reassuringly as the woman jerked at her voice. “I’m Abbie Phillips, working with the SCMPD on your case.”
Once she’d sat down next to the woman, Sommers said, “Like I said on the phone, I haven’t remembered anything new. I don’t know how I can help by talking to you.”
“I am sorry to make you go through it again,” Abbie said sincerely. “But I have some pictures to show you. Do you think you’re up to taking a look at them?”
Sommers visibly recoiled. “You mean . . . you’ve found him?”
“We have a lead.” Despite her own reservations about Juarez as a suspect, she’d agreed to show his photo in an array to the victims. With none of them recalling seeing their attacker’s face, it was a shot in the dark, but an avenue they needed to cover.
Tracy moistened her lips, fists clenched in the lap of her denim skirt. “I don’t know how much it will help, but I’ll try.”
Abbie opened the folder she carried and handed it to the other woman. Each color picture showed a man in a full body shot, with Juarez’s picture second in the alignment.
The folder shook in Tracy’s trembling hands. “I don’t . . . I told the detectives I never saw him.”
“I know. But maybe his mask or gloves slipped down, just a fraction, and you saw a strip of skin.” The woman was shaking her head before Abbie even finished the suggestion. “In any case, these individuals are different heights, races, and body types. Go ahead and take your time,” she urged. “Study them. The purpose here isn’t positive identification, of course. But if anything about these men sparks a memory, just by comparison . . .”
Tracy shrugged helplessly, looking up at Abbie. “He grabbed me from behind. And once he jabbed that needle in my arm, I just wasn’t that aware of him, you know? Only of what he was doing to me.”
Her words were eerily similar to what both Billings and Richards had said. “How are you doing, Tracy?” Abbie asked, her voice gentle.
“Oh, well . . .” The pretty brunette tried a smile, didn’t quite manage it. “I haven’t been back to work because I can’t bring myself to use the elevators or enter a stairwell.”
For this victim, Abbie recalled, the rapist had placed a plastic bag over her head and repeatedly suffocated and revived her. “Have you seen a therapist? They might be able to help you with the claustrophobia, too.”
“I’m attending a group. It’s not helping much, though.” The woman looked away, a bitter expression on her face. “I try to spend as much time as possible outdoors, where the walls can’t close in on me. My husband . . . he’s been great, but I can’t help wondering . . . he’s an extreme sports fan. White water rafting, paragliding, rock climbing, you name it. How long is he going to stay interested in a wife who freaks out if a restaurant’s bathroom is too small?”
“Couples counseling will help both of you work through this.” She knew, better than anyone, that some fears lasted a lifetime. But that didn’t mean a person couldn’t learn to cope with them.
Tracy appeared not to hear, her gaze on a group of pigeons splashing in the fountain. “I’ve always had a problem with enclosed places, you know? Todd—my husband—used to tease me about it because I tended to shake and sweat in elevators, but I could still do them if I had to. But now . . . now I can’t even get into a car. It’s too confining.”
“Give it time,” Abbie advised gently. “And I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but counseling will help.” Certainly it had saved her life at one point. It had been less successful with Callie.
She shook the thought away. Callie and Tracy didn’t have similar issues. There was no reason to believe that therapy wouldn’t help Tracy, especially if her husband remained supportive.
It took another hour to lead the woman through the same list of questions she’d gone through with Amanda Richards. It was a tedious process, but necessary if she was to discover the intersections in these women’s lives. Somehow each of them had come to the rapist’s attention. If she could just discover that one point, it would be a huge lead in learning his identity.
When they were finished, Tracy looked one last time at the photos, while Abbie began to stow her notebook in her purse. “They’re too big,” she blurted.
“What?” Abbie’s gaze fell to the pictures. “How do you mean?”
“These two are too tall.” She pointed at the first and last men. The men depicted were over six foot. “This one is broader through here.” She traced the chest and shoulders of another. “The man who raped me was strong. But he wasn’t as big as Todd. He’s six foot and is in really good shape. The guy was smaller than him.”
> Feeling a spurt of excitement, Abbie put her bag down and withdrew the notebook she’d just put away. It didn’t escape her notice that Tracy hadn’t discounted Juarez. Or that her description of her attacker echoed the one Billings had given.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Phillips, but Barbara didn’t sleep well last night. I gave her one of the sedatives her doctor prescribed. You’ll have to reschedule your appointment.” Nancy Billings spoke from the three-inch opening she allowed in the door, as if ready to slam it at the merest hint of Abbie’s noncompli ance.
With a sudden shift of plans, Abbie said, “I will reschedule. But as long as I’m here, do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
The woman seemed taken aback. “Me? What could I possibly tell you?”
“In cases like this, we always talk to the victims’ families, ma’am, to add background to our case.” Know the victim, know the perp. Raiker’s mantra had been drilled into her. “You could fill in some blanks for me about Barbara’s residence history, educational background, employment history, relatives . . . things like that.”
The door was closing. “I don’t think—”
“Anything I can cover with you is less information I have to go over with Barbara.”
The words were an inspired choice. The movement of the door stopped, then the space widened slightly. “You wouldn’t need to bother Barbara again?”
It was obvious the woman would do anything to spare her daughter further involvement with the police. Abbie couldn’t blame her. “I still need to speak to your daughter, Mrs. Billings. But I think you can give me some of the details I need.”
It didn’t matter why the woman had decided to cooperate, Abbie figured, as she followed her through the home and was shown to the couch. Only that she had. As she watched Barbara’s mother flit around the room, straightening seat cushions and folding newspapers to “tidy up a bit,” Abbie noted that the woman really didn’t physically resemble her daughter in any way other than hair color. Which made her curious about Barbara’s father.
“Is your daughter a native Georgian?”
Nancy never stopped moving. “Oh, my yes. My husband—that’s my first husband—and I moved down here while I was pregnant with her. Lived in Mobile awhile, then Atlanta. But we’ve been in Savannah since Barbara was four.”
“I didn’t know you were remarried.” Abbie jotted a notation down in her notebook. “Do you live here with your second husband?”
“No, thank heavens.” At Abbie’s raised brows, the woman stopped straightening the curtains and crossed to stand behind a chair opposite Abbie. “I’ve been divorced for ten years. Purchased this house when the divorce was final. Ron Billings is living in Tallahassee with his new wife, and good riddance to him.”
“So he must have adopted Barbara,” surmised Abbie.
The older woman nodded. “And she took his name back after her divorce, not that she was ever that happy with it to begin with. She idolized her real daddy, God rest his soul. She and Ron never got along that well, especially in her teens.”
“Why is that?” Abbie wrote Ron Billings? in the notebook and drew a line under it. Although with the evident links in the rapes, it was doubtful that Barbara’s poor relationship with her stepfather had any bearing on the case.
“Well, he was a bit of a bully, I guess you could say.” Nancy smoothed the sage green fabric on the chair before her, plucking at a loose thread. “Always thought he knew what was best for everybody. Arranged things to suit himself most of the time and expected us to fall in with his decisions. He and Barbara used to have huge battles over that boat of his.”
“His boat?” Abbie asked, summoning patience. Oftentimes the most illuminating tidbits of information came when she got the other person talking freely. And Nancy Billings had obviously relaxed since her arrival.
“He bought it—he claimed—so we’d have family time together. Ron had a way of justifying all of his extravagances. Barbara refused to have anything to do with it, and of course I sided with her. Ron could be incredibly insensitive about other people’s feelings.”
Sifting through the statements, Abbie asked, “Barbara didn’t like boats?”
“Barbara didn’t like water,” Nancy corrected. “She’s terrified of it. Has been ever since she witnessed her father’s death. She nearly drowned herself.”
Abbie’s attention bounced from her notepad to the woman across from her. “When was that?”
“When Barbara was seven.” Nancy was on the move again, trailing one finger across the glass end table, frowning at a bit of dust she spotted. “I stayed home that day because I hadn’t been feeling well. Jack had taken her sailing, just off Hilton Head Island. A storm had come up suddenly and the boat capsized.” The woman stopped, took a deep breath. “They were wearing life jackets, and my husband had Barbara and was trying to swim back to shore. They weren’t that far out. But the boat must have been lifted by a swell and it came down, striking him on the head . . .”
Leaving his young daughter to watch her unconscious father drown. For a moment she was flooded with empathy. Then an idea reared, one so implausible she nearly dismissed it. But it refused to be rejected. “Mrs. Billings, would you mind sitting down? I want you to tell me everything you remember about Barbara’s fear of water since her childhood.”
There was a kick in her chest as she caught sight of Ryne bent over some paperwork at his desk. Abbie accepted the sensation with resignation rather than alarm. Last night had proven only too clearly that she wasn’t immune to the man. Far from it.
Ryne looked up at the sound of her approach, dropped his pen, and rubbed a hand over his shadowed jaw. “You’re keeping long hours.”
She didn’t bother pointing out the obvious. Sometimes she wondered if he kept a razor and change of clothes there and slept at his desk.
“Heard from your sister?”
The words had Abbie slowing in the process of rounding her desk. “No.” She’d barely given Callie a thought for hours, a fact she wasn’t proud of. But the kiss she’d shared with him . . . that memory had prowled the edges of her mind throughout the day. On the drives to and from the interviews. During them. Most people would be a lot happier if memory functioned upon command. Since she couldn’t order the mental replays to stop, she’d done her best to ignore them.
That attempt wasn’t helped by the sight of Ryne, looking lean and dangerous with a black ribbed pullover shirt and a stubbled chin. A wheat-colored collarless jacket hung over the back of his chair.
It wasn’t until his gaze met hers that she realized she was staring. Her tongue felt suddenly thick. “Do . . . do you have time to give me a quick rundown of the updates?”
Glancing at his watch, he grimaced. “I’m going to have to leave pretty soon. I’ll print out a copy for you, though.” He swiveled his chair to the computer on his desk and tapped in a command. A moment later the printer across the room whirred. He got up to retrieve the pages, and stopped at his desk for another sheaf of papers, setting both on her desk. “I wanted your thoughts on the interview with Juarez’s ex-girlfriend.”
He perched on the corner of her desk, and leaned forward to flip through some pages until he found the one he wanted. “When you talked about this guy practicing or role-playing with wives or girlfriends . . . is this what you were talking about?”
Abbie seized on the subject gratefully. Anything to tear her gaze away from the sight of that black-clad muscled thigh situated too close to her. Scanning the papers rapidly, she said slowly, “It could be. Especially for someone who was just starting to enact his fantasies, before they’d gotten very detailed. How long were they seeing each other?”
“Rivera says just a matter of weeks.”
She nodded. “It’s possible he would have gotten bolder with her . . . demanded more, if they’d stayed together longer. Of course,” she added wryly, “this could just be someone with a master-slave fetish. It’s certainly not uncommon.”
“So your answer is
. . . yes? But maybe no?”
She grinned at his wry tone. “Exactly.”
“Very helpful.” He straightened, but didn’t move away. “And about as definitive as the rest of the leads in this case. Cantrell and McElroy did come up with a few names when they talked to prostitutes about guys who roughed them up. We’re following up on those. All we could charge Juarez with at this time was assault and possession, and he made bail this afternoon. I’ve got guys on him around the clock, though.” He stopped, but she didn’t respond. “Go ahead and say it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know. And very loudly, too. You still don’t think it’s him.”
“I think,” she said carefully, “that forming opinions before looking at every lead thoroughly can blind us to—”
“Bull. You don’t think it’s him. But we have every reason to focus on him.”
“Yes.” Because it put a measure of distance between them, she leaned back in her chair. “Juarez is a valuable lead in this case, whether he’s the perpetrator or not.” Ryne hadn’t said where he was going. Given his dress, she’d guess he had a hot date, and the thought had her stomach clenching.
“Right.” He seemed to have forgotten all about having to leave. “Because of the positive blood match in his vehicle.”
She nodded. “His SUV was used in the commission of a rape, and regardless of his direct involvement, that makes him one more intersection. We’ve been concentrating on figuring out how the victims came to the perp’s attention. Now we have one more person to consider. If Juarez isn’t our UNSUB . . . how did he come to the perp’s attention?”
“Whether he’s the perp or another victim, we’ll pull on the threads of his life and see where they lead us.” He nodded toward the update he’d printed out. “What the detectives have gotten so far is there. They’ve talked to his neighbors, his cellmates, and all his relatives around here . . . tomorrow they’ll be hitting his workplaces and hangouts.”