by Kylie Brant
It was almost enough to make her feel sorry for the detective. Almost.
After another ring of the doorbell, the door finally cracked open a few inches and Larsen stared out unenthusiastically. “This really isn’t a good time.”
Abbie pinned on her cheeriest smile. “I’m sorry to bother you again, Ms. Larsen. But we had some follow-up questions for you. When you didn’t answer the phone, I decided to take a chance and drive over.”
“Anything you need to know should be in the report I filed with the fire investigator,” she said firmly, inching the door shut again. “I have to work third shift tonight and I need to get some sleep before then.”
“Actually, Jim Cordray isn’t mentioned in the fire report, although he probably should be.” A sliver of satisfaction traced through her as the name of the Loose Goose bartender had Larsen freezing in the act of closing the door. “We wondered why you didn’t mention to the investigator, or to Officer O’Hare, that you were expecting company on the night of the fire.”
There was a tremble to Larsen’s mouth, before she firmed it. Stepping back, she opened the door wordlessly, and Abbie stepped through it.
The place was as neat as the last time she and Ryne had been there, but dark, with the shades drawn. A pillow and a comforter were lying on the couch, and there were creases in the oversized T-shirt and yoga pants the woman wore. It was obvious Abbie had wakened her.
“So.” Larsen swept the blanket aside and sat cross-legged on the couch. “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”
“We followed up on the places you said you’d been that night. Cordray was the only one who recognized you.”
Larsen’s mouth twisted, her gaze cast downward. “Always nice to be remembered, I guess.” She swallowed hard, then lifted her chin and looked squarely at Abbie. “You may as well tell me what else he said.”
“I think you can guess.” Their gazes met, held, until Larsen’s dropped away. She clasped her hands in her lap tightly.
“I don’t do this. That. I mean, whatever he told you . . .” She pursed her lips tightly and looked away. “That’s just not me. I’m not a slut.”
“No one’s judging you, Karen,” Abbie said gently. “We just need the whole story so we can figure out what really happened the night of the fire.”
The other woman lifted a shoulder jerkily. “I wasn’t withholding information. It just doesn’t have anything to do with the fire. Really. The investigator agreed it was the candles that caught the drapes on fire.”
“He also said there were more than a dozen candles lit in your bedroom. A woman doesn’t light that many candles if she’s planning on crawling into bed alone.”
Larsen dropped her face into her hands. “I’m so stupid!” Her voice was muffled. When she lifted her head again, her eyeliner was smudged slightly under one eye. “It’s not like it was going to be romantic anyway, with that big creep. Obviously I wasn’t thinking clearly.” She shook her head. “I must have picked up the rest of the candles on the way home somewhere. I only had the one in my house before then.” Her voice trailed off, and she looked like she was about to cry. “You must think I’m horrible.”
Abbie gave her a sympathetic smile. As confessions went, Larsen’s was more pathetic than shocking. “What I think is that you’re being too hard on yourself. All of us have done things that we’re ashamed of. Things we wish we could undo. The first step in moving on is forgiving yourself for your mistakes.”
The other woman scrubbed at her eyes, smearing her makeup even more. “Yeah, well, when I screw up, I do it major, don’t I?” She let out a shaky breath. “I’m hazy on the details. I’d had a couple good-sized margaritas at The Loose Goose before coming home.”
More than a couple, according to Cordray’s statement, but the detail wasn’t important so Abbie remained silent and let the woman go on.
“He’d said it’d be an hour or so before he could meet me, but he was there ten minutes or so after I got home.” Her voice broke. “It was horrible. He was horrible. Sick and violent. I think he must have put something in my drinks, because once it started I lost consciousness several times.”
Everything in Abbie stilled. “Who, Karen? Who was there?”
The woman frowned at her. “Cordray, of course. He . . . he grabbed me from behind, and at first I . . . at first I laughed. I thought . . .” Her throat worked and she unfolded her hands to wrap her arms around her middle. “I actually thought, ‘Well, he’s certainly eager.’ ” Her voice was filled with self-loathing. “That’s the worst. I invited him. I brought all that horror upon myself.”
Abbie leaned forward and said urgently, “Karen, are you sure it was him? Did you see Cordray’s face? At any time during the night?”
Larsen seemed to fold in upon herself. “I . . . I don’t know. I must have. I was just so out of it. I really think he slipped me something because all I can really recall is fading in and out of consciousness. Which was probably a blessing,” she said bitterly. “He hurt me so bad. But I was drunk, and I invited him. Believe me, I know what the police would say if I filed charges. And I . . . didn’t want anyone to know what I’d done.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she bent at the waist, a loud sob escaping her.
Abbie rose and crossed to the couch, sinking down beside the woman to put an arm around her shoulders, her mind racing. She didn’t know how much more Larsen could take right now, but there were more blows to come, and she didn’t know any way to soften them.
“Karen, listen to me.” The woman drew in a hiccupping breath, but lifted her head, although her gaze skirted Abbie’s. “The man that night . . . wasn’t Cordray. We’ve already checked his alibi thoroughly. He was held up in the bar that night with his manager and all the other employees until after five a.m.”
Karen did look at her then, confusion and misery warring on her face. “That’s impossible. He was there. I admit I was in and out of it, but I know he was there.”
“Someone was there, Karen,” Abbie said as gently as she could. “But it wasn’t Cordray. I know this is hard for you. But I need you to answer another question for me.” She gave the woman a few moments before leveling the question that had been on her mind for the last few minutes.
“Had you ever been in a fire before?”
“Is it safe to come in yet?”
Ryne looked over his shoulder to see Abbie approaching with exaggerated caution, and for the first time in hours, something lightened inside him. “Hey.” He let his pencil drop to the desktop and spun his chair to face her. “Have you been with Larsen all this time?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly seven.”
“Yeah, well, after our discussion she was having a very bad day.” She leaned against the corner of his desk. “I finally called her neighbor to come over to stay with her. She was pretty upset.”
He was listening, but wasn’t as focused on what she was saying as he should have been. The headache that had been threatening all day was a dull rapping at the base of his skull, despite the pain relievers he’d swallowed an hour earlier. He was used to putting in long hours, but there came a time when he wasn’t even effective anymore. He was perilously close to that point right now.
He’d like nothing better than to head out with Abbie to her place. Or his for that matter. Close the door and forget this case, forget this day, forget everything for the next several hours but the two of them.
The thought had interest, and more, stirring in the pit of his belly. She wore a gray shirt today, one of those fitted ones with the buttons hidden beneath a . . . what’d they call those things? A placket? Whatever. The shirt matched her eyes, the color of dense fog.
Her eyes darkened with emotion, he recalled. With temper. With desire. Pleasure. His stomach muscles clenched at the memory. The sight of Abbie when passion took her was a gut-wrenchingly sexy image that had burned itself onto his mind. It recurred at the most inappropriate of times, disturbing his focus. Disrupting his concentration.
That sh
ould alarm him. Did alarm him on some level. But damned if he could get his fill of her.
She batted him lightly on the side of the head. “And you’re not listening to a thing I say.”
“On the contrary,” he lied, forcing his gaze away from the fabric hiding the fastenings on her shirt. “You had Larsen’s neighbor come over to stay with her.”
“I should have hit you harder,” she observed. “I told you that a couple minutes ago. You’re in another world.”
“Would it make you feel better to know you were there with me?” God, he loved that expression on her face, that mixture of shock and pleased embarrassment. It made him think that, regardless of her experience, she hadn’t experienced this before. Whatever this was between them.
He gave himself a mental shake. Apparently lack of sleep and Tylenol were enough to turn his brain to mush. He leaned back in his chair, stretched. “Let’s start again. What had Larsen so upset?”
Abbie folded her arms across her chest. “She was convinced Cordray was there. That he drugged her, raped her, although she didn’t report it as such because she’d invited him back to her place, just like we’d figured.”
The news succeeded in snaring his attention. “Except it wasn’t Cordray.”
“And that’s what sent her into near hysterics.” He didn’t miss the flicker of sympathy on Abbie’s face. “And there’s more. Her home started on fire when she was seventeen. A neighbor pulled her from the flames before she suffered major injuries, but . . .”
He could almost guess what she wasn’t saying. “The rest of the family?”
“Her brother was away at school, but her parents died.”
A fire survivor, who had been assaulted and had her bedroom aflame later that night. He’d always hated coincidence.
“Did she mention the tox screen?”
“Eventually.” Abbie tapped the fingers of one hand against her shapely thigh. “She had the neighbor take her to the hospital instead of waiting for the ambulance because she doesn’t have insurance.”
“A ride in an ambulance is eight hundred bucks a pop,” he noted.
“But while she accepted treatment for smoke inhalation, she didn’t breathe a word about her other injuries. Thinking it was Cordray, she blamed herself for the attack. But she did have her friend, Dixon’s girlfriend, run a tox screen. She was afraid Cordray—at least who she thought was Cordray—had drugged her. I got her to agree to give us a copy of the tox screen so now our possession of it will be legal.”
Ryne frowned at her reference to Dixon but didn’t correct her. “So she arrived home from the bar at two-thirty, according to her statement. And there’s no way Cordray could have been there before five.”
“Another interesting thing—she claims she had only one candle in the house, and thought she might have stopped to buy more on the way home. But where would she buy candles at that time in the morning?”
“If this is our guy, he probably brought them with him,” Ryne guessed.
“That’s what I thought. He grabbed her about ten minutes after she’d been home and the fire was called in at four-fifteen.”
“Leaving only about an hour and a half for the attack,” Ryne said slowly. “That would rush this UNSUB. He likes to take his time. Inflict a lot of damage.”
“Maybe things didn’t go as expected,” Abbie suggested. “If he watched Larsen as closely as he did the other victims, he’d have expected her to be home. According to her, she didn’t have much of a social life.”
“All he’d have to do is watch to see if she leaves the house dressed for work and from there guess the time she’d be home, if she usually works eight-hour shifts.”
“Only this time she leaves again, and by her account, it’s still early. Five-thirty or so. And she doesn’t return for hours. That must have really thrown a wrench into his plans.”
“But if he followed his usual MO, he’d have been inside the house by the time she got home from work. He could have grabbed her while she was changing then. He got Billings around six thirty, so he isn’t worried about starting the attack in the daylight. Why didn’t he just take her when he had a chance?”
She shook her head slowly. “Hard to say. Unless her leaving caught him by surprise, since she so rarely went out.” She thought for a moment. “Did Han say anything about the effects if this drug was mixed with alcohol?”
Ryne shook his head. “I doubt he’d be able to take more than an educated guess about that. Why?”
“Because I wonder if all the booze she consumed interfered with the effects. She’s hazy about the attack. More so than the other victims. It sounds like she was unconscious a lot of the time.”
He leaned back to study her carefully. “I’m thinking the perp would be pretty pissed off by that. He’d want her subdued but awake to suffer through the whole experience. The whole time line hurries him. Maybe that’s why she was able to get loose from her bonds—he had to act more quickly than usual.”
“There’s still a lot of details to her story that need to be filled in,” Abbie admitted. “Tomorrow I want to visit the scene of the fire, talk to her neighbors.”
“Were you able to access that information about her family’s fire on the Web?” he asked, without much hope.
“It wasn’t available to the general public. I had to pay a fee for the newspaper archive, and of course, I already knew what to look for. I followed up with the same question I asked the other victims, about any personals postings she might have made to an online bulletin board, blog, or chat site. She claims she isn’t into that sort of thing.”
It had been a good line to follow, but hadn’t panned out. Out of all the victims, only Richards regularly used the new Web gadgetry that allowed people to share what was, from a police perspective, an unwise amount of personal information.
He rubbed at the base of his skull, where the pounding had taken on jackhammer status. “You filled out the interview questionnaire? Victim checklist?” He didn’t need her nod to have his answer. Abbie was as thorough as he was himself. When it came to victimology, probably more so.
“Nothing in her daily routine or habits jumped out for me, but I’ll be certain once I add the information to the victim grid.”
“So tell me where you think this leaves us.”
“He’s not relying on a single method for selection,” she said regretfully.
He shared her disappointment. It would have been a helluva lot easier all around if he were. They’d have nailed it by now. The victim grid Abbie had put together was comprehensive, with only the most superfluous intersections.
“Some of the information he could have gathered through the media or Internet, and I think it’s probable that he did so, at least in the case of Richards and Hornby. But for the others . . . somehow, some way, they gave up the information about their fears freely, in a completely nonthreatening environment.”
Abbie’s face went pensive as she continued, “He’s in a position to win women’s trust, or in a crowd, like a party where you mingle and have innocuous conversations with lots of people over the course of the evening. Maybe he even overhears the information, and then follows up on it.”
“Someone who wins their trust.” Ryne mulled the statement over. “Who is a woman going to talk to so freely?”
“Girlfriends. Their mothers. Pastors. Therapists. Gyne cologists.”
He was following Abbie’s rapid litany until the last. He raised his brows. “Gynecologist?”
“Or doctor.” Abbie shrugged. “Think about it. You already have very few secrets from the person doing your annual Pap smear.”
Ryne felt what he considered a very natural squeamishness at examining the idea too closely. Some of women’s mysteries should remain just that. Mysteries.
“And so far we’ve gotten nowhere looking for connections in where they doctor or worship. Maybe we should look harder at the friends and acquaintances angle.”
She nodded unenthusiastically and he suspe
cted Abbie understood what he did himself. They’d covered that angle pretty thoroughly already. It was going to be nearly impossible to predict the actions of an offender who was using random methods of selection.
“I didn’t get through all the ViCAP hits, but I did highlight the cases in which electrical cord was used to bind victims, regardless of whether it was arms, legs, or both.” She half turned to reach for the binder, which she’d placed on his desk, and opened it to indicate pages bearing yellow highlighter. The sight brought a smile to his lips, in light of their earlier conversation that day, but he knew better than to let her see it.
“I had a forensic knot analyst look at what pictures we could get of the cord,” he reminded her. In most cases, whoever had found the victim had released her before the police were there to salvage the knots. But the security guard who had rescued Amanda Richards had had the foresight to cut the bonds carefully enough so that they could be reconstructed, as had Marine Patrol when they’d pulled Billings out of the sound. The analyst could only tell them the knots hadn’t been military, nautical, or connected with any occupation requirement.
“Yeah, and I’m still not sure whether the use of the electrical cord means only that the wire is accessible to him or part of his ritual. But if it is part of his signature, it might pay off to look further at the cases I highlighted. There was a string of sexual homicides in New Jersey three years ago that were particularly violent, in which electrical cord was used.”
Ryne frowned. “I think I remember those. I was still in Boston at the time. Followed the case in the newspapers.”
“It rang a bell with me, too, because Callie was going to nursing school in Connecticut at the time. At any rate, there are several others, most sexual homicides, involving some sort of cable or wire. I’ll continue looking at them tomorrow.”
Pushing away from the desk, she rounded his chair to pluck a file folder out of the drawer of her desk, and handed it to him. “Maybe this will cheer you up. I contacted Ketrum’s PR department under the pretext of being an enterprising young reporter, and got you a list of their labs and locations, including the lab that’s working on the trials with TTX.”