by TL Schaefer
That stung, but his bald statement gave me an out, since I certainly couldn’t tell him the truth. “You don’t know me well enough to make any kind of statement, Detective.”
He mulled my words over for a moment, a grin pushing up one corner of his begging-to-be kissed mouth. My heart almost stopped.
“What would you say if I told you I wanted to remedy that?”
This time it did stop, stuttering for a few beats. I stared at him for a moment, then threw back my head and forced a laugh.
“I don’t date cops, Roney. Know that right now.”
His blue eyes glittered with repressed laughter. “I wasn’t talking ’bout dating.”
“You’ve got balls, you know that? Let me make it crystal clear. Not interested. Period. End of sentence.”
He gave me a slow, lazy once-over that had more than my hackles rising.
“Why are you here anyway?”
His mouth curved again. “I thought I made that pretty obvious.” But his eyes had gone serious, and in a flash, I saw right through Detective Brian Roney, at least on a personal front. He had all the makings of a player, but not the heart for it. No, he put up a good front, acted like he was supposed to, and went home alone because he wasn’t quite sure what to do next. I would have called him a coward if it weren’t like looking into a mirror.
It was because of that I let him stay instead of kicking his ass to the curb.
“Give it up. Not gonna happen.” I started putting away the groceries, feeling the weight of his gaze on me the whole time. He might not be a player in his personal life, but he still had a cop’s eyes, a cop’s instincts. That was as much a part of him as the other. “Why are you really here?”
He sighed, and in it I heard the depth of his frustration...and it wasn’t directed at me. “We found another one this morning. Same signature.”
My head whipped around. “Two in twenty-four hours?” That was distinctly abnormal. Almost unheard of. “Are you sure?”
“Oh yeah. You weren’t called in because it was on the other side of town.”
That didn’t make sense. Killers, unless they were mobile by nature, like truckers or salesmen, usually stuck to their home turf. It was almost always a comfort thing. Dallas was a big city, and him crossing clear over to the other side of town was beyond odd.
“How’d you get in on it?”
He shot me a look that said “use your head”. I did, and answered my own question.
“A city councilman gets whacked and they’re gonna eyeball everything, right?”
He nodded.
“So why tell me?”
He was shaking his head when he answered. “I dunno, but it’s what my gut tells me, and it’s always right.”
Of all the things he could have said, that one surprised me the most—and was exactly the right thing to begin to win my grudging trust. Most cops wouldn’t admit to following instinct to an outsider, and no matter how much I worked with them, that’s exactly what I was. How his open admission of intuition squared with his Nullness, I wasn’t sure, but it intrigued me...mightily.
“I brought the stills.”
Shit. I couldn’t pass up on something as juicy as that, especially with a thrill-killer on the loose. I had no doubt our mystery man was just that. His aura hadn’t struck me as anything but a nutjob. A calculating, organized one, granted, but a whacko nonetheless.
I sighed, but it was for Roney’s benefit, then motioned him toward the coffee table in front of the couch. Natural light was best for this. “Let’s see ’em.”
He smiled, the first full-fledged one he’d graced me with. It was a beautiful, breathtaking thing. I was in serious trouble.
Roney laid the photos out in sequential order on the coffee table, carefully putting the glass of lemonade I’d poured on a coaster. Gotta love a man who does that.
I studied the stills. This time the victim was a woman, naked as the day she was born, and the gaping slash across her throat looked exactly the same. Her body had been positioned like the city councilman’s, in a way to elicit the most shocking response. Unlike the councilman’s, her face wasn’t relaxed, and instead portrayed every bit of the screaming horror she must have experienced. Most shockingly, as with the first victim, she bore no signs of ligature marks. Party clothes were folded at her feet, a pair of expensive strappy sandals atop the pile.
“He’s controlling them somehow...no restraint bruising. He’s also a leftie, and the knife is wicked-sharp. The wound is too clean for it to be a serrated blade.”
Roney nodded in agreement. “What makes you think it’s a guy?”
I pictured last night’s scene again in my mind. It didn’t hurt that a blade was my weapon of choice and had been since I’d found myself on the streets at sixteen. Never mind the fact my Sight had honed what were already ferocious observational skills. It was probably one of the reasons Chief Davis kept me around.
“Size and height. Your red ball, Williams, was a big guy, and the cut was angled up a bit. He applied more pressure at the end of the slice, too. Not trying to take his head off, more like finishing with a flourish. You’ve got the same thing here. Either it’s a huge chick or a big beefy dude. Either way, your perp likes what he’s doing. Likes it a lot.”
“Where are you from, Sara?”
I didn’t like the way he said my name again, almost as if he were tasting it, rolling it around in his mouth. Oh hell, I had to be honest. I liked it too much. So much it gave me the goose bumps.
“Why?” I kept my voice completely free of expression, my face blank.
He leaned back against the cushions and laid an arm across the back of the couch, the picture of insouciance. “Because not too many people around here use words like chick and dude, not when they’re looking at a murder scene.”
Damn him and his cop’s ears. “It doesn’t make a difference. What does is that you’ve got a thrill killer on your hands, and probably a serial.”
“Why aren’t you full-time crime scene tech?”
“What is it with the personal questions?” I snapped. Why the hell did he care? No one had in the last ten years, especially after I gave them the cold shoulder. Repeatedly.
“Well, if I’m not gonna get lucky, I’d at least like to know who I’m talking to.”
“You’re not going to score. Write that in the notebook I know you’re carrying, and underline it. Twice. And when it comes to personal stuff, I could say the same thing about you, Roney. I don’t know anything about you, except you barging into my place and flashing a badge.”
“Hey.” He spread his hands wide. His large, capable-looking hands. If I were a fanciful girl, I could too easily envision those hands cruising along my ribcage, cupping my breasts... I shook my head, trying to jiggle some sense into it.
“I’m an open book. Grew up in San Diego, went to San Diego State on a football scholarship, joined the Air Force as a cop and after that, pararescue for twelve years, and signed up with Dallas PD when my enlistment ended. Worked my way into homicide and moved over from North Central about a month ago at the request of Chief Davis. That’s it.”
Yeah, right. “Somehow I doubt that. Especially if you made detective so quickly, and Davis himself wanted you, but heck, I’ll play. I’m from Phoenix, moved here and started shooting ten years ago. Now can we get back to your crime scene?” What I didn’t say was that my last “home” had been near Colorado Springs, and the winters were too cold in Colorado when you lived on the street. Dallas had sounded a lot warmer...and a lot further away.
He crossed one leg over the other and regarded me inscrutably. What had he heard to make him look at me that way? Roney began speaking again and I realized it didn’t matter. I’d remade myself over a decade ago, and I’d done it right. He could speculate all he wanted.
“All right. I want you to take a look at the scene. The detective who caught this one is an old friend of mine from my military days. Even though we’re crossing divisions, it’ll be cool.�
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“Only if he can keep his mouth shut. His CSU guys will scream if they hear I was there. I don’t need to catch any more crap than I already do.” I didn’t care what the crime scene techs thought. I didn’t need it getting out that I was a psychic. Roney’s being here was already strange enough.
“She did a tour in Iraq as an Air Force Reserve cop, and with me in Afghanistan as regular Air Force after 9/11. Monica’s seen things that would make your hair curl.”
The way he said it, with absolute confidence, told me he trusted this Monica. Part of me wondered if they’d been lovers, and I had to shake myself. Why the hell did I care? I was doing this because I was morbidly intrigued by the baddie and what he was trying to say with his kills. I nodded my head. “Let’s get rockin’, Roney.”
Monica Foudy met us at the crime scene. Short, petite and dark-haired, she sported a rock on her ring finger that had to have set her husband back at least fifteen grand. In her peach twin-set and sensible flats, she looked more like a soccer mom than a homicide investigator. The deadly Beretta at her hip dispelled the benevolent image as quickly as a bullet.
She gave me a long look as I stepped out of the Crown Vic, keeping her face impassive.
I let my glasses drop low enough to get a quick glimpse of her aura...something I seemed to be doing a lot more of lately. It was a vibrant, shocking red. The color that made you think of arterial blood—I figured it kind of fit her job. When it came to mood, I got nothing but cool, calm and restrained. Either she was a powder keg getting ready to blow, or one of the most controlled people I’d ever met.
“So this is wonder girl.” Her voice was dry, short of mocking, and automatically pissed me off.
I shot Roney a murderous glare. “I’m not ‘wonder’ anything. I’ve simply been shooting crime scenes for ten years.”
“Well, I don’t know what good you’re going to do when our guys have already taken care of it.”
She didn’t pull any punches, even if her aura hadn’t changed one bit. She wasn’t antagonistic toward me, she simply didn’t want anyone wasting her time. I could understand that, but I didn’t have to like the way she expressed it.
“Let her look, Monica. I’ve got a feeling on this one,” Roney requested quietly, confidently.
Detective Foudy’s eyebrows raised above her sunglasses. “Okay Covington. Look away.” She motioned Roney over to a spot in the shade, and they huddled together, comparing notes.
I wondered about their little exchange, about whether I’d been right back up in the loft about them being an item, but chose to focus my attention on the alley snaking between two abandoned manufacturing warehouses. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure they were still occupied, and slipped my glasses off.
Late-afternoon sunlight blinded me for a moment, then faded away as “my” dimension enveloped me. As always, the unadulterated sensation pushed me back a step and stole my breath.
A thick purple smear still hung on the stagnant air, most blatant next to the chalk outline of the body, before drifting away to the corner where the alley met the street. It lingered there, and told me more than I wanted to know. The perp had stood here for a long time, probably watching the cops do their thing. The thought made my stomach roll. Behind, and somehow merged with the nauseating violet color, was a shadow, a bottomless black smudge that may have been part of the killer’s personality...or not. Either way, it was disturbing.
I turned my attention to what remained of the crime scene and looked at what the victim had left behind.
She’d been young. The remains of her aura were still strong and vivid, a bluish-green I always associated with youth. I would have known that, even without the crime scene photos. But there was more, a rounded and soft consistency to the color that told me something important. All around her was the texture and sensation of terror, garish and seething. Sometimes the impressions a victim left behind were worse than the actual scene, as was the case here. This girl had died in such a state of horror I was surprised her heart hadn’t given out before her killer delivered the fatal blade stroke.
I slid my glasses back on and turned to find Roney and Foudy watching me with identical hawk-like expressions. Roney looked almost...pleased, as if I’d validated something he’d thought. Foudy simply appeared disgruntled.
I ambled over, making my stride purposefully slow in order to collect my thoughts. What I said in the next few minutes might very well change the course of my life...for the better or worse.
Why did freakin’ scruples have to rear their ugly head now, when I was nice and comfy in my life? Now that I had a great job, a solid roof over my head? I sighed internally. There was no getting past this, no matter what the cost.
“Well?” Foudy propped a fist on her hip next to her sidearm.
The time for dissembling was long past, at least with this particular killer. Offing the city councilman was one thing, but he’d recognized this girl’s vulnerability somehow. And while his satisfaction with the kill was apparent, there was more, a kind of inevitability, that hit me even deeper. It was this that pushed buttons better left alone.
I’ve never been known for putting my ass on the line for anyone, but this baddie, he was different, and because of that, I’d have to be different. Or suffer the consequences of my own conscience.
“Your vic was pregnant. Not too far along, she might not have even known.” Normally I would never have given this information, but in this case, I wanted them to believe everything I said. This guy wouldn’t stop with these two. He was just getting started.
Foudy drew in a sharp breath, her body going bowstring taut.
“The perp is male, older, because he acts with sophistication, but not as old as we might think. Definitely an organized killer. These two weren’t his first, but they may have been the first in Dallas. He likes this hunting ground and probably won’t leave until you put some pressure on him. He’ll disappear after that. See if your photographer got any crowd scenes. He stayed here for a while, watching you process the site. There was no sexual assault, just a straight-up kill. He’s got a reason for doing this, for selecting these victims. Worse, he enjoys it.”
“Jesus, what are you, a psychic?” Foudy’s voice had dropped an octave.
“No, merely a skilled observer.” Roney cut in. Why was he covering for me? “Sara has been shooting our division for years, and probably knows more about crime scenes than we do.”
“But she was right about the vic...”
“Monica, let it go. Run with what she’s given you and see if we can’t get a profiler in on this. Let’s see what jibes.”
Foudy nodded jerkily. “Only for you, Roney. Only for you.” She cut one last suspicious glance at me before climbing into her car. Roney and I followed suit, and only after we were settled inside with the air conditioning on high did he address me.
“How did you know she was pregnant? The ME only came in with that an hour ago.” He wasn’t looking at me, instead staring into the alley, no expression on his face.
I waited a beat before answering, letting the cold, canned air wash over me. What was it about Roney that made me want to answer truthfully? Was it because he was a Null? It must be, because I’d certainly never felt the compulsion before. Maybe it was easier to let him think what Foudy had, that I was a psychic. Cops were more likely to believe that than the fact I could see another dimension.
“Foudy wasn’t too far off. I get feelings when I’m at a crime scene, that’s all.”
His head swiveled, and he pinned me with those blue, blue eyes. “Monica’s going to check you out now, quietly, of course. You know that, right?”
I nodded and tried to still the pounding of my heart. It was standard procedure to eliminate me as the killer. The medical examiner would back me up; I was too short to have done the city councilman, and was probably shooting his crime scene when the woman had been killed. And my last ten years here in Dallas, unless they somehow obtained and ran my prints, we
re solid. I wasn’t too worried about being implicated. Apparently Roney wasn’t either, and he confirmed my thoughts with his next words.
“Initial ME results indicate this vic was killed while you were at the red ball scene, so don’t worry about catching any flack.” He paused, as if struggling to find the right words. “How long have you been getting these ‘feelings’?”
I shrugged. “Since I was a kid. Listen, can you take me home now? It’s been a long twenty-four hours.”
He stared at me for a moment longer, then faced forward and put the car in gear.
I really, really needed a cigarette.
Roney left me at my doorstep with a smoldering look that had nothing to do with being a cop and everything to do with being a man.
He totally screwed up my equilibrium. One minute he was a pushy cop, the next a man I could too easily envision falling into passion with. He was a total contradiction, and one I couldn’t read, at that. The less I saw of him, the better. Somehow I didn’t think I was going to be so lucky.
I trudged up the stairs, melancholy for a reason I didn’t want to analyze.
Xena greeted me at the door so I took her for a quick stroll around the block, before heading home for a fast, cold shower.
I was toweling my hair dry and quite successfully avoiding any thoughts of Roney when my cell rang. I cringed. The only time I got a call was when I needed to head to a scene since the folks at HQ were pretty much the only ones who were even aware I existed. After last night and this afternoon, it was the last thing I wanted to do.
Caller ID confirmed my suspicions, and I hesitated before picking it up. If DPD was calling, I was the one they wanted, not a badge-carrying tech.
“I’m off duty. Wanna get a bite?” Roney.
Yes, yes, yes, my subconscious shouted, finally let out of its cage by visions of too much death and a libido that had been ignored for too long. “I thought I told you no, Roney.”
“Call me Brian, and you didn’t say anything about dinner.”
“Detective, I’m tired, and getting ready to have a glass of wine and a cigarette. Eating with you tonight, or any night, is not on my to-do list.”