by Kylie Brant
“You’ll have to ask my companion. Apparently profiling perps is her deal.”
“Detective McGuire isn’t a believer.”
Nate jerked around. He hadn’t realized she’d come up behind him. Some detective that made him. But the woman was quiet as a cat.
She shrugged, as if his attitude was no big deal. And it probably wasn’t to her. She’d made no bones about her reluctance to be here. He still couldn’t figure out what had made her change her mind and come along.
“Anyone think to bring a portable ladder?”
“Why, you got an urge to climb some trees?”
Her expression remained unsmiling. “I’d like a closer look at one, anyway.” She pointed at the one several yards to the right of the concrete pad. “You’re done with that area, right?”
Glancing back toward the two CSU techs, he saw that they both looked as mystified as he felt. “Yeah, we finished that grid,” he responded finally.
“I’ve got a twelve-foot Quikstep sitting outside the police tape,” Tillman offered, pointing at the briefcase-sized foldable ladder unit.
“Thanks.”
As she headed toward it, Nate just shrugged at the two men’s questioning looks. The workings of the female mind were enough of a mystery when he knew the female in question. He’d been around Marisa Chandler for less than an hour, and he didn’t know anything about her. Except that she’d once been a Philadelphia police detective.
And that the slim-fitting pants didn’t do a thing to disguise her mile-long legs.
A belated thought occurred. “Don’t touch anything,” he called out as she passed by carrying the portable briefcase holding the ladder.
She slanted a glance his way. “I’ve been around a crime scene or two.”
Which didn’t tell him a damn thing except that temper made her eyes more gold than hazel.
The observation made him edgy. “Let’s get back to the search.” The other techs had continued walking their grids, bagging and labeling every beer can and wrapper in the vicinity. Evidence markers dotted the area, but unless a piece of litter yielded a usable print, the only real finds so far had been the police-issued ID and toy badge.
And that, too, would be similar to the other two cases.
Mitchell looked beyond him, cocked a brow. “What is it she’s doing up there?”
Frowning, Nate turned to spy the woman at the top of the ladder. She’d leaned it precariously against one large branch of the tree several yards to the right of the cement pad. “What the hell?” he muttered, just as she turned and waved an arm at him.
“McGuire!”
Tillman tilted his head, plainly transfixed. “Not a bad view from this end either,” he said meaningfully. “She’s got legs that don’t quit. And there’s nothing wrong with her”—he broke off when Nate’s attention snapped back to him, before amending—“eyes. Looks like she’s found something.”
But Nate was already striding in her direction. All the while wondering what the hell the woman was up to. He stopped several feet short of the trunk, staring upward. And noted, reluctantly, that Tillman had been right on both counts. Long endless legs were topped with what appeared to be a singularly spectacular ass.
The recognition was more than a little unwelcome. He folded his arms over his chest. “You stuck?”
“Move to your left another six inches. Can you see this?”
He did as she requested and squinted up to where she was pointing. From this vantage point he could see a dark shape, but a large knot on one of the crossed branches made it difficult to identify the item. “What is it?”
“Looks like a camcorder. An older model that takes VHS tapes. And if the red light is any indication, it’s set to record.”
Nate watched silently as Mitchell repositioned the ladder and clambered up it to begin dusting the device for prints. “If it was placed there by the perp, he picked a good hiding place.” He cut his eyes toward Risa. “How’d you happen to see it?”
She moved her shoulders but didn’t look at him. Her attention seemed glued on the tech. “Just happened to be standing in the right position when I looked up, I guess.”
“So you saw it before you asked for a ladder?”
He didn’t think it was his imagination that she went still at the question. But her hesitation was barely discernible before she answered. “I thought I saw something up there. I wanted a closer look. I didn’t touch anything.”
“I know.” He’d been watching to make sure of that. At least that’s what he preferred to think his focus had been on when he’d watched her on that ladder. He traced the direction of the camera’s lens to the cement pad that had held the body. It looked to be in perfect placement to catch the scene at the pad. “So what are you thinking? Did he record the scene to replay and relive it later or is he getting his rush watching us work?”
“I take it you didn’t find a camera at the other scenes.”
“No.” But that fact was niggling at him now. Had they missed something? Had the UNSUB actually gotten away with filming the entire thing and sneaking back later to retrieve the device? He didn’t want to think so. Didn’t want to believe that he could have overlooked a camera not once, but twice.
“The answer is both.” She finally looked at him and must have seen the confusion in his expression. “You asked if he wanted to relive the scene or record you working. Both would give him a rush. But I guess you’ll know for sure when your lab discovers how much tape you have there.”
He gave a nod. If he remembered correctly, the VHS tapes could be set to record for as little as two hours or as many as eight, depending on what speed was used. Discovering how long the tape had been set to run would give them even more information, however. It might help pinpoint time of death.
A car door slammed in the distance, and with a quick glance Nate determined that Cass had arrived. Finally. Tamping down an accompanying flare of frustration, he said, “Maybe he outsmarted himself this time.”
The slight smile on her face had him blinking. It transformed her features, replacing the carefully blank expression with a vibrancy that was punch-in-the-gut sexy. The observation was as out of character as it was alarming.
“You won’t find any trace of him on that tape. Or his prints on the camera.”
It was annoying how closely she’d read his thoughts. He just hoped she hadn’t keyed in to all of them. “Could be you’re giving him too much credit.”
The smile was gone now. And it was a bit of a relief to be faced with her impassive mask again. “After three deaths targeting cops, maybe you need to start giving him more credit.”
“This vic was connected to the other two, then?” Cass pulled to a stop beside them. He took a quick visual inventory. The bruise she’d sported around one eye for the last week had been carefully disguised with makeup. Since it was harder to see today, he assumed it was fading. And there were no new ones, at least not where they showed.
“I’ll fill you in,” he said as evenly as he could manage. “We were just walking the grid.” He waited until they were out of earshot of anyone else before he demanded, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Don’t start with me,” she muttered. Her gaze, like his, was carefully trained on the ground, searching for trace evidence. “Donny showed up as I was on my way out the door. It took a while to get rid of him.”
“Jesus.” The word was released on an explosion of breath. “You could have gotten rid of him by calling for a unit. You took out a restraining order last week, right?” Her silence had his instincts rising. “Right?”
“I didn’t see the need. I can handle him.”
Anything he could have said to refute that—and there was plenty—was put aside for now. It wasn’t the place or the time. And pointing out the obvious, that Cass was a bum magnet who replayed the same mistakes in her personal life over and over like a movie reel on permanent rewind, would fall on deaf ears. It always had.
“The job’s look
ing at you.” He kept his expression carefully impersonal. From a distance everyone would believe he was catching his partner up on the case. “My guy in Internal Affairs tipped me off. Your relationship with Donald Larson means you’re colluding with a known felon. An ex-con. And it’s putting your shield in jeopardy. So if you don’t give a damn about what he does to you personally, maybe you’ll care what he’s doing to you professionally.” A quick look at her face showed she’d paled beneath the makeup. And her eyes were worried. “Lose that guy, fast, or you may not remain on this investigation with me. You may not be on the force at all.”
Risa wished she could shut off the adrenaline humming inside her as easily as the CSU tech had flipped the switch on the camera she’d found. She didn’t want this. She didn’t welcome a return of instincts, long dormant, that were now alert and quivering. Was panicked by the curiosity revving to life.
And she especially didn’t want to admit that Raiker might be right. That she couldn’t walk away from this work. The thought brought simultaneous stabs of exhilaration and panic. She’d once thought she was destined for this sort of career. It gave her dreams meaning and made them something more than a curse.
But recent events had taught her she could no longer trust the dreams that had guided her instincts in her cases. And where did that leave her, other than just as confused as she’d been for the last four months?
“If you’re not busy, you can hold the ladder while I inspect the rafters.”
Brandau’s voice jolted her from her thoughts. And she wasn’t unhappy at the diversion. She followed him over to the cement pad and watched dubiously as he rested the portable ladder against a scorched wooden beam. “You may get up there and discover there’s more damage to that beam than it looks like down here.”
Jett shot her a smile, the charm in which was wasted on her. “In that case I’ll expect you to catch me in your arms. Or at least to break my fall.” Carefully maneuvering the VTA machine, he headed up the ladder.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered. But she held the ladder firmly. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do. She’d welcomed the errant Cass’s arrival because it had meant an end of McGuire’s interrogation about how she’d come to look in the tree for the camera. She thought she’d covered well enough. Because there was no way in hell that she could have told him the truth.
The only person she’d ever shared it with was Raiker. And him only because it was impossible to do otherwise. The man was like a human lie detector.
Brandau lifted the instrument, turned it on, and started taking readings. After several minutes he headed down the ladder. “Well, that’s not surprising.”
“No trace of accelerants up there?”
He shook his head. “No need for it, really. His intent wasn’t to burn the thing down. Just to consume the victim.” He set the machine down and bent over a kit before ascending the ladder again. She grasped it to steady it as he climbed.
“Were you called to the other scenes, too?”
“Not the first one.” He unscrewed the lid of the glass jar he’d taken from the kit and began taking scrapings of the charred timber.
“But you’d know which accelerant was used at the first, even if you weren’t there.”
“That’s right. It was a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline. Unless I’ve lost my touch—and that’s highly doubtful—it was used this time around, too. Gasoline burns off too quickly to be relied on. The diesel fuel makes it burn longer.”
“Because he isn’t relying on whatever is handy,” she murmured. “He goes into the kill prepared.”
He glanced down at her as he screwed the lid shut on the glass container holding the scrapings. “That’s right. Has it down to a tee, if you ask me. Our guy has had some practice, even though we’ve struck out with ViCAP.”
The words elicited a renewed burst of interest. The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database allowed law enforcement to submit details of a crime to compare with similar ones around the country. “You didn’t get any hits?”
“Oh, we got plenty. Nate could tell you the exact number. But none were close matches for what we’ve seen with these crimes, taking into account the type of accelerant, material used to secure the victims, the manner in which they were bound . . . Here, take this, will you?” He broke off to hand her the jar with the sample he’d taken.
She reached for it. The factors he’d mentioned could all be part of the offender’s MO, which could change over time as he perfected the kills. But his signature wouldn’t change. “Were any of the other victims from the results cops?”
“No. But Nate still figures he might have practiced first, so he hasn’t given up on ViCAP.” Brandau handed her another glass jar with more scrapings in it. “Maybe this time around we’ll get more details to feed into the search.”
Something inside her was relieved by the exchange. It sounded like the case was being managed competently. There was no reason to believe she could bring something to this case that McGuire couldn’t. Especially since the dreams that had always been at the root of her “uncanny instincts” had been absent for months.
Until last night.
“Well, well, looks like you were right again.”
Nonplussed by the remark coming so close on the heels of her thoughts, she sent a startled glance upward. And saw Brandau holding up tweezers with something that looked like blackened hair in its grip.
But in the next moment she recognized it for what it was. “A strand of rope?”
His expression was grim as he dropped it into another jar and labeled it. “There’s a few more up here. The bastard kept the victim in place with a rope thrown over these rafters, most likely.” His assessment was an almost eerie affirmation of her and Nate’s guess earlier today.
And a macabre reminder of the burning specter in her dream last night.
Chapter 3
Risa unlocked the small house she’d bought for her mother three years ago. It was past six. Hannah Blanchette would have already headed out to catch a bus to her job, cleaning office buildings after hours. So catching sight of the figure sitting on the brightly floral secondhand couch had her stopping short in the doorway, her hand going automatically to a weapon that wasn’t there.
One she would have been unable to fire even if it’d been present.
Her eyes slid shut for a moment in frustration. “Adam.”
The lack of welcome in her voice had no discernible effect on her employer. “Marisa. Your mother left about twenty minutes ago. She assured me it was all right to wait for you.”
“I’ll bet she did.” Hannah was fascinated by Adam Raiker, while maintaining a healthy wariness of the man. It might have been his appearance, which Risa had to admit was ferocious. A black eye patch covered one laser blue eye and a hideous scar ran across his throat. More scars covered the backs of his hands, one of which clutched the knob of the cane he was never without. He looked like a man who had entered the gates of hell and made it out, barely alive.
If even half what she’d heard was true, the description fit.
“You’ve been gone all day, she said. Didn’t leave a note, so she wasn’t sure where you were.”
“Shopping,” she lied, and watched with satisfaction as his eye narrowed in annoyance. “I hate to miss those spring sales.”
His gaze swept her. “No bags.”
“With my height everything has to be altered.” Because she’d never been one to enjoy being manipulated, she continued the pretense. “Once it’s done they’ll be delivered to me. Pretty good deal.” She shrugged out of her coat and hung it up in the postage stamp front closet.
When she turned back, he seemed to have relaxed against the couch. She wasn’t fooled. Raiker never relaxed, and his brilliant mind was always operating on multiple levels simultaneously. “Nice try. But there’s not a woman alive who’d go shopping dressed like that.” He nodded to her attire. “I can only think of one thing that would have y
ou rolling out of bed and leaving the house without changing.” His pause was full of meaning. “A case.”
Risa dropped the farce. It was useless with him anyway. She also didn’t bother hiding her irritation. “I’d be more impressed with your powers of deduction if I didn’t know damn well that you were behind the invitation from Detective McGuire today.” She set her purse on the hallway table with a bit more force than needed. “Had a little chat with the chief inspector of the detective bureau, I understand.”
His shrug was negligible. “Actually, I spoke with the commissioner. I assume he made a suggestion to the chief inspector.” He waited, but when she said nothing, he added, with a familiar note of impatience, “Well? So you were invited to look over the case file on the torched cops?”
“Not exactly. I rode along to a response to the newest victim.”
Adam’s impatience faded to be replaced by a gleam of interest. “Another policeman?”
She nodded, trying, and failing, to ignore the pitch of excitement that was always present at the onset of a new case. “I don’t even know why I went. I can’t help them. I can’t help you. How many times have I told you that?”
His smile was feral. “I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.”
Risa hissed in a breath, an all too familiar sense of frustration filling her. It was maddening to be faced with a man who refused to take no for an answer. Who constantly thought he knew better than she what was in her best interests.
And heartbreaking when his dogged persistence inevitably had doubt rearing.
And that was perhaps the most difficult emotion to deal with. She knew what the spectacular failure in her last case meant. Her career was over. Her usefulness on an investigation at an end. And sometimes she could almost hate the man for trying to make her think differently. For making her hope.