Chapter Nine
Alec turned on the desk lamp and sat down. Katie was in the other room painting, which gave him a few moments to look over what the investigator had couriered up from Miami.
Shadows remained tucked into the tall corners of the large room, but light poured onto the two manila envelopes he’d placed on his desk earlier, purposely leaving them until now.
He liked working at night. He found it easier to concentrate in the dense quiet. When he’d been with the FBI and had been called in by a local PD to provide a profile, he would sometimes take a copy of the case file, including photos, back to his hotel room. He’d put in a wake-up call for 3:00 a.m. Often the lost sleep paid off.
He slid out the jacketed report detailing Carlos’s background and his movements before he’d fallen out of sight.
Taking a sip of red wine, Alec lifted the front cover. The enclosed photos were fairly generic and showed Carlos entering the gallery, then eating lunch with another man, the man’s back to the camera, Carlos coming out of the grocery store. All normal activities. He was obviously of Hispanic descent, had the dark, good looks, the lean body. It wasn’t surprising that Katie had found him attractive.
He found his thoughts shifting to this morning and the look in Katie’s eyes when she’d believed Carlos had just walked into the restaurant. She’d been damned frightened. Was there something she hadn’t told him about Carlos?
He took another sip of wine. The report seemed fairly basic and showed Carlos as pretty much an average citizen—at least as far as Miami’s law enforcement was concerned. Just a few speeding and parking tickets and one assault charge three years ago shortly after he’d moved to Miami, the victim a male bar patron.
Before that move, Carlos had owned an art gallery in San Francisco where he hadn’t been such a model citizen. He’d collected battery charges on a fairly regular basis, the victims always women. He’d either had a good lawyer or managed to buy his way out of doing any jail time.
As in Miami, he’d managed to have it all. Successful gallery, house overlooking the bay and a well-known artist to support both. Evidently, Katie wasn’t the first woman Carlos had used.
Alec held up the photo of Carlos’s most recent digs. The shot, taken from the water side, featured a large yacht as well as a three-story modern house. The good life. Was that what Katie had been looking for?
Alec fiddled with the stem of the wineglass. He couldn’t seem to keep his mind on the report and off the woman.
Getting involved now was out of the question, and later might not be possible, either. He doubted Katie would stay in Deep Water. It wasn’t as if she had any ties to the town. He, on the other hand, was staying. The progress on rebuilding a relationship with his brother was slow going, but he was committed to mending the rift. In the past, he’d put family last too often. He wasn’t going to do that this time.
He opened a second large manila envelope, this one sent by Seth Killian. Though the FBI had no official interest in the investigation of Jill Blade’s death, Seth, who was with the FBI’s Philadelphia field office and a close friend since their days at Quantico, continued to stay in touch with the lead detective on the case.
Alec had sent off a length of the surgical tubing from Katie’s place for comparison with what had been used in Philadelphia. He scanned the report, focusing on the most important piece of information. The tubing was made by a well-known manufacturer of surgical supplies and was found in most physicians’ offices, as well as hospitals and blood banks, but it wasn’t a match to what had been knotted around Jill’s ankles and wrists.
Not a match?
Alec raked both hands through his hair, and, leaning back, closed his eyes, mentally running through the list yet another time. Same brand of box cutter and candles. The method of entry—a French door with an inadequate dead bolt—was the same. As were the roses—generic long-stemmed red ones that could have been purchased almost anywhere, but to date the Central Florida vendor hadn’t been located. And then there was the surgical tubing, identical diameter, but different maker. Significant?
Maybe. Maybe not. It was just as likely the killer’s source had changed brands and the killer was unaware of the difference.
Alec was just sliding the report back into the envelope when Katie placed a fresh glass of wine on the corner of his desk. “I opened a new bottle.” She spoke around the pencil she held between her teeth. She clutched a large sketch pad tucked under her right arm. “I hope you don’t mind.”
He liked that she was comfortable enough in his home to help herself, but she’d had one glass before dinner and had taken a second with her to her studio. Making the one she carried number three.
“No. But you should take it easy. Alcohol screws with more than the judgment. It also inhibits the REM phase of sleep.”
“I’d have to fall asleep for that to happen.”
He’d known she hadn’t slept well the night before, because he’d been awake, too. And because there had been dark circles beneath her eyes this morning. “Maybe you should skip the wine and take the Valium instead.”
“I don’t need drugs.”
He took a sip. “But you do need sleep.”
She frowned as if she felt he was bullying her. “I’ll sleep when this is over.”
Turning away, she carried her sketch pad and her own glass of wine toward the far end of the couch. She wore loose-fitting navy blue jogging shorts and a pale pink T-shirt, and, as they often were, her feet were bare.
She flipped on the lamp on the side table. Sitting, she tucked her legs beneath her like a teenager at a slumber party.
She had no sooner propped the pad in her lap than the cat jumped up and settled beside her.
“If he bothers you, kick him off.”
She ran a hand down the cat’s back. “Are you allergic to cats?”
The question seemed an odd one. “No. Why would you think that?”
“Because you avoid petting him.” She continued to rub the underside of the cat’s chin. The animal watched Alec with a smug stare, like a criminal who knew he’d just beaten the system.
“One of Jill’s students gave him to her. We didn’t exactly hit it off. Even from the beginning, my only func tion was to throw food in a dish if she wasn’t around. Otherwise, I was off his radar.”
“But you kept him after…” Her words dwindled away as if she’d only then realized what she was about to say and wasn’t certain how it would be received.
He leaned back in the desk chair. “Actually, I didn’t. About six weeks after the funeral, I gave him to a friend with a farm.” He took a sip of wine. “When I woke up the next morning, it hit me that I’d given away one of the few living creatures who missed Jill as much as I did. But when I drove out to reclaim him, he’d disappeared.” Why was he telling her any of this? Must be the wine. Or perhaps it had been too long since he’d talked to anyone about fairly inconsequential topics.
“What happened?”
“A few days later he showed up at the back door, nearly dead. He’d been hit by a car trying to get home.”
As she continued to stroke the large tom, he stretched out and rolled over onto his back, giving up his belly. The cat’s green eyes never left Alec, and it reminded him of the times when he hadn’t been on the road, and Jill would settle in on the couch with whatever novel she was reading, or with a pile of papers to grade. The cat would always lie beside her, and periodically she’d reach out to fondle an ear or paw. Alec never joined them. Instead he had continued to work, his thoughts and energies focused on one of the many cases he was juggling at the time.
It was no wonder that she’d thought his work meant more to him than she did. Truth was, he’d figured there would be time later to show her just how important she was to him. There was a tightness in his chest that he hadn’t experienced since the day he buried her. He frowned. What was wrong with him tonight?
Katie flipped open the pad and, propping it on her knees, looked over
at him. “You don’t mind, do you, being a model? I’ve drawn enough plants for one night.”
“No. I don’t mind.” It gave him the perfect excuse to watch her without appearing to be rude or probing. Her pale gray eyes narrowed in concentration as she studied him. They were both observers, he realized, though they used their observations in very different ways. He found himself recalling those moments in the supply room. The way her lips had parted. The slight hitch to her breathing as their gazes had met. He liked that hitch. It did something to him every time he heard it. Made him wonder what sounds she made at other moments during lovemaking.
She glanced up. “If you have work to do, that’s fine. I’m used to moving subjects.”
“Like the boy and father on surfboards?”
“Yeah.” She picked up the wine. “I especially like to do kids. It pays well, but more importantly, I’ve never had a seven-year-old tell me that I’ve made a mistake in the size of his nose.”
He smiled even as he slid Seth’s report back in the top drawer with Jill’s photos. As always, he locked the drawer, and then settled back to enjoy watching her.
Katie’s gaze, when it lifted from the paper even briefly, was intense and focused. She had great eyes, wide-set and expressive. But it was her mouth, which was now hidden from view, that he considered her best feature. Soft, full. Quick to smile. He’d noticed that the first time she’d served him at the restaurant. Well, that wasn’t completely accurate; he’d noticed her face first, then her trim, athletic body. The smile had come only seconds later, and had been the icing on the cake.
He’d worked with enough police artists to recognize when the fast, sweeping movements of blocking out facial shape gave way to the tighter ones indicative of the finessing of cheekbones and brows and lips.
Alec pushed away the glass of wine. “The scars on your side. How did you come by them?”
She didn’t look up, but lowered the pad slightly. “Car crash.”
“The one that took your sister’s life?” He’d obtained a copy of the initial report, so knew the cut-and-dry official version, but hoped that if he could get her to share a more personal one, it would further the developing level of trust between them.
“Yes.” Her lips flattened. “And the reason I don’t drive.”
“Were you behind the wheel when it happened?”
“No,” she answered. She’d stopped sketching completely now.
He waited, letting the silence grow in the shadowed room. A strategic pause. Experience told him that she wanted to talk, but was having a hard time doing so.
“It was late,” she said finally. “About one in the morning. We’d sneaked out, which we had done a lot that summer. We usually went down to the beach to hang out. We’d take some pretty deserted roads to get there because Karen liked to drive fast. She was always pushing the limit, even when she wasn’t behind the wheel.”
He could picture it. Two teenage girls escaping parental bonds for a few hours….
“One minute everything was okay,” she said in a voice suddenly heavy with emotion. “Then in the next we were rolling. We’d been hit broadside. I don’t remember the actual impact. Or the car landing on its roof.”
She averted her eyes. “I remember thinking it was okay, that we’d both been wearing safety belts. I was hanging in mine and figured Karen was also, but I couldn’t see her because blood had run into my eyes. I…I couldn’t seem to make my hands work enough to wipe it away.” She stared at the pencil, running her fingers up and down its length repeatedly.
“Then I heard a car door slam. By that time, I had wiped the blood away and I watched the flashlight beam come closer. I remember thinking again that everything would be okay. That whoever the other driver was, they would help us.”
She picked up her glass, but set it back down without taking a sip. “But I was wrong. He knelt down and looked in. He had a flashlight. When he reached in, I thought he was trying to get Karen out of her restraint, but he wasn’t. He was taking her pulse. It was then that I realized she was dead.”
He understood the pain he heard in her voice. The torment that remembering brought with it. He wanted to go to her, to offer her the comfort of his arms. But he wouldn’t. Because he didn’t trust himself to offer only comfort.
She fiddled with the pencil.
“After that, he aimed the flashlight at me. Stared straight at me with those emotionless eyes of his and said, sorry kid. And then he just left. I was still screaming and begging when he drove away.”
Pausing she closed her eyes almost as if she were in physical pain. “A garbage truck spotted us the next morning.”
Alec could imagine what those hours must have been like. Trapped in the sedan with her dead sister, uncertain if help would come in time for her.
“Was he apprehended?”
“Yes. They found him. It was more than two months later, though. He’s serving time for vehicular homicide.”
She seemed to be shading in some aspect of his portrait. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“How soon did people stop mentioning Jill? Stop asking how you were doing?”
“Not right away.” But sooner than was healthy for him. He realized that now. He had needed to talk about Jill. Not about the investigation. Not about evidence and suspects. But about the woman she had been. The wife.
He’d called her parents once or twice, but even they had closed him down. They blamed him for what had happened, and saw his torment as something he deserved. He had seen it that way, too, at first.
“Two months,” Katie said. “That’s how long it was before people stopped asking. By the third month, the only person interested in Karen was the prosecuting attorney. Now, seven years later, it’s as if she never existed. As if no one remembers just how smart and gutsy she was.” Her lips flattened. “Except me.”
“What about your parents?”
“They rarely mention her.” She took a sip of her wine. “I know it’s because it hurts. Dad was passionate about fishing. It was something he and Karen did together. They’d go off on Saturday mornings and wouldn’t come back until nightfall, all fishy and dirty and laughing.”
She was fiddling with the pencil again, but this time she stared at it, as well. “The morning after we spread her ashes, he took a sledgehammer to the boat. When he was done, he locked himself in his den for three days. We could hear him in there bawling, but nothing we said would make him open the door. By the time he did come out, my mother had removed every picture of Karen. I had become an only child.”
She ducked her chin and rubbed her forehead. “Going through that again would destroy them.”
He wanted to reassure her that nothing would happen to her, but something stopped him. Maybe because she’d just bared a very painful part of her soul, and she deserved the truth.
“Listen, Katie, I’m not going to make you empty promises, but I can tell you one thing. He’ll have to go through me to get to you.”
Seeming to study her nearly empty glass, she grimaced. “Cheery thought.” She glanced up, forced a smile. “What about you? Do you remember the last person to ask you how you were doing?”
“It’s different in my case.”
“In what way different?”
“We didn’t have many couple friends. Most of mine barely knew Jill. And I spent very little time with hers. So no one really noticed when she was no longer there with me. Except Seth Killian. He was one of my coworkers who got to know Jill.”
“Does he still ask?”
“Every time he calls,” Alec said quietly.
Looking for some way to change the conversation, he stood. “I’m heading out to the kitchen. Can I get you anything?”
She picked up her empty glass. “Perhaps a bit more wine.”
She’d have a headache in the morning.
The cat followed him, so Alec opened the cabinet and refilled the stainless bowl with cat food. With the first touch, the cat jerk
ed away.
So much for any progress in their relationship. Alec had long ago decided the animal only stayed because he was waiting for Jill to come home.
Having put on coffee for himself, he returned to the living room with Katie’s wine. He’d changed to a smaller glass and had filled it exactly half-full—enough that it wasn’t readily obvious that he was trying to control her alcohol intake.
Alec sat on the couch, leaving more than a foot between them. He held out his hand. “May I have a look?”
She passed the sketch pad to him. “It’s not quite finished.”
He studied the drawing. Was that how she saw him? His expression grim? Eyes that seemed more probing than interested. Maybe she did. Because that’s who he was.
He glanced over at her. “As I said before, and as you know, you’re quite good.”
“Thanks.” Taking the pad, she folded it closed and placed it on the table.
While he’d been gone, she’d propped her feet on the ottoman and now rubbed the top of the left one with the toes of her right.
“Are the feet any better?” he asked. At least it was a safe subject.
Bending forward, she rubbed the instep of one, grimacing as she did it. “I wouldn’t have thought five days was long enough for me to forget just how important good shoes are to a waitress.” She moved on to the other one briefly before leaning back again. “I just hope I can walk in the morning.”
Putting down his glass, he sat forward. “Maybe I can help. I’m pretty good at foot massages.”
He understood her hesitation. They weren’t exactly strangers. Nor were they really friends.
He held out his palm. “What do you have to lose? Besides sore feet?”
“If you’re sure you don’t mind.” She swung one foot up next to his thigh. Alec lifted it into his lap, the action forcing her to reposition herself closer to him. He waited while she propped a cushion behind her.
He warmed up by rubbing her foot between his hands. “I sometimes can get carried away, so if I go at it too hard, let me know.”
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