When he approached Interstate 81, Tom almost swung off the road to turn around. But he crossed into the merge lane. He had to do his job. Rachel understood that. The longer Shelley’s murder went unsolved, the more damage would be done to all the families affected by her attempt to free Vance Lankford. If Tom could prove her death had no connection to her work for the innocence project, that would be the best outcome for everybody concerned.
The drive to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. took four hours, and Tom was ready for lunch when he exited the interstate and entered Fairfax City. Navigating the narrow, traffic-clogged streets, he passed several restaurants in converted Federal-style townhouses but didn’t see anywhere to park. The small city, at the heart of a huge, sprawling urbanized county along the Potomac River, dated back to the early 1800s, and a lot of the buildings looked as if they’d been around that long.
Deciding to ignore his hunger pangs for a while, Tom consulted a map while he was stopped at a red light, then headed over to the innocence project office, just outside the western edge of the city limits. It occupied a storefront in a strip mall, and he grabbed a parking space reserved for patrons. He pushed the swinging door. Locked. He peered inside and saw no one. A long counter divided the outer room in half, a row of empty plastic chairs lined one wall.
No bell, no knocker. Tom rapped his knuckles on the glass door. After a moment, an inner door behind the counter opened a few inches and a young woman stuck her head out, angling her neck so her blond hair fell in a smooth sheet.
Tom raised a hand in greeting and waited for her to look him over, take in his uniform. He’d talked to her on the phone and told her to expect him.
She walked around the counter to let him in. From the sound of it, the door had a slide bolt and a chain lock as well as the deadbolt.
“Come in, Captain Bridger. I’m Morgan St. James.” She glanced around outside before shutting the door and relocking it. A perfect example of a modern professional woman, she wore a sexless black suit that hid a slender figure but enough makeup to bring out the striking contours of her face, its high cheekbones and wide mouth.
He took the hand she offered. She had a firm handshake.
“Come on back.” She led him around the counter and through the doorway into a large back room dominated by a conference table with a dozen chairs parked around it. File boxes and stacks of bulging file folders sat on the table. “Detective Fagan called about an hour ago and asked if I’d heard from you.”
“Oh?” Tom moved around the room. Cork bulletin board covered the top half of the rear wall, and along its length the stunned eyes of a dozen prisoners stared back from mug shots. Grouped under each prisoner’s photo were blown-up snapshots of men, women, and children Tom assumed to be victims. He spotted Vance Lankford’s mug shot, and Brian Hadley smiling from a photo underneath. “Did Fagan tell you not to answer my questions?”
He glanced at the woman in time to see one corner of her mouth lift in a humorless smile. “Not in so many words, but I got the message. He doesn’t control who I speak to. I want justice for Shelley. I only wish I could help more.” She shook her head, her eyes drifting away from Tom. “It’s dreadful what happened. Horrible. I kept hoping she would turn up alive somewhere.”
Tom stepped over to study Vance Lankford’s picture, which had been taken when he was arrested and booked in Mason County. With his lean, angular face and thick brown hair, he was just as good-looking in his own way as the boyish Brian Hadley, but in his mug shot he looked like he’d been slammed up against a reality he couldn’t quite grasp. Tom saw only bewilderment and fear in his deep-set eyes.
He told himself he was reading too much into a photo that captured one second of the man’s life. Vance had probably been stunned by his own behavior, disgusted that he’d been stupid enough to kill Brian in a rage, careless enough to get caught.
Tom turned away from the pictures to find Morgan St. James watching him with catlike intensity.
“I’m sure that when you look at him you see a guilty man,” she said. “But Shelley believed very strongly that he was innocent. She put in a phenomenal amount of work on his case interviewing everyone involved and going over the evidence presented at the trial.”
“Did she go see Lankford in prison?”
“Of course, several times. That was the first thing she did, when we were evaluating whether to take on the case. That initial meeting with him was what sold her on his innocence.”
“You mean she liked the guy and thought he sounded credible,” Tom said.
Morgan’s patient little smile told him she was used to this kind of skepticism. “Don’t you ever rely on gut instincts in your work, Captain?”
“Sure, but I’m a professional with more than ten years on the job. Shelley was a first-year law student.”
“A lot of our volunteers are young and idealistic. If they believe in something strongly enough, we allow them to pursue it. Passion and a fresh perspective can lead to breakthroughs. Shelley was serious about the work, and she seemed to be making some progress. I was willing to let her work on it as long as she needed to.”
“She was making progress in what way?” Tom asked. “Did she tell you she suspected somebody specific of killing Hadley?”
“No, she didn’t. But she did say that she had talked to a woman who might have information that would help Vance Lankford. She wasn’t even sure what the information might consist of. She was planning to continue talking to the woman until she could persuade her to tell what she knew. Before you ask, no, she didn’t tell me the woman’s name.”
“Is that normal,” Tom asked, “for your volunteers to keep you in the dark the way Shelley did?”
“No, it isn’t.” Morgan sighed. “And you have no idea how I’ve beaten myself up for not insisting that she tell me absolutely everything.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one having an attack of hindsight where Shelley’s concerned.” Tom gestured toward the door. “Would you show me where her car was parked the night she disappeared?”
Morgan led him outside and paused to lock the office door before they moved away from it. As they passed a hair salon, a pawnbroker, and a computer repair shop, Tom checked the positions of security cameras. He spotted one at each end of the strip. “Are those the only cameras?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Morgan said. “The businesses are concerned about robberies. They don’t care what happens in the lot. This is where Shelley was parked.”
They stopped at a parking spot along one edge of the lot. At the moment a blue Honda occupied it. Traffic streamed past on the street.
“Is it busy like this at night, around the time Shelley went missing?”
“No, unfortunately. It’s fairly quiet here at night. When she arrived, the lot was busy, which is probably why she parked over here. By the time she left, all the shops were closed and rush hour was over.” A light breeze blew Morgan’s hair across her face and she pushed it back behind her ear. “We’ve offered a reward to anybody who might have seen something, but the only people we’ve heard from are the usual head cases.”
“Are you going to keep working on the case without Shelley?”
Morgan lifted her chin. “Absolutely, unless we hit a wall and can’t find any reason to pursue it further.”
“Do you believe she was murdered because she was trying to help Lankford?”
“It’s hard not to believe there’s a connection.” Her green eyes glinted with sudden anger. “We’re used to people trying to put roadblocks in our path, but no one’s ever resorted to murder before.”
“Aren’t you afraid the person who killed Shelley might come after you if you continue the investigation?”
“That’s why I keep the door bolted, Captain.”
“Do you have anything of Shelley’s, any of her notes on the case, anything that points toward somebody she was investigating?”
Morgan sighed. “All we have are the public do
cuments, the trial transcript and so on. Shelley held on to her documentation. Every bit of evidence she gathered, every piece of paper, every computer file, vanished when she did.”
Chapter Nineteen
Something else had happened. Michelle waited, wide-eyed and rigid, by the front desk when Rachel walked her client and the woman’s dog out. Rachel smiled through her goodbyes to owner and pet, then grabbed Michelle by the elbow and steered her toward the office. “What’s wrong?”
“Another e-mail.” In Rachel’s office, Michelle stood away from the desk, her arms folded, gaze fixed on the laptop screen. “It’s an instant message. It just popped up.”
All Rachel saw was a screensaver, a constant swirl of bright colored lines. Dreading what might appear, she tapped the navigation pad. The screensaver faded, two lines of type came up.
The cops can’t help you. You can’t get away from me.
Rachel sighed. “Call Dennis Murray and let him know about this.”
“What good will that do? He won’t be able to tell where it came from.”
True enough. Somebody using a free e-mail account from a gigantic international server could remain unidentifiable and untraceable.
“He might be out there watching me right now.” Michelle’s gaze flicked to the window and the street beyond. She shifted a couple of feet sideways, putting the wall between herself and anyone looking in. “I wish we didn’t have to be alone in the house tonight.”
“We won’t be,” Rachel said, trying to sound reassuring although she knew she would feel vulnerable as long as Tom was absent. “Brandon Connolly will stay all night if necessary. Nothing’s going to happen.”
Michelle nodded too many times. “I’m trying to hold it together. It’s not easy.”
“I know it isn’t.” Rachel frowned, distracted by a whiff of a foul odor. She’d first noticed it when they arrived, but she’d quickly forgotten about it as she got caught up in work. This was the first time she’d been back in the office. “Do you smell something?”
“Yes, I’ve been smelling it all morning.” Michelle seemed to struggle to pull her mind away from the nastiness on her computer screen to the unpleasantness in the office. “I don’t know what it is. It’s getting stronger.”
Now that Rachel gave it her full attention, she recognized the odor. Where was it coming from? Sniffing like a tracker dog, she moved around the office, trying to pinpoint the source. She couldn’t. “Hold on a minute,” she told Michelle.
She walked out to the waiting room, where a small dog with a thick, fluffy black coat scrambled to his feet, nails clicking on the vinyl tile, as she approached.
“Hey, Loki.” Rachel scratched the dog’s head. He was a Schipperke, a breed she didn’t see often, and he looked like a black fox with his pointed ears and snout. She smiled at the owner, an older woman with dark hair. “Hi, Mrs. Stevens. I’ll be ready to give him his shots in just a minute, but first, would you mind if I borrowed him? There’s an odor in my office that I can’t track down, and I need a dog to show me where it’s coming from.”
Mrs. Stevens laughed. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to help out. Can I come too?”
“Of course.”
They trooped back to the office, Loki’s owner tugging him away from intriguing scents in his path. Inside the room, Rachel and Michelle stood back while Mrs. Stevens unclipped the leash and allowed Loki to snuffle around the space. In less than thirty seconds, he zeroed in on the cabinet underneath the window. Sniffing loudly, whimpering, he scratched at the cabinet door.
“No, no.” Mrs. Stevens grabbed his collar and tugged him away, but he strained forward, trying to get at the source of the tantalizing odor. “Don’t destroy the furniture.”
Rachel leaned down to take a whiff. “I think this is what we’re looking for. Good boy, Loki. I’ll reward you with a rabies shot in a minute.”
Loki whined in protest as Mrs. Stevens dragged him out of the office.
Rachel opened the cabinet and released a sickening stench.
“Oh, my god.” Michelle clamped a hand over her nose and mouth. “What is it?”
Rachel shifted a box of stationery to one side in the cabinet. “It’s something…” She broke off, staring at what she’d uncovered. “Something dead.”
The biggest rat she’d ever seen lay on the cabinet shelf, its throat and belly slit open, its entrails spilling out.
Michelle took a look, gasped and stumbled backward.
Rachel slammed the cabinet door shut. “Mish, listen to me. Don’t panic.”
“It’s him. He put that thing in there.”
Rachel grasped Michelle by the shoulders, felt her body trembling. “It’s just a dead rat. Don’t start imagining all sorts of—”
“Are you trying to tell me it died a natural death? Look at it!” Michelle twisted out of Rachel’s grip. “You heard Tom yourself. That man followed me. He’s here.”
Rachel scrubbed her fingertips across her forehead. She was getting a heck of a headache. “I’ll ask Dennis to come over and look for fingerprints on the cabinet, but I doubt he’ll find any.”
“What are you going to do with that thing?”
“Dennis can take it. Meanwhile, I’ll get something to put it in. Dennis will probably give me a lecture about disturbing a crime scene, but I can’t leave it here, decompos—” Rachel caught herself. Why didn’t she just saying rotting and maximize Michelle’s reaction? “You can take your computer into the staff lounge while the office airs out.”
In the supply cabinet Rachel found a plastic, airtight container. She deposited the dead animal in it, folding the rat’s body to make it fit. She tried not to think about what the mutilated rodent meant, but she couldn’t silence the buzz in her head, the echo of Michelle’s words. He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.
***
On the telephone Shelley’s boyfriend, Justin Reidel, sounded eager to talk to Tom and told him to come straight over. When Tom knocked twenty minutes later, the apartment door swung open immediately.
“Hey, I’m Justin. Thanks for coming to see me.” The skinny, dark-haired young man stuck out a hand. His palm felt sweaty against Tom’s. “Have you arrested anybody? You’ve got suspects, right? You’ve got some idea who did it, don’t you?”
Tom stepped inside and waited for him to shut the door. “We’re following up on some leads.”
Justin crammed his fists into the pockets of his khaki cargo pants and bounced on his toes. He wore a blue tee shirt with the Hard Rock Cafe’s circular gold logo printed on it. “Oh, man, I still can’t get my head around this.”
His boyish face and slight build made him appear younger than twenty-four, the age Tom knew him to be. And he was rattled. About to jump out of his skin. Tom checked the pupils of his brown eyes for a sign he was high on something, but they appeared normal.
“Can we sit down and talk?” Tom asked.
“Oh. Oh, yeah, man, sorry.”
Justin led Tom to the seating area in the living room. The sparse, shabby furnishings made the images that crowded the walls all the more dramatic. Most were photos of wild birds, eagles and hawks, colorful songbirds and several species of woodpeckers. No photos of Shelley, Tom noted. If Justin had been a possessive boyfriend, he wasn’t displaying any evidence of it.
Instead of sitting on the small couch, Justin took one of the wooden captain’s chairs that flanked the coffee table. Tom sat in the other.
Leaning forward with his head in his hands, Justin muttered, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“When was the last time you saw Shelley?” Did the guy have tears in his eyes? Tom hoped he wouldn’t have to cope with a weepy boyfriend.
“It was that day. The day she—she—”
“Disappeared,” Tom supplied.
Justin nodded. “We grabbed some burgers for dinner, then she went over to the innocence project office, and that was it. Next thing I heard, she was gone.” He paused only a second before adding, “I was
working that night, in case you’re wondering. Lots of people saw me. I was taking pictures outside a restaurant in Georgetown, there were some Hollywood people there that night, in town to talk to Congress about something. The environment or refugees, I can’t remember which, it’s usually one or the other with them.”
“So you’re the Washington version of the paparazzi?” Tom asked.
Justin laughed. “It’s not just me, man. But yeah, I pick up some freelance money that way. And I do wedding shoots, kids’ birthday parties, whatever people will pay me for. That stuff pays the rent so I can do the kind of photography I really want to do.” He waved a hand at the extraordinary nature photos on the walls. “Anyway, I already told the Fairfax cop where I was that night, he checked it out.”
“Yeah, I know. Have you remembered anything you didn’t tell the police about at the time? Anybody Shelley was having trouble with, anybody she’d talked about.”
He slumped back in his chair, his legs sprawled, resting his chin in his hand. “The only person who bothered her that I know of was that guy from Mason County, the one whose brother got murdered. He was up here about once a month, putting pressure on her.”
Skeet Hadley again. “Was he here close to the time Shelley disappeared?”
“Oh, yeah. Couple days before.”
“Did she ever say that he threatened her? Was she afraid of him?”
“No, man, he didn’t scare her. It was kinda like, you know, a routine with them. He’d come see her, yell at her for a while, then he’d go back home. She said she felt sorry for the guy, him losing his brother and all, and he’d thank her when she got his brother’s real killer put away. Hey, wait a minute, I’ll show you something.”
He jumped up and went to a long, low cabinet against a wall. Tom followed him. Justin pulled out a drawer containing lateral files and ran his fingers along the tabs.
“Here we go.” Justin plucked the file from the drawer, laid it on the cabinet, and opened it to reveal an eight by ten shot of Skeet Hadley with his mouth wide open, his cheeks florid with anger, a pointing finger two inches from Shelley’s face. “That’s him. Crazy fucking dude. But look at Shel. Cool as ice. Never let him get to her.”
Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 15