Was he looking for two people? Like Jason Erickson and his missing mother? It would explain the contradictory signals, the raging number of stab wounds but the folded, peaceful hands, the broken mirrors but the spotless crime scenes.
Had he been wrong? Searching all this time for a single offender when he should have been hunting for two?
Chapter Five
Thursday, June 11, 9 a.m.
Tucson, Arizona
You’ve done gone and brung me to hell.”
“The locals call it Tucson,” Hayden said as he took the duffel from Smokey Joe’s hand and put it in the trunk of his SUV, which was parked in long-term parking at the Tucson airport.
“How hot is it?” Smokey wiped at the sweat beaded on his forehead.
“About 110 degrees. But it’s a dry heat.” Hayden shut the trunk and walked to the passenger side, where Kate reached for the rear door. He grabbed her wrist. She jumped, her pulse spiking beneath his fingertips. Quickly, he dropped her hand, refusing to contemplate at length the spike in his own pulse. “The handle,” he said. “It’s hot.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, lined his hand, and opened her door. “Give it a minute. I’ll get the AC going.”
She hugged her bag to her chest and looked the other way.
She’d given him the silent treatment all morning. He figured part of the reason was that she was still mad at him for putting her in protective custody. The other part: She hated being out in the open. The moment they turned onto the highway, she popped on her sunglasses and ducked lower in the seat, a clear reminder that she was a victim and that her sexual come-on last night was designed only to get a rise out of him because, right now in her mind, he was one of the bad guys.
“You’ve spent some time in hell?” Smokey asked as Hayden cranked the engine and air conditioner.
“Some.”
Smokey turned to Kate, who was climbing into the backseat. “Did you know about this, Kate? You know G-man here was going to leave me in a furnace?”
“He told me he was going to bring you someplace safe.”
Early this morning he’d talked with Smokey Joe’s caseworker and an advocate at the veterans hospital, and both agreed with Katrina that Smokey did not do well in group situations. After exhausting a number of alternatives, Hayden made arrangements with Maeve, his mother-in-law, to house Smokey Joe as a guest for the next few days. Smokey would be safe and out of the way, and, frankly, after the accident, Maeve could use the company. Hardly a conventional move, but Parker’s team was known for its unconventional approaches.
He’d explained to Kate that Maeve was a close family friend who lived in the desert outside of Tucson and had cared years for her husband, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. “She knows how to handle people with special needs,” he’d assured Kate. “And there’s plenty of open space and not many people. He’ll be safe.” Kate reluctantly agreed only when the caseworker told her that the only other option right now was a group home.
With Smokey Joe sulking in the front seat and Kate stone-faced and staring out the window in the backseat, he guided the SUV away from the airport and into the foothills of the Catalina Mountains. They followed the road through scrappy desert and heat waves to a sun-baked adobe house with a hummingbird garden out front.
When his mother-in-law opened the door, she hugged Hayden and smiled at Kate and Smokey Joe. “I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Bernard,” Maeve said. “Please come in.”
Smokey didn’t budge, and Katrina grabbed his elbow and dragged him into the entryway.
Maeve led them to a sunroom. “Can I get you some coffee, Mr. Bernard? Or how about a lemon muffin or fresh strawberries?”
Smokey crossed his arms over his chest and scowled like a two-year-old. Kate, who took a seat in a wicker chair near a large potted palm, looked like she wanted to give him a swat.
Maeve poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Hayden. “How was your flight, Kate? I’d ask Hayden, but I’m sure he spent the whole time working.”
“Uh…fine,” she said, sinking further into the shade of the palm. Hayden knew being out in public today would be difficult for loner Kate, but Maeve was good with difficult situations and people. Hayden studied his mother-in-law, noting that she looked tired this morning, her face thin and waxen behind her carefully applied makeup. Unlike Kate, his mother-in-law wasn’t good at being alone.
As for him, he hadn’t been alone for days, thanks to the voices booming through his head.
Found another footprint. Some kind of orthotic.
Got us a witness…woman in a pink dress.
Here you go. The name and address of the man who attacked me. Now get out of my life.
Katrina’s voice, the last, echoed the loudest, probably because it went nicely with the vision of her that refused to leave his head, the one of her stretched across that bed. He straightened his tie and reminded himself she was the key to stopping the Butcher. That’s why he kept thinking about her. His quasi-obsession was quite logical.
“And why do they call you Smokey?” Maeve was asking when he turned his attention back to the group seated in the sunroom.
“Smoked a lot of weed. Got any?” The wiry tuffs of the old soldier’s eyebrows narrowed, and Hayden swallowed a laugh.
“Smokey!” Kate said through pinched lips.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Maeve said.
Smokey snorted. “Didn’t figure a broad like you would.”
“Perhaps you’d like to put your things away,” Maeve went on, unruffled. “Let me take your bag.”
“Ain’t no invalid. I can carry it myself.”
“Well then let me show you to your—”
“Can’t see a damn thing, lady. Why the hell would you show me anything?”
Hayden watched as Katrina’s creamy white skin drained of all color but for the splash of freckles across her nose. She opened her mouth, but Hayden shook his head.
Next to him, Maeve’s polite smile didn’t waver. “I’m fully aware of your disability, Mr. Bernard.”
“I’m blind, lady. Call it what it is.”
Maeve set her coffee cup on its saucer with a louder-than-expected clank. “Okay, blind man, grab your damn bag and follow me.”
Smokey’s upper body rocked in a small jolt, and something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh tripped over his lips. “You always this bitchy?”
“Only when the people around me are acting like jackasses.”
* * *
Thursday, June 11, 10:10 a.m.
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Lottie felt the gears moving notch by notch, and today she and her navy stilettos with yellow polka dots were behind the wheels of justice pushing hard. Last night the wheels got a bit of grease from that kid who claimed to see a woman in a pink dress standing on Thomas’s front porch the night she died, and this morning justice got another little nudge when Lottie had an unexpected visit from one of Shayna Thomas’s coworkers.
“Tell me everything you know about the slug,” Lottie told the blond-haired woman with the plastic boobs.
The woman sitting in front of her was Sue Mathis, a weathergirl from the television news station where Shayna Thomas had worked. Lottie couldn’t help but think the buxom journalist had a bit of plastic in her brain, too. Thomas had been killed more than forty-eight hours ago, and the question had been asked over and over, “Did Shayna Thomas ever complain about anyone stalking her?”
Silicone Sue finally had a lightbulb moment. “You know, I didn’t think it was important at first, because Shayna didn’t make a big deal out of it.”
Lottie took a deep breath. “Ms. Mathis, at this point, everything is important. Please tell me what you know about the stalker.”
“I don’t think I ever heard Shayna call him a stalker. She mentioned that she kept bumping into him, at the grocery store, the bank, clubs. Kind of creeped her out.”
“Did she know him?”
“She didn’t say. She just said h
e’d been popping up more and more.”
“Did she ever tell you anything about him? What he looked like? What kind of car he drove? How he was dressed?”
“Nothing. She mentioned him two weeks ago while we were at a coworker’s retirement party. It was a pretty light conversation, cocktail chatter. She made a joke about the whole thing.”
Lottie continued to drill Sue Mathis until Detective Traynor poked his head into her office. “Hey, Sarge, time for the press conference. Chief wants you front and center.”
* * *
Thursday, June 11, 10:15 a.m.
Tucson, Arizona
“Can I get you more coffee, Kate?” Maeve asked when she returned to the sunroom.
Kate sunk deeper into her chair. “No, thank you. I’m fine.” It was odd, being in this strange, sun-filled house, trying to chat with a stranger. As a broadcast journalist, she had been able to talk to strangers, hold her own against politicians and powerbrokers, and make small talk to put sources at ease, but the social muscles that had served her well in broadcasting had atrophied in the past three years. Now she felt like her brain and mouth suffered a serious disconnect.
Kate pulled a lock of hair over the right side of her face. “Hayden, uh, went to check on the drip system in the garden. He noticed that a few plants looked dead.”
“He’s a good boy.” Maeve poured herself a glass of orange juice from the frosted carafe. “Ever since my husband died, Hayden’s been so good about fixing things around this place.”
An image of Hayden with a tool belt around his waist popped into Kate’s mind, and she almost giggled. The image was silly because Hayden Reed wasn’t a hammer-and-nail kind of guy. He tackled bigger things, like people. She slid her thumb along the rim of her coffee cup. That’s what Hayden liked to do, fix people.
In the single day they’d been together, she’d spotted him looking at her often, as if trying to figure out how to fix her broken world, but there weren’t enough tools in anyone’s tool belt to put her back together. Not that she wanted her old life. Despite always looking over her shoulder, she’d found an unexpected contentment as she traveled the back roads on her bike and settled in with Smokey Joe. She realized that for once in her life she wasn’t fighting against someone or for something. She hadn’t known peace as a child or in college and certainly not in her broadcast news days, but the past two and a half years had been oddly fulfilling. Until Agent Reed snatched it all away.
As she took another sip from her coffee cup, a loud thud sounded from the back of the house followed by “Dammit to hell” and a very Smokey Joe–like growl.
Kate swallowed a groan. “Smokey’s really not that bad, not once you get past the rough edges.”
“Oh, we’ll get on fine.” Maeve smiled over the rim of her glass. “Hayden’s right. It’ll be good for me to have some company right now, especially after the funeral last week.”
Kate’s cup stilled halfway to her mouth. “Funeral?”
Maeve set down her juice with a clank, lines marring her forehead. “I’m sorry, dear. I assumed Hayden told you about Marissa and the accident? It’s consumed both of us the past two weeks.”
Buttoned-up Hayden was hardly the show-and-share type. “Marissa?”
“My daughter.” At Kate’s look of confusion, Maeve added, “Hayden’s wife.”
“Wife?” Coffee sloshed over the cup and burned her fingers. “Hayden’s married?” She couldn’t imagine Hayden married to anything but his job.
“The marriage ended long ago. It’s probably been at least seven years.” A wash of sadness slipped over the older woman’s face, and Kate could tell she still had fond feelings for her daughter’s ex-husband. “Anyway, two weeks ago Marissa died in a car accident and—”
“Drip system’s fixed.” Hayden walked into the room, wiping his hands on a paper towel. “Three of the sprinkler heads had snapped off.”
Maeve planted an accusing look on him. “I was just telling Kate about Marissa’s accident.”
Hayden folded the towel and set it on the table next to the tray. “It doesn’t concern her,” Hayden said, his words clipped and cool. “Time to get back to the airport. Flight to Denver takes off at noon.”
Maeve’s frown deepened, and Kate’s own lips turned down. Hayden straightened his cuffs three times before he headed out of the room, his shoulders a degree or two less than erect, and Kate wondered what weighed him down. Regret? Sadness? Her entire life she hadn’t been shy about releasing her emotions, and she couldn’t imagine the weight a man like Hayden, the type of person who kept things close to the chest, must carry beneath that exquisitely tailored, buttoned-up suit. He seemed very human.
“Katrina!” Hayden called from the entryway. The steely edge was back, reminding her who he was and why he was in her life.
As she thanked her host, the sound of shattering glass rent the air. She and Maeve rushed down the hallway to a big, light-filled bedroom along the back of the house. Smokey stood next to the window, bits and pieces of what had been a porcelain teapot at his feet on the tile floor.
“Damn old hands,” he muttered.
Kate couldn’t wrench her gaze from the broken pieces of glass: a bodyless spout, cracked handle, and dozens of splintered slivers and chunks. Another broken mess.
“It’s okay.” Maeve swished her hands through the air. “Just an old garage-sale teapot.” She waltzed out of the room and came back with a dustpan and broom. Kate helped the older woman sweep the glass into a trash can she’d found in the attached bathroom.
When Maeve left with the trash can, Kate said, “Clear.”
Smokey remained at the window, and he raised his hands and fumbled at the latch. “I didn’t mean to break her teapot.” He tugged harder at the window, his hands and body shaking. “You tell her that, okay? Tell her I’m sorry.”
Kate settled her hand on his. Together they pushed the latch until the window swung open. “I will.”
Smokey Joe stood at the window breathing deeply, and the tremors released the hold on his body.
“I need to leave now,” she said.
He mumbled something about living in an oven and then something with the word safe in it.
As she stared at his stooped back, she realized this was probably the last time she’d see him, except perhaps when she stopped by his cabin to pick up her bike. “Be nice to Maeve. She seems like a good person.”
This didn’t merit even a grunt from the old man. She turned to go when he muttered, “On the nightstand. Something for you.”
She found a small teal tourmaline angel sitting next to an alarm clock. Her throat tightened as she traced its single wing. She’d planned to toss the pendant last month when she’d accidentally broken off the other wing and cracked the stone, but Smokey wouldn’t hear of it.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with a one-winged angel,” he’d said and put it in the zipper pocket of his wallet. “Kinda like the idea of a few gimps up above.”
She’d laughed with him then, but now she wasn’t laughing. “This is yours.”
“No, you take it. So you don’t forgit me.”
Her fingers tightened around the angel. Then she carefully set it on the nightstand. “No. You keep it.” A character like Smokey would be impossible to forget.
She hurried out of the room and met Hayden, who was talking softly with Maeve in the foyer, his hand resting on her shoulder. Tears pooled in the corners of the older woman’s eyes.
Kate must have made some noise or movement, because Hayden’s head popped up. When he spotted her, he gave Maeve’s arm a squeeze and kissed her cheek.
Kate headed for the door but stopped and reached into her bag. “Here.” She handed Maeve a small box of paper clips. “You might need these. If Smokey has a nightmare, hand him a few.”
Maeve took them, her forehead lined.
“He worked in transport on a medical evac helicopter in Vietnam. A few times he used safety pins to keep body parts together. In his nightmares
, he asks for them. I didn’t want to give him sharp pins, so I gave him paper clips. They seem to help.”
Maeve nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll remember that.”
“And if you’re okay with it, give him a…a…hug.” Her throat tightened. Two arms. Her arms. With the power to stop a war. “That helps, too.”
* * *
Thursday, June 11, 1:05 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada
He turned off the television and smiled.
Chaos was everywhere—in the Mideast, on Wall Street, and in Colorado Springs, where a short, fat black woman who looked more like a grandma than a cop was leading the charge to find Shayna Thomas’s murderer. Sergeant Lottie King had been on the news for two days straight, promising that her ever-growing team of able-bodied law enforcers would crisscross the globe until they found the vile creature who killed Shayna Thomas.
Silly old woman. He wasn’t a vile creature. He was actually quite meticulous, and he was rather close by, a few states away in a picture-perfect town on the northern tip of Lake Tahoe in Nevada. And for the record, there was no chaos in his little corner of the world. All was going according to plan. Broadcasters were dying, and law enforcement officials everywhere were hunting for the Broadcaster Butcher.
He didn’t like the name the news media had assigned to him. It was too coarse and brutish. He possessed much more finesse than a butcher, a precision worthy of admiration by the masses. He stretched out his right leg, which was bothering him again. When it was all said and done, it wasn’t about the attention, or even the power he got from the blood of the six women he’d murdered. It was all about Katrina. This one woman eluded him, but not for long. FBI Special Agent Hayden Reed would see to that.
Yesterday, while watching a news report from Colorado Springs, he’d spotted Agent Reed, who, as usual, stood in the background, watching and waiting. Reed had been the first one to connect the Santa Fe and Boise slayings to Katrina Erickson’s attack three years ago. Such a brilliant man and a valuable ally. He had high hopes that Agent Reed would track down Katrina, because in the end, it really was all about her, about finding her and silencing her.
The Broken Page 6