by Lisa Regan
“’Cause the only time you don’t want to talk to me is when you’re in bed with a beautiful woman. It better be Claire or I’m going to kick your ass, just as soon as we wrap this Strangler case up.”
A smile crept across Connor’s face. He glanced over his shoulder at Claire’s slumbering form. He had a weird feeling of déjà vu. Of the first night they’d ever spent together. A shiver worked its way through his body. She would be there when he came back, he reminded himself. She wasn’t going anywhere this time.
He said, “I’ll see you in thirty.”
Glory Rohrbach’s young landscaper-lover lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a rundown section of the city better known for its number of robberies than its charm. Stryker had assigned several of the other detectives in the division to go door-to-door in Pocket and compile a list of twenty-something men living in the area. Most had already been eliminated by virtue of their alibis, but it would take at least a day or two to cover the entire neighborhood. Given the GPS coordinates found on Leah’s vehicle, Connor and Stryker had moved Denny Taggert to the top of their list. The coordinates revealed that she had driven to an intersection five blocks away from Denny Taggert’s residence, in front of several old homes, some of which Connor knew were halfway houses. The surrounding buildings were nearly falling down, and the owners offered low-rent rooms to people with bleak prospects. Connor had arrested more than one suspect in this area. Unfortunately, there was no surveillance available that showed Leah parking or getting in or out of her vehicle. They had no idea where she had actually gone, but it was too much of a coincidence that she’d been only blocks from someone who had worked in her neighborhood.
Denny Taggert was twenty-six years old, and hadn’t had so much as a parking ticket in his life. He had a little-used Facebook page. He barely existed on paper. He had a half-dozen old addresses, almost all of them apartments in less-than-stellar neighborhoods.
They knocked for several minutes before he flung the door open, shirtless and wearing only boxer shorts. His thick brown hair was in disarray. He squinted at them as though they were shining a spotlight on him.
“Denny Taggert?” Connor said.
The man cleared his throat. “Who’s asking?”
Connor handed him his credentials, introduced himself and Stryker, and said, “We’re here to talk about Leah Holloway.”
He handed Connor’s credentials back and squinted up at them again. “Who?”
“Leah Holloway,” Stryker said.
Denny’s brow furrowed. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“The lady who drove her kids off the I-5 overpass into the American River on Saturday.”
Denny’s eyes widened. “Oh shit. Yeah, I saw that on the news. What’s it got to do with me?”
“You tell us,” Stryker said.
Denny put his hands up in a defensive posture. “Whoa, dude. I don’t even know her. I never even heard of her before I saw the news.”
“You sure about that?” Connor said.
Denny shook his head. “Don’t know her, man.”
“I know her,” a female voice said from behind Denny.
The man turned, revealing a huge tattoo of an eagle across his upper back. “I said stay in the bedroom,” he told her.
She was easily twice his age, her deeply tanned skin like wrinkled crepe paper, freckled from too much sun. Her blonde hair was pulled into a loose ponytail. She wore only a T-shirt.
Connor assumed it was Denny’s. She was rail thin and smelled of cigarettes. She sidled past Denny, breaking his hold on the doorknob. Up close, in the daylight, she was even less attractive. Connor wondered what Denny saw in her. He could hear Jade saying, She must be amazing in bed. Older women know how to do more stuff. He could see her wink, feel her elbow in his ribs. He swallowed and looked back at the woman before him.
“Leah was my neighbor,” she explained.
“Glory Rohrbach,” Stryker said.
She smiled a rueful smile. “Those bitches over there are still talking about me, huh? Which one of them sent you?”
“Nobody sent us, Mrs. Rohrbach,” Connor said. “We’re just following up on a lead.”
Denny had taken a few steps inside the apartment. He picked up a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table and shook two out. He returned to the door and handed one of them to Glory. In his other hand appeared a lighter. He snapped it open and lit it up in one fluid movement. Glory leaned forward toward his flame. She sucked in a long breath as he held it out to her. On a smoky exhale, she said, “A lead? For what? Leah’s dead, isn’t she? What’s there to investigate?”
Connor and Stryker exchanged a furtive glance. “We have reason to believe that Mrs. Holloway was under duress when she went into the river.”
Glory guffawed. The sound, loud and unexpected, startled even Denny. “Duress?” she scoffed. “Please. She was a soccer mom. What kind of duress could she have been under? Did the boredom finally drive her insane?”
None of them spoke. When they all just stared at her, Glory shrugged, took a long drag from her cigarette, and sauntered off. She sat on the couch, which was a futon, tucking her left leg up beneath her.
“Mr. Taggert,” Stryker said. “Did you see Leah Holloway on Wednesday?”
Denny looked mildly confused, as if they’d just asked for directions to a place he wasn’t familiar with. “What? No. I told you, I never met her.”
“Where were you on Wednesday, around twelve thirty?” Connor asked.
“At work.”
“Where were you on Sunday night?” Stryker asked.
Denny sat on the edge of his pockmarked coffee table and lit his own cigarette. He seemed unconcerned by the sudden change in direction of their questioning. “I was here,” he said. “Sleeping. Glory was here too.”
Stryker flipped his pad open and rattled off the dates and times of the Soccer Mom Strangler murders. For each one, Denny answered that he’d been at work. That would be easy enough to check. Connor was already feeling as though this was a dead end although he didn’t know how much supervision landscapers were given. It was possible that he had committed the crimes while working. A landscaper wouldn’t be out of place at a playground or soccer field. He was the right age, and he had no record. Still, doubt niggled at Connor. They’d either woken this guy from a nap or interrupted him midcoitus and started asking him for alibis, and he showed no signs of nervousness at all.
Glory, on the other hand, was a different story.
“Why are you asking him all these questions?” she asked. “What do all those dates have to do with Leah Holloway killing herself?”
“We have reason to believe that someone might have assaulted Mrs. Holloway before her death. We’re trying to find that person,” Connor said.
“And you think my Denny here did it? He didn’t even know her. He would never do such a thing—to any woman.”
“Mrs. Rohrbach, we have to eliminate all the possibilities. We’re looking at any man in his twenties who would have had contact with Mrs. Holloway last Wednesday. We know that Mrs. Holloway was in this area at that time,” Stryker said. He looked at Denny. “Would you be willing to come downtown and give fingerprints, DNA, and a dental impression?”
Denny exchanged a look with Glory. With a sigh, he said, “Sure. I got nothing to hide. You want me to come with you now?”
Too easy, Connor could hear Jade say.
“Please,” Stryker said.
“Am I under arrest?”
“No,” Connor said. “We’re just talking. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll give you a ride.”
As Denny disappeared into the bedroom at the back of the apartment, Glory advanced on them. Shaky hands lit another cigarette from the butt of her last one. “So you think because Denny lives in this neighborhood, it was him? He wasn’t even here on Wednesday at twelve thirty. He was working in some other neighborhood. You can check that with his boss. Go outside and look around. Lots of degenerates live around here. You need to look at
some of them. Did you talk to Rachel?”
“Yes,” Connor said. “We spoke with Mrs. Irving.”
She stared at him pointedly. “So you talked to her nephew too.”
“Her nephew?” Connor echoed.
Glory shook her head. “Rachel is a nasty, lying bitch. I know she puts on this Mother and Wife of the Year thing, but she’s not. She didn’t tell you about her nephew?”
“No,” Connor said. “What do you know about him?”
“I know he’s around the same age as my Denny, maybe younger. He came to live with her last year, or it might have been the year before that, I’m not sure. Rachel acted like he didn’t exist, but I saw him coming and going all the time.”
“How do you know he was her nephew?” Connor asked.
“Leah told me. Her and Rachel were besties. I asked her once if she noticed this kid coming and going from Rachel’s house. She said he was Rachel’s nephew. That was right before I separated from my husband.”
“He have a name?” Stryker asked.
She waved her cigarette in the air. “D.J. Don’t know his last name. Leah said he was from back East. Pennsylvania, I think. Came to live with them after high school. Rachel hated him. I still can’t figure out why she let him live with them. I think she kicked him out eventually.”
“Do you know when he moved out?” Connor asked. “Where he went?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t tell you. I left over a year ago. It was Rachel, wasn’t it? She’s the one who said you should talk to Denny, wasn’t she?”
She looked back and forth between them but they said nothing.
“Forget it,” she said. “I can tell by your faces that it was her. She thinks it’s entertaining to sit around and judge people. Her husband is never home. She’s bored out of her skull. Well, if she’s going to point fingers, then so am I.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
NINETEEN MONTHS EARLIER
She couldn’t call it rape. She had let him do it. She hadn’t tried to stop him. She hadn’t even spoken. She hadn’t said no or stop. She’d made no effort to push him away or fight him off. She had orgasmed, for God’s sake. Afterward, she had cleaned herself up in the bathroom, changed her underwear, and gone back into the yard, acting the gracious hostess. She pushed what had just happened into her Deal with It Later compartment. What else was there to do? A few people at the barbecue remarked that she looked pale, unwell, but she just shrugged and said she felt a migraine coming on.
D.J. hadn’t stayed. Thank goodness. Leah was excellent at compartmentalizing, at staying in control, at putting on whatever face the situation called for, but she really wasn’t sure she could have kept her composure if he had lingered in her yard, eating the food her husband had prepared, smiling at all the female neighbors undressing him with their eyes. Out of sight, out of mind.
She busied herself playing with the children, cleaning up after people as they ate, and fastidiously restocking the strategically placed snacks as their guests consumed them. When the ice in the coolers got low, she offered to drive to the store and get more rather than asking Jim to do it. She took Peyton with her so she wouldn’t be tempted to think about D.J. or what had happened. Peyton was a good girl. Leah realized that she should really reward the girl more for always being so quiet and well behaved.
As they stood in line at the nearest minimart, Leah glanced over at the wall of self-serve beverages partially obscured by the coffee kiosk. She placed a hand on the back of Peyton’s neck. Her skin was warm and soft. The girl looked up at Leah, her brown eyes questioning. Leah smiled. She leaned down and spoke softly into her daughter’s ear. “How about an Icee and some chocolate cupcakes?”
Peyton’s eyes doubled in size. The expression—half delight, half disbelief—burst across her face, making Leah’s heart seize. “Really?” Peyton said. “Right now?”
Leah nodded. She should try harder to put that look of wonderment on Peyton’s face more often. Peyton took off to the back of the store, singing, “Car picnic” in a high-pitched voice.
It was a private ritual the two of them had started the year before when Leah had to take Peyton for her three-year well visit, and she had taken her vaccinations with the stoicism of a Navy SEAL. Rachel had watched Hunter. Afterward, Leah had taken Peyton to a minimart and let her pick out any snack she wanted. She chose a cherry Icee and chocolate cupcakes. Leah let her sit in the passenger’s seat of her SUV while they ate and called it a car picnic. Peyton had loved it. It had been so out of character for Leah, who was normally very strict about staying on some sort of daily schedule, that Peyton had requested it ever since. But Leah rarely gave in. She was too busy or Hunter was with them. Or they just didn’t have time.
“Mommy, I want the red,” Peyton said when they reached the Icee machine. Leah dispensed two red Icees and bought them each a pack of chocolate cupcakes. They sat in the front of the parked vehicle with two bags of ice melting in the back, and Leah watched her daughter’s tiny lips turn red from the cherry drink, watched her scatter chocolate crumbs down her front and onto the passenger seat.
They returned to the party, Leah’s Deal with It Later compartment more tightly locked. She was able to get through the next day—the cleanup day—without really thinking about D.J. or what had happened between them. Then work Monday. But it kept pushing its way out of the Deal with It Later drawer in her mind, bringing back the feel of him inside her, the way her body had gripped him and coursed with pleasure. She did her best to pretend it hadn’t happened, to deny it to herself, but she became more and more frazzled as the week went on. The energy she had to expend to keep it hidden from her own mind began to be greater than the energy she needed to carry out her daily life.
She was exhausted.
On Saturday, she found herself sitting at Rachel’s kitchen table, never more grateful for Rachel’s weak coffee. Even though Leah had never been so happy for a weekend to arrive, Jim had been driving her crazy watching his fishing shows and talking about lures, casting, and other things she didn’t care about. The moment Hunter went down for his nap, she’d hustled Peyton out of the house for some much-needed girl time for them both.
She knew it was counterintuitive. Considering what she had done, she should want to stay as far away from Rachel as possible, but that would only arouse suspicion, and Rachel was nosy as hell. Leah knew she would not withstand the scrutiny that would come from avoiding her best friend. Besides that, Rachel categorically refused to speak about D.J. Leah had pried countless times, and Rachel had always shut her down. It was not a topic that was open to discussion. The boy had been living with Rachel and Mike for weeks before Rachel even acknowledged that he was there, and that was only because he happened to walk through the television room while Leah and the kids were visiting. Rachel had had to explain his presence, although it was clear she hadn’t wanted to. In a halting tone, she had simply said, “My brother’s kid. He’s here from Pennsylvania. He just needs a place to stay for a few weeks.” Leah had always thought Rachel was an only child. But Rachel had never talked much about her childhood. She occasionally made references to her mother, but never to her father or any siblings. Leah had never pushed because her own childhood had been so traumatic, she had no desire whatsoever to rehash it.
Rachel acting as though D.J. didn’t exist made it easier for Leah to act that way as well. She could pretend that he had never come into either of their lives. She could just be a woman having coffee with a friend. So that’s what she did.
She’d purposely left her cell phone at home, but that didn’t stop Jim from pestering her. He just dialed Rachel’s landline. She’d been at Rachel’s house for fifteen minutes, and Jim had already called twice.
Both times, Rachel put him off, answering his inane questions herself. She shook her head as she hung up the second time. “This man lives with you, and he doesn’t know where to find the bottle opener or the spare toilet paper?” Rachel rolled her eyes and resumed her spot at the table acro
ss from Leah. “Even I know where you keep them. Men. You can’t live with them and you can’t shoot them.”
“Or strangle them in their sleep,” Leah added.
They both laughed.
“He’s driving me nuts,” Leah admitted. It was a familiar refrain. When didn’t her hapless husband make her crazy?
Yet, when Rachel responded with “Rough week?” it wasn’t Jim who came to Leah’s mind.
“This has been the worst week of my life,” she confessed.
Rachel froze, her coffee mug halfway to her lips, and stared at Leah. Slowly, her eyebrows drew together. She put her mug back down on the table without drinking. She said, “Is there something I don’t know?” She leaned forward, the interest in her eyes bordering on glee. “Did something happen with Jim?”
Anxiety was a vise around Leah’s midsection, restricting her diaphragm, making it hard to breathe. She put a hand to her chest. “Oh no,” she backpedaled. “Jim’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“No more fallout from the day care–pickup fight?”
Leah tried a smile, her skin feeling tight, like her face was sunburned. “Oh no,” she said.
Rachel’s shoulders slumped just perceptibly, as though she were disappointed. Leah was glad she had chosen not to tell her friend anything more about the “day care–pickup fight.” Jim was due at work by four, and Leah got done working at three. The kids had to be picked up from day care by three. Leah thought it worked out perfectly. Jim could pick them up before work, and Leah would be home in time for him to leave. But the moment she’d proposed the arrangement, Jim suddenly had to be at work by three. She’d accused him of lying, which he hadn’t taken well. They’d had a huge blowout over it, which Leah had initially told Rachel all about. But Jim had started going in at three each day. Because Leah couldn’t afford aftercare—she was already paying an exorbitant amount of money for before care—she had to leave work early each day. It was hugely inconvenient, and she’d promised her boss it was only temporary.
What she hadn’t told Rachel was that she’d driven past Jim’s work one day after picking up the kids and seen him sitting in his truck, eating a sandwich and listening to the radio. She’d driven by three times after that to find exactly the same thing. When she confronted him, he told her he kept forgetting something in his truck. They’d fought, but eventually, she’d given up, too worn down by the absurdity of it all. She’d revisit it with him when he brought home a paycheck that didn’t reflect the extra hour a day he swore he was working. Of course he’d probably still deny it. Her husband was the type of person who’d throw his dirty underwear at your feet and then vehemently deny having done so. And what could Leah do? Leave her husband because he refused to pick up the kids from day care? Was that the type of thing you ended a marriage over?