“You recorded this conversation, I hope.” Baskin was nodding now, as if he might approve of the good work after all.
“Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Only I had the recorder in my pocket, and there was some kind of mechanical failure. So no, I don’t actually have it although I did record it as I should. It’s just mechanical failure and nothing I can do about that. But I’m sure we’ll find plenty to prove Graham is our UNSUB once we’re done tossing the place.”
Baskin inclined his head toward Graham’s body. “And that’s when he bit down on something and started foaming at the mouth?”
“It is, sir. That’s correct, sir.”
“Did you try to revive him?” Caitlin asked.
“He was dead. So no, I did not try to revive the motherfucker.”
A uniform emerged from the bedroom holding an evidence bag and crossed the room to show them his discovery. “Jackpot,” he said, and rattled the bag. “I think I found the cyanide, here, and in the bedroom, there’s a computer and get this . . . the asshole’s still logged on.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tuesday, September 17
Phoenix Police Department
Mountainside Precinct
IT’D BEEN A long day. They’d spent hours at the crime scene, then grabbed a late lunch and headed to the precinct—where she’d been waiting even longer. Caitlin sat, throbbing head in her hands, in the break room. Spense had directed her to stay put while he attended to an important matter. An important matter he hadn’t seen fit to explain. The ache in her head worsened, and she felt pressure building behind her eyes. A thought flitted across her consciousness—that maybe if she cried, the pressure would subside. Instantly, she shut the stray thought down because once she opened the floodgates, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop.
Control meant survival.
Control had been the only way to endure her life. She’d watched as a lethal cocktail had been injected into her father’s veins. She’d seen his death, and that was all she could handle. She couldn’t bear feeling it, too. No. Crying definitely would not help. And this morning, at Graham’s apartment, the no-holds-barred tactics used by Thompson had dredged all her distrust of the police back to the surface.
Detective Thompson had lied to Silas Graham. And now Silas Graham was dead. The leeway he’d taken with the suspect made her sick to her stomach. She shot to her feet. She didn’t want to keep sitting around in the police station waiting on Spense any longer. She had to get away from here.
She was just reaching for the door, when it swung open and Spense strode into the room, carrying a cardboard box with a lid that barely contained its contents. He placed the box on a table near the doorway and took her hand.
“You okay?”
She jerked her hand away. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seemed angry . . . with Thompson, with everyone really. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you get that close to losing it. Caity, I’m not condoning Thompson’s actions, but we don’t know what transpired in that apartment, so first, don’t go assuming facts not in evidence. Second, not all LEOs are like him.”
He really meant he wasn’t like Thompson, and it made her chest hurt that he felt he had to say so. She knew Spense was a good man, a man of integrity—not someone who assumed every suspect was another species. But she also knew that in the past, he’d lied to get a confession. Her gut clenched. Did the fact that man had been guilty make it right? What if he’d taken the easy way out—like Graham apparently had. “I didn’t lose it.”
“I said you came close.” His voice was low and soothing.
“Maybe, but so did you.”
He turned his palms up. “True that. But for you, it’s completely out of character. You wanna talk about what’s got you so worked up?”
“Not now.” Not ever. “And by the way, thanks for keeping me cooling my heels for hours.”
His eyes shifted to a spot on the wall. “Look, I’m sorry I took so long in there, but I wanted to access ViCAP . . . and I had something else I needed to pick up.”
“Sorry?”
“No, it’s my bad. I shouldn’t talk in Bureau speak. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program provides a database of violent crimes, especially unusual ones or those that show any signs of being a serial—like a signature.”
She felt her shoulders drop. She was tired and impatient, but she wanted to know more. “How does that work?”
“Say a detective enters a case with an unusual signature in New York, then another enters the same signature from a ten-year-old case in Arizona. ViCAP will match the cases and spit them out as possibly connected. I entered the information about the temporal-bone trophy into the system. We’ll know soon if we get any hits. If there’s a network of killers out there carving up skulls and stealing their victims’ bony labyrinths, the database may tell us. But I’m not counting on it. This may be a relatively new group; besides which, ViCAP only works when you use it. If the case detectives didn’t enter the data in the system, we won’t know about the similar cases.”
She sucked in a breath and closed her fists. If they were right about how the Man in the Maze found his pupils, and there really was a cyber kill club out there, she didn’t want to think about how many more murderers might keep on getting away with it because they could no longer interrogate Graham. While he fit the UNSUB profile and had confessed to the Ferragamo murders, he simply did not fit her constructed image of the Man in the Maze. She was convinced the Man in the Maze was a teacher of some sort. In her exercise at the museum, she’d seen him so clearly as a professor. And Sally Cartwright had been a coed at Tempe University . . . like Gail Falconer. Her ears buzzed, and she realized Spense was still speaking. Her head had gone cottony, and her knees threatened to give way. Stiffening them for extra support, she looked back to Spense, squaring her gaze with his.
“I’m not the enemy, Caity.”
She was still reeling from the way Thompson had handled Graham. Her nerves were raw, and her mind kept going back to her father no matter how hard she tried to focus on the case at hand. When she’d asked Spense for help with the Falconer case he’d refused. “But you’re not my friend either.” She hated the bitterness in her words, but she wouldn’t pretend, not with Spense.
His body canted away from hers. “You don’t think so? You got some high standards there, sweetheart. I carried you to safety in that courthouse. I sat by your bedside every damn day until you got well. I brought you into my home, and quite frankly, I’m ready to take a bullet for you right now should one come flying through that window. How does that song go?”
“I’d catch a grenade for you.” She filled in, but her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. Spense had done more for her than any person besides her family ever had, and yet . . . the one thing she needed from him was the one thing he’d refused to give her.
“But that’s not enough to prove I care, is it?”
She looked up through a blur of moisture in her eyes. He reached out and tilted her chin so she couldn’t look away.
“I know what you want from me, Caity. And I’m going to give it to you. I just hope to God we both survive it.”
Her head, already light, started to spin. She pressed her fist to her chest, trying to catch her breath, but her lungs refused to expand. Spense grabbed her by the hand to steady her. Then he walked her to the table where he’d placed the box. She reached out, ran her fingers over the cardboard, and a burst of electricity shot through her, jolting her heart into overdrive.
“You know what’s in there, right?” Spense said, his voice steady and easy.
Her world was coming back into focus. “The Falconer files,” she whispered.
“Watching Thompson in action today was enlightening. I guess I was seeing him through your eyes. And then . . . I took a good look in the mirror an
d made a decision. Whatever I can do to help you find the truth—about your father, about what happened to Gail Falconer—I will. And in return, I’m asking you to put your trust in me. Because if you can’t do that, this partnership we’ve got going won’t work. The case against your father is strong, but I’m going to be there for you no matter what we find. You said before it wasn’t about you giving me another chance. You said it was about me taking one. Well, this is me, taking that chance.”
She took a step toward him, and he remained still, didn’t move toward her or back away. He just waited, letting her come to him. Then she reached out, touched her hand to his shoulder. Her head dipped to his chest, and he finally moved, tugging her hard against him.
“It’s okay, Caity, you don’t always have to be so tough.” He whispered the words into her hair. His heart thudded against her ear, and she burrowed into him, grateful, wanting to let it all go. She needed relief . . . she needed to lose control . . . but the tears simply refused to fall.
Wednesday, September 18
Rutherford Towers
Phoenix, Arizona
AROUND HALF PAST three in the morning, a single sobbing scream awakened Spense. His body played out its role automatically, from sheer muscle memory. If he’d thought about leaping from the bed, grabbing his pistol, clearing the hall and rushing into Caity’s room, the memory had already fled. All he knew was that Caity screamed, and he burst through the door with his Glock to find her on the floor of her closet, rocking back and forth, eyes wide open, but maybe not really awake. Hugging her knees, she kept rocking, her shoulders heaving with tearless sobs. Moonlight streamed in from the window, varnishing her alabaster face. Her skin seemed frozen onto her features, like a painted mask. In the dark, her dry blue eyes looked huge and nearly black. Jesus. He’d never seen anyone not cry with such vengeance.
Lowering his pistol, he crawled into the closet beside her. “Bad dream?” He was the master of understatement.
She stopped rocking, but stared straight ahead, as if he weren’t there, and that didn’t work for him. He was there, and he wanted her to know it. Cautiously, he let his hand fall into her lap. Through her nightshirt, he could feel the heat and moisture of her damp skin, and his body responded automatically. He was an asshole, but at least he recognized it and moved his hand from her thigh to a safer location—her cheek.
Just as he’d thought, her skin was bone dry. “Bad dream?” he repeated.
Seeming to come back to herself, she turned to him. “Yes.”
Well, okay. That was progress. Her eyes were wired red, her thick brown hair was a hell of a tangled mess; she had dark circles under her eyes, and he still felt a catch in his chest at how beautiful she was. Minutes passed in silence, then finally she said, “It’s an awful dream. Sometimes, I don’t have it for weeks, and I think it’s left me for good, but it always comes back.”
“Sounds like posttraumatic stress. You’ve been shot at, and—”
“It’s not that. I started having the dream a long time before I got shot. I’ve had it ever since . . . well, I’ve had it a long time.”
“Since your father?”
“Yes. Since I watched my father die.”
He wanted to grab her and hold on to her and kiss her and make all her pain disappear. But he restrained himself. “So in this dream, what happens?”
“Oh, trust me, it’s just your usual fare. Nothing extraordinary whatsoever. There’s a long black tunnel. It’s pitch-black inside. I’m running down the tunnel, chasing my father. And all I can hear is my heart echoing louder than our footsteps.”
He swallowed hard, dreading what might come next, but needing to know. “You chase your father.”
“I want to be with him.”
Spense leaned in, barely breathing now, but managing to say what he needed to say. “Caity, I think maybe you should talk to someone about the dreams.”
“I am. I’m talking to you.” She looked at him, and for the first time, he saw trust in her eyes, and that made him determined to deserve it. While his hand stroked her back, she continued, “I don’t mean I want to die, Spense. Not at all. I could never throw away the life I’ve been given. But when I was a girl, I used to wish I could be with my father in prison, so he wouldn’t be lonely. So I wouldn’t be lonely.”
And suddenly he understood. The closet was like a cell. That’s why she was in here. He reached an arm around her, and she leaned into his touch. Lips parted, she gazed up at him.
This was a dance he knew very well, the softening of the eyes, the lowering of defenses that signaled a woman would welcome his touch.
You can have me if you like.
He would like.
But Caity had put her trust in him, and he craved that more than he craved her body, or the feeling of sinking inside her, the sensation of her pulsing around him. This wasn’t the time . . . She was purring up against him now. He closed his eyes and steeled his resolve. If he claimed her for his own tonight, when the light of day brought her back to herself, he might lose her forever. But a stolen kiss . . .
He inched closer, and she tilted her face to him. The softness of her lips thrilled him. Her mouth tasted sweet, like fruity Chapstick, and he licked her lips open. His tongue thrust inside—a promise of what could be between them. With her wrapped tightly in his arms, they kissed until he felt the shuddering in her body subside. Then he whispered in her ear, “Okay if I stay?”
In answer, she nestled her head against his chest. He leaned back against the wall, and together they drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wednesday, September 18
Rutherford Towers
Phoenix, Arizona
THE FALCONER FILES. Caitlin couldn’t believe that the evidence files from her father’s case were sitting on the breakfast table in front of her. She didn’t know what markers Spense had called in to get them, and she didn’t care if it was against policy to remove them from the evidence room—from the horror stories she’d heard about old files going missing, they were probably safer in her care than in police custody anyway. The only thing that mattered now was that at long last, fifteen years after her father had been executed, she was going to see with her own eyes the evidence that had convicted him.
A rather jubilant whistling came closer and closer, then Spense wandered into the kitchen and shot her a goofy grin. “Hey, doll,” he said, as if they were an old married couple, and this was just another ordinary day. He rattled around at the refrigerator and eventually produced a frosty mug filled with her favorite breakfast drink—her favorite anytime drink really—an Arnold Palmer. “I can whip up some scrambled tofu if you like, doll.”
Considering he’d gotten her the evidence files, slept sitting up in her closet after her night-terror, and proven himself to be a really good kisser, she decided not to complain about the doll. Whatever name Spense chose to call her, she didn’t mind. Even when they’d been on opposite sides, she’d secretly liked that he was the only one bold enough to call her Caity. Something made her let out a dreamy sigh. Maybe it was the sparkle in his eye when he looked at her, or maybe it was the warmth in his smile. Or maybe it was the way her heart expanded at the sound of his voice—perhaps the feeling of tenderness that sometimes swamped her out of the blue, just because she’d caught a glimpse of his profile. “No thanks. I think I’ll stick with this. I don’t have much of an appetite.” She was too jittery to think of food, and if anything was going to tempt her, it wouldn’t be Spense’s cooking. She favored him with her own goofy grin, took the mug he offered, and sipped it, resolving to think about last night later. There was no denying that had been a doozy of a kiss. But today, the Falconer files were uppermost in her mind.
“You and me, Caity. We all good now?”
“Yeah. We’re good.” The mug wobbled in her hand, and she set it down and stea
died her hands by wrapping her arms around her waist. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
She shivered, then faked a laugh. “That was semirhetorical.”
“Then you should’ve used the signal.” He tugged madly at his ear.
“Right. I’ll try to remember. Anyway, here goes. I’m feeling a little nervous about opening this box. Not because I think I’ll find out my father killed Gail Falconer. In my heart, I know he didn’t. But I don’t look forward to reliving all those terrible memories. I’m afraid looking at evidence, reading the witness statements, will bring the trial back to life for me. And that was a terrible time. I don’t want to go back there.”
“Then don’t open the box. No one’s forcing you. From what you’ve told me, your mother doesn’t want to relive the past either. She’s not pressing anyone to reopen the case.”
“But she wants my father’s name cleared. I’m sure of it. It’s only that she doesn’t want me to live in the past. That’s the reason she doesn’t approve of my digging around and hiring private investigators. She’s protecting me from my own obsession—that’s how she puts it.”
“Have you ever considered the possibility your mother might be right? No matter what you find inside those files, Caity, even if you managed to somehow get your father’s conviction overturned, it won’t bring him back to you.”
That’s where Spense had it wrong. She wanted her pure, untainted memories of her father back. And the only way to exorcise that tiny yet malignant seed of doubt was to see the evidence with her own eyes. “I have to do this, Spense.” Then, heart pounding in her chest, she opened the box and pulled out the first file. In big red letters it read:
Falconer, Gail
Case Closed.
SPENSE HOPED TO hell he hadn’t done the wrong thing getting Caity those files. But after last night, there was no going back. He finally understood that no matter how much he wanted to protect her from the truth, sooner or later she’d have to face it. At least now, he could be there with her when she did. And there was something more, too—Caity was so certain of her father’s innocence. Family members often deluded themselves, but she was a smart woman. And whether by nature or nurture, she had incredible empathy for others. It was hard to believe she’d been sired and raised by a sadistic monster. He’d read the trial transcripts, but now he wondered if he’d missed some detail that might suggest her father’s innocence.
Judgment Page 17