Body of Lies

by Deirdre Savoy

  Who knew? The only thing she did know was what Zach would say to her once he came upstairs. Whatever the source, he’d want her to treat that note as a credible threat. He’d want her to do what the police always wanted people in her situation to do: to lie low, disappear for a while until the threat was past. She couldn’t do that. Not only did she have patients that depended on her, but altering her plans in that struck her as turning tail and running. But she was still Sammy the Bull’s daughter. She couldn’t do that. Whether that made her brave or foolhardy she didn’t know, but she wouldn’t change her mind.

  She heard him now, talking to the officer stationed outside her office door. She downed the contents of her glass and set it down on the table. There was no point in giving Zach more ammunition by letting him know she’d already resorted to drink. Although the liquid warmed her insides, the rest of her remained as chilled as before.

  He came into the room a moment later and sat in one of the chairs facing her. Lines of fatigue stretched around his eyes and mouth. She knew he hadn’t gotten any more sleep than she had and she felt ready to drop. But she knew she’d go home eventually and sleep well that night. Would he?

  He stretched out his legs in front of him. “Alex, we need to talk.”

  She knew that. She counted on that. But still she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear all he had to say. “Did the guard get a better look at the delivery boy?”

  “Only slightly. The two of them have agreed to work with a composite artist to see if they can come up with something. And, yes, the kid left his skateboard downstairs. Alice was right about that.”

  “In other words, this killer was close enough to the office today for a kid on a skateboard to ride up and make the delivery.”

  “Or he could have been right outside. There’s a florist a block from here, but she hasn’t fill any orders for white roses in the past week.”

  “You’re trying to trace the box?”

  “It’s about all we have to go on, until the fingerprints come back.”

  Alex rubbed her fingertips together. She hadn’t done a great job of removing the ink from when they took her prints to make a comparison. “I take it no one else saw anything,” she said, referring to the canvass of the neighborhood she knew had been conducted.

  Zach shook his head. “Aside from this building, the florist, and the grocery store, this is a residential neighborhood. Most folks were probably asleep or minding their own business that hour of the morning. There weren’t many people out on the streets.”

  He didn’t seem to hold out much hope of anyone having seen either the kid or the killer, and truthfully, neither did she. “So where does that leave us?”

  “When you leave here, a car will follow you home and sit outside your place. You should take some time off.”

  She smiled without mirth. “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  “You’re a cop’s daughter and not too slow on the uptake?”

  “I can’t do it, Zach. I have patients who rely on me. Not on the strength of one crackpot letter whose source we don’t even know. If your guys want to follow me around, that’s fine.”

  He shot her an impatient look. “I admire your bravado, but it’s misplaced. We’re talking about a guy who’s already killed several women. We know who he is but not where. For all we know he slipped into the crowd last night unnoticed. If you’re thinking you’re safe because he contacted you here, how hard do you think it will be for him to find where you live? I checked the phone book. You’re listed.”

  She couldn’t argue with any of his statements, but one. “You’re sure it’s Thorpe now?”

  “I never stopped thinking it was Thorpe. I wasn’t as content to rush to judgment, as were some of my colleagues. Did he ever make any threats against you?”

  “None I took seriously.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Threats from patients aren’t all that uncommon. Neither are love letters for that matter. It’s called transference. The patient projects onto the therapist the emotions he feels for someone significant in his life. Which one you get depends on the emotions churned up by therapy.”

  “How did Thorpe threaten you?”

  “Nothing specific. Something of the ‘make me sorry I was ever born’ variety. I was trying to press him for more information about his childhood that he refused to give me. All I knew about him was that his mother died when he was ten years old and that he and his sister were sent to separate foster homes. There was no other family, or none that would take them in.”

  “That was a sore point?”

  “Everything was a sore point. You have to remember, he was here because of a court order, not because he wanted help. A lot of these guys would rather put out their own eyes than tell you anything. They’ll show up because they have to, but they’ll spend the whole time reading the paper or listening to music with headphones on. The court can only mandate their appearance, not that they are actually benefited by the therapy provided. But you have to keep trying.”

  “Was Thorpe coming around?”

  She nodded. “He’d started to. He was talking to me, anyway. Mostly, I think he wanted to convince me he was innocent, that he hadn’t been trying to hurt those girls. He never told me outright but my gut says he was abused himself, which is probably why he didn’t want to discuss his childhood.”

  Alex inhaled. She was tired of discussing Thorpe herself. She stood and crossed to her desk. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before, but Roberta and I might have found out something.”

  “You and Roberta?”

  Alex pulled the file she wanted from her bottom drawer, stood, and met Zach’s gaze. She wondered if the incredulousness she heard in his voice came from the fact that they were two women, that they weren’t cops, or that he hadn’t been aware she’d been looking into the case herself.

  “Yes, me and Roberta. Have you ever heard of an organization called Juvenile Justice?”

  “Yeah. From what I understand they’re a bunch of crazy vigilantes out to stamp out kiddie porn and pedophilia.”

  “And you’re against that.”

  “Not their mission but their methods. They’ve managed to screw up quite a few investigations by tampering with evidence of online crimes. Aside from that, you’ve got to wonder about some of the people who get involved in that sort of group. Even though they say they are against child sexual exploitation, how do you catch someone involved without having to view the material yourself? How do you lure a pedophile without listening to the list of things he wants to do to you? Maybe that’s what really gets their rocks off. In your neck of the woods isn’t that called sublimation?”

  Since she couldn’t argue with his assessment, she didn’t bother. Some of the volunteers might have found a socially acceptable way to view material they claimed to abhor. That thought had occurred to her, too. What bothered her was the scorn with which he spoke. He didn’t sound like the man she knew. “That’s awfully cynical.”

  He shrugged. “That’s the place I’m in right now. How did you and Roberta get involved with these people?”

  “Her brother is head of the organization. Their sister was held hostage and raped by some man she thought she was in love with.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “From what I understand, mostly.” She walked back to the sofa and sat. “Do you want to know what we found out?”

  “Of course.” He held out his hand for the file.

  She handed it over and sat back, folding her feet underneath her. “We were looking for men who had Yourplace accounts going by the screen name Hercules. There were fourteen of them.” Inside the folder were printouts of the profiles the men had registered with the company. “I don’t know if any of them is your killer, but I thought it was worth checking out.”

  He closed the folder. “It is. Thank you.”

  Sensing in him an urge to get going, she stood. “Let me know what you find out.”

  He
rose to his feet. “I will.” He closed the gap between them. She could feel in him the urge to touch her, but he held back. “Be careful, Alex.” That smile she loved formed on his face. “And lay off the hard stuff.” He winked at her and he left.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, watching his departure. If he’d given her the opportunity, she would have told him she’d welcome his embrace. She wasn’t foolish enough not to be scared. She wasn’t immune enough from him not to want to be held by him. It had been such a long time since she had even the promise of comfort that she craved it.

  Who knew he’d pick now, when she was softening, to follow her wishes? Between leaving her undisturbed last night and untouched today, he was giving her what she said she wanted, damn him. But he hadn’t tried to convince her again that she should disappear for a while. She thought she knew why. At least, she hoped so.

  “So we finally meet.”

  Zach shook the hand of Darryl Ferguson, the detective from online crime that he’d been trying to meet with the past couple of days, but either Darryl’s schedule or his hadn’t permitted it. Although Darryl was off today he agreed to meet as long as Zach was willing to do it on his turf. Both men settled into lawn chairs at the back of Ferguson’s house while the family barbecue sizzled on the grill. “What’s going on?”

  “You tell me.” Ferguson pulled a Corona from the cooler beside him. “Want one?”

  Zach accepted the beer and twisted off the top. The liquid felt cool and refreshing going down. Just what he needed. “You know I’m working on that Amazon thing.”

  Darryl nodded before taking a swig. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s some nasty business.”

  “And getting nastier. It turns out some of his victims weren’t pros as originally thought. He might have met some of the girls on the Internet. All of them had pages on this site called Your place.”

  Darryl nodded again. “I’ve heard of that site. Popular with the teenyboppers. We’re just starting to look into that one. A couple of months ago, a mom catches her daughter sneaking out her bedroom window to meet some pervert she met online. The only information the girl will give us is that she met the guy in one of this site’s chat rooms. But there’s nothing on her computer—no saved chat logs, no IMs. The kid had 102 names on her buddy list, but she told us we were wasting our time since his name wasn’t there. Apparently the perp told her to delete anything of his she’d saved so if her parents disapproved of them seeing each other, they couldn’t find out who he was and stop them.”

  Obviously the girl had fallen for that explanation, since she’d done what he asked. Had Thorpe done the same thing with his victims? Or could Thorpe and the man Darryl was after be the same man? Two months ago had been the first time the killer hadn’t left a victim. Had this mother’s attentiveness kept her daughter from meeting the same fate as the others?

  “What night was this?”

  “January twenty-fifth, exactly one month after Christmas.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Like every other kid these days: thirteen going on thirty-five. Too much hair, too much boobs, too much makeup.”

  Just the way Thorpe liked them. “A Catholic school girl?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “We like a guy named Walter Thorpe for the killer. Seems to be his type. A kill on January twenty-fifth would fit his pattern, but there wasn’t one that month.”

  Darryl took a long pull from his bottle. “Then this kid might be luckier than she knows. Last I heard, she was mad at her mother for taking the computer away.”

  That seemed a reasonable reaction for a thirteen-year-old, if his Stevie was anyone to go by. “Assuming for a moment that your guy and my guy are the same guy, what can we do? Without getting into too much detail, we believe he’s probably going under the screen name Hercules or some variant. So far we’ve found fourteen guys.” Zach had rested the file containing the profiles on his lap. He picked it up and handed it to Darryl. “We’re running down the profiles. So far, nothing yet.”

  Darryl opened the file and scanned the profiles. “I don’t think I’ve seen any of these guys yet. We can add a page with a girl more to this guy’s taste and see if he bites.”

  “I appreciate it.” Zach stood. “I’ll let you get back to your family.”

  “No problem.” Darryl stood and shook his hand. “I’ll let you know if he pops up on the radar. “What do you want me to do with him if we hook him?”

  Zach winked. “Make him fall in love.”

  She’d expected him to show up and he didn’t disappoint. He came to her house a little after nine. She’d already changed into her nightgown and bathrobe and enjoyed a catnap on the sofa that was thankfully dream-free. She opened the door to him and the first words that sprang into her mind tumbled out of her mouth. “You look like hell.”

  He gave a snort of laughter. “And to think I thought I missed that bluntness of yours.”

  She ushered him inside the door and closed it behind him. “Have you eaten?”

  His answer took a moment to come, as if he had to consider it. “Actually no.”

  “Unfortunately, I haven’t cooked in days, but I can offer you a sandwich.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  She led the way back toward the open space that housed both the kitchen and the dining area. She paused briefly at the table. “Have a seat, I’ll have it ready in a minute.” She continued on to the refrigerator, taking out the fixings for his meal, and brought the items to the counter. Zach was still standing pretty much where she’d left him, looking around the space in that way he had that seemed to drink in his surroundings while giving away nothing of what he felt about them. Was he seeing the room the way it had been thirteen years ago, how it was now, or was one superimposed on the other?

  Then his gaze focused on her. “It seems you have done some redecorating.”

  She shrugged. At one time the cabinets had been a dark wood, the stove and refrigerator had been two avocado relics from the seventies, and the only dishwasher in the place had been her. Now the cabinets were a lighter wood and the appliances were white, which gave the room an airier feel. “Those pesky people from Sears kept coming around. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  He smiled. “Looks good.”

  “Thanks.” That’s all the conversation she could muster at the moment. She supposed he’d fill her in on his progress, which she wanted to hear once she was seated with a glass of merlot in her hand. She also knew he’d try to convince her to stay somewhere other than her own home tonight. She’d rather hear that under the same conditions, as well.

  Luckily, she’d finished the sandwich. She brought it and a bottle of beer to the table. “I hope you don’t mind roast beef.”

  He slid into the seat that had traditionally been his as she set the food down in front of him. “Thank you.”

  She went back to the counter to claim the wine she’d poured for herself. By the time she got back to her seat he’d already devoured half the sandwich. She remembered Zach as a more deliberate eater. He really must have been busy if he hadn’t taken the time for a meal. “Did you find out anything new?”

  Zach put down the sandwich and wiped his mouth on a napkin. “Our latest tip on where to find Thorpe turned out to be a bust.”

  “Why is it so hard to find him?”

  “For one thing, we’ve got every crazy and his mother calling in tips, and each has to be checked out. Besides, Thorpe was a loner. He’s got one ex–cell mate and one living relative, both of whom claim not to have seen him. He doesn’t have a bank account or a credit card that we know of that we could have used to track him. If it weren’t for his gift to you, we couldn’t even be sure he was still in the area.”

  “Glad to know it served some purpose other than scaring my office half to death.”

  “I met with one of the detectives that works with online crime. They’ve already started working on the Yourplace site. It seems
some other girl was approached by a similar type of guy.”

  “You don’t think it’s the same man?”

  “Probably not. When you think about the number of wackos and perverts out there, especially in New York, it would be too much of a coincidence. But a lot of these guys operate in the same way. This guy was probably just looking for some supposedly consensual underage sex, which is bad enough. Not all of them are as sick as Thorpe.”

  He took a last swig of his beer and set the bottle on the table. His gaze settled on her, assessing her with the same intensity with which he’d surveyed the room. What did he see when he looked at her like that? Not really wanting to know, she stood and picked up the empty bottle. “I’ll get you another.”

  Before she could move, he grasped her arm to prevent her from going. “What’s going on with you, Alex?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gazed up at her, a sardonic expression on his face. “For one thing, why are you being so nice to me?”

  She sighed. He was too observant not to have noticed a change in her. He’d probably noticed this afternoon. But how could she explain to him what she felt? That Roberta was right, she did have lingering feelings for him and not all of them were bad. Most of them were quite good, which was the scary part. Mostly, it took too much out of her to still be angry with him.

  She felt him take the bottle from her fingers. “Tell me.”

  She took a step backward to slide back into her chair, dislodging his hold on her. “I realized I was punishing you for things that weren’t really your fault. I thought it was time to let you off the hook. You’ve been very good to me. You’ve kept me in the loop, and I know you’re the one who got McKay off my back. You’ve even taken my ideas seriously, which I know is hard for a cop to do.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  She shook her head. “It’s odd, but at one time you were the only person with whom I could be myself. But I don’t know how to act around you anymore. I think that’s part of the reason why I was angry with you, too. Being angry provided me with a definitive role, the injured party. But we hurt each other, didn’t we?”