by Brenda Novak
“Did your father ever think about hiring an independent specialist to administer a separate lie detector test?”
“Why would he bother?”
“To prove the police were wrong.”
“I don’t think it would’ve made any difference.”
Caleb knew he should probably let the subject go—for tonight, anyway. She was growing agitated. But he needed answers, and he needed them fast. If only she’d tell him something he didn’t already know…“Why wouldn’t it?” he pressed.
“My father wasn’t a very sophisticated man. He just wanted to be left in peace.”
Just as she wanted to be left in peace. But she hadn’t really answered his question. If Ellis hadn’t been lying, why didn’t he try to prove it?
Maybe winning her over would take too long. Maybe he needed to crack her cautious facade. “Do you ever think about the victims?” he asked.
She jerked as though he’d just poked her with something sharp, and he immediately realized he’d said what he’d said to remind himself of who she was. She appealed to him at such a gut level he regretted that he couldn’t get to know her in any type of honest relationship.
“I try not to,” she said.
“Did your father ever say anything about them?”
Ignoring his last question, she headed for the kitchen. “Thanks for the pizza, but I’d rather not talk about this anymore. It’s hard enough to forget what happened to those poor women without dragging it all out in the open.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, following her.
She didn’t answer.
“Madison?”
“It’s late.”
His calculated risk hadn’t paid off. She hadn’t given him any new information and was most definitely shutting him out. “Are we on for breakfast in the morning?”
“I don’t think so. I promised Brianna I’d take her to the zoo, and we should probably get an early start. Maybe we’ll just prorate your payment for meals by the number of days I actually cook.”
“No problem,” he said, because he didn’t have a choice.
She led him down the hall and flicked on the porch light as soon as they reached the front door. “Watch that first step,” she said politely as she held the door open for him.
Caleb started to go, then turned back to face her. “I don’t want to go home like this,” he said. It was probably the most honest thing he’d said so far.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re upset.”
“I’m not upset,” she said.
“Then what?”
“I’m—” she lifted her hands helplessly “—disappointed.”
Caleb leaned against the doorframe, wishing he could go back in time and take the evening a little more subtly. He’d grown impatient and pushed too hard. And he’d become frustrated by the fact that he really liked her when he didn’t want to like her at all. “Are you going to tell me why?”
She sighed and folded her arms. “I guess I stupidly thought that when you offered to be my friend, you meant it.”
His conscience wouldn’t let him say he did want to be her friend, even though, on some level, it was true. If there’d never been a Sandpoint Strangler…If Susan weren’t missing…“And now?”
“And now I know you’re just like everyone else. You’re only out to satisfy your morbid curiosity at my expense.” She lifted her chin. “Well, I hope you were entertained.”
Caleb didn’t know how to respond. He let the silence stretch, torn between his duty and how he would have handled the situation if circumstances were different. “I owe you an apology,” he said at last, but that sounded trite, even to his own ears. So he stepped close and ran a finger lightly over her soft cheek. “I’m really sorry, Madison.”
She swatted his hand away and blinked several times in rapid succession, as though battling tears, and Caleb couldn’t help pulling her into his arms.
She resisted at first, but he murmured, “It’s okay, come here,” and she finally relaxed against him. Only he didn’t feel he’d improved matters. He couldn’t promise to be a better friend. He couldn’t declare his innocence. He was still living a lie.
He held her for several minutes—until he felt her tears fall on his forearm. Then he leaned away to wipe her cheeks and said what had been going through his mind all evening. “You’re so beautiful, Madison. You know that?”
She stared up at him, her dark eyes luminous in the porch light. His gaze lowered to her lips. Then his heart began to pound and he did something he knew he was going to regret—he bent his head and kissed her.
CALEB’S KISS WAS SOFT and lingering, gentle. Letting her eyes close, Madison slipped her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and refused to think about anything. Not all the arguments against what she was doing. And certainly not her father. It was late, and they were completely alone. She felt as though she’d stolen this moment out of time and could do with it as she pleased. If she wanted only to feel—to feel and forget the shadow of violence in her life—she could do it right now.
Breathing in, she caught his slightly musky scent and liked it. When his arms tightened around her, she liked that, too. For the first time in a very long while, she seemed to be drowning in a sea of warm, pleasant sensations. She’d been cold for so long; she hadn’t even realized how cold, until now.
His hand came up to brace her head as he parted her lips. She hesitated briefly as she remembered his pointed questions. But most people were curious about her father, and her disappointment in Caleb’s earlier insensitivity was swept away by his touch. All of a sudden, she wasn’t a rejected wife. She wasn’t a single mother trying to run a struggling small business. She was young and wanton and desirable again….
You’re so beautiful, Madison.
Sliding her other hand up over the muscles of his chest, she leaned into him as he kissed her more deeply. She wanted him to go on and on but, without warning, he pulled away.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, closing his eyes as though he’d just made a huge mistake. “I had no idea.”
She cupped his chin and made him open his eyes. “No idea of what?”
His breathing was a little erratic, giving her the impression that whatever had come over her had affected him just as much. “That you, of all people, could do this to me.”
“Me, of all people? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he said and left.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Caleb started packing. His big strategy had been a bust. He’d spent nearly the entire night thinking about Madison, and had decided he just wasn’t cut out to use her. He was the guy who’d married a woman twice just to be sure he’d given her a fair shake. What made him believe he’d be able to divorce himself from the personal betrayal involved in what he had planned for Madison? She might be Ellis Purcell’s daughter, but she was as deserving of loyalty and respect as anyone else.
He’d just have to find Susan without her. He wasn’t sure there was any connection between the Sandpoint Strangler case and his ex-sister-in-law’s disappearance, anyway. He’d only been working on a hunch. He’d buy out the lease and be on his way and never think of Madison Lieberman again.
Except that he knew he would think of her. After that kiss, he craved the taste of her—and wished like hell that they’d met under different circumstances.
His cell phone rang. He glanced over at it, reluctant to even check the caller ID, certain it was Holly or his mother. Yesterday he’d told Justine Trovato that he was renting a cottage from the daughter of Ellis Purcell. His mother knew what he wanted from Madison and hadn’t liked his methods at all.
“‘What tangled webs we weave,’” she’d quoted.
He should have listened to her.
Whoever had called simply hung up and tried again. Shoving the rest of his clothes into his bag with little regard for neatness, he f
inally grabbed his cell phone. The caller ID simply said “private.”
“Hello?” he barked, curiously tense for someone who’d just gotten out of bed.
“There you are.”
Gibbons. “Tell me you’ve found Susan,” Caleb said.
For once the detective was noticeably reticent. “I’m afraid we have.”
Dropping the tennis shoes he’d been trying to stuff into his bag, which was nearly bursting its seams because he’d put his computer in there, too, he sank onto the bed. “But?”
“It isn’t good news.”
Those words seemed to echo through Caleb’s head. He pictured his ex-sister-in-law coming toward him, grinning sheepishly, that time he and Holly had collected her from the airport after the stunt she’d pulled in Vegas, and closed his eyes, knowing instinctively what Gibbons was about to say.
“She’s dead.”
Jaw clenched, Caleb didn’t bother to respond. His chest had constricted so tightly he could barely breathe, let alone speak.
“You there?” Gibbons asked after a few moments.
Caleb struggled to find his voice. “Have you or someone else notified the family?”
“Not yet. I thought maybe you should do it.”
Thanks, he wanted to say. And yet he knew it was better for him to break the news than some stranger. “Right. I’ll take care of it.”
“Caleb?”
“What?”
“She was strangled.”
Chills cascaded down Caleb’s spine. “Then I was right.”
“There’s something going on. She was killed just like all the others, same fracture to the hyoid bone, same ligature marks, same…” He hesitated, obviously sensitive to the fact that because of the nature of his involvement, Caleb might not want to hear the gory details. “Same everything,” he finished.
Which meant she’d been sexually assaulted with a foreign object and positioned for maximum shock value. Caleb closed his eyes against the mental picture that was conjured up in his mind, and cursed. It felt as though he was living in some sort of alternate reality. How could the violence and horror he wrote about in the lives of others now reach out to touch him so personally? “Where did you find her?”
“Not far from where we found the others.”
“Near the university?”
“Just off the Burke Gilman Trail, in some trees. A jogger saw a glimpse of white fabric—she was wrapped in a sheet—and went to investigate.”
“How long has she been dead?”
“I don’t have the coroner’s report yet, of course, but looking at the body, I’d say at least ten days, maybe two weeks.”
She’d been dead before Caleb ever reached Seattle. But what made the killer single Susan out?
“We’ll know the time of death soon enough,” Gibbons added, then covered the phone while he coughed. “Meanwhile, I need the next of kin to come down and ID the body.”
Her parents were in Arizona, so Holly would have to do it. And Caleb knew, after two weeks, Susan wouldn’t be a pretty sight. God, how was his ex-wife going to deal with seeing her sister like that?
“I’ll bring Holly down to the morgue after…in a couple of hours,” he said.
“That’ll work.”
Caleb sighed, wondering how to break the news.
“You get anywhere with Purcell’s daughter?” Gibbons asked.
He’d nearly rounded first base, but that wasn’t the kind of progress he’d been hoping for—and it certainly wasn’t what Gibbons wanted to hear. “No, nothing that could help us.”
“It’s not too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“We can catch this guy. There was a tire track at the scene.”
“But do we have a vehicle to compare it against?” Caleb asked. Even DNA evidence wasn’t any good unless the police could pinpoint a suspect and get a sample.
“Not yet, but according to a specialist on tire track impressions, it’s probably from a truck.”
“Oh, that narrows it down.”
Any other time, Gibbons would have called him a smart ass. But he said only, “I want to check it against the tires on that blue Ford pick-up Purcell used to drive.”
The blue Ford. There was a blue Ford in the picture Holly had acquired of Susan. And Susan had been strangled shortly after that photo was taken. “Do we know where the truck is?”
“I already checked with the DMV. It’s still registered to the Purcells.”
“So you’re going to get another search warrant?”
“With Purcell dead, I don’t think it’s possible. Judges don’t take the violation of people’s constitutional rights lightly, and we both know Annette Purcell isn’t capable of this murder. I was thinking it would be better to have you borrow the truck so I can take a quick peek.”
“I can’t borrow that truck,” Caleb said.
“Why not?”
“Having me act as an agent for the police in order to obtain evidence could get you fired, for one thing. And I’m moving out of here.”
“You’re making this a bigger deal than it is,” Gibbons replied. “I’m not going to touch the damn truck or its tires. The tread of this imprint is unusual enough that I should be able to get some idea from a visual inspection. If it checks out, I’ll ask for a warrant. But I have to know I’m not out of my mind for wanting to see Purcell’s vehicle when the man’s already dead.”
Caleb looked over at his packed bag. He’d been halfway out the door…. “Can’t you see the truck’s tires some other way?”
“I could if Purcell’s widow ever drove it.”
“Madison won’t lend me her father’s truck,” Caleb said, remembering how difficult it had been for her to even talk about Ellis.
“She hasn’t figured out who you really are, has she?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know she won’t do you a favor? You haven’t asked her yet.”
“She’s trying to put her life back together. She’s running a business, raising a kid. I can’t—”
“Are you interested in solving this or not?” Gibbons interrupted.
“Of course.” He wanted to solve it now more than ever. All the friends and family members of the various victims he’d met through the years suddenly seemed far closer to him. Instead of telling the story from a distance, he was now part of the actual picture—and the irony didn’t escape him. To think that someone he knew, someone he cared about, had suffered as Susan must have suffered made him ill and showed him the difference between empathy and real understanding.
But he didn’t want to use Madison. After last night, he knew that much.
“So what are you thinking?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know,” Gibbons said. “Maybe we were wrong about Purcell. Maybe he wasn’t the strangler, after all. Or maybe someone else has picked up where he left off. Someone close enough to know how he worked.”
“Like who?” Caleb asked.
“Remember that license plate you had me run? The car you said Purcell’s son was riding in a couple of nights ago?”
“Yeah?”
“It came back as stolen.”
Caleb scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You don’t think Johnny’s somehow involved, do you? He was in prison when some of those women were murdered.”
“Well, he’s not in prison anymore,” Gibbons said. “They let him out three days before Susan disappeared.”
CHAPTER NINE
THEY’D LEFT THE VIEWING room fifteen minutes earlier. Caleb and Holly had stared at Susan’s body through a small window; they’d been separated from her by a wall and a glass panel, so Caleb knew he had to be imagining that he couldn’t rid himself of the sweet, cloying scent of death. But he still would’ve headed directly home, stripped off his clothes and taken a long hot shower—with plenty of suds and vigorous scrubbing. Except he couldn’t leave Holly. She was in no condition to be on her own, and her parents’ flight from Phoenix wasn’t arriving until later this
evening.
“You okay?” he murmured as they sat on a bench in the hallway of the morgue. Holly had wept since he’d told her about Susan, but she seemed to be coming to the end of her tears. Her skin was splotchy, her eyes red and puffy, her hair somewhat tangled, but her face had taken on a stark expression that conveyed the depth of her grief far more effectively than simple crying.
She didn’t answer him. She just wrapped her jacket more tightly around her.
“Hol?” He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze.
“How can you even ask me that?” she said dully, her voice barely a whisper. “Of course I’m not okay.”
“You have to get through this,” he said. “Susan wouldn’t want you to fall apart.”
“Susan.” Tears welled in her eyes again, but she didn’t curl into him as she had before. She sat on her hands and stared blankly at the floor.
Down the hall, Detective Gibbons stepped out of the autopsy room. “You’re still here?” he said when he saw Caleb.
Caleb hadn’t been able to get Holly to leave. She couldn’t bear the sight of Susan as she was now. But the battered and badly decomposed corpse was all that remained of her sister. For Holly, walking away would sever that one last tie.
“You got a minute?” Gibbons asked. Though Gibbons’s language and manner were pretty rough, he did wear a suit. It was a rather cheesy, three-piece affair—a throwback to professional fashion in the seventies—but it was a suit. And the way he straightened and buttoned his coat told Caleb that Gibbons wanted to talk to him alone.
Caleb was reluctant to abandon Holly. She seemed so fragile. But when he hesitated, she lifted her gaze to his and the tears that had pooled in her eyes brimmed and rolled down her cheeks. “Go. I want this bastard caught.”
With a nod, Caleb got up and followed Gibbons into the coroner’s office, where the smell of fresh-brewed coffee heartened him. He’d received Gibbons’s call so early, he hadn’t showered or shaved, and he felt rumpled and dirty, as though he’d been sleeping in his clothes.