Untraceable

by Laura Griffin

  Alex fixed her gaze on Courtney’s latest masterpiece. “How did you do that?”

  Melanie cast a sheepish look in Alex’s direction. “You like it?”

  “Yes.” She stepped around the desk for a better view. Gone was the pasty skin, the dark circles. And yet—thanks to Courtney’s skill—she didn’t have that base-face look that Alex despised. Also gone was the choppy black hair, replaced with a light brown pixie cut that seemed completely natural. And unnoticeable, which was the entire point. Melanie needed to blend in with the crowd, not stand out. And—unbeknownst to Courtney, Sophie, and Melanie herself—she was having a new passport photo taken this morning.

  “We made a mess of your bathroom,” Courtney said, applying coral lip liner to Melanie’s mouth. “But nothing a little Lysol won’t take care of.”

  “I’ll do it,” Sophie said.

  “What did you do to her eyes?” Alex leaned in for a closer look.

  “White eye pencil,” Courtney said. “On the inner rims. That combined with the eyelash curler really wakes her up. Makes her look younger. My older clients love it.”

  Alex filed it away. She hardly ever wore makeup. But her mother had told her that might change, right along with her metabolism, when she hit thirty.

  “Did you notice the eyebrows?” Sophie propped a hip on the desk and sipped her coffee.

  “Yeah, something’s different.”

  “I altered the shape,” Courtney explained. “Gives her face a different look. Subtle, but effective.”

  Alex nodded her approval.

  Courtney finished off the face with some light brown blush, accentuating Melanie’s cheekbones and further reinforcing the new look. She snapped the compact shut and stepped back to admire her efforts. “Not bad.”

  “It works,” Alex agreed.

  Melanie smiled nervously as Courtney rummaged through her shiny silver makeup case.

  “I almost forgot.” Courtney pulled out a circular container of flesh-toned makeup. “Your scars. Here, bend your head down.” Courtney stepped around the chair and dabbed makeup over the circular pink burn marks on the back of Melanie’s neck. Coghan had put those marks there, according to Melanie. Some sadistic thing he liked to do during sex.

  When Courtney was finished, she dropped the concealer into a Ziploc bag that was already filled with makeup.

  “This is for you,” she said, handing it to Melanie. “Just remember everything I showed you.”

  “Thanks.” Melanie glanced worriedly at the bag in her hands. “Um… how much do I owe you for all this?”

  “It’s on me.” Courtney latched shut her makeup case and looked at her watch. She turned to Alex. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Are you sure?” Melanie cast a tentative look at Alex, and Alex knew she was thinking about her outstanding bill with Lovell Solutions.

  “It’s okay,” Courtney said, grabbing her kit, her coffee, and her keys. “I owe Alex a few favors.”

  “Speaking of favors.” Alex cleared her throat. “It would be really helpful if you wouldn’t mention to Will—”

  “I was never here,” Courtney said. And Alex breathed a sigh of relief because, in addition to being a former client, Courtney also happened to be married to Nathan’s partner.

  Courtney turned to Melanie. “You watch out for yourself, all right? And if you want to make this work, take my advice and do whatever Alex tells you.”

  Alex smiled slightly, remembering how Courtney had had very little luck following that advice herself.

  “I will,” Melanie promised.

  And Alex hoped to hell that, this time, she meant it.

  As strange as it was, sometimes Nathan just couldn’t look at a dead body on an empty stomach.

  “Fuckin’ bad way to go,” Webb said, and turned to spit on the pavement.

  Nathan glanced up at him from where he was crouched near the corpse. “Hey, you wanna take that shit over there? Away from the crime scene?”

  Webb fixed him with another hard stare and swished his chaw around.

  Nathan stood up and stepped over a puddle of what looked like urine. He crouched down again and took a closer look at the vic’s face. Mid-twenties. Hispanic. And with a bloody wound around his neck that reminded Nathan of the victim they’d pulled out of Lake Austin just a few weeks ago. Baling wire, the ME had concluded. But it was all conjecture because, as with this guy, the killer had taken the murder weapon with him when he’d split the scene.

  A line of ants marched from the gaping neck wound all the way up the victim’s throat and into his nose and mouth. Nathan’s stomach twisted. He wished he’d managed to get more than a few sips of coffee into his system before heading over here.

  He’d been called out not long after Alex had left, and he’d spent the entire drive over reviewing last night in his head. It occurred to him now—probably because she wasn’t around to distract him with sex—that she’d been acting funny when she’d first shown up. She’d been in a great mood. Tired, but cheerful. Then she’d gotten emotional when he told her the rumor he’d heard about Melanie. And then—strangest of all—she’d seemed happy again. Happy enough to want to spend the night with him.

  Her behavior was puzzling, now that he thought about it. And Nathan had never been one to leave a puzzle alone. Something weird was going on, something he felt certain had to do with Melanie’s case. He needed to figure out what it was.

  A gust of air whipped through the alley, stirring up the putrid smell of death and piss and garbage. Nathan glanced around the vicinity, looking for something he might have missed when he’d first walked up.

  “What did the club owner say?” he asked Webb, who had arrived right after the patrol officer.

  “Not much. Just that there was a stiff in the alley when he was leaving the place about six twenty this morning. Cocktail waitress inside claims she served the guy a Miller Lite at one thirty, then he skipped his check.”

  “You tracked down the waitress already?”

  “Wasn’t hard. She was working overtime in the club, if you know what I mean.” Webb leaned against the brick wall on the opposite side of the alley they were standing in. Nathan didn’t bother telling him to quit touching shit within the crime scene perimeter. Webb was two years from retirement and made no effort to hide his contempt for all the rules and regulations that had come along with the flashy new forensics available now. Nathan would have taken Will Hodges over Webb any day of the week, but the kid was out sick today, puking his guts up with some stomach bug.

  “She’s a hooker?” Nathan asked, skimming his gaze over the victim’s skin for any body art. The victim had a black sun tattooed on his right hand, but that was the only thing visible at the moment. Nathan didn’t plan to touch anything, even the guy’s wallet, until the ME showed up.

  “Just a guess.” Webb waggled his eyebrows. “She looked dressed to party. Said they had some after-hours thing going on inside the bar last night. A ‘private event,’ she called it.”

  Nathan stood up and glanced around. About two feet from the body was a half-empty bottle of Miller.

  “What’s the plumbing situation inside?” Nathan asked.

  “The what?”

  “Maybe the john’s broken?”

  “Hell if I know.” Webb turned and spit again. “Ask Angel.” He grinned. “That’s her name. Angel. You believe that?”

  “She a dancer here?”

  “Nah, supposedly she’s just a waitress. But my guess is they’re all working. Probably she knows a lot more about this guy than she’s saying. Claims she doesn’t even know his name.” Webb stepped closer now and frowned down at the victim. “So how do you think it went down?”

  “Looks to me like he came out here to take a leak, set his beer there by the Dumpster. Could be the restroom was full, maybe a couple in there or something.”

  “Wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “Guy comes up from behind, wraps the wire around his neck. Creates that blood spatter there on th
e wall.”

  “He’d have to be pretty strong,” Webb observed, squinting at the corpse. “This kid’s got to be five-ten, one-ninety. Looks like he works out, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell you what, this reminds me of that one off Highway 71. What was that strip joint they used to have out there?” Webb rubbed his jaw. “Shit, what was it called?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Damn, what was that place? They had three-dollar steaks. This was back five years ago. But still.”

  Nathan glanced over his shoulder as the crime scene unit rolled to a stop at the end of the alley. “I was in Houston then,” he reminded Webb.

  “Ah, that’s right. Anyways, it was like this. Guy gets it right behind a titty bar. Wire around the neck. Same thing.”

  “What happened?” Nathan asked, suddenly feeling a renewed sense of appreciation for some of the dead weight in his department.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Or maybe not. “You remember a name? A suspect? Anything?”

  “Naughty’s. That was the place.”

  “You guys make an arrest?”

  “Don’t think so,” Webb said. “I remember this, though. When we bagged the vic, he still had that wire wrapped around his neck. Messy as shit job. If it’s the same guy as now, he’s cleaned up his act.”

  “What happened to the wire?”

  “Who knows? Probably still sitting in the evidence room.”

  * * *

  The Honorable Judge Gordon Mueller liked punctual lawyers, polite defendants, and short closing arguments. He didn’t tolerate tracksuits in his courtroom, and he had a standing 10:30 A.M. appointment with a pack of Winston Selects.

  It was 10:31. Like clockwork, the doors to Mueller’s courtroom pushed open, and a stream of people filed out for a fifteen-minute break from the State of Texas versus Luis J. Perez.

  The prosecution’s star witness slipped through the doors and headed for the men’s room. Nathan followed.

  “Hey, Craig.”

  Coghan turned around, and his surprise quickly turned to suspicion.

  “Got a minute?” Nathan asked amiably, and nodded at the nearby side door. Without waiting for a response, Nathan walked through the door, just beyond the knot of reporters and bureaucrats milling beside a giant ashtray. He stopped at an empty bench and propped his shoe on it.

  “Hey, what’s up, Devereaux?” Coghan frowned at his watch as Nathan bent to tie his shoelace. “I’m supposed to be in court.”

  “This won’t take long.” Nathan straightened and gave the man a once-over. Shit, he hadn’t been this close to Coghan in a while. He’d been bulking up. “How’s married life?”

  Coghan scowled.

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Looks like we have a mutual friend.” Nathan rested his hands on his hips. “Alex Lovell? She runs a PI shop here in town.”

  Coghan’s expression hardened.

  “She showed up at my house last night, big old bruise on her face.” Nathan stepped closer. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  Coghan’s shoulders tensed as Nathan got right up in his grill.

  “Like I said, Alex is a friend of mine,” Nathan said quietly. “You go near her again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “Hey, go fuck yourself, Devereaux.”

  Nathan shoved Coghan in the chest with both hands. He tripped backward a few feet, then lunged forward and landed a hammer-sharp blow to Nathan’s jaw. Gasps and yelps went up from the smokers.

  Nathan staggered back, stunned by the pain. Then he launched himself at Coghan’s gut, and they crashed to the ground. Nathan jabbed him in the nose once, twice, three times. With the third hit came the satisfying crunch of bone, and Nathan jumped to his feet. Coghan sat up and made a grab with both arms, but Nathan evaded him.

  Coghan scrambled to his feet just as a few guys in jeans and ties closed in. Reporters, judging by the press passes hanging from their necks. One hoisted a news camera onto his shoulder.

  Coghan surged forward, then noticed the audience. He squinted at Nathan with hatred in his eyes. “You’re going to regret that.”

  “Watch out, Coghan.” Nathan swished the blood in his mouth and spit on the pavement. “You don’t want to be grabbing any headlines.”

  Nathan turned his back on him and walked away.

  * * *

  “What do you mean she’s not there?” Alex demanded. “I just talked to her an hour ago.”

  Sophie darted a glance at the phone number she’d written on her notepad. She’d dialed correctly.

  “Well, maybe she’s there,” she told Alex. “But she’s not answering.”

  Alex jerked her cell phone from her back pocket and started dialing, glancing over at the message pad to check what Sophie had written down. She waited and waited, but evidently Melanie wasn’t picking up for Alex, either.

  “Goddamn it!” Alex said, disconnecting the call. “I swear to God—”

  “You think she took off?” Sophie asked, earning a death scowl.

  Alex tried the number once again, while Sophie refrained from pointing out that it probably wasn’t such a good idea to lend Melanie her car.

  But Alex must have known that already, or she would have lent her the rental car, which was parked right outside Lovell Solutions.

  “She wouldn’t just take off,” Alex muttered, almost to herself. “She couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t she?”

  Alex glanced up, and seemed to realize what she’d said.

  Sophie watched her expectantly. She’d figured out quickly that if she wanted to learn this business, she had to ask questions. Sometimes Alex blew her off. But sometimes she let her in on things, like she had with regard to Melanie.

  Obviously, though, there were some things she’d left out.

  “Why couldn’t she just leave?” Sophie asked again. “I mean, she’s done it before. You showed her how.”

  “This time’s different,” Alex said. “I have stuff she needs. She was supposed to meet me in La Grange to get it before she went anywhere.”

  La Grange, Sophie understood. Alex knew a motel owner in the nearby town who had agreed to put up Melanie—for free—without filling out any paperwork on her. From what Sophie had gathered, the motel owner was a business acquaintance of Alex’s. What Sophie hadn’t gathered was what the “stuff” was that Melanie needed from Alex. Besides the obvious: cash.

  But Sophie was beginning to get some ideas.

  She crossed her arms. “I thought you told me fake identities didn’t work.”

  Alex glanced up from her phone. She’d been scrolling through e-mail messages, probably looking for something from Melanie.

  “They don’t,” Alex said. “Usually.”

  Sophie frowned. Alex had told her she didn’t buy fake IDs for her clients who wanted to disappear. She’d explained that you never knew what you were buying. You could be buying the identity of someone with major credit problems. Or a criminal history. Or worse, an outstanding arrest warrant. The best way to disappear, Alex had told her, was to erase all possible tracks—digitally speaking, of course. Then to leave false tracks—again, using computers. And finally, to create a new life for yourself well under the radar. Which, Alex had told her, was precisely what she’d helped Melanie do the first time.

  This time appeared to be different.

  “Are you helping her leave the country?” Sophie asked.

  Alex halted, mid–text message, to give her a warning look. “Stop asking questions,” she said. “The less you know about this case, the better.”

  Sophie watched her boss, getting worried now.

  Alex had said fake passports were worst of all. Customs and Border Protection had become quite adept at sniffing out forgeries. And who wanted to leave the country with the knowledge that they might not have a way back in?

  Melanie must be in some seri
ous trouble. With some seriously dangerous people.

  Sophie glanced at the clock, then stood up to gather her purse and the rental car keys. The plan was to return the car by two, to avoid getting charged for another day.

  “We need to leave,” Sophie told Alex, and she finally put her phone away.

  Alex followed her out of the office and paused to set the alarm. Sophie took one look at the car rolling to a stop behind the Mercury and knew they were never going to make the two o’clock deadline.

  Nathan Devereaux shoved open the door of some awful-looking gray sedan. Even Sophie could tell it was an unmarked police vehicle; it might as well have had a sign on the door.

  And the detective looked worse than his car. The shiner was gone, but now he had a swollen violet bruise on his chin.

  He nodded at Sophie.

  “Hi,” Sophie greeted him. “You get in a fight?”

  His gaze settled on Alex. “Bumped into a wall. Where you ladies headed?”

  “We have an errand.”

  Sophie glanced over, startled by Alex’s curt tone. She’d never seen these two together, but she’d thought they were friendly. Evidently not.

  Nathan leaned back against the side of the Taurus and crossed his ankles, clearly signaling his intention to hang around a while until Alex gave him the time of day.

  “I’m on my way to the Delphi Center,” he said. “Thought you might want to come.”

  Alex folded her arms over her chest and watched him a moment. She bent her head slightly and looked at something inside his car. Sophie followed her gaze and saw two brown paper bags sitting on the passenger seat.

  “What’s in the bags?” Alex asked.

  “Not much.”

  “You want me to come with you, but you won’t tell me what you have?”

  “I’ll fill you in on the way there.”

  “Sorry, can’t do it. I’ve got a full afternoon.”

  “All right.” Nathan crossed his arms, mirroring Alex. “Let’s try this another way. Where’s your Saturn?”

  Sophie’s gaze snapped to Alex, but her boss’s expression gave nothing away.

  “I told you,” she said. “In the shop.”