Anything to get in. “You never know,” Kali told the manager. “I might be.”
“Let me get the key.” The woman retreated into her apartment and returned a moment later with a large key ring. They proceeded to unit 11, where she inserted the key and opened the door.
The interior was dark, musty, and very hot.
“No sense wasting money on air-conditioning when no one’s here,” the manager explained, turning on a light. “It comes furnished.”
That’s stretching it, Kali thought, as she eyed the stained plaid couch and yellow laminate kitchen table. Basic, ugly, and probably encrusted with years of grime. But Hayley had clearly tried to spruce things up. She’d taped posters on the walls. One of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and another of a sun-drenched tropical beach with a hammock stretched between two palm trees. Diagonally across from the sofa was a fiberboard bookcase topped with an array of candles and a basket of potpourri. A vase of colorful paper poppies sat at the center of the yellow table.
Kali peered into the single bedroom, which contained a bed with a sateen patchwork quilt and matching shams, and a rickety dresser. She started to turn away when a pile of magazines on the floor caught her attention. Not the magazines, really, which were the sort of thing you’d expect to find a young woman reading— Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Elle—but a slim book with a familiar hand- tooled cover. It looked like the volume of poetry she’d found on Olivia Perez’s desk.
With the manager occupied in the main area, Kali slid into the bedroom, lifted the book from the floor, and opened to the flyleaf.
Hayley,
There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all. And yours speaks to me. Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.
The signature was the same indecipherable scrawl she’d seen in Olivia’s book, with the same smiley face in the loop of the final letter.
Kali’s heart thumped in her chest.
Two friends with identical books inscribed by the same person.
Both of them dead.
She was relieved to note that the handwriting and signature weren’t John’s.
“Looks like her friend’s gone, too,” the manager said.
“Friend? What friend?” Kali was only half listening.
“The girl who was staying here,” she said, poking at the pillow and blanket heap on the couch. “I told Hayley, ‘This is a single unit. You can’t go renting a single and then try to save on rent by doubling up.’“
“Who was the friend?”
The manager shook her head. “Young girl with a big red birthmark on her neck. I seen her here a week, maybe two. Boyfriend trouble was what Hayley said. Still, that’s no excuse for doubling up.”
Kali reached into her purse for the photo of the three girls and showed it to the woman. “Is this the friend?” she asked, pointing to Crystal.
“Looks like her.” She looked around the apartment and sighed. “This is why we ask for the last month’s rent up front. Still, it’s a pain in the behind, if you’ll pardon the expression. It costs money to get the place rented again.”
Kali offered a murmur of sympathy, but her mind was on what she’d learned. She needed to think, but she knew, too, that it was time to go to the cops with what she knew.
Chapter 28
Kali’s cell phone rang as she was pulling out of the parking space in front of Vista Heights.
“Thank God I reached you,” Sabrina said, sounding breathless. “You have to come home right now.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Sabrina sucked in air. “Someone threw a rock through the big picture window in the living room. Totally shattered it.”
“A rock? Were you hurt?”
“No. I wasn’t even in the room. But I’m spooked. Who’d do that?”
“Did you see anyone?” Kali asked. “Hear anything?”
“I heard the crash, but I didn’t see anyone.”
“Call the cops and report it. I’m on my way.”
Kali’s heart was pounding. Sabrina was there alone and the house was isolated. What if something happened to her, too? She’d never forgive herself.
Thankfully the midday traffic was light. Kali made it back to John’s in less than half an hour. Sabrina rushed outside to greet her in the driveway.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’ve been scared to death.”
“Anything more happened?”
Sabrina shook her head. “The police weren’t interested,” she said, spitting out the words as though the blame were somehow Kali’s. “They’ll send someone out ‘at the first opportunity,’ but it might be a day or two.” She folded her arms and rested her weight on one hip. “They suggested I take a photo and call the insurance company.”
“Figures,” Kali muttered. “If they aren’t interested in investigating a possible homicide, it’s not surprising a broken window falls off their radar.”
Inside, Kali surveyed the damage. The rock had come through one of the wide windows facing the deck and pool in back. The floor of the living room glistened with broken glass—a few jagged shards and thousands of tiny, diamond-like fragments.
“They said it was probably kids,” Sabrina explained.
“Maybe.” But Kali hadn’t forgotten the beige sedan that might or might not have been tailing her.
She stepped gingerly through the mess and picked up the errant rock. It was about the size of a softball, plain and brown like every other rock she’d seen around Tucson. No note or threatening message was attached. That was a small consolation.
She sighed. “I guess we’d better get this mess cleaned up. Did you call the insurance company?”
Sabrina nodded. “They’re sending someone out to board it up until they can get it replaced.”
“Good.”
By the time they’d swept and vacuumed and mopped to the point they felt confident they’d picked up most of the glass, the repairman sent by the insurance company had come and gone. Ugly brown plywood had replaced the expansive view of mountains to the east, and the once light and airy living area now resembled the inside of a packing crate.
Sabrina brushed dust from her slacks. “I’m going to take a shower and then maybe lie down for a bit if that’s okay.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
Kali poured herself a Diet Coke and took it into John’s study, where she booted up the computer and typed in the password that Sabrina had so cleverly plucked from the ether.
John’s computer desktop was relatively uncluttered, with icons for only the basic programs. She went into Explorer and scanned the contents of the hard drive. Again, standard fare. She clicked on “My Photos.”
Sabrina was right. The images John had stored there were mostly nature shots with a few of Sabrina’s family interspersed.
Often there were two or three versions of the same photo with different light or color adjustments. John playing around with his camera and photo-editing software. Nothing of interest in “My Documents,” either, except financial records, and they already had a hard copy of most of the files.
Like Kali, John used Firefox as his browser and Thunderbird for e-mail. She logged on and downloaded recent e-mail. Mostly spam, as Sabrina had noted, with a few auto club digests thrown in.
Kali scanned previous e-mails, as well. Several short, chatty messages from Sabrina. A couple from Sabrina’s son Joey, far more heartfelt than his mother’s. John had apparently offered his nephew a sympathetic ear and an occasional word of advice. One brief e-mail from Kali back in early July. But none that shed light on John’s death or the murders he was accused of.
She checked the browser history next. A number of Yahoo! searches, a string of Porsche discussion forum hits, and page after page of X-rated sites with full-screen photos of bare female flesh.
Diet Coke, along with disgust and anger, rose up in Kali’s throat. The photo subjects were adult women, she reminded herself, not children, although in some instanc
es that distinction was questionable. She remembered Graciela telling her that John had been spending a lot of time at his desk in the weeks before his death. Kali had naively assumed he was working. Instead, it looked like he’d been getting his kicks online. And on the television screen, she thought, remembering the porn DVDs she’d found in John’s collection.
She turned off the computer and pushed back from the desk. She’d wanted to get to know her brother, hadn’t she? Well, she was getting her wish. Too bad she didn’t like what she saw.
<><><>
Kali was savoring a fresh cup of coffee the next morning when Detectives Shafer and Parker showed up at the front door.
“First the department brushes us off like it’s nothing,” Kali clucked, standing back to invite them in, “and now they’re sending out the big guns.” Then something in her mind clicked and she felt a tingle of dread. “You must have learned something, right? It wasn’t a simple act of vandalism, after all?”
Shafer frowned, his bushy brows pulling to a straight line, but it was Michelle Parker who responded. “What are you talking about?”
“The window.” Kali pointed across the living room to the bulky sheet of plywood. “Someone tossed a rock through it.”
They glanced briefly at the damage, then back to her. With a fresh rush of dread, Kali realized the window wasn’t what had brought them there.
Arms crossed, Detective Shafer looked ready to bite. “What’s your interest in Hayley Hendrix?” he asked curtly.
Kali felt herself pale. “What makes you—”
“You were at her apartment asking questions. You want to tell us why?”
“The manager called you?”
“Other way around,” Shafer said. “We contacted her. Now, once again, what is your interest in Hayley Hendrix?”
Kali’s throat was tight. She didn’t like finding herself under the microscope. “I was actually on my way to tell you when my sister called me yesterday about the rock through the window.” That wasn’t entirely true, Kali conceded. She wouldn’t have gone straight to the station; she’d have come up with a story and a game plan first. And now she had neither.
“Tell us what?” Michelle Parker asked, her tone far more conciliatory than Shafer’s.
Kali leaned against the wall. “Well, that sketch I saw in your office the other day, the one of the missing girl. The Jane Doe. I think it might be Hayley Hendrix.”
They didn’t seem surprised. But then they were here, weren’t they? And they’d already contacted the apartment manager. They must have learned the girl’s identity themselves.
“How do you know her?” Shafer asked, stepping closer and pinning Kali with a narrowed gaze.
“I don’t. She was a friend of Olivia Perez’s.”
The two detectives exchanged glances. “Your brother tell you that?” Shafer asked.
“John?” Kali shook her head, perplexed. She didn’t like where their questions were heading. Why would they assume John knew either girl?
“What makes you think the two girls were friends?” Shafer asked.
“I’ve been doing some investigating,” Kali explained, hedging while she tried to figure out what the detectives were really asking. “In conjunction with the wrongful death suit Olivia’s parents are threatening. In talking to people who knew Olivia . . . Hayley’s name came up.”
Shafer rolled his shoulders and moved toward the window. “Came up how?”
“That she was a friend.”
“That doesn’t explain how you’d know what she looks like,” Michelle said amiably.
Kali’s mouth felt dry. “I saw a photo.”
“Who showed it to you?”
This was exactly why she hadn’t rushed to tell them her suspicions about Hayley Hendrix being their Jane Doe. Kali couldn’t explain how she’d come to see the photo of Hayley and Olivia without implicating John further.
“That’s part of my legal investigation,” she said. “I don’t have to tell you.”
“I can’t see why you wouldn’t, though,” Michelle remarked.
When Kali didn’t respond, Shafer spoke up again. “What’s your brother’s relationship to her?”
“Hayley? As far as I know, there wasn’t one.”
“But he knew her?”
Kali shrugged. “What makes you think he did?”
Shafer gave another little shoulder roll. “Would it interest you to know your brother was at the Crazy Coyote a few days before he died?”
Her pulse quickened. The news did interest Kali, but she wasn’t going to share that with the detectives. “So?”
“Hayley worked there. In fact, John mentioned Hayley by name. He was asking about her.”
“That would have been after she was killed,” Kali said, as much to herself as the detectives. “If he’d had something to do with her death, which appears to be what you’re implying, do you really think he’d show up at her workplace and ask about her?”
Shafer pulled at an earlobe. “Thing is, he wasn’t asking about Hayley so much as another girl, Crystal Adams.”
As though it had been zapped by an electric shock, Kali’s heart turned choppy. Adams. So Crystal’s last name was Adams. John had hired a private investigator to search for Ray and Martha Adams. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Kali tried to appear nonchalant. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Who is Crystal Adams?”
“I don’t know.”
He eyed her skeptically, hands on his belt.
“It’s true, I don’t.”
“But you recognized the name.”
Kali nodded. “Crystal was another name that came up when I talked to Olivia’s friends.”
“In what context?” Michelle’s dark eyes were wide and friendly.
Were they playing good cop, bad cop? Probably. But Kali sensed there was also a genuine difference in personalities. She needed to keep her guard up against both detectives.
“Just that she was someone Olivia met over the summer,” Kali said.
“Why would your brother inquire about her?”
“I don’t know.” She tried to put the X-rated Web sites she’d found on John’s computer out of her mind, but it wasn’t easy. “Is she okay?”
“You have reason to think she might not be?”
“With Olivia and Hayley both murdered . . .” Kali twisted her hands together. “It’s just worrisome.”
Shafer’s gaze narrowed. “You going to tell us what’s going on? What your brother’s connection was?”
“I don’t know how he knew them. Honestly.”
“Your brother is dead,” Michelle said. “You don’t need to protect him anymore.”
Anymore. As if she’d ever been there for him when he needed her. “My brother wasn’t a murderer,” Kali protested. “He was a victim himself. Why are you so intent on refusing to see that?”
Shafer threw up his hands in disgust and turned toward the door.
“Do you know how to get in touch with Hayley’s family?” Michelle asked Kali.
“I’m sorry, I don’t. I honestly don’t know anything more about her than what I’ve told you.”
“What about Olivia’s friend, the one who told you about Hayley? Do you think she’d know?”
The problem with deceit, as Kali had learned many times over, was that it eventually circled back on itself and caught you in a snare. On the other hand, coming clean about the photo wasn’t a viable option. Not until she had a better idea of what was going on.
“I doubt it,” she replied.
Michelle shot Kali a look infused with disbelief and rebuke. “We can find Olivia’s friends, you know. But it would save time if you helped us.”
“I can’t recall who it was.”
That look again. “If you think of anything, let us know.”
Misgiving formed a knot in Kali’s gut. She realized how it looked to the cops. They knew next to nothing about Hayley Hendrix except that she’d been brutally murder
ed. They’d finally gotten an ID on her, only to learn that Kali had been asking questions, and that there was an apparent connection between their victim and John. And now they’d learned that Olivia Perez, another victim, was a friend of Hayley’s. It made sense they’d be suspicious of John. And of Kali, for that matter.
Kali wanted answers herself. Real answers, not a whitewash that pinned the crimes on John because he was convenient. On the other hand, she hated to sit on information that might be significant.
As she walked Michelle Parker to the door, she asked, “Have you searched Hayley’s apartment?”
“Not yet. We’re waiting for the warrant to come through.”
There was nothing veiled about the comment. The manager had obviously not told them everything. “When you do,” Kali offered, “you might keep your eyes out for a volume of love poems inscribed with a smiley face. Olivia had one just like it.”
Michelle looked at her, puzzled. “How would you know that?”
“One of her friends mentioned it.”
“Do you know who the books were from?” Michelle’s curiosity was clearly piqued.
Kali shook her head. “But two friends, both murdered . . .” She left the thought unfinished.
“I hope you’re not playing games with us.” Michelle was no longer the amiable good cop. Her jaw was set and her eyes steely. She let herself out the front door and closed it with a thump.
Kali didn’t breathe normally again until the sheriff’s car had pulled away from the front of the house. Even then, her heart continued to pound. She barged into Sabrina’s room without knocking.
Sabrina lifted her head off the pillow and braced herself on an elbow. It was clear she’d been awake. “What was that all about?”
Kali dropped down onto the edge of the bed. “The detectives wanted to know about Hayley Hendrix.” She recounted what they’d told her about John’s visit to the Crazy Coyote.
“He knew Hayley?” Sabrina asked.
“Looks like he might have known all three girls. The police case against John is totally off the wall. He didn’t kill Sloane over some perceived threat to his job.”
The Next Victim (Kali O'Brien series) Page 21