by Maggie Price
Her fingers tensed against her notepad. Her own needs were something she had no business thinking about, not when a woman lay dead fifteen yards away. Not with a sadistic killer on the loose. A killer who had seemingly sprung from some dark hole in hell.
She glanced at the rookie guarding the front door. He didn’t look old enough to vote, she decided. He just looked scared, standing there with his hand clenched on the grips of his holstered Glock as if he expected the killer to walk out of the open door of apartment 1 A.
As if sensing her gaze on him, he looked her way and forced a halfhearted smile. “I guess the lab’ll be done pretty soon, ma’am.”
“I imagine so. Officer...” She squinted at the brass name plate on his right coat pocket. “Gilchrist. Are you okay?”
“Fine, ma’am.”
“Call me A.J.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Across the foyer, the four uniforms who’d conducted a door-to-door of the neighborhood stood in a tight knot, sipping steaming coffee from disposable cups. One officer made a comment, which evoked laughter from the others. A.J. suspected they were enjoying the rookie’s greenish complexion. The poor kid had been the first on the scene, she’d learned. The pure horror in his eyes verified the grisly devastation the killer had left in his wake.
She leaned forward on the step and gazed into the open door of apartment 1A. Inside, cameras flashed; a lab tech clad in a blue jumpsuit swished a brush loaded with black fingerprint powder across a fiberboard coffee table. The tech hunched down to examine the surface, shook his head, then snapped the lid on his container of fingerprint powder.
No prints, A.J. thought. Just like all the other scenes, the killer had wiped down every surface. All they could hope was that Sky Milano and her forensic team had better luck ferreting out minute bits of almost invisible evidence.
“Hairs, you bastard. I hope you left some hairs.”
The rookie jerked his head around. “What, ma’am?”
A.J. blinked. “Nothing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She inhaled a slow breath meant to calm, but it did nothing to ease the edginess that gripped her. It wasn’t the first time she’d found herself talking to the killer. In her mind he’d evolved from a shadow lurking on the pages of police reports into a flesh-and-blood entity, driven by some twisted motive. A motive that eluded her. A motive shrouded in some perverse logic that made sense only in his sick brain.
Pulling off her reading glasses, she rubbed a latex-gloved fingertip up and down the bridge of her nose. The only thing she knew for sure was that he’d killed two women in as many weeks. The clock was ticking. If they didn’t find him in the next few days, they’d be posting another picture of an auburn-haired woman on a bulletin board that was filling with frightening speed.
“No prints, A.J.,” the lab tech said when he toted his equipment case out of the apartment.
She nodded. “No surprise, Tom.”
He stopped, spoke to the four officers. As if by mutual consent, they simultaneously tossed their coffee cups into a trash can below the bank of mailboxes, then followed the tech across the foyer.
When the rookie swung the door open to let them out, A.J. glimpsed the crush of gawkers that the urgent screech of sirens had drawn into the frozen night. Emergency lights strobed in rhythm, washing the crowd with an eerie tinge of blood red and blue. The door whooshed shut, admitting a gust of frigid air into the foyer.
Shivering, A.J. rose off the step just as Michael walked out of the victim’s apartment. His black wool coat hung open, revealing the bow tie that dangled loose beneath the open collar of his pleated shirt. The image of her hands yanking frantically at that tie sent a bolt of sensation straight to her center. She felt her knees go weak. Reaching out, she curled her hand around the banister and concentrated her gaze on the gold badge clipped to the breast pocket of his coat.
“The lab’s done, A.J.” The grimness in his voice put her thoughts squarely back on business.
From inside the apartment, a police radio squawked. Michael stripped off his latex gloves while he waited for the dispatcher to sign off. “I asked the ME to hold off moving the body until you had a look. I think it’s important that you see how he positioned her. What he did to her hand.” Michael paused, his eyes steady on hers. “I hate the thought of you going in there, seeing it.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“What he did to this one makes his other killings look like a walk in the park.”
“I understand,” she said, and squared her shoulders. She’d been to numerous crime scenes, had seen enough dead bodies that she no longer feared losing her latest meal. But her detached approach to viewing the ravages of homicide didn’t stop her stomach from clenching at the prospect of getting near a mutilated corpse.
“She was only eighteen,” Michael said quietly. “A nursing student. She moved here two months ago from Arnette, Oklahoma. Eighteen.”
The bleakness in his eyes closed around A.J. She reached out, touched her hand to his sleeve in an attempt to comfort. “I sat in when Sam interviewed the landlord,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t think Linda Ann had any friends here. She’d gotten into the habit of going out most nights by herself—to clubs. A lot of mornings he’d see some guy leave her apartment. It was never the same one twice.”
“Shades of Dianna Westfall.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Might as well start at the most obvious place,” Michael commented. “I’ll send a team of detectives to Encounters to show Linda Ann’s picture around.”
The cell phone protruding from his coat pocket rang. He answered, listened for a few moments, his eyes narrowing. “Fax a copy of the field-interview card to the crime scene van. I’ll look at it, then get back to you. Meanwhile, run him through records, then for wants locally and nationwide. Check the car for registration and run it stolen.”
Michael clicked off the phone, then cradled it in his palm for a long, silent moment.
“What is it?” A.J. asked.
He met her gaze, his blue eyes intense. “They finally got the computer back on-line and finished our run.”
“How many?” She could feel the anticipation humming in Michael’s nerves, felt her own jump. “How many names in Dianna’s address book matched the FI cards on men stopped near Encounters?”
“One,” Michael answered. “R. Thornton. Patrol stopped a guy named Robert Thornton in November, two blocks from Encounters. His car had a taillight out. The officer noted Thornton was overly polite.”
A.J. stuffed her notepad under her arm and began to pace. “In her book, Dianna wrote the location she had sex with her dates. What did she put after Thornton’s name?”
“She didn’t,” Michael said, his gaze tracking her movement across the foyer. “All she wrote was his name.”
“Maybe...” A.J. began, her brows knitting with thought as she sidestepped around the stiff-spined rookie.
Michael rested an elbow against the banister. “Maybe what?”
“What if Dianna had some sort of ritual she went through?”
“Go on,” he encouraged.
“She’d meet a guy at Encounters who looked like a promising companion for the night. After things heated up between them, she’d excuse herself to the ladies’ room where she wrote his name in her book...”
“Then she took him home,” Michael finished. “The next morning she’d jot the location of where they had their fun.”
“Right,” A.J. said, crossing back to stand beside him. “Only with Thornton, Dianna wasn’t alive to do that.”
“Works for me.” Michael’s eyes played over her face. “I’ve said it before, A.J. We work well together.”
She smiled up at him. “I think so.”
In a moment of silent intimacy he reached out, touched her arm. She felt the strength of his hand when his fingers tightened on her sleeve for a brief instant.
He glanced over at the rookie. “Gilchrist, go out to the
crime scene van. Pick up a fax for me.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”
“And don’t let any reporters see what you’ve got.”
The door swung closed behind the rookie. Michael looked down at her, his eyes solemn. “You ready to take a look?”
A.J. took a deep breath. “Ready,” she said, then followed as Michael escorted her into the crime scene’s bloody depths.
Chapter 13
The noise level in the conference room was the lowest it had been since the computer spit out Robert Thornton’s name. Michael tossed down his pen, leaned back in his chair and surveyed the tired faces of the people grouped around the long table. The collective surge of adrenaline that had electrified the air throughout the past two days and nights had ebbed. Now, the members of the task force seemed something akin to lethargic stuffed animals.
He felt physically depleted himself. His body ached from a combination of fatigue and the few hours of fitful sleep he’d managed on a lumpy couch in the officers’ locker room. Except for a quick run home that morning to shower and change clothes, he’d spent the past forty-eight hours on duty. He didn’t remember when he’d last gotten a full night’s sleep. Couldn’t say how long it had been since he’d eaten a meal off a plate.
He rubbed his eyes, then glanced out the bank of windows at the sleek skyscrapers huddled together in the frigid air. The late afternoon sky looked thin, gray and drab.
“Everyone take off,” he said, and pushed out of his chair. “Go home. Spend an evening with your family.”
Michael stood at the head of the table, waiting for his words to register. The blank stares he received didn’t surprise him—they’d all worked like demons since Robert Thornton became their prime suspect.
“Go home,” he repeated.
Sam Rogers was the first to react. The homicide detective pulled the glowing stub of a cigar from between his teeth and said, “You just say that to get our attention, Mike?”
Michael smiled. “No, Sam. We’ve issued flyers on Thornton nationwide. California authorities are on the lookout in case he returns there. The wanted notice is posted on NCIC and the Internet. Local media’s airing his description every half hour. We’ve done all we can at this point. The thing that’s left to do is find him. We don’t have to be here for that to happen.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed as several people rose, grabbed their coats and headed toward the door. “I’d feel a hell of a lot better if we had a recent picture of the bastard.”
“No kidding,” Helene said from the chair beside Sam’s. She plucked up the fax sent from the California State Bureau of Investigation. “A ten-year-old picture of a pimply-faced teenager hardly makes for a good ID.” Her pale eyes met Michael’s. “I guarantee you, Lieutenant, if this guy’s the one Dianna Westfall invited home, he’s undergone a major overhaul in the looks department.”
“It’s him.” Sky Milano flipped her leather portfolio closed with a confident snap. “Thornton’s blood type is AB.”
Helene let the fax sheet flutter onto a stack of file folders. “I wonder if the ACLU lawyer who sprang Thornton from that mental hospital is having second thoughts.”
“Yeah, and I’m Prince Charming,” Sam guffawed. “Thornton machetes his grandparents to death and winds up in a juvie facility where some of his scuzzball peers force a few up-close-and-personal encounters on him. Who does poor Robbie blame all this on? The auburn-haired judge who shook a red-polished fingernail in his face when she sentenced him to the place.”
Sam pushed out of his chair and pulled on his coat before continuing. “Then here comes a bleeding-heart lawyer who frees Thornton on a technicality. The bastard’s out two days when the judge winds up stabbed to death, with that very finger hacked off. As we all know, ole Rob was just getting started.”
Sam checked his watch, then glanced across the table at his partner. “You ready to leave, pretty boy?”
Grant Pierce looked at Sky, who gave him a demure smile. The detective grinned, shook his head. “Nah, Sam, you go on.”
“Ain’t love grand?” Sam grumbled, then headed for the door.
“Night, Sam,” Michael said as he loaded file folders into his briefcase. Around him, people shut off computers, straightened papers. Someone turned off the coffeepot.
Out of the corner of his eye, Michael glimpsed Helene making her way to the far end of the table where A.J. sat, conversing with a crime scene tech. Giving the tech a weary smile, A.J. propped her glasses on top of her head and accepted a thick ream of paper.
Helene halted inches away, her narrowed gaze on A.J., her mouth set in a thin line. Michael slowly lowered the lid of his briefcase. More than once over the past two days, he’d caught Helene’s pale eyes inspecting A.J. with catlike intensity, watching, waiting.
For what, dammit?
He shoved a hand through his hair. He had no idea, no hint of what was going on in Helene’s sharp brain. All he knew was that when she looked at A.J. like that, his nerves went on full alert.
The tech moved off. Michael walked the length of the table, his footsteps silent on the thick carpet. He halted behind Helene and heard her ask, “Did you return Greg’s call?”
“No.” A.J. stuck the papers the tech had left into a file folder, then glanced up. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Helene said as she shrugged on her coat. She slid a manicured hand against the nape of her neck and pulled a waterfall of platinum hair from beneath the coat’s collar. “I took the call. I don’t want Greg to think I forgot to give you the message.”
“I doubt he thinks that.”
Michael stepped forward, put a hand on the back of A.J.’s chair. “I can’t lock up until everyone’s gone,” he said pleasantly. “How long are you two going to make me wait?”
Helene gave him a cool smile. “I’m on my way, Lieutenant. See you tomorrow.”
Her feathery brows knit in thought, A.J.’s eyes tracked Helene out the door. “She keeps asking me about Greg.”
Michael slid a hip onto the table. “What about him?”
“How involved are Greg and I? Have I talked to him in the past five minutes? Are we spending Christmas together ?”
Michael had wondered those things himself. The thought of Lawson—or any other man—holding her lush body in his arms as he’d done two nights ago had his hands curving into fists.
“I don’t get the connection,” A.J. continued while straightening a stack of papers, her slow, deliberate movements betraying her weariness. “Greg and Helene aren’t close, not that I know of. I never heard him mention her. Yet, every time I see Helene, she brings up his name.”
“Makes one wonder,” Michael said thoughtfully.
“It does.”
When A.J. reached for an unorganized stack of file folders, he caught her hand in his. “What I said still goes. I can’t leave until everyone’s gone. You’re holding me up.”
She raised her chin and blinked. “Oh, you have plans—”
“We have plans, I hope.” Using his free hand, he plucked her glasses off the top of her head. “That is, if you’re up to having dinner with about twenty adults. Then, there’re the nieces and nephews—I lost count of the exact number a few years ago.”
“Your family,” she said, a startled look in her eyes. “You want me to meet your family?”
“I want you to brave stepping into their midst.” He smiled, and tightened his grip on her fingers when she tried to pull her hand away. “We’re Irish, you know.”
The deep, rolling brogue he’d added to his voice had her returning his smile. “I know.”
“It’ll be loud. There’ll be enough whiskey to get this whole department feeling good. People will ask you nosy questions and you’ll get kissed on the cheek by men you’ve never met.”
“But this is your family’s Christmas dinner—”
“That’s two days away. Mother’s just getting warmed up. The night before Christmas Eve, she and Dad always invite everyone over—
family, neighbors, friends. They put on big pots of stew, bake mountains of breads and desserts. After we eat, we sing carols.”
A.J. leaned back and gave him a considering stare. “You sing?”
Michael grinned. “Like a saint.”
She sighed. “I’d love to hear that, but I can’t. I need to go to the hospital and spend time with Aunt Emily.”
“We’ll stop there on the way, stay as long as you want. There’s no set time to be at my parents’.”
She glanced down at her slim tailored slacks and black sweater, then shook her head. “I’m not dressed right.”
His knuckles stroked the side of her throat as he toyed with her gold hoop earring. “You could wear rags and still look good.”
Seeing he still hadn’t convinced her to go, he leaned forward, put his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in. “It’s been hell these past two days trying to keep my mind on work and off you.” Her warm scent stirred his senses. “I keep thinking of us together. Of what would have happened between us if dispatch hadn’t called.”
She swept him a look through dark lashes. “Me, too.”
“I want to take you to bed, A.J. I want to make love with you until we both know every inch of each other’s bodies.”
“I...thought you wanted to go to your parents’.”
“That first.” He took her hand, brought her fingers to his lips. “We have all night, don’t we?”
In the space of two hours, A.J. had an enormous bowl of Irish stew, a mountain of fudge, uncountable hugs from sticky-fingered children and three proposals of marriage thrust upon her. Two good-natured offers of eternal bliss had come from Michael’s youngest brothers, Patrick and Sean. The other from an unnamed gray-haired gentleman who had to be pushing ninety.
“Is it always this crazy around here?” A.J. asked as she swabbed a dish towel across a damp plate.