by Dana Nussio
“Yes, of course. We’ve been so busy since the earthquake, it’s hard to keep track of everyone we’ve helped.” Leigh had regained her composure and her smile was back to hundred-watt capacity. “Your sister did stay with us for two nights back in April. I wanted to check with Bart and Randall in case they had any information about where she went after she left us.”
“We don’t.” Bart’s smile was considerably less attractive than Leigh’s. “She said she was going. Didn’t say where.”
For a moment, the solid tile floor beneath Katrina’s feet felt springy. Then she realized her knees had started to shake. It was June. If Eliza had left this place in April, she had been absent for two months. It wasn’t the first time her twin had gone missing. But it was the first time Katrina hadn’t known about it and been actively looking for her. If she’d known, she would have followed her usual routine and contacted Eliza’s friends, liaised with her counselors, and, if all else failed, reported her missing to the police.
“I’m sorry we can’t help you.” Leigh’s gaze flicked toward the door.
Fighting the fog of panic that was threatening to engulf her, Katrina sucked in a breath. “I don’t understand. Her apartment was destroyed. You offered her a safe place to stay. She had no money or belongings. Why would she leave? Where did she go?”
“We don’t hold that sort of information on our database,” Leigh said. “People who spend time with us are free to come and go as they choose.”
“But you were out and about in the town offering people your help after the earthquake. That means you had a responsibility to care for them.” Katrina wasn’t concerned that the volume of her voice was rising. “You must have known Eliza was homeless and vulnerable. How could you have let her walk out of here without making sure she was okay?”
“Hey.” Bart stepped closer. “You’re clearly worried about your sister, but Leigh has explained the situation. There’s nothing more we can do for you.”
If they thought she was letting this go, they were mistaken. Blank smiles and excuses weren’t going to work. Katrina would talk to every person in this place if that was what it took to find even a sliver of information about her sister. With no other family and addicted friends who drifted in and out when she was part of their dependent lifestyle, Katrina was all Eliza had.
Just as she was about to tell Bart to take a step out of her personal space, a high-pitched yelp and the sound of claws scrabbling on tile made her turn her head. In a practiced move, she squatted in time to catch a squirming bundle of fur in her arms.
“Dobby?”
As she petted the excited dog and dodged the face kisses, her mind was whirling. How could her sister’s pet be here if Eliza left in April? Because...
No. Just no.
Ever since Eliza had rescued the pup—whose face was not his prettiest end—when he was eight weeks old, the pair had been inseparable. Whatever else was going on in her life, Eliza made sure Dobby was fed, clean and healthy. The little guy’s bed was always positioned alongside Eliza’s, he ate ethically sourced food and he had access to the best training at Look Who’s Walking, where, until Eliza had stopped coming around several months before the earthquake, he’d also attended play dates and gotten regular grooming.
Tucking Dobby under her arm, Katrina got to her feet, her resolve hardening. “Since my sister left you two months ago, perhaps you’d care to explain why her dog is still here?”
Dobby looked from Katrina to the two men as though he, too, was interested in the answer. For the first time, Leigh’s pleasant mask slipped and she appeared nervous. It was a momentary lapse and she recovered quickly, but it was enough to fire up Katrina’s suspicions.
“I remember now.” The smile returned. “Your sister said she wouldn’t be able to keep a dog where she was going, so she left him with us. We’ve adopted him at the center. He’s become quite the AAG mascot, hasn’t he, guys?” She threw a help-me-out glance toward Bart and Randall.
“Sure has. He’s found his best self here with us.” Bart reached out a hand to stroke Dobby’s head, but the dog ducked away from him and tucked his head into Katrina’s neck. The little guy always did have good taste.
“When I walked in here, you told me you knew nothing about my sister.” Katrina kept her gaze on Leigh. “Now you’re saying she left her dog behind and he’s become your mascot? Call me skeptical, but I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t have remembered that detail as soon as I mentioned her name.”
Leigh looked down at her computer screen without replying. Bart and Randall also remained silent.
“I’m leaving now. Here’s my business card, in case anyone remembers anything more about my sister.” Anger stiffened Katrina’s spine as she started to walk away. “And I’m taking your mascot with me.”
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Ten Days Gone by Beverly Long.
Ten Days Gone
by Beverly Long
One
Tuesday, May 10
She’d been killed like all the others.
A.L. McKittridge squatted down to get a closer look at the body. The woman, already stiff, had likely been dead for hours. The coroner had not yet arrived, so there was no official cause of death. But a damn rookie could figure it out. And neither he nor his partner, Rena Morgan, had been rookies for a long time.
But they’d never seen anything like this, either. Four dead women in forty days, each killed ten days apart.
They’d started their shift over seven hours earlier, and as each hour had passed, they’d gotten more and more anxious, knowing the call was going to come, not having a clue what to do about it.
They’d had to wait until Jane Picus’s husband had gotten home from work and found his wife. Naked. Dead. And one pillow missing off their bed.
“He’s going to...” Rena’s voice trailed off. She likely did not want the photographer, the sketch artist and the evidence techs who were doing their thing to hear. She looked tired. They all were. “He’s going to make a mistake,” she said quietly.
The asshole hadn’t thus far. The three other victims, ranging in age from thirty-two to forty-eight, had all been found naked, with their clothes folded neatly in a pile next to them.
No signs of struggle, in their houses or on their persons. No robbery. No sexual assault.
No fucking physical evidence, not even a little skin or blood under their fingernails. Just some cotton fibers, as if their killer had made them wear gloves while he killed them. But those were never left at the scene. Nor was the pillow.
With so little to go on, they’d looked for connections between the three women. Had come up dry.
Now they’d dissect the life of this new victim and try to figure out what led to her ending up stone-cold dead on her kitchen floor. They’d hope like hell they could find something to link her to the other women. Then, just maybe, they’d catch the murderer.
If they didn’t, there’d be another dead woman ten days from now.
A.L. stood up when he heard the front door of the house open. Carrie Stack, the medical examiner, walked into the room, her cloud of perfume preceding her. She wore too much, but nobody ever complained. The smell of death was a worthy opponent. And most of the male detectives had a permanent hard-on when she was within fifty yards, so they weren’t about to bitch that their eyes were watering.
Carrie Stack was stacked. And beautiful. And he’d taken a ride on her merry-go-round more than once. It was an arrangement that suited them both.
“Detective Morgan. Detective McKittridge,” Carrie said, greeting them both. Her tone was neutral. She was a cat in bed, but on the job, she was always professional. And very good at her job. She stood in the doorway and carefully pulled on booties over her shiny black heels. “I was, unfortunately, waiting for the call. Where’s the husband?”<
br />
A.L. pointed outside. Terry Picus was in the back seat of a patrol car, his face partially turned away from the house. Five minutes earlier, he’d been bent double in the yard, losing his lunch on the rosebushes.
“Press is behind the line,” Carrie said. “Can’t wait to see the headline.”
The first murder had not gone unnoticed by the Bulletin. But it had been a reasonable four paragraphs—above the fold, of course, because, after all, murders were a rare occurrence in Baywood, Wisconsin. And if it had stopped after the first one, the victim would have been easily dismissed as that poor woman who was smothered in her own kitchen.
But then the second murder had occurred ten days later. It had been the lead story for three days running. The television folks in Madison, sixty miles southeast, had picked up the story.
The headline after the third murder had been expected. Baywood Serial Killer Strikes Again. So far they’d been able to keep most of the details under wraps, simply offering up the cause of death, the absence of any sexual assault and the location in the home where the bodies had been discovered.
But the press was getting antsy to find out why the police weren’t releasing any more information about the crime scenes. No one just lies down in their kitchen and waits to be smothered. That had come from James Adeva, the crime reporter at the Bulletin who was probably smarter than most.
He was right. Mostly. A victim might start off compliant. Yes, Mr. Bad Guy, I’ll be happy to take off my clothes and lie on this cold floor. Of course, she’d be hoping to get the upper hand at some point, or that her attacker would have a change of heart when he saw how accommodating she was. Maybe the killer had told the victim that it would be fast and painless if she didn’t struggle, but long and torturous if she did.
But no matter how it started, when it came right down to it, once the air supply got choked off, victims would instinctively put up a fight. The will to live was strong.
While Carrie did her thing, A.L. and Rena walked around, pointing at evidence that the techs needed to tag and bag. The clothes on the floor, the cell phone on the counter, the computer on the small desk in the kitchen.
After the second murder, they’d asked for resources from the state. A.L. had worried they might get in the way, but instead, they’d been helpful, especially with the computer and online activity analysis. The Picuses, like the other three families, would have no secrets by the time they were done.
The money trails they’d helped uncover had yielded a few coincidences, as one might expect. Baywood wasn’t that big, after all. Didn’t have that many grocery stores or nail salons or gas stations that their three previous victims hadn’t overlapped at times. Now, they’d find out just how much in common Jane Picus had with any or all of the others. And regardless of how slight the connection might be, it would get followed up on.
He and Rena stood back while Carrie saw to the loading of the body into the ambulance. Then they followed her outside and watched as she walked over to Terry Picus. The two spoke briefly.
Carrie was good about remembering that while her focus was on the dead, the living couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t possible to pretty up the indignity of an autopsy, but she would, at the very least, convey to Terry Picus that while his wife was in her custody, she would be handled with the utmost care.
She walked back to them. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done,” she said. Then, looking at Rena, she asked, “What about Friday?”
Rena shook her head. “I’m pretty sure we’re canceling it. I’ll let you know. Nobody feels like celebrating these days. It’s not fair, but it just feels wrong.”
He waited until Carrie was gone before turning to his partner. “Another jewelry party?”
“Baby shower for Violet,” she said.
Maybe that was why Rena looked tired. Violet O’Brien was popping out her fourth kid in about as many years. And Rena and her husband had been trying for a while with no luck.
“She’s been on maternity leave more than she’s worked as the department’s secretary,” he said.
“I guess. We should talk to the husband again.”
“Yeah.” They’d exchanged basic information with him already. The guy had made the 911 call and had been waiting on the front steps when the first patrol car arrived. He and Rena had been just minutes behind. Mr. Picus had been pale and sweating, but he’d managed a few coherent sentences before his stomach had taken over.
Jane Picus had worked at the floral shop on Division. Today was her day off. She’d made him eggs and toast this morning before he’d left for work at the food plant at the edge of town. She’d still been in her pajamas. He had not talked to her or communicated with her in any way during the day. That wasn’t unusual. They’d been married for twenty-one years.
It was that last sentence that had sent him running for the rosebushes.
At some point, Jane had changed out of her pajamas into a white denim skirt and a blue T-shirt. That’s what had been neatly folded less than two feet from her dead body.
Rena knocked on the window of the patrol car before she opened the door. “Mr. Picus. I know this is a very difficult time for you, but can you answer a few more questions for us?”
The man licked his dry lips. “Our daughter is at college in Milwaukee. I...need to tell her.”
It wasn’t the kind of news a daughter should get over the phone. Unfortunately, because of the lightning speed of social media, there wasn’t a better option. The Picus family lived in a nice, middle-class neighborhood, and several neighbors were already gathering. Some idiot had probably already taken a photo and put it on Facebook. They weren’t going to be able to keep this under wraps.
A.L. saw that the man had a cell phone on his belt. “Call her. Tell her what has happened, and then we’ll have someone drive you to Milwaukee,” he said. “Before you do that, however, can I ask you about the following names and whether they mean anything to you?”
Picus nodded.
“Leshia Fowler. Marsha Knight. LeAnn Jacobs.” He didn’t need to refer to a list. He’d been dreaming about these names almost every damn night.
Picus shook his head. “They’re the other women who got killed,” he said, his voice flat. “Jane and I had read the articles in the newspaper. Had talked about the three women. How horrible it was.” The man swallowed hard. “I don’t think either one of us realized,” he added, his voice barely audible.
When had Jane Picus known that she was number four? And why the hell hadn’t she fought like a crazy woman? No. It seemed as if she’d simply gotten undressed, lain down and let the bastard smother her.
“Does your daughter have a good friend at school?” Rena asked.
“She and her roommate get along great.”
“Do you have her roommate’s phone number?” Rena followed up.
The man nodded. “In case of emergency,” he said.
A.L. was pretty confident this hadn’t been the type of emergency that Picus and his wife had been anticipating. Having a daughter close to the same age, he had an idea of how tough it might be for the kid to hear the news. Rena had been smart to think of getting some on-hand help.
“We’ll take that number. Once you’ve talked to your daughter,” he said, “we’ll contact her friend, ask her to stick close to your daughter until you can get there.”
With shaking hands, the man pulled the number up on his phone. Rena entered it into her phone. “Call your daughter, sir,” A.L. said.
Picus pressed a button, held the phone up to his ear. “Hey, honey,” he said softly. “It’s Dad.”
A.L. and Rena drifted ten feet away. There was no dignity in death, but the man deserved a little privacy to deliver the news.
“Guess I’ll make that call, then,” Rena said.
“I can do it,” A.L. said. He’d had some practice with emotional teens.
&
nbsp; “I’ve got this,” Rena said, already dialing.
A.L. nodded and listened while Rena explained the situation briefly, providing just enough detail that the girl understood the gravity of the situation.
Rena hung up. “She’s at the library, but she said she’ll find Hailey Picus and be there until Mr. Picus arrives.”
“Good. We should try to talk to the neighbors.” They walked to the house on the right. Knocked sharply. No answer. Maybe not home from work yet.
They crossed in front of the crime scene tape and walked up the sidewalk to the house on the left. Before they could knock, a voice behind them said, “That’s my door.”
The woman, very Scandinavian-looking with her blond hair and fair skin, had a much darker-skinned baby on her hip. The kid had a pink headband wrapped around her mostly bald head.
“Detectives McKittridge and Morgan,” he said. Both showed badges. She barely glanced at them. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Reese Holden.”
“Were you home this afternoon, Mrs. Holden?”
“Ms. Holden,” she corrected. “I’m not married. And yes, I was home.”
“Did you see or hear anything unusual?” Rena asked.
The woman shook her head. “I’m a graphic artist and I work out of my house. My office is in the basement, on the back side.”
“Have any knowledge that Mrs. Picus was having trouble with anybody, that anybody would want to harm her?” Rena continued.
“Jane is delightful,” she said. “Was. Was delightful.” The woman nervously straightened the headband on her kid’s head. “It’s like those other women, isn’t it?”
No woman was feeling safe in Baywood anymore. “We can’t comment, ma’am,” he said. “You don’t happen to have any exterior security cameras, do you?”
“No. But I might think about getting one,” she said.
He understood. No doubt, others were probably thinking about going to the sporting goods store and picking up a shotgun. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, we’d appreciate a call,” he said, handing her a card. Rena did the same.