CHAPTER ELEVEN
A couple of dead bodies.
A storm.
Elevator broken.
Empty stairwell.
Girl alone in a stairwell.
Lights out.
I’m officially living a B horror flick, only someone screwed up and gave the chick, who’s alone in the dark stairwell, a gun. Correction. Someone screwed up and gave the crazy-as- fuck chick, who will shoot your ass, a gun. This realization, that I’m that chick, is pretty darn comforting right now. Because I will shoot your ass. I will shoot whoever is in this stairwell with me. Well, unless it’s someone I like, and that list isn’t long. I consider my options and decide that whoever is in here with me, is trying to scare me, which means, it’s Umbrella Man. This news isn’t terrifying at all. He’s fucking with me, as Kane said a few minutes earlier, which means he’s not done with me. He’s not going to shoot me the minute he hears my steps.
With that in mind, I start feeling for steps and inching my way upward. One step, two, five, ten. I make it to another level and repeat, stopping to listen in between my upward movement, hearing nothing but then I’m a stealthy bitch. I know my visitor can’t hear me either. In other words, silence doesn’t equal absence. Two flights up, I sense his nearness, and I want this done—perhaps I’m not so patient after all. I flip on my flashlight and rush forward. In the same moment, or perhaps a moment later, another flashlight comes on, and in a split second, I’m on a landing, facing off, gun to flashlight, with a tall, big man. A familiar man.
“What the fuck Sergeant Morris?” I demand. “What is this?”
“What the fuck is right,” he growls. “No one is supposed to be in here unless they clear it through me first. Use the radio.” He curses under his breath and lowers his weapon. “The last thing I need is you thinking that I’m trying to kill you, too. I setup a procedure, and Agent in Charge or whatever the fuck you are, you still have to follow it or end up getting fired on.”
I don’t lower my weapon. “What fucking radio? Houston didn’t tell me about a radio.”
“I didn’t even know Houston was in the building. I have a point man downstairs.”
“Well, he failed miserably. Why the hell are the lights out?”
“I’m on my way to the utility room now, but in case you didn’t notice, there’s damn near a hurricane outside.”
“This is a high-end building. I guarantee there’s a backup generator.”
There’s a slight sound, a barely-there echo that has me turning and standing next to Morris, both of us raising our weapons and pointing. Seconds tick by while we both wait for what comes next. And then the lights flicker and turn back on. A door somewhere several floors down opens and then shuts. We weren’t alone but that doesn’t change my opinion of Sergeant Morris. It doesn’t change my opinion of Williams. Something with the two of them just doesn’t add up.
The door opens again. “Morris! You in here? Agent Love? Everyone okay in there?”
Morris relaxes. “Yes, Nick. We’re good.”
“Maintenance guy got the generator going,” the man calls out. “It was a lightning strike that threw out the power.”
I don’t know if I buy that, but I lower my weapon. I don’t, however, put it away.
Sergeant Morris turns to me and eyes my weapon, harnessing his with exaggerated precision. “You going to shoot me, or should I escort you to the crime scene?”
“Walk,” I order, motioning him toward the stairs. “You first.”
His jaw flexes. “You trust me that much, huh?”
“I trust you not at all.”
“But I need to trust you and give you my back?”
“That about sums it up. So hurry the fuck up the stairs. I have a dead body waiting on me that isn’t yours. Yet.”
He shakes his head in evident disgust, but he starts walking. I eye the stairwell beneath us, even going so far as to lean over the railing to confirm that no one is following me before I fall into step behind him. Three floors later, he opens the door, and when he holds the door for me, I grimace. “Really?”
“Whatever, Agent Love,” he says, walking ahead of me and exiting to the hallway.
Then, and only then, do I holster my weapon while Morris speaks to someone over his damn radio. Where the hell was his point man when I came upstairs? I catch the door and exit to the hallway to find him waiting on me. “I need to follow up on the power outage,” he says, motioning around the corner. “You’ll find the apartment secure.” His lips thin, and he just stands there.
“Say whatever the fuck you need to say because it’s taken me way too long to get to that body.”
“That’s not her apartment.”
My brows furrow. “Then who the fuck’s apartment is it? Did she have a sugar daddy?”
He scowls. “No, she didn’t have a sugar daddy. What the hell, Agent Love?”
“What the hell, exactly. Who the hell does the apartment belong to?”
“It’s hers, it’s just not hers.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
Then a realization hits me. “You knew the victim?”
“She’s one of Detective Williams’ sorority sisters. Both of the twins were. They were all close.”
“And you know this because you weren’t fucking Williams?”
“I told you. We dated. We had dinner here a few times.” He grimaces and presses his hands to his hips. “My point is,” he continues, “that I was here. I saw the apartment. Karen lived in chaos. That apartment is not chaos. It’s like someone else lived there.”
He means it’s been turned into an OCD field of dreams, which means, somehow, Umbrella Man made that happen here, in this building. We’ve just determined that he was here, in this building. We’ve determined he might have been jealous enough to target Ralph Redman, Williams’ recent boyfriend. I should be celebrating cornering a killer, but it’s too easy.
“She was messy as hell,” he rambles on. “Just like Detective Williams. That was a problem for us. I like clean and neat. I’m a bit anal that way. She’s not. She’s wasn’t. She was a slob.” He cuts his stare, seeming to choke up before he looks at me. “That apartment, Karen’s apartment, now looks like mine. Perfect. She didn’t keep her apartment like this. She didn’t.” He scrubs his jaw. Again. “Me being a neat freak doesn’t mean I did this. I didn’t have to tell you that. You wouldn’t know I was ever here.”
“There are cameras in the building,” I remind him. “Maybe you were preempting me seeing you in the feed. Or preparing me for what I’d find in your apartment should I search it.”
“I could just mess my apartment up.”
He could, but extreme OCD might make him feel he was better off explaining his neatness.
“I didn’t kill her,” he says.
“I didn’t kill her,” I say. “And that’s the only statement I consider true right now. What’s the sister’s name?”
“Katy.”
“Tell me about Katy,” I order.
“I didn’t meet her, but Karen said that she’s a model and an aspiring actress. That’s why she moved to LA last year. To act.”
And there it is, the missing piece of the puzzle.
Now I have the connection between Detective Williams and the other victims.
Holy fuck.
The obvious just hit me. Why the hell it took me this long I don’t know. This isn’t all about Williams. She’s not even the main victim. She’s the “family member,” in this case, the sister, and I use that term lightly, who lured me into that alleyway to save her sorority sister. Umbrella Man chose a circle of friends who complement one goal. He’s drawing me a picture of blood and death.
The posed, primary victims include two models, one of which was retired and in advertising, a literary agent, and an actress, all involved in the media. They all live in the world my mother inhabited. They connect to me by way of my mother’s stardom, her career.
This isn’t me solving his random crimes.
This is him killing on my behalf, because of me. Maybe even killing for me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He thinks he’s perfect.
That’s what the whole OCD clean is all about. I’m not sure he’s actually OCD. I think it’s more about him telling me he’s perfect, he’s unbeatable. He just doesn’t know how fucking perfect a slob like me can be, but he’ll find out.
“Agent Love,” Sergeant Morris says, “I want—”
“And that’s your problem,” I snap. “This is still about you. You want. That, and you talk way too fucking much.” I step around him because really, truly, he’s not the guy. He’s not the killer. He might, in fact, be another victim who actually lived.
I stop walking and turn around. He steps around the corner to face me. I close the space between me and him. “Were you being blackmailed by the killer?”
He blanches. “What? No. Hell no. What are you even talking about?”
“Have you been into the apartment?”
“You know I have. I just told you, it’s cleaned up.”
“Did you look at the body?”
“No.” His lips thin. “I heard—I heard it’s—”
“Bloody?”
“Yes,” he confirms.
“You don’t like blood,” I accuse.
“No one likes blood,” he says.
I sure as fuck don’t, I think, but what I say is, “He does. The killer likes it a lot. He likes that you don’t even more. Every one of his victims has someone close to them blackmailed and then killed. Williams was the one who got blackmailed over her sister. Everyone who is blackmailed is now dead. He kills them. In other words, if you’re lying to me—”
“I’m not lying,” he snaps.
“A lie is a death sentence.” I shrug. “But I warned you. I’m done.” I turn and start walking.
“She had a plan. She wouldn’t have traded you for her sister.”
I stop walking, but I don’t turn. I don’t say a word. He’s right. She wouldn’t have. Because Umbrella Man’s not ready for me to die. He clearly was ready for Katy and Karen to die. God, even the names are similar, twins and all.
I round the corner, leaving him behind with finality this time, heading toward the apartment where Karen lived and Katy died. That’s the new battlefield, and that’s where I win. That’s where Mr. Perfect Umbrella Man made a mistake. I just have to find it.
The crime scene is my purpose right now, and I don’t believe Morris killed anyone. I also don’t believe he’s telling me the entire truth. I’m not sure yet what that means, but I will. Right now, it’s me and Katy. No. It’s me and Umbrella Man. My gloves are on by the time I’m at the door.
“Agent Love. Who’s inside?” I shrug out of my cumbersome rain jacket and drop it to the floor.
“No one,” the twenty-something cop informs me. “I was told once the scene was secure to hold it for you. Not even CSI gets in.”
“At whose direction?”
“Chief Houston.”
He doesn’t want me involved, but he held the scene for me. Houston’s a clusterfuck of contradictions these days.
“It’s messy in there,” the officer adds. “I was told to tell you they contained the mess in the bedroom by turning off the ceiling fan.”
Because it’s raining blood again. Of course, it is. He had to create a similar death for both sisters. “Who is ‘they’?” I ask.
“The officers who were first on the scene.”
“Where are they now?”
He stands a little straighter. “Throwing up.” He clears his throat. “Both of them.”
At least he’s honest. “Morning sickness will do that to you.”
“No, they—” he stops and laughs nervously, “That was a joke.”
“Why yes,” I say, pulling on a pair of booties I’ve retrieved from my bag. “It was. I was calling them—”
“Girls,” he supplies. “That’s not all that politically correct.”
Now, he’s irritating me. “Why the fuck do I want to be politically correct? Tell them if they fight like girls, too, to go home.” I open the apartment door and step inside, entering my Otherworld, and shutting myself inside it and the luxury apartment. I turn and take it in. It’s small but beautiful, the living room area cozy and intimate. I do what I do and that means I don’t rush to the main blood and gore. I take my time and ensure I miss nothing. And so, I slowly tick off my observations, looking for something that stands out. The floors are a pale tan wood. The couches cream-colored. One large oval window in the center of the room. There’s a fireplace with bookshelves filled with books and trinkets, most from movies and television shows. Every book is lined up and measured to perfection.
I walk to the shelf and run a finger over the wood. Not a hint of dust. Stepping to the center of the room, I stare at the perfect square that the blanket is folded into. I eye the pillows set on each side of the couch at the exact same angle. Katy did this. I have no doubt of this. He made all the family members clean to perfection as one of their duties to save their loved ones. And I now know that she was that family member, trying to save her sister.
But how did he inspect her work?
He could have been here, and obviously, I could go back to Morris as a suspect, but it’s not him. So was the real killer here? I pull my phone from my pocket and dial my trusty tech guy, Tic Tac. “Lilah.”
“I’m living with Kane.”
“Oh ah—like the crime lord?”
“He’s not a crime lord, asshole.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Stop talking and listen before you make me force our boss to relocate you here.”
“You can’t force Director Murphy to do that.”
“Don’t take risks you can’t afford to live with,” I say. “Take notes. I need the security footage for this building for the past thirty days.”
“Don’t date that dangerous man if you think he’s fucking around on you.”
“Holy fuck, Tic Tac. I have a dead body. The soap opera star on the fifteenth floor. I need to know if the security footage covers private floors.”
“Oh. Crap. Yeah. Okay. I’ll look now.”
“Just text me. I have a body to talk to right now.”
“I hate when you say things like that.”
I hang up. I need to focus. And as much as I want to walk the rest of the apartment now, CSI will be here any second. I want just a few minutes with Katy on my own. I follow the hallway that leads to the rest of the apartment and find crime scene tape in front of the bedroom door. I inhale and let it out. I know what’s inside this room. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but this has become personal. This killer knows me far more than I know him. He knows at least one of my weaknesses, and that’s Kane. The other is blood, buckets of blood. Damn it, I’m afraid that’s what I’m about to find in this room, and it pisses me off that I’m letting him get to me. He will not get to me. Fuck Umbrella Man. Fuck him ten ways to Sunday. I will fuck him up. He doesn’t get to fuck me up. Holy hell, just give me an umbrella and a few minutes alone with him, and I will make him walk funny for the rest of his life.
I step inside the damn room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I forget my own anxiety the minute I’m actually inside the victim’s bedroom. I step into my Otherworld, really step into it, and everything else slides away. Of course, it helps that there are no puddles of blood waiting for me in the bedroom.
There is just Katy. Ready to tell me a story I need to hear.
She’s in the center of the bed, an umbrella taped to her hand, her arm over her head.
Dead.
Naked.
Covered in the same splattered blood that blots the white bedspread and white walls. I now believe the bedspread, which seems to be an exact match to the one in the prior victim’s house, to have been brought in for the occasion, for contrasting effect, of course. All of this is about an impact statement. I file that away in my mind as a possible mistake
. They were purchased. They can be traced.
My gaze returns to the victim, to Katy. That she’s on the bed, and not the floor, as was the prior victim, is interesting. It might appear to be a gentler ending to some, even to him, but it’s not, not to me. She’s still dead. She’s still a body with a name attached that no longer matters, at least not to her. It is, however, no accident. It’s a message that I’m supposed to read and understand. I don’t have two flips of an idea, right now, what that means. Maybe it’s simply supposed to make me hyperfocus and miss something bigger. Maybe it’s a test.
Last time, he left me a clue with the cigarettes, Roger’s cigarette brand, which still seems to indicate this matchup between him and me connects to an old case that I worked under Roger. Yes, it could be about Roger; Roger, I think, hearing his comments from earlier in my head, but it’s not. And that we’re here, at my building, is a message to me about me, in the building I was always at when I worked for the NYPD because I was engaged to Kane.
Engaged.
Fuck that took me to a place that isn’t in my zone.
“Fuck you, Kane Mendez, for distracting me,” I murmur and refocus on the damn room.
There’s a clue here for me. I need to find it before the team gets here, and, somehow, it’s misplaced. I scan the blood patterns on the wall, studying them, looking for patterns but find nothing this time when the patterns led me to the cigarettes last time. It would be too simple for him to leave a clue the same way he did before. I walk to the body and stare down at the white foam on Katy’s red-painted lips. She was poisoned. She was wearing lipstick. For him? Because he made her? Because she wanted to please him? Did the sick fuck watch her undress? I think yes. He was here. He had to be here when she died, and undressing her after she died, touching her, would come with the risk of leaving behind DNA.
Love Kills Page 6