Maggie made a mental note to check the footage on any traffic cameras in the neighborhood—if any existed.
She checked the wallet again, this time extracting all of its contents, spreading them out on the plastic sheet: a bunch of credit and membership cards, all in Dana’s name; a few local business cards; paper cash totaling forty-eight dollars; and a faded, dog-eared photograph.
Maggie held the photo under the glow of the portable lamp.
It appeared to have been taken with an instant camera—a square image with a white border. And it looked old. Time had leached the colors to a pinkish hue, as though it had been exposed to strong sunlight, and the white frame had yellowed. Despite several jagged crease marks, Maggie was able to make out the blurred subject matter, and her cool unease came rushing back.
“What’s up, Novak?”
Startled, she looked around to see Loomis approaching.
“Just the usual suspects,” she said, putting the photo facedown on the hood. “Credit cards, an inaccessible cell phone, and car keys but no car.” She showed him the evidence bag with the wood carving in it. “What do you make of this?”
Loomis took it from her, his eyes narrowing as he peered through the clear plastic. “Where’d you find it?”
“Inside a zipped pocket.”
“First impression—looks like a wooden Pringle.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“Okay. In that case, some kind of black magic voodoo thing. Maybe Dana’s a witch. Let’s be honest, it’s the perfect night for it. Maybe that’s how she cheated death the first time around.”
“Your sarcasm is duly noted.”
He handed it back. “You do know the only way to kill a witch is with fire, right?”
Maggie let him see her frown. “There’s a gated community on the way in,” she said. “Why don’t you go canvass the neighborhood? I know the idea of hanging around here all night is freaking you out. There’s no telling how long it’s going to be before Forensics arrive. Maybe somebody saw something other than a couple of smooching teenagers.”
Loomis seemed to brighten. “You’re sure? I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I abandoned you here.”
She flapped a hand. “Will you just scram. It’s not too late to bang on doors. Let’s save ourselves some legwork tomorrow. Start with properties overlooking the lake. I’ll call if I need you.”
Loomis didn’t need prompting twice. He rounded up a posse of deputies and headed out, and once they were gone, Maggie turned the Polaroid photo over again, the coolness heavy in her belly.
When they were barely eighteen, and as far as everybody knew, Rita had burned to death in a house blaze that the fire department marshal had later deemed accidental. According to the news at the time, both Mr. and Mrs. Grigoryan, Rita, and her two younger brothers had all suffocated in their sleep from smoke inhalation before burning into unrecognizable husks. The tragedy hadn’t been tragic enough to make the national newspapers, but it had been solemnly announced on the local TV news, and Maggie still remembered it vividly, like a scald.
She remembered the images of crying students, some collapsing from shock, and the grim-faced teachers trying to contain their own upset, holding hands in solidarity while Principal Myerson gave his reaction to the terrible news.
She remembered rushing to the bathroom, where she’d gripped the sink for fear of fainting, tear-filled eyes staring at her from the bathroom mirror, her thoughts afire.
She remembered lying awake at night in the weeks that followed, restless, helpless, stupidly blaming herself even though it wasn’t her fault.
Most of all, she remembered Rita’s disappointed expression the last time she’d laid eyes on her.
Maggie’s best friend had died that night, and Maggie had never quite gotten over it.
But you didn’t die. You survived. How?
Maggie didn’t have the answer. Not yet.
Somehow, Rita had survived the blaze that had killed the rest of her family, and the news of her death had been either a mistake or a lie.
Both outcomes were incredible.
How is something like that even possible?
Maggie’s gaze fell to the Polaroid picture again, taking in the washed-out image of two seventeen-year-old girls sitting on the end of a bed, cuddling and grinning as the photo was taken.
If Dana wasn’t Rita, why did she have Rita’s photo in her wallet?
Chapter Four
THE GAP
Maggie couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the younger, flame-haired version of Rita standing in the middle of the clearing, barefoot on Devil’s Landing, her gaze pleading with Maggie to do something as an inferno consumed her from the ground up.
A similar image had haunted Maggie for years.
Breathing hard, she rolled out of bed, grumbling as she clocked the lateness of the hour. It was a little after four a.m., and still dark out. Although Sunday had been slated as her day off, the lakeside murder had effectively rewritten her shift pattern for the week, and police reports didn’t write themselves. At best, she had four hours’ grace before she’d need to head into the office. Sooner, if sleep resisted.
Without switching on lights, Maggie pulled on her running gear.
Whenever she was this wired, she knew that trying to force sleep was like pushing water uphill with a rake. Her whole body had been vibrating like a tuning fork for hours, her thoughts ringing, and try as she might, she hadn’t been able to stop her thoughts from charging down every mental dead end in an attempt to explain what was presently inexplicable.
How did Rita survive without anyone knowing?
She clipped her phone to her armband and then made her way outside, knowing that if she didn’t burn off her excess energy, she’d be fried come morning.
In the dark, she limbered up at the foot of the driveway, forcing lactic acid from her muscles. Maggie had a policy: never run cold—always warm up first. She’d learned that lesson the hard way in her youth, experiencing crippling cramps that had floored her for long excruciating minutes, and miles from help. Nowadays, she never ran without stretching out the kinks first.
She had almost finished her warm-up when a light came on in the porch across the street. A second later, the front door opened and a dark-haired stringy man wearing plaid pajama pants and a baggy Ramones T-shirt came strolling out. He paused on the front walk to light a cigarette, sucking deeply before blowing a thick cloud of smoke into the night. He noticed Maggie and raised a hand in salutation. “Hey, neighbor.”
Maggie waved back. “Hey, Nick. Since when do you like Ramones?”
“I don’t. But the shirt was on sale, and I like the cut. For the record, I’m also the proud owner of a vintage Village People concert tee from seventy-nine.”
Barefooted, he padded across the lawn toward her, a trail of smoke curling in his wake.
Nick Stavanger was the neighborhood night owl. He worked as a columnist at the Orlando Chronicle, where he regularly lambasted city commissioners about costly public policies and, on occasion, ran investigative pieces on crime and punishment. He and Maggie had been friends the last nine years, since he’d accidentally backed a U-Haul truck over her mailbox the day he’d moved in.
“You’re up early, Maggie,” he said, crossing the street toward her.
“Late,” she answered.
“Ouch.” He stopped at the foot of her driveway and began to mirror her warm-up routine.
Even in the poor light, Maggie could see a dried track of toothpaste on his T-shirt and two-day stubble coating his chin.
“So, Detective,” he said, leaning to one side, vertebrae cracking, “what’s the story here? Only time I see you up and around at this godforsaken hour is when you have murder on your mind.”
She reached over her head. “You can read all about it in Monday’s paper.”
He laughed. “Touché. Seriously, though, if you need to unload, I’m all ears. There’s a bottle of twelve-
year-old scotch on my coffee table right now, just crying out to be drunk. We could share sob stories and cheer each other up. Maybe watch The Golden Girls.”
“You’ve got The Golden Girls on DVD?”
“I do. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget my Friends box sets.”
“You certainly know how to sweet-talk a woman, Nick.”
“I hope not.” He blew out smoke. “Well, do I get a scoop?”
“Not right now.”
He made a wounded face. “Tough crowd tonight.”
As sincere as Nick was, Maggie knew that his offer to talk things through came with an ulterior motive. At heart, Nick was a journalist, and as such he never let a friendship get in the way of a good story. At some point, probably when they were well oiled and their inhibitions asleep, he’d start to press her for insider scoops—the journalist in him unable to resist—and what started out as a friendly chat would soon deteriorate into an awkward interrogation and then an uncomfortable silence.
“Got to run,” she said, wrapping up her routine and jogging away. “Catch you later?”
“I wouldn’t stake your career on it, Detective,” he called after her. “Have a good one.”
Maggie waved a hand, then turned her focus on her run.
Right away, her restless energy urged her to sprint, to burn it off as quickly as possible, but she resisted, keeping her stride steady as the road inclined out of the cul-de-sac. Elbows tucked in. Soft footfalls striking the cement.
As she turned right onto Hammocks Drive, she glanced back into the cul-de-sac, but all she could see of Nick in the dark was the glow from his cigarette.
It was all uphill from here to White Road. Maggie followed the snaking sidewalk, keeping her stride shallow to allow for the steepness of the slope.
Running wasn’t just Maggie’s way of keeping off the pounds. It helped her think, detach, and sometimes to zone out when too much thinking became unproductive. Health and work permitting, Maggie ran five miles every day without fail, her preferred route taking her east to the West Oaks Mall, where she would complete several circuits of the crumbling parking lot before retracing her steps home. The hypnotic metronome of pounding the pavement bringing order and occasionally enlightenment. It wasn’t the most picturesque route—mostly the cream-colored featureless backs of mall buildings and the endless undulations of cracked asphalt—but it was quiet and deserted at six in the morning when she usually ran, and that was the draw.
But she didn’t head that way this morning.
At the intersection with White Road, Maggie went left instead of right. And as her speed increased on the flatter level, her thoughts revisited the events of the last few hours.
An apologetic associate medical examiner and his assistant had arrived at the crime scene at around ten, and while they had busied themselves assessing the burned body, Maggie had studied the setup from a killer’s perspective, reconstructing in her mind the various scenarios that might have led to the same grisly outcome: Dana’s death.
First off, she’d wanted to know how Dana had come to be in the woods.
An absence of drag marks meant one of two things: Either Dana had walked to the clearing unassisted, or her killer had carried her there. The former pointed to Dana still being alive at that point, while the latter indicated a killer with the physical strength to carry a dead weight some hundred or so yards from the roadway.
Were you still alive at Devil’s Landing, or already dead?
Secondly, Maggie had wanted to know why the killer had chosen that particular spot as his dump site.
Although it wasn’t located in the sticks per se, the clearing was isolated. It pointed to someone familiar with the lay of the land—a local man, as Loomis had said, or even somebody associated with the high school across the street.
Did you know your killer?
Shortly after eleven, weary-looking Forensics Squad technicians had arrived at the death scene, and a detailed inspection had ensued, including a videoed walk-through. Then, with the assistance of a dozen deputies, the entire cordoned-off area had been systematically searched. Evidentiary items had been photographed in situ and logged before being collected, and casts had been taken of the boot prints in the muddy beach.
Around midnight, Loomis had returned empty handed. All told, he and his posse had canvassed more than one hundred homeowners in the gated community hugging the lake. But none had reported seeing anything out of the ordinary—except, of course, for bunches of small ghouls scuttling from house to house—and nobody recalled seeing anyone suspicious on the parkway either.
Under the cover of dusk, and with most people who were outside at the time preoccupied with the Halloween festivities, the killer had come and gone seemingly unnoticed.
Maybe a traffic cam had picked something up?
Finally, the burned body had been carefully extracted from the woods, and, satisfied that all the death evaluation steps had been completed, the associate medical examiner had released the scene. One by one, the EMS vehicles had disappeared into the night, and everyone had gone their separate ways.
But Maggie hadn’t called it a night, not right away. She’d made a detour, stopping by the address on the driver’s license, curious to see if there was a husband waiting for his wife to come home. But the house had been dark, and her persistent knocking had gone unanswered, leaving her even more unsettled.
Maggie sidestepped a burst pumpkin lying in the middle of the sidewalk, its jack-o’-lantern face ripped wide open, gooey bits of it spattered down the street.
For the life of her, she didn’t get Halloween.
Nora said it was because Maggie didn’t have kids, and that being a parent changed everything. Parenthood transformed the mundane into the marvelous. Maggie had seen the change in Loomis when the twins had come along. His priorities had switched overnight, and now he thought twice about putting himself in harm’s way.
Was that an evolutionary thing, or just part of growing up?
Maggie’s foot slid on a chunk of pumpkin skin, and she corrected her balance, crossing the street and going north on Montgomery, her thoughts returning to the case.
Sometime Sunday, Maury Elkin would examine Dana Cullen’s burned remains, and tests would be undertaken to determine the exact cause and time of death. A murder investigation would be officially opened, and a time line for Dana’s last known movements would be established as quickly as possible. Friends, neighbors, and coworkers interviewed. Anyone with an ax to grind routed out and questioned.
The wedding band on Dana’s finger pointed to her being married. It didn’t account for her first name being changed, but it could account for the different last name.
Is your husband lying awake in bed right now, wondering where you are?
At the outset of every homicide investigation there were always dozens of questions in need of answering. Some answers would come quickly—the victim’s place of work, their familial relationships, their lifestyle—while others would need painstaking care and attention to tease out into the open.
Who were their enemies? Who did they owe money or favors to? Who would benefit from their death?
Uncovering the truth about someone’s life was like doing a jigsaw puzzle with the gray side up. All the pieces were there, but it was only when all of them were fit together that it could be turned over and the bigger picture revealed in all its glory.
Maggie spotted the corner with Oak Street in the distance, and slowed her pace as the pavement headed uphill again.
Although she was barely a mile from home, she hadn’t been this far along Montgomery in years. Purposely, she avoided this part of the neighborhood. In total, she could count on one finger how many times she’d ventured here on official business in the last two decades.
She slowed to a fast walk, suddenly reticent about getting any nearer to the street that was home to so many of her childhood memories, good and bad.
Even in the dark, the street didn’t appear to hav
e changed much. The trees seemed a little taller, the houses a little smaller. Fences in need of painting and lawns in need of mowing. A picture-perfect postcard of sleepy suburbia, with no indication that anything bad could ever happen here.
But it had.
As Maggie reached the corner with Oak, she stopped altogether, a few yards short, unable to go any farther, her stomach knotting.
It was all in her head, she knew, but she could smell smoke lingering in the damp air. A distinct reek of smoldering wood that clawed at the back of her nose. And now that she listened, it was easy to confuse the rustle of leaves for the sound of flames licking wood and bubbling off paint.
Maggie held on to her cloying breath, her heart suddenly pumping wildly in her chest.
An empty lot lay between the first two houses on Oak Street. A large rectangle of darkness that, at first glance, could be mistaken as an innocent parcel of land waiting to be developed.
But it hadn’t always been this way.
As a child, Maggie had spent many hours here, riding her bike up and down the street with her friends, or getting into mischief at the lake at the end of the block. Skipping ropes and Rollerblading and fighting for turns on someone’s Nintendo. And as a young teenager, she’d hung out at number 1265 most weekends, doing girly stuff, daydreaming out loud, and boy-talking. But something bad had happened to bring a sudden and devastating end to all that, and things had never been the same again.
Maggie’s lungs began to burn, but she held on to the fiery breath all the same, her wide-eyed gaze roving the empty lot across the street.
Time had grassed it over, and several trees had sprung up in the passing years, but Maggie had a sense of things still being askew here, running much deeper than what met the eye. Unless somebody pointed it out, no one would ever know that a house had once stood on this spot, that there used to be ten properties on this quiet lane instead of the nine still standing.
Don't Even Breathe Page 4