Invaded

by Jennifer M. Eaton

  A flush whipped through her chest. “Wait a minute, you don’t think I’m a suspect, do you?”

  “Well, you did show up.” He raised a brow before a smile crept across his lips. “No worries. I’m just doing my job.”

  Tracy relaxed, but only a little. Her eyes traveled over the remaining onlookers. Could one of them actually be a criminal? “So, do you question everyone who shows up to gawk?”

  “Nope, just the pretty ones.” He closed his eyes and looked away. “Sorry, that was probably the worst line you’ve ever heard.”

  A warmth spread through her middle. “Well, it was better than the, ‘I’m sure I know you from somewhere’ line.”

  A man in a suit leaned out Melissa’s front door. “Peters, we need you in here.”

  John straightened. “Duty calls. It was really nice seeing you again, although I wish it was under better circumstances.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  13

  Dak twitched, spiraling through John’s chest. *That went well.*

  “Yeah, I guess.” John walked toward the Harpoona residence.

  *Why didn’t you kiss her goodbye?*

  “We barely know each other.” His phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but swiped the bar to answer anyway. “Detective John Peters.”

  Tracy’s voice answered. “Oh, so it’s detective? You didn’t mention that.”

  He released the doorknob and looked over his shoulder. Tracy was still beside the barricade, holding a phone to her ear. “Yeah, well, they haven’t let beat cops wear jeans and blazers on the job yet, but I hear they’re working on it.”

  The wind carried her long, dark hair to the side. “You said I could call you any time.”

  He tried to hold back a childish grin. “Yeah, well, I’m kind of working right now.”

  She tucked her unruly hair behind her ear, adding a slight swing of her shoulders. “Okay, listen, this is going to sound completely impulsive and insane, and this is probably the worst place ever to do this, but I wanted to ask if you’d like to get a bite to eat or something some time?”

  *Whoa. Did she just ask you out?*

  Quiet. And, to Tracy, “You mean, like dinner?”

  “Dinner would be great. Thanks for asking.”

  For a moment, the weight of the crime scene lifted. Someone inside called his name again. They could wait. “How about we meet at the Villari’s in Sicklerville. Tomorrow at 7:00.”

  “That sounds great. I’ll look for you in the bar.”

  “Sounds like a plan. See you tomorrow.” He clicked off the phone, biting back a grin as he grabbed the door handle.

  *She’s going to think you’re an idiot for not picking her up. Who asks a girl to meet them somewhere?*

  “A cop working on multiple murder cases with practically no staff, that’s who. And she barely knows me.”

  “Talking to yourself again?” Art Commings waved his handheld tablet as he strode toward John.

  “Just working some stuff out in my head.”

  He’d go insane if he didn’t speak out loud. Sometimes it was easier to pretend Dak was standing beside him.

  John motioned to Art’s computer pad. “What have you found so far?”

  Art pointed to the back of the house. “Same M.O. as the last one, but Forensics says most of the incisions on the body didn’t take place in this location.”

  Shit. If this was the same guy that killed Diana Worth, the press coverage would explode, and these poor girls’ families would suffer for it.

  Dense humidity and the coppery tang of blood hung in the air as he followed Commings to the rear of the home. A couch and two recliners faced a flat screen television. Staff Sergeant Biggs crouched near the white tape marking the floor where Melissa’s father had found her body.

  Sergeant Biggs snapped off his disposable gloves and adjusted his tapered collar as John approached. “Forensics missed you this morning. They said it wasn’t the same without you yelling at them.”

  The tape hadn’t been blocked correctly. There was no way the girl’s neck was that long or her head that small. “I hope you told them to bite me,” John said.

  He worked to settle the roiling in his stomach. Freaking budget cuts were giving murderers the upper hand. There weren’t enough detectives left to work the caseload, let alone cops walking the beat. Melissa deserved better. If he hadn’t been questioning the last victim’s husband, he would have been first on the scene and made damn sure nothing was overlooked.

  “The blood patterns don’t compute.” Art pointed at the coppery stains on wall. “This asshole sliced her up somewhere else, but not enough to kill her. Torture maybe?” He glanced toward the rear of the house and pointed to the small, yellow cones on the floor marking dark smudges on the carpet. “It looks like she walked through the back door on her own. She was alive when she got here.”

  John took a deep breath, detaching himself from the life that had depended on the blood now soaked into the rug. He couldn’t dwell on Melissa. It was too late for her. The only good he could do for her and her family was to find the bastard who did this.

  The pressure behind John’s eyes told him Dak wanted him to look away. Anger boiled in his mind as Dak tried to block himself from the images contrived from the tape marking the ground, the deep stains marring the once-white carpet.

  John didn’t allow the darkness in, but keeping Dak’s volatile emotions from flooding his subconscious was always a problem. Even receded, Dak’s agitation boiled to the surface.

  “He did her right here.” Art folded his arms, looking at the outline on the floor. “The bastard cut her up somewhere, forced her to walk back home, and killed her in her own living room with her parents asleep upstairs.”

  John’s hands shook as he tried to hold in the heat emanating from Dak’s anger. “The parents didn’t hear anything? How is that possible?”

  “You ain’t really asking me that, right?”

  “It was a rhetorical question.” John squatted beside the lines showing Melissa’s final pose. He ran his fingers in the air above the line where her face would have been. “Why didn’t you scream for help?” John spoke to the lines, as if Melissa could answer from the grave. He crouched closer to the floor. “She was gagged.”

  “What?” Biggs said. “The body wasn’t gagged when we got here.”

  John pointed to the carpet. “Look at the indent here. It’s deeper, less soaked with blood.”

  Art squinted, probably pretending he saw what John pointed out. “Yeah. So?”

  “So, she was gagged. That’s why her parents didn’t hear anything. Forensics didn’t mention an indentation in the back of her hair?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Biggs said. “Shit. I should have made the team wait for you before removing the body.”

  “Interesting that the bastard took the gag with him.”

  “Trophy?” Art asked.

  John stood, his gaze following along the edge of the blood beneath the tape. “Her throat was cut, yes?”

  Biggs nodded.

  “He severed her vocal chords. Since she couldn’t scream anymore, he removed the gag and watched her die.”

  “Psychotic dick,” Art murmured.

  John stood. “It turned you on, watching her bleed out, didn’t it?” Light shone through the back door. He imagined the creep slipping through and taking a moment to glance back at his handiwork. “But there were two more people in the house.” He glanced back to the stairway that led to the bedrooms upstairs. “Two more people you could have killed.”

  “We have no reason to believe he’d look for another victim,” Biggs said. “Looks personal, like she was a premeditated target.”

  John’s gaze carried over the splatters of blood drying in the carpet fibers, over the lines marking the unnatural spread of her legs, and the final resting place of her hands. Oh, she was definitely the target.

  And everything about the woman who’d died last week, despite the robbery
consensus, had reeked of premeditated assault as well. Although he hadn’t been able to prove that, yet.

  Dak shimmied inside him, an erratic clatter within his ribs, as if the Ambient tried to hide beneath John’s organs. The entity settled again, allowing John to regain his focus.

  A slight chill touched his cheek as he walked through the back door and followed the red flags their team had placed along the path leading to the woods behind the house. John eyed the indents that they believed were footprints and the break in the shrubs beside the trees. “An easy getaway. But you knew that, didn’t you?” The flags shifted in the breeze, a line of perfectly uniform soldiers. Maybe too perfect. “The parents were asleep. There was no reason to rush. You wouldn’t have been so careless to leave tracks.”

  Dak shivered as John sauntered to the opposite side of the yard, taking in each blade of grass, each small rock, and each flower in the garden.

  Bingo.

  A row of marigolds lay on the ground in the middle of the floral border surrounding the property, their fluffy yellow heads smashed into the brown mulch. John looked back toward the house and to the woods. “You didn’t really go into the woods where they marked the escape path, but you made it look that way, didn’t you?” He turned back toward the house. “Commings!”

  “Yeah, what you got?” His partner ran toward him, his white collared shirt untucking from his polyester pants.

  John raised an arm, a warning for Art to keep his distance. “I need a team out here to block off this area. He didn’t enter the woods where you first thought.” He pointed to the right. “He entered right there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because deer and rabbits don’t crush plants like this. I need a mold. We might get a shoe size.”

  “A mold? Seriously? Wouldn’t a digitally modulated image be better?”

  “Nope. You know I’m old-fashioned. Take as many images as you want and then get me a mold.” Crouching brought John closer to the flowers. A thin piece of light wood with a red and blue stripe rounding the edge stuck out from the darker mulch. “And get me an evidence bag. I think our perpetrator may have dropped something.”

  14

  “You asked him out?” Laini threw a pillow at Tracy. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Tracy bit back her grin. “It just kinda happened.”

  “But damn, girl, at a crime scene? You have way more balls than I do. I don’t believe you did that.”

  “Me, neither, but when I saw him heading to that house…” John was maybe the only person she’d ever meet who understood what Tracy was going through. If he walked out of her life, she’d be alone with the entity inside her, lost to her own fears. She couldn’t let him walk away before she’d made sure she could see him again. “I was afraid I wouldn’t have the guts to call him later, and you know how it is. Sometimes guys act interested and then conveniently forget your number.”

  “Tell me about it.” Laini shifted one foot under her butt. “Was it weird, though, seeing Melissa’s house again?”

  “Very weird.”

  Everything about today was kinda morbid, but she needed that link, that assurance that her life could still be normal, that everything was going to be okay. As crazy as asking John out right then seemed, she’d do it again. In a heartbeat.

  Her gaze met Laini’s. “Did you know that murderers come back to the crime scene? Anyone there could have been the killer.”

  “Yeah, I heard that on TV. That’s why you wouldn’t catch me anywhere near there.”

  Tracy shifted her weight. Each face refocused in her mind. “They all looked so normal. It could have been any one of them.”

  “Scary.” Laini pulled her knees up and hugged them. “It almost makes you want to lock the front door and never come out.”

  Tracy nodded. Except now, for some reason, she wanted to go out more than ever.

  15

  “F’ed up, that’s what it is,” Art said, throwing an evidence bag across the table at John.

  “Come on, think. Melissa Harpoona and Diana Worth.” John tacked their pictures onto a bulletin board. “Do they have anything in common?”

  “Nothing. Noth-ing.” His partner crossed his arms.

  John frowned. “Who crawled up your ass and died?”

  Art baulked and closed his eyes. He grimaced.

  “Hey, man, what’s up with you?”

  Art shook his head, shifting his graying hair. “It’s nothing. Just not getting enough sleep.”

  Sleep? Art had been in the precinct far longer than John. Nothing phased the guy. Not until now, at least.

  But they didn’t have time for outside distractions.

  A flash of Tracy Seavers’s sparkling blue eyes crossed his thoughts. That tight-fitting T-shirt that showed off those round curves.

  Dak fizzed like a soda, but John pushed the memory aside. It was bad enough Art was unfocussed. The last thing John needed was to be sidetracked by a nice rack.

  Art leaned against his palm, stretching the skin around his right eye. “Could it be possible that your instincts are wrong, just this once?”

  Could they?

  John stared into Melissa Harpoona’s eyes, then Diana Worth’s. No. They were connected. He could feel it.

  “I’m not ready to give up on the possibility, so I need you to think.” John pointed at the war board. “What connects them?”

  Art threw his hands in the air. “They’re both blonde. I don’t know. Nothing else matches. One is a mother, the other is single. One hung out in bars, the other was on the PTA. Other than them both being murdered, it’s a dead end.”

  Sergeant Biggs entered the room, folder in hand. “Coroner’s report came back, gentlemen. I think you’ll find this interesting.” He tossed the file to Art. “As Peters suspected, Melissa Harpoona was also raped.”

  Obviously. John gritted his teeth. He didn’t need a goddamn autopsy to tell him that. “Give me something I can use.”

  “There you have it,” Art whispered, shoving the file toward John. “Preliminary DNA match. You were right. This was the same asshole that killed Diana Worth.”

  Two murders—one short of a serial killer. Shit.

  “Prelims have been known to be wrong, but let’s act like this is the official report from the lab.” Biggs turned to John. “You’re up, Peters. Do your magic and nail this scumbag.”

  John ran his fingers through his hair. “I know we’ve got a great track record, but that was when we had cops working the beat; when I had a team of people to bounce ideas off of.”

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Art asked.

  Biggs snorted. “This is an ugly one, Peters. I need to know you’re in the game.”

  “When the hell haven’t I been in the game?”

  Biggs held up both hands, but his gaze didn’t waver.

  John stared back with Art shifting nervously in his periphery.

  The Sergeant turned away. “Just give me this scumbag’s ass on a platter.” He yanked the door shut behind him.

  Taking a deep breath, John turned to his friend.

  Art suppressed a grin.

  “What?” John asked.

  “Nothin’. Just another day at the precinct.”

  16

  Tracy fidgeted with her purse. Why were barstools so uncomfortable? She adjusted her ankles, trying to prop her heels on the bar below her. The dress and heels were probably a bad idea.

  What had gotten into her, asking a guy out like that? Thank goodness he’d said yes, or she’d have felt like a complete oaf. But was he really interested, or only being polite?

  And what about her? Was she really attracted to John, or just grabbing for someone who could help her through the insanity that had entered her life?

  She sipped her drink. None of it mattered. At this point, they were only friends. But could they be more? A little shiver ran down her spine. The thought certainly didn’t disgust her. With those broad shoulders, chiseled cheek bones, and that ad
orable dimple that somehow begged to be kissed, she was surprised he didn’t have a girlfriend.

  The heat within her chilled. He never actually said he didn’t have a girlfriend. For all she knew, he was married. Did he have a ring on? Idiot. She never thought to check.

  A tweak of pain spread behind her eyes and she massaged the area between her brows. Maybe she’d overdressed for a friendly dinner, after all.

  Across the bar, a woman laughed. Her hand splayed over a bosom much too large for her low-cut blouse. The man she was with barely glanced at her. Well, that wasn’t true. His eyes stayed perched on her hand, as if willing her fingers to fall so her breasts would tumble over the bar top. Tracy imagined the scene in a perfume ad: An overly-boobed woman and a ruggedly-handsome man—hell, even his hair seemed to flow as if it were painted rather than combed. The man licked his lips, the desire in his eyes more apparent as they lingered on the cleavage bared for his amusement.

  What would it take to have a man look at her like that? She glanced down at her un-noteworthy boobs. Probably about ten grand and a plastic surgeon. She sighed. Not that she wanted guys to senselessly lust after her, but a brief glance once in a while wouldn’t be so bad.

  She didn’t have what it took to attract and keep a guy. They all left her, again and again. Four dates was her current record. Jason almost made it to five, if he’d stayed around long enough to take her out for her birthday. Asshole.

  Since she’d turned thirty, relatives had started to whisper at family parties when she’d shown up alone. Most of her younger cousins had already married. A few of them had kids.

  What was it about marriage and children that meant a life was complete, anyway?

  She puffed out a breath. They meant everything…everything that Tracy didn’t have.

  Her three recent breakups scrolled through her mind before she stopped herself. Rehashing every moment of those nights wasn’t helping. She’d done nothing wrong. None of the break-ups made sense. She’d even slept with a few of them.