A Tracers Trilogy

by Laura Griffin

  Ric rubbed his bleary eyes and returned his attention to the case file in front of him. It was pitifully thin, which, given the fact that the murdered grounds-keeper had been both poor and illegal, wasn’t surprising. Money was tight everywhere, and even homicide cases had to be prioritized. From the looks of it, this one hadn’t been given more than about two days of a detective’s time. Ric finished skimming the autopsy report and flipped to the last page of the detective’s notes. The ballistics report was tucked in back, right behind a couple of crime-scene photos. The half-page report told Ric what he already knew. Carlos Garza had been killed by a forty-caliber bullet, which had probably been fired by a Glock. The shell casing had been run through IBIS, but the database didn’t contain any matches.

  Until now. The same weapon that had fired the bullet that killed Garza had been used to kill Frank Hannigan. Had been used to nearly kill Mia. Every time Ric thought about it, the burning in his gut intensified.

  What was she caught up in? And why was she lying to him? She was hiding something. Ric knew it, just as surely as he knew he was about one hot look away from dragging her off to bed and stripping away everything between them—the lies, the secrets, everything. No matter what she told him, he knew that trust and sex were all part of the same package with Mia. Ric knew that if he could get her naked, he could get her trust. And that, more than anything, was what he needed right now.

  Ric closed the folder and looked into the file box. It contained only two other items: an envelope holding the brass recovered from the crime scene and a paper evidence bag containing the gardener’s clothes.

  “Still down here, eh?”

  Ric glanced up as a bulky guy with white hair stepped into the room. Ric had never met him, yet he was all too familiar. He looked like every homicide cop on the brink of retirement Ric had ever known, right down to his thinning hair and his clogged arteries.

  “Brice Baker?” Ric ventured.

  He leaned against the door frame and rattled his pocket change. “That’s me.”

  “They told me you were in court today.”

  “Judge took a recess.” Baker pulled a pack of Winstons from the pocket of his cheap navy blazer and tapped out a cigarette. “Got your phone message. What can I do you for?”

  “I’m up here on a case. Carlos Garza.” Ric nodded at the file. “Saw your name on the log. Looks like you checked out this jacket about six years ago?”

  Baker blew out a stream of smoke, ignoring the NO SMOKING sign posted beside the door. “Groundskeeper up at the country club. Bullet to the forehead, I seem to recall.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “That case is colder than a witch’s tit.”

  “Not much in the file, either,” Ric said. “Can I ask why you checked out the case file?”

  “Sure can. Don’t mean I’m gonna remember much.” He stepped up to the table and took a look, ashing on the linoleum floor as he flipped through the pages. “Yeah, I recall it now. I’d planned to interview him. He was on my list of witnesses on another case. Checked out before I could track him down, unfortunately.”

  Ric’s interest picked up. A list of witnesses implied a serious investigation. “What was the other case?”

  “A homicide.” Baker sank into the metal chair at the end of the table and took another drag.

  “When?”

  “Oh, ’bout six years ago.” He pulled the file toward him and tapped the date on the autopsy report with a meaty finger. “Yup, just a few days before ol’ Carlos bought it. This was a teenage girl. Stabbing vic. She was found in the woods near the golf course.”

  Ric sat forward. “Laura Thorne?”

  Baker’s gaze sharpened. “What have you got on it?”

  “Her name came up in connection with another case I’m working.” Goddamn it, Mia was right. There was a link. Ashley Meyer, Laura Thorne, Frank Hannigan, now this. It all tied together. Ric just didn’t know how.

  “You worked that case,” Ric stated, although he hadn’t known the detective’s name until now. Jonah had given Ric a notebook full of names and numbers to follow up on while he was in Fort Worth, and he’d been planning to do it after he read the Garza file. Now the detective was sitting right in front of him.

  “Messy business.” Baker shook his head. “Pretty girl, too. Least she was, up until some nut job got to her. Slashed her up good, dumped her in the woods. Grounds-keeper you got there”—he nodded at the file—“he was on shift when she went missing from a party out there at the country club. Thought he might have seen something. Woods where she was found border on the golf course he tends, so I had it in my mind to interview him, see if he knew anything.”

  “You guys ever close the case?” Ric asked, although he knew the answer. Mia had looked into it just last week, and she was thorough.

  “Nope. Sent her clothes off to the lab. Nothing useful turned up. That case file’s been collecting dust for a while now.”

  Unbelievable. A homicide with a clear link to another unsolved homicide, and yet both cases hadn’t been looked at in years.

  Baker dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and crushed it out with his shoe. The shoe was polished. Baker’s shirt was pressed and his hair combed neatly— probably all for his court appearance. The man might be close to retirement, but he still took pride in his job, which made Ric bite back all of the snide comments he wanted to throw out right then.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Baker said. “But you know how it is. Money. Case loads. Our population’s ’bout doubled these last twenty years. You think the budget’s kept up? Heck, no. We still got just a handful of guys working a shitload of cases. We focus on the fresh ones. The ones with suspects, witnesses, physical evidence. I bet it’s the same where you are.”

  Ric didn’t say anything, which was confirmation enough. It was the same everywhere. But that didn’t make it okay. Once these cases went cold, it was next to impossible to heat them up again. It took confessions, DNA hits, people like Mia who were willing to take a second pass at old, forgotten evidence using new technology.

  “You still have the case file?” Ric asked.

  The detective nodded down the endless row of shelves lined with cardboard file boxes. “Bottom shelf. End of that row.” He pushed back in his chair and stood up. “I comb through it every year or two, see if anything new jumps out.”

  Now it was Ric’s turn to be surprised. “You do?”

  “She sticks with me. Go through the crime-scene photos. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Ric followed him down the long row of boxes, sobered by the knowledge that each one held evidence of a crime that had destroyed lives and devastated families. Baker stopped at the end and stooped down to pull out a box. He handed it to Ric, then pulled a second box from the shelf.

  “Lot more than the Garza file,” Ric commented as they carried the boxes back and dropped them onto the table.

  “Pretty blond teenager. You know how it is.” Baker pulled off the lid to his box and tossed it aside. “Turned out she was a high-class call girl. Me? I’d call that an oxymoron, but that’s what the press labeled her. They got hold of some pictures from some Web site she was on and kept running them over and over on the news, so the story wouldn’t go away. Even my partner got obsessed with it.” Baker reached into the box and pulled out a fat accordion file. “Now, most of what you want? It’s in here. The rest of this is noise mostly, stuff that never went anywhere.”

  But Ric was already thumbing through another folder, this one filled with newspaper articles. “What’s all this?”

  “Ah, just some research I did once on similar cases.”

  Ric glanced up at him.

  “Told you, she sticks.” Baker looked almost apologetic as he explained his continued interest in Laura Thorne. “Something about that girl—maybe her age, I don’t know. It’s a memorable case.”

  Ric pictured Mia sitting beside him at El Patio, peeling the label off her beer and looking uncomfortable as
she told him about her haunted dreams. He thumbed through the pile of news clips. Homicides mostly. A few rapes, all of young women in Texas, Louisiana, or Oklahoma. A clipping fluttered to the floor, and Ric crouched down to retrieve it from the beneath the table. He stared at the image of a smiling young girl. “Paroled Sex Offender Suspected in Teen Stabbing Death,” the headline read. Something about the girl’s youthful grin made it impossible for Ric to look away.

  He stood up. “Hey, they ever collar this guy?” He showed Baker the clipping.

  “Nah, not enough evidence.”

  “Think it’s related to the Laura Thorne murder?”

  “My best guess is no. That was twenty years ago. And the MO was totally different. I just ran across that and kept it, I don’t know why. Maybe because it was a stabbing.”

  Ric slipped the article back into the file, and the photo caption caught his eye. His hands froze as he read the name.

  Jonah’s cell phone started buzzing the second he tossed his gym bag onto the floor of his pickup. He dug it out and recognized his partner’s number on the screen.

  “Where are you?” Ric demanded by way of greeting.

  “On my way to pick up dinner. Want me to grab you some?”

  “I’m still in Fort Worth.”

  Shit, he should have been back hours ago. “What happened up there?” Jonah asked.

  “A lot. I’ll fill you in later. Listen, you talked to Mia today?”

  “Nope.”

  Ric cursed.

  “Why would I talk to her?” Jonah fired up his truck and navigated the congested parking lot filled with people still committed to their New Year’s resolutions.

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe she’d been by the station or something. Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t reach her. She’s not answering her phone. I need you to go by her house.”

  Jonah turned into traffic and cast a longing glance at the row of neon signs lining the highway. He hadn’t eaten all day, and he’d just spent an hour lifting weights.

  He sighed. “Where does she live?”

  Ric recited some directions, and Jonah pulled an illegal U-turn. “You want me to check if her car’s there or what?”

  “Let me know if she’s home,” Ric said. “And if anything looks funny, go in and check it out. I’ll give you her alarm code.”

  “How do you know her alarm code?”

  “I saw her enter it the other night.”

  Jonah filed that away along with the alarm code as Ric rattled it off. He heard the worry in his partner’s voice and wasn’t sure what to make of it. Ric wasn’t a worrier. Protective, yeah, but he didn’t sweat the small stuff.

  Jonah saw the sign for Sugarberry Lane. “I’m turning on her street now,” he said. “Call you in a few.”

  Jonah located the little white house but learned next to nothing from the first pass. Some lights were on. No car in the drive, but the door to the single-car garage was closed, so she could have parked in there. He pulled another U-turn at a stop sign and parked in front of a house across the street from Mia’s where a FOR SALE sign was planted in the yard.

  Jonah retrieved the pistol from his gym bag and the lock-picking tool from his glove box before climbing out of the truck. He left his keys inside. Anyone dumb enough to want a dinged pickup with nearly two hundred thousand miles on it was welcome to it. As he crossed Mia’s street, he marveled at the amount of crap he was willing to put up with for his partner. But then, it was a two-way street. They had each other’s back, which was more than Jonah could say for some of the guys he’d worked with over the years.

  Jonah walked up the sidewalk. What was it with this girl? He didn’t like Mia Voss, not since that meeting with the district attorney. He could tell when people were lying, and she’d had been lying her ass off through that entire meeting, which didn’t sit well with him. It shouldn’t have sat well with Ric, either, but the man was blinded by lust. Jonah half hoped he’d nail her and get it over with so he could get his head back in the game and start clearing some of their cases.

  He rang the bell and waited. He peered through the windows flanking the door. He rang again. No TV on or voices that he could hear. Blinds covered the windows. He went around back. After finding the garage empty, he knocked on the door off the driveway.

  Lights on in the kitchen. Drawers and a few cabinet doors hanging open. Not what he considered a good sign. Jonah knocked again, but again, no answer. He spent about ten seconds picking the lock with his slender tool before stepping inside. The alarm beeped at him, and he tapped in the code.

  “Mia? Jonah Macon here. You home?”

  No answer. He stood for a moment in her kitchen. All of the appliances were off. A notepad sat on the counter beside a cordless phone. It was a mess, but he didn’t pick up on that weird vibe he usually got at a crime scene. No funky smells. No signs of struggle. He glanced around and ventured into the hall, where a coat closet stood open and a heap of scarves and gloves lay on the floor. Jonah turned down a hallway leading to a bedroom, a bathroom, and what looked to be the master suite, where low music emanated from a radio. He stepped into the room.

  Clothes were strewn across the bed. An empty duffel bag sat on the floor, and the closet stood open, as if someone had been packing in a hurry. Jonah glanced at the clock. Nine-sixteen, and the radio was tuned to NPR. Had someone turned it on tonight, or had it gone on that morning and no one had been there to silence it? Jonah’s detective instinct favored the second scenario. He glanced around some more. The top drawer of the dresser was open, and it looked as though someone had cleared out half the contents of—he stepped closer to see—the underwear drawer.

  “Make one move, and I’ll shoot.”

  Shit. The female voice behind him was almost as surprising as the words. He spread his hands and started to lift them above his head.

  “Not one move! I swear I’ll put a bullet in you.”

  Something in her tone told him she meant it. How the hell had she gotten the drop on him?

  He heard steps on the carpet behind him. He smelled perfume. It was soft and musky and didn’t belong to Mia Voss any more than that voice did.

  “Take that gun out of your pants, and toss it onto the bed. Now.”

  Jonah sighed. “Lady, I’m a cop.”

  “Now.”

  Slowly, he pulled the Glock from the waistband of his sweatpants and held it up by the trigger guard. “Jonah Macon, San Marcos PD. I’m a friend of Mia’s.”

  “Are you deaf, too?”

  Jonah took a deep breath and tossed the pistol onto the bed, turning as he did to get a look at her.

  She was tall and blond and wore a short black dress and high black boots that left way too much to his imagination. And she held a snub-nosed revolver aimed straight at his dick.

  Her wide blue eyes didn’t leave his face as she stepped to the bed and collected his pistol with her left hand. Confusion flittered across her face as she realized she didn’t have a place to put it. She glanced around, then backed up a few steps on those four-inch heels and set the gun on an armchair.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  He noticed the tremor in her fingers, which didn’t inspire much confidence as she reached into the tiny purse hanging off her shoulder and fished out a silver flip phone.

  “Ma’am, would you just listen before you do that? I told you, I’m a cop.”

  A cop who, very unfortunately, had left his ID in his truck.

  She ignored him and punched numbers on her sleek little phone. Shit, was she calling 911? This was going to be a huge pain in the ass—

  “Vince? Hi, it’s Sophie.” Her voice shook only slightly as she held the phone to her ear. “I’m standing in Mia’s house, and I’ve got a man here claiming to be a police officer. Jonah Bacon.”

  “That’s Macon.”

  “Jonah Macon … Uh-huh. San Marcos PD, he says.” Those blue eyes widened a bit. “Okay, than
ks. Make it quick, would you?” She dropped the phone back into her purse and thrust the gun forward. “My friend’s with the San Marcos police. He says he’s never heard of you.”

  “What?”

  “And he’s coming over. Along with several squad cars. They’ll be here any second.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonah rolled his eyes. No one said “squad cars.” And Moore was fucking with him, the little shit. This was probably payback for Jonah cleaning him out last month at the poker table.

  Jonah weighed his options. It would take him two seconds, tops, to disarm this girl, but if by chance she got a round off, he might seriously regret not talking his way out of this. He didn’t particularly feel like getting his balls shot off tonight.

  “Listen, Sophie, I really am a cop. I’m a friend of Mia’s, too. Call her up and ask her.”

  “What are you doing in her bedroom?” A little line formed between her brows, and he could tell she sort of believed him.

  “You want to aim that thing someplace else while we talk?”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Jonah closed his eyes and counted to three mentally. “Look, my partner, Ric Santos, was worried about Mia and asked me to check in on her, all right?”

  Evidently, “Ric” was the magic word, because all of the tension went out of her. She lowered her gun, and Jonah was surprised by the wave of relief he felt. He was tempted to drop to his knees and kiss her feet with gratitude. But then, that might have been because of the boots. He wasn’t sure where this woman was going dressed up like that, but he was extremely tempted to follow her.

  “Where’d Mia rush off to, anyway? Ric’s concerned.” He dropped the name in again, just for good measure.

  “That’s none of your business.” She glanced behind him. “Neither is her panty drawer. What are you doing in here?”