by Beverly Long
“Did you see anything helpful?”
He shook his head. “Nothing matched up with what we saw in and around the area of Jane Picus’s house two nights ago to any traffic in and around her house yesterday. I think we need to talk to Terry Picus again.”
“Shouldn’t we wait... Never mind,” Rena said.
A.L. understood. Waiting might be polite or considerate, but every hour got them sixty minutes closer to another dead woman.
“I’ll make the call,” she said. “He probably spent the night in Milwaukee.”
With his daughter. After he’d told her that her mother was dead. He could not imagine having that conversation with Traci if something happened to Jacqui.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Okay. I’m going to get some coffee. Want a refill?”
He nodded and dialed the number. When Mr. Picus answered, his voice sounded husky. Probably had been a whole lot of crying the night before.
“This is Detective McKittridge.”
“Do you have news?”
He could hear the hope in the man’s tone. “We’re continuing to investigate,” he said. “We’d like to come see you, to ask a few more questions.”
The man sighed. “Fine. I’ll be home by noon.”
“How’s your daughter?”
“Shook,” the man said. “She was going to stay at school and take some summer classes, but she’s decided to come home instead.”
Probably didn’t want her dad to be alone. Daughters were like that. Always worried about their dads. Hopefully by fall, Mr. Picus would have convinced her to go back to school.
He’d had a message that the evidence techs were finished, but he’d not yet released the crime scene. “Wait outside your house. We’ll meet you there at noon,” A.L. said.
He’d no more than hung up when his desk phone rang. He was tempted to ignore it. Everybody who knew him knew to call his cell. But he snagged it on the fifth ring.
“McKittridge,” he said.
“Detective McKittridge, this is Officer Bruce Byron.”
He’d met Bruce Byron, or BB Gun, as he was affectionately called after he’d almost shot his own foot off six weeks into the job. That had to be a couple years ago, and in a town the size of Baywood, patrol officers often mingled with detectives. He was acting a little formal, but then again, he was a twentysomething and A.L. was not. “What can I do for you, Bruce?”
“Do you have a daughter in high school? Traci McKittridge?”
A.L.’s goddamn heart maybe stopped. He looked up at the clock. Half past eight. Traci should be in class. A dozen scenarios, most of them having to do with some crazy kid and an assault rifle, flashed through his brain. “Yes. Has something happened?”
“She’s okay,” Bruce Byron said quickly. “But I picked her up under the Oaken Bridge.”
The Oaken Bridge connected the east and west sides of town that the river split. Vehicle traffic used the upper bridge and underneath the pedestrians walked. On nice days like today, it got some heavy use from idiots intent upon logging their ten thousand steps and who didn’t mind dodging Baywood’s homeless.
What the fuck had she been doing there?
“She...she was drinking,” Bruce Byron said.
“Alcohol?” A.L. asked, then immediately felt stupid.
“Yes. I could smell it on her. She had it in a plastic cup. Said it was just a Diet Coke, but I asked her to open her purse and there were a couple of those small bottles, like you get on airplanes. Empty. When I looked at her driver’s license, I saw the last name and figured she might belong to you.”
“Where is she?”
“I took her home. And I’m sitting outside your house right now. She wasn’t driving or anything, and I just figured this might not need to go any further.”
A.L. swallowed hard. “Thank you.” He pushed back his chair. “I’m on my way. Can you just stay there for another ten minutes?”
“Sure. No problem. She’s...a real polite young lady.”
Who was truant from school and drinking under age. It wasn’t dealing heroin, but for a kid who did everything right, it was pretty damn unusual. He scribbled a note for Rena. Family thing. Back in thirty.
He didn’t use his lights or siren, but he still got to Franklin Avenue in record time. He waved at Bruce Byron as he pulled into the driveway. The cop waved back before driving away.
He used his key to get in. And there she was, sitting on the couch, watching television. Like she had every right. He picked up the remote and turned it off. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” he said.
She stared at him. “There’s nothing going on.”
“I don’t think so, Traci. You’re a sixteen-year-old girl who should have been in biology class, and instead, you’re tipping one back under the Oaken Bridge.” He took a breath and asked the question that was burning in his brain. “How long have you been drinking?”
“Today? For about the last twenty minutes.”
He held up a finger. “Don’t be a smart-ass. You know what I mean. How long have you been sneaking alcohol?”
“I don’t sneak alcohol. This is the first time I’ve ever done this. I’m not Aunt Liz.”
“What do you know about Aunt Liz?”
“Mom told me that she was back in a treatment program again. She heard it at the salon.”
It was true. His sister, Liz, his lovely sister who’d lost her husband, her looks and probably her liver to alcohol, was on day twelve of a twenty-eight-day intensive inpatient experience. The kind that occurred when multiple outpatient stints hadn’t taken root.
“It would have been nice to hear it from you,” she said.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to be giving me lectures,” he said. He let out a loud sigh. “And given what Aunt Liz is dealing with, I would think you would understand that this...scares the hell out of me,” he admitted.
“I get that, Dad,” she said, sounding contrite for the first time. “And I probably should have thought this through a little better. It’s just that I’m sick of school. It’s so boring. We’ve got two weeks left, we’re not learning anything new and I’d just had enough. I got the booze from a friend who carries it in her purse. It was a nice day and I just thought I’d have a drink.”
The fact that kids were carrying alcohol to school didn’t surprise him. “So rum and Coke is your drink?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have a drink. It’s what she had, so I took it. But it was pretty good,” she admitted sheepishly.
She was a charmer. Always had been. “It’s illegal for you to be drinking. You could have been arrested. Would have been if the officer hadn’t recognized the last name.”
“That was BB Gun, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“I hope you didn’t call him that,” A.L. said. “Since he was cutting you some major slack.”
“I didn’t call him that. But it did keep me amused in the car ride here.”
“Are you amused now?” he asked, arching his eyebrows.
“No,” she said, her tone more respectful. “I’m sure you were working and busy, and this was a big interruption in your day.”
“Screw that. I don’t care about that. I care about you. I care about you being safe and whole and staying away from things that can mess that up. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you,” he said.
Tears welled up in his baby girl’s eyes, and he sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her. “Don’t cry,” he said.
That never worked, and sure enough, ten minutes later, his shirt was wet and he felt as exhausted as Traci looked. “Are you going to tell Mom?” she asked. “She’s going to go crazy. What if she tells me I can’t go to prom?”
It was hard telling how Jacqui would react. Traci doing all the right things was very import
ant to her.
“Please don’t tell her, Dad. Please.”
It wasn’t the right thing to do. And if Jacqui found out, she’d probably turn it into a huge fucking thing. But he always had a hard time saying no to Traci. And he believed her. Didn’t think she was lying about this being a one-time thing.
“Okay. But no more drinking. And no more skipping school.”
She hugged him. “I promise. I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too, Tweety Bird. Now go brush your teeth and wash your face. I’m taking you back to school.”
* * *
“Where were you?” Rena asked when he got back to his desk.
He told her. After all, he’d promised not to tell Jacqui. Anybody else was fair game, and he knew with Rena it wouldn’t go any further. When he was finished, he studied her. “You think I did the right thing?”
She nodded. “Most kids skip school once in a while. I know I did.”
“Me, too.”
She smiled. “And look at us now. Maybe you should go home and lock her in her room.”
“I can’t. She’s back at school.” He paused. “She’s a good kid.”
“She’s a great kid,” she said.
“The alcohol scares me,” he admitted.
Rena knew about Liz. Didn’t know that she was in a program, but knew her struggles, had been a firsthand witness to a couple of Liz’s meltdowns over the years. “I doubt there are many sixteen-year-olds who haven’t had a drink,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that she’s going to have a problem. It doesn’t mean that she’s Liz.”
“That’s what I told myself.”
“And it certainly could be worse.”
This in a county where all first responders carried naloxone to respond to heroin overdoses. “You’re right. I’m done talking about it.” He clicked keys on his computer. “I’ve got something from the Petal Poof,” he said.
“Sharon sent it to me, too. I went through it while I was waiting for you. I saw something,” she said.
He waited.
“Not related to the case. But you might find it interesting. Craig Olson ordered flowers.”
Craig Olson taught honors biology. He wore tennis shoes all the time and perpetually had a messenger bag over one shoulder. “Okay.” She was going somewhere with this, just not in a big hurry.
“The delivery address was your house. On Franklin.”
He almost spit out his coffee. Was that why Traci was skipping school? Had she gotten involved in a relationship with a teacher and couldn’t face him? Or the other kids if word had leaked out?
His baby. He was going to rip the guy apart. He stood up, picked up his keys. “She’s sixteen, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “I hope he enjoys prison.”
Rena held up a hand. “The flowers were for Jacqui, not Traci.”
He sat back down. “Oh.” He opened up the spreadsheet, found the transaction, stared at the information.
“Did you know she was dating?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t expect her to say anything. I thought Traci might.”
“Her mom probably asked her not to.”
That sounded right. But it wasn’t fair to Traci. “He’s got to be ten years younger than Jacqui. What is she thinking?”
“Probably not about his age. How do you feel about it?” Rena asked.
He felt nothing. “I hope she’s happy.” That was a lie. He didn’t care if she was happy or unhappy. “Give the list to Ferguson and Blithe and have them comb through it and identify anything unusual.”
“Right,” Rena said. The phone on her desk rang. She answered it, then said, “A.L. is here. I’ll put you on Speaker.” She put the receiver down and lowered the volume on the speaker in deference to the others in the room.
“Morning, A.L.”
It was Carrie Stack, and it reminded him that it had been too long since he’d heard her say those words from the other side of the bed.
“Morning, Carrie. What do you know?”
“I know that Jane Picus’s cause of death is asphyxiation due to smothering, and I’m a hundred percent confident that she was killed in a similar manner to your other three victims.”
He’d been expecting this, but still, it was hard to hear the words. “Will your office be making a statement?” There had been three messages from the press waiting for him when he’d arrived this morning.
“Yes. Of course, we won’t make any link to the other murders.”
She wouldn’t need to. The press would do that on their own. And they would hound him for confirmation. “Thanks for the heads-up,” he said.
“Of course. Goodbye, Detectives.”
Maybe he’d call her later. He looked across the desk at Rena. She had her purse over her shoulder. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I have a doctor’s appointment. It’s one I can’t cancel. But I’ll be back in time for the task force meeting.”
“No problem,” he said. And because Rena seemed kind of down, he added, “We’re going to get this asshole.”
“Just a matter of time,” she said before she walked away.
* * *
Just a matter of time. The minute she’d said the words, she wanted to take them back. That was some version of what Dr. Mobriani had said to her and Gabe the first time they’d met with him. He’d couched it as, You getting pregnant is probably just a matter of time.
Gabe hadn’t heard the probably. He’d been so confident that once they sought medical intervention they’d be pregnant within months. It was as if the eighteen months that they’d already been trying had been forgotten.
But now, another year and a half later and still no baby, it was becoming the elephant in the corner of the room. She hadn’t even mentioned to Gabe that she had an appointment this morning. She’d thought about canceling, because it was hard to focus on anything but the dead women, but...she really just wanted this so badly.
Dr. Mobriani’s office was in a clinic building across the street from the hospital. It was always the perfect temperature, and there was classical music playing in the background. The chairs in the waiting room were a rich brown leather, and an aquarium—the biggest she’d ever seen—took up most of one interior wall.
He was a soft-spoken Indian man who preferred to sit next to his patients rather than across the desk as he counseled them about the infertility journey. Had been known to hold a hand in comfort when the going got really tough.
Like when IVF failed. Twice.
Today they would talk about other things. Things that she wasn’t ready yet to discuss with Gabe.
The receptionist escorted her back to Dr. Mobriani’s office. He stood when she entered and shook her hand. “Your husband is coming?” he asked.
Rena shook her head. “Just me.”
“Of course,” he said. “Let’s sit.”
A half hour later, she left the office. She wasn’t feeling better or worse—although the skeleton of a plan was forming. She would think it through, then talk with Gabe.
A block down was a bakery that she and Gabe used to frequent when they were dating. She hadn’t been there for months. But right now, she could use a Danish. She walked, rather than drove, wanting to enjoy the warm sun of the May day.
She caught her reflection in the store windows. It was a good hair day. Once summer humidity sank in, she’d resemble the lion in The Wizard of Oz.
Gabe loved to tease her about her hair—said it was the first thing he’d noticed about her. And once they’d started living together, and waking up together, she’d become Redhead Bedhead, or RB for short. He didn’t use it in public often, but once, when his brother, Danny, had overheard him, Rena had let Danny assume that it stood for Rena Beth.
Danny had taken to calling her RB, and she’d let it go. It seemed to tickle Gabe that his broth
er misunderstood the inside joke. She would never understand their relationship. Maybe it was because she was an only child. She knew Gabe and Danny loved each other, but there was always a little edge between the two of them. More on Gabe’s part, likely because he was younger by two years.
Gabe was rarely competitive when he played cards. Unless his opponent was Danny. He was, most of the time, tolerant of those who had different political beliefs. Unless it was Danny. He rarely made fun of people. Unless it was Danny.
And because Danny didn’t passively take it every time, there had been some tense family dinners over the years. For the most part, Rena was able to ignore it. But every once in a while, she’d lose her patience and launch into a tirade about the stupidity of men.
She was three feet away from the door, still looking in the store windows, when she stopped short. Took a quick step back. Then more carefully edged forward.
There, at a corner table inside the sunny bakery, was Gabe. With a woman.
She could see both their profiles. He was leaning forward, his forearms resting on the table. He was talking.
She was smiling. Listening. Like what he was saying was fascinating. Her hair was blond, one side short and tucked behind her ear, the other side a little longer and curving around her face. She wore a light green linen dress. Had a tan Michael Kors bag next to her chair. Maybe thirty, certainly not much older.
What the hell was this? She knew there could be a thousand innocent explanations, but her head went to a dark place very quickly. She should just go in. Order her coffee. Get a pastry, maybe two. Then turn, smile and say, “What a surprise.”
She could hear the words in her head. Nice, sane words.
Or maybe, “I have a gun and I know how to use it.”
That felt better somehow. She took a small step backward. She was strung out from her visit to the doctor, knew that she wasn’t at her best. She’d simply ask him about it tonight.
She turned and walked quickly back to her vehicle. Almost ran the last thirty yards. Threw herself into the front seat, started the engine and cranked up the air conditioner. God, she was hot. She looked into the rearview mirror and could see the sweat on her temple.
