by Lisa Jackson
Here we go, she thought and made quick introductions and both men were tense, sizing each other up. “David, this is Ty Wheeler.” Sam wished they’d both just evaporate. There was way too much testosterone floating around for this hour of the morning. “Ty—David Ross.”
Ty extended his hand. David pretended it didn’t exist. Great.
“I’ve known David for years,” she added, stepping out of the doorway and waving Ty in. “And Ty is the friend I was telling you about,” she said to David. She saw no reason to hide where she’d been. Besides, David needed a dose of reality. A big one.
Opening the hall closet, she found a raincoat and threw it on. “I’m going to make coffee. If either of you want a cup, great, but I’m going to warn you both that I’ve about had it with anyone telling me how to run my life.”
David was right on her heels as she made her way to the kitchen and opened her pantry door. “I want to talk to you alone,” he whispered.
“There’s no reason.”
“I flew all the way here to talk to you. The least you could do—”
“Don’t go there, David,” she warned, holding up a finger to cut him off. Pulling out a bag of ground coffee, she nudged the pantry closed with her hip, and added, “I already told you that if you’d planned to see me, you should have called. End of story.” She poured the coffee into the basket of the coffeemaker and filled the glass pot with water out of the tap.
Ty was leaning against the counter, legs outstretched, watching the interplay between David and her with intense eyes.
“This is nuts,” David said. “What do you know about this guy?”
Good question. “Enough,” she lied, and she saw Ty’s lips twitch.
“But with all the trouble you’re having down at the station, don’t you think you should…cool it…or check him out?”
“I think I’ll handle it my way.”
The skin over David’s cheekbones tightened, and every muscle in his body seemed tense. Rigid. “That’s the problem, Sam. You always do things your way.”
“Because it’s my life.”
“Fine. If that’s the way you want it, then—”
“It is. It works for me.”
She snapped on the coffeemaker as David, his face flushing, turned on his heel and stormed out of the kitchen. Italian shoes pounding on the floorboards he stomped through the foyer. The front door banged shut behind him.
“Don’t say a word,” Sam warned as the coffeemaker started to gurgle and sputter. “Not a word. I’m not in the mood.”
“Far be it for me to comment on your taste in men.” His hazel eyes sparked in amusement.
“Exactly. Now, I’m going upstairs to clean up and when I come down, if you’re still here, you can tell me all you know about Annie Seger.” She leveled him a stare guaranteed to melt steel. “No more lies, Ty,” she said. “I’m tired of being played for a fool.” With those final words hanging in the air, she flew up the stairs to her bedroom. The box she’d hauled out of the attic was still where she’d left it on the foot of her bed. All her notes on Annie Seger were inside.
Could she trust Ty? she asked herself, and the answer was a resounding “no.” Then again, she’d slept with him, spent hours with him, didn’t believe for a second that he’d do her physical harm.
But he’s a liar. Out for his own gain. He didn’t tell you about Annie. He used you.
All for his book.
That was his motive. He wasn’t out to scare her or harm her…he was out for personal gain.
“Aren’t we all?” she asked, yanking off her slip and reaching past the curtain to turn on the spray of her small shower. Within half a minute she’d stepped inside and felt hot rivulets massage her muscles and run through her hair. She wanted to live in that tiny tiled cubicle, but couldn’t waste the time, not with Ty downstairs. She shampooed, rinsed and was toweling off five minutes after turning on the hot water. There were still drips on her skin as she pulled on a pair of clean shorts and pulled a T-shirt over her head. Sliding into thongs, she ran a comb through her wet hair and ran a tube of lipstick over her lips. Voila. Good enough.
Seconds later she was down the stairs and found Ty in the kitchen toasting bagels and scrambling eggs. “You didn’t have much to work with,” he apologized.
She hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
“Hey, anytime someone cooks for me, I don’t complain. No matter what it is.”
“Good, cuz although I am a master chef, I do need utensils and just the right ingredients.” He placed a bowl of grated cheese, onions and milk in the microwave.
“Oh, cram it, Wheeler,” she said, smiling despite herself. She grabbed a butter knife and leveled it at him as she found a carton of cream cheese in the refrigerator, “And just remember you’re not off the hook. I’m still mad at you.”
“I figured.”
She waggled the knife in his direction. “This lying stuff is bad news. Very bad news.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“You’d better not, or I might be inclined to use this weapon where it would do the most good.” She flipped the butter knife in the air and caught it on the fly.
He laughed out loud. “Okay, now I’m scared.”
“I thought so.” Why couldn’t she stay angry with him?
The eggs were sizzling in the pan, and he stirred them with a wooden spoon. “We’re about done, here,” he said. “I thought we could eat outside.” He hitched his chin toward the back verandah.
“And then you’ll spill your guts about Annie Seger,” she surmised, leaning a hip against the counter and watching him play the part of the domestic in his shorts and T-shirt that was stretched across his shoulders. She took in his narrow waist and the backs of his legs—well muscled, tanned, covered with downy hair. Whether she liked it or not, Ty Wheeler got to her on a very basic level.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he promised, and she remembered his claim that he’d feared he was falling in love with her.
“Anything?” she teased and he sent her a sizzling look over his shoulder.
“Anything.”
Her throat went dry just as the bagels popped in the toaster and the microwave dinged.
“Why do you think Annie Seger was murdered? The police have claimed that she committed suicide,” Samantha said, pushing her plate aside. She and Ty were seated at the glass-topped table under the porch overhang, and she’d waited until they’d finished eating before bringing up the question that had been pulsing through her mind for hours.
A hummingbird was flitting between the blossoms of the bougainvillea and sailboats skimmed across the lake. Somewhere down the street a lawn mower roared while overhead the wake of a passing jet was dissipating into the cloudless sky.
Ty rested a heel on one of the empty chairs and frowned. “So you haven’t had time to read my computer disk yet?” Before she could protest, he said, “I know you took it, and if you’d read through the research, you’d understand.” He leaned over the table, closer to her. “Annie Seger was despondent, yes, and she had been drinking—she’d gone to a party and some kids had witnessed it. She’d had a fight with her boyfriend, Ryan Zimmerman, probably over the baby and what to do about it. There were witnesses who’d said as much. Annie had even had her friend Prissy drive her home that night. When she got there, the house was empty. She’d tried to call you again, but hung up before she’d gotten through, and that’s when things get blurry. Did she sneak into her mother’s bathroom and steal the sleeping pills? Did she go out to the garage and find the gardening shears and then go all the way upstairs, write the suicide note and slit her wrists at the computer? Could she have, considering how much booze was already in her system?”
“That’s how I thought it happened.”
“That’s the way it was supposed to look,” Ty said, “and it’s the easiest explanation. But there were other footprints on the carpet. The maid had vacuumed while Annie was out and there were deeper i
mpressions on the plush pile—a bigger foot.”
“Weren’t there tons of people at the scene? Police and emergency workers?”
“Of course and Jason, the father, said he’d come into the room to check on her. Since he found the body, no one thought anything of it.”
“A big footprint on the carpet. That’s not much to go on. In fact it’s nothing,” she said.
“I know. And there was potting soil from the gardening shed on the carpet, but not on any of Annie’s shoes.”
“Still thin.”
“How about this then? Her fingerprints were all over the gardening shears, true, but she was right-handed. It would seem that she would have slit her left wrist first, made the deeper cut. Instead it was just the opposite.”
“You think.”
He nodded.
“Ty, this isn’t enough to write a book about or argue her suicide,” Sam pointed out as she watched Charon slink through the shrubs. Absently she rubbed her neck, scratching at the bump left by the hornet’s sting. “Why would anyone want her dead? What’s the motive?”
“I think it has to do with her baby.”
Samantha’s stomach clenched. As horrid as it was to think that Annie ended her life, the thought of her baby dying as well was even more painful.
“I don’t think she would have killed the baby. Her boyfriend wanted her to get an abortion; she refused. It was against her morals. Against her faith. She was raised Catholic, remember. Killing herself and killing the baby were both mortal sins.”
“But she was despondent. You said so yourself.”
“But not suicidal. That’s a big leap. There’s more. The baby’s blood type. No one paid attention, but Annie Seger’s baby couldn’t have been fathered by Ryan Zimmerman. The blood type proves it.”
Sam felt the hairs on the back of her arms lift. “You think someone killed Annie because she could point the finger at them?”
“Possibly. Maybe a married man. She was underage. The law would charge him with statutory rape if the guy was older. Or it could have been someone in her own family. Incest. Or her boyfriend could have come unglued and killed her in a fit of jealousy. That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze holding hers. “But I will,” he promised, “And while I’m doing it, I’m gonna figure out how this all ties in with the calls you been getting at the station. Somehow ‘John’ is connected to this thing. “We’ve just got to find out how, and then nail his ass.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“…it’s definitely not the same guy unless you’ve got a split personality,” Norm Stowell said from his cell phone somewhere in Arizona. Bentz wasn’t surprised. He’d already decided he had two killers on his hands. He glanced at the pictures on the computer screen in his office and could split the two cases right down the middle. Norm was still talking. “MO will evolve, we know that. As the killer learns what will work for him, he makes subtle changes in his approach or access route, but his signature remains constant. You’ve got two guys out there. One’s pretty messy—is careless with his clues, doesn’t seem to worry that you’ll nail him with his hair or fingerprints or semen, but the other guy—he’s clean. Neat. Careful. Definitely two perps.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Bentz said as he shoved a report on the wig fibers to one side of his desk.
“I’ll fax you my profile of your killers when I get home, and for the record, I’m sending a copy to the field agent.
Seems your partner hasn’t been forthright with the Federal boys, and they’re none too happy.”
“I’ll talk to him. Montoya’s a little green, but he’s good.”
“If you say so.” Norm wasn’t impressed, but then little did impress him. He was jaded far beyond his years—a short, stocky man who had never given up his allegiance to the crew cut he’d gotten at boot camp at Fort Lewis over thirty years earlier.
“So here’s what you’ve got to look for in the guy who’s killed Bellechamps and Gillette. He’s a white man, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He must not have a prior as you said he’s careless with his fingerprints, body fluids and hair. If that’s the case, something triggered him to start killing, some emotional trauma. He’s got a job, but it’s not very grand, and he’s smart enough, but is from a highly dysfunctional and probably abusive family. He’s got a feeling of abandonment or deep-seated hatred of some woman in the family, probably a mother or stepmother or older sister or grandmother. He could have been sexually molested, and in his history he has arson and cruelty to animals or smaller children. He was probably a bed-wetter in grade school and something’s happened to him recently, something major that triggered him killing. Maybe he lost a job, or a girlfriend, or has been cut off from his family, which could likely be the major source of his income.”
“A gem of a guy,” Bentz muttered into the phone.
“And dangerous as hell. He could live alone, or he could be married, or have a girlfriend, but whoever he’s living with, she’s in danger. This guy’s escalating, Rick. You might have to let the public know what’s going on for safety’s sake and because someone out there might know a guy who’s been acting weird lately—unusually anxious. He could be pouring himself into a bottle or abusing drugs. Besides that, if he’s involved with a woman, she should know about the danger to her. If she knows what he’s doing, and we both know that a lot of women who are emotionally trapped in bad relationships will even be a part of their man’s crimes. Anyway this woman has probably seen his violence or suffered from it herself. Potentially she could be his next target—unless we get her to turn him in.”
Bentz thought the odds of that were somewhere between slim and none, and closer to none.
“As I said, this is just the high points. I’ll fax you what I’ve come up with, then get to work on your second guy.” “I’d appreciate it, Norm. Thanks,” Bentz said, and hung up, his worst suspicions confirmed. Two monsters were on the loose in New Orleans, killers with no conscience, murderers who hated women. He flipped through the computer files again, checking open cases that hadn’t been solved, ones that had bizarre elements. There were several that stood out, the most grotesque being the case of a woman who had been burned to death, her body then dumped at the feet of the statue of Joan d’Arc near the French Market last May 30. It had been macabre and surreal, that horridly charred body lying facedown on the grass, and reminded the press and police that St. Joan herself had met a similar fate.
Sometimes he wondered why he kept at this damned job.
Because someone has to nail these guys, and, for the most part, you’re good at it, you sick son of a bitch.
He found a half-full pack of Doublemint gum in his top drawer and jammed a stick into his mouth, then walked to the window and looked outside to the street below. Cars spewed exhaust as they crawled down the narrow streets, and people crowded the sidewalks, but Bentz hardly took any notice. He yanked at his collar. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back. He didn’t hear the hum of computers or conversations of the outer offices though his door was ajar. No, he’d blocked out the noise of the station and the scene below as he considered the prospect of two serial killers in the city, at least one of which was connected to the terrorization of Dr. Samantha Leeds. Some way. Somehow. He didn’t have any concrete evidence, no tangible link, but the knot in his gut told him whoever was calling was somehow involved with the murders. The mutilated C-notes so like the ruined publicity shot of Samantha Leeds, the radios tuned to her program at the time of death, the fact that the women who’d been killed were hookers and John had accused her of prostitution, but why sin? What redemption? What the hell did it have to do with Annie Seger, for crying out loud?
He walked to the tape recorder on his credenza and pushed the play button so that he could hear for the hundredth time some of the calls, particularly the one from the woman who called herself Annie…he’d played it over and over, as had the lab, and he’d come to the conclusion that the c
all from Annie had been prerecorded. There hadn’t been a live person on the phone. The woman proclaiming herself to be Annie hadn’t answered Sam’s questions directly, but only paused between her own statements…As if someone had anticipated what Dr. Sam would ask on the show that night. As if a woman was involved in this mess.
But who?
Someone who knew Annie Seger?
Someone connected to Dr. Sam?
Someone working with “John”?
And how had the call gotten through the screen at the radio station before being played on the air?
He snapped his gum, reached in his back pocket and found his handkerchief, then ran it over his forehead and mopped his face. How the hell did Montoya wear leather jackets in this weather and manage to keep his cool? The day was sweltering. Unforgiving. Intense. Bentz needed a beer. A sixteen-ouncer—ice-cold in one of those frosty mugs, yeah that would do the trick. And a pack of Camel straights. That old ache for booze and nicotine haunted his blood and he chewed his gum furiously as he walked back to his desk, where copies of telephone records were strewn.
The billing that interested him was from Houston, a cell phone registered in the name of David Ross. Not only had he called Sam’s home number, but the station as well, on a few of the nights that “John” had phoned, but his cell number had a block on it and his name had never shown on caller ID. Just his number. But those calls hadn’t even gotten through, not according to the station records. He must’ve called, then chickened out…or decided to use a pay phone. Ross had also been in New Orleans a couple of times in the past few weeks…but Samantha had insisted her love affair with the guy was over.
Maybe he didn’t like it.
Maybe he was getting back a little retribution.
The phone jangled. He grabbed the receiver. “Bentz.”
“Looks like we got another one,” Montoya said, his voice serious. “I’m driving over to a hotel on Royal, the St. Pierre. The story is that we’ve got another Jane Doe, strangled with a series of weird cuts on her neck. The maid let herself in with her key, ignoring the Do Not Disturb sign as it was after checkout time. The guy who rented the room is gone, but we might have gotten lucky because the clerk working the desk last night remembers him. I’m on my way to the St. Pierre now. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
