Count to Ten

by Karen Rose

  She helped him, making quick work of the buttons. “I do hot dogs, too.”

  He lifted one eyebrow and now she could admit that had turned her on from the beginning. “You are a very bad girl, Mia.”

  “Mustard, Solliday.” She smacked his ass as he walked away. “Think condiments.”

  “Very bad girl.” He was almost to the front door when it struck her—2026 Chablis.

  “Reed, wait.” She ran after him. “Did you say 2026 -Chablis Court, like the wine?”

  He frowned. “Yeah, why?”

  Her heart skipped a beat, visualizing the records check she’d run yesterday. “That’s Brooke Adler’s address.”

  His expression went grim. “Meet me there,” he said. “Hurry.”

  Thursday, November 30, 4:15 A.M.

  The fire was contained to one apartment building, the end of a row of five. To the untrained eye it might seem chaotic but it was under control. People stood on the edge of the parking lot, huddled in small groups. Many were crying, child and adult alike. The apartment fire he’d worked last year came back and with it the horror for the victims.

  And while every one of them was important, one victim was at the front of his mind. Reed found Larry Fletcher and immediately knew it was very bad. “What’s happened?”

  “We were still en route when you called back, told us about the Adler woman.” Larry’s voice was flat. “The 186 was doing search and rescue in the building, but Mahoney and Hunter wanted to go in. Wanted to win this time. Chief of the 186 said it was my call, so I let them. Now I wish I’d said no.”

  “They’re hurt?”

  “Not physically. They pulled out Adler and her roommate. It was bad, Reed.”

  Reed looked over his shoulder. Mia was turning in from the main road. “Alive?”

  “One was DOA. The other’s on her way to County.”

  Ten cruisers surrounded the perimeter, uniforms controlling the crowd and passing out blankets to the victims. “What about the cops who were first on the scene?”

  Larry pointed to the cruiser farthest away. “Jergens and Petty.”

  “Thanks.” He jogged over to the cruisers. “Solliday, OFI. Jergens and Petty?”

  “I’m Jergens, this is Petty,” the officer on the left said. “We were first on the scene.”

  Mia was walking toward him. Reed gestured for her to hurry and she closed the distance at a run while he took out his recorder. “This is Detective Mitchell.” He turned to her. “Two women pulled out of the fire, one dead, one en route to County.”

  “This is the guy that did Burnette’s kid,” Jergens said, his mouth flattening. “SOB.”

  “Which woman is dead?” Reed asked and the two shook their heads.

  “Both were burned pretty badly. The neighbors said they were both about the same size, both brunettes, but nobody would make an ID. That’s the DOA.” A gurney was being rolled toward the ambulance, the body bag zipped.

  Mia motioned the MEs to stop. “Well, let’s find out.” They cringed then exhaled in unison as the ME unzipped the bag. The burns were bad. “Not Adler,” she murmured, then turned back to Petty and Jergens. “Did the neighbors at least provide a name?”

  Jergens checked his notes. “Roxanne Ledford. She called in the 911.”

  “Tell us what happened,” Mia said calmly. “Start from the 911.”

  Jergens nodded. “Rape in progress was called in at 3:38. The 911 operator told her to vacate the premises, but she didn’t. We got here at 3:42.

  “We could see flames upstairs and in the lobby when we got here. Petty radioed for the fire department. I grabbed the extinguisher from the cruiser and tried to go in, but the fire in the entry was already too big. Another cruiser was behind us. I went to see if the perp was still on the grounds and Petty and the other two started evacuating.”

  Mia lifted her eyes. “But you didn’t find anyone?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Detective. There was nobody around.”

  “The last time, he drove off in the victim’s car. I want you to find out which cars belonged to Adler and Ledford and see if they’re still here. If not, put out an all points.”

  “What else?” Petty asked. “We really want this SOB.”

  Mia looked around. “Any of these guys the super?”

  “That one.” Petty pointed. “Tall, big guy wearing the fuzzy pink slippers.”

  “Find out if the building’s got security cameras. I want any and all tape from the last week. Oh, and what are we doing for these people? We gotta worry about exposure.”

  “Two buses are on the way,” Jergens said. “We’re going to put them in the elementary school down the street until we can set up a shelter.”

  “We’ll need statements from everyone. I want to know if there was anybody around here that anybody didn’t know.” She shot them a hard smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it. So will Roger Burnette.” She looked up when the officers moved off to follow her orders. “We need to get to Brooke. Maybe she can tell us something.”

  “Hunter and Mahoney pulled them out.”

  She shot him a look of disbelief, then started toward the trucks at a run. “They went in again? There are four companies here. Why Mahoney and Hunter for God’s sake?”

  He remembered the look of honest affection she’d given Hunter at the Hill fire. A nasty voice whispered in his ear, but Reed dismissed it. Whatever had happened between Mia and Hunter in the past, Reed had been the one to leave her bed tonight.

  “They wanted to go in. After pulling corpses, it really makes you feel good to pull out a live person. The other chief understood that and let Larry’s guys go in for the -rescue.”

  “Like Howard and Brooks let me have DuPree.”

  “Yeah. Just like that.”

  Hunter and Mahoney sat on the back of the truck. Both looked shell-shocked.

  Mia put her hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “David. Are you two all right?”

  Hunter nodded, his eyes flat. “Fine,” he murmured.

  Mahoney grimaced. “Yeah. Sure. We’re just fine.” But the sarcastic words were filled with pain. He closed his eyes. “I really hate this guy.”

  “What happened?” Reed asked quietly. “Tell us everything you saw.”

  “We went in the front,” Mahoney began. “He’d started a fire there, too, but the 186 knocked it down. Smoke was heavy in Adler’s apartment, but the stove was in place.”

  “Where did you find them?” Mia asked.

  “In the back bedroom.” Mahoney shook his head, cleared his throat. “The bed was in flames, all the walls, carpet, everything.” His voice broke. “There were two women in the room. One was on the floor. I picked her up and started out. Called for backup for Hunter. When I got her out, the EMTs said she was already dead. She was wearing flame-retardant pajamas, so her body wasn’t burned so badly, but her face and hands were. She’d been stabbed. Ripped open.” He pursed his lips and turned away.

  “And the second woman?” Reed asked quietly.

  Hunter swallowed. “She was tied to the bed. Nude. Her body was on fire. I grabbed a blanket and rolled her up in it. Her legs were broken. Bent at angles.”

  Mia suddenly stiffened, her eyes swerving to the road where a woman with a blonde braid approached. Two officers turned her away. “Goddammit.”

  Carmichael again. “She was following you,” Reed commented and her eyes flashed up to his. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was. Carmichael had been waiting outside her apartment. She’d seen Reed leave just before Mia had. That he’d spent the night would be all over the front page. Shit.

  But Mia’s attention was already back to Hunter. “What happened next, David?”

  “I had to cut the ropes to get her out of there. But I didn’t touch anything else. I picked her up and carried her out. She was burned.” His jaw trembled and he clenched it. “Badly. The EMTs weren’t sure if she’d make it.”

  Mia squeezed Hunter’s hand. “If she does, it will be because of the two of you
. You have to hold on to that, David.” She let go and looked up. “I have to talk to Brooke.”

  Reed looked up at the building. The fire was nearly out. “I’ll stay here and go in as soon as I can. Foster and Ben should be here any minute. Can you call Jack?”

  “Yeah.” She kicked at some gravel at her feet. “Dammit, we missed him again.”

  Thursday, November 30, 4:50 A.M.

  “I’m Detective Mitchell. You just took in a Brooke Adler. Rape and burn victim.”

  The ER nurse shook her head. “You can’t see her.”

  “I have to talk to her. She’s the only one who’s seen a killer. She’s his fourth victim.”

  “I wish I could help you, Detective, but I can’t let you see her. She’s sedated.”

  A doctor walked up, brows crunched. “She’s -heavily sedated, but somehow still lucid enough to mutter. She has third-degree burns over ninety percent of her body. If I thought she’d survive, I’d make you wait. Hurry. We were just about to intubate.”

  Mia fell into stride beside the doctor. “We need to do a rape kit.”

  “Already noted on my chart. She looks bad, Detective.”

  “I saw his first two victims in the morgue, Doctor. They looked bad.”

  “Just tryin’ to prepare you.” He handed her a mask and surgical drape. “After you.”

  Mia came to a stumbling halt. Acid rose to burn her throat, choke her air. Dear God, was all she could think for the first five seconds. “Oh, sweet Christ.”

  “I tried to tell you,” the doctor murmured. “Two minutes. No more.”

  The nurse standing at Brooke’s side glared. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s the bad cop,” the doctor said blandly. “Let her through.”

  Mia shot him a sharp look. “What?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what she kept calling you. The bad cop.”

  “She’s muttering something about ‘ten,’?” the nurse said.

  “Like the number?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, Brooke, it’s me, Detective Mitchell.”

  Brooke’s eyes opened, and Mia saw wild fear and excruciating pain. “Ten.”

  Mia lifted her hand, but there was no place to touch her. “Who did this, Brooke?”

  “Count to ten,” Brooke whispered. She moaned in agony and Mia’s heart clenched.

  “Brooke, tell me who did this. Was it someone at Hope Center? Was it Bixby?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Mia flinched. The woman had been afraid to talk to them. They’d forced her to speak, she and Reed. I’ll have to live with that. And though she knew this wasn’t her fault, she understood Brooke’s anger. “I’m so sorry, Brooke. But I need your help.”

  “Count to ten.” She labored for a breath and machines started beeping.

  “Pressure’s dropping,” the nurse said with grim urgency. “Oxygen level’s dropping.”

  “Push one amp of epi,” the doctor commanded, “and start an epinephrine drip. Get ready to intubate. Detective, you have to leave.”

  “No.” Brooke struggled, pathetically. “Count to ten. Go to hell.”

  The nurse was injecting a syringe into Brooke’s IV. “Get out, Detective.”

  “One more minute.” Mia leaned closer. “Was it Bixby? Thompson? Secrest?”

  The doctor leaned over Mia with a growl. “Detective, move.” Mia backed away, helpless, horrified, while the doctor and nurse battled for Brooke’s life.

  Thirty grueling, endless minutes later, the doctor stepped back. His shoulders sagged. “I’m calling it. Time of death oh-five-hundred twenty-five hours.”

  There had to be a word for what churned inside her. But that word wouldn’t come. Mia lifted her eyes to the doctor’s weary gaze. “I don’t know what to say.”

  The doctor’s mouth tightened. “Say you’ll catch who did this.”

  Roger Burnette had demanded it for Caitlin. Dana had demanded it for Penny Hill. “We will. We have to. He’s killed four women. Thank you, for doing what you could.”

  Grimly he nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” She got to the door and stopped. Forced herself to turn around and look at Brooke Adler one more time. Then crossed herself and backed out of the room.

  Thursday, November 30, 5:45 A.M.

  The child watched from his hiding place. He was outside again. He didn’t know what the man buried, but he knew it had to be very, very bad. Because he was very bad. Doesn’t anybody else know? Am I the only one that sees how bad he really is?

  He thought of his mother, tossing and turning in her bed and he was suddenly, fiercely angry. She had to know. She had to see. She knew he disappeared in the night. But she got up every morning and put on her best face. Made him bacon and eggs and smiled like they were normal. They weren’t normal.

  He wished he would just go. Leave them alone. He wished his mother would throw him out. Tell him to never come back. But she wouldn’t, because she was scared. He knew that. He knew she had a right to be. So am I.

  Thursday, November 30, 7:20 A.M.

  “Daddy?”

  Reed looked up from buttoning his shirt, buttonhook in one hand. “Yes, Beth?”

  She stood in his doorway, her brows drawn together in worry. “Are you okay?”

  No. He was sick at heart. Two more. “Just tired, honey. Just really tired.”

  She hesitated. “Dad, I need more lunch money.”

  Reed frowned. “I just gave you lunch money on Monday.”

  “I know.” She made a face. “I owed some library fines. I’m sorry.”

  Feeling unsettled, he gave her another twenty. “Return the books on time, okay?”

  “Thanks, Dad.” She slipped the money into her jeans. “I’ll go put your coffee on.”

  “I could sure use it.” Wearily he sat on the edge of his bed. Mia had been right. He was a wreck this morning. He wondered where she was, imagined her back in her apartment, alone. He should have held off, waited until they could establish the ground rules. No strings. But he hadn’t been able to. His mind had been too full of her, his body at the edge of control. He had to stay in control because he didn’t want to hurt her.

  He looked around his bedroom. Everything here was as Christine left it, elegant and tasteful despite the passage of time. Mia’s room was a hodgepodge of clashing colors, orange and vivid purples. Striped blankets and plaid curtains. All rummage sale stock.

  But the bed had served its function quite well. Sex with Mia could become addicting if he allowed it. But he didn’t allow addicting behaviors. He was stronger than that. Absently he rubbed his thumbs over his numb fingertips. He’d stopped himself from drinking when it got out of hand, something his biological mother had never done. A disease, she’d said. A choice, he knew. She’d loved the liquor more than she’d loved him, more than she’d loved anything. He grimaced, pushing the thought of his mother out of his mind. He’d thought about her more this week than in years.

  He had to stay in control. Not let this thing with Mia distract him from what was important. The life he’d built for Beth. For himself. He lifted the fine gold chain from his nightstand and put it around his neck. A talisman, perhaps. A reminder, most certainly.

  He had to get moving or he’d be late for morning meeting.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thursday, November 30, 8:10 A.M.

  Count to ten and go to hell?” Spinnelli sat at the head of the table, frowning. Jack was there, along with Sam and Westphalen. Spinnelli must have been shoring up the troops because Murphy and Aidan Reagan had joined them. Mia had taken the chair farthest away where she sat alone, eyes shuttered. But Reed knew her emotions churned. She’d called him when she’d left the hospital, her voice heavy with despair.

  “Those were her dying words,” she said, blandly now. “Literally.”

  Westphalen was watching her closely. “What do you think it means, Mia?”

  “I dunno. I thought at first she was telling me to go
to hell.” She huffed once, sardonically. Painfully. “God knows she had the right.”

  “Mia,” Spinnelli started and she held up her hand, straight-ening in her chair.

  “I know. It’s not our fault. I think it’s what he said to her, Miles, right before he lit her on fire. I’ve never seen anything like that before. I know I never want to again.”

  “Then let’s get busy.” Spinnelli went to the whiteboard. “What do we know?”

  “Well, Manny Rodriguez couldn’t have done it,” Mia said. “He was in holding.”

  “You were right about him,” Spinnelli agreed. “Now it’s even more important to find out what he knows and isn’t telling. What else? What about the victims?”

  “Brooke Adler and Roxanne Ledford,” Mia said. “Both were schoolteachers. Brooke, English; Roxanne, music. Roxanne was twenty-six. Brooke just turned twenty-two.”

  Spinnelli’s expression became one of grim resignation. “Cause of death?”

  “Cause of death for Adler was cardiovascular collapse secondary to overwhelming burns,” Sam said. “Cause for the second victim was the stab wound to her abdomen.”

  “The blade?” Mia asked tightly.

  “About six inches long. Thin. Sharp. He plunged it into the abdominal cavity and”—he made a horizontal slicing motion—“cut her, approximately five inches across.”

  “The knife is consistent with his sexual assault on his victims,” Westphalen said. “Many believe the knife is an extension of the penis.”

  “I’d like to take a knife to his extension,” Mia muttered.

  Reed cringed. He wasn’t alone. “Smoke inhalation?” he asked.

  “None. Ledford died within a few minutes at most. Well before the fire started.”

  Spinnelli wrote it on the whiteboard, then turned. “What else?”

  “Adler’s car is gone.” Mia checked her notes. “We have an APB, but nothing so far.”

  “He repeated that part of MO,” Spinnelli said thoughtfully. “What else is the same?”

  “The device was the same,” Reed said. “I found rem-nants in Brooke’s bedroom and at the front entrance of the building.”