Secret Witness

by Jessica Andersen

  “Not unless he can be in two places at one time,” Reid muttered, feeling a tingle along his spine, feeling as though he was missing something. “Which is downright impossible.”

  “We’re missing something,” Sturgeon said, mirroring Reid’s own thoughts. “Let’s head into Chinatown and have another look at the timelines, okay? I don’t think we’ve overlooked anything here.”

  “Yeah,” Reid grunted, glancing quickly at the closed kitchen door, then away. “What about her?”

  Sturgeon lifted an eyebrow, but he was smart enough to keep his thoughts to himself. “We could leave her here with her aunt and the Marine, but she understands the DNA evidence as well as anyone. Maybe we should bring her with us.”

  The man in Reid didn’t want to be anywhere within a mile of Stephanie. Even now, in the midst of hell on earth, he could taste her. He could feel her. He could hear her cries and smell the two of them on his own skin. And he ached.

  No. The man in him didn’t want to be in the same room with her for a century or so. But the cop in him knew that Sturgeon was right, so he nodded. “You get her. I’ll meet you both at the station.”

  Maybe a quick detour to his place, a Brillo-and-bleach shower and another change of clothes could erase the memories long enough that he could do his job. It had been his inattention that had allowed Jilly to be snatched in the first place, so he’d damn well see her back with her mother.

  He’d promised, and he’d rip his own soul out before he broke that promise.

  Then again, Reid thought as he jogged down the granite steps and felt the ache in his chest, it already felt as though he had ripped out his own soul. And he wasn’t sure how he was going to get it back from the red-haired, green-eyed woman who’d stolen it.

  HE DIDN’T WANT to be in the room with her. Steph could sense it like a physical presence between them, chattering at her and jeering when she couldn’t force herself to focus on the computer screen. “Would you go away?” she snapped at it, then winced when the words echoed out loud in the computer room.

  “Problem?” Sturgeon asked from the lab desk he’d appropriated, not really looking up.

  She shook her head. “Never mind.” Then she reconsidered. “I was just thinking that perhaps Detective Peters would prefer to be doing something else right now.”

  “Why?” Peters snapped as he spun and paced back to the window and glared down at the streets of Chinatown. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to be done until we have another name. If it’s not Bott, it has to be someone.” He reached over one shoulder to scratch the middle of his back. “You got anything, Sturgeon? Any names?”

  For the third time since they’d ridden up to the thirteenth floor together in the too-small elevator, Reid spoke to his partner as though he thought the DNA evidence was played out. Steph bristled. “It’s Bott. He did it.”

  Reid shot her a look that left her steaming. “According to the law, it’s not. He has an alibi for three of the incidents. It can’t be him.”

  “The law is wrong,” she practically snarled, and pointed at the computer screen, where the DNA match between the rape kits and Derek Bott’s DNA—which she had illegally scanned and inputted into the Boston General system—was shown in clear black and white. “The DNA is a match.”

  “It can’t be,” he shot back. “And arguing that it is won’t get your daughter back!”

  The words echoed.

  Peters cursed and scratched absently at his chest as he walked over to her computer chair. “I’m sorry.”

  She spun away from him, trying not to remember how vulnerable he’d looked crouched on her sofa with his head in his hands. How they’d moved together in the night. How they’d loved each other. She crossed her arms. “Don’t be sorry. And don’t be mad at me because you’re too much of a coward to take a chance on us. Be mad at yourself.” Aware of Sturgeon staring furiously at the drift of creased index cards he’d poured onto the desk he’d taken over, she glared out the window, seeing nothing. “Scratch that. Don’t be mad at anyone. Just do your job. Find my daughter and you can go back to your empty apartment with your dead fake plants and your empty brown life. Okay, Peters? I don’t care what you do next. Just find my daughter.”

  He cursed. “I’m trying, Steph. We’re all trying, but we need more to go on. Until we’ve got something, we’ll just be knocking on random doors, asking the same old questions. Don’t you see that?”

  Steph saw, but she didn’t care. “You promised, Reid. You promised to find my daughter. Don’t add liar to your life list under the words emotional coward.”

  She thought he might snap back at that, might give her the fight she needed, but he didn’t. He merely turned and walked back to the window and looked out. She didn’t think he saw anything, either. He whistled a fragment of melody and her throat closed.

  It was what she’d come to think of as Jilly’s song, the poignant string of notes the little girl had been whistling for days now. Steph wondered whether she was whistling now. Whether she was cold. Hungry. Afraid.

  Alive.

  She choked back a sob and stared hard at the computer screen, willing the tears away. When that didn’t work, she surged to her feet and stumbled out into the carpeted hallway, past the cop who’d taken over the receptionist’s desk, and down the bright corridor to the ladies’ room. She heard Reid calling her, but she didn’t stop until she was in the farthest stall, retching miserably.

  She heard the bathroom door open, then shut again, and she hoped whoever it was would have the good sense to leave her alone. There was a fifty-fifty chance that she’d slug them or cry on them, and she didn’t have the energy for either.

  “Hey.” The voice was quiet, but unmistakably that of the man who’d sat at her bedside waiting for her to wake up from that coma a year ago—not because he needed her to name her attacker, but because he cared whether she woke up or not.

  At least that’s what she’d told herself. But if he was too stubborn and too committed to beating himself up over a childhood he hadn’t been able to control, too stuck in his belief that a Chinatown cop like him couldn’t find a way to balance love and family against the job, then it didn’t really matter whether he cared or not.

  Because he didn’t care enough.

  “Go away,” she whimpered, sliding down to sit on the cold floor tiles, feeling the chill seep through her jeans and wishing she’d worn a lab coat. Then she thought of the gleam in Reid’s eyes when he’d taken the lab coat off her the night before, and was glad she hadn’t.

  “Sorry. Can’t do that either.” He hunkered down beside her on the ladies’ room floor and took her hand. Squeezed it. “I’m sorry, Steph. Sorry about all of it. If I’d been paying better attention last night…”

  On a quick, vividly sensual memory, she shook her head. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. We thought we were safe last night. We thought it was Bott.” She glanced up at the ceiling tiles and pictured the matching DNA patterns marching side by side down the gel. Identical. “Damn it, it is Bott. I don’t care about the alibis.”

  “Unfortunately, the District Attorney does.”

  Steph felt herself relax fractionally against Reid’s side, felt his warmth battle the chill of the floor and felt the good, steady pulse of blood through his body. Saw it in the throb of a pulse at his throat. And found a smile. “Then the D.A.’s a fool.”

  “You have no idea, sweetheart.” Reid sighed. “Unfortunately, until we can explain to him how Derek Bott could be in two places at once, we’re stuck. And the uniforms at the Bott house aren’t even sure where he is right now, so we’re double stuck because we don’t have the authority to find him and we’re not sure what to charge him with if we could.” He cursed and wiggled against the wall, scratching his back against the rough tile. “I still feel like we’re missing something. Like it’s right there, only not. Know what I mean?”

  Steph nodded. “I know. But short of Derek being in two places at once…” She frowned. “Well, act
ually we don’t need him in two places at the same time. We just need his DNA in one of those places.”

  Reid snorted. “An enemy framing him with a planted DNA sample? That’s something that only happens in the movies.” He shifted again on the hard floor, then stood with a grunt. “You ready to go back? We should see if the others have found anything.”

  Wearily, aching in unexpected places, both from their lovemaking the night before and from the toll the last few days had taken, Steph heaved herself to her feet and rinsed her mouth out with tinny Boston tap water.

  Walking back through the sterile white corridor with Reid at her side, she frowned. “No, not a plant. You’re right, we’re missing something.” A tarantula of black lines and boxes crept across her mind. Something in the pedigree?

  When they reached the computer room—which was starting to feel like the center of a besieged castle—Steph pulled up the half-drawn Bott family tree. It was incomplete, as they only had information on two of Sinclair Bott’s children. She traced her finger along the lines of descent. “How can Bott’s DNA be in two places at once?” she asked rhetorically, but Reid answered her from across the room.

  “Not possible, unless he has a clone.” He grinned crookedly at her. “And from what I know of the state of the art around here, you’re still a few years away from that.”

  Steph froze, staring at the angled lines connecting Sinclair Bott to his brother in a relationship that was closer than a normal sibling’s. “Not a clone,” she breathed, only barely aware that the detectives had hustled to their feet at the tone in her voice, only barely aware that her finger trembled as it pointed to Derek Bott’s father…and his twin brother. “An identical twin.”

  Reid swore quickly, explosively. Then cursed himself again. “I saw children in the house when we took Bott. Identical boys.”

  Sturgeon was already on the phone when Steph lifted her eyes to Reid’s. “You said once that crime runs in families around here. I guess in this family it runs more closely than in others. You said it yourself. Bad blood.”

  Reid closed his eyes, bit back another useless curse, and nodded tightly. “We knew Derek had brothers. We never thought to ask about a twin.” He swore aloud. “That’s why the patterns weren’t falling into place. There are two different perps hiding behind each other.” He glanced out the window, down to the maze of Chinatown thirteen stories below. “And they’ve been setting up the alibis so we couldn’t get a conviction to stick on either one.”

  He strode to the wipe board at the back of the computer room and uncapped a pen. Sturgeon joined him, still barking a string of instructions into the phone.

  “The first set of rapes fit together. Teenage street-walkers. Violent. No DNA.” Reid listed the names, and Steph shuddered to see them written out. “But Mae Wong didn’t fit. She was the wrong age and there was DNA at the scene.” He wrote the child’s name at the top of another column.

  “Honey’s death fit the first pattern. She was a streetwalker and there was no semen, though there was DNA beneath her fingernails,” Sturgeon said and Reid wrote the name in the first column.

  “Then the letter bomb. That was way off pattern, and didn’t fit within the blackmail scheme Bott had going with Stephanie.” He wrote it under the second column. “I think the date rape was a learning experience. After one of them was hauled up on charges, they learned about the DNA and took care not to leave it again.”

  “Until Mae Wong,” Sturgeon pointed out and they both stared at the board while a pattern emerged.

  Finally.

  Steph stepped forward, though she didn’t want to be anywhere near the two neat columns. She gestured at the first column. “That one is the thinker. The planner. The smart one.” They all gazed at the second column. “And his brother wants to be just like him, but he’s not bright enough. He leaves DNA behind and compromises both of them. He plans a bomb that does nothing but confuse the issue.”

  Reid nodded. “The second brother probably did the setup in Jilly’s room with the teddy bear and the model horses. There was something childish about it.”

  “But the first brother used the scenario to bring Peters in with Honey Moreplease.” Sturgeon flipped his phone open again. “Makes sense. The DNA confused us by pointing to one perp when there were two all along.”

  “But where does Jilly fit in?” Steph demanded. “And why is he still after us when I can’t help him any more? Revenge? Is he trying to get back at me for turning this over to the police, even though he brought Reid in? That doesn’t make sense!” Her voice was rising as the fear rose again at the question she couldn’t ask.

  What column did Jilly belong in?

  Reid and Sturgeon stood shoulder to shoulder in their matching police-issue holsters and Steph felt the screams push at the back of her throat at the knowledge in their eyes.

  “We don’t think he’s worried about the DNA any more, Stephanie.” Sturgeon’s eyes were kind but Reid’s were hard and cold. Cop’s eyes. Angry eyes. The older detective continued, “Bringing Reid in with the Moreplease murder didn’t make any sense if he was still hoping to avoid capture. We think he was playing with you. He’s become fixated on you and your daughter. He doesn’t care about the DNA any more. He wants you.”

  Steph felt her knees turn to water and Reid caught her on the way down. He helped her to a chair and tipped the dregs of a bottle of water into her mouth until she coughed and batted him away, feeling as though her whole world was crashing down around her as Sturgeon moved and wrote a single word below and between the two columns.

  Jilly.

  “They’ve both got her,” Reid grated, rising and pacing to the window and back. “And we need to find her. Fast.”

  The unspoken words echoed in the computer room.

  Or else.

  Chapter Twelve

  Having a name should have made things easier, Reid thought fiercely. Having two names should have doubled the speed of their investigation.

  They had pictures of the Botts. Or else they had two pictures of the same Bott. It was hard to tell but Reid had convinced himself he could see the difference in their eyes. One pair were slightly vacant. Confused.

  The other had eyes like a snake. Cold. Dead. Elemental.

  But five hours later, they still didn’t have Derek Bott. They didn’t have his identical twin brother Dwayne.

  And they didn’t have Jilly. Time was running out. He could feel it. She was still out there, somewhere. He had to believe that, because the alternative was unacceptable.

  With a little girl’s life at stake, D.A. Hedlund had come through with the arrest warrants in record time. Derek’s wife Maria and her twin sons were pinned down as tight as the Chinatown officers could get them. Patriot was watching Stephanie’s house as well as Mortimer’s place, but there hadn’t been any activity in that neighborhood all day.

  There wasn’t much going on in Chinatown, either. Reid stared down the thirteen stories and watched a narrow parade of cars snake down Kneeland Street in front of the Boston General Genetic Research Building. Ten minutes ago there had been a fender bender, and the cabby and the other motorist were coming to blows over insurance cards.

  From this high up, they looked like ants.

  “Anything?”

  He glanced up at Stephanie’s quiet question, and had to stop himself from smoothing the tired smudges beneath her eyes with his thumb. He didn’t have the right to touch her. Didn’t want the right.

  Liar.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. For better or worse, most of what we do is hurry up and wait.” He gave in to the urge, and touched her cheek. “You could try to nap in your boss’s office. I seem to remember she keeps a cot in there.”

  Steph shook her head, knotted and reknotted her fingers. “I can’t settle down. Too much caffeine, I guess.” She shifted from one foot to the other, and glanced down at the street. Her expression lightened slightly when she saw the fight in progress. “When things are slow with the experimen
ts, we spend time watching the street. It’s like television except you never know what program will be on. Some weeks there are two or three grease fires in the Chinese restaurants, other weeks none. We see the accidents and the traffic jams and we’re so happy to be above it all in our ivory tower. Then the day’s over and we go back down there and rejoin the masses. So many people.”

  Reid saw her brow knit as she stared out the big picture window, and knew that she was trying to see her daughter in one of the tiny buildings spread out below them. He gave her a quick one-armed hug and let her go before her scent could draw him closer. Tempt him.

  “Then go for a walk and burn off some of the twitches.” It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to walk with her, but that would be unwise in the extreme. Not just because Sturgeon needed him at the lab, which had remained their impromptu command central even after the DNA mystery had been solved, but because something deep within him needed to go for that walk. With her.

  Impossible. He needed to be on the job. He had to be the job. He’d already proven that when he let Stephanie distract him from it, terrible things happened.

  Little girls disappeared.

  So he waved to the young officer sitting at the receptionist’s desk in the lobby. “O’Connell. Walk with Miss Alberts, will you? She’s going to stretch her legs.” He fixed the rookie with a stare. “Nothing seedy and stay off the Commons. If you see the suspect or you feel like something’s off, come right back here, no questions asked, got it?”

  Stephanie huffed, “I’m not stupid and I don’t need a keeper, Peters,” but he stared O’Connell down until the kid gulped and nodded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  With a snort, Stephanie grabbed her purse and stomped off toward the elevators. Reid held O’Connell back long enough to whisper, “Anything happens to her and you’re dead, got it?”

  The rookie stammered an affirmative that had Sturgeon snickering from his desk as the lobby doors closed. “That one’s scared right out of his uniform now. Good job, Peters. He’ll be drawing down on some poor hotdog vendor now, trying to protect her.”