Ric had woken up that morning much more concerned about the unidentified shooter than about the lieutenant governor. The shooter was a direct threat to Mia. Lane wasn’t. But after spending the entire day checking and rechecking every lead they had on that front, Ric was being forced to shift focus.
“Nothing new from Rey,” he told Jonah now. “I’ll let you know. I’m up at Lake Buchanan, trying to shake something loose.”
“You going back to the house?”
“Got an interview with the carpet installer.” As Ric said it, he spotted the sign for the roadside café where he was supposed to meet the kid, nineteen-year-old Clayton Sands. “I want to find out what that carpet looked like when they ripped it out. Hell, maybe I can even get my hands on it.”
“Call me if you do.”
“Lean hard on that buddy of yours,” Ric ordered. “I turned those case files inside out, and I can’t get any new leads on that shooter.”
They clicked off as Ric pulled into the lot of the café. It was filled with pickups, and he hoped one of them belonged to Sands. It did. Ric spotted him right away— the only solo guy anywhere near nineteen, camped out at a table and nervously rearranging condiments. His T-shirt and jeans were covered in paint spatters. The woman at the carpet store had told Ric he moonlighted for a house-painting company on the weekends.
“Clayton Sands?”
“That’s me.”
Ric flashed his creds and sat down. “I’ve got a few questions for you about a job you did a couple of weeks back.”
“Ask away,” he said, but his casual attitude didn’t mesh with his fidgeting hands. The kid was drinking a soda. If he’d been old enough, Ric might have bought him a beer to loosen him up. Instead, he cut to the chase, rattling off the address and all of the details he remembered from his interview back at the carpet store.
“Yeah, I remember it.” He made a lean-to out of sugar packets. “Got paid time and a half because of the holiday. New Year’s Day.”
“That’s right.”
“Missed half the bowl games but made some good coin, so, you know, can’t really complain.”
“And do you remember what happened to the carpet?”
“The old stuff?”
“Yeah, the carpet you ripped out.”
He nodded, focused intently on his construction project. “Took it straight to the dump soon as we finished.”
“What was wrong with it?”
“What, the carpet?”
Shit, this kid needed to get his nose out of the paint. “Yes, the carpet.”
He shook his head. “Nothing worth salvaging. Maid that let us in said someone broke a case of red wine on it.”
“A whole case?”
“That’s what she said. Twelve bottles. Red wine everywhere.”
Ric tried to imagine how someone could shatter twelve wine bottles, all in a box, on a carpeted surface. If you dropped them from the ceiling, maybe.
Kid cleared his throat. “We wouldn’t have salvaged it anyways. We had specific instructions not to take it for recycling.”
“Whose instructions?”
“The maid’s.” The kid’s gaze met Ric’s, and there was something there. Ric’s skin prickled. Goddamn it, he knew he’d been right about this case.
“And you’re sure this was wine?” he asked the kid. “Not something else, like maybe blood?”
“I know my carpet stains. That was wine.” He looked down at his hands, rearranging the packets in rows now.
“Did you see anything else while you were in the house that looked to you like blood?”
“Nope.” No eye contact. “Not at the house.”
Ric waited. Finally, the kid looked up, and he saw the conflict in his eyes. Whose identity was he protecting here?
He glanced down and started over on the lean-to. “Guest house was a mess, though.”
Ric leaned forward. “What guest house? You’re talking about the same property?”
“One driveway over.” He looked up through his shaggy bangs. “Just next door, right down by the lake.”
“And this job was when?”
“December thirty-first. Day before New Year’s.”
December, not January. No wonder he hadn’t seen it on the calendar back at the carpet store.
The kid’s hands were outright shaking now with whatever information he was holding in. But Ric waited him out. He wanted to talk, he just needed time.
“Anyways, this guest house was pretty small. Maybe five hundred fifty square feet? Not nearly as nice as the main house next door.” The sugar packets were in motion again. “There was all this brown paint everywhere, too.”
“Brown paint.” Ric leaned back in his chair. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yep. It was paint, all right, same color as the deck outside. All over the place, like somebody spilled a whole gallon. No way we could recycle that carpet. It went straight to the dump, too. Maid’s orders.”
Had someone dumped paint on that carpet to disguise the bloodstains?
“This maid,” Ric said. “She happen to give you a tip or anything? For following these orders?”
A minuscule nod.
“Okay, what else, Clayton? Besides the brown paint.”
The lean-to collapsed. He laced his fingers together and looked down at them, then up. “Got rid of the carpet pad, too. Whole thing was soaked with blood.”
CHAPTER 25
Kurt Lane,” Ric said the instant Jonah picked up. “What? Where are you?”
“I’m driving like a bat outta hell back to Lane’s lake house. His son’s our man.”
“You’re talking about the grad student? Out in California?”
“He’s not in California.” Ric took a curve in the highway going double the speed limit. “He’s been living in his parents’ guest cottage right here on the goddamn lake. I can’t fucking believe it. We even checked him out, remember? Got a cell-phone dump two weeks ago. Everything was up in Oakland.”
“But he wasn’t there? Shit, how did—”
“Maybe someone has his phone. How the hell do I know? Anyway, I need you out here ASAP,” Ric said. “I spent the last two hours getting a search warrant for this guest cottage. Had to go to the freaking judge’s house and drag him away from the ball game, and now I’m on my way to meet a CSI team—”
“Hold up. I’ve got news.”
Ric tensed at the words. He’d been so caught up with the warrant he’d hardly thought about the firing range.
“Just left the range. My buddy showed me the sign-in logs dating two months back. About half a dozen cops that he knows of, could be more. I took down all the names.”
“And?” Ric gripped the steering wheel.
“One stands out. Burleson was out here last weekend doing some long-range shooting.”
“Todd Burleson?”
“One and the same. He’s ex-Army, turns out, so he and my buddy know each other some from talking shop whenever he comes by. I didn’t know this before, but Burleson was in Desert Storm a good ways back, before he was on the job. And get this—he got his start as a uniform up in Fort Worth, where he first made detective.”
Ric’s skin went cold. He knew what was coming.
“I called up there,” Jonah said. “Got hold of his former partner. You’re not going to believe this.”
“Guy named Baker?”
Pause. “How did you know?”
“Goddamn it. I met him.” Ric remembered his words about the Laura Thorne murder. “He said his partner was obsessed with the Thorne case.”
“Exactly. Which makes me think Burleson maybe got assigned to it on purpose, so he could derail the investigation and protect Lane.”
“That’d be pretty hard to pull off,” Ric said. “More likely, he caught the case legitimately, then Lane got to him and paid him off to protect his son and keep his name off the suspect list.” The bitterness was like a rock in Ric’s throat as he said the words.
“Howev
er it went down, Burleson was out here last Sunday, worked on five- and six-hundred-yard shots all afternoon.”
Sunday afternoon, the day after he tried to kill Mia.
Ric slammed on the brakes and pulled a U-turn. He narrowly missed an SUV that was barreling down the highway and a horn blared behind him as he stomped on the gas.
“Listen, Ric, I know what you’re thinking, and before you do anything—”
“I’m going to fucking bash his skull in.”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down? Are you out of your mind? He tried to kill Mia twice! He murdered a cop!” Ric glanced at the clock on his dashboard. “Meet me halfway. I’ll hand off this warrant, and you can meet everyone over there.”
“Ric, listen to me before you do anything. I checked the schedule. He’s not on today. I went by his house, too, and he’s not there, either. So before you go off half-cocked, we need to think about this. If we tip him off, no telling what he’ll do.”
Ric’s gut burned with rage. The highway stretched before him in a haze of red.
“Man, think about what you’re doing.”
Ric thought for about half a second. That’s how long it took him to realize that going after Burleson with a tire iron wasn’t what he needed to do right now, no matter how much he wanted to.
“Meet me at the Highway 71 and Bass Road juncture,” Ric said. “This warrant’s all yours.”
“And what about you?”
“I’m going to get Mia.”
• • •
Mia checked her phone as she stepped off the elevator. Ric.
“I’m glad you called! I’m running late, but I might have a breakthrough, so—”
“Where are you?”
Something in his voice made her feet stop. “Just leaving the lab. Why?”
“Stay there.”
“What?”
“I’m coming to get you.”
“But—”
“We know who the shooter is, Mia, and you were right. He’s a cop. Goddamn SMPD. You know Todd Burleson?”
She stood there, shocked, in the middle of the dimly lit lobby. SMPD?
“Has he ever talked to you? Approached you?”
“No. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Wait, who did you say again?”
“Todd Burleson. He’s a homicide dick. Caught the Meyer case before the chief tossed it over to me.”
“I don’t know any Burleson.” Mia tried to conjure a face.
“I’m sending you a picture. Check your phone, okay?”
Mia looked anxiously around the lobby. Sophie’s desk was empty. The coffee shop was empty. All of the corridors she could see were empty. She looked out the windows, where daylight was disappearing behind the tree line.
“Because he’s a cop,” Ric went on, “he could probably badge his way past the gate.”
She felt the first stirrings of fear. “You think he’s coming here?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing. He’s not answering the phone or his door. He’s freakin’ AWOL, Mia. Are you inside?”
“I’m in the lobby. I just—”
“Get away from the glass. Go into an office. Not your office. Call the security guard, and tell him to come wait with you, and I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Twenty-five at the most, okay?”
Her chest constricted as she stepped toward the elevator bank.
“Okay, Mia?”
“Ric, do you really think—”
“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing, but until we pick him up, I’m not taking any chances. Call me if anything weird happens, anything at all, okay?”
“All right,” she said, trying to sound brave. She ducked behind one of the tall Doric columns and leaned her back against the cool marble. She took a deep breath.
“I’m coming fast, Mia. I’ll be there soon.”
“Be careful. The roads are icy.”
“I will.”
They disconnected, and Mia stood motionless as the silence enveloped her. A trickle of fear slipped down her spine, and she realized that something very weird was already happening.
She was in the lobby, and she didn’t see Ralph.
CHAPTER 26
From the minute he set foot in the room, Jonah knew they’d found their crime scene. Even without the tip from the carpet installer, the place had a particular smell about it—new carpet, yeah, but something else, too.
“Look, but don’t touch,” one of the crime-scene techs warned, walking around Jonah to kneel in the corner of the room. He took out a utility knife and started peeling back a corner of carpet.
Like the CSI, Jonah wore a Tyvek suit and shoe coverings to keep from tracking debris either in or out. He wore latex gloves, too, but didn’t plan to touch anything until the place had been thoroughly photographed and dusted for prints. Jonah was there as a pair of eyes only, at least for now.
The photographer continued snapping away with her camera as Jonah tried to get a feel for the place. It had all the features of what might have been a college apartment: efficiency kitchen, combination living and sleeping area, faded futon slouched in front of a TV hooked up to a gaming system.
“Hey, you smell that?” Jonah asked, turning to look at the CSI.
“What, the carpet?”
“Yeah, but I’m getting some other funk, too.”
The guy sniffed the air. “Think you’re right. Good nose.”
Jonah scanned the room for investigative possibilities. Should he start with the unmade bed? The papers littering the breakfast table? The closet overflowing with dirty laundry? He walked over to the TV and surveyed the tall stack of video games. He eyed the joystick with disgust. This jerk off had an extreme case of Failure to Launch.
“Damn, what a hovel.”
He turned and saw a Tyvek-clad woman standing in the doorway—the FBI’s computer expert, Beth Something-or-other. She wrinkled her nose at the mess and went straight for the laptop on the coffee table. Kurt Lane was considered a flight risk, so the task force was after any information that might indicate his whereabouts. E-mail was a good place to start.
“Let me know what you get on that system,” Jonah said, stepping into the bathroom for a look. Nothing on the sink. A can of beer sat on the back of the john. Jonah poked his head behind the moldy shower curtain and scanned the tile grout for anything suspicious. Nope.
His phone buzzed, and he pulled it from his pocket.
“What was Burleson practicing with Sunday?” Ric demanded without preamble.
“Remington 7600.”
“Does it have a night scope?”
“Don’t know. Why?” Jonah glanced through the frosted-glass window and saw that daylight was fading fast.
“Mia’s at the lab. I’m on my way, but she just called, and she can’t find the security guard.”
“You think he’s out there?” “He” meaning Burleson.
“I’ve got no idea,” Ric said, but the edge in his voice told Jonah that was exactly what he thought.
“Guard’s probably taking a piss break or maybe making his rounds or something,” Jonah said.
“Mia’s been there for hours. If he set up waiting for her out by the parking lot, he’s bound to figure he’s missed his shot by now. It’s almost dark.”
“And you think … ?” Jonah didn’t even want to finish the sentence.
“I think the guard’s missing and so is Burleson. I think he’s about to make this up close and personal.”
Mia sat at Kelsey’s desk, clenching her hands as she waited for Ric to call. Where was he? Maybe the roads were icy and he’d taken it slow, as she’d asked him to. But she didn’t really believe that, not after hearing the alarm in his voice. He thought she was in danger. Right now. And as the minutes ticked by, she was starting to believe him.
Her phone chimed, and she jerked it to her ear. “Ric?”
“You find Ralph yet?”
“I looked around some more, but I didn’t see him.”
&nb
sp; “Is there a control room somewhere? Maybe where he monitors security cams or something?”
“I don’t know. I mean, there probably is, but I’ve never seen it.”
“Okay. Anyone else there?”
She took a deep breath. “Not that I can tell. Kelsey left hours ago, and the evidence clerk clocks out at five on weekends. There were only three cars in the lot when I pulled in.”
“Where are you?”
“The Bones Unit.” Mia’s gaze rested on the skull-and-crossbones coffee mug she’d given Kelsey last year for her birthday.
“Did you lock the door?”
“Yes.”
“Double-check for me.”
Heart pounding now, Mia got up and tried the door to the room where Kelsey and her colleagues kept cubicles.
“It’s secure,” she said. “Are you almost here?”
“I’m probably ten minutes away.”
Silence stretched out, and Mia bit her lip. “Ric, this feels wrong to me. Ralph never leaves his post.”
“Maybe he’s making rounds.”
Mia thought about that. She didn’t know the guard’s routine, but she’d never seen him anywhere besides the lobby.
“Should I call the police, maybe?” Mia had almost done it a minute ago.
“I already did, as a precaution. But I’ll probably get there before they do.” He paused. “Do you have your gun?”
A little bubble of hysteria rose in her throat. “What gun?”
“The pistol Black lent you.”
“It’s at home. I don’t have a permit.” Not that she would have felt comfortable carrying it even if she had—although having a pistol in her hand might go a long way toward calming her nerves right about now. “Maybe I should go down to the ballistics lab, see if I can find something.”
“Is it locked?”
“Probably, but my key card might work.”
“Good thinking. Be careful, and I’ll call you when I get there.”
Cautiously, Mia left the Bones Unit and headed for the elevator. The corridor was dim and silent. What had happened to Ralph? And was she really alone in the building with someone who wanted to kill her? As she rode the elevator down, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, reaching for that inner reservoir of calm. Ric would arrive any minute. This was nothing. The police knew who they were looking for now, so it was just a matter of arresting him. Maybe she’d even be called to ID him in a lineup. Mia pictured herself behind mirrored glass, surveying a row of suspects, all wearing bandannas and ball caps like the man who’d carjacked her. Then she pictured the same line of men, all with Band-Aids over their noses, and it was Sam standing behind the glass and pointing a pudgy little finger at one of them.
Unforgivable Page 28
