She glanced over her shoulder. The note lay on her bedstand, beside her phone. She could take it to the police, lay it all out for them. All what? That she was counseling a troubled teen? One who seemed frightened. A teenager who, Liz believed without proof, knew what had happened to her sister?
Right. Lieutenant Lopez would laugh her out the door. He would trivialize the note and attempt to dissuade her from digging any further into Rachel’s disappearance.
Liz brought her hands to her face. Rachel…Rachel, what happened to you?
Sudden anxiety took her breath. Her heart rate accelerated, her skin went hot, then cold with sweat. Fight or flight, she thought quickly. Not anxiety. Not a panic attack.
Do something. Now. Fast. Before it really was too late.
Liz turned and ran to the closet. She rummaged for her running shoes, grabbed them, then raced to her bureau for a pair of thick socks. She put them on, pulled her hair into a ponytail, thundered down the stairs and out into the blessedly mild night.
She started to run, sucking in one deep breath after another, realizing that she felt great. Free. Unencumbered. It was as if the debilitating anxiety had never existed. Was that all she had needed? she wondered. All this time, had she only needed to take a positive action with that moment? With her life?
Liz laughed out loud, looked to her left, then right. The street was deserted, a rare occurrence for Duval. Apparently, even the most confirmed party animals had gone home to sleep it off.
She passed Rick’s Island Hideaway, then Paradise Christian. She ran on, one block, then two.
She stopped suddenly. Heart in her throat, she turned around slowly. The street behind her was empty. She frowned and took a step backward.
It was as if her sister had called her name.
“Rachel?” she whispered.
Liz shifted her gaze to the church, ghostly white against the night sky.
Not Rachel. Her church.
Without pausing to consider how crazy that thought was, Liz started back, her feet moving slowly at first, then quickening until her breath came in ragged gasps and it felt as if her heart was going to burst through the wall of her chest.
She reached the church, shuddered to a halt and stared up at the structure, waiting. The stained-glass windows glowed subtly, as if illuminated from within. She shifted her gaze to the massive wooden doors then up to the towering spire and bell tower.
Why was she here? What had propelled her to this spot?
Maybe she really was crazy.
She heard a sound and shifted her gaze once more. To the door to the walled garden.
The sound came again. The breeze kicked up, rustling the leaves in the branches above her head. Some creature stirred, then scurried from its resting place. The clawing came again, this time accompanied by an anguished cry.
Liz ran forward, toward the garden door. It was locked at night. The tour guide had said so, to keep runaways and indigents from using the garden as a flophouse and because the garden statuary had been vandalized.
With each step closer, her heart beat faster, the urge to flee grew greater. Perspiration formed on her upper lip, she began to shake.
What was she doing? Testing herself? It was 3:00 a.m., for heaven’s sake. She was a woman alone in a new town.
Elizabeth Ames, are you strong enough, bold enough, brave enough to be here? Do you, Elizabeth Ames, have the right stuff for the job?
Liz reached the heavy door, grasped the handle and twisted. The door eased open.
A large tabby cat screeched and launched itself at her.
With a cry, Liz jumped sideways, flattening herself against the door. A high laugh bubbled to her lips. The noise she’d heard had been the cat. It had gotten locked in the garden, and hungry, had begun to claw and whine at the door in an effort to escape.
And along had come big brave Liz.
Feeling more than a little foolish, she stepped into the now deathly quiet garden. A sound escaped her, one of surprise. And pleasure. The garden was beautiful in the moonlight. Exquisite. A ghostly paradise.
She moved farther into the garden, growing intoxicated on nature’s perfume: night jasmine, ginger, sweet olive. She roamed her gaze over the landscape. Against the riot of flowers and foliage, the banyan roots became architectural.
Her gaze landed on something at the back of the garden, glowing unnaturally white on the carpet of green.
Frowning, she started for it. Not a blossom or toadstool, she realized.
A hand.
A scream rose in her throat. She inched closer. Trembling, she bent and brushed away the cover of foliage.
Tara stared up at her, face frozen in death.
Liz leaped backward, the scream ripping from her. That scream was followed by another and another. Turning, she ran for the garden door. Her foot landed in a hole and she pitched forward, falling on her knees. She clawed her way to her feet, whimpering, crying for help.
Tara. Dear God. They’d killed Tara.
She made it to the door and stumbled through it. Someone grabbed her, their grip crushing. She screamed again.
CHAPTER 15
Saturday, November 10
3:45 a.m.
Rick held the hysterical woman tightly against his chest. She fought him, kicking, scratching, her piercing screams ripping through the night.
She landed a blow to his shin. He swore and sprang backward, releasing her. “Dammit, lady! Shit.” He rubbed his shin. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I heard you scream and came to see what was…shit,” he said again.
“I’m sorry, I-” She choked on the words. “ Tara…in the…someone-” She uttered a sound, part moan of despair, part whine of terror.
He glanced toward the garden. “Someone’s in there?”
“ Tara -” She brought a hand to her mouth. He saw that it shook badly. “In the garden… Tara. She’s…dead.”
Rick frowned, certain he had misunderstood her. “There’s a girl in the garden? Dead?”
The woman nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “Murdered.”
Rick glanced toward the garden once more. Key West averaged one murder-or less-a year. It hardly seemed possible that this woman had stumbled on a murder victim, in a church garden no less.
He returned his gaze to hers. “Are you certain she’s dead? Did you check her pulse?”
She shook her head.
“All right, you stay put. Where is she?”
“All the way in back. Her hand. I saw…”
“I’ll check it out.” He started into the garden, then stopped and looked back at her. She stood, hugging herself, eyes wide and frightened. “Are you going to be all right?” She managed to nod and he made his way toward the back of the grounds.
It took a moment to locate the girl, but when he did he saw that checking her pulse would be unnecessary.
Her throat had been slit, blood loss had been extreme.
Crouching, Rick checked it anyway.
Swearing, he stood. He breathed through his nose, struggling to remain objective. Fighting against the stomach bile that rose in his throat.
Shit. Son-of-a-bitch. Why did things like this have to happen?
He hadn’t been face-to-face with murder in over four years.
It sucked just as bad now as it had then.
Turning, he headed back to the woman. She looked on the verge of falling apart.
“Is she-”
“She’s dead.” He unclipped his cell phone from his belt, punched in the number for the KWPD and handed it to her. “That’s the police department’s number. Hit send. Tell them what’s happened and where we are. Tell them Rick Wells is with you.”
She did as he instructed and he returned to the garden and the dead girl.
Rick hadn’t done police work in years, but some things a cop never forgot. Crime-scene procedure was one.
She had been young. And pretty. She’d had long dark hair and fine features. He narrowed his eyes. She looked vaguely familiar. He searched his
memory. She was a resident, not a tourist. One of a group of teenagers he saw occasionally, partying on Duval.
He shifted his attention momentarily from the victim to her surroundings. Lots of blood. Broken foliage. Bloody footprints leading away from the body.
He inched closer and crouched beside one of the prints. He was no expert on prints, but he would bet this one belonged to an athletic shoe, maybe size nine or ten, men’s.
Swallowing hard, he returned his gaze to the girl. She had been killed in a ritualistic fashion. She was naked, her body arranged in the shape of the cross, arms out, legs almost together. He noticed a tattoo, on her thigh, just below her shaved pubis. A flower, he realized. A strange flower, with curved, pointed petals.
Rick moved on. In addition to slitting her throat, the killer had split open her abdomen just above the pubis-her organs partially spilled out. He had also carved letterlike symbols on her torso and thighs. Judging by the minimal amount of coagulated blood at the wounds, the carving had been done postmortem. Her breasts and genitals had also been mutilated, most likely after death.
He frowned. Something about the style of the murder and the victim’s wounds tugged at his memory. He couldn’t put his finger on just what, and once again shifted his gaze to the scene. By the amount of blood, it was obvious that she had been murdered here, not elsewhere and transported to this spot.
Rick narrowed his eyes. The condition of the brush and foliage around the corpse didn’t indicate a violent struggle. Perhaps the killer had come up from behind, slit the girl’s throat, killing her before she realized what was happening.
So, what had she been doing here in the middle of the night? Judging by lividity and rigor mortis, he didn’t think she had been dead that long. Maybe an hour or two.
He looked at her hands. One was relaxed, one curled into a fist. From what he could see, neither exhibited defensive wounds. He bent closer. She appeared to be clutching a scrap of paper.
From behind him came voices. Val and Carla, Rick realized. He stood to greet the two officers.
“What are you doing, Rick?” Val snapped.
Rick bristled at the other man’s tone. “What do you think I’m doing, Val? Examining the scene.”
“That’s not your job, my friend. I need you to back off. Now.”
Rick stood his ground. He glanced at Carla. She met his eyes and looked quickly away. He returned his gaze to Val’s. “Once a cop, always a cop. Isn’t that what you always say?”
“Carla, would you escort Mr. Wells out front?”
Rick looked at Carla in silent warning-he would not be escorted from the scene like some bimbo civilian. “What is this, Val? I was a cop for eleven years. I’ve handled a lot more murder investigations than you will in your entire life. It seems to me that considering my experience, you should be grateful I was first to the scene. If I were you, I’d be interested in my assessment of the situation.”
Val narrowed his eyes. “Did you touch anything? Contaminate the scene in any way?”
“I checked the girl’s pulse. Okay? Standard operating procedure.”
“Did you touch the body in any other way?”
“Oh, sure, I French-kissed her.” Rick glared at the other man. “Hell no I didn’t.”
Val’s face flooded with color. “Dammit, Rick! You’re a civilian. Not a cop. You were one of the first to the scene, that also makes you a suspect, even if only until after we question you.” He scowled. “You don’t belong here, and you sure as hell know it!”
“Fine! If you need to talk to me, you know where to find me.”
“Bullshit, buddy. Don’t leave the premises. We need a statement tonight. Got that?”
“Got it, Lieutenant.”
CHAPTER 16
Saturday, November 10
4:28 a.m.
Thirty minutes later, Carla finished questioning Liz Ames and Pastor Tim-who had come out to see what the commotion was all about-and headed to where Rick waited, pacing like a caged animal.
Carla approached him with trepidation. She had no desire to tangle with him just now, no desire to be on the receiving end of his fury at Val.
She understood why he was angry. A girl had been brutally murdered. He had been second to the scene. His every instinct told him to get involved-and his best friend had told him in no uncertain terms that he could not.
What Rick had said earlier had been right: he was more qualified to handle this case than either she or Val. He had more experience with murder investigations. And he had awesome instincts. She had seen him zero in on a suspect with nothing more to go on than a gut feeling.
Truth was, even though he no longer carried a badge, Rick Wells was still more a cop than she would ever be.
Carla shuddered suddenly, chilled. Tonight, she wished she was anything but a cop. If only she hadn’t seen that girl in there. If only she could go back to this morning. Or block the image from her head.
But she couldn’t and she feared she would never sleep again.
Rick whirled on her. “What the hell was that all about?”
Carla glanced quickly over her shoulder. She saw that Elizabeth Ames and Pastor Tim had left the scene. She faced her old partner. “Cut him some slack, Rick. He’s a little tense. This is a serious situat-”
“No shit it’s serious, Carla. Tell me something I don’t know.”
She lowered her voice; it trembled. “This isn’t Miami, Rick. We’re not…murder’s not an everyday occurrence here.”
His expression softened. “How’re you doing?”
“Hanging in there. Barely. I puked in the bushes.” She puckered up her face. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I’m not qualified.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. That scene…Let’s just say, I’ve seen some as bad as that but not worse.”
Carla wet her lips. “A murder in this town is…it’s going to shake the rafters. And the murder of one of our own, too.”
“I figured. Who was she?”
“Tara Mancuso, a senior at the high school. Val knows the family. They’re real conchs, just like he is.”
Carla could see Rick’s anger slip away. “What’s he thinking?”
“As far as I know, nothing yet.” She glanced over her shoulder, then back. “What’re you thinking?”
He frowned. “That she knew her attacker. That she wasn’t sexually assaulted.” He paused. “She never knew what hit her.”
“Thank God.”
He leaned toward her. She caught a whiff of the spicy soap he used, and for an instant she couldn’t breathe. “Carla,” he murmured, “there’s something about the killer’s style…something that’s-”
He bit the words back as Val strode over to them, his expression regretful. “Damn, man, I’m sorry. This thing…here…on my island.” He looked away quickly, but Rick thought he saw tears in his friend’s eyes. “I know her folks. How am I going to tell them about this?”
Rick understood how the man felt. He also knew that nothing he could say would make it better. “I’m sorry, Val.”
His friend nodded, visibly pulling himself together. “Carla get your statement?”
“We were just getting to it,” she said. She took a spiral notepad and pen from her front shirt pocket. “Shoot.”
“There’s not all that much to tell. I was closing up the Hideaway-”
“What time was that?” Val asked.
“Around three-thirty.”
“That’s later than usual, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He looked from Carla to Val. “It was a busy night. I was short-staffed.”
“Who was out?”
“Libby, my night bartender called in sick. Again. And Mark Morgan, my boy Friday, went home sick with the flu about 2:00 a.m.”
“So, you were alone at the bar from two on?”
“Two-thirty. That’s when I kicked Pete out.”
Pete, Carla knew, was a local old-timer and good-natured drunk. He spent his days and nights si
tting on bar stools trading gossip and stories of the old days, when the navy still played a pivotal role on Key West. His favorite story was one he told about the days leading up to the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Then what happened?”
“I was beat, so I put the cash from the register in the safe, figuring I’d officially close out in the morning. The plan was to go home and catch some z’s. I was locking up when I heard her scream.”
“Her?”
“Ms. Ames. Didn’t know her name then, but I do now.”
“So, you don’t know her at all?” Carla asked.
“Never even seen her before she landed in my arms.”
Val continued. “What happened next?”
“I followed the sound of the screams here, to the garden door. As I reached it, she came flying out. She was hysterical. Once I got her calmed down, she told me about the girl-”
“What were her exact words?”
Rick frowned, trying to recall. “Something about a dead girl. In the garden. She said the girl had been murdered.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I thought she was mistaken. That maybe some kid had OD’d or something. I went to see for myself. And saw right away that the woman hadn’t been mistaken.
“I hightailed it back to Ms. Ames, gave her my cell phone and told her to call you guys. The rest you know. I looked over the victim, checked out the scene and got kicked out by Val. Been cooling my heels ever since.”
Val nodded. “And I appreciate it, Rick. You’ll be available, if we need to question you further?”
“Like I said, you know where to find me.”
“That I do.”
Carla watched as Rick started off, wishing she was going with him, longing for his strength and the comfort of his arms.
Tonight, for the comfort of anyone’s arms.
Her head filled with the image of Tara ’s lifeless face, of the brutal, bloodied gash that had not only taken her life but nearly severed her head as well. She shuddered, stomach turning. She swallowed hard, fighting the queasiness.
“Learn anything interesting from Tim or Elizabeth Ames?” Val asked.
“Nothing that rang alarm bells.” Carla flipped through the notebook, stopping on Pastor Tim’s interview. “The pastor had gone to bed around ten. Didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. Was awakened by our cherry lights.”
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