“I’ll never make sense of it,” she corrected, tone bitter. “I just want to know what happened to her. Is that so wrong?”
“Only if you’ve used these murders to support that agenda.”
Liz couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Or how much it hurt. “Is that what you think I’ve done?”
He didn’t reply; she took a step away, devastated. “Why can’t you see? Who knows how many people are a part of this? And if the Horned Flower is operating with the full support of the police-”
“Stop it! This has gone too far! You’re accusing upstanding citizens of murder and moral corruption. My oldest friend. A popular preacher. Who else? The mayor? The elementary-school principal?”
“Why not?” she retorted, a hairbreadth from falling apart. “Anyone could be involved.”
He took another step back, expression closed. “You’re the outsider here. You’re the one who’s crazy, not everybody else.”
She brought a hand to her mouth. “How can you say that? After all we’ve shared?”
“Did we share anything, Liz?” he asked tightly. “I’d begun to believe that maybe…that sometimes life offered up second chances. But now I wonder, was I simply a pawn in your desperate game?”
She moaned as if in pain. She had never felt more alone, more abandoned.
“It’s over, Liz,” he said softly. “I can’t be a party to your delusions anymore.”
CHAPTER 49
Wednesday, November 21
12:25 p.m.
Carla sat at her desk, struggling to keep her thoughts from showing. She glanced at her watch, noted that Val’s secretary, Becky, would be leaving for lunch any moment. She would walk by Carla’s door, call goodbye then stop and ask if Carla wanted her to pick her up anything. Same as she did every day.
What made today different was what Carla planned to do while the woman was gone.
Apprehension tightened her chest. She couldn’t believe what she was thinking. She wanted to prove her suspicions wrong.
Val wasn’t dirty. He wasn’t involved with these women’s deaths-or with this Horned Flower group Rick had told her about.
Carla lowered her eyes to the file lying open on the desk in front of her. Tara Mancuso’s file. Below it lay Rachel Howard’s. Below that Naomi Pearson’s. Inconsistencies jumped out at her. Little ones she had missed before. Things like dates and times. Things that could be nothing.
Or something big.
She had eavesdropped on Val and Rick’s conversation that morning. Something Val said had jumped out at her, bold as a street whore.
“If Rachel Howard had uncovered a cult on the island, one that was endangering the teenagers in her flock, wouldn’t she have come to the police for help?”
Carla brought a hand to her temple, to the headache that pounded there. She was thinking Rachel Howard had called the police. Shortly before she had gone missing. Carla closed her eyes, trying to recall. She had been walking by Val’s office; he had been on the phone. She had paused to speak to him and he had said the woman’s name as he hung up.
“I’ll look into it, Pastor Howard. Thanks for calling.”
Why hadn’t she recalled that snippet before? she wondered. The day after Tara ’s murder, Liz Ames had come to see Val. Carla had been there; Val had told Liz that he had never spoken to her sister. Why hadn’t alarm bells sounded then?
In the past hours she had made a number of excuses for herself. That the memory had been so fleeting, so inconsequential. That she’d had no reason to suspect her superior of any kind of impropriety. That even now she was uncertain if the memory was accurate-or one conjured by exhaustion and frustration.
She was done making excuses. The truth was, Rick never would have forgotten such a detail, inconsistencies never would have escaped him. He would have involved himself so thoroughly in the investigation that inconsistencies, whether sloppy mistakes or deliberate falsification, never would have happened. Period.
Carla turned her attention to the files on her desk once more. Val had claimed to Rick that morning that Tara had been clasping a piece of paper in her hand, the Hideaway’s number scrawled on it. It hadn’t been paper at all, but a scrap of white fabric, most probably torn from Tara ’s attacker’s shirt. Why had Val lied to Rick? About that and about Pastor Howard’s call?
To influence him into discrediting Liz Ames. To convince him to back off.
Why?
Because Rick had been a damn good cop. Because he had feared Rick would figure out the truth.
Val was dirty.
Carla shook her head. She wasn’t going to believe it, not without proof.
“I’m out of here, Carla,” Becky called from the hallway outside her office. “You want me to pick you up anything?”
Carla looked up, praying she didn’t look as guilty as she felt. “No thanks. I’ll catch a bite later.”
“Be sure to do it before Lieutenant Blood gets back.” Becky made a face. “If you don’t, you won’t get lunch. He was on a tear this morning.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Carla forced a smile. “By the way, when is Val due back?”
“He thought his meeting with the chief would go through lunch. I figure I’ll see him sometime after one.”
Carla thanked her but the words stuck in her throat. The secretary looked at her strangely. “I think I’m coming down with a cold,” Carla explained, clearing her throat.
“I have a bottle of echinacea in my top right desk drawer. Help yourself. It really works.”
“I’ll do that, thanks.” Carla smiled and the other woman walked off. She lowered her gaze to her wrist, counting as the second hand of her watch ticked out one minute, then two, then three.
She stood and crossed to her office door. She stood there a full minute, listening for Becky’s distinctive voice, wanting to be absolutely certain the woman had left the second floor.
Confident that she had, she made her way to Becky’s office, a small cluttered area located to the right of Val’s. In actuality, Becky worked for all the detectives; she answered the phone, directed calls and ran interference between the detectives and everybody-including witnesses, victims’ families and the chief himself.
But Val was her boss; he had hired her, he could fire her. His work always came first.
Val required Becky to keep all the carbon copies from her old message pads for six months. Unless Pastor Howard had reached Val directly, which certainly could have happened, Becky would have taken a message. It was a fifty-fifty shot, but one worth taking.
The secretary kept them in the file cabinet in the corner. Bottom drawer. Carla crossed to the cabinet, squatted in front of it and pulled open the drawer. The empty pads were located in back, a stack of five of them. She chose the least recent one and began thumbing through it.
Nothing. She retrieved the next pad. And hit pay dirt.
A message to call Pastor Rachel Howard from Paradise Christian Church. Wednesday, July 11. Two days before she was discovered missing.
What that meant hit her with the force of a heavyweight’s best punch.
“What are you doing, Carla?”
She jerked her head around. Becky stood in her office doorway, face screwed into a suspicious scowl. Carla forced a laugh. It sounded choked, even to her own ears. “After you left, I got to thinking about something-” She ripped the carbon copy from the pad, stood and carried it to the secretary. “This call from Rachel Howard, did Val get it?”
The woman’s cheeks flooded with color. “Val gets all his messages.”
Carla hurried to smooth her ruffled feathers “That’s what I thought, of course.”
“Besides,” Becky said, tapping the pad, “the original’s gone. That means I put it on Val’s desk.”
“Did he return this call?”
The woman stiffened. “I imagine he did. Lieutenant Lopez is very thorough.”
“Yes, he is.” Carla thought of Rick, of how he would take what she was about to show him, a
nd sadness crept over her. Everyone would be hurt by this thing-the department, Rick, her. “Thanks, Becky.”
She started out of the office. The secretary stopped her. “Your voice, Carla. It seems suddenly better.”
She looked over her shoulder at the other woman. “It is. Thanks for your concern.”
CHAPTER 50
Wednesday, November 21
1:40 p.m.
Rick drew the ancient Jeep Wrangler to a stop in front of Carla’s South Street cottage. She had called him on his cell phone a half hour ago. She needed to see him right away, she’d said. It was about the disappearance of Pastor Howard.
He cut the engine but didn’t move to get out of the vehicle. He leaned his head against the rest and stared blankly up at the Jeep’s canvas top, thinking of Liz. As he had watched her walk away, his every instinct had shouted to call her back. The feeling that he had done the wrong thing had grown in the hours that had passed, as had his worry over her safety.
He couldn’t trust his instincts, not when it came to Liz. He saw that now. Until Val had pointed it out, he hadn’t consciously acknowledged Jill’s and Liz’s physical similarities. Just as he hadn’t seen what he had been doing-trying to save her, the way he had not been able to save Jill.
The truth of that left him feeling raw. And foolish.
He glanced at Carla’s house and saw her at the window. He lifted a hand in greeting, pulled the keys from the ignition, climbed out of the Jeep and made his way up the walk.
He stepped onto the porch. It sagged slightly and the gray deck paint was peeling. In contrast, the hanging ferns and pots of multicolored flowers all but shouted tender-loving care.
Carla had always loved plants and for the longest time had tried to keep several in her cluttered, windowless office. It had driven Val nuts. Real cops, he had complained, didn’t keep pansies and petunias on their desks.
Carla appeared at her door. “Hi.” She smiled nervously and pushed the screen door open.
After he entered, she peered outside as if assessing if they were being watched, then closed and locked the door. He cocked an eyebrow. “What was that all about?”
“You’ll understand in a moment. Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”
She led him into her small kitchen. She went to her purse and retrieved a slip of pink paper from its side pocket. She held it out. “Take a look at this.”
He closed the distance between them and took it from her. It was a carbon copy from a message pad, the kind found in most offices.
He read it then lifted his gaze to hers.
“Rachel Howard did call Val. She called him two days before she was reported missing.”
Rick pulled out one of her kitchen chairs and sat, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
“This morning, I eavesdropped on you and Val. And I…remembered. He was in his office, on the phone, he said her name.”
“Are you certain? Maybe he didn’t get-”
“He did. I spoke to Becky about it.”
“Shit.” He shook his head, struggling to come to grips with this piece of information. The ramifications of it. “This doesn’t mean anything. She could have called him about a…donation. About a church function or-”
“There’s more, Rick,” she said gently. “There was no scrap of paper with the Hideaway’s phone number scrawled on it. Tara had fabric in her hand. Shirt fabric. White.”
Rick thought back to that night, what he’d seen. It could have been fabric. It’d been dark, he had assumed it had been paper.
“Mark had on a light-blue T-shirt that night.”
“How do you-”
“I saw it at his place. The blood looked purplish on the blue. I’m embarrassed to say I never thought about it until now. Even though that fabric was most probably torn from her attacker’s shirt.”
Rick felt ill. Not Val. His best, his oldest friend. The person who had seen him through the darkest days of his life. He felt as if he were being ripped apart.
And he thought of Liz, the way he had torn into her for suggesting Val might be dirty.
“Why, Carla?” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Why would he do this?”
“I don’t know.” She turned and crossed to the window behind the sink and stared out at her lush, overgrown backyard. She let out a long, disappointed-sounding breath. “I made so many mistakes. I always let him lead. Like a little puppy dog, whatever he asked of me, I did. Whatever he said, I believed.”
She swung and faced him. “I never questioned, Rick.” Her voice trembled. “A good cop questions everything.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. He was your boss, a lieutenant and highly thought of in the department. Who would have thought twice about-”
“You would have,” she said simply, interrupting him. “I’m going to see this thing through, then I’m getting out, Rick. This isn’t the job for me. It isn’t the place.”
He understood. But he didn’t want her to go. “You’re a good cop, Carla. You’ve turned into a good cop.”
A small smile touched her mouth. “Thanks, but I know better.” He started to protest. She cut him off. “I’m not you, Rick. Never will be. The time’s come for me to stop kidding myself. This isn’t my calling. I’ll never be better than adequate, not here. Not in police work.”
“You don’t have to leave Key West. There are other opportunities here. You could-”
“Waitress? Work in a hotel or clothing boutique? I don’t think so.” Her expression became wistful. “I’m a steel mill-town girl, Rick. I don’t belong in paradise.”
“There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?”
She met his eyes, hers bright with longing. “There’s one thing, Rick. Say that and I’ll stay.”
Tell her there was a chance for them. That he might love her.
“I can’t tell you that, Carla. I’m sorry, I wish I could.”
He meant it. And he regretted having hurt her.
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you? With Liz Ames?”
He thought of Liz and his chest tightened. His instincts had been right. About everything but Val.
“I don’t know. I was beginning to think there might be something-”
Dear God, he had sent her out there alone. Unprotected.
As if reading his thoughts, Carla touched his arm. “She’ll be okay.”
“If he hurts a hair on her head,” he said fiercely, “I’ll kill him, I swear I will.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked, dragging his thoughts back to the issue at hand.
Rick pursed his lips. “We need more information. We need something substantive we can take to the chief.”
“I’ll get it. As a member of his team, I have access to things you don’t. His files, desk, computer.”
“That’ll put you in harm’s way. I can’t allow that.”
“It’s not up to you though, is it?”
It wasn’t, he knew. He swore. “Carla-”
“I told you, I’m seeing this through. Consider it my swan song.” She smiled, the curving of her lips determined. “Someday I’ll be telling my kids about the big case I helped crack.”
He hesitated, then acquiesced-not because he approved of her solution but because he didn’t see another. “Let’s look at what we have. Two women dead, another missing. Rumors of a strange cult involved with drugs and teenage sex.”
“Let’s not forget one prominent banker’s suicide. A banker who was up to his ass in bogus bank loans.”
“As was one of the victims.”
Rick met Carla’s eyes. “Means and opportunity aren’t a problem. We need a motive. Why does one of Key West’s most respected citizens, a man next in line for the chief of police’s job, become a killer?”
“Is he a killer? Or is he just in bed with one?”
“Motive?”
She ticked them off on her fingers. “Love. Hate. Greed. The holy trinity of murder. Take your pick.”
“True, but that doesn’t change the facts, now, does it?”
“Go to hell, Carla,” he said, turning his fury on her. “Just go straight to hell.”
She crossed to him and laid a hand gently on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I know he’s like a brother to you.”
His fury evaporated, replaced by resignation-and determination. “How much we get done and how fast depends on what this storm decides to do. We need to move fast, if Becky hasn’t told Val about your finding the message from Pastor Howard yet, she will soon. You need to-”
Carla’s beeper sounded. She checked the display. “It’s headquarters.”
He nodded, understanding. She crossed to the wall phone and called in.
“Chapman here.” She looked at Rick, eyes widening. “Another woman?”
“Where?”
Rick crossed to stand beside her.
“Big Pine Key,” she repeated. “Do they have ID?” She nodded. “Keep me informed.”
Carla hung up. “There’s another victim. No ID yet, but she’s a pretty blonde.”
“Do you need to report in?”
She shook her head. “Sheriff’s department is at the scene.”
Rick shook his head, thoughts on his earlier conversation with Liz. “Do you know a woman named Heather Ferguson?”
Carla was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Gorgeous blonde, right? She’s been in to see Val. Recently, as a matter of fact.”
Rick curled his hands into fists. More proof. Son-of-a-bitch.
“She owns a shop on Duval,” he said, jaw tight. “I’d met her at one of the Old Town merchants’ meetings. Turns out she was a friend of Rachel Howard’s. Liz went to see her earlier today and learned from the guy next door that she’d been missing a couple days. Apparently he went to Val, who did nothing.”
“Same as he did when Rachel Howard and Naomi Pearson turned up missing.” Carla clasped her hands together. “The body count’s climbing too fast. Val, or whoever he’s covering for, is out of control. It’s like they’re on a rampage.”
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