So did that imply that she was on Mix, too? Somehow he couldn’t picture this woman posting a dating profile for men to gawk at.
“Did she ever mention anyone she met there?” Reed asked.
“No.”
“She ever mention anyone she was seeing at all?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Where’d you two meet, anyway?”
She looked at him for a moment, maybe resigning herself to the fact that he wasn’t going to leave her alone until he got some answers.
“At work,” she said.
“ChatWare Solutions?” Her name wasn’t on the current list of employees. Reed had checked.
“It was a long time ago,” she said vaguely.
In her world, that meant what, six months? A year?
Delaney Knox was twenty-four, even younger than April Abrams, which made it all the more interesting that she had the balls to stonewall him.
Or it could be an act. After her little stunt yesterday, she might be worried that he intended to charge her with a crime.
She watched him, her hands clutched around a twenty-ounce double-shot coffee that would keep her up all night. He wondered what she planned to do later. And who she planned to do it with. His gaze dropped to her mouth. Her lips were full. Tempting. She had the kind of mouth that sparked fantasies. Reed dragged his attention back to her eyes, and the look in them told him she knew where his thoughts had strayed.
“So you knew April was on Mix,” he said. “And you think this had something to do with her murder?”
“They’ve got security holes,” she said. “Ones that can easily be exploited by any moron with a keyboard.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do.”
“You ever work there?”
“No,” she said, and something in her tone made him think it was a lie. But hell, why would she lie about something he could easily check out?
He was intrigued now, and not just by her nonanswers and screw-you attitude.
She glanced at her watch and stood. “Time’s up.”
This woman was a piece of work, no doubt about it. Reed knew he’d be seeing her again, and he felt a buzz of excitement as he got to his feet.
“Don’t follow me,” she said, picking up her coffee.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
• • •
The security system beeped as Laney stepped through her front door and dropped her bag onto a chair. She silenced the noise with a few quick taps while her cat looked on in silent reproach.
Laney made a beeline for the fridge, where she found an expired yogurt and a carton of curry shrimp. She gave the carton a sniff and put it back.
“There’s nothing to eat, Baggins.”
She opened the pantry, but the options there were equally uninspiring. Baggins did figure eights around her ankles as Laney stared at the shelves that hadn’t managed to replenish themselves while she’d been gone. She was famished, but even hunger wasn’t enough to prompt her to pick up the phone. Sometimes she got like this. I can tell you’re in one of your hermit moods, her mom would say on her voice mail. Call me when you get this.
Laney was definitely in one of those moods. She didn’t want to face a single living person right now, not even the pizza guy. She poured cat food into a bowl and then returned to her messenger bag and dug out a half-eaten pack of Twizzlers.
She kicked off her shoes and sank onto her futon. She stared at her laptop for a few long minutes, gnawing on candy. Finally, she turned on her computer and watched her inbox fill. She had several messages about April, all from former coworkers at ChatWare.
That job seemed ages ago. It had been her first job out of college, and so much had changed since then. Over the past two years, she’d lost touch with the “normal” people she used to know, people who didn’t live and breathe code.
But she’d gained some things, too, such as an unbelievably high security clearance. And what had once been a thrilling and subversive hobby had become a full-time job. Laney hacked for a living now, and she loved every minute of it.
What she didn’t love was the fallout, because that was where people came in. And people could be incredibly shitty, in her experience. Not all people but plenty.
She thought of Reed Novak. She thought of his cool blue eyes and his relentless questions. Was he a good guy or bad? Hard to tell, and she’d been wrong in the past.
She’d expected him to take the lead that she’d generously sent him and run with it, without getting all hung up on where it came from. But the detective was thorough, apparently. She remembered the flare of attraction in his gaze, and the warm tingle was back again. There was something about him.
The men in Laney’s world fell into two main groups. There were the smooth, overly manicured guys, who tended to be in software sales. And then there were the programmers, who tended to be smart and witty but awkward in social situations that didn’t involve games.
Reed Novak was different. Maybe it was his broad shoulders and the confident way he carried himself. Or maybe it was his ruggedly handsome face or the lines around his eyes that told her he’d seen a few things and had some life experience under his belt.
Maybe it was that he didn’t mind making her uncomfortable. He probably made a lot of people uncomfortable in his line of work, and she liked that about him.
She thought of his low, easygoing voice, which had been at odds with his steely gaze. He hadn’t been intimidated, and Laney was glad. April needed someone like that on her case, someone hard and persistent who would leave no stone unturned.
Baggins hopped onto the sofa and burrowed against her side. As he settled in for a nap, Laney surfed around for a few minutes before landing on Mix. She’d duplicated the answers to April’s questionnaire and created a fake profile for herself to see what sort of response she’d get. So far it had been less than impressive. Most guys were idiots. They’d say something friendly or maybe ask to meet up, and when she declined they’d quickly devolve into insults. She read a few messages telling her she was a stuck-up bitch and then logged in under a different name and navigated over to April’s profile.
Laney stared at the picture. Three full days, and no one had taken it down, not the system admin, not the family. Laney’s cold and queasy feeling was back again.
She knew how it felt to be violated in the very place you called home. She knew the shock, the panic. Three years later, it was still seared into Laney’s mind. She couldn’t get away from it. Her life was forever divided into Before and After.
Before her attack, Laney had been aware of personal security but not vigilant. The danger had felt abstract, something she knew she should worry about—like cancer or air pollution—but in actuality, she didn’t.
Now her fear was very real. She was fully attuned to noises in the night and hang-up calls and strangers watching her on the street. She habitually locked her car and set her burglar alarm. She no longer jogged at night or early in the morning. Her life was different now. Yes, she was safer, absolutely. But she also felt confined. Limited. As though her wings had been clipped when she’d only just learned to fly.
She stared at April’s photo and wondered again what she’d felt in those final moments. Had she been paralyzed with terror, or had she managed to fight? Had she been aware of every agonizing second? Or had the stunning shock somehow blocked out the pain?
Looking at April’s picture now, Laney felt a surge of anger. It shouldn’t still be here, and yet it was. Three full days, and men were still shopping her. They were still leering, still critiquing, still imagining.
Even in death she wasn’t out of their reach.
CHAPTER 4
“So what was wrong at the autopsy?” Jay asked as he stepped into the conference room. He plunked a gi
ant Frappuccino on the table, and Reed immediately regretted not stopping for caffeine.
Reed handed him a copy of the pathologist’s report, which he’d just pulled off the printer.
“ME spent a lot of time looking for things he didn’t find,” Reed said.
“Semen?” Veronica asked, getting straight to the point.
“Negative.”
“Wait, back up.” Lieutenant Hall pulled out his reading glasses.
The fact that the lieutenant wanted to sit in on this Saturday-morning meeting underscored the importance being placed on the case by the top brass.
“What’s the cause of death?” Hall glanced at Reed.
“Blunt-force trauma.”
“Weapon?”
“None recovered.”
“He took it with him,” Veronica added. “You can tell from the spatter pattern.” She pulled a crime-scene photo from a file and slid it toward the lieutenant. “See how the droplets are comet shaped? The tail of the comet points toward the door, which is consistent with an object dripping blood as the perpetrator leaves the scene.” She slid several photos to Reed and then Jay.
Reed studied the pictures. The tiny blood drops were denoted by evidence markers. Magnification revealed a clear pattern.
Hall glanced up from the photo in front of him. “What do we know about the weapon?”
“A hammer-like instrument, based on the skull fracture,” Reed said.
“Hammer-like?” Hall’s gaze narrowed.
“ME doesn’t think it’s a regular hammer but some sort of specialty tool. She was killed by a blow to the left parietal bone.” Reed flipped through the pages to the diagram. As he studied the picture, something niggled at his subconscious, but he couldn’t pinpoint it.
“What about the bruises?” Jay asked.
“She had bruising on her legs and torso,” Reed said. “Plus a broken arm. By the looks of it, she was alive for most of the attack, resisting him, and then he killed her at the end.”
The door opened, and Reed turned around to see Jordan Lowe stepping into the room.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, grabbing a chair next to him. She wore street clothes and a badge that dangled from a lanyard around her neck. Jordan was a homicide detective, but lately she’d been doing undercover work for vice.
What’d I miss? she mouthed, and Reed slid the autopsy report in front of her.
“Okay, what else?” the lieutenant asked. “I assume we searched the surrounding area for this hammer?”
“We covered everything,” Jay said. “But you know, chances are he ditched it. Town Lake is just across the street.”
Reed wasn’t convinced he’d ditched the weapon, but he kept his theory to himself for now.
“Also missing,” Reed continued, “saliva, bite marks, hair, or skin cells belonging to the assailant, despite obvious signs of rape.”
“So he wore a condom,” Jay said.
“Tested positive for lubricant. Still working on a brand.”
“I’m not surprised by the condom,” Veronica said. “This guy’s a real neat freak.”
“Why do you say that?” Jay asked.
“No un-ID’d prints in the apartment. No outside hairs that we were able to find. Only one partial footprint, and that in itself looks weird.”
“How come?” Reed asked.
“Shoe pattern’s obscured.” She passed him another photograph, this one showing a faint oblong shadow on the victim’s Saltillo tile floor.
“You’re sure this is a shoe print?” Reed asked.
“Positive. There’s actually a trace of blood there at the bottom—the victim’s blood—and it’s clinging to a white fiber consistent with the synthetic material manufactured by Tyvek.”
“You’re saying he wore shoe covers?” Reed didn’t bother to hide his disbelief.
“Looks that way.”
Jay whistled. “Man, that’s what I call premeditated.”
Reed sat back in his chair, even more disturbed than he’d been during the autopsy.
“You’re sure we didn’t leave that print?” the lieutenant asked.
Veronica bristled. “Absolutely. The footprint was one of the first things the photographer captured when she arrived at the scene. Only person who’d been in there beforehand was Gutierrez, and she’d neglected to put booties on for her initial walk-through, so it wasn’t her.”
Reed flipped through the file, still digesting the implications of everything. No semen, no hair, no fingerprints. The victim’s fingernail clippings had come back negative for skin cells, even though there were clear signs that she’d put up a fight. Reed had first thought the killer had gotten lucky, but now he thought maybe he’d worn long sleeves. And he might have worn some sort of head covering, too—maybe panty hose—to keep from leaving other trace evidence. Hell, maybe he’d even shaved his head.
“I did find some hair around the back door,” Veronica continued, “all belonging to a cat, probably a calico, based on the coloring.”
“No cat recovered, either,” Jay said, trying to lighten the mood.
“What about method of entry?” Jordan asked.
“Unknown at this point,” Reed said. “No sign of forced entry, but her sister said she was very conscientious about security, so it’s unlikely she left her doors unlocked at night.”
“You’re thinking she let him in?” Hall asked.
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion yet,” Veronica said.
Reed looked at her. “You come up with something on the door?”
“No, but I’m working on it.”
Hall turned to Reed. “What’s this I hear about the victim being on a dating site?” It was an abrupt change of subject. Maybe they were getting around to the real reason Hall had wanted in on this meeting.
“She has a profile on a site called Mix,” Reed told him. “They’re headquartered here in Austin, coincidentally. In terms of suspects, we’re checking out guys from this site, but there are a lot.”
“How many?” Hall asked.
“Thirty-six thousand and twelve, to be exact,” Jay said. “And almost eight hundred who live locally. From the messages, it looks like she only maybe went out with two of them. This was back in October, and both have alibis for the night of the murder.”
Reed looked at Jay. His partner had interviewed the men personally, and he had good instincts about people. The alibis had checked out, but Reed still wasn’t ready to let it go.
Delaney Knox seemed to think Mix was a good lead. Reed had no idea why that should carry any weight, but it did. The girl might be prickly, but she was smart. Plus, she knew the victim, which gave her a perspective he didn’t have. He thought of the way she’d looked at him last night. She’d been guarded, but there was something else there, too—an expectation she seemed to have of him.
“She might have contacted some other people from this site off-line,” Reed said. “So we’re still checking her phone and email records.”
“This dating-site thing, that sounds like a huge time sink,” Hall said. “Unless we turn up a specific suspect, let’s wrap up that avenue as fast as we can. We definitely don’t want that angle leaking to the media, not with the local connection.”
Reed didn’t respond. He disliked the media as much as anyone, but why should he worry about bad PR for some company, local or not? Reed despised this kind of politics. This case was bad enough already, with a young woman murdered inside her own home and not a single decent suspect four days in.
Hall looked at Jay. “What about people she knew at work?”
“We’re checking into it.”
“We’re also investigating a phone number,” Reed said. “It was scrawled on a receipt found in the victim’s car.”
“The receipt is dated the day of her murder,” Veronica added, looki
ng at Reed. “What’d you get on that?”
“Number comes back to a wellness studio on Barton Springs Road.”
“Wellness studio?” Hall asked.
“Yoga, Pilates, meditation. They’ve got a health-food restaurant on-site.” Reed’s phone dinged with an incoming message. “I’ll go by there later today.”
“Who’s going to the funeral?” Hall asked.
Silence.
“It’s at noon, Sacred Heart Church,” the lieutenant added.
“I’ll go,” Reed said.
Jordan looked at him. “No, you covered the last one. I’ll take this one.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jay offered, much to Reed’s surprise. Jay hated funerals. Reed did, too, but they were part of the job. They offered a good chance to observe people close to the victim and sometimes a chance to pick up on any unusual family dynamics.
“Fine, Novak can cover the wellness studio, and you two are on the funeral,” Hall said, “but keep it low-profile. The press is going to be all over this one.” He checked his watch and pushed back his chair as Reed read his text message.
SBUX ACROSS THE ST 5 MIN. Once again, the number belonged to the chief of police. Reed muttered a curse.
“Novak?”
He glanced up. “Sir?”
“Send me an update later today, and I want progress.” Hall glanced around the room. “The minute that funeral ends, the media’s going to be ringing my phone off the hook.”
• • •
Delaney Knox wasn’t hard to spot. She was the only one outside the coffee shop who wasn’t drinking or staring at a phone, and she turned to face him as he approached her.
She wore faded jeans ripped at the knees, chunky black biker boots, and another tight-fitting black T-shirt. Her streak of pink hair was braided and tucked behind her ear today.
Reed stopped in front of her, and she gazed up at him with those brown-black eyes.
“Detective.”
“Delaney.”
“It’s Laney.” She looked away. “Let’s go over there. This shouldn’t take long.”
He followed her to a circular fountain surrounded by stone benches. Reed glanced around, checking people’s faces and body language, looking for suspicious behavior, but everyone seemed mellow on this sunny Saturday morning.
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