Ruthless Game (A Captivating Suspense Novel)

by Danielle Girard

  "What?" he asked without removing his smoke.

  Still breathless, she stopped at his window. "Did you see a car pass you on the next block?"

  Only when his eyes took in her appearance like a starving man taking in the sight of a sirloin steak did she realize that she was wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Crossing her arms over her chest, she drew his gaze back to her face.

  She stared hard, daring him to say anything inappropriate. Though she didn't smell alcohol, he smiled slowly and his eyes were dazed and unfocused, as if he had been drinking. She knew the look, and she recognized the other smell wafting from the truck. This was Berkeley, and normally she wouldn't bother with someone minding their own business, smoking some weed. But this guy was pissing her off.

  "Uh, what were you saying?" he mumbled.

  "A car—down that road, going the other way."

  "I saw it. So what?"

  "Did you get a good look at it?"

  "I see cars every day on this road. I never pay attention." Without the view of her chest to enjoy, he seemed suddenly bored.

  Annoyed, she sucked in a quick breath. "Any idea what kind of car it was?"

  "What do I look like, a cop?"

  She bit the inside of her cheek and forced herself not to reach in and pull him out through the window. "Listen, bud, I was just wondering if you got a look at the car."

  After a moment of thought, he shook his head. "Nope." His chin cocked in the air, he looked back at her. "If you want, though, you can hop in and we can try to go catch him." One of his eyebrows snuck up his forehead and he gave her a crooked smile, his gaze traveling over her from head to toe.

  She rolled her eyes. That was it. He had gone too far. She reached into the window and twisted his shirt in her fist. "What's your name, asshole?"

  "Hey, hands off the digs, man. What's your deal?"

  Alex didn't loosen her grip. "What's your name?"

  He raised his hands dumbly. "Ray—the name's Ray, like sunshine."

  "Ray what?"

  "Denwood. Ray Dodson. You can call me Ray." He jacked up his eyebrows again.

  Slowly, she let the smile curve on her lips. "Well, you can call me Officer. Officer Kincaid."

  She watched his reaction, enjoying the quick disappearance of his dopey smile as adrenaline took over and his eyes darted around his truck for any incriminating evidence left in plain sight.

  "And then you can tell me what exactly you have burning in there," she continued. "A controlled substance perhaps? From the smell of it, I've got enough to drag your ass out of the truck and search it."

  "Uh—" His mouth remained open but nothing came out.

  "I asked you for a little help. Did you see the goddamned car that passed you back there or not?"

  His tongue hanging partially out of his mouth, he shook his head.

  Letting go of his shirt, she wiped her hands together. Then, she walked slowly to the front of the truck, glanced down at his plate, and committed the sequence to memory. When she had it down, she walked back to the window and leaned in to Ray.

  He sucked in a deep breath, as though he was going to try to hold it for the rest of the conversation.

  "You know what I'm going to do, Ray?"

  As he shook his head, a small whimpering noise escaped from his throat.

  "I'm going to ask a favor."

  He nodded quickly. "Sure, Officer. Anything."

  "I want you to think long and hard about the car that passed you. If you remember the color, the make, anything, I want you to leave me a note as soon as possible. If I catch this guy and he saw you and you haven't contacted me, I'll find you."

  "Absolutely, Officer. Anything I can do to help."

  "And another thing. From now on, I want my paper right on the front porch every day, got it?"

  Silent, he nodded again.

  "Better yet, how about on the doormat? Is that going to be a problem, Ray?"

  He shook his head.

  "I didn't hear you."

  "No problem, Officer."

  "Get out of here."

  Without listening for his response, she headed back to the house. She expected the truck to peel off but when she looked back, Ray appeared to be moving about six miles per hour.

  Alex went inside and turned on every light she could find, stepping around the glass in the den. She searched the room for a sign as to what the intruder was looking for. She saw her Nikon camera staring at her from the top of her entertainment center. A stereo with CD player sat untouched behind the glass. Her wallet was still where she'd left it on the table by the door. And yet, in the kitchen, all the cabinets and drawers had been pulled open. What kind of burglar left a camera and a stereo but searched through drawers containing silverware?

  The kitchen phone caught her eye and she ran a finger across it. Maybe she should call this in. She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes. She pictured the talk in the station when the word got out that she'd called in a crank call. But an intruder, that was serious. She looked around the room. Her gut said it all related to her waking up on Yolo. And she wasn't ready to tell anyone about that. She hoped she'd never have to.

  She thought about keeping the break-in quiet. She wasn't hurt. Nothing was missing. Maybe there was something she could do on her own. Process the scene herself and avoid having to admit what had happened the other morning. She let her breath out. It was worth a try.

  Taking the stairs by twos, Alex returned to her bedroom and pulled a small satchel off a shelf in her closet. Unzipping it, she looked inside. As a prank in the academy, she and few friends had gotten a hold of some black dusting powder and dusted the inside of a classmate's car. The black leather seats had hidden the dust and only after sitting down had he realized that he was covered in powder. The powder was notoriously difficult to get off, and he'd had to meet his in-laws for dinner with a black backside. Alex had kept the brush and powder in case the mood struck her again. Now she had better use for them.

  In the kitchen, she found heavy plastic gloves in the cabinet under the sink and pulled them on. Using what looked like a big powder brush for makeup, she proceeded to dust the surface of the open cabinets, trailing black as she went. There were partial prints everywhere and it was difficult to tell which were newest. She continued across any cabinet or drawer she thought he might have touched, until she felt she had gotten them all.

  Next, she brushed the broken glass from the window into a paper bag and stapled it shut. Using a roll of transparent packing tape, Alex lifted the prints she found off the cabinets and onto clean white sheets of writing paper she never used. When she was done, she had eight decent samples. The rest of the prints were piled on top of each other until they were completely illegible.

  Sitting at her desk, she pulled out an ink pad that had been her mother's and printed herself on a clean sheet. She was no expert, but she knew the basics of fingerprinting from the academy. There were four types of print classifications: the plain arch; the tented arch, where the arch was almost triangular in shape; the whirl, where it looked like the ridges created a spiral; and the loop, which looked like a tented arch that had circled back on itself. Some people had all four types of prints. After a fingerprint analyst determined the basic print style, he or she classified an additional ten to twelve points and entered that series of numbers into a computer search. Alex couldn't do that, but she should be able to at least determine if all the prints were hers.

  Alex's prints were all whirls, the most common type. One by one, she walked through the prints she'd found, searching for one that wasn't hers. She matched her pointer finger twice, her thumb four times, and there were two prints of her index finger. There were no one else's prints. She thought about the statement that made about her life. She really didn't have people over. With the men in her life, she went mostly to their places, more comfortable not sharing her house. With friends, she met them out. Only Roback occasionally came over, and they spent very little time in the kitchen. />
  The lack of prints told her something far more important, though—that her intruder had been careful. Alex would have much rather seen prints all over the place. The fact that someone worried about the possible evidence trail meant he was thinking—and a thinking criminal was a dangerous one.

  Alex caught her reflection in a silver bowl on the counter. Leaning down, her hands still smudged with ink, she ran her fingers across the bluish black formation on her forehead. She thought back to the struggle, to the moments before he pushed her head to the floor. She'd felt his thumb on the inside of her arm. He couldn't have been wearing gloves.

  Taking the powder, brush, and tape into the small downstairs bathroom, Alex turned sideways in the mirror. She dipped the brush into the powder with her left hand and brushed it along the inside of her arm. The light was awkward, so she twisted her arm to try to see if the print showed on her skin. Unable to tell, she went and found a flashlight, shining the light on her skin. Nothing. Setting the light down, she proceeded to dip the brush in the powder and test another patch of skin, more to the right. Nothing. She tried again, imagining his finger on her skin. Where had he touched her? She thought about the kitchen gloves she had worn and wondered if they had rubbed the print off.

  On the last try, she chose a spot farther up her arm. Studying the results in the light, she saw something. Twisting the flashlight to get a better angle, she caught the image of tiny ridges that formed what looked like a tented arch. It was almost a perfect thumbprint. "You screwed up, asshole."

  Blowing off the excess dust, Alex cut a piece of tape and lay it across the print, making sure there were no air bubbles. Then, in a smooth motion, she pulled the tape off and put it on a clean piece of white paper. She compared the print to the others she'd found. It was definitely not hers. Prints only lasted on cool, dry human skin, and she was thankful he'd touched her arm rather than her neck, where the moisture would've ruined the image.

  She looked down at the black print and wondered what she could do about finding a match. She'd need a fingerprint analyst, since she didn't have any suspects' prints to compare it to. If she called the police and reported the incident, finding the matching print might be a simple matter of sending it to the lab to do a computer search. But she didn't want to call it in. If she did and she didn't mention the incident on Yolo, then she would be lying. She didn't want to lie. She just didn't want to tell the truth yet either. And there was someone else who could help her with the print.

  Elsa Thomas owed Alex a favor for getting her nephew out of trouble a few times. Her husband was a fingerprint analyst at the Contra Costa County Sheriff Department's Criminal Information Bureau. He could classify the print and have it run on the state's fingerprint system, CAL ID.

  If they didn't find a match in California, he could run it in the FBI's AFIS system, too. Sending it to Elsa's husband, Byron, also meant it wouldn't go to the same lab she dealt with for Alameda County. Byron was definitely her best bet. She trusted Elsa to handle the matter with the same discretion that Alex had used when her nephew should have been arrested for stealing a neighbor's car.

  Alex pulled her address book from the kitchen drawer and found Elsa's numbers. It was the middle of the night so Alex dialed Elsa's work number and left her an urgent message, asking Elsa to call as soon as she had a minute and could talk freely.

  There was nothing to do now but try to get some sleep. She'd clean up tomorrow. Alex looked around at the black powder that dusted the counters and floor. She still had no idea what the man was after, why he'd come, or who he was. She thought about the caller. See if you can find the present I left for you and one I took. It seemed impossible to imagine that he and the intruder were two different people.

  Having tucked the thumbprint and the swept-up glass into a cupboard, Alex opened cabinets and drawers in search of what "present" he'd meant. She found nothing. Nothing had been left or taken that she could see. She eyed the knife block that had been her mother's and counted six knives and four empty slots. Suddenly she wondered if one was missing. Had there been seven before? Eight? She never paid attention. Had he been in the kitchen looking for a weapon to kill her? He'd had a chance and he'd let her go. She didn't think he wanted her dead, but then what did he want?

  A sense of dread poured over her like ice water. He was smart. He was strong. He knew things that could damage her, things from the night she couldn't remember. And now he wanted something.

  Chapter 7

  Alex arrived at the station at ten after seven, determined to force things to move forward again. She had arranged, with James's reluctant help, to assist at the Loeffler crime scene for a couple of days. The doctor had written that he didn't want her back on the streets, and helping with the investigation was a good way to utilize her without disobeying doctor's orders. The department was just understaffed enough to get her captain to go for it. She'd spent an hour covering the bluish black bruise above her right eye. Between the makeup and the careful placement of her bangs, it was just barely hidden.

  On her way to meet James, she stopped by the reference area and located the copy of the Physicians' Desk Reference. With a quick look over one shoulder, she found the listing for Restoril. Running her finger down the entry, she scanned the adverse reactions—drowsiness, headache, fatigue, nervousness, lethargy, anxiety, blurred vision, nightmares. No violence.

  "What've you got there?"

  Hearing Greg's voice, she started to close the book, but he put his hand in it before she could get it closed.

  Throwing it back open, he scanned the page until he found what she'd been looking at. "Restoril, huh?"

  "Just curious," she said.

  He backed her to a file cabinet. "Bullshit."

  She waved him off and started to leave. "Think what you want, Roback."

  "Something's going on, Alex."

  "Nothing's going on," she snapped back.

  He reached up and pushed her bangs aside. "What happened to your head?"

  She flinched and pulled back. "I was jumped by a mugger if you don't recall."

  "I thought you hit the back of your head."

  "Well, he got me in the forehead with his fist."

  Watching her, he shook his head. Then, when she didn't respond, he said, "I heard you're working the scene." His tone was cool.

  She nodded.

  "I guess I'll see you around then." He turned and walked away before she could answer.

  She put away the PDR and headed to James's office.

  "You ready?" he asked when she arrived, handing her a cup of coffee.

  She took it and thanked him. "Yep," she said, looking at the dark coffee. It would be her third cup since four this morning, and she wasn't sure it was a good idea. Her stomach already had the rattle of a baby's toy.

  To keep herself from drinking any more, she set the coffee on the table.

  "Lombardi's heading back over to the house this morning. Captain Lyke was going to call him, so he should know you're coming by now. Just go on back there and I'll see you later." James started to say good-bye.

  "James."

  He looked up.

  She met his eyes. "I just wanted to say thanks."

  "Don't thank me. Just don't do anything stupid."

  She knew what he meant was don't do anything stupid again. She wouldn't. She was back in control.

  In her gear, she headed for the detective division.

  Elsa hadn't called back, but it was still early. She felt a little nervous as she walked down the corridor.

  This was normal. Her first cadaver, she reminded herself. Her first death. But the body hadn't bothered her. It had been something else—recognizing him, perhaps. Forcing air into her lungs, she opened the door and stuck her head into the detective division.

  Lombardi sat hunched in his chair. "Wondering when you'd arrive," he said without turning around.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only seven-twenty.

  "I like to start by seve
n."

  "Right." Before her mouth had a chance to debate the issue, she bit her tongue.

  "We're heading back to the house." He turned and looked at her for the first time. "So, if you've got everything together..."

  She motioned to herself and nodded. "This is it."

  Leaning back, he cocked an eyebrow. "Normally the detective division wears street clothes. It's hard to be undercover when you're dressed as a cop."

  She stared down at her uniform and winced. "It's—"

  "Yeah, yeah. Habit, I know," he interrupted, lumbering out of the chair and turning away from her.

  "I'll remember tomorrow."

  "I would hope so," he mumbled, just loud enough for her to hear. Pulling his lucky coat off a tall standalone coat rack that looked as though it belonged in an old Dick Tracy movie, he slung it over his shoulders. "One more thing," he added as they stepped into the hall.

  "Sure."

  "No more fainting. I can't take that shit."

  Refusing to allow her mouth to open, she nodded and followed him out of the station. "We can take my car if you want," she suggested when they reached the police lot.

  His eyebrows nearly firing off his forehead, he halted in the street. "And you drive?"

  "Yes."

  Without breaking a smile, he emitted a long, loud chortle. "No way. I don't ever go anywhere with a broad driving. I enjoy my life, thanks."

  Suddenly, she couldn't hold herself back. "Speaking of bad drivers, did you hear what happened to the side of the station over there?" She motioned to the back of the lot, knowing it was Lombardi who had done the damage. "Someone reversed right into the wall."

  "Shut up, smart ass," he growled.

  She fastened her seat belt, though Lombardi made no move to do the same. "So what's the status with the case so far?" she asked to redirect the conversation.

  Lombardi seemed to relax against the seat. "We finished the printing last night—while you were out cold, I figure."

  Allowing him a return jab, she nodded. She deserved it.

  "It's all at the lab now. Won't know for a couple days at least. The DNA takes a month, if they're quick. Fibers, more like two weeks."