Serendipity

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  How long could he draw it out? How loud could he make her scream? How well could he clean up after?

  Pretty darn well, it turned out. But he hadn’t expected the full impact it would have on the city. What were a couple dead women, in the scheme of things? But he’d heard the talk, heard the term serial killer being discussed in worried tones and nervous whispers.

  It had given him a thrill, that was for sure.

  But Bobby Lee wasn’t stupid. Contrary to what he’d always been told, Bobby Lee knew he was smart as a whip.

  And being as he was whip-smart, Bobby Lee had waited months for the right opportunity.

  So the third, well the third had just about dropped into his lap, hadn’t she? Elijah Fuller was a sick, sick puppy, and he’d made the perfect fall guy. So the third, yes the third had been a pure pleasure.

  He’d intended to stop at that.

  But the woman inside the bedroom… Bobby Lee studied the lace-covered window. He couldn’t see more than shadows, the occasional movement, and the freaky one-eyed cat on the sill. But he knew she was in there. The foul-mouthed bitch. And the assistant district attorney. It was a tricky situation, to be sure.

  Chewing on that, Bobby Lee wiggled down the tree. And figuring he had some thinking to do, headed toward Bay Street.

  Because being as he was whip-smart, and thirsty with it, he decided he might as well do his thinking over a beer.

  CHAPTER NINETEENJORDAN awakened with a tongue in his ear.

  “If you don’t stop that,” he warned, voice husky with the remnants of sleep and the fresh stirrings of desire. “You’re going to have to make an emergency run to the drug store. We used all the condoms I had last night.”

  The licking continued unabated, and Jordan snapped open his eyes. He was rewarded with a sloppy doggy kiss.

  “Ugh. Get off me, Finn.” As much as he’d enjoyed playing Vet with Ava last night, he thought that might be taking things too far. He gave the dog a playful scrub between the ears, then rolled over to find the bed empty beside him. He heard the shower, peeked at the clock, and realized Ava must be getting ready for work. Despite the whole condom issue, he decided not to fight the urge to join her.

  There were other ways of pleasing each other.

  He stumbled toward the bathroom, knocking this time before stepping in.

  “Hey. You’re up.” Ava pushed her dripping mass of hair aside and took stock of his long, naked body. “Literally.” And the grin was fast and flirty.

  “Pretend it isn’t there.” He grimaced as he joined her in the shower, slid his hand over her naked hip. “A perfectly good party to go to, but it seems I’ve nothing to wear.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad. You know the rule. No shirt, no shoes, no service.”

  Jordan laughed, and pulled her close enough for wet skin to rub against wet skin. “I could try wearing a shoe, sweetheart, but I’m pretty sure that might hurt.” Then he captured her mouth, torturing them both by spinning out the kiss.

  Blood simmered, and his muscles tightened over it. He felt her pulse flutter against his and reminded himself of the situation.

  “Well.” Ava ran her hands over his chest when he stepped back. “I, um, guess I need to start stocking condoms. And dog treats.”

  Gripping her chin between his fingers, Jordan lifted it so he could see her eyes. When she saw the seriousness in his, that laughing brown flickered into hesitation. “Is that what you want, Ava?”

  “If I didn’t want you, you wouldn’t be here. And we certainly wouldn’t have done what we did last night.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. I meant it when I said it was more than sex.”

  Flustered, Ava turned to fiddle with the shower fixtures. “Water’s getting cold.”

  “Ava –”

  She jerked the knob toward hot. “You don’t even know me, Jordan, not really. How can you know it’s more? Let’s just agree that we enjoy each other, and see where that takes us for now.”

  “Because I’m trying to be upfront about my intentions. I’m not above herding you, Ava. We’ve already established that. But I’d prefer to just point out the direction I’m headed and see how you feel about heading there with me. Maybe you need a nudge or two to get going, and I might be willing to adjust my pace. But the point is, we’re going to end up there all the same.”

  “YOU’RE unbelievable, you know that?” Ava stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. Rubbed it viciously over her skin. Why did this have to be so complicated? “I finally have sex with you, and you have to talk the thing to death. We’ve known each other a couple of weeks. What man in his right mind hears I enjoy you, I’d like to keep enjoying you and starts bringing out maps and life plans? For God’s sake, I –”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  Ava lowered the towel from her face, slowly. “What?” She met his reflected gaze in the mirror. “What? Are you crazy? Are you nuts?”

  “There’s a better than middling chance.” He wrapped his own towel around his waist. And his eyes, heartbreakingly blue, softened as he came up behind her.

  “I don’t know what you’re afraid of. I can’t know, if you won’t tell me.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Maybe your ex-fiancé hurt you a lot worse than you’re willing to admit. Maybe you’ve got some other kind of trouble. But I’m not going anywhere, Ava. All this hiding, circling and stomping around you’ve been doing, seems to me you’re just wearing yourself out.”

  The towel slid out of her numb fingers.

  “Jordan –”

  “It’s okay, Ava.” He took her shoulders, turned her into his chest. “I know you’ve got to get into work, and fact is, so do I. This isn’t the best time to discuss this, and I let you put it off last night. But I want you to understand,” he cupped her chin again, tilted it up. “Want you to understand that I’m here for you. Whether you think you need me or not.”

  His cell phone rang, and Jordan dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “I need to get that.”

  Ava stood, rooted, and watched him stroll easily from the room.

  And felt herself tumble helplessly, hopelessly into love.

  He thought he was in love with her. And to give the man credit, well, maybe he was. She knew her heart, didn’t she? He could just be the rare kind of man who knew his as well, without having to be beaten over the head with it.

  But how would he feel about her when he realized what she actually was?

  The daughter, the niece of violent criminals. And a woman who’d known about his own brush with violence, but neglected to come forward.

  She had a feeling Jordan just might change his stance when that particular fact came to light.

  “Shit.” She sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

  Despite the hiding, the circling, and the damn stomping around, Ava realized that she still didn’t have a clue what to tell him.

  JORDAN grabbed his pants off the bedroom floor and dug his cell phone out of the pocket. The number on the screen showed his boss’s personal cell. Irritation flared. Despite Jordan’s misgivings, he’d been pushing forward with the Fuller trial. He’d honed Daniel Hatcher’s testimony until it shone like polished stone, stone that would withstand the inevitable chipping away from the defense. He’d strategized with Clay to apply the salient points of the profile to Elijah Fuller, had poured over the implications and applications of what physical evidence they had.

  He’d set aside his own doubts.

  But the rest of his team couldn’t quite forgive Jordan for having the temerity to express those doubts in the first place.

  Prepared to take whatever licks the master was doling out for the day, Jordan reluctantly answered the call.

  “Good morning, Joel.”

  “Not from where I’m sitting. I need you down at the jail, ASAP. We’re about to have a media circus on our hands, and it looks like it’s your turn to play ringmaster. I don’t know how that damn viper Ashby sniffed it out already, but she’s br
oadcasting live.”

  “With all due respect, sir, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Cripes, turn on the news. Elijah Fuller’s dead, Jordan. He hanged himself in his cell.”

  AS Jordan approached the door to the Chatham County jail, the media descended like locusts.

  He knew a few reporters on a personal level, and tried not to think of the entire profession as a plague, but when they were coming at him with cameras and microphones he couldn’t help but feel like Moses facing the Red Sea.

  “Mr. Wellington! Is it true that Elijah Fuller hanged himself with his own pants?”

  “Sources from inside the jail indicate that he left a suicide note. Can you tell us what it said?”

  “Does the DA’s office consider this an admission of guilt? Will the investigation into the murders of the three women be closed?”

  “No comment,” Jordan said as he muscled through the buzzing swarm.

  An aggressively perky blonde pushed in front of the others and shoved a microphone in Jordan’s face. “Lauren Ashby, WSAV. My sources indicate that there has been some dissension over your ability to obtain a conviction against Elijah Fuller. Do you feel that his alleged suicide this morning has saved you from facing an acquittal at trial?”

  That one stopped Jordan in his tracks. “As I believe we are still operating under a system that deems a person innocent until proven guilty, I can only be sorry that Mr. Fuller has been denied his day in court.”

  “Is it true that due to your recent medical problems, District Attorney Feinstein was considering replacing you as lead prosecutor? That the head trauma you suffered impaired your ability to handle a case of this magnitude?”

  So now he was not only incompetent, but brain damaged?

  Jordan smelled a rat. But until he had a chance to sniff it out, the smart thing was to keep his mouth shut. “There will be a press conference forthcoming shortly,” he told the bottle-blonde insect, and then the gathering at large. “You’ll have an opportunity to ask your questions then. Until that time neither the members of the police department nor anyone from the district attorney’s office will be able to offer further comment.”

  Steaming, Jordan turned his back on the reporters, and welcomed the blast of air conditioning that greeted him inside the jail. He produced ID, made the expected small talk, and stalked toward the cell where Elijah Fuller had been held without bond.

  And stepped into controlled chaos. The assistant coroner conferred with an investigator from the medical examiner’s office, crime scene analysts dusted and plucked and sealed evidence up in bags, the flash of a camera bounced off the concrete walls and stung the eyes. Fuller’s public defender poked a finger toward Joel Feinstein’s chest. Detectives Simpson and Dawson questioned a guard, because any suicide – but particularly this one – would be treated as an open investigation until fact substantiated theory.

  And in the center of it all, the small, crumpled body of Elijah Franklin Fuller. Naked, because as the reporter outside had suggested, he’d apparently fashioned a rope out of his own pants. Jordan saw remnants of the fabric looped through an air vent, the rest still knotted beneath Fuller’s swollen and purple face.

  Scrawled on the wall, in what appeared to be blood, were the simple words: forgive me.

  “Jordan.” Six feet of strain in a pinstriped suit, Joel Feinstein called out when he noticed Jordan’s appearance. And using it as an excuse to evade the other attorney’s poking finger, strode over with a gathering frown. “It’s about time you got here. We’ve got a hell of a mess.”

  “I apologize for my tardiness. I had to stop home, get some appropriate clothes. How did this happen, Joel?”

  “The kid made a noose out of his pants.”

  “Yeah,” he said drolly. “I got that. I’m talking about the fact that he was supposed to be supervised. A walk-by every fifteen minutes to prevent just this sort of thing. His attorney warned us Fuller was struggling with depression.”

  “And as I just reminded his defense counsel, there will be an investigation. Just like the investigation to make certain Mr. Fuller didn’t have any help getting that noose around his neck. Given his notoriety, the situation, you can be sure the police will cross their Ts and dot every I.”

  Jordan glanced down the hall, caught Simpson’s eyes on him. “If they’d dotted every I to begin with, the man likely wouldn’t be dead.”

  Feinstein’s frown darkened. “That may be true, but that kind of comment is best kept to yourself. At least there’s no family on record, waiting to sue for negligence.”

  Somehow, that made it more depressing.

  Jordan looked at the bloody message on the wall. Fuller had begged forgiveness. For taking his own life? For stalking Sonya Kuosman? For killing three women in cold blood?

  It could mean any damn thing.

  But Jordan just couldn’t reconcile the pathetic figure on the floor with what he’d learned about the killer.

  “He wouldn’t have expressed remorse,” Jordan said quietly.

  “What?”

  Jordan glanced back at his boss. “From what Agent Copeland described in his profile, the man who killed those three women is a sociopath. He’s incapable of feeling guilt over their deaths. To his mind, they deserved what they got, at best. And at worst, he didn’t even see them as people. More a means to his own end. I can’t imagine,” he nodded to the wall “that this would be in keeping with his behavior.”

  “Jordan.” And the tone was ice. “Exactly whose side are you on?”

  “I like to think I’m on the side of justice. Barring that, at least truth. I know you were disappointed with me at last week’s meeting, but I can’t quite be sorry for it just now. If we’d gone to trial the evidence, such as it is, would have had a chance to speak for itself. And Fuller would have had a chance to defend himself against it. Now,” he looked back at the figure on the floor. “Nobody gets the chance to talk. Those three dead women, least of all.”

  “You don’t believe Fuller killed them.”

  “I had doubts. You know I had doubts. And after this?” Jordan shook his head. “I can’t say that I do. But I get the feeling that opinion will be even more unpopular now than it was at last week’s meeting. After all, this wraps things up. A little messily, but certainly more easily than a trial. Serial killer dead by own hand. Savannah streets safe once again. Makes a nice headline, doesn’t it?”

  “Jordan –”

  He waved his hand in the air. “I know what you’re going to say, so just spare us both the lecture. I know better than to air my misgivings to anyone outside this team. Unlike some people.” He narrowed his gaze at Simpson. “But sir.” And he turned a cool gaze on his boss. “I’m not going to stand in front of a camera and lie to the people of this city, politics be damned. Fuller might be dead, but we didn’t prove him guilty of a crime. There was sufficient evidence to indict him, that’s fact. And I’ll happily lay out the facts as we have them. But beyond that, I’m not going to just brush this thing under the rug. Because if I am right, and Fuller wasn’t our man, and another woman dies? I don’t want her blood on my hands.”

  THE bar was old, another of those Savannah institutions. Handmade brick, pressed tin, the wooden floors scarred and stained. Chairs and stools were worn smooth from generations of asses. Whiskey spiced the air, and the sound of rough laughter salted it. Music pumped in a happy beat that simmered under them both.

  Jordan noted the photographs lined like dutiful soldiers along the walls.

  Samuel Bryson, R.E. Read, the first Savannah police officers to be killed in the line of duty. A timeline of police vehicles, from horse and buggy, to motorcycles, to the ubiquitous black and white. The Original Nine, the first courageous black men to overstep racial boundaries and take up the Chatham County badge.

  It was a cop hangout.

  Many a glass had been raised in triumph, in anger. To honor a fallen comrade, toast a fellow’s retirement. To mourn the losses, celebrate t
he victories, and ease the stress of the day-to-day. Jordan respected the institution, and more, much more, the men and women who found their way through the doors. He’d joined them himself on several memorable occasions.

  But this time, this time he was here with blood in his eye.

  Jeff Simpson had taken a swipe at him one time too many.

  “Hey Jordan,” one of the female officers he knew called out to him from her stool at the bar. “Looking good on TV this afternoon.”

  “I don’t know.” The bartender, a portly ex-cop named Big Jim shook his head as he filled a pilsner. “That thing they say about the camera’s true. Those pants made you look fat.”

  “Maybe you could spare me the name of your dietician.”

  “That’s easy. Mick Donalds.”

  As laughter rolled over the music, the crowd, Jordan scanned the back of the room.

  “Can I get you something, Counselor?”

  He spotted Simpson in a booth, laughing with a detective from Special Victims and a blond man Jordan didn’t recognize. And felt everything inside him tighten. “Ah, not tonight, Jim.” He was feeling volatile enough without adding an accelerant.

  “Somebody’s in for it,” he heard Jim murmur when Jordan began to push his way through the crowd.

  Yes, Jordan thought, and felt the simmering frustration of the day click to boil beneath his skin. Somebody is. But he tried to remember to keep it cool, keep it civil, as he made his way to Simpson’s table.

  The laughter that bounced around the booth like a silver pinball died as Jordan stepped up.

  “Miller.” Jordan greeted the man from SVU and nodded to the blond, who looked barely old enough for his beer. “Sorry to interrupt.” Social niceties aside, he shifted his gaze toward Simpson. “Detective. I’d like a word with you.”

  The surprised annoyance that had flashed over the other man’s face slid into an amused mask. “Imagine that,” he said to the table at large. “A lawyer who claims he can get a point across in just one word. I thought y’all needed a press conference for that. But come to think of it, you didn’t say much more than no comment this afternoon. I guess the fact that the sick fuck that murdered Sonya Kuosman and two other women hanged himself in his cell was too complicated for you to get out.”