Trigger Effect

by Maggie Price

  “Because by that point she’s dead?” someone asked.

  “I’d say so. A depersonalization is common in homicide cases when one spouse murders the other.” Paige skimmed her gaze to the end of the statement. “The last sentence is the kicker. ‘Whoever killed her made her suffer, that is for sure.’ If I were working this case, I’d be sure to ask how he knows that.”

  She shifted her gaze to Henderson and Kidd. Both had their eyes trained on her. “In my opinion,” she said, “the husband is as guilty as homemade sin. Is that how things turned out?”

  “Man,” Henderson said, shaking his head. “Man, oh, man.”

  “Yeah.” Kidd pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. Paige saw that it was a plastic one with a curve on one end that held a length of dental floss. “It took us a couple of days, but we got a confession out of him.” Kidd paused. “Did you read about this case in the papers, Ms. Carmichael?”

  “I live in Dallas, Sergeant Kidd. Our media doesn’t cover most crimes that occur in Oklahoma.”

  “Guess not.” He slid the toothpick into the inside pocket of his sport coat.

  “Statement analysis can be used in areas other than criminal investigations.” Paige moved to the table beside the podium and picked up the stack of assignments. “Let’s take a look at one of these.” She fanned through the pages, spotted McCall’s handwriting, plucked out the sheet and began to read.

  “‘I woke up, showered, shaved, got dressed, then drove across town and picked up a friend. We went to Nick’s for champagne brunch. We left Nick’s and drove to a movie. After the movie we stopped and had a drink. Then she and I went to a mall, did some shopping. Later I took her back to her condo. She unlocked the door, I turned on the lights. I went home not long after that. I worked on my car, watched TV, then read for a while.’”

  Paige glanced up. Because several cops were sending knowing looks in McCall’s direction, she figured Nick’s must be a well-known hangout of his.

  “I’m guessing this was written by a male since the author mentioned shaving and working on a car.” She met McCall’s gaze for an instant before looking back at the paper. “The author didn’t introduce his lady friend by name. The norm for healthy relationships is a clear introduction. For example, ‘My friend, Sally.’ But in tumultuous relationships, introductions often are missing. Still, there’s a sense of togetherness in that the author uses the word we in his initial description of his and his friend’s activities. We went to Nick’s, we left there, we drove to the movie, we stopped to have a drink.”

  “Hey, McCall,” Henderson said, sending his coworker a leering look. “Just how much togetherness went on?”

  Muted chuckles sounded while McCall shrugged, said nothing.

  “A problem,” Paige continued, “or disagreement occurred between the time the author and his friend stopped to have a drink and went to the mall. I know that because he shifted his language from we to she and I. That change shows a distancing. This problem continued when he got to his friend’s condo. He was hoping to…” Paige paused. “Well, let’s just say, hope is all he did.”

  “Holy—” Detective Alvarado flicked a slightly amused look over her shoulder at McCall before turning back to Paige. “How the heck can you tell when someone doesn’t score?”

  “The author mentioned that when he and his friend arrived at her condo, he turned on the lights,” Paige replied.

  “So?” Tia asked. “It must have been dark out.”

  “And turning on the lights would be taken for granted. So, mentioning the activity indicates it meant something.” Despite her best intention not to, Paige looked at McCall. She felt a streak of satisfaction to see Sergeant Lothario’s jaw locked tight and his eyes smoldering. “A reference to turning on the lights is prevalent in statements where a person wanted sex, but didn’t get it.”

  “Why is that?” a man from a security consulting firm asked.

  “No one knows for sure.” Paige held up a hand to ward off the inevitable protests. “That’s a long way from a scientific explanation. So is a cop’s following some hunch that winds up solving a crime. You can’t explain it. It just is.”

  “Hey, Teach, can I get my assignment back before you read it?” a man’s voice spiked with humor asked.

  “No can do.” Smiling, Paige opened her briefcase, slid the assignments inside, pleased she was already gaining converts to the investigative technique she deeply believed in. “Like I said, I told you a lot about myself. It’s only fair I learn a few things about each of you.”

  Paige had excused the workshop attendees for lunch and had the classroom to herself. Or so she thought until she glanced up and saw Nate McCall moving down the aisle toward her with what she sensed was a deceptive calm. Seeing him for the first time on his feet, he was taller, leaner than she’d first guessed.

  “Aren’t you going to lunch, Sergeant McCall?” she asked as she shut her briefcase. His cocky grin was just a memory; his face had taken on a closed look, and she decided he did the dead-eyed cop stare as well as anyone she’d ever seen.

  “Kidd and Henderson will wait on me. I need to talk to you.”

  Not you and I need to talk, or we need to talk, she automatically thought. Verbally, McCall was putting plenty of distance between them.

  “About?”

  “You know damn well what about. I want to know why you started snarling the instant you laid eyes on me. And then on your way out of the room why you made sure to drop your pen behind my chair so you’d have time to peg my handwriting.” He paused, giving her a pointed look that would make a civilian squirm in their shoes. “Jump in if I get any of this wrong.”

  He might be a jerk but he wasn’t stupid, Paige thought, and felt her stomach tighten when he took a step forward.

  “That way you could make sure you pulled my paper out of the stack so you could analyze it,” he continued. “Why single me out?”

  Faced with cold, hard facts, Paige conceded it hadn’t been the smartest thing to let her personal baggage color her professional behavior toward one of her workshop attendees. Then again, Detective Studpuppy had asked for it.

  “You leered at my legs.”

  He raised a dark brow. “That’s it? My giving your legs an appreciative look made you decide payback was in order?”

  “You leered.” She lifted her chin. “You reminded me of someone I don’t like. As a matter of fact, he’s a total weasel.”

  Annoyance narrowed his eyes. “Are you always this quick to make assumptions about someone you’ve never before laid eyes on?”

  Yes, she thought. Especially when the person was a man with the type of charmer’s grin that put a sizzle in her blood. She’d been pulled in once by a blinding grin that prevented her from seeing the truth. Never again.

  She ran a hand across her briefcase while acknowledging how bitter, vindictive and totally lame she sounded. “Look, I had a rotten morning even before I got lost twice on my way here. That little encounter with you went all over me.”

  “So you pulled out my paper on the off chance you could hammer me? What if I’d spent all day yesterday volunteering at an old folks’ home or something?”

  It was her turn to arch a brow. “Then I doubt you’d have mentioned turning on the lights.”

  “Lights,” he repeated with derision. “Your area of expertise might have merit, Carmichael, but I’m not buying your explanation that you know someone’s got sex on their mind just because they walk into a dark room and flip on a light switch.”

  She smiled at the temper smoldering in his eyes. “Was I wrong about what happened between you and your companion?”

  “We argued. The way you came up with that makes sense. And it isn’t a huge mental step to figure the odds are low of two people in the midst of a fight winding up in bed.”

  “You think it was a good guess on my part?”

  “Exactly.”

  Paige eased out a breath, reminding herself it had also taken her time to buy into the
merits of statement analysis. “You’re entitled to your opinion, Sergeant. Maybe as we get deeper into the subject matter it will change.”

  He started to say something just as his cell phone chimed. Shoving back one flap of his suit coat, he pulled the unit off his belt and answered.

  Watching him, Paige saw the way his eyes went flat and cool as he listened to the caller. No one had to tell her she’d just witnessed McCall slide into his cop’s skin. She’d done it often enough herself when she carried a badge.

  After a minute passed, he said, “I’m on my way. Make sure the uniform keeps the scene secured. Until the lab guys get there, he doesn’t allow anyone in that freezer, including himself.”

  He hung up, clipped the phone back on his belt. “I’ve got a homicide to work. Don’t expect me back today.”

  Paige blinked. “You’re enrolled in my workshop and on call to work cases?”

  “Have to. My partner’s on maternity leave. With three of us from Homicide taking your workshop, things are spread thin.”

  “Hopefully you’ll rejoin us tomorrow.”

  He paused and looked at her. Paige had the sense he was sizing her up with the same intensity he would if she were a suspect in the murder case he’d just been assigned.

  “If I do make it back, how about giving me a break?”

  She hoped he would be back. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt an intense challenge to make a believer of Nate McCall. “I’ll consider it, Sergeant.”

  Hours later, Paige rose from behind the desk in the office used by the center’s guest instructors. Grateful she had the first day of the workshop behind her, she set the locks on her briefcase, then retrieved her coat from the closet tucked into one corner. The headache that had stayed with her all day hammered behind her eyes, tension knotted her shoulders and she hoped she could find her hotel without repeating the wrong turns she’d made that morning.

  “Dammit,” she muttered after she pulled on her coat and turned back to her briefcase. She’d had the secretary run a copy of each of the workshop assignment sheets so she could leave the originals untouched when she analyzed them. But she’d stuck the copies in her briefcase and left the original statements stacked on one end of the desk. Not wanting to take time to rekey the briefcase’s combination, she coiled the sheets like a roll of paper towels and slid them into her red suede purse.

  Swinging its strap over her shoulder, Paige grabbed her briefcase, then headed out of her temporary office. The click of her heels echoed against the now-deserted main hallway.

  To acknowledge the three-year anniversary of her life getting blasted to smithereens, her evening plans included cracking open the minibar, room service and a long soak in the tub. With her headache drumming, she revised those plans to include a couple of aspirin.

  Car keys clenched in one hand, briefcase in the other, she shoved open the door and stepped into the cold afternoon gloom.

  With thoughts of the escaped Edwin Isaac never far from her mind, she paused just outside the door. The wind gusted, raking through her dark hair like wild fingers while her senses strained to catch the slightest noise, the slightest movement.

  Maybe it was just the low, ominous-looking gray cloud bank sucking up what was left of the daylight that compelled her to settle her briefcase at her feet and slip her hand into her coat pocket. When her fingers failed to connect with the asp she habitually carried there, she swore a silent oath. She’d stowed the collapsible tactical baton inside her suitcase for yesterday’s flight from Dallas to Oklahoma City. In her haste this morning, she’d forgotten to retrieve the weapon.

  “Can’t just stand here,” she muttered. Picking up her briefcase, Paige hunched her shoulders against the chill and headed around the side of the building.

  The instant she came abreast of a thick, bushy shrub she sensed a presence. Motion. The hair rose on the back of her neck. Her right hand instinctively went for the holstered Glock she hadn’t carried in three years.

  At the edge of her vision she glimpsed a towering black-clad figure wearing a leather mask charge from the shadows. Adrenaline blew through her system, and she had a crazy half second to think how her day was about to get worse.

  Chapter 2

  Paige’s elbow swept up toward the man’s jaw at the same instant the side of his hand slammed into her temple. The blow shot jagged lights behind her eyes.

  Stumbling off balance, she smashed against the hood of her rental car.

  She had no time to think, to work out if the attacker was Isaac. No time to wonder if he had a weapon. There was no time to do anything but act and react.

  Sucking in a breath like a diver going under, she tightened her hold on the briefcase, spun upward. Her mind catalogued her attacker’s black leather mask and gloves as she slammed the briefcase into his gut.

  His breath exploded in a grunt. It turned into a cursing rush when the toe of her shoe plowed into his knee. She knew if he had a weapon, odds were he’d have gone for it by now.

  He locked an arm around the briefcase and yanked. Snarling, she held on like a pit bull.

  Still gripping the keys in her right hand, she shoved one between her clenched fingers. She jerked on the briefcase’s handle, yanking him into a forward stagger as she jabbed the key at his left eye.

  He feinted and, instead, the teeth of the key raked a furrow along the side of his neck, drawing blood.

  Howling, he swung his fist.

  The blow to Paige’s cheekbone sent pain grinding down her face. Reeling, she knew she was going down, and made sure she took him with her. She hit the pavement hard, and though she rolled, he landed on top of her.

  The impact stole her breath.

  He lunged up. Jerked the briefcase from her hold. Bolting in a half limp, he veered across the parking lot toward a six-foot cement block fence.

  Paige shoved herself up, ignoring the flash of pain in her side and the throb in her cheek. She set off running after him. Eyeing him from behind, she realized the mask fitted over his entire head, like something out of an S&M flick.

  She was a foot away when he swivelled. She dove under his arm and hit him hard. Instead of toppling, he took the impact, swung the briefcase. She twisted, deflecting the brunt of the blow with her shoulder.

  She wished like hell she had her asp baton.

  He lobbed the briefcase over the fence, then scrambled after it. She caught his pant leg when he was halfway over.

  “Give it up, bitch!” he snarled, kicking wildly.

  The toe of his shoe caught her in the jaw, snapping her teeth shut. She lost her grip on his pants, staggered back and landed on her butt. She was on her feet in a flash.

  And knew there was no way she could get over a towering cement block fence in her snug straight skirt and three-inch suede heels in time to catch the scum.

  “Dammit!”

  Lungs heaving, breath ragged, adrenaline rocketing through her system, she crammed her trembling hands on her hips. Her jaw clenched as she listened to the bastard race through what sounded like high brush on the other side of the fence.

  “Freaking February tenth,” she muttered.

  The patrol cop whose brass name tag said Vawter sat behind the wheel of his black and white, jotting a note on a report form clamped to a metal clipboard. He sent Paige a speculative look across the front seat. “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, Ms. Carmichael?”

  “Positive.” A crackle of police traffic from the radio accompanied her reply. Even though she had a stinging sensation in her jaw and her right cheek was just now getting the feeling back, Paige had gotten roughed up a lot worse when she was a street cop. Nothing a couple of Advil couldn’t help. “The other guy was doing all the bleeding.”

  “A stroke of luck, considering the way you said you went after him.” Vawter was tall, with a linebacker’s shoulders beneath his uniform jacket. His thick hair and vivid blue eyes reminded Paige of her Grandpa Carmichael. “It’s going to take some doing to get
the grime out of that expensive coat. And it’s my guess you’ve got a few bruises underneath it.”

  “A couple.” Already, her hip ached like a bad tooth.

  “Might have been smarter to let the guy have your briefcase. Especially if you think it could have been the escaped shrink.”

  “Like I said, I’ve got my doubts it was Isaac.” With the after-attack adrenaline still pricking at her wrists, Paige stared out the windshield toward the cement fence the scum had slithered over. “The voice didn’t sound like Isaac’s. And his waging an assault like that doesn’t fit his profile. He first likes to play mind games with his prey. Attack comes later. When that happens, he doesn’t leave his victim behind. He takes her with him.”

  “You said he called you after he escaped. Maybe he’s ready for a face-to-face.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “But you don’t think it’s probable.”

  “I don’t know. He’s been locked in a cell for three years. That changes a person.” Paige pursed her mouth. “My partner and I suspected Isaac had an accomplice, but we could never prove it. If we were right, that could have been who mugged me.”

  Vawter nodded. “Let’s look at things from another angle,” he said. “In my experience, a run-of-the mill mugger wants cash, credit cards. Stuff a woman carries in her purse.”

  “You’re wondering why he stole my briefcase. Maybe because I slammed it into his gut? Though he didn’t even try for my purse.”

  “Plus, hanging around the police training center is a strange place for a masked mugger. Unless he’s got a specific target.”

  “You’re not saying anything I haven’t already thought of, Sergeant.” Fingering her cheekbone, Paige winced when she hit an extratender spot. “The briefcase is old. It first belonged to my mother, so it shows a lot of wear and tear. If the guy was some druggie aiming to boost something he could pawn for enough money to score a hit, he struck out.”

  Vawter studied the list he’d jotted on the report form. “Inside the briefcase was an extra training manual, a file folder with copies of reports and newspaper articles on Edwin Isaac, another file containing personal papers, written assignments the people in your workshop turned in and a premeasured syringe of epinephrine, used to treat your allergy to peanuts.”