Smoke Screen (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 7)

by Linsey Lanier

  It could have happened.

  Everything could turn out just fine. And with luck, she’d find Hannah Kaye and have her back in class tomorrow. Or at least know where she was and where she’d been all this time.

  She pulled down her covers, got into bed and switched off the light.

  Yes, everything would be all right. If there had been a glitch in that data. If her optimistic interpretation was right. If the stubborn nagging in her gut was wrong.

  And if the dancer was still alive.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Parker sat back in the creaky chair at Dave Becker’s desk in the Agency lab and rubbed his tired eyes with both hands. The muscles in the back of his neck ached. He felt as stiff as cement.

  He and Dave had searched through hours of disk recordings from the surveillance cameras planted in the office. Now displayed on Dave’s large flat screen monitor was the section of the cube bank near Miranda’s desk. Parker had watched it until the pale blue tones of the office décor had melted into a grayish blob. They had both grown numb listening to the steady hum of office noise.

  But they had seen little activity.

  Occasionally a worker would pass by, stop to chat, continue on. An hour later another would stroll past on his way to the restroom. A few minutes later, he would return. At lunchtime there would be a flurry of commotion. Then the screen would return to its static image.

  It was the dullest of deadly dull work.

  So far only Agency employees had appeared on the recording. No one Parker didn’t know personally to some extent. No one he didn’t trust. No one who made any suspicious moves.

  He feared they had reached another dead end.

  Parker glanced at the time in the corner of the screen. Past eleven. He was working his employees to death. And for what?

  “Did you get something to eat?” he asked Dave.

  Dave’s body jolted out of his concentration at the question. He gave Parker a shy look and shrugged. “Yes, sir. I got something across the street while you were…out.”

  Parker’s dinner date with Wilhelmina Todd had already faded into a distant memory, but he could see Dave was longing to ask about it. He was glad his employee was discreet enough to contain his curiosity.

  Parker rose to stretch, then reached for the jacket and tie he’d laid across the back of a nearby chair. “Perhaps it’s time to call it a night.”

  Dave sat back, watching an image on the screen move slowly through the cubes. “I’m wondering something, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe we’re looking at the wrong timeframe.”

  They had agreed to focus on normal business hours. The time when clients stopped by for appointments. They had hoped to find someone lurking around Miranda’s desk—at some point during the day.

  They had started with the recordings from nearly a year ago, early October of last year when Miranda had gone to Lake Placid, and worked from there. Her desk had been empty most of the ensuing months. She had been convalescing from the dire injuries she’d received in the northeast.

  “This is the timeframe with the best opportunity to access Miranda’s phone,” Parker reminded Dave.

  She had come into the office in January of that year for half a day’s work, which had proven too much for her. She’d left her phone at her desk by mistake. Wanting her to stay home and not think about work, Parker hadn’t brought it to her. It had remained in her desk drawer for two weeks.

  Frowning Dave nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Parker draped his coat and tie over his arm. “Let’s stop for tonight. Don’t come in before eleven tomorrow. I want you fresh.”

  “Okay, sir.” But there was a far away tone in Dave’s voice. He was at his keyboard again.

  Wearily Parker scowled. “What are you doing?”

  “Just trying something.”

  Parker was considering ordering him to stop when there was a knock on the door.

  “Anybody in here?”

  “Of course, he is. Becker lives in here.” Janelle Wesson made a long-legged march into the room, followed by Curt Holloway.

  She blinked when she saw Parker standing beside Dave’s desk. “Oh, hello, sir. I thought you had left.”

  “I did. I came back.”

  Wesson folded her arms self-consciously, still in her robin’s egg blue suit. Holloway was still in his sport coat and tie.

  Standing next to him was Sybil, his receptionist. She’d changed from her usual silky and fashionable attire she wore at the front desk to jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt with an artistic painting of a blue horse on the front. Her brown-and-auburn hair was pulled back with a matching artificial flower. She smelled as if she’d just refreshed the expensive perfume she liked to wear.

  Despite their attire, all three of them looked rumpled and weary, dark circles growing under their eyes.

  He should give them all the day off tomorrow and let them return to their normal tasks the next day. This had been an exercise in utter futility. From now on he would work on this case alone. If he wanted to waste time, he would waste only his own.

  “Why are you all still here?” he grunted at them.

  Holloway pointed a thumb at the receptionist. “Sybil’s been helping us go through the logs, sir.”

  “Have you found anything?”

  “No, sir. No odd calls. No strange visitors. That’s what we came to tell you.” Holloway’s shoulders slumped.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Wesson said.

  “Really sorry,” Sybil echoed.

  Dear Lord, it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. If the person they were looking for wasn’t in the logs, he wasn’t in the logs.

  “Let’s all go home,” Parker said longing for his bed and changing his mind about that strong drink before lying down.

  “Wait. I think I might have something here.”

  Holloway turned to Dave. “What, Becker?”

  Wesson moved over behind Dave’s chair and peered at the screen. “Is that from those surveillance cameras?”

  “What is that?” Parker wanted to know.

  But he could see it for himself. The area around Miranda’s desk was on the screen. The same recording they’d been viewing for hours. But the lighting was different this time.

  “We’ve been looking at regular office hours.” Dave said, his voice filling with childlike excitement. “But I thought we’d try a little later in the evening. This is from eight at night.”

  Parker squinted at the screen feeling as if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

  A grayish figure stood in the opening to Miranda’s cube. He wore some sort of uniform. He looked as if he were studying her name tag. After several moments he stepped right into the workspace. The camera angle was sharp, a lot was hidden behind the cube wall, but it was plain what the man was doing. Rummaging through Miranda’s desk drawers.

  When he found what he was looking for, the grin on his face was as clear as the noonday sun on Mercury.

  As was what he had in his hand—Miranda’s cell phone.

  He did something with the devise, then bent down so he couldn’t be seen. A moment later he stepped out of her cube and disappeared around the far corner.

  He had taken Miranda’s phone number.

  He was the one. Dave had found him.

  Holloway clapped his colleague on the back. “Way to go!”

  “Good work, Becker,” Wesson chimed in gleefully.

  But Sybil put a hand to her mouth and let out a squeal as she stared wide-eyed at the screen. “I know him. That’s Gabriel.”

  “Who?” Parker asked.

  “Gabriel, sir. I don’t know his last name. He’s on the cleaning staff.”

  “Cleaning staff?”

  “They come in at night. They dust, empty the trash, water the plants, that sort of thing.”

  Of course. Parker thought a moment. “With the building management.”

  “Yes, sir. I have to admit I
always thought he was kind of weird.”

  “What do you mean, Sybil?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him very often unless I was working late. But when I did see him…I just didn’t like the way he looked at me.”

  Parker nodded. At the moment he didn’t like anything about the man. He had to find out more about him. Parker had leased this floor from Gypsum Management for years and he had a good relationship with the director, but their offices would be closed at this hour.

  “I’ll follow up on this tomorrow,” he said. “Dave, can you enlarge the image of that man?”

  Dave’s fingers flew over his keyboard, clicking away. He reversed the recording, paused it just before the man entered Miranda’s cube. He pressed more keys and the man’s face and shoulders filled the screen. But the image was grainy.

  “Can you make that clearer?”

  Dave attempted more keyboard magic but the image remained the same. He shook his head. “Not at this resolution, sir.”

  He should have invested more in the equipment. This would have to do. “Print a copy of that for me.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Grainy or not, Dave was obviously thrilled with his find.

  Parker reminded himself to commend his employee. “This is excellent work, Detective. Excellent work.”

  The poor man’s cheeks glowed red as a stop sign. “Thank you, sir. Just doing my job.”

  “More than your job. As all of you have done tonight. And now that we’ve made some progress, let’s go home.”

  “Good idea,” Holloway chuckled. “C’mon, Becker. Let’s all get a beer to celebrate.”

  Turning off his computer Dave shook his head. “I’d better pass or Joanie will have my hide.”

  “Chicken,” Holloway teased. He turned to Parker. “Would you like to go, sir?”

  “No, thank you, Curt. I need to get home.” And though there was no one at home to chide him for staying out so late, and his bed would be empty, he nonetheless longed for it.

  He was going to have a busy day tomorrow. If he could track down this maintenance man, he just might have the answers he’d been looking for for weeks.

  As his employees filed out, Parker went to the printer and pulled the photo of the man named Gabriel and studied it a moment.

  He was a good-looking man. Broad shouldered, seemed to be in his early thirties. A crop of shaggy, dirty blond hair stuck out from under his ball cap.

  The image reminded him of someone. But Parker couldn’t think who. He wasn’t familiar with the cleaning staff.

  He pulled on his coat, folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Draping his tie around his neck he headed for the rear exit.

  He’d skip the drink for tonight, he decided. He didn’t need it now. Amazing how a bit of progress on a case could lift one’s spirits.

  But as he reached the stairwell, his memory kicked in.

  The image of the cleaning man who had taken Miranda’s cell number matched the image in his mind of the suspect on their last case. Or rather, Miranda’s case. The cold case she’d worked in Chicago.

  He’d never seen a photo the man, try as they might to find one. But the description was the same. Good-looking. A muscular build. Longish shaggy blond hair. He would be in his early thirties by now. He’d been the love interest of the victim in the case, a twenty-year-old art student named Lydia Sutherland. The police had questioned him in her death.

  Miranda had tried to track the suspect down but to no avail. After the death of his mother in a fire that had destroyed the family estate, the young man had completely disappeared.

  And Parker knew why.

  But he didn’t know where the man was now or what he had to do with a cleaning man working for Gypsum Management. It was probably just a coincidence.

  In all probability this man named Gabriel had nothing to do with Adam Foster Tannenburg.

  And yet the likeness in his mind lingered. And as he reached the parking lot and climbed into his car, Parker couldn’t help but feel unnerved by the image.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Finished for the night, he climbed the creaky steps to the main area of the forty-year-old house he’d found in the woods, pleased with what he had accomplished.

  The hour was late, but he wasn’t hungry.

  He went into the kitchen and washed the blood off his hands. Then he poured himself a glass of wine, took a bag of ice from the freezer. Carrying them both into the small living room, he switched on the MP3 player on the sparse mantelpiece and smiled at the lovely sound it emitted.

  Mozart. The clarinet concerto in A. One of his favorites.

  He settled into the old musty recliner near the fireplace and took a sip from the wine glass. He let the liquid play over his tongue, its sharp citrus flavor pleasing him. He’d chosen well. A white rioja from Spain, its lineage going back to the Phoenicians. In his choice of libation he was a purist.

  As he was with his projects.

  He inhaled deeply, but the air in this place was foul. He scowled at the mold growing along the baseboards. It was only a temporary dwelling, he reminded himself. He would move on soon.

  This project was almost over.

  He placed the ice pack against his sore jaw. The tender place where she’d kicked him with those long strong legs. He’d made her pay for that affront. Dearly. And her blood curdling cries in response were as lovely to his ears as the strains of this Mozart symphony.

  Intensely satisfying.

  He laid his head back and closed his eyes as the happy allegro notes of the first movement washed over him. He conducted with his hand a moment until the deep, rich tones of the clarinet began. One of Mother’s best pieces. She’d made him learn it, too.

  They were so like playing the clarinet, his projects.

  You had to know just how the joints went together, how to twist them, how to place the fingers, the tongue to get the right tone and pitch and timbre. He could play their bodies as well as he once did his own instrument. He could take their shrieks and wails through all the registers at will.

  The low chalumeau, the shrill clarion, the high altissimo, his favorite. And the quality was always filled to the brim with helpless terror.

  He chuckled to himself. He was quite an expert now.

  But as he readjusted the icepack against his sore jaw, the anger simmered again inside him. How dare she kick him?

  Yes, he had made her pay. She wasn’t kicking now. She had passed out from the pain of her punishment. But it didn’t take away the memories.

  The way he used to pass out when Mother punished him.

  Along his back he could still feel the tufts of the bedcover where she’d make him lie naked. Feel the tears in his throat he swallowed down, knowing it would only be worse if he made a noise. Smell the sickening scent of the strawberry oil she always wore as she neared the bed.

  She would start with the clarinet. Caressing, teasing his member until he burned with shame.

  He remembered her crooked smile, the delight in her eyes at the unnatural act. The excruciating pain rippling through his body when she grabbed him between his legs and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

  He would cry out, of course. He could hold back no longer. What child could?

  That had always made her so angry. So very angry.

  The anger brought on the beatings. Merciless. Unrelenting. Over and over she would strike and poke him with her conductor’s baton. She would raise stinging welts, break skin, make him bleed. He would end up crying himself to sleep in the dark closet where she’d lock him after she’d finished with him.

  But none of that mattered now, did it? Of course not.

  He’d paid her back, too.

  And he continued to pay her back with every whore he found who took her place. They were all like Mother. Blond and lovely and seductive.

  And they were all dead.

  He had done to them what she had done to him. And worse. Much worse. And then he’d finished them off.

&n
bsp; And this one? The one in the basement of this foul house?

  She had no more than a day left in her. He was sure of that. He could estimate time of death rather precisely after so many years of practice.

  He knew how to dispose of a body. He had taught him that. But he’d found that wasn’t always necessary if one was careful. And he was always careful. Meticulously careful. As thorough and detailed as he was in the crafting of his punishment for these whores.

  Whores. That was what they were. He had taught him that, too. He could still hear his harsh voice croaking out the words that night he watched him fuck and kill the one who was supposed to have been his.

  He’d told her what she was that night.

  Whore. Whore. Whore.

  The words clanging in his head he groaned and pushed the memory back into the past where it belonged. The wine made his thoughts drift. Not so far back now. Only a year ago.

  To last October.

  He’d just finished a project and was in the living room of the house he’d selected, much like this one. He’d been settling down in front of the television with caviar and a claret to celebrate the completion of another job well done.

  And then the news had come on.

  Lake Placid. A skating competition. A shooting. A dreadful disaster. People were dead.

  And then the screen flashed a photo of one of the victims, a man in a policeman’s uniform, taken years ago.

  His chest had spasmed with shock.

  It was him. Him.

  In his uniform. Just the way he remembered him. He was dead.

  Then they showed someone being carried out of the stadium on a stretcher. He had stared at the image dumbfounded. His heart began to burn and pound with painful, violent memory.

  It was her. She had killed him.

  He’d never expected to see her again. Never thought he would find her. Never intended to. That wasn’t his plan.

  Or was it?

  He couldn’t ignore it. It was as if fate had handed her to him, delivered her right into his hands. He listened carefully to the details of the broadcast. They said she worked for a private detective agency in Atlanta, Georgia. And that she might not live.