by Lisa Jackson
Every muscle in her body froze. "What did you say?" she asked, and when he tried to touch her shoulder she drew away.
"I was trying to explain that I missed you and hoped that we could talk things over, see if we could find a way back to us again."
You're overreacting, Sam. This is David. You trust him. You nearly married him, for God's sake, and here you are thinking he's somehow related to "John" and Annie Seger and all the crap that's gone on around here. You're losing it, Sam, losing it. David's just here being David.
"It's too late to get back together," she said, and bent over to scoop up her cat and hold him close. Stroking Charon's black fur, she shook her head. "I think you should leave, David. Whatever you hoped would happen isn't going to. We've been through this before. It's over."
"Because you wanted it to be," he pointed out, and there was more than a trace of anger in his words.
"That's right."
She was too exhausted to discuss this now. Her feet were dirty, her hair a mess, only half-dressed. As if he was following the train of her thoughts, he waggled a finger at her state of undress. "Why are you only wearing that?"
"I left in a hurry."
"From yaw friend's house."
She bristled. "I'm not in the mood for a lecture."
"This friend sent you home without your shoes… ?" he asked, and she saw from the change in his eyes that he was beginning to put two and two together. "But what about your car? I looked in the window of the garage. It's not here."
"I left it downtown."
"Then spent the night with your friend."
"What was left of it, yes."
"I don't think I like this."
"You probably don't. But it's not your business." She shoved a lock of hair from her eyes. "You're not my keeper, David. That was part of the problem with us, remember? Your control issues?"
"I've been working on them."
"Good." She didn't think she needed to explain anything else, but David wasn't taking the hint to leave and before she could be more pointed and tell him to take a hike she heard the familiar rumble of an engine. Stupidly, her pulse jumped. Through the open door, she watched as Ty's Volvo appeared.
Great. Just what I need. Another male who thinks he knows what's best for me.
But she wasn't surprised. She'd figured that the minute she was out of his sight, he'd climb into his car and track her down. He'd only let her leave because he was giving her time to cool off. In one respect she was flattered, in another ticked off. After all, the truth of the matter was that he was a liar and a user and all things bad that were male.
"Who's he… ?" David asked as Ty cut the engine. Before Sam could respond, he said, "Oh, I get it."
"Yes. My friend."
David's expression turned hard as nails. "It sure didn't take you long, did it?" he accused.
"Don't even say it."
Ty climbed out of the car and strode up the walk. He'd taken the time to throw on a T-shirt and damn it all, he looked good. And intense. Sam bristled, ready for another confrontation, one she didn't need. She met Ty at the door and Charon, quick to sense his escape, scrambled out of her arms. The cat leaped onto the porch before rocketing into the bushes.
"You don't know how to take 'no' for an answer do you?"
"No." His hazel eyes sparked and a cocksure smile spread from one side of his beard-shadowed jaw to the other. Bastard she thought again, but held her tongue. His eyes lingered on her lips for just a second, then he glanced over her shoulder and something changed in his expression; the playful look was replaced by challenge. Obviously he'd seen David.
Here we go, she thought and made quick introductions and both men were tense, sizing each other up. "David, this is Ty Wheeler." Sam wished they'd both just evaporate. There was way too much testosterone floating around for this hour of the morning. "Ty—David Ross."
Ty extended his hand. David pretended it didn't exist. Great.
"I've known David for years," she added, stepping out of the doorway and waving Ty in. "And Ty is the friend I was telling you about," she said to David. She saw no reason to hide where she'd been. Besides, David needed a dose of reality. A big one.
Opening the hall closet, she found a raincoat and threw it on. "I'm going to make coffee. If either of you want a cup, great, but I'm going to warn you both that I've about had it with anyone telling me how to run my life."
David was right on her heels as she made her way to the kitchen and opened her pantry door. "I want to talk to you alone," he whispered.
"There's no reason."
"I flew all the way here to talk to you. The least you could do—"
"Don't go there, David," she warned, holding up a finger to cut him off. Pulling out a bag of ground coffee, she nudged the pantry closed with her hip, and added, "I already told you that if you'd planned to see me, you should have called. End of story." She poured the coffee into the basket of the coffeemaker and filled the glass pot with water out of the tap.
Ty was leaning against the counter, legs outstretched, watching the interplay between David and her with intense eyes.
"This is nuts," David said. "What do you know about this guy?"
Good question. "Enough," she lied, and she saw Ty's lips twitch.
"But with all the trouble you're having down at the station, don't you think you should… cool it… or check him out?"
"I think I'll handle it my way."
The skin over David's cheekbones tightened, and every muscle in his body seemed tense. Rigid. "That's the problem, Sam. You always do things your way."
"Because it's my life."
"Fine. If that's the way you want it, then—"
"It is. It works for me."
She snapped on the coffeemaker as David, his face flushing, turned on his heel and stormed out of the kitchen. Italian shoes pounding on the floorboards he stomped through the foyer. The front door banged shut behind him.
"Don't say a word," Sam warned as the coffeemaker started to gurgle and sputter. "Not a word. I'm not in the mood."
"Far be it for me to comment on your taste in men." His hazel eyes sparked in amusement.
"Exactly. Now, I'm going upstairs to clean up and when I come down, if you're still here, you can tell me all you know about Annie Seger." She leveled him a stare guaranteed to melt steel. "No more lies, Ty," she said. "I'm tired of being played for a fool." With those final words hanging in the air, she flew up the stairs to her bedroom. The box she'd hauled out of the attic was still where she'd left it on the foot of her bed. All her notes on Annie Seger were inside.
Could she trust Ty? she asked herself, and the answer was a resounding "no." Then again, she'd slept with him, spent hours with him, didn't believe for a second that he'd do her physical harm.
But he's a liar. Out for his own gain. He didn't tell you about Annie. He used you.
All for his book.
That was his motive. He wasn't out to scare her or harm her… he was out for personal gain.
"Aren't we all?" she asked, yanking off her slip and reaching past the curtain to turn on the spray of her small shower. Within half a minute she'd stepped inside and felt hot rivulets massage her muscles and run through her hair. She wanted to live in that tiny tiled cubicle, but couldn't waste the time, not with Ty downstairs. She shampooed, rinsed and was toweling off five minutes after turning on the hot water. There were still drips on her skin as she pulled on a pair of clean shorts and pulled a T-shirt over her head. Sliding into thongs, she ran a comb through her wet hair and ran a tube of lipstick over her lips. Voila. Good enough.
Seconds later she was down the stairs and found Ty in the kitchen toasting bagels and scrambling eggs. "You didn't have much to work with," he apologized.
She hadn't eaten since yesterday.
"Hey, anytime someone cooks for me, I don't complain. No matter what it is."
"Good, cuz although I am a master chef, I do need utensils and just the right ingredients." He placed a bowl
of grated cheese, onions and milk in the microwave.
"Oh, cram it, Wheeler," she said, smiling despite herself. She grabbed a butter knife and leveled it at him as she found a carton of cream cheese in the refrigerator, "And just remember you're not off the hook. I'm still mad at you."
"I figured."
She waggled the knife in his direction. '"This lying stuff is bad news. Very bad news."
"I won't do it again."
"You'd better not, or I might be inclined to use this weapon where it would do the most good." She flipped the butter knife in the air and caught it on the fly.
He laughed out loud. "Okay, now I'm scared."
"I thought so." Why couldn't she stay angry with him?
The eggs were sizzling in the pan, and he stirred them with a wooden spoon. "We're about done, here," he said. "I thought we could eat outside." He hitched his chin toward the back verandah.
"And then you'll spill your guts about Annie Seger," she surmised, leaning a hip against the counter and watching him play the part of the domestic in his shorts and T-shirt that was stretched across his shoulders. She took in his narrow waist and the backs of his legs—well muscled, tanned, covered with downy hair. Whether she liked it or not, Ty Wheeler got to her on a very basic level.
"I'll tell you anything you want to know," he promised, and she remembered his claim that he'd feared he was falling in love with her.
"Anything?" she teased and he sent her a sizzling look over his shoulder.
"Anything."
Her throat went dry just as the bagels popped in the toaster and the microwave dinged.
"Why do you think Annie Seger was murdered? The police have claimed that she committed suicide," Samantha said, pushing her plate aside. She and Ty were seated at the glass-topped table under the porch overhang, and she'd waited until they'd finished eating before bringing up the question that had been pulsing through her mind for hours.
A hummingbird was flitting between the blossoms of the bougainvillea and sailboats skimmed across the lake. Somewhere down the street a lawn mower roared while overhead the wake of a passing jet was dissipating into the cloudless sky.
Ty rested a heel on one of the empty chairs and frowned. "So you haven't had time to read my computer disk yet?" Before she could protest, he said, "I know you took it, and if you'd read through the research, you'd understand." He leaned over the table, closer to her. "Annie Seger was despondent, yes, and she had been drinking—she'd gone to a party and some kids had witnessed it. She'd had a fight with her boyfriend, Ryan Zimmerman, probably over the baby and what to do about it. There were witnesses who'd said as much. Annie had even had her friend Prissy drive her home that night. When she got there, the house was empty. She'd tried to call you again, but hung up before she'd gotten through, and that's when things get blurry. Did she sneak into her mother's bathroom and steal the sleeping pills? Did she go out to the garage and find the gardening shears and then go all the way upstairs, write the suicide note and slit her wrists at the computer? Could she have, considering how much booze was already in her system?"
"That's how I thought it happened."
"That's the way it was supposed to look," Ty said, "and it's the easiest explanation. But there were other footprints on the carpet. The maid had vacuumed while Annie was out and there were deeper impressions on the plush pile—a bigger foot."
"Weren't there tons of people at the scene? Police and emergency workers?"
"Of course and Jason, the father, said he'd come into the room to check on her. Since he found the body, no one thought anything of it."
"A big footprint on the carpet. That's not much to go on. In fact it's nothing," she said.
"I know. And there was potting soil from the gardening shed on the carpet, but not on any of Annie's shoes."
"Still thin."
"How about this then? Her fingerprints were all over the gardening shears, true, but she was right-handed. It would seem that she would have slit her left wrist first, made the deeper cut. Instead it was just the opposite."
"You think."
He nodded.
"Ty, this isn't enough to write a book about or argue her suicide," Sam pointed out as she watched Charon slink through the shrubs. Absently she rubbed her neck, scratching at the bump left by the hornet's sting. "Why would anyone want her dead? What's the motive?"
"I think it has to do with her baby."
Samantha's stomach clenched. As horrid as it was to think that Annie ended her life, the thought of her baby dying as well was even more painful.
"I don't think she would have killed the baby. Her boy-friend wanted her to get an abortion; she refused. It was against her morals. Against her faith. She was raised Catholic, remember. Killing herself and killing the baby were both mortal sins."
"But she was despondent. You said so yourself."
"But not suicidal. That's a big leap. There's more. The baby's blood type. No one paid attention, but Annie Seger's baby couldn't have been fathered by Ryan Zimmerman. The blood type proves it."
Sam felt the hairs on the back of her arms lift. "You think someone killed Annie because she could point the finger at them?"
"Possibly. Maybe a married man. She was underage. The law would charge him with statutory rape if the guy was older. Or it could have been someone in her own family. Incest. Or her boyfriend could have come unglued and killed her in a fit of jealousy. That's the part I haven't figured out yet." He leaned back in his chair, his gaze holding hers. "But I will," he promised, "And while I'm doing it, I'm gonna figure out how this all ties in with the calls you been getting at the station. Somehow 'John' is connected to this thing. We've just got to find out how, and then nail his ass."
Chapter Twenty-five
"… it's definitely not the same guy unless you've got a split personality," Norm Stowell said from his cell phone somewhere in Arizona. Bentz wasn't surprised. He'd already decided he had two killers on his hands. He glanced at the pictures on the computer screen in his office and could split the two cases right down the middle. Norm was still talking. "MO will evolve, we know that. As the killer learns what will work for him, he makes subtle changes in his approach or access route, but his signature remains constant. You've got two guys out there. One's pretty messy—is careless with his clues, doesn't seem to worry that you'll nail him with his hair or fingerprints or semen, but the other guy— he's clean. Neat. Careful. Definitely two perps."
"That's what I was afraid of," Bentz said as he shoved a report on the wig fibers to one side of his desk.
"I'll fax you my profile of your killers when I get home, and for the record, I'm sending a copy to the field agent. Seems your partner hasn't been forthright with the Federal boys, and they're none too happy."
"I'll talk to him. Montoya's a little green, but he's good."
"If you say so." Norm wasn't impressed, but then little did impress him. He was jaded far beyond his years—a short, stocky man who had never given up his allegiance to the crew cut he'd gotten at boot camp at Fort Lewis over thirty years earlier.
"So here's what you've got to look for in the guy who's killed Bellechamps and Gillette. He's a white man, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He must not have a prior as you said he's careless with his fingerprints, body fluids and hair. If that's the case, something triggered him to start killing, some emotional trauma. He's got a job, but it's not very grand, and he's smart enough, but is from a highly dysfunctional and probably abusive family. He's got a feeling of abandonment or deep-seated hatred of some woman in the family, probably a mother or stepmother or older sister or grandmother. He could have been sexually molested, and in his history he has arson and cruelty to animals or smaller children. He was probably a bed-wetter in grade school and something's happened to him recently, something major that triggered him killing. Maybe he lost a job, or a girlfriend, or has been cut off from his family, which could likely be the major source of his income."
"A gem of a guy," Ben
tz muttered into the phone.
"And dangerous as hell. He could live alone, or he could be married, or have a girlfriend, but whoever he's living with, she's in danger. This guy's escalating, Rick. You might have to let the public know what's going on for safety's sake and because someone out there might know a guy who's been acting weird lately—unusually anxious. He could be pouring himself into a bottle or abusing drugs. Besides that, if he's involved with a woman, she should know about the danger to her. If she knows what he's doing, and we both know that a lot of women who are emotionally trapped in bad relationships will even be a part of their man's crimes. Anyway this woman has probably seen his violence or suffered from it herself. Potentially she could be his next target—unless we get her to turn him in."
Bentz thought the odds of that were somewhere between slim and none, and closer to none.
"As I said, this is just the high points. I'll fax you what I've come up with, then get to work on your second guy."
"I'd appreciate it, Norm. Thanks," Bentz said, and hung up, his worst suspicions confirmed. Two monsters were on the loose in New Orleans, killers with no conscience, murderers who hated women. He flipped through the computer files again, checking open cases that hadn't been solved, ones that had bizarre elements. There were several that stood out, the most grotesque being the case of a woman who had been burned to death, her body then dumped at the feet of the statue of Joan d'Arc near the French Market last May 30. It had been macabre and surreal, that horridly charred body lying facedown on the grass, and reminded the press and police that St. Joan herself had met a similar fate.
Sometimes he wondered why he kept at this damned job.
Because someone has to nail these guys, and, for the most part, you're good at it, you sick son of a bitch.
He found a half-full pack of Doublemint gum in his top drawer and jammed a stick into his mouth, then walked to the window and looked outside to the street below. Cars spewed exhaust as they crawled down the narrow streets, and people crowded the sidewalks, but Bentz hardly took any notice. He yanked at his collar. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back. He didn't hear the hum of computers or conversations of the outer offices though his door was ajar. No, he'd blocked out the noise of the station and the scene below as he considered the prospect of two serial killers in the city, at least one of which was connected to the terrorization of Dr. Samantha Leeds. Some way. Somehow. He didn't have any concrete evidence, no tangible link, but the knot in his gut told him whoever was calling was somehow involved with the murders. The mutilated C-notes so like the ruined publicity shot of Samantha Leeds, the radios tuned to her program at the time of death, the fact that the women who'd been killed were hookers and John had accused her of prostitution, but why sin? What redemption? What the hell did it have to do with Annie Seger, for crying out loud?
