The work gave him a sense of validation and comfort. After all, he did suffer from a fear of being brutally chomped by one of his sexual partners, yet neither being able nor wanting to deny himself the pleasure of sexual intimacy. Resisting but always yielding to erotic release, like he had experienced the day before with Tina from Martini’s. Not to challenge his hero’s brilliance, but the Great Masturbator should have been more aptly titled “Succubus” or “Incubus.”
And why had they seen his models as the Venus de Milo? Because of the pretty girl’s face, perhaps? A likeness to the Greek goddess of love and beauty? Or maybe it was because she no longer had arms. Or legs. But didn’t they find the locust? The tongue? And his male model was quite Apollo-like, particularly in his tighty whities. But mostly, he suspected, the FBI bestowed the name upon him because of his genius, his carving. Yet they hadn’t truly seen it. They hadn’t grasped what he was attempting with his five masterpieces to date.
In fact, the imbecilic FBI agents hadn’t even associated his other three works of art with these two. He understood why they had made the connection between the latest and likely greatest of his works so far—Nutrition, or as others knew it, the popular CSU student Jill Brannigan—and that nice couple he molded into his Succubus. No, he should be respectful to the master. The couple would remain the Great Masturbator. But why hadn’t the investigators seen it in his personal favorite, the hermaphrodite, his Bather?
A smile slid across his lips. Hermaphrodite. Aphrodite. Maybe the FBI weren’t so far off after all? The moniker, considering the juxtaposition, was starting to grow on him. So close, and yet so incredibly far. He would need to do better; show them more, lead them closer. An example, a clue. Maybe two.
Squinting, he committed the faces of the man and woman standing next to Detective Brandt to memory. The man was menacing, stern. He reminded him of his own father, a perfect William Tell, trying to shoot an apple from his head, the threatening presence that he so wanted to eliminate. The girl pleased him. She was lovely and soft, but her steps were sure and quick. She would be a wonderful model. He imagined her sleeping—a dreamless, timeless sleep. A sleep so deep that the bitch would forget about her schedules and calendars and deadlines. The woman walked with purpose and precision, which detracted from her beauty and prohibited her from being his perfect model. His Awakening.
Time was running out for him, and it seemed as if this woman was turning up the volume on the ticking time bomb of discovery he had worked so carefully to avoid. It was time for him to find out who she was. If he was right, and these two with Brandt were FBI, they were likely going to the crime scene.
“Hello, Awakening,”he murmured. Within minutes of parking in a remote area alongside the reservoir on the eastern shore, he spotted them through his binoculars. William Tell and Awakening. Detective Brandt was showing them around, pointing out something in the rocks and showing them what appeared to be photographs.
“I’ve got better ones I could show you,” he whispered.
He watched Brandt tap one of the pictures and point toward the water’s edge. He lowered the binoculars and glanced first at his watch and then around him to make sure none of the many other spectators and news reporters had come anywhere close to where he had positioned himself. He counted dozens of cars along the road where he had parked and twice as many along the western side of the reservoir. He figured there must be at least a hundred and fifty people camped on the shores, on the rocks, and along the road, each with a front-row seat to the biggest show to hit Fort Collins in years.
No one would take note of him. And even if they did, he was no more guilty than the rest of these rubberneckers were. He settled back into his car and decided to wait this one out, watching William Tell and Awakening until he could find out for certain who they were and how he should cast them in his next little scene.
A woman and a man interrupted Brandt’s discussion. He lifted the binoculars. The man had a camera on his shoulder with the call letters to a local television station stenciled in bright red above the lens. He shifted his binoculars to the right and recognized the blonde as a local anchorwoman for the evening news. He saw Brandt wave his arms and yell something at them. William Tell grabbed Brandt’s arm and leaned toward him, their heads close, to whisper something to him, perhaps. William Tell then shook the hands of the news team, and Awakening followed suit.
“Chummy,” he mumbled.
Nevertheless, Brandt launched into a diatribe of some sort, and the anchorwoman looked like she was apologizing to him. William Tell then led the two newspeople aside and eventually under the yellow crime scene tape toward their news van.
“Clever. He just escorted them politely to the exit and the blonde is still smiling about it. Doesn’t even know what hit her. Good one, Mr. Tell.”
He swung the binoculars down to the shoreline and saw that Awakening was cajoling Detective Brandt and he too was smiling.
“You’re clever too, eh, Awakening? I’ll have to be very careful with you two. Treat you with the special care your intelligence deserves. And make sure your de Milo remains faceless.”
He settled in for a long afternoon, careful not to doze. He watched Tell and Awakening study the pictures, reports, and maps, and then talk to Brandt, the criminalists, the technicians. He watched them comb the rocky shore in a tight grid, back and forth, back and forth. He watched them sit, think, write, and study the entire scene.
Eventually, his eyes caught the news van pulling away from the roadside and lumbering up the hill to the east of the reservoir. They were coming his way. He pulled his truck out in front of the van as if not noticing their approach and heard it screech to a halt and blare its horn. He feigned alarm and jumped out of his truck.
As he approached the van, he saw the cameraman rolling down his window.
“I am so terribly sorry. I didn’t see you coming up the road. Please accept my apologies.”
The cameraman scowled.
“Truly. Forgive me. This is such a distraction, a circus.” He waved toward all the parked cars. “More like a nightmare, actually.”
The cameraman nodded. “It’s okay. No harm, no foul.”
“I just flew into DIA and was on my way home when I ran into all of this. What’s going on here?”
The anchorwoman leaned over. “The Venus de Milo struck again.”
He gasped. “No. In Fort Collins?”
She nodded.
“Who? When?”
“A college student. They found her yesterday morning,” the blonde answered.
“Oh, dear Lord. Please tell me the proper authorities are working on this,” he said.
The cameraman nodded. “FBI arrived today.”
“Oh, thank God. Do they have an SAC designated yet?”
“An SAC?” the blonde asked.
He chuckled. “Sorry, old habits die hard. My father was with the FBI. Special agent in charge. The one who’s lead on the case.”
“Oh, that would be Special Agent Pierce,” the cameraman answered.
“Streeter,” the anchorwoman added.
“Streeter Pierce,” he repeated. “A man?”
The cameraman nodded. “He’s got a hottie tagging along with him.”
“He brought his wife?”
The anchorwoman scowled. “Lisa is a behavioral profiler.”
“Lisa?”
“Special Agent Henry,” the cameraman added.
The car pulling up behind the news van sounded its horn.
The cameraman waved. “Better get going.”
“Oh, hey, please. Again, so sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it,” the cameraman said, rolling up his window.
He jumped back into his truck and pulled back into his parking spot alongside the road, waving timidly as the news van passed him. The driver in the car behind the news van flipped him the bird as she drove by.
He returned the favor and grinned. He turned off the car and resumed watching the scene at the shorelin
e. He’d been right. They were FBI. William Tell was in charge of the case. Awakening was in charge of finding him. She was indeed the ticking time bomb he thought she was.
Ticktock. Ticktock.
Awakening would need to go first.
He studied her for the rest of the afternoon. As darkness stole the sky, the FBI agents found their way to their cars. Awakening pulled onto the road and William Tell fell in behind her. They were coming his way up the hill. He nonchalantly pulled in behind them, careful to keep his eye on Awakening’s car the entire time. He was not going to try to find out where both of them were staying tonight. Just Awakening.
But as luck would have it, William Tell stuck close to Awakening’s tail, not that he blamed Tell for that. Awakening had quite the tail. He followed them into a nice, quiet neighborhood ten minutes from the reservoir. Awakening pulled to the curb of a two-story blue house on a small cul-de-sac. William Tell parked behind her.
He kept driving and circled the block to make sure they were both still at the blue house.
They were. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was too late to get the homeowner’s name from the courthouse. Then he thought of the library. He could access the county’s mapping system to find out who lived here. That could help him figure out why these two were staying at the house. First, he would wait to see if this was a short visit or something more. He leaned back in the driver’s seat and watched through the big picture windows as the two settled next to what looked like a desk with computers and monitors in what should have been the living room area.
Three hours later, William Tell, aka Agent Streeter Pierce, emerged from the front door and took off down the street. Within fifteen minutes, another car pulled onto the street. He ducked down as the lights swept through his windshield. He poked his head up in time to see a white Ford Explorer pulling into the garage of the blue house. After a few minutes, a woman appeared in the window with Awakening, aka Agent Lisa Henry. Again the two huddled around the desk, staring at whatever Agent Henry had pulled up on the computer screen. The woman was not as striking as the FBI agent was; this one was shorter and not as thin, her hair brown. She walked with the same confidence as Awakening had, however, strong and sure.
That must be the owner, or at least the wife of the owner. He decided to pull online information about her tonight at the library.
“I’ll be right back, ladies,” he clucked as he pulled away from the curb.
“YOU JUST MISSED HIM, Liv,” Lisa said as I walked into the kitchen.
“Shoot, I was really looking forward to meeting him. I stayed late tonight at work hoping to give you guys time to work, if you decided this was home base.”
“Headquarters. And it is. You were right. Police Chief Richardson blew up when Streeter took over the case. Held a press conference against our wishes and told the whole fricking world that we were looking for the de Milo murderer.”
“I heard that,” I admitted. “What an SOB. Nothing like putting Pierce’s ass in a sling before he even gets started.”
Lisa nodded. “That’s what I said. Just not quite that colorfully.”
I opened the lid of the box I had brought with me. “Hey, I’ve got some good news, I think.”
“What?”
I pulled Jill’s hard hat from the box and set it aside so I could show Lisa Jill’s personal belongings. “Joe and I cleared out Jill’s locker today. Thought it might help with the investigation somehow.”
“Thanks,” Lisa said. “Did you happen to find a necklace?”
“With three heart-shaped charms with Mom, Dad, and Julia engraved on them?”
“That’s the one,” Lisa sighed. “Her mom called. Said Jill wore it everywhere. She wanted it back if we recovered it.”
My chest swelled.
“And I thought this was the best part.” I grabbed the book from the box with my hand tucked in the sleeve of my shirt. No prints of mine would mess up this case. With my other hand, also tucked deep in my sleeve, I fanned the book until it fell open to the page where a folded letter was stuck tightly in the binding. “I thought this might help.”
Lisa stared at the letter. “What is it?”
“We didn’t touch anything with our bare hands. As a matter of fact, we tried to touch as little as possible. I saw this sticking out of the book right away and noticed that the handwriting doesn’t match Jill’s. It’s a letter from someone. Maybe it’s a clue.”
Jinkies, Velma, maybe? I was so out of my league with Lisa.
Lisa cocked her head to one side. “Possibly. But it’s not likely we’ll find a letter from the killer stashed in Jill’s belongings stating he intended to murder her or anything.”
“Oh, don’t be a dullard. I know that. I’m just saying that maybe there’s a name on that letter of someone close to Jill who can help answer some questions.”
Lisa pulled on some gloves she had stuffed in her pocket.
“You carry latex gloves in your pocket? Damn, this girl’s prepared.”
Lisa chuckled. “They’ve been there since this afternoon. From when we were out at the crime scene.”
“How was that?”
“Interesting. Strange. Sad.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And helpful.”
“Good,” I said. I looked at the clock. Eight twenty. “Want me to make you some dinner, or have you already eaten?”
“That would be great,” she said, her fingers delicately unfolding the penned letter.
I washed my hands and got to work. I diced some onions and peppers, tears streaming down my cheeks. “How about stir-fry and rice?”
“That sounds perfect,” she said. “Mind making some for Streeter too?”
“He’s coming back?” I wiped the tears from my face and tossed the peppers and onions in the frying pan I’d coated with some olive oil. “I just assumed he went back to Denver when you said he’d left.”
“No, he went to interview Jill’s little sister, Julia. It was the first chance he’d had.”
“So he’s planning on staying here?”
“Hope that’s okay. Still no hotel rooms.”
“I’m thrilled to be able to help.”
I pulled some precooked and shelled shrimp from the freezer and ran cold water over the bag. I poured a box of instant rice into a bowl, added the butter and water, and popped it in the microwave. I opened a bottle of white wine and poured some in two glasses, taking one to Lisa. She was still reading the letter, her brows furrowed.
“What is it?”
“Sounds like a love letter. Kind of,” she said, flipping to the next page.
She read quietly for another few minutes, so I retreated to the kitchen to stir the sautéed vegetables and the rice and to check on the thawing shrimp. I grabbed my glass of wine and returned to the living room. She set the letter on her lap.
“Ever hear Jill mention someone by the name of Jonah?”
I shook my head and sipped my wine.
“It sounds like this Jonah character overstepped a friendship boundary with Jill and made a pass at her or something. It’s kind of like an apology; a please-give-me-another-chance letter.”
“Nothing unusual about that. So why the concerned expression?”
“I don’t even know the guy, yet he freaks me out with the way he’s gushing about her and pleading for her to get to know him better. It goes on and on about what a great guy he is and how his father worked so hard to provide for his mother, and how he wants to care for her in the same way.”
“Think they were dating?” I asked.
“No.” She picked up the letter again and scanned through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “Here. It says: ‘Not that it was a real date, but I thought it was proper to give you a good-night kiss when I dropped you off. My intention was just a kiss, and I see my mistake now. Hindsight is a great teacher! I am so sorry. I should have waited until we went on our first date to make such a bold move,’ and it goes on and on.”
“Do you suppose he tried more than a kiss?”
“Don’t know,”Lisa said, laying the letter carefully on the desk. “Thanks for this, Liv. It may be a clue after all. And if we need to lift some prints from this, you did the right thing by not touching it.”
“Why would she be carrying the letter around with her? Was it dated?”
“No, but it did say ‘Midnight Friday,’ as though it mattered what time he wrote the stupid blathering.”
“If he wrote it the night before her last day of work, Jill would have had to be at work Saturday morning at six. And Saturday was her last day of work. Is it possible she saw this Jonah guy sometime between midnight and five thirty?”
Lisa cocked her head to one side. “Or he left it for her somewhere to find as she left for work: in her car, under a wiper blade, against the door of her dorm room. Somewhere so that she grabbed it and took it to work with her.”
“Or he could have given it to her some other Friday, an earlier week.”
“Let me call Streeter so he can add that to his list of questions as he interviews Julia Brannigan and Kari Smithson.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and started punching numbers.
“Who’s Kari Smithson?”
“Jill’s roommate.”
I finished making dinner while also eavesdropping on Lisa’s call with Agent Pierce. I’m such a competent multitasker. She relayed the information about the letter and suggested he ask the girls if they knew a Jonah.
“Tell them we found Jill’s necklace.” Lisa offered me a smile. “Liv did, at work. In Jill’s locker along with the letter.”
From Lisa’s comments, it sounded like Agent Pierce was in the middle of talking with Julia and Jill’s parents, who had arrived from Wisconsin. Poor bastard. Lisa mentioned I was making dinner for them, and she fell silent for several minutes before closing her cell phone and shoving it in her pocket. She took a drink of wine, draining half of her glass.
In the Belly of Jonah: A Liv Bergen Mystery Page 8
