Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  The clerk shook his head. “Just didn’t show up.”

  “You tried to call him?”

  “Not answering.”

  Roarke spoke through a tight throat. “I need his phone number and home address.”

  The clerk checked the computer and wrote on a card, pushed it across the counter to him.

  Roarke asked for the clerk’s phone, but his call to Driscoll’s cell number went straight to voice mail. His home number just rang and rang. Roarke listened to the ringing for longer than he had to, with a sick feeling in his gut, then headed for the elevator.

  The address was in Daly City, a twenty-minute drive. Roarke knew he could have a patrol car there sooner, marginally sooner, than he could get there himself. But instead of calling it in, he left the jail and got into his fleet car.

  Morning traffic added another twenty minutes to the trip, and that gave him plenty of time to envision scenarios, all of them involving blood and death. But he was not expecting the one he got. As he turned onto the run-down street, he spotted a crowd of neighbors, fire trucks, and an ambulance around a half-burned-out house. He didn’t have to check the address to know it was Driscoll’s. He didn’t have to ask the uniforms stationed at the perimeter what had happened. And he knew Cara was nowhere near there anymore.

  In the scraggly yard of the charred house, he showed his credentials to the uniform managing the scene and told her, “I may have some information for the investigators.”

  What he was going to say, he had no idea.

  The blackened area of the house was in the back. A bedroom, no doubt. The fire department had caught it early; the damage was visible only from the side of the building.

  The uniform who escorted Roarke into the still-smoking house had words with a detective who then stepped over to meet Roarke at the front door. He introduced himself as Vince Pinella. Daly City was in a different county from San Francisco, and Roarke had never met the wiry, middle-aged detective before.

  “You’ve got a fatality here?” he asked.

  Pinella looked Roarke over before he answered. “Adult male, burned to death in bed. You know something about it?”

  Roarke glanced toward the inner hall. “Lawrence Driscoll, corrections officer at San Francisco County #8?”

  “We don’t have a positive ID yet, but that’s the owner of the house.”

  Roarke nodded. “I was coming to question him on one of mine.”

  “As a wit or a suspect?”

  “Nothing formal, but there have been allegations.”

  Pinella’s eyes narrowed. “I’d like to hear.”

  Roarke thought of Kaz. “This was from a CI, but I’ll help out where I can.”

  The detective nodded. “Fair enough. Want to take a look?”

  “Want” didn’t factor in to it. Roarke had seen far too many burned bodies. His suit would be a write-off; you could never get the smell out. The aversion went deeper than that, of course. Nothing made him feel his own mortality more than a body fried beyond recognition by merciless fire. But he couldn’t help himself.

  He nodded back to the detective while his body tensed with dread.

  Pinella stepped through a doorway and Roarke followed, into the inner hall. The first half of it was a dirty white. The second half was black with fresh soot.

  The bedroom doorway opened into a chasm of a room: blackened timbers, ceiling caved in from flashover.

  The bed was a lump of charred mattress with a human figure cooked into it. The coroner’s assistants circled, trying to figure out how they were going to get the whole ungodly mess into the van.

  Roarke stayed in the doorway, which was not far enough away to spare himself the smell. His bile rose and he had to make his mind blank to keep from retching, or running. The corpse was unrecognizable, but he had no doubt he was looking at the remains of Driscoll. He noted the truculent stiffening of the deceased’s arms and fists, an indicator the victim had burned while still alive.

  He breathed in shallowly to counteract the lurching of his stomach, then turned away from the bed to find Pinella watching him. The detective spoke evenly. “No forced entry. We found this in the bed with him.” He passed over an evidence bag with a blackened hash pipe, and another with a partially melted cigarette lighter. Roarke studied the contents while his mind played out the scenario. There had been drug paraphernalia found with another of Cara’s suspected victims, one who on the surface seemed to have died of an overdose . . .

  Pinella nodded his head at the bed, the corpse. “It all tells a story, but I’m guessing you could tell me another one.”

  Roarke thought of the look he’d seen in Kaz’s eyes, her barely audible voice . . .

  “She wouldn’t be the first.”

  The detective’s gaze was still on him. “You going to help me on this one?”

  Roarke shook his head slowly. “Right now all I’ve got is a hunch. But I’m looking for a—witness. If I find her, I’ll let you know.” He realized only after he said it that he’d used the word if.

  “So I should dig deeper,” the detective said.

  Roarke handed over his card. “Yeah. If you find evidence of foul play, I’d appreciate a call.”

  He turned back to look at the blackened bed, the fried corpse. The white skull grinned at him from the melted body.

  He twisted around, strode through the blackened house past startled crime scene techs.

  Outside the door he was pulling off his suit coat even before he reached the car, flinging it away from him, fumbling for his necktie and stripping it off. He stopped at the car, tearing his shirt open and off, trying to breathe through the overwhelming smell of flesh.

  He closed his eyes and leaned against the hood of the car.

  And saw the guard’s skull, burned into his eyes.

  Chapter 31

  The team sat around the table in the conference room, looking up at images of the charred house that Roarke had taken with his phone, now displayed on the projection screen. Outside the windows, the sky was darkening into late afternoon. Roarke had stood in his shower for a full forty minutes, and he still had the stench of the guard’s melted corpse in his nostrils. He willed his stomach to settle, and spoke.

  “The deceased is Lawrence Miller Driscoll, corrections officer at County #8. He burned to death in the bedroom of his house last night, apparently while smoking a hash pipe in bed.”

  Epps was stiff with anger. “Last night. They kick her loose and eight hours later she’s doing this . . .”

  “More like twelve,” Roarke said.

  Epps turned on him. “Are you trying to be funny? Because dying by fire is no laugh riot.”

  Singh was speaking before Roarke could answer. “Do we know what he did?”

  Epps exploded. “What he did—”

  Singh’s voice never lost that ineffable calm. “It is relevant to finding her.”

  Roarke glanced at Singh and was reminded that there was a whole other conversation he would need to have with her. But for the moment, he answered her question. “I think there was prisoner abuse. I’ll be able to find out from her cellie. She was on the verge of telling me this morning.”

  “And that is how you knew to check on the guard?” Singh queried. “I did have bulletins out asking that all suspicious deaths be reported, but this did not come in this morning.”

  No, she didn’t waste any time at all. She went straight to him.

  Roarke banished the memory of cooked flesh and answered evenly. “Daly City is San Mateo County, and they weren’t thinking foul play at first,” he told the team. “I was at #8 questioning the cellmate, and she mentioned the guard but wasn’t ready to give details. I think she might, now.”

  “Now, meaning . . .?”

  It was Jones asking the question, but Roarke glanced at Epps as he answered. “Now that there
’s no danger of retribution by Driscoll.” Roarke had to brace himself again to deflect the memory of the corpse.

  Epps moved angrily in his seat, but Singh spoke first. “So we have Lindstrom leaving the courthouse at approximately thirteen hundred hours. Molina dropped her off at the Hyatt Regency on Market Street. She checked in, but . . .” She looked at Roarke. “You arrived there within the hour, and she was already gone. Last night it appears she went to Daly City and killed Driscoll.”

  Jones was studying the city maps posted on the whiteboard. “The Hyatt’s right next to the Embarcadero BART station, and Daly City is on the BART route. But Driscoll’s house is a good two miles from the BART station. Which means she probably boosted a car. We could question Driscoll’s neighbors to see if anyone spotted an unknown car—but chances are she’s already dumped it.”

  “Perhaps at the Daly City station,” Singh said. She typed into her tablet. Then she looked up at Roarke questioningly, and he realized he hadn’t spoken for some time. Talking seemed a great effort.

  He cleared his throat against the taste of the dead guard. “We need to be anticipating her next moves, not trying to play catch-up. I think Driscoll was a one-off. Unfinished business. Now that he’s out of the way, I doubt she’ll be sticking around. I think we can safely say that she’s jumped bail.”

  Epps made a contemptuous sound in his throat. Roarke ignored it and continued evenly. “But it’s not going to be official until she misses her next court appearance, and we have no idea when that’s going to happen. Stanton is going to have to go back to the judge with more evidence. We can’t even put out an APB. As far as the law is concerned, she’s no longer a fugitive. For the time being, anyway.”

  “So what now?” Jones asked.

  “Mills is running down another lead,” Roarke said obliquely, avoiding mention of the visitor list.

  Singh spoke, her face distant with concentration. “If I were trying to evade capture, I would go out of state. I would also avoid any state that you know her to have been in.” She said this looking directly at Roarke, and he felt his stomach flip with discomfort. “You know the most about her. You have anticipated her moves before. So if I were she, I would drive at least halfway across the country, to someplace you, personally, do not associate with me.”

  There were many nuances in her last few sentences that disturbed Roarke. He focused on the most troubling.

  “If you were trying to evade capture,” he repeated, as neutrally as he could manage.

  “I do not know her motives,” Singh answered slowly. “But she did not have to follow you to the mountains last month. She could have gone far out of state after surviving her injury in the desert, and she did not. She did not leave San Francisco the instant she was released but remained very close. So no, I do not think that evading capture is her primary goal.”

  The same thing Snyder had said.

  The team sat with that for a moment. Then something flashed in Roarke’s mind, a moment of clarity through his detached state. A mental image of crimson on white. Blood streaming from cuts on pale flesh. And he remembered the one person who might keep Cara in the city. Or who might know where she had gone.

  “Her cousin is in town,” he said aloud. “She may try to contact her.”

  “Erin McNally,” Singh said thoughtfully.

  “Lindstrom was very concerned about her.” He’d almost said Cara. “I haven’t been able to reach her.” He had tried several times, by phone and email. “There’s a slight possibility she’ll know where Lindstrom might have gone.” Even as he said it he knew Erin would never disclose where Cara was, but he continued, “I’ll try going by her hotel tonight.”

  “Is that likely to get us anywhere?” Jones asked, voicing Roarke’s own doubt.

  “Probably not,” Roarke admitted.

  Singh was watching him, a frown in her eyes. “So for the time being, we focus on finding Jade?”

  “As what, though?” Jones asked. “As a witness against Lindstrom? Or as a murder suspect? Are we looking to deal with Jade on the pimp murder, to testify against Lindstrom in exchange for a reduced sentence?”

  It was a good question, but Roarke found himself lost for an answer. He had no idea what the plan was. He had no idea what he wanted. He had no idea at all.

  “Maybe what we do is stop.”

  It was Epps speaking, after several minutes of complete silence from his corner. The thought was so startling that Roarke and the rest of the team turned in shock to stare at him.

  Epps looked back at them. “Serious. The judge let Lindstrom out. She could be in any state, or another country by now. So could Jade. It’s out of our division. We could let it go. Get back to our own damn business.”

  The possibility had never occurred to Roarke.

  They had not been on the case for long. No more than two months. Compared with the length of other cases they’d worked, it was a fraction. A drop in the bucket.

  And yet it was different from any other case. At every turn, Cara had slipped through their hands like water, like the wind.

  There was a strange urgency in Epps’ voice now. “A pimp’s dead? Fuck him. Let San Mateo County handle the guard. Let someone else make the case. Go on with our real jobs. Last time I looked, my business card still said ‘Organized Crime.’”

  Across the conference table, Jones shifted uncomfortably. As agents, giving up was not what they did.

  “That is unacceptable,” Singh said.

  The team turned toward her. She was sitting straight up in her chair, and her face was flushed. “That is not what we do. That is not how we function. That is not how we live.”

  It was the most emotional reaction Roarke had ever seen from her, and it threw him. Looking across the table at her and Epps, their defensive postures, the slight trembling in their hands, he was aware that for the first time in his memory, his two exceptional agents were about to fight. Epps had a temper, no doubt, but Roarke had never before heard Singh even raise her voice. The whole case was affecting his team as well as himself. Even Jones looked startled at the escalating friction.

  Is this what it’s come to? What’s happening to us?

  It was enough to pull Roarke out of his trance, at least for the moment. “We sleep on it. We reassess in the morning.”

  There was a numb silence around the table.

  “I’m down with that,” Epps said stiffly.

  Roarke waited for the other agents to leave the room, then stopped Singh on her way out.

  “Your name was on Lindstrom’s visitor list.”

  He watched her face. Her eyes flickered, but her expression remained neutral.

  “Yes. I had hoped to speak with her.”

  “Why?”

  She held his gaze. “I suppose I have become equally fascinated by her.”

  Roarke had to fight to keep from reacting. Was she really saying what he thought she was saying?

  “Fascinated how?” he managed brusquely, although he knew. Of all people, he knew.

  “As an agent, I find her psychology riveting. As a woman—” She stopped. “I want to know why.”

  “But you cancelled.”

  “I reconsidered.”

  Roarke lifted his eyebrows, waiting.

  Now she avoided his eyes. “I felt I was . . . overstepping my professional bounds.”

  “So you never saw her.” He stared at her until she looked at him. She didn’t blink.

  “No.”

  They remained looking at each other, at an impasse.

  “All right, Singh.”

  He watched her as she left the conference room, elegant and unfathomable as ever.

  In his own office he slumped back in his chair. Immediately his cell phone buzzed, and he flinched at the sound before he glanced at the screen. Mills. Roarke picked up and the detective spoke w
ithout preamble.

  “So you’re right. There’s something hinky with this ‘Andrea Janovy.’”

  “It’s a fake ID?” Meaning Jade?

  “Nope, it’s a valid driver’s license, passed through the background check just fine. But the actual owner of the driver’s license wasn’t the one who visited. The real Andrea Janovy hasn’t used the license in two years, being that she was injured in an accident back then and lost the use of her legs. Which yes, is true, I checked.”

  Roarke sat still at his desk.

  “The Richmond address on the license is four years old. The real Janovy currently resides down south in Goleta. And no, she says she has no idea who would be using her ID to get into a jail.”

  Roarke was thinking fast. “So someone who knows about her injury either stole her license or claimed it was lost to get a replacement. That’s a pretty sophisticated setup.”

  And it sounded more like something Bitch would be able to do than Jade.

  “Can you send me through the license photo?” he asked.

  He waited until his email pinged, then clicked into the mail to see a scan of the driver’s license.

  The photo was of a serious young woman with gray eyes and auburn hair. She wasn’t a match for the blogger, but with hair dye and colored contacts, some makeup, the blogger might have passed. Or not.

  “So what are you thinking?” the detective demanded in his ear.

  “Doesn’t look like Jade.”

  “Yeah, I’d worked that out for myself. But the CO on duty that day didn’t get much of a gander at her. It’s the holidays; there’s been a shit ton of visitors this week. You think it could be your blogger?”

  “Possible.”

  “Then rustle yourself up a sketch artist and get us a composite. I want a look at this Bitch.”

  The sitting with the sketch artist took an hour, and mercifully, it concentrated Roarke’s mind away from everything else. In the end they had a reasonable approximation of the young blogger.

  Roarke scanned the drawing through to Mills, then left the building in a fog.