"I know that."
"He's probably the best all-around cop I've got."
Graham continued to nod. "But there's something not right about him, Claire. I mean, all that time in the gym. Strutting up and down the boardwalk at night. And who wears long sleeves in August?"
She looked at him and the rolled-up sleeves of his white oxford.
"Okay, I do. But only because I think short sleeve dress shirts look silly. And I work in an air-conditioned office and store all day. He's in and out of his car, walking the boardwalk—"
"Ryan McCormick is not a killer," she said firmly.
"The ladies like him. He likes the ladies." He finished off his wine and set the glass down. "And did you know he likes it a little kinky?"
She frowned. "No I didn't know—how the hell do you know he likes it kinky?"
"The girls in the store talk. In the break room. When the store's empty. Business is slow." He shrugged. "A guy can't help but hear sometimes."
"You eavesdrop on your employees?"
"Don't have to. They don't seem to care who hears." He got up. "Guess I'm going to go now. Thanks for dinner."
She set down the pile of cards and followed him to the door. It seemed to her as if he were leaving a little abruptly. Truth was, she really wasn't ready to let him go. Having him here tonight reminded her of how lonely she was. How much she missed Kurt. "I'm the one who's supposed to be thanking you for dinner. You brought it. You cooked it. You even did the dishes."
He halted at the door, sliding one hand into his pocket. Studying him, she wondered how tall he was. She was a hair under six feet and he was four or five inches taller than she was. Both her ex-husband and Kurt had been her height or shorter. Had that been the problem?
"You're welcome, then." He grinned. "Thanks for having me over. I'm glad I could help out."
"You did not help me out."
"I think I've got you thinking in a couple of different directions."
"McCormick."
He nodded.
She shook her head. "I'm telling you. McCormick is not our guy. I've worked with him day and night. He might be a little..." She searched for the right word. "Uptight sometimes, but—"
"What officer has been the first on every scene, except Kristen Addison's?"
Claire's mouth went dry. She had been the one to find Kristen. "McCormick," she said quietly.
They were both quiet for a moment. "Look, I'm not saying it's him. I'm just saying you need to look at this with open eyes. This guy, when you catch him, you're going to know him, maybe better than you'd like to think."
She rested her hand on the smooth wall for support and closed her eyes. "You know how scary that is?"
She felt his hand on her waist.
"I have a good idea."
Claire opened her eyes to find him looking down at her. He smelled good.
"I was thinking about trying to kiss you," he said quietly. "What do you think?"
She wished he'd just done it because the same thought had crossed her mind. But now that he put it that way to her... She covered his hand with hers. "Graham. I've got a man killing women out there. I can't begin to think—"
"You're right. I'm sorry." He let go of her. Took a step back.
Claire considered crossing the short distance between them, throwing her arms around him and laying one on him. Instead, she opened the front door to let him out. "I might do a little snooping around tomorrow on my possible suspects. I'm not ready to bring anyone in for questioning, but I might have a friendly chat with a few people."
"I think that's smart."
"I'm going to keep my eye on the diner." She lifted one shoulder, letting it fall. "I guess keep my eyes and my mind open."
"'Night, Claire."
"Good night," she said a little more wistfully than she'd intended. She watched him turn around in the driveway and then she went back into the house. She knew it would be a while before she slept so she decided to start making a list of questions for the men on her suspect list.
As she walked back into the living room, she thought about what Graham had said about McCormick, about the fact that she needed to realize that this killer really was someone she knew. That meant that even though she thought she was a pretty good judge of character, she was wrong about someone. Could that someone be Ryan McCormick? Could she really have a man on the force who was also a killer?
Chapter 6
The phone beside Claire's bed jangled and she instinctively reached for it, even before she was fully awake. "Drummond," she said, squinting to read the digital clock beside her bed. It was 4:46 a.m.
"Chief. This is Jesse Perdue, night dispatcher." He hesitated.
She rubbed her eyes, trying to sit up and sound half intelligent. "Yes, Jesse."
"Sorry to wake you, but we got another dead girl."
Claire swore as she slid her bare legs over the side of the bed and turned the bedside lamp on. Dear God, not another one, was all she could think. "Where?"
"The elementary school."
She closed her eyes for a moment, rubbing both eyelids with her thumb and forefinger. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Night janitor found the body beside the dumpster behind the gym. The call just came in. All available units have been dispatched. Paramedics and an ambulance. Not that they'll be needed. They say she looks like she's been dead a little longer than the others were when they were found."
"I'll be there as quick as I can." Claire hung up the phone and dropped her face into her hands for a moment, letting her blond hair fall over her face. Maybe Dr. Larson, the mayor, the others were right. Maybe she was in over her head. Maybe it was her fault another woman had been murdered.
Wearily, she got to her feet and went to her closet for a clean uniform. At least two weeks ago she'd been told the attorney general was making noise about gathering a task force to take over the investigation. Maybe it was time for her to officially ask for assistance.
* * *
Claire walked the perimeter of the now familiar crime scene. The sun was just rising in the east, casting a golden yellow glow over the redbrick wall of the school, the green industrial-size Dumpster and the body sprawled on the dark pavement. Flashing blue ambulance lights and police car lights added a strange, ethereal sentiment to the early morning vista.
The young woman had been identified by the New Jersey driver's license in her purse as Brandy Thomas, aged twenty-three. Claire held the plastic coated license in her gloved hand, studying it. A pretty, heart-shaped face stared back. Five foot six inches, 135 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes. Of course Claire had known the girl would be a blonde before she got here.
"Chief." Detective Robinson approached. He'd also been pulled out of bed. At least he'd taken the time to shower. His thinning hair was still damp and he smelled of shaving lotion. "Found some paperwork in her purse; looks like she just started working for a local temporary agency in town."
Claire handed him the driver's license to be bagged with the dead woman's other personal belongings. "Call the place as soon as it opens. Find out where she's living and where she's working."
"Will do."
"ME been here?"
"On her way," Robinson called over his shoulder as he walked away.
Claire turned toward the dumpster and the dead girl beyond the yellow crime scene tape. There were people milling everywhere: cops, the paramedics, and an ambulance crew. Two men, one Hispanic, one Caucasian, dressed in custodial jumpsuits, stood near one of the town's police cars. Someone sat in the front seat of the car, asking questions. She couldn't see which officer it was.
She shifted her attention back to the body. Slowly, she blocked out the hushed, uneasy voices around her. She let the school's brick wall, the dumpster and the distracting emergency vehicle lights fade into the background. This was just about Claire—Claire and Brandy. Claire sensed that the young woman had something to tell her; she just had to listen.
Trying to put every detail
of the scene to memory, as she became aware of it, Claire ducked under the repulsive yellow tape and squatted beside the body.
Brandy, like the other women, had been dumped. She had been killed in another place, and then disposed of here. As Claire had been told over the phone, it was immediately obvious that she had been dead longer than the others, when they were found. Rigor mortis had already come and gone and Brandy's body was beginning to decompose. Though Claire couldn't yet see the breakdown of the flesh and organs, she could smell it.
Brandy Thomas was fully dressed in a pale yellow cotton top and a short jean skirt, sandals on her feet, her purse carefully placed over her shoulder. From what Claire had been reading about serial killers, the scene wasn't as bizarre as it appeared. Killers like this one did everything for a reason and to discover his motives could mean finding him.
So, what was the killer telling about himself here, Claire wondered. That women were trash. That he was not a thief. That he liked order. Like the others, not only had he left her purse with her, cash untouched, but he had slipped the strap over her shoulder... where it belonged. As if she would need it. Like the umbrella he had left for the dead Anne Hopkins...
Claire continued to make her observations. Both of Brandy's wrists had been repeatedly slashed. Claire could now recognize the smears of blood where the killer had attempted to prevent the wounds from closing up, then cut her again when the blood coagulated. Once again, the death had been a slow one. It was the process of dying; that was how this killer got his rocks off.
Claire's stomach did a flip-flop and for a moment she feared she'd embarrass herself by barfing all over the crime scene. She closed her eyes and took deep, steady breaths through her mouth. 5:30 in the morning and it was already hot. Sweltering.
The sickening feeling passed and she opened her eyes. With a gloved hand, she brushed the young woman's hair off her face to get a better look at her. Thankfully, her eyes were closed. The chief ME, Martha, up in Wilmington, had told Claire that if it was any comfort, all these women had died relatively painless deaths. She said that when one bled to death, one just got sleepy, that everything faded into darkness and that was it.
A discoloration around Brandy's mouth caught Claire's eye and she pulled her flashlight from her belt. The sun was not fully up yet so there were still shadows cast against the building and the girl. Claire flipped on the light and aimed the beam on Brandy's face. She had a split lower lip. There was no blood. The wound looked as if it had been cleaned, but there was a definite bruising. This was a prior to death injury; she knew that much from her basic forensic training.
Had the killer done it?
Claire glanced in the direction of Kevin James who was standing around, talking with Patrolman McCormick. "Kevin," she called. She tilted her head, gesturing for him to approach. "Did you see this?"
"Looks like someone hit her, huh?" he said, walking over.
"So I'm right? This happened before she died?"
"Definitely." He was wearing latex gloves, too. Similar to hers, but his were blue. "See the bruising around here?" He brushed his fingertip around the corner of her mouth. "You can't get that postmortem."
Claire lifted her gaze to stare at the green dumpster . "You think the killer did it?"
The medical technician shrugged. "Hard to say. After the autopsy, they'll be able tell you how old the bruising is. You figure when he snatched her and—"
"I'll know if it was the killer or not." She looked at Kevin. "You know, we've seen no violence like this before." Realizing how ridiculous what she had said sounded, she laughed without humor. "You know what I mean. He didn't knock the others around. He tied them up, taped their mouths, slit their wrists, but he didn't hurt them. From the appearance of the other women's bodies, the ME thought he was actually pretty gentle with them," she continued, thinking aloud. "But if the killer hit her, that means something is changing. Violence is a result of anger or frustration."
"Something else new, too. Anyone tell you about this?"James brushed the dead woman's silky blond hair aside to reveal two angry red welts on the side of her neck.
"What the hell?" Claire leaned closer, directing her flashlight beam. "A bite?"
The technician stood up. "Who knows? I'm not good with dead ones, just the live ones. The ME should be able to tell you, though."
He walked away and Claire got down on her knees for another look at Brandy's neck. It definitely wasn't a human bite mark; those she'd seen.
"You need the camera, Chief?" Officer Savage asked from behind her.
She stood up, still contemplating the two red marks. "Thanks." She took the camera bag and crouched on the ground again. She loaded a fresh roll of film and began to methodically take pictures from every angle.
Sometime in the middle of the night, when she hadn't been able to sleep, she'd decided she had to look at solving these murders as a mental exercise. Graham was right; this guy was smart. But so was she; she just had to be smarter.
So what could she learn from this particular crime scene? The similarities between Brandy's case and the others were pretty easy to pick up on. Young blond-haired, blue-eyed women. The abduction was non-violent, so they were somehow lured into the killer's confidence. They all died of blood loss. The bodies were all dumped next to some sort of trash receptacle.
So what was different here? The marks on the neck, obviously. What else? The camera shutter whirred as she snapped photo after photo, averting her eyes to keep from blinding herself with the flash. What was different? The fact that he had hit her, if Claire's guess was right. Did that mean he knew her more personally?
The actual location of the dumpster was different, too. No two women had been dumped in the same place. She glanced up at the brick wall. Of all the places the bodies had been found, this one was the most easily accessible, and most public. Anyone could drive by on the street behind the school and see a car pull up and dump a dead girl's body. In every other case, the dumpster was in an alley, or in an isolated spot like a construction site or a state park. Why the school?
Snapping the last photo, she stood up, staring at the redbrick wall of the gym. The gym...
"Son of a bitch," she whispered, turning away suddenly.
"What you got, Chief?" McCormick called, coming off the patrol car he was leaning on.
She glanced over her shoulder at the wall behind her. "He was here," she murmured.
"Who?"
"The killer," she said, shocked by her epiphany. "He was here at the town meeting the other night."
McCormick scowled. "How do you know that?"
She glanced at her officer and for the first time in her career, wished she hadn't shared information with one of her own. "I just do," she said.
* * *
At 4:30 that afternoon, Claire pulled into the gravel parking lot of Stewart's Lawn and Garden shop. She parked under a shady locust tree near the rear gated entrance that led to the greenhouses and cut the engine. Ashley didn't get off for another half an hour, but Claire needed some downtime. Some time to think through what she'd learned today.
The latest victim, Brandy Thomas, according to her tearful father who Claire spoke to around noon, had just moved to Albany Beach two weeks prior to her death. She had broken up with her boyfriend and left her hometown in New Jersey to make a clean break. She'd ended up in the southern Delaware beach town because she had worked there summers when she was in high school and an old friend had offered her a couch to sleep on until Brandy got settled. She'd gotten a job with a temp agency doing secretarial work at the hospital, her father explained, and she had been very excited. She had actually been talking to her parents about starting nursing classes in the fall. As far as the father was aware, Brandy knew no one except the girlfriend she'd been staying with.
Claire ran her pen down the side of the yellow legal-size notepad, going over the details she had so far. The roommate, Rachel Clause, had already been interviewed. She'd last seen Brandy at Bubbles martini bar Sun
day night. It was a new place on the edge of town where the young crowd liked to hang out. According to Rachel, when she left the bar around nine-thirty, Brandy was still there. Rachel couldn't recall anyone in particular her friend had been talking with. The bar had been crowded and loud, the young woman had explained. Brandy's car had been located in the bar parking lot this morning. This time of year, beach goers looking for free parking used the lot all the time. No one had noticed the car hadn't moved in three days.
Claire had had the ex-boyfriend in New Jersey checked out immediately. He had an airtight alibi. After Brandy broke up with him, he'd apparently gone on a tear. Sunday night, he'd been sleeping off a drunk in a New Jersey municipal jail, after a bar fight.
So where did all this leave Claire's investigation? She removed her sunglasses and rubbed her aching eyes. The chief medical examiner for the state assured Claire she'd have an autopsy report for her by morning. In the meantime—
Motion out of the corner of Claire's eye caught her attention and she turned to look out the passenger-side window to see Ashley trudging toward the car from behind, dressed in her usually black on black, backpack on her shoulders. "Mom, what are you doing here so early?"
Claire glanced over her shoulder in the direction her daughter had come. "I wanted to be on time for once. You just get off work?" She looked at the open gates that led into the nursery in front of the car. Ashley usually came out through the gates.
"Mr. Stewart said I could go a few minutes early." She opened the car door. "Guess he saw you pull in." She tossed her backpack into the backseat and climbed in.
Claire watched as she sat down stiffly and reached for her seat belt. "You okay? Your back bothering you?"
The teen fiddled with the buckle on the seat belt. "Yeah, a little. I was carrying all these fifty pound bags of fertilizer today. We had to move them from one pallet to another because we had this one bag with a hole in it or something."
Claire tucked her notepad into her briefcase on the seat beside her and tossed it over the seat. The photos of Brandy Thomas's body were inside and she didn't want to risk Ashley seeing them. Being the daughter of a cop, Ashley was already exposed to more of the realities in life than Claire liked. No fifteen-year-old needed to see pictures of a woman who had been purposefully bled to death.
She'll Never Live Page 7
