The Next Victim (Kali O'Brien series)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  Sabrina made a face. “You want to visualize the murders?”

  “Not because I get a kick out of it,” Kali snapped. She was hot and tired, and in the back of her mind, she was worried she’d only wind up convincing herself of John’s guilt. “You were the one urging me to look into Sloane’s murder. For that, I need information.”

  “Okay, okay. You don’t have to get your knickers in a twist.”

  “So are you coming with me or not?”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re such great company, how could I pass up the opportunity for more sisterly bonding?”

  <><><>

  Sloane Winslow lived in an older development in the foothills. The streets meandered in mazelike fashion and the houses were set far apart. They were less pretentious than some of the newer places higher up in the hills, but there was an air of established serenity about the area that appealed to Kali.

  The driveway was circular and made of crushed rock. Kali pulled in and turned off the engine.

  “This must be where John parked,” she said. She realized she’d subconsciously bought into the official scenario and immediately corrected herself. “Where a car like John’s was parked.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Sabrina had apparently not caught Kali’s slip.

  “At night, it must be really dark out here.” There were, Kali noted, no streetlights. Nor was there a house directly across the street. The roadway, also gravel, was divided by a median of natural scrub. She wondered how the witness had spotted the silver Porsche.

  “It’s dark everywhere in Tucson at night,” Sabrina said. “Especially in the hills. It’s because of the Kitt Peak Observatory. They don’t want a lot of light making it difficult to see the stars.”

  Kali remembered sleeping under the open sky in the Sierra with Bryce only a few days earlier, the stars so bountiful they took your breath away. The memory seemed to belong to another life. She realized she hadn’t called him since she’d arrived in Tucson.

  “Let’s take a look.” Kali set the parking brake and they got out of the car.

  “What are we looking for?” Sabrina shielded her eyes from the sun with a hand.

  “Imagine you’re the killer. What would you do?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t park my car in the driveway, for one thing.”

  “Good point.” Kali tried the front door, just for the heck of it. Locked.

  The gate on the right side of the house was open, and Kali pushed through. More crushed rock led past a cactus garden to the back of the house, where a patio and pool gave way to a vista of the city to the south and mountains to the east.

  Large windows and French doors faced the yard. Kali pressed her nose to the glass, peered through the open spots in the blinds, but she wasn’t able to see much. She tried the doors. Locked tight.

  “You really want to get in?” Sabrina asked.

  Kali shrugged, embarrassed to have been caught in the act. “I’d only be doing it to help John.”

  “Hey, I’m not judging.” Sabrina wandered back to the side of the house and returned a moment later with a key.

  “Where’d you get that?” Kali asked, incredulous.

  “It was hidden in one of those fake rocks. I noticed it coming up the side of the house. I have the same thing at home.” She tried the key in the door and the lock turned. “Ta-ta.”

  As Sabrina pushed the door open, Kali had second thoughts. “There might be an alarm system,” she warned. They paused to listen. But the only sound to be heard was the high-pitched buzz of insects from the yard.

  “Guess not,” Sabrina said.

  So much for security. Still, breaking and entering was a crime. One Kali had committed on previous occasions, true, but never without a degree of trepidation.

  Sabrina was already inside. “Are you coming?” she called.

  Their motives were honorable, Kali told herself, as she followed her sister into the sunny breakfast area. A vase of droopy asters sat in the center of a round wood table. The air was heavy and rank.

  They crossed through the kitchen into the living area, where vestiges of violence presented a disquieting contrast to the cozy furnishings. Chalk marks and bits of masking tape left behind by the police. Shards of blue glass from a broken vase, an overturned lamp, an ivory-hued wall peppered with tiny holes. And blood. It had pooled on the tile floor, then dried, leaving a sticky, black residue. On the wall near the doorway was a dried streak of it, and above that, a smeared handprint.

  “Oh, my God,” Sabrina gasped. She pressed a balled fist against her mouth. “I don’t think I’m up for this.”

  Kali felt the bile rise in her own throat. The sheer brutality of murder always shocked her. The thought that John might have had a hand in it was horrifying.

  “You want to wait outside?” she asked. “I won’t be long.” In truth, she wanted to flee with her sister.

  Sabrina nodded numbly and left the way they’d come in.

  Kali made herself wander through the main rooms of the house, getting a sense of Sloane. Bold art, strong southwestern colors, and a sleek uncluttered style that she found inviting. Lots of books—fiction, history, art, cookbooks. A U-shaped kitchen with cherry cabinets and granite counters lined with upscale appliances.

  Returning to the living area, Kali tried to visualize the scene as it would have been the night Sloane was killed. From the police markings, it appeared she’d been in the living room, Olivia coming from the other wing. The killer must have been standing near where Kali was now.

  Why had Sloane let him in? Or was it Olivia who’d done that? Was the face at the door someone they recognized?

  John would be a familiar face. But not the only one, Kali reminded herself.

  She moved on to the bedroom wing. The master bed and bath, again tastefully decorated in bold colors and furniture with clean lines. A guest room and an office. An oak file cabinet held too many files for Kali to examine in depth, but she glanced quickly through the folders—bills, bank statements, typical household records. Of course, the police had been here before her. No telling what they’d taken.

  The answering machine light was blinking. Kali hit PLAY. Two messages: one from a telemarketer, the other letting Sloane know the print she’d taken in for framing was ready. Kali held the play key down longer, hoping she’d be able to pick up earlier messages, but they’d already been erased. She wondered what had been on the machine when the police had arrived.

  She couldn’t find an address book or a Rolodex, though she did find Sloane’s cell phone, still plugged into its charger. She scrolled through the stored numbers and copied them onto a sheet of paper.

  Then she retraced her steps through the main rooms of the house to the other end, where a door led to a separate guest wing with a studio bedroom, bath, and small kitchenette. Kali guessed it was the room Olivia Perez was using.

  The bedroom walls were painted a soft peach. A wood-frame bed with a pin-striped comforter in subtle shades of green and rust was centered on one wall, a pine bureau next to it. On the opposite wall was a small desk with papers neatly stacked, but no computer. A low bookcase held textbooks, school supplies, and a box of tissues. There were no posters on the walls, no dried flowers, stuffed animals, or other memorabilia tucked about. It was a functional room, warm and comfortable, but not personal in the way Kali would have expected a young woman’s room to be.

  On the desk, under a spiral notebook labeled Soc 251, Kali found a slim book of love poems with a soft, hand-tooled leather cover. On the inside flap was an inscription:

  Olivia,

  There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all,

  And yours speaks to me.

  Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

  The signature was an indecipherable scrawl ending in a loopy letter, maybe a y or g, in which the writer had drawn eyes and a mouth in smiley-face fashion.

  Kali heard voices outside, near the front of the house, and froze. Was someon
e coming?

  She quickly returned the book to its place under the sociology notebook, went back to the kitchen, and slipped out through the French doors.

  She found Sabrina in the shade of the front porch talking to a pudgy woman in her mid-forties who was cradling a tiny white dog in her arms.

  “Hey, Kali. This is Janet Fisher,” Sabrina said. “And her dog Snowball. They live next door. Janet thought we were real estate agents.”

  “Just a guess. I might know someone who’d be interested in buying the place.”

  Kali looked to Sabrina for a clue. God knew what her sister had told the woman.

  “I explained we were friends of the family,” Sabrina said, with wide-eyed innocence.

  “What they must be going through,” Janet said, with a shake of her head. “You don’t expect something terrible like this in a quiet neighborhood like ours. I know most everyone on this street and the next one over. We’ve never had a lick of trouble before this. Well, there was a string of auto thefts a couple of years ago. Being so close to the Mexican border and all, it’s a problem.”

  “You weren’t by any chance the one who spotted a car parked here the night of the murders, were you?” Kali asked her.

  “No, that was Les Billings. He lives over there.” Janet pointed to a house diagonally across the street.

  From where they were standing, Kali could make out only the rooftop. “He could see the driveway from there?”

  “He was coming home.” Janet scratched Snowball behind the ears. “You have to drive down this side of the road to that break in the median in order to cross and get back to his place.”

  “Did you see anything?” Kali asked.

  Janet shook her head. “Of course, with four kids, I’ve learned to block out a lot.” The dog was squirming in her arms. She set him on the ground, with a warning to behave himself. “But I was the one who called the police,” Janet continued, with an air of self-importance. “If the day hadn’t been so hectic, I’d have noticed sooner. The police told me it wouldn’t have made a difference, though. They were both already dead.”

  “Noticed what?” Sabrina asked.

  “Little things. Like the newspaper wasn’t picked up and the interior lights were on. I just sensed something was different. That’s just the way I am. Observant, well, nosy according to my husband, but I like to know what’s going on. They interviewed me on the evening news, you know.”

  A busybody, in other words. Kali could imagine Janet might be difficult to take in large doses, but for her purposes right then, the woman was ideal. “How well did you know Sloane Winslow?” Kali asked.

  Janet took her time brushing loose stands of white dog hair from her shirt, loving the spotlight. “She moved in only a little over a year ago. But most of the folks on this street are older, and Sloane and I were close to the same age, so that gave us something in common.”

  Although Kali had never met Sloane, she had to imagine that age might have been the only thing the two women had had in common. “What about her other friends?” she asked. “Did you know any of them?”

  “Sloane pretty much kept to herself. Just recently that girl, Olivia, moved in. She was a quiet thing. You hardly knew she was there. And not very friendly, either. One of my sons is about the same age. We invited her to a party but she wasn’t interested.” Janet frowned. “Didn’t you say you were part of Sloane’s family?”

  “Friends of the family,” Sabrina said easily. “We’ve known her brother, Reed, for years.”

  Kali piped in, “He’s devastated, of course. And he wants to make sure word of her death reaches the people she knew.”

  The frown softened to a look of understanding. “Of course. If Sloane mentioned names, it was only in passing.” Janet paused, then continued conspiratorially. “Sloane was seeing someone for a while. It’s been over for months, though.”

  “Really?” This was interesting. No one had mentioned that Sloane might have had an ex-lover as well as an ex-husband. Affairs of the heart were always worth looking at where motive for murder was concerned. “What do you know about him?”

  “She didn’t talk about it much.” Janet sounded miffed at not being in the loop. “I don’t suppose it’s important anyway. The police have a pretty good idea who did it, don’t they?”

  “There’s some question whether they’re right,” Sabrina said emphatically.

  “Oh, I hadn’t heard that. I certainly hope they aren’t thinking it was some random nut case. It’s frightening enough as it is.”

  A young voice called out from the street. “Mom! Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “I’m coming, Beck.” Janet scooped up the dog, who’d been busily sniffing Kali’s feet. “If there’s any way I can help, tell the family to give me a call. Fisher. It’s in the phone book.”

  When she’d gone, Kali held up the house key. “Show me where this goes, will you? Then let’s go see if Les Billings is in.”

  The Billings house had the same type of circular gravel driveway as Sloane’s, but the yard was landscaped with metal sculptures of desert animals instead of live plants. The door was answered by a skinny man in baggy Bermuda shorts and a short- sleeved shirt with what looked like mustard stains down the front. Kali guessed he was in his early sixties.

  “You two look too pretty to be Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

  Kali humored him with a chuckle. “Mr. Billings?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’d like to talk to you about the car you saw the night Mrs. Winslow was killed.”

  “You’re reporters?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Kali replied, a non-answer that sometimes worked.

  Sabrina piped in with a cheery “And I’m her assistant.”

  “My older son’s a lawyer. The younger one,” he said with a grin, “could be a perpetual client. What is it you want to know?”

  “Can you walk us through what you told the police?” Kali asked.

  “There isn’t really much to tell.”

  “We’d like to hear what you observed.”

  Sabrina nodded. “It’s important we hear it in your own words.”

  Kali shot her a silencing look, but Sabrina was busy batting her eyelashes and probably missed it.

  “Well,” Les Billings said, “I was coming home from a very long and boring evening with my brother and his wife when I saw a silver Porsche parked in Sloane Winslow’s driveway. It was a car I’d not seen there before. It started up and pulled away just as I drove past, and I saw that one of the taillights was broken.”

  “Did you get a look at the driver?”

  “Not a good look. My impression was of a male, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  Equivocating witness testimony might earn points for the defense in the courtroom, but unfortunately it wasn’t going to help them now.

  “What time was this?” Kali asked.

  “About eleven.”

  “Did you see anyone else? Any other unusual cars on the street?”

  Les Billings shook his head. “But I wasn’t really looking, either. It’s just that the Porsche caught my eye, especially starting up just as I drove past.”

  As Sabrina had remarked, it was a foolish killer who parked his car in plain view. Kali now added her own corollary: it was equally foolish to draw attention to yourself by fleeing the scene of the crime in front of a witness.

  Kali had called John many things in her life, but foolish wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 12

  Erling was finishing his report on an assault of an elderly woman outside a Walgreens store when Michelle Parker appeared at his desk. She slid a plastic-encased drawing across to him.

  “We’ve got a sketch of our Jane Doe,” she said, brushing the hair from her face, “but no match with any of the missing persons reports.”

  Erling closed his eyes briefly, taking a moment to center himself before looking down and finally putting a
face to the young woman whose nude body had been discovered two weeks ago in a wash in East County.

  The coroner had pegged the time of death as a couple of weeks earlier, but the combined effects of decomposition and animal scavenging made it difficult to be certain. His best guess was that she’d choked to death on her own vomit as a result of being bound and gagged.

  He estimated her age to be between sixteen and twenty.

  Erling took pride in never losing sight of the fact that murder victims were more than case files. They were people with hopes, dreams, and fears. With families and friends. In living and in dying, they touched many lives. Erling carried their stories in his mind and heart; they touched him, too. And it was one of the reasons he liked working with Michelle. She felt the same.

  Lately, though, he’d begun to wish he were more like his brethren who consciously distanced themselves from the crimes they were working. He’d about had his fill of perversity and death.

  Erling took the black-and-white sketch from Michelle and pulled it closer. It showed a young woman with shoulder-length curls, round cheeks, and wide-set eyes. Neither homely nor beautiful, but attractive with the bloom of youth. She was more or less as he’d imagined, but seeing her likeness there on the page, as though she’d posed for a portrait at a local street fair, wrenched his heart. She was too young to have died at all, much less so tragically.

  “Isabel says the mouth may not be right,” Michelle told him. “She didn’t have as much to work with as she’d have liked.”

  Isabel was the forensic artist who worked with the sheriff’s department. She also taught criminology at the university. “So it’s a good likeness,” Erling asked, “but not perfect?”

  “Right. With the identifying data of height, weight, and coloring, though, it might be close enough that someone will recognize her.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Erling said. He held on to the thought that somewhere this girl had family who loved her and were frantically trying to find her. He wanted that to be so, not because he wished them to suffer, but because the alternative, that no one cared about her, was worse.