Then, damn the consequences, the investigation would have to be widened to include the case long since closed. Ricardo Mendoza would be getting exactly what he wanted.
Will stared unseeing down at the half dozen meatballs he'd already formed and the bowl of spicy ground meat.
But how could a man who'd been in the state penitentiary for five and a half years possibly have arranged for a crime so brutal, so personal, to be committed?
The wrenching anguish in his chest was answer enough. Mendoza hadn't. Couldn't.
Which meant that everything Will had believed for six bleak years wasn't true. Gillian's murderer was still out there.
And Will knew himself to be a self-righteous son of a bitch who'd hurt people he loved without even the excuse of being right.
He couldn't imagine that saying "I'm sorry" would cut it. Too little, too late.
* * *
"THIS MUST BE IT." Meg Patton stared doubtfully up at the dark bulk of the apartment building, distinguished only from the ones to each side by an artfully illuminated letter C on the facade.
"There's visitor parking." Trina pointed ahead.
The lieutenant nodded and pulled into the slot. She turned off the engine, but for a moment didn't move. Then she said wearily, "All right. Let's go talk to him."
She didn't sound at all like a mother relieved to be able to see her son after a tough day. She sounded like she might when she had to knock on a door to tell someone a loved one was dead. The chore was necessary but terrible.
Trina accompanied her to the second story, where Lieutenant Patton rang the bell at 203C.
Will opened the door almost immediately. His lean, rough-hewn face was haggard, his jaw shadowed with stubble. His brown eyes were bloodshot. He wore dress slacks and a white shirt but no tie. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned, and something red had splattered the white fabric that even Trina's uneducated eye recognized was expensive.
Alarm quickened the lieutenant's voice. The mother had reawakened. "Did you hurt yourself? Is that blood?"
"What?" He stared at her without comprehension, then glanced down at his shirtfront. "Oh. No. It's spaghetti sauce. I've been cooking."
"You'll never get it out of that fabric," his mother scolded. "Tomato sauce stains."
He shrugged, and Trina could tell he didn't care. "Come in. Are you done for the day? Can I get you a glass of wine? Or would you like coffee?"
"The first sip of wine, and I'd topple over," Meg Patton admitted. "Do you have some juice?"
His face softened. "You never did like having to live on fast food and coffee when you were hot on a case, did you?"
"No." She smiled back at him, crookedly. "Good nutrition is important."
"Trina?" He lifted his brows. "Coffee? Juice?"
"Actually…the juice sounds good to me, too. I've had an awful lot of coffee today. In fact…" She hesitated. "May I use your restroom?"
"Second door on the left."
The first door was closed. The one on the other side of the hall was open, allowing her a glimpse of a bedroom that had obviously come furnished with a "rustic" bed and dresser that had probably been made in Bangladesh, so little resemblance did they have to local furniture handmade of peeled Ponderosa pine. Only the duvet, halfheartedly straightened that morning, and the sheets partially exposed looked as if they belonged to Will. The duvet cover was indigo flannel with a bold, scroll pattern in ivory, matched by ivory sheets. A couple of framed photos sat on the dresser top. As much as she itched to take a few steps into his bedroom to see whose photos he kept close, Trina knew it would be inexcusably nosy.
The bathroom was bland but spotlessly clean. An electric razor sat on the counter, but otherwise his toiletries were behind cupboard and medicine cabinet doors. Towels were thick, expensive jacquard in forest-green and cream.
After using the toilet, Trina washed her hands and dried them on one of those luxurious towels. She heard the murmur of voices as she came soundlessly down the hall.
Will's voice, leaden. "He's smarter than all of us, isn't he?"
"No. Careful, sure, but you know we'll get him. It worries me, though, that there was only two weeks in between murders. That's quick. This guy must be very angry to feel the need to kill again so fast. Usually there's an interlude where the killer feels some satisfaction. But two weeks…He must have started looking for his next victim immediately."
"Or have already chosen her," Will said.
Meg, in an easy chair that faced the hall, saw Trina. "Hey. Come sit down."
Trina hesitated between a rocker that looked uncomfortable and the other end of the couch from where Will sat, finally choosing the couch. He picked up a glass of apple juice from the coffee table and extended it to her. Their fingers brushed as she took it. She sipped to hide her reaction.
Your idol touched you! an internal voice mocked. Do you plan to swoon?
Shut up, she told the voice, and absolutely refused to listen when it didn't.
"Detective, will you take notes?" the lieutenant asked, in a voice that had become formal. "Let's find out what Will knows about Karin and her friends before we call it a day."
Out of the corner of her eye, Trina saw him stiffen. She took a drink, then set down the glass and pulled out her spiral notebook and pen.
"I've been getting calls all day." A muscle jerked in his jaw and his tone verged on bellicose. "Everyone I know is scared. The women that they're next, the men that they're suspects."
"What are you saying?" his mother asked.
"Now I feel like a suspect."
"Don't be ridiculous." She frowned at him. "You know better than that."
"It hasn't occurred to you what a sublime coincidence it is that my girlfriend was the first to die, and that her look-alikes are being murdered only now that your prodigal son has returned to Elk Springs?"
"It's occurred to me," she said shortly.
"Do you want to know where I was last night?"
"Will, I know you didn't kill Gilly."
His face contorted briefly, then he scrubbed a hand over it. "I was home alone last night. Not what you wanted to hear, is it?"
"For God's sake!" his mother exploded. "What is this, pity Will day?"
He stared at his mother, who didn't back down. A flush darkened his cheeks. "Yeah," he said in a strange voice. "I guess it is. I've spent the whole goddamn day wondering what I did to visit something so horrible on two perfectly nice women. Maybe on three." After a brief internal battle, during which the tic reappeared along his jaw, Will cleared his throat. "Then I examined my monumental arrogance, to think that every tragedy relates somehow to me. The jury is still out on which it is: Will Patton, egoist, or Will Patton, angel of death."
With no apparent sympathy for her son, Lieutenant Patton said crisply, "Angel of death? That sounds like another dollop of arrogance. Will, whether these murders have some tie to you doesn't mean you have any responsibility for them!"
"Do you blame me for worrying that I do?"
Worry and weariness on her face, she said, "No. At least this time the body wasn't dumped in any place that has meaning to you. The fact that Amy's body was out by the Triple B was probably just chance."
Suddenly he leaned forward, voice harsh with urgency. "Wait. I heard it was a new development. God. Tell me it wasn't Crescent Ridge."
Trina and the lieutenant stared at him.
Seeing their faces, he breathed an obscenity.
Meg Patton made a ragged sound. "All right, Will. What do you have to do with Crescent Ridge?"
CHAPTER TEN
"THANKS TO Jimmy McCartin, everyone I know heard that I'm considering buying a house at Crescent Ridge. I told Jimmy I'm not, the place is too damn big, but he can't find anyplace else to sell to me, so he won't let up about that house."
"Everyone you know," his mother repeated. "Who?"
He ran his hands through his hair, creating wild disorder. "Travis, his artist friend, Bruce Restak, Jody Cox, Gavin Hu
sby, Justin Hill, um, Vince Baker and his wife. Let me think. Nita Voss. Remember her? She was there hanging on Justin. There were people at a couple of nearby tables, too." He reeled off a few more names, which Trina wrote down. "And, you know, any of them could have told anyone. Bronwen Fessler joined the group after Travis and I left."
"That was the night I saw you at J.R.'s," Trina realized.
He gave her a distracted glance. "Yeah. Remember how crowded the place was?"
"So what it amounts to," his mother said flatly, "is that pretty much anyone in Elk Springs could have heard that you were seriously considering buying a house at Crescent Ridge."
"That's about it."
"Was it that house?" Trina asked.
The other two looked at her.
"I don't know," Will said. "Which one was it?"
"The first one on the left. A big log house."
He shook his head. "I didn't even look at that one. It was even bigger—damn near five thousand square feet, I think. No, the one Jimmy showed me was at the top of the ridge."
"In other words," the lieutenant said, "our killer knew you were thinking of buying there, but not which house."
His forehead furrowed. "Jimmy didn't say, that night at J.R.'s. We didn't get into details. He just said something like, 'Have you thought any more about that house at Crescent Ridge?' No. Wait." He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. "I think he said something like, 'Have you thought any more about the house?' and someone said, 'What house?' or something like that."
"Who?"
He looked haggard. "I have no idea."
"This can't be chance," the lieutenant said.
He sat up straight and shoved the fingers of both hands into his hair, yanking at it. "I should leave town. This morning, I almost packed up and started driving. If this has something to do with me, it'll stop."
"It might not," Trina said. "He has your attention now. He's going to know you'll hear about every development, whether you're in town or not. How many women here in Elk Springs have you dated? He can keep killing and know that he's getting to you, whether you're here or not."
He muttered a profanity.
"He could follow you, too," his mother said. "Unless you want to change your name and disappear, he could let you get settled somewhere else, maybe start seeing a co-worker, and then kill her."
As if he could no longer contain his anguish, he shot to his feet and prowled the living room, movements jerky and shoulders rigid. "Then what in the hell am I supposed to do?"
"Help us catch him," the lieutenant said. "Think, Will. Who could hate you this much?"
He made an inarticulate sound and slammed one hand against the wall, fingers splayed. Both women jumped. "I don't know! Goddamn it, I don't know!"
His mother went to him, wrapping her arms around him. He stood stiffly within her embrace, and after a moment her arms fell away.
Voice soft, she said, "Will, you may not have done anything. This guy's sick. We all know that. But I also believe that, if you think long and hard enough, something he's done will mean something to you. The rape and the way he displays the bodies have to do with how he feels about women. That's unrelated to you. But why the jockstrap? Why is he choosing women that, in his view, you had? Did those three women in particular reject him? Or did you always get the girls and he didn't?"
Will stood silent for a long moment, his eyes closed. Finally, he scrubbed a hand over his face. Sounding lifeless, he said, "Okay." He walked like an automaton to the couch, sat down, braced his elbows on his knees and looked down at his hands. "You already had questions. Ask me what you have to."
It was a moment before his mother followed, looking ten years older than she had an hour ago.
Trina took notes as he answered her questions.
No, he hadn't seen Karin Kristensen since Saturday night, when she had joined his group at J.R.'s Sports Bar. He wasn't aware that she was dating anyone.
"She was with Gavin when I got there." He briefly lifted his head. "But he says they just happened to be the first two to arrive. He was thinking of asking her out. That's all. He's pretty upset."
"We spoke to him already. Somebody else mentioned that he was with her Saturday night."
Will nodded.
"Amy was apparently, ah, fairly relaxed about sex. Everybody agreed that she often went home with a man on a first date. Would Karin have done the same?"
"Is that a subtle way of asking whether I slept with her? The answer is no. I didn't ask. She didn't offer. So I can't tell you."
He didn't know anything they hadn't already heard from friends who had been closer to Karin Kristensen.
Once he looked up, his eyes red. "Vince Baker told me today that Karin was crocheting a blanket for the baby he and his wife are having. I had no idea she was the type to do something like that."
"Jody Cox says that Karin was a homebody. That all she was really looking for was a husband. She liked to ski and enjoyed living here, but always made clear that she was just having a little fun before she settled down." Lieutenant Patton looked down at her own notebook. "She wanted, I quote, kids more than anything."
"God," he said in a strangled voice.
"So, whether intentionally or inadvertently, our UNSUB has now chosen two women who were PTA moms-to-be. Ironic, if he thinks he's punishing loose women."
"Do you have any reason to think that's why he chose them?"
The lieutenant sighed and shut her notebook. "I have no reason to think anything except that he hates women."
"You saw the TV coverage?"
"I heard." Her eyes glittered. "Somebody's head will roll."
"Was she left in the house?"
Lieutenant Patton told him about the fire, the body laid out in the snow in the driveway, and their probably futile attempts to take casts of the footprints. "If the snow had just been wet!"
"Tell that to the skiers."
"Wouldn't you think people would be scared off by the news that a serial murderer is killing young women in Elk Springs? Scott says daily ticket sales are at an all time high." She shook her head. "Go figure."
When it was obvious she was done, he stirred. "I'll bet neither of you have had anything to eat all day, have you? I can have spaghetti on the table in about ten minutes."
Trina's mouth had been watering since they'd walked in the door. She'd assumed that he had already eaten before they came. But if there were leftovers, she could go for them.
The lieutenant's smile glowed. "That's nice of you, Will, but I talked to Scott a little while ago and he's expecting me. He's been cooking, too. But, Trina, you should take him up on it. My son would be a master chef if he hadn't gone to law school."
They were both looking at her. Panic set in. The invitation had included her only because his mother had brought her. Having to make conversation with her over dinner couldn't be what he'd had in mind, especially not in the state he was in. "Oh, I, um, I planned to get something at home."
He lifted a brow. "You mean, you were going to throw something in the microwave?"
"Well…"
His mother rose. "Will, can you run her home? We came together."
He stood, too. "Sure."
She nodded at Trina. "I'll see you in the morning. One of us will have to stand in at the autopsy."
Trina had been dreading her first autopsy, but she might as well get it over with. "I can do that."
The lieutenant smiled. "Bless you. I hate them."
Will shook his head. "What do you expect to learn?"
"Absolutely nothing," Lieutenant Patton admitted. "The tricky thing is time of death. She may have been alive until shortly before she was deposited there. Otherwise her body should have been too stiff to lay out. That's the one thing that's different this time around—he signaled us to come running. That took some planning on his part. It looks like he snatched her last night—we found her car in front of the Timberline. So why didn't he dump her until five o'clock this morning? Did he hold her
captive to whet his anticipation? Or did he have to be somewhere else, so he saved her until he was free?"
The idea was creepy—too much like tucking away a goodie from the bakery for a later moment.
"Once Sanchez examines her body closely, we'll have a better idea. If we're really, really lucky, he'll find something to indicate where she was held."
A tiny nub from a carpet caught in her hair would give them something to go on. Right now they had zilch.
Lieutenant Patton said, "Enjoy dinner," and left.
The moment the door closed, Trina said to his back, "I'm sorry. I'm sure this wasn't what you had in mind. It was nice of you to offer, but…"
Turning, he rolled up a cuff. "I'm glad to have your company. Cooking gave me something to do. I wanted to…" He stopped abruptly, furrows forming on his brow. "Oh, hell. Do something for Mom, I guess. But, really, I'm glad you stayed. I've spent the day going crazy, wondering what you'd found, fielding calls from all my friends who assumed I'd know more than they did. Now, after finding out where Karin's body was found…" His shoulders hunched, and he fell silent for a moment. With a visible effort he relaxed and nodded toward the kitchen. "Come and talk to me while I start water to boil."
Following him, she asked, "Haven't you eaten?"
"No." In the small kitchen, he took a large stock pot from a cupboard and turned on the tap. "I wasn't hungry. Cooking relaxes me. And what the hell. I figured I'd have dinners for the next week."
"It smells fantastic."
"Thanks." He ran water into the pot and set it on the stove. "Can I pour you a glass of wine now?"
Was she still on duty? Even sort-of on duty? Trina gave an internal shrug. Maybe a few sips would help her be less nervous.
"Thanks." She sought desperately for a topic of conversation that would be neutral and have nothing to do with the murders. "So," she finally came up with, "do you still play basketball?"
His glance told her he knew what she was trying to do, but he went along with it. "Pickup games." Shrugging, he poured ruby-red wine into two glasses and handed one to her. "I hear there's a league made up of cops and judges and attorneys. Maybe I'll join that."
Dead Wrong Page 14
