by Mary Burton
He hesitated and she couldn’t tell if he was trying to read her or gauge his own words. ‘Did Phil White ever mention that you look like his wife?’
That took her aback. ‘I do not look like Jackie White.’
‘He did, didn’t he?’ He boldly studied her high cheekbones and her vivid green eyes. ‘She wasn’t as pretty as you are, but the similarities are there. I saw it even when she was lying by the river, pale and lifeless. You had to have noticed.’
Kendall drew in a deep breath. ‘Is that supposed to spook me?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The second victim looks like you as well.’
Her stomach dropped. ‘Brown hair and green eyes are common traits. Whatever similarities you see are strictly coincidence. Now if you don’t have anything else to add, it’s late and I want to work.’
He pulled two Polaroid pictures out of his coat pocket and laid them on her desk. They were of the two murdered women. Unexpected sadness washed over her as she stared at the lifeless faces.
She swallowed. ‘The women look similar, but nothing like me.’
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
He tapped the desk with his index finger. ‘Have you had any odd e-mails lately? Obsessed fans? Irate ex-boyfriends?’
There had been the tipster who’d sent her the text message. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. Some send me notes frequently but none have been menacing.’ She tried to look nonplussed. ‘I think you’re grasping at straws.’
He stared at her as if trying to read her thoughts.
Those thoughts flashed to the dreams she’d had. The unknown woman’s screams echoed in her head. She pushed aside the memory and focused on logic. ‘I’ve had no threats. No creepy guys. No odd phone calls. It’s been business as usual. You’d think if someone was living out some strange fantasy I’d have some sign.’
‘Not necessarily.’ He was a dog with a bone. ‘What about ex-boyfriends?’
‘My ex-boyfriend would like to patch things up.’ She folded her arms over her chest, not sure why she mentioned it. ‘I’ve been very clear we are not getting back together.’
Warwick raised a brow. ‘Did he say anything to make you concerned?’
‘No. I mean he was a little frustrated with me but Brett’s always frustrated with me.’
‘Brett Newington?’
Loyalty made her hesitate, but then she answered, ‘Yes.’
‘Why would he be frustrated with you?’
‘I’m too independent, I suppose. He likes his women a bit more biddable.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve known Brett for years. He’s stable.’
‘Right.’
‘Hey, this is the kind of thing that could really hurt his career.’
‘I can be subtle when I ask questions.’
She arched a brow. ‘You’re about as subtle as I am biddable.’
A smile tugged the edge of his lips and for a moment it transformed his face. He didn’t look so fierce. He looked attractive even.
She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. ‘You went out on a limb to tell me this.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
His face tightened. ‘I owe you.’
That surprised her. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’
‘That’s not how I see it.’ He shrugged. ‘Just keep your eyes and ears open, Kendall. Do you have an alarm system in your house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Use it.’
‘All right.’ She held out her hand to him, trying to prove to them both that there was no snap of energy between them. ‘Thanks.’
Strong powerful fingers wrapped around hers, and for a moment she felt a jolt zigzag through her body.
‘You’ll keep me posted,’ she said.
‘When it’s necessary.’ He released her hand, picked up the Polaroids and tucked them in his pocket, and left her office.
Kendall stood stunned and not quite sure what had just happened. If he’d come to her about anyone else, she’d have a dozen ways to crack the story without breaking her word to him. But the angle he’d brought her put her dead center in the middle of the story. She’d been there once. And knew that was a place she never wanted to be again.
Brett Newington sat in a chair and stared at the woman standing before him. She had a long, lean body and the dark wig he’d supplied draped her slender shoulders. The woman wore black heels, a pencil-thin skirt, and a silk blouse, all of which he’d supplied as well. In the dim light he could almost pretend it was Kendall standing before him.
‘Unbutton your blouse,’ he said.
She’d been instructed not to speak except when she was spoken to. And then she only said, ‘Yes, sir.’
Her hands trembled as she unbuttoned the blouse. He smiled. She was afraid of what was to come. The others had told her. Good.
She let the blouse fall to her shoulders and then slide to the floor. Full breasts rose up over the black lacy bra.
‘Now the skirt.’
She wriggled out of the skirt and kicked it toward the blouse puddled beside her.
The woman was curvier than he liked, her belly not as flat as it should be. But she would do.
Brett rose, walked toward her, and stopped when he was only inches away. She stared up at him. Under the heavy makeup he could see the pockmarks on her skin. He could see that she wasn’t Kendall. That she was a cheap imitation.
Rage rolled inside him. He raised his hand and slapped her hard on the face. The impact sent her to her knees.
She touched the back of her hand to her lips, now crimson with blood. But she didn’t scream or fight back. She’d been paid well for the violence as much as the sex.
‘Stand up,’ he ordered.
She rose up and faced him. Fear darkened her eyes. The money was good, but he suspected she was wondering now if it was worth the pain.
He grabbed her arm and yanked it back hard. ‘You’re going to earn every dime.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Brett smiled, pleased by her obedience. He slapped her a second time and then pushed her down on the bed.
Dana sat in her car and watched as Nicole drove off. In the dimming light, Dana smiled. She flipped open her cell phone and dialed a familiar number. ‘I need to buy a gun.’
Chapter Eleven
Sunday, January 13, 8:00 P.M.
Jacob leaned against a wall on the first floor of the medical examiner’s building while Zack finished his call to his wife. Zack and Lindsay had barely seen each other in the last week, thanks to the murders. But Zack made sure he called whenever he could. Jacob admired the couple. They’d pulled a failing marriage out of divorce court and found their way back to each other.
Zack frowned as he snapped the phone closed and tucked it in his belt holster. ‘She sounded tired.’
Jacob pushed away from the wall. ‘She all right?’
He frowned. ‘Yeah, it’s just that she’s trying really hard to get her new women’s center together. It opens soon.’
‘Lindsay thrives on work. She’ll be fine.’
Zack shoved out a breath. ‘She’s pregnant.’
Jacob straightened. ‘No shit.’
Zack grinned. ‘Yeah. She’s only about six weeks along. She doesn’t want me telling anyone for another month, so keep it under your hat.’
Jacob clapped him on the back. ‘Good job, old man.’
Zack looked pleased with himself. ‘We hadn’t expected to do this so soon, but it’s pretty damn cool.’
They started down the hallway. ‘That explains why you’ve been calling her every five minutes.’
‘She’d overdo it if I didn’t remind her to slow down.’
Jacob shook his head. ‘She’s smart. And she’ll do whatever it takes to protect the kid.’
‘Yeah.’
A wave of emotion burned through Jacob. He couldn’t decide if it was jealousy or relief. He didn’t have a family and told himself that he liked it that way.
His ex-girlfriend could testify to that. But there were moments when he did wonder what it felt like to really love someone and have them love you back.
He doubted he’d ever know. Love required trust and he had none of that to give. For the first time, he was sorry.
They strode down the hallway to the medical examiner’s office and found Dr Butler behind his desk. The space was small, crammed full of books and a half dozen diplomas on the walls. Papers piled high in an in-box.
The doctor sat facing a laptop computer on the side of his desk. He was typing furiously and didn’t notice Jacob and Zack in the doorway. Jacob knocked.
Dr Butler started and his gaze swung around to the two cops. ‘Crap, I wish you wouldn’t do that.’
‘Do what?’ Jacob couldn’t help but smile.
‘Move like a damn cat. Both of you never make any noise. Do me a favor and make some noise once in a while.’
Jacob smiled. ‘What do you want me to do, tie bells to my ass?’
Dr Butler’s face was deadpan. ‘That’ll work fine.’
Jacob found himself wondering if the guy was serious or not. Shaking his head, he followed Zack into the office. He sat in one of the two government-issue chairs in front of the desk. With all three of them in the office the place felt very small.
‘So I hear you did our Jane Doe’s autopsy,’ Zack said as he propped an ankle on the opposite knee.
‘She’s not a Jane Doe anymore.’ Dr Butler’s eyes glistened with pride.
‘That was fast,’ Jacob said.
The second body had ramped up the pressure on all of them. ‘I rolled her prints an hour ago and Tess came up with a match. Your victim’s name is Vicky Draper. Her ID came up so quickly because she has a record. She did five years for drug trafficking. She was released two years ago.’
Zack tapped his finger on the arm of his chair. ‘What else can you tell me about her?’
Dr Butler read his notes. ‘She was strangled from behind. And she also had a pronounced bruise on her right jaw. Someone hit her hard before she died.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And she had a nasty scar on her right hand. It’s got to be years old. Reminds me of a defensive wound.’
Jacob grabbed a rubber band off of Dr Butler’s desk. He strung it around his index fingers and started to roll it in circles. ‘Someone tried to stab her?’
Dr Butler shrugged. ‘It was my first thought when I saw the cuts. She also had nicks on the inside of her arm. Also old.’
Jacob shoved out a breath. ‘What about needle marks on her arms?’
‘Scars of old ones. But they’re a couple of years old. Nothing fresh. But there’s no doubt she was a heavy user at one time. Her teeth are a mess. I’ll need a few days before I’ll have results of a tox screen to tell me what was in her system when she died.’
Zack leaned forward, his gaze full of interest. ‘Vicky and Jackie look alike. Jackie could have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. The killer could have been after Vicky. Maybe she’d gotten back into drugs and had pissed someone off.’
Jacob shook his head. ‘Vicky was wearing a charm.’
Dr Butler nodded. ‘Judith.’
‘If not for the charms, I’d agree with you, Zack. But the charms change everything,’ Jacob said.
Zack nodded slowly.
Dr Butler leaned forward. ‘A serial killer.’
‘I sure as hell hope not,’ Jacob said. But he already knew he’d return to the office and file a report with ViCap and make sure Tess had entered her DNA evidence into CODIS. ViCap was the FBI’s primary database of violent offender profiles. CODIS was a national DNA database of offenders. Jacob wanted to know if this killer had struck elsewhere.
‘Any other similarities between the victims?’ Zack asked.
‘I’ve run a battery of tests. But it’s going to take time before I get any results back.’
Jacob could feel a headache forming behind his temple. ‘The press is going to eat this one up.’ He’d told Kendall about the murder, and now he wondered if she’d be good to her word.
‘Like a pack of wild dogs,’ Zack said.
The rubber band snapped in Jacob’s hand. Would Kendall Shaw be leading the pack?
*
The screams had stopped. Only the child’s quick, panicked breaths broke the silence. Even the baby that lay beside her was quiet, as if it too sensed a momentary reprieve. She huddled in the back of the closet her face pressed in the corner. Coats hanging above brushed the top of her head. She didn’t trust that it was safe. Her heart pounded in her chest.
And then footsteps.
Slow, unhurried footsteps creaked outside the closet. ‘Come out, come out wherever you are.’
The familiar voice was soft, kind even.
The little girl wanted to trust the honey-coated words. She wanted to be held in a safe, protective embrace, but she didn’t move. Behind the sweetness she sensed evil lurked.
The baby started to flail and kick its legs. Kendall laid her hand clumsily on the baby’s chest, hoping to calm it. The infant’s rapid butterfly pulse thrummed under her fingers. But her touch only agitated the baby more. The baby started to kick, to whimper, and then to cry.
Outside someone moved closer to the closet door. Fear burned in Kendall’s chest as fresh tears filled her eyes. She pressed her back against the hard wall behind her and held the baby’s arm. The baby started to wail. The closet door snapped open.
A man stood in the doorway. The light behind him obscured his face but caught the steel edge of the knife in his hand. Blood dripped from its tip.
‘No!’
Kendall sat upright in bed. Sweat soaked her nightgown and tears streaked her face.
She raked a shaking hand through her hair and shoved out a deep breath.
She glanced at the clock and groaned. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock. Soon she’d be a walking zombie.
She got out of bed and grabbed the robe she kept on the bedpost, then shrugged the robe on.
Moving to her dresser mirror, she stared at her tired expression as she rubbed her aching shoulder. All the dreams had one thing in common: in each, she was a little girl – afraid, alone.
She had no memory of the house or the infant. The closet or the man with the knife. Yet the dream kept coming to her. Night after night.
‘Damn.’ She prided herself on control and this dream was stealing it from her.
She drummed her fingers on the dresser and continued to stare at her face. What had happened to her before she was adopted? She thought about the pictures displayed in her parents’ home. From the age of three onward the Shaws had proudly documented every moment of her life. Birthdays. Halloween costumes. Awards. Graduations. They’d savored every moment and cherished her.
But before the adoption her life was a glaring blank slate. No pictures, birth records, birth parents’ names. She had nothing.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered as she stared at her image.
When her mother had died, Kendall had been too upset to go through her papers. She’d simply boxed them up and put them away. And when she’d moved into this house, she’d had the movers stow the untouched boxes in the attic room. They’d sat there for the last five months. Forgotten. Ignored.
Kendall moved to the closet in her room that accessed the attic. She opened the door and shivered as a cold blast rushed down from the eaves above and cut through her robe. Shaking off a quiver, she clicked on the light and climbed the unfinished stairs to the landing. The single lightbulb cast shadows in the darkened corners.
There wasn’t much in the attic. The few decorations she bought for Christmas, files from old stories she’d done and her mother’s papers. There were six of those boxes and they stood grouped in the far corner.
Kendall crossed the plywood floor to them. She uncapped the first box and started to thumb through the records. This box contained Irene and Henry Shaw’s tax records for the last three decades. She picked up one of the files and opened it. Her dad’s
handwriting was neat and precise and he’d pressed down on the paper so hard with the black ballpoint pen that the letters still indented the page. She smiled and traced her fingers over the page. Her throat tightened. Ten years since his death and she still missed him.
Kendall shoved out a breath, replaced the file, and covered the box. The cold made her hands tremble and the bottom of her bare feet prick. In another box she found a dusty album filled with black-and-white pictures that documented Irene’s life from early childhood up until her marriage to Henry.
They’d been married in the midseventies and Irene wore her blond hair loose, no veil, and a slim white dress that had chiffon sleeves with thick cuffs. Henry wore a blue tux, thick sideburns, and a large bow tie. Kendall smiled as she studied her father’s full crop of hair. For as long as she could remember, his hair had been thinning.
Kendall closed the album and gently laid it back in the box. She set the box aside and dug through the others. More financial papers. And then finally, in the last box, tucked in a brown accordion file full of tax records she found a slim file that had Kendall written in her mother’s neat cursive.
Kendall had never seen the file before. And she found her hands shook anew, not from cold but fear. She smoothed her hand over the dusty manila folder.
A chill snaked down her spine.
She tucked the file under her arm and headed back down the stairs, then shut off the light and closed the attic door before climbing back into her bed.
The sheets had grown cold and it took a moment for the chill to leave her body. She rubbed her hands together and opened the file to find a picture and a single sheet of paper.
The picture stapled to the left side of the manila folder was of Kendall. Unlike the hundreds her mom and dad had taken of her, this one wasn’t in color but black and white. Kendall’s hair was cut short and her face was pale. She frowned as she stared off into the distance as if she were searching for something.
Kendall traced the outline of her young face. ‘You look so unhappy.’
What had happened to her before the picture had been taken? Had her birth mother just left her? Was she mourning the loss?
Her heart heavy, Kendall flipped the picture over, but the reverse side was blank. She shifted her attention to the single sheet of paper in the file. It was a letter from an adoption agency informing the Shaws that the closed adoption of Kendall Elizabeth Shaw had been finalized. All birth records had been sealed by the courts.
