JB strode out the door with a Cheshire cat grin, holding up a small zip drive. “I downloaded the footage. Took a little peek at the playback on the video camera.”
“And?”
“That Heather Hoffman deserves a swift kick in the ass. But let me tell you, somebody oughta give her an Emmy or a badge. She did one hell of an interrogation. And bad news for us, the techs said that the video camera was Wi-Fi enabled. I guarantee you the whole viewing public is going to see that interview tomorrow morning.”
Will cut his eyes at Olivia. Already, she had that look—eager and determined—and it put him on edge. The disturbing dream he’d had of his own dark basement, of what he’d found there, who he’d found, crept back into his mind, slippery as a snake. “C’mon, I’ll drop you off at home on the way to the station.”
JB cleared his throat with ceremony, no doubt paving the way for a smartass remark. “Did you forget she works with us now, partner? I’d say, the more eyes on this, the better.”
“Doctor Rockwell has had quite a night. I thought she might be tired.”
“Doctor Rockwell can speak for herself.” Olivia stood up and headed straight for JB’s Camaro. “I’ll ride with Detective Benson,” she said, without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
“Good decision. Detective Decker’s a horrible driver anyway. He couldn’t beat Grammy Benson in a street race. And she’s been dead ten years now.”
Will felt relieved to see Olivia laughing, but infuriated all the same.
One case. One lousy case. And she fancied herself a real-life Columbo.
Relegated to coffee duty, Will secured three lackluster cups of brew from the break room, filling the Styrofoam half full with cream and sugar to drown the muddy taste. When he returned, he pretended it didn’t bother him that Olivia hadn’t touched the sweatshirt he’d brought for her—an old relic from his days in the police academy—leaving it slung across the arm of his chair. In running shorts and a tank top, she had to be cold. Cold, and stubborn.
Fine. Let her suffer then.
Will tossed the sweatshirt onto his desk, making a show of it. He rolled his chair to JB’s cubicle, positioning himself next to Olivia, the video queued up and ready to play.
“Jeez. This coffee tastes worse than Bev’s meatloaf.” JB stuck out his tongue in disgust. “That’s my third ex-wife,” he explained to Olivia, her own cup untouched. “Her cooking was so bad I actually thought she was trying to poison me.”
“How do you know she wasn’t?” Will teased.
JB took a second glance at his coffee cup.
“Don’t worry. I ran out of arsenic.”
Olivia laughed at them, then shut them both up. “You two bicker like an old married couple.”
JB scrolled through the first ten minutes of video, where Heather roamed the cabin solo with her camera, documenting every inch of the crime scene, including the basement with its creepy bracket and dirt floor.
“You’ve got to hand it to her,” he said, pausing the tape. “She’s got cojones.”
“And a bullet in her back.” Will couldn’t believe she’d had the audacity to show up back at the crime scene after she’d been warned. JB had been right. Anything for ratings.
The video picked up in the bedroom, with Heather in full makeup and seated across from Drea.
“Drea Marsh was just sixteen years old the last time she saw her best friend. For thirty-five years, she’s blamed herself, wondering if a fateful encounter led to Shelby’s death.” Heather offered an empathic smile, careful not to overdo it. “Welcome, Drea. Thank you for joining me for this exclusive interview.”
Drea’s eyes, rimmed with mascara as black as her tattoo ink, flitted to the camera and back again, more suspicious than excited. With a boyfriend like Simpkins, life was a battlefield. Sleeping with the enemy, landmines at every turn. No wonder she didn’t trust the cops. No wonder she looked older than her fifty-one years.
“Tell us about your friend.”
“Shelby was a real sweet girl. A little naive though, especially when it came to guys. She always liked the bad boys. Probably, it had to do with her daddy. He took off right after she was born. I tried to tell her to be careful, but…”
JB harrumphed. “Sounds like the pot and the kettle.”
On the screen, Heather nodded sagely. “How did you find out Shelby was pregnant?”
“She came over to my house one evening, scared out of her mind because she’d missed her period. We walked to the pharmacy and bought one of those tests. She took it right there in the store bathroom. Two pink lines.”
“Did Shelby know who had fathered the baby?”
“Oh yeah, her boyfriend. I figured he wouldn’t be too happy about it, since they’d been on the rocks for a while. But she insisted on telling him.”
“How did he react?”
“I wasn’t there. But right after, Shelby asked me to drive her to the women’s clinic in the Mission District. She was upset.”
“The clinic?” Heather’s voice went up an octave. All show, in Will’s opinion. “And what happened there?”
“She wanted to get an abortion. But when I came back to pick her up, she hadn’t gone through with it. She said she couldn’t do it. I took her home, and I never saw her again.”
Heather looked at the camera knowingly. “Did anything out of the ordinary happen at the clinic?”
Drea nodded, taking a visible breath, and waited for a while. He wondered if she’d been coached to be this coy. “Shelby talked to a man.”
“Did you recognize him?”
The answer came in a hail of bullets as, off camera, gunshots pierced the glass, rapid-fire. In Heather’s scream, as she clutched her arm, the blood already seeping through her fingers. In Drea’s sudden slump to the floor.
Will counted seven shots in total, consistent with the number of shell casings found in the grass outside the bedroom window. Which told him just how lucky Heather had been. The eighth and final shot had entered her back after she’d fled the cabin. The shooter, firing to empty. With one more bullet, the night would have certainly ended with two dead women.
They watched as Heather lifted her head from the floor and examined her wound. Then, she turned her eyes to the window. Cursing, she stumbled to her feet, darted out the bedroom door undaunted, leaving a trail of blood droplets behind her.
JB shook his head, as he paused the tape. “Thoughts?”
Will opened his mouth to speak.
“Not you, numbskull. I want to hear the doc’s take on the shooter.”
“Alright, Doctor, let’s hear it. Enlighten us.” Will kicked back in his chair, while Olivia gave him a sheepish look. Still, when she began, her voice sounded clear and certain.
“Well, your shooter wasn’t very skilled with a firearm.”
“Obviously.” Will stretched out the word, steeping it in sarcasm. “Two for seven. A total amateur. Must’ve gotten lucky with Heather.”
“Maybe. Or the shooter timed the attack. Hiding behind a tree until Heather passed by him. Then, firing a shot at her back at close range.”
He sat up and leaned toward Olivia, while JB looked on with amusement. Her explanation of the bullet to Heather’s back made sense, but he hated when she out-detectived him. “I thought you said our perp wasn’t skilled. Now he’s lying in wait. Are you contradicting yourself, Doctor?”
“No.” A flash of fire in those green eyes told him he’d hit his mark. She spun her chair toward him, facing off. Their knees, touching now. “Skilled isn’t the same as clever. This was a planned assault with Drea as the intended target.”
“The first six shots were fired to the left of the camera where Drea was sitting, so clearly, that makes her the intended target.”
“Unlike taking an andiron to someone’s head, which speaks to a possible personal connection to the victim and a high degree of rage, the use of a firearm suggests psychological distance. In other words—”
Will rolled his eye
s, cutting her off. “I know what psychological distance means.”
“Possibly the attacker had been following Drea for a while, and might have even been the one who eluded JB at her house. Heather Hoffman doesn’t seem like the type to run from police. She’s never had a problem blatantly disobeying authority.”
“‘Eluded’ is a strong word. She opened a gate.”
Finally, JB piped up. “Hey, I told you. I don’t do fences.” Olivia paid him no mind, laser-focused on proving her point. Will found her determination maddening. And sexy as hell.
“Assuming it’s the same person, the killer escaped both scenes without notice. Which means he’s organized and deliberate and smart.”
Will shrugged, letting her think she’d won.
“So you don’t disagree with my profile?”
“I don’t disagree.” He matched her victory smirk with one of his own. “But I fail to see how you’ve told me anything I didn’t already know. Hell, I’m pretty sure Graham could’ve come up with that profile.”
JB raised his hand like a schoolboy. “Am I allowed to speak here? Because you two need a referee. I call a foul on City Boy. That’s hitting below the—”
The desk phone’s ringing interrupted him. While JB spoke into the receiver, Olivia addressed Will.
“If you’re so smart, then why’d you show me the case file in the first place?”
He’d never realized he could be told off in a whisper. And why did he feel the urgent need to grab her and kiss her mouth regardless of what came out of it?
With no reasonable answer to her question or his own, Will waited for JB to rescue him. “Steve’s about to go through the duffel bag. I told him to wait for us. Unless you two need a little time to make up.”
Olivia sat still as a stone while Will snagged his keys and pretended to straighten papers that had been there for weeks. Both of them silent, until Will caved first.
“A badge is required to get into the crime lab, so… I’ll get patrol to give you a ride home. If that’s okay. I’d take you myself, but—”
“It’s fine.” She stood up, hand on hip, cocking her head at him. “I’m fine.”
“Fine.” Will reached for the sweatshirt he’d tossed on the desk. Fog Harbor nights could get chilly in the spring, and he’d only had time to tug on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Besides, Olivia clearly didn’t want it.
Just as his fingers grazed the arm of the sweatshirt, Olivia snatched it from him.
She grinned unabashedly. “Give it to me. I’m freezing.”
Fifty-Three
Olivia collapsed onto her sofa, exhausted. Too tired to strip off Deck’s gray sweatshirt, she tucked her arms deeper inside the oversized sleeves. The material was soft and stretched out and frayed a little around the cuffs. And it smelled like him. But she didn’t have the strength to resist. In fact, she might never give that damn sweatshirt back. Not after witnessing the aftermath of a murder. After going toe to toe with its annoyingly hunky owner.
She stared up at the ceiling, thinking of Drea’s face—full of life this morning, drained of it by nightfall—until the tug of sleep dragged her under.
The beep of her phone startled her awake, and she sat upright. Her eyes scanned the room for threats. Found none. But her heart kept pounding against her rib cage. Her amygdala still working overtime.
A text from Emily waited on her screen.
U ok? Just watched the news. Heather Hoffman shot?
I’m ok. It happened at the cabin next to Deck’s. The one where they found that girl in the barrel.
Olivia didn’t say that she’d been there. That she still felt spooked. No need to worry Em unnecessarily.
That’s wild. The cases must be connected, right? Do they know who did it?
They’re working on it. How was the drive back to SF? You promised to call from the road, btw.
Uneventful. And I didn’t want to be a distracted driver, BTW.
Em always knew how to win an argument with those one-liners and sarcastic capital letters that came standard in the little sister start-up kit.
Fair enough. Talk tomorrow though?
Yes, ma’am. I’ll call you after class. *salutes*
Olivia smiled and tossed her phone back on the coffee table next to the Mayfield case file Deck had copied for her. She’d been too tired to give it the second look she’d intended, but Em’s questions had prodded her back into action. She wanted to put Deck in his place. To show him solving the Seaside Strangler case hadn’t been a lucky break.
She lugged the folder to the kitchen and spread it open on the table, studying the chilling photo she’d clipped to the front, and trying to decipher its secrets.
An impulse struck her then, and she dug through the junk drawer until she’d found her mother’s magnifying glass. She placed it above the blurry last photo on Shelby’s film, moving it methodically across the image until the sleeve of the jacket grew large beneath its eye.
She still couldn’t make out the patch on the shoulder but she couldn’t deny its distinctive colors—yellow, red, and black—and its strange shape. She felt certain that patch was the key to unmasking the subject of Shelby’s final image.
Newly energized, Olivia scanned the photo into her laptop, then scrolled through the contacts in her cell until she found a name she’d banished to a lock box in her brain, filed under verboten.
She composed an email, attached the snapshot, and hit send. Imagined her request hurtling through cyberspace, looping through miles of cable fiber until it pinged the inbox of Supervisory Special Agent Jason Nash at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Fifty-Four
Steve ushered Will inside the evidence room of the Del Norte County crime lab, the opened duffel bag already sitting on a metal work table. JB stood nearby, drumming his gloved fingers impatiently.
“’Bout damn time, City Boy. I told you to make it fast. You know, the opposite of the way you drive.”
Will had drawn the short straw. So, on the way over, he’d telephoned Drea Marsh’s family in San Francisco, delivering the kind of news that brings parents to their knees. The worst part, Drea’s mother hadn’t cried. Not at first. She’d told Will she’d expected it for years now and asked if they’d thrown that bastard Simpkins back in jail yet. When he’d told her Simpkins had never gotten out, that Drea had been killed by an unknown assailant, only then had she choked out a sob and dropped the phone, leaving Will to eavesdrop on her despair.
“Show a little compassion.” Will donned his own latex gloves as he approached. “You sound like you’ve got ice in your veins.”
“Ice in the veins, fire in the loins.”
“I doubt anyone says that.”
“Tammy does.”
Steve raised his eyebrows but kept his mouth shut. He reached into the bag and produced the first item, Shelby’s Mary Jane doll. When he laid it on the table, even JB fell quiet as it reminded them all that Shelby was still a girl herself, pregnant or not. Next, came the clothing. A couple of T-shirts, most with hard rock band logos printed across the chest, and a few pairs of denim shorts. A makeup kit and a hairbrush still tangled with Shelby’s blonde locks. Beneath it all, a paperback book Will remembered reading in high school. Artifacts of a life cut short, each item called to mind his promise to Trish. To find out what happened to her daughter.
“That’s it?” JB sighed, flashing Steve a sour look. “Where’s the smoking gun you promised?”
Steve grinned. “It’s not a smoking gun exactly, but I did find something of interest in the outer pocket. It fell out in transport.”
He revealed a slip of paper he’d packaged in a plastic bag and placed it on the metal table for inspection. At its center, it was marked GREYHOUND and dated March 3, 1986. Place of Issue: Fog Harbor. Destination: San Francisco.
“Can we get prints?” Will examined the ticket, contemplating what it meant.
“Already on it,” Steve said.
“It looks like it hasn’t bee
n stamped or marked. I don’t think she got the chance to use it.”
JB puzzled for a moment. “Are you saying our runaway was running back home?”
Will thought of the bag, stuffed in the heating vent. Hidden, not by the killer, but possibly by Shelby herself. “Or running for her life.”
When Will arrived back at the station, his heart sank. Chief Flack’s black sedan sat alone in the parking lot, its face scowling. Its headlamps seemed to look down on him with the same kind of judgment and expectation he’d seen from the chief herself.
JB cursed under his breath while they trudged up the sidewalk. “It’s nearly midnight. This can’t be good.”
Will tried to organize his thoughts, to grab them as they flitted past, but they disappeared like smoke in his hands. Fitting, since he was running on fumes and stale coffee. “What do we tell her?”
“Hell if I know. You’re the lead detective.”
The chief’s door stood open. Positioned behind her desk, she glared at the computer screen. Will recognized the news footage. An image of the cabin, cordoned off with crime scene tape. Beneath it, the headline: Double shooting at cabin, one dead. Reporter in serious condition.
“Don’t engage,” JB muttered, darting out of her eyeline.
Will paused, sighed. “Hey, Chief.”
“‘Hey, Chief’?”
From the relative safety of his cubicle, JB shook his head and mouthed, I told you so.
“‘Hey, Chief’? Are you punking me, Decker?” Chief Flack rose from her chair and stalked toward him. “Because this is not a ‘hey, Chief’ kind of night.”
“Agreed. Bad choice of words.”
“I thought I made myself clear. Nobody gets in that cabin but law enforcement. Now, we’ve got two victims that had no business being there. And a sensationalist reporter, no less. It’s an embarrassment to the department.”
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