Aim to Kill (7 page)

“And your witness arrived about 9:30?” Olivia prompted.

Zack nodded. “Sunset was officially 6:57, but it probably wasn’t full dark until after 7:30. I’m figuring he waited until dark to dump the body as an added precaution.”

“You’re looking at a two-hour window?”

“I’m thinking the killer didn’t expect someone to discover the body until at least Saturday morning, and possibly not until Monday. None of the businesses open over the weekend.”

“I saw something about a tattoo.” Olivia’s heart quickened. This was what she really wanted to hear, but she didn’t want to seem overeager at this point. “No details?”

“One of the girls who saw Jenny walk away with the killer saw a tattoo. It was a vague impression, and she had nothing else for us. My partner is looking into similar crimes. We’ve tracked down two so far—four dead girls in Austin,
Texas
, and four in Nashville,
Tennessee
. We’re waiting on Nashville’s reports.” He stared at her and leaned back in his chair. “You work either of those cases?”

Clearly, it was her turn to share.

Olivia opened her briefcase and took out the thick folder of information she’d compiled. “Unfortunately, I believe the man we’re looking for has killed thirty girls, including Michelle Davidson.”

“Thirty? And no one caught on that we have a nationwide serial killer?” Zack looked as irate as she felt.

“He’s cautious. Methodical. Patient. Years of inactivity between murders. In three cases—
California
,
Kansas
, and
Kentucky
—someone else was arrested and tried for the crimes. There’s no clear-cut pattern, and because the murders happen within weeks of each other before he stops, the cases grow cold quickly.” She slid over a copy of her file.

“How did you connect these cases to mine?”

“I told you someone was tried in
California
for a crime I believe your Seattle killer is responsible for. The M.O. is similar. The man convicted was just released from prison because of a DNA test. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence, but it convinced the judge and jury. But he didn’t rape Mel—the victim.”

“He could have been involved.”

“Yes. I’ve thought of that, but the prosecutor said the evidence after all this time is too thin to guarantee a conviction. And with all the publicity over wrongful convictions across the country—well, I think they simply didn’t want to try a difficult case.” She’d talked to Hamilton Craig about it when Hall was released two weeks ago. He was willing to retry Hall, but he didn’t think they’d win. There was no evidence suggesting there were two people involved. That didn’t mean there weren’t, but it would be harder to prove. And thirty-four years later? Virtually impossible.

“What do you think? Think my killer has a partner in crime?”

He was asking her an opinion that another cop, or an FBI agent, could offer. She didn’t know. “I don’t have any evidence to suggest either way—”

“What do you
think
? What’s your
gut instinct
say? Or aren’t you FBI types allowed to listen to your instincts?”

Instincts? She didn’t know how to listen to her instincts. She needed the facts in front of her. Numbers. Statistics. Probabilities. She could compare microscopic threads and tell with certainty whether they matched or not. But her feelings about whether Missy’s killer had a partner? This was unfamiliar and potentially dangerous territory, and an area she wasn’t comfortable exploring.

“Well,” she said, trying to buy time.

“You have an opinion. Spill it. I’m not going to hold you to it if you’re wrong.”

She swallowed, tucked her hair behind her ear. “Okay, I think the killer works alone. His crime is too personal, too
intimate
to share with another person. But—the
California
murder appears to be his first. And maybe he was still working out the bugs in his killing style. The primary evidence that convicted Hall was his truck—evidence in the truck proved that the victim had been in it.” She paused when she realized she’d said Hall’s name out loud. She hadn’t meant to, and quickly continued her line of reasoning, hoping Zack didn’t seize upon her slip. “Perhaps he drove the killer? Or maybe lent the killer his truck? But I can’t see anyone keeping quiet and going to prison to protect someone.”

“I agree.”

She was surprised. “You do?”

“The crimes are too personal. I don’t see him having a partner. But maybe early on he had help.” Zack shrugged. “We won’t know until we find him.”

“Do you have a DNA sample? Anything like that?” Olivia asked.

“We have a sample off Michelle Davidson, but it’s apparently small.” He shook his head. “I’m not well-versed in DNA testing, I’ve left it to Cohn. He’s good. But it’ll still take a few weeks to get anything. Cohn’s trying to push the state crime lab into rushing the test, but they have to put court-ordered DNA testing first.” He ran a hand over the dark stubble on his face, then rubbed his neck.

“I—” How could she get that sample without Zack thinking she was taking over the case? She had to proceed carefully. “You know, I might be able to rush the sample through the FBI lab.”

He gave her a blank stare, only the tic in his neck telling her he was suspicious of her motives. “And?” he prompted.

“We have state-of-the-art equipment there, and I sort of know the assistant director of CODIS. He’ll rush it for me.”

“Oh?”

She felt like she was on the hot seat. “He’s my ex-husband.”

“Your ex-husband works in the lab?” He grinned. “Hell, I wouldn’t be able to get my ex-wife to do me any favors.”

His humor relaxed Olivia a bit. “Well, he’ll do it for me. We parted friends.”

“It’s not easy keeping a marriage going in our line of work,” Zack commented, almost to himself.

Guilt again tickled Olivia. It wasn’t her line of work, but she knew enough agents and cops to know relationships were difficult for them. Ironically, work was the one thing that had brought her and Greg together, and kept them friends.

“All right,” he said, standing abruptly. “If we can get answers faster by using your ex, I’m all for it. Let’s go down to the lab and you and Cohn can talk about all that technical stuff. You probably picked up a lot of knowledge just being married to one of those lab guys.”

He doesn’t know the half of it, Olivia thought.

CHAPTER

6

Brian stomped down the three flights of stairs to the alley where his beat-up truck was parked. He was stuck until his attorney could get him some money from the damn government. You’d think they could have handed him a check on his way out the door—he was
innocent,
he’d told them he was innocent, and no one had believed him because that stupid fucking cop lied about the evidence. Planted evidence. Isn’t that what happened to O.J.? Cops planted evidence.

Of course Brian didn’t believe for one minute that O.J. didn’t do his wife, but hey, the cops fucked it up just like they screwed up everything and so they probably planted evidence on O.J. to make themselves look good, just like they’d planted evidence in his truck.

He jerked open the tinny door of the mini-pickup, wishing he had his big Dodge, but it had been seized
as evidence.
Shit, that wasn’t fair. It was probably a classic now. Worth some money.

Three tries as he pumped the clutch and gas to get the rust bucket to turn over. He’d wanted to see his mom and show her that he was fine, just fine, better than ever. He wanted to move home, eat real food, sleep in a real bed, and never again see another cockroach.

He’d called his mom from the prison last week, the night before he was released.

“Ma, it’s me. Brian.”

She didn’t say anything for nearly a minute, and Brian thought for sure he’d been disconnected, some lame-ass prank of the prison guards.

“Brian,” she finally said, her voice old and flat. Unhappy.

Anger and a funny sort of pain clogged his throat. He swallowed with difficulty, then said, “Ma, I’m getting out. I didn’t do it.”

Another long pause. “I don’t understand. Where are you?”

“I’m still in Folsom, but they’re letting me come home tomorrow. They have new evidence, and it says I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Home? You’re coming home?”

She sounded scared. Hadn’t she heard what he’d said? That he was innocent? That the stupid fucking cops had made a mistake?

“Yeah. I’m
inn-o-cent,
” he stressed. “I told you that before.”

It hurt that his mother hadn’t visited him. He squirmed. He really didn’t know what his mother thought, what she even looked like as an old woman, or how she was coming along with his dad being dead.

He was surprised at how much it bothered him.

“I—Brian, I don’t know what to say.”

“Say I can come home.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

His hand clutched the receiver so tight his knuckles whitened.
Stupid bitch! I told you I didn’t do it!

A familiar guilt spread through him and he hated himself for thinking so poorly of his mother. Shit, this was no good. He had to show her.

“Ma, it’s okay.” He took a deep breath. “The court got me an apartment and is giving me a little money, and because I was wrongfully imprisoned they’re going to give me over a million dollars. So I’ll call you next week, give you some time.”

“Thank you. Brian, I never stopped praying for you. Not one day. I hope you’ll do something good with your life now that you’re being released from prison.”

“Yes, Ma.” He hung up, afraid he’d start yelling at her.
Something good with his life?
What’d she think he’d do, murder someone? He didn’t murder that little girl, never would kill a kid. And the guy on the yard, hell, that had been an accident. And the Vietcong had been the enemy. He hadn’t murdered anyone, like in cold blood. It wasn’t fair, it fucking wasn’t fair, that he’d been sent to prison for thirty-four years because the stupid cops screwed up their investigation.

Fucking
not fair.

Brian wiped his brow, sweating, hot wind blowing through the open windows of his pitiful truck. It wasn’t just the weather. It was this odd feeling he’d had ever since he’d walked out of Folsom Prison a free man. He didn’t feel free. He didn’t feel like he was in his body. He was disoriented. He’d been watching television nonstop since he’d been out. He’d taken nearly half the piddling stipend the prison handed him—like $1500 and a free apartment was supposed to last for three months until his million bucks came—and bought a fine 36-inch tube. It wasn’t like he’d been living in a vacuum in prison—he’d watched the news and a few stupid shows and movies and whatnot, but he didn’t realize how much he’d missed.

His mother lived in Menlo Park, in an older, middle-class neighborhood on the San Francisco peninsula. It was only ten minutes from his shit-ass apartment on the bad side of the tracks in Redwood City, where he was the only white boy in his building. But until he got the money from the government, he couldn’t go anywhere.

Life sucked.

By the time he’d turned into his mom’s neighborhood, he was a basket case. First, he hadn’t realized how much the area had grown in the last thirty years. He almost had a heart attack on the freeway surrounded by a gazillion cars and big rigs. Shit, where did all these people live? The peninsula connecting San Francisco to San Jose wasn’t that big.

A lot of the houses in his mom’s neighborhood were big and opulent, well kept. Classy, he thought. Some were add-ons, little houses turned into big homes. This was not the middle-class neighborhood he’d left when he went to Vietnam. These people had money.

The trees were bigger—a lot taller. But the streets had a hint of familiarity, and there was the park where he’d played as a boy.

Tears stung his eyes and he pinched the bridge of his nose. How’d it all get so fucked? He used to walk on this exact road with the guys, Pete and Barry and Tom. Kicking rocks and jabbering. Whittling wood like his daddy had shown him. Where were the guys now? Pete had gone to Vietnam, like him, but Barry and Tom didn’t go, at least not that he knew. Barry had the brains; he’d gone off to some big college. Probably made good money and married and had kids and did all the stuff they hadn’t thought about as kids, but figured they’d get around to sooner or later.

Tom? Hell, he could have landed himself in prison for all Brian knew. He was always walking that line, like the time he ripped off Old Man Duncan’s soda shop on El Camino Real, or when he nabbed Debbie Palmer’s purse and found out she had birth control pills in her wallet. Debbie Palmer wasn’t a virgin? Tom had returned the purse without her knowing, minus five bucks, and hit on her. Got her in the back of his dad’s pickup one night after a ball game and they went at it like rabbits.

Brian stopped the truck in front of his mom’s house and it sputtered before it died. He stared at the neat little bungalow. The same, but different.

Same red-shingled one-story, but freshly painted. The porch still had a swing, but it wasn’t the one Brian remembered. This one was wooden with a red-and-white flowered cushion. Flowers lined the walk. Petunias, his mother’s favorite.