Aim to Kill (8 page)

“They grow like weeds but they’re so colorful I can’t help but love them,” she’d told him many times when she planted at the first sign of spring.

What was she doing planting petunias now? She was eighty. She shouldn’t be on her knees in the dirt.

As with many of the homes in the neighborhood, the garage was set back from the house. Still, a new Honda rested in the driveway. He couldn’t remember a time his mother didn’t garage the car. He hoped she was well.

He missed her.

He got out of the truck and walked slowly up the brick path, straightening his new Dockers. Twenty-four bucks. He couldn’t believe a pair of stupid pants cost that much—and the shirt was half-price, but still fifteen dollars! But he wanted to look nice for his ma.

The door opened before he even knocked. It wasn’t his ma.

Uncle Glen? Looked just like him. Full head of light gray hair, watery blue eyes, and fat nose, much too big to be on the little guy’s skinny face.

Brian blinked. Couldn’t be Uncle Glen, his mom’s brother. He’d be ancient by now. And didn’t Ma write saying that he’d croaked years ago?

“Toby?” Brian blinked again, his mouth falling open. His cousin Toby looked so old. But he was six years younger than Brian, and . . .

. . . And
he
was old.
He
was fifty-four. In his fucking fifties.

His life was gone. Over. Stolen.

“Brian.” Toby made no move to open the security screen. When had Ma installed it?

“What are you doing here?” He didn’t mean to sound so defensive. He used to like his little cousin. But that was three decades ago, before shit happened.

“Aunt Vi called and said you’d been released. I came down to help.”

“Help with what?”

Toby shrugged.

“Let me in. I want to see my mom.”

“You’re not going to cause problems, Brian, are you?”

Brian fumed and wanted to slap that stern, holier-than-thou expression off Toby’s rotten face. “No,” he said, reining in his temper. “I wasn’t released. My conviction was overturned. I didn’t do it. I always said I didn’t do it; now there’s proof.”

Toby nodded. “Yes, that’s what Aunt Vi said you told her. She asked me to look into it.”

His own mother didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe that he’d been
exonerated.
She didn’t believe his word—she’d sent his lousy cousin to check up on him.

But more than the pain of his mother’s belief in his guilt was the anger that she’d been subjected to this travesty in the first place.

He didn’t kill that girl! His jaw trembled as he controlled his anger.

“So you know I told the truth.” It was almost impossible for him to speak. He wanted to pummel Toby’s stupid, gloating, idiotic face. Damn asshole, walking into
his
house and turning his own mother against him.

Toby gave a half-nod. “To an extent. But you still could have been involved.”

“Bullshit!”

Toby flinched and Brian heard a gasp from somewhere in the living room, behind his cousin. His ma. Shit. He ran a hand over his face, regaining his control.

“Your mother is eighty-one years old, Brian. Her heart isn’t too good. If I let you in, you have to promise not to upset her. Or I
will
have you arrested.”

Brian wanted to leave and never look back. All these years, in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and now his own mother didn’t believe he had nothing to do with it.

But he missed her. He had to see her. She was all he had left.

He glanced down, torn but contrite. “All right.”

Toby opened the screen and Brian took a tentative step inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dim indoor lighting, he couldn’t help but notice everything had changed. While the house itself hadn’t, the furnishings were new, more modern. Leather. But the grandfather clock was still in the dining room. He couldn’t see it, but he heard its steady tick-tock, an intimately familiar sound that soothed him as he remembered listening to it as a small boy when he couldn’t sleep.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Slow and comforting.

Calmer, he searched out his mother.

She sat in a recliner, a walker perched next to her. She seemed so—small. Old. Shriveled. Three decades aged anyone, and Father Time took a middle-aged woman and made her elderly. Her hair, which she had dyed blonde for as long as he could remember, was now snow white. She was skinny and wrinkled. His mother despised wrinkles and used every lotion and potion under the sun to prevent them.

Guess they didn’t work.

But her eyes—blue and clear. She hadn’t lost her mind. As she turned those sharp eyes to him, he felt her disapproval, her sadness. He wanted to fall on his knees and beg her forgiveness.

Yet he had nothing to be forgiven for. He was innocent!

“Ma.” His voice didn’t sound right. He cleared his throat. “Ma, it’s good to see you.”

She nodded slowly, looked him up and down. Tears welled in her eyes and Brian’s throat constricted and his eyes blurred. Her arms came up.

“Brian.”

He stumbled toward her, fell to his knees and into her skeletal embrace. “Ma, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, I never did anything to hurt you.”

“I know, son.”

He sobbed into her lap, wanting to erase the years and make something of himself. Wishing he hadn’t volunteered for Vietnam, yet wishing he’d never left the military.

He had wanted to be her hero. Just like Daddy had been.

Now he was nothing.

CHAPTER

7

Doug Cohn was no pushover, yet Zack watched Agent St. Martin quietly win him over. In less than ten minutes, they were speaking a language foreign to Zack, about DNA samples and test procedures and how they would transport the evidence found on Michelle Davidson’s body to the FBI lab in
Virginia
.

Then he heard Olivia mention her theory about the killer stealing trucks.

“I don’t have the motor vehicle records from the other jurisdictions,” Olivia said, “but I think the killer steals a truck the day of the abduction, and either returns the vehicle or dumps it somewhere.”

“We ran auto theft reports,” Cohn said. “One Expedition in the manufacturer year we’re looking for was reported stolen the day before Jennifer Benedict’s abduction, but it hasn’t been recovered.”

“Why would he steal them?” Zack asked, almost to himself.

“Convenience,” Olivia said. “Removes him from the crime scene—if it’s not his vehicle, it’s less likely it can be traced to him. Two different vehicles were used for two victims. It doesn’t make sense that a killer smart enough to move from state to state in order to avoid detection would use his own vehicle to transport a victim.”

Zack frowned, realizing Olivia was probably right. “We had no idea there was an established M.O. The little information we’ve received from Austin and Nashville dealt more with the victim profile.”

He must have sounded defensive, because she said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I would have done exactly what you’ve been doing with the information you had.”

Cohn nodded. “Makes sense to me. Travis, I’ll go ahead and run auto theft reports daily, see if the Dodge pops or any other SUV or truck. There’ll be dozens every day.”

“I’ll talk to the chief about alerting patrols to keep an eye out for the trucks on our list,” Zack said. “Probably won’t lead to anything, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“We’re looking for a white male, over fifty,” Olivia said. “Maybe you can add that to the watch list.”

“White men over fifty driving a truck in Seattle?” Cohn laughed. “That’d fit half the population, including me.”

She smiled, a wonderfully genuine grin that lit up her face, but didn’t reach her eyes. She was even more beautiful when she smiled, Zack thought.
Stop it, Travis. She’s not only your partner, but a Fed, too.
“True. I was thinking with regards to the stolen vehicles.”

“Over fifty?” Zack asked. “I wouldn’t think he’d be that old.”

“The first suspected case, the one in
California
I mentioned, was over thirty years ago. If he was eighteen when he committed that crime, he would be fifty-two today.”

“Pervert,” Cohn mumbled.

Zack’s cell phone rang. He frowned as he glanced at the number. It was the Sheriff’s Office. He flipped open his phone. “Travis.”

“Detective, Jim Rodgers here. You’re working the two homicides, right? The blonde girls?”

“Yes.” Every muscle in his body tightened. The sheriff would only call him directly to share bad news.

“We think we have another one.”

“An abduction?”

“A body. Jillian Reynolds, age nine. She’s been missing for nearly three months. And by the look of things, she’s been dead that long.”

“Why do you think it’s related to my investigation?”

“She was blonde. Apparently stabbed to death. The body’s not in real good condition due to decomposition, but it appears a chunk of hair was cut.”

Zack’s gut churned. “Where?”

“Vashon Island.”

“I’ll be there in—” he glanced at his watch. If he stepped on it he could make the ferry. Maybe. “Forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll have a deputy meet you at the dock.”

Zack slammed his phone shut.

“Do you need me?” Cohn asked, obviously clued in by Zack’s end of the conversation that there’d been a crime.

Zack shook his head. “The sheriff’s people are there. But it looks like the same guy, so I’ll have them send everything to our lab.” The sheriff’s department generally sent evidence to the state lab, but Seattle had a top-notch facility and could expedite the lab work. Whenever possible, the county used the local lab.

Cohn nodded and ran a hand over his nearly-bald head. “Rodgers’s people are team players. We’ll have no jurisdictional problems.”

Olivia looked from Cohn to Zack, perplexed. “What happened? Another kidnapping?”

Zack glanced at Olivia and for a split second thought he saw rage in her eyes. Rage tinged with fear. Then it was gone, like an opaque shield sliding down. She grabbed her briefcase off Cohn’s desk, all business, cool and detached.

“Three months ago,” Zack told her. “They just found her body.” He led Olivia from the lab to the parking garage.

“Three months . . .” Olivia paused in her stride and stumbled. When Zack caught her elbow to steady her, she tensed under his touch. “Thanks,” she mumbled, but moved away from him. “Three months,” she repeated. “That means Michelle Davidson was his third Seattle victim.

“Zack, I don’t think I pointed it out when we were reviewing the cases, but he only kills four girls in each city he hits. If we don’t get him now, we’ll lose him.”

Vince Kirby ran a hand through his short-cropped hair before hitting
SEND
on the e-mail to his editor.

Now, he couldn’t take it back.

The Seattle Slayer?
Corny. And it didn’t sit well with Kirby. These were kids who were murdered. He didn’t feel comfortable sensationalizing their deaths.

Well, if Bristow wanted to fire him, fine. But Kirby wouldn’t stand for major editorial changes under his byline. Not anymore.

The biggest problem was Zack Travis. When he read the paper tomorrow morning and saw the sub-headline
SPD fumbling investigation
, he’d blame Kirby, no doubt.

Why did Kirby even care? He’d tried to explain to Travis a half-dozen times that he didn’t write all his stories the way they came out in print.

But Travis had been important to Amy, and that made him important to Kirby.

Kirby reached over, picked up the only picture on his cluttered desk, and stared at Amy’s secretive smile. Lips together, turned slightly up, her dark eyes lit with humor and a touch of mischief.

God, he had loved her.

Bristow’s door slammed open. “Kirby!” he called.

So, maybe sending the e-mail wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but changing the article at the last minute when he’d been covering the crime beat for eight years—that was low, even for his editor.

He stood. “Coming,” he called.

But Bristow was already crossing the floor. Most everyone had left for the day, but Kirby had a feeling the senior editor lived in the building. There wasn’t a time of day or night that Kirby was here when Bristow wasn’t.

“Get out to Vashon Island ASAP. There’s some sort of police activity, all hush-hush on the band, but one of my contacts said the sheriff called in Detective Travis. My gut says it’s the Slayer.”

Kirby cringed at the killer’s moniker. “Mr. Bristow, I think we need to tread lightly in this case. I—”

The editor waved his hand as he lit a cigarette. It was a nonsmoking building. Bristow took that to mean nonsmoking during business hours. Then, he smoked in his office. “I saw your e-mail. Funny. You work the beat, I’ll clean your copy. Now go, before you miss the damn ferry.”

Kirby stuffed his camera and notepad into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.