Deep Dark (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

This case was going to throw him. Reed Novak knew it the instant he saw the volleyball court.

Taut net, sugary white sand. Beside the court was a swimming pool that sparkled like a sapphire under the blazing August sun.

“Hell, if I had a pool like that, I'd use it.”

Reed looked at his partner in the passenger seat. Jay Wallace had his window rolled down and his hefty arm resting on the door.

“Otherwise, what's the point?”

Reed didn't answer. The point was probably to slap a photo on a website to justify the astronomical rent Bellaterra charged for one- and two-bedroom units five minutes from downtown.

Reed pulled in beside the white ME's van and climbed out, glancing around. Even with a few emergency vehicles, the parking lot was quiet. Bellaterra's young and athletically inclined tenants were either at jobs or in classes, or maybe home with their parents for the summer, letting their luxury apartments sit empty.

Reed stood for a moment, getting a feel for the place. Heat radiated up from the blacktop, and the drone of cicadas drowned out the traffic noise on Lake Austin Boulevard. He glanced across the parking lot
to the ground-floor unit where a female patrol officer stood guard.

“First responder, Lena Gutierrez,” Reed said, looking at Jay. “You know her?”

“Think she's new.”

They crossed the lot and exchanged introductions. Gutierrez looked nervous in her wilted uniform. Her gaze darted to the detective shield clipped to Reed's belt.

“I secured the perimeter, sir.”

“Good. Tell us what you got.”

She cleared her throat. “Apartment's rented to April Abrams, twenty-five. Didn't show up for work today, didn't answer her phone. One of her coworkers dropped by. The door was reportedly unlocked, so she went inside to check . . .”

Her voice trailed off as though they should fill in the blank.

Reed stepped around her and examined the door, which stood ajar. No visible scratches on the locking mechanism. No gouges on the doorframe.

Jay was already swapping his shiny black wing tips for paper booties. Reed did the same. Austin was casual, but they always wore business attire—suit pants and button-down shirts—because of days like today. Reed never wanted to do a death knock dressed like he was on his way to a keg party.

He stepped into the cool foyer and let his eyes adjust. To his right was a living area. White sectional sofa, bleached-wood coffee table, white shag rug over beige carpet. The pristine room was a contrast to the hallway, where yellow evidence markers littered the tile floor. A picture on the wall had been knocked askew, and a pair of ME's assistants bent over a body.

A bare foot jutted out from the huddle. Pale skin, polished red toenails.

Reed walked into the hall, sidestepping numbered pieces of plastic that flagged evidence he couldn't see. A slender guy with premature gray hair glanced up, and his expression was even grimmer than usual.

April Abrams was young.

Reed knelt down for a closer look. She lay on her side, her head resting in a pool of coagulated blood. Long auburn hair partially obscured her face, and her arm was bent behind her at an impossible angle. A strip of silver duct tape covered her mouth.

“Jesus,” Jay muttered behind him.

Her bare legs were scissored out to the side. A pink T-shirt was bunched up under her armpits, and Reed noted extensive scratches on both breasts.

“What do you have?” Reed asked.

“Twelve to eighteen hours, ballpark,” the ME's assistant said. “The pathologist should be able to pin that down better.”

Reed studied her face again. No visible abrasions. No ligature marks on her neck. The left side of her skull was smashed in, and her hair was matted with dried blood.

“Murder weapon?” Reed asked.

“Not that we've seen. You might ask the photog, though. She's in the kitchen.”

Reed stood up, looking again at the tape covering the victim's mouth. A lock of her hair was stuck under it, which for some reason pissed him off.

He moved into the kitchen and paused beside a sliding glass door that opened onto a fenced patio. Outside on the concrete sat a pair of plastic bowls, both empty.

“I haven't seen a weapon,” the crime-scene photographer said over her shoulder. “You'll be the first to know.”

Reed glanced around her to see what had her attention. On the granite countertop was an ID badge attached to one of those plastic clips with a retractable cord. The badge showed April's mug shot with her name above the words
ChatWare Solutions
. April had light blue eyes, pale skin. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she smiled tentatively for the camera.

The photographer finished with the badge and shifted to get a shot of the door.

“Come across a phone?” Reed asked, looking around. No dirty dishes on the counters. Empty sink.

“Not so far.” She glanced up from her camera as Jay stepped into the kitchen and silently handed Reed a pair of latex gloves. “I haven't done the bedroom yet, though, so don't you guys move anything.”

Reed pulled on the gloves and opened the fridge. It took him a moment to identify the unfamiliar contents: spinach, beets, bean sprouts. Something green and frilly that might or might not be kale. The dietary train wreck continued in the pantry, where he found three boxes of Kashi, six bottles of vitamins, and a bag of flaxseed.

Opening the cabinet under the sink, Reed found cat food and a plastic trash can. The can was empty, not even a plastic bag inside it despite the box of them right there in the cabinet. He'd check out Bellaterra's Dumpsters. Reed opened several drawers and found the usual assortment of utensils.

“That's an eight-hundred-dollar juicer.” Jay nodded at the silver appliance near the sink.

“That thing?”

“At least. Maybe a thousand. My sister got one last Christmas.”

Gutierrez was standing in the foyer now, watching them with interest.

“Did you come across a phone?” Reed asked her. “A purse? A wallet?”

“No on all three, sir. I did a full walk-through, didn't see anything.”

Reed exchanged a look with Jay before moving back into the hallway. The ME's people were now taping paper bags over the victim's hands.

Reed stepped into the bedroom. A ceiling fan moved on low speed, stirring the air. The queen-size bed was heaped with plump white pillows like in a fancy hotel. The pillows were piled to the side and the bedspread was thrown back, suggesting April had gone to bed and then gotten up.

“Think she heard him?” Jay asked.

“Maybe.”

The bedside lamp was off, and the only light in the room came from sunlight streaming through vertical blinds. Reed ducked into the bathroom. Makeup was scattered across the counter. A gold watch with a diamond bezel sat beside the sink. Reed opened the medicine cabinet.

“Sleeping pills, nasal spray, laxatives, OxyContin,” he said.

“No shit, Oxies? Those are getting hard to come by.”

Reed checked the doctor's name on the label.

“What about the sleeping pills?” Jay asked.

“Over-the-counter.”

Reed examined the latch on the window above the toilet. Then he moved into the bedroom. Peering under the bed, he found a pair of white sandals and a folded shopping bag. On the nightstand was a stack of magazines:
Entertainment Weekly
,
People
,
Wired
. He opened the nightstand drawer and stared down.

“Huh.”

Jay glanced over. “Vibrator?”

“Chocolate.” Four bars of Godiva, seventy-two percent cocoa. One of the bars had the wrapper partially removed and a hunk bitten off.

Reed was more or less numb to going through people's stuff, but the chocolate bar struck him as both sad and infinitely personal. He closed the drawer.

“We ID'd her vehicle,” Gutierrez said, stepping into the room, “in case you guys want to have a look.”

Reed and Jay followed her back through the apartment, catching annoyed looks from the ME's people as they squeezed past again.

“What are you thinking?” Jay asked as they exited the home and got back into real shoes.

“I want that phone. I want her friends, her boyfriend, secret admirers at work, whatever.” He glanced at Gutierrez. “What's the name of that witness? The coworker?”

“Mindy Stephens. She's in the leasing office with a patrol officer right now. She kind of lost it after she called it in, got sick all over the floor.”

“I'll talk to her,” Jay said.

Wallace was good with female witnesses. He had been a defensive tackle in college, where he'd been known as “The Wall” because of his size. But he'd
stopped pumping iron and now had a teddy-bear thing going that seemed to put women at ease.

Reed, not so much. He was tall and lean, and his skeptical eyes made people uncomfortable. At least that's what his ex-wife said. When they'd been married, she'd often accused him of interrogating her like a suspect, and maybe she was right. He'd gotten to where he expected people to lie to him right out of the gate, whether they needed to or not. Reed was thirty-nine and had been a cop for seventeen years. All that time on the job had made him jaded, but it had also made him good. It was a trade-off.

“Strange place to park,” Jay observed as Gutierrez led them across the lot to a powder-blue BMW. Reed had been thinking the same. It would have been natural for April Abrams to park in front of her unit.

Police barricades had been set up around the victim's car, and a CSI was already crouched beside the driver's-­side door. Reed recognized her—Veronica Greene. She was known to be abrasive, but Reed didn't mind, because she was crazy good at what she did. He'd once seen her lift a usable print off a charred envelope.

She glanced up as he neared the car. “You touch anything, you die.”

“Print all of it, especially the passenger side,” Reed said.

She lifted an eyebrow in a way that told him what he could do with his advice.

“Any sign of a phone?” he asked.

She leaned into the car and plucked something from the floorboard with a pair of tweezers, then dropped it into an evidence bag. “No, but I found a charger. Looks iPhone-compatible, which should help you track down
the carrier, at least. There's a laptop computer in the trunk. And”—she reached in and lifted something from the cup holder—“a receipt. Dated yesterday, looks like a coffee shop.”

Someone had scrawled a local phone number across the bottom of the receipt. Reed pulled out his phone to photograph it. It might be the best lead they had so far.

Or it might be nothing.

He glanced across the lot to where the ME's people were unloading a gurney from the van. The parking lot was filling in now, and Bellaterra residents were beginning to stop and gawk. In a few moments they'd realize what was happening, and then the phones would come out and pictures would end up on Facebook and Twitter.

“I need to notify the family,” Reed told Jay. “And it's going to suck. I'm betting they're close.”

“As in friendly or nearby?”

“Both.”

“Why?”

“Call it a hunch.” He glanced at the car. “Someone was giving her juicers and BMWs.”

“Maybe she was good at her job.”

“She was practically a kid.”

Jay shrugged. “So was Mark Zuckerberg when he made his first billion.”

Reed looked at him.

“Anyway, I need to move on that witness,” Jay said. “What's our game plan?”

Reed watched the gurney being rolled inside. Twenty minutes into the case, and already they needed a game plan. That was how it worked now, and Reed didn't waste his energy cursing social media.

He thought of April's ID picture. He thought of her anxious smile as she'd stood before the camera, probably her first day on the job. She'd probably been feeling a heady mix of hope and anticipation as she embarked on something new.

He pictured the slash of duct tape over her mouth now. It would stay there until she reached the autopsy table.

“Reed?”

“No forced entry. No purse, no phone. But he left jewelry, pain meds, and a Bose stereo.”

Jay nodded because he knew what Reed was thinking. At this point, everything pointed to someone she knew.

Jay glanced across the lot. “Shit.”

Reed turned to see an SUV easing through the gate, tailgated by a white news van. Just in time for the money shot of the body coming out. In a matter of minutes the image would be ping-ponging between satellites.

“Dirtbags,” Jay muttered.

“Right on time.”

•   •   •

Laney rolled her chair back and let her system think. And think. It was sluggish tonight.

“Laney.”

She tipped back and rested her Converse high-tops on the edge of the desk. She checked the script.

“Laney.”