Playing Dead (47 page)

“Well, I guess I should start at the beginning.” He sat down where her father had been sitting. “Apparently, thirty years ago, Bruce Langstrom—”

“Did you go in the house?” she whispered.

Mitch nodded.

Claire closed her eyes, unable to squeeze back burning tears. She wanted to disappear, to run away where no one knew who she was. Soon everybody would know, everyone would see all her secrets exposed, watch her have sex . . . oh, dear God, the Internet. It would be everywhere . . .

“Claire, don’t do this to yourself.”

“How can I face my dad? Everyone I work with, my friends, Dave and Bill—”

“It’s gone. Destroyed. No one is going to see it. No one is going to talk about it.”

“But it’s evidence—”

“No it’s not.”

Claire looked at Mitch, saw that he spoke the truth. Her lips trembled. “I—Thank you.”

“Don’t do that. God, Claire, when I saw you in that grave, my life was over. I couldn’t imagine not being given another chance to explain why I lied, to ask for your forgiveness, to tell you I love you. To ask for time to prove it.”

She put her fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry, Mitch. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry for what? I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry he hurt you. I would do anything to turn back time and stop it from happening.” Mitch reached out for Claire, hesitated.

She took his hand and squeezed it.

“I was so mad and hurt when I found out the truth about you,” she said.

“I know, and—”

“Let me finish, okay? I was hurt because I thought I had fallen in love with a lie, with someone who didn’t exist. But it’s you. Writer or damn FBI agent, it’s still you. I love you, Mitch.”

He let out a long breath, touched his head to hers. “I’ve been so worried. I need you, Claire. You showed me how lonely I was. How jaded. How miserable. When I’m with you, I see myself in a whole different light. I’ve been moving from job to job in the FBI—from Atlanta to Washington to Texas to Sacramento—never settling down, never happy, until I met you. I love you so much.”

He kissed her lightly.

She sighed. “Aren’t we a pair? I’d never have thought I could fall head over heels for someone like you, but now that I have, I couldn’t imagine loving anyone else.”

He smiled, touched her face.

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Can you check on my dogs and Neelix? They haven’t eaten. They’re probably—”

“I’ve already done it. I went by last night, and decided to stay. They missed you, I think.”

She smiled. “They like you. They’re good judges of character.”

“I had a job offer.”

“What kind of job?”

“Something that challenges me, that speaks to my sense of justice and fair play.”

“Tell me.”

“J. T. Caruso offered me a position at Rogan-Caruso.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“You’re okay with us working together?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. We’d make a good team.”

“I agree. I won’t lie to you again, Claire. Just promise me you’ll trust me once more. I won’t let you down.”

“I trust you. No secrets, Mitch. You and me, no matter what, no secrets between us.”

“I promise.” He kissed her. “You won’t regret loving me.”

Also by Allison Brennan

The Prey
The Hunt
The Kill

Speak No Evil
See No Evil
Fear No Evil

Killing Fear
Tempting Evil
Playing Dead

Can’t get enough
of the edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense
from Allison Brennan?
Read on for an exclusive sneak peek at

SUDDEN DEATH

the first book in the new FBI trilogy

by

Allison Brennan

Coming from Ballantine Books
Available wherever books are sold

The murder had been ritualistic, brutal, and efficient.

There didn’t appear to be any signs of a struggle, but here in the decrepit underside of Sacramento, that was difficult to determine. While the city did a fairly good job at keeping most of the streets clean, on the north side of downtown—away from the Capitol building and closer to the soup kitchen—the grime and unwanted bred. Here, the homeless weed through the garbage for something edible. Cardboard boxes had been pulled from the trash to shield them from an early heat wave.

Based on the lack of blood spatter, the victim had been prone when shot. But the victim had the same outward injuries as the other two known victims. His hamstrings had been cut clean through, incapacitating him.

“What are you thinking?” Sacramento PD Detective Dave Kamanski asked. He’d been the one to contact the local FBI office about the like-crime, and Meg was pleased to be able to work with someone she already knew and respected.

“His hamstrings weren’t cut here. Not enough blood.”

Kamanski frowned. “If the killer sliced his hamstrings first to prevent him from running, then shot him in the head, would there still be pooling?”

“I’m not a forensic expert,” Meg said, “but my guess is that there would be some sort of spray or castoff.” Without touching the victim, she inspected the deep gash in the back of his legs. She mimicked a slicing motion with her hand and then said, “I need the coroner’s report, but it appears that the killer sliced right to left, cutting both legs with an even, fluid motion.” She stood and said, “Turn around.”

Kamanski did, looking over his shoulder at the tall blonde. She said, “I’m shorter than the killer and you’re taller than the victim, but my guess is that the victim was walking somewhere, and the killer came and
slice,
cut the hamstrings. The vic went down on his knees—that should be obvious at the autopsy with early bruising or physical evidence of a collapse—and then even if the killer immediately sheathed the knife, there would be blood on the ground and castoff”—she looked to the left—“over there.”

There was no noticeable blood on the ground or opposite brick wall. “But,” she continued, “you’ll want your crime scene unit to go over the area carefully.”

“They’re working it already,” Kamanski said. “So you don’t think he was killed here?”

He sounded skeptical, so Meg clarified. “No, he was definitely shot right here, as he lay prone—small caliber handgun is my guess, .22 caliber, behind the left ear. A .22 is very effective at close range.”

Megan had seen far too many execution-style murders while she was part of the national Evidence Response Team that went to Kosovo ten years ago. Which led to the question of why disable the victim first if only to shoot him?

Megan already had the answer, if the evidence held true to the first two known victims: between the time the killer cut the victim’s hamstrings to when he shot him, he’d received his sick pleasure from the torture. Debilitating the victim was simply to keep him from escaping.

“We need to find out where he was attacked and tortured.”

“So this is connected with the cases on the hot sheet?”

“I can’t say for sure, but the sliced hamstrings and the execution-style murder are two strong similarities. Neither detail was released to the media in either city of the first two killings, so I think it’s probably the same guy. If the victim was tortured, that won’t be obvious until the coroner strips the body.”

The two previous victims had no visible marks until their clothing was removed and dozens of tiny pinpricks were obvious.

First Austin, Texas, then Las Vegas, Nevada. Now Sacramento. The only thing those three places had in common—on the surface—was that they were large cities. The victims were single, male, between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, tortured and murdered in their homes. While most serial predators stayed within one race, the first victim was black and the second—and presumably the third—were white. The first vic owned his own business and, though divorced, was by all accounts a devoted father. The second vic had never married, but had a rap sheet for minor drug charges, and worked as a mechanic. There was some indication that he had a gambling problem, which delayed the local police from reporting the crime to the national database, mistakenly believing it was payback for an uncollected debt. The hot sheet possibly linking the two had only been sent out last week.

“The deputy coroner just pulled up,” Kamanski said. “Let me clue him in and we’ll be back.”

“Great. The sooner we get the body moved, the better.” Already, decomp had set in from the layers of clothing the dead man wore coupled with the already high late morning temperature.

Kamanski walked away, and Meg frowned at the body. Something else seemed—odd. Because the victim was homeless and had been living on the streets long enough to disappear into the backdrop of Sacramento, his age was indeterminate. His clothes hadn’t been washed in weeks or longer, so his hands stood out.

“Tate,” she called to the new special agent assigned to Squad Eight, the Violent Crimes/Major Offenders Unit of the Sacramento FBI. “Take pictures of his hands.”

“I already photographed the body.” But he squatted next to her and snapped a few shots with the digital camera, then with a film camera.

“They’re clean,” he said, surprised.

“Exactly. Another part of the ritual?” she wondered out loud. “Or had he fought back and scratched his attacker? Maybe scouring the hands was an attempt to get rid of evidence.” She didn’t have the hot sheet in front of her, but she didn’t recall that the killer had cleansed his previous victims. If it was the same killer.

Under normal circumstances, Megan wouldn’t be called out to a local homicide, but this murder matched two recent homicides in Texas and Nevada, prompting the Bureau to send out a nationwide alert about a possible serial murderer. Normally, such rather generic murders wouldn’t have sparked the interest of the FBI, but the killer marked his victims in a very specific manner.

First, slicing the hamstrings to incapacitate the victim. Not fatal, but extremely debilitating and painful.

Next, restraint of some sort. Meg didn’t touch the body because the coroner hadn’t inspected it yet, but there were no obvious marks of restraint. Perhaps the wrists and ankles, which were concealed by his clothing.

Followed by prolonged torture. The hot sheet indicated that the first victim had been tortured for a minimum of two hours, the second victim four hours. But the torture itself was in dispute—there wasn’t a lot of detail as to the method, only that needle marks were found on the victims but no known drugs were present. There was some obvious physical violence—the first victim had his fingers broken with a blunt object, the second victim’s ribs had been cracked and broken from a beating. But no biological evidence had been found yet. The Quantico laboratory was assisting in processing trace evidence.

After the apparent torture, the victim was shot low in the back of the head, a classic and effective method of execution. There was no obvious postmortem ritual.

“It’s as if he plays with them then suddenly shoots them dead.”

“Excuse me?” Tate asked.

“Talking to myself,” she muttered. “And it doesn’t fit with this crime scene. He wasn’t tortured here.” She itched to look under his clothing to see if the needle marks matched up to the photographs she’d seen of one of the previous victims.

“Agent Elliott,” Tate said.

She looked up, not realizing that she’d been staring at the body, trying to make sense of a senseless murder.

Senseless to you, Megan, not to the killer.

“Is the coroner ready?”

“I don’t know. But look.” He pointed to a chain under the victim.

Only three prongs on the chain, or necklace, were visible, but the pattern was immediately recognizable. Dog tags.

A veteran.

Meg had always prided herself on her even temper and logical approach to problems, but suddenly her vision blurred and she wanted blood—the blood of the killer, the blood of a society that didn’t value those who fought for them. Men like her father . . .

She pushed him from her mind and focused on the homeless veteran. “Detective!” she called, wanting an ID as quickly as possible. Wanting to know how this soldier had ended up homeless and dead.

Detective Kamanski was at the edge of the crime scene talking to a small group of people. Uniformed officers were along the perimeter to keep the onlookers from getting too close. He glanced at Meg, then approached with a casually dressed young black man carrying a medical bag.

“Agent Elliott, this is Deputy Coroner Roland Banks.”

Meg shook hands, then pointed to the chain. “I think those are dog tags. We might be able to get a quick ID on this victim.”

“That’d be nice,” Banks said. “We have a few dozen unidentified homeless filling the deep freeze right now.”

While Banks did his job, Kamanski said, “I called in a detective who worked undercover down here for several months last year. He knows this area and the homeless better than anyone on the job.”

“Good. We need an insider. If we do have a witness, it could be hard to get them to talk.”

“Exactly. Abrahamson is on his way down.”

Meg asked, “So how do you want to handle the investigation?”

“We’ll need to have your boss and my boss talk, but I’m open. Joint task force?”

They both cracked a wry grin.

“Can you take care of the canvass and forensics? But if you need anything from our lab, let me know and I’ll jump on it. And I’ll start working the joint jurisdiction issues with Texas and Nevada, talk to both the locals and Feds and get copies of the files. It might help. Something connects these three men. It just doesn’t seem random.” To Banks she said, “I’d like to observe the autopsy.”

“Probably first thing in the morning,” the deputy coroner said. “They’re already jammed up this afternoon.”

“I’ll be there. One thing I’m looking for are needle marks on the body. Very small, likely on the feet, neck, hands, and groin.”

“The body is already in decomp, I don’t know what we’ll see underneath the clothes, but I’m not removing them here. The skin is already slipping.”

“How long has he been dead?” Kamanski asked.

“In this heat? Decomp is telling me about twenty-four hours, but with this heat could be as few as six. I’ll have to do some calculations, factor in his clothing, the position of the body—fortunately, he’s not in direct sunlight. I’ll take a wild stab—and I mean a not to put in your report guess—at six to ten hours. I know, he looks like twenty-four plus, but he’s not.”