Pretty Dead (27 page)

“I have some cuts, but I don’t think any of them are deep. But that’s not important. I have to tell you something, Detective . . . He wrote on me.”

Elise’s blood ran cold. “Wrote on you?”

“Yeah. In black ink.”

She released a breath. “Where are you?”

“On a corner near Pulaski Square.” That was followed by the names of the intersecting streets.

“Be right there.” She disconnected, shed her pajamas, tugged on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, grabbed her badge and gun, and headed down the hall to Audrey’s room.

She shook her daughter’s arm. “Honey, I have to leave.”

Sleepy, Audrey blinked and shaded her eyes against the light pouring in from the hallway. “Is it a body?”

“Not this time.” What a thing for your child to have to ask.

“What then?”

“Something to do with Jay Thomas Paul. I’ll lock the door and set the alarm.” Elise never thought she’d say it, but David had been right about having Sweet living with them. She didn’t worry as much about leaving Audrey alone.

“Is Jay Thomas okay?” Audrey asked.

“He’s fine. I just talked to him. Go to sleep. I’ll be back in time to take you to school.”

“M-kay.”

Audrey turned away and pulled the covers over her shoulder. The sleep of the young.

Downstairs, Elise knocked lightly on Sweet’s open door.

His voice, when it came out of the darkness, was alert.

“I’m leaving the house,” she said.

He switched on the lamp. “Another body?” A popular question, it seemed. Covers were tossed aside as he reached for a pair of ratty jeans. He’d recovered from the negative effects of chemotherapy, but another round was just a few days away.

“You need to stay here. With Audrey.”

His hand dropped the pants. “Oh. Right.” He didn’t yet get this responsibility thing, but he was catching on. Despite her resentment of him—resentment that might or might not fade—she’d become oddly used to his presence in her house.

At the back door, she set the alarm and locked up as she exited.

Savannah was never quiet, not even at 3:00 a.m. Deliveries were being made, and parties were taking place. Add to that the weirdly comforting sound of the street sweeper. Just the idea that entire streets could be swept and cleaned while people slept seemed a magical thing. And waking up to a shiny new world always left her with a sense of peace.

Silly of her.

As if the street sweepers could wash away death.

When Elise arrived at the scene, officers were wrapping up their interview with an older gentleman holding a black Lab on a leash.

“Jay Thomas Paul is in the patrol car,” said the officer in charge, a man who looked and acted like a bouncer.

“Officer Dunn, right?” They’d had some dealings in the past. Decent guy, if a little abrasive. Typical cop.

“Over there,” he told her, pointing.

Elise slid into the backseat of the patrol car, and her breath caught when she saw the ink and blood on Jay Thomas’s face. The word written on every spare inch of skin was
decipio
. Latin? Another enigmatic clue? Or just some sicko messing with Jay Thomas’s head?

“Do you need medical attention?” she asked.

“He cut me, but not deep. I think it can wait.”

Relief.
“What happened, Jay?” she asked softly.

Haltingly, he told her about a man he’d met in a bar a couple of weeks earlier. “He called me tonight. Asked me to come to his room.”

“Hotel room?”

“Yeah, I can tell you where it is.”

“How about the man’s name?”

“Chuck. That’s all I know. Well, he said his name was Charlie Brown, but I’m pretty sure that was a joke. I don’t even know if Chuck is his real name.” He paused in embarrassment. “He tied me up. I—I asked him to. I thought it would be exciting, but once I was strapped to the bed, he began cutting me.”

“How did you manage to get away?”

“He was drunk, really drunk, and he passed out. I was able to work the rope loose from one hand, then undo the rest. Once I was free, I ran. I didn’t even stop to grab my clothes or phone or anything. I just ran.”

“You did the right thing.”

He nodded and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.

“I’m going to have someone take you in so the crime-scene team can process you,” Elise said. “They’re going to need to get samples.”

“Do you think this might be him? The Savannah Killer?”

“I don’t know, but we have to make sure we don’t miss anything.”

“He was always asking about you and the case.” He let out a groan and put a hand to his forehead. “Probably pumping me for information.” His mouth trembled. “I’m so sorry.”

“This word . . .
decipio
. Are you familiar with it?”

“It’s Latin. It means trapped or deceived. Beguiled. Guess he had that right.”

She pulled out her phone and called the head of the local crime-scene team, a man named Abe Chilton. “I’ve got an assault victim who needs to be processed right away,” Elise told him.

“Sexual assault? Rape kit? Have her go to the hospital. You don’t need me for that.”

“This is a little more involved. The victim is male, and it’s possible the assailant was the Savannah Killer. We’re going to need skin and nail samples. You’ll have to treat his body as if it’s been involved in a homicide.”

“Be right down.”

Elise exited the backseat. The encounter, the writing on Jay’s face, could have been a sick mind having some twisted fun. It was no secret that the Savannah Killer left words on his victims.

This time Elise called Lamont. He answered with a gruff and groggy voice three rings later. She related the fiber discovery, filled him in on Jay Thomas, and gave him the location of the hotel where the journalist had been victimized. “Meet me in the parking lot.”

“Are you getting a warrant?” Lamont asked.

Judge Abernathy didn’t appreciate the seriousness of off-hour calls, and Elise was afraid they might already be too late. The man who’d assaulted Jay Thomas might have run. “We’ve got enough justification to go in warrantless, but I’ll contact the judge anyway.”
Worth a try.

“Good call.”

His agreement surprised her. Who’d given him happy pills?

“Meet us in the side lot, and we’ll go in together.”

“Be there in fifteen minutes.”

At the three-story hotel in a run-down area of town, Elise pulled out her badge and introduced herself to the big blond woman behind the desk. “We had a report of a possible assault taking place in room 234, and we need to speak to the guest. Can you give me his name?”

The woman bit her lip while Elise silently profiled her. Single mom with a couple of kids, struggling to make ends meet while holding down two jobs. She would have been within her rights to refuse to share the name. Instead, she hunched down over the computer screen while clicking keys. “Charles Almena.”

“How many ways in and out of the building?” Lamont asked.

“There’s a back and side door”—she pointed—“and the door you came in.”

Elise thanked her. With little conversation, the team fanned out. One officer remained in the lobby, and two others headed down long hallways to guard the exits while Elise, Lamont, and Dunn took the stairs to the second floor.

At room 234, Lamont reached over Elise’s head and knocked heavily on the door. “Police. Open up.”

So much for keeping a low profile.

“I believe in going in bold,” he said upon seeing Elise’s irritation.

They heard the sound of movement from inside, and Elise displayed her badge in front of the peephole. “Homicide.”

The door opened, and a hastily dressed, bleary-eyed man stood there, shirt unbuttoned, in wrinkled khaki dress slacks. “What’s this all about?”

“Are you Charles Almena?”

“Yes.”

It hit her that he was Lamont’s profile in the flesh, from the top of his head to his toes. Age, race, height, and weight. Even clothing.

Dunn spoke into his radio. “We have the suspect engaged. Repeat, suspect is engaged.”

“Suspect?” Almena looked from Elise to Lamont. “You’ve got the wrong room.”

“Do you know a Jay Thomas Paul?” Elise asked.

A door down the hall opened, and a frightened woman peeked out.

“Everything’s fine here,” Dunn assured her.

The woman’s face vanished and the door closed.

“Mr. Paul has filed a report against you,” Lamont said.

“For what?”

“Assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful restraint.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Elise’s phone rang:
Judge Rita Abernathy
.

“I’ve e-mailed a warrant,” the judge said.

“Thank you.” Elise disconnected. “Got the search warrant.”

The other officers appeared.

“Read him his rights,” Elise said.

Almena let out a roar of rage, pushed past them, and made it a few yards before he was tackled, his arms pulled behind him, cuffs slapped on his wrists.

“Add resisting arrest to that list,” Lamont said.

Two of the officers helped Charles Almena to his feet, then pushed him toward the elevator. “Let’s go.”

Elise would have preferred to let the crime-scene team collect evidence, but they wouldn’t be there until morning, and even sealing the room was no guarantee it would go undisturbed. A housekeeper could come along with a master key and destroy everything, so Elise retrieved her kit from the trunk of her car, and she and Lamont got to work.

“Look at this.” Lamont held up a piece of rope that had been left on the bed. “This could be a match for the burns on the bodies of Devro, Murphy, and Chesterfield.” He tucked the rope into an evidence bag. “You noticed the guy fit my profile, right?”

“I’d think that would disappoint you,” Elise told him, “because if Charles Almena is our killer, it means David Gould is innocent.”

“This could just be a nut job who’s following the killings and decided to scare your buddy, Jay Thomas. That guy is bully bait.”

With gloved hands, Elise lifted a black marker and dropped it in a labeled evidence bag. “Washable,” she said. “The press didn’t have that information.”

“Yeah, but Jay Thomas did. So they’re having this affair or whatever you want to call it, and Almena is pumping J.T. for information on the case. Then he acts out the very stuff Jay Thomas has told him. I’m betting it will all be made apparent in the interview.”

“Which I’ll conduct.”

Lamont frowned. “Or, hey, how about that father of yours. Why don’t you have him do it? Isn’t that why he was brought in to consult?”

“By Major Hoffman. And since she’s dead . . .”

“I think you should abide by her decision, just out of respect. Let your dad put on those special glasses he wears.”

He was baiting her. “How did you know about the glasses?”

“I hear things.”

She let it go. No way was she getting into it with him at a crime scene.

An hour into the evidence collection, Elise attempted to engage Lamont in actual conversation. “What happened between you and David? Why does he dislike you so much?”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t told you.”

“He has. A little, but I don’t know the whole story.”

Lamont paused as he dug through a paper bag. “His wife . . . She was beautiful. The kind of woman who stopped men dead in the street. I think she even did some modeling. They were mismatched, that’s for sure. But I couldn’t blame Gould. He wasn’t that smart about women. Kind of inexperienced, really, and oblivious to her misery. Because she
was
miserable—even though they had this perfect suburban life in this newly minted neighborhood.”

How strange it was to think the person Lamont was talking about was the person Elise knew. Or didn’t know.

“I’d stop by their house and she’d be crying. I don’t know. Maybe she had postpartum depression, or maybe she’d just gotten herself into a situation she couldn’t get out of. But anyway, yeah. We started seeing each other. When Gould was out of town for weeks at a time, I practically lived at his house. And he thanked me for it. Thanked me for watching out for his wife.”

Not an unusual tale.

“I felt bad.” He gingerly held up a sex toy before tucking it into an evidence bag. “I really did. Gould and I roomed together at Quantico. We’d partnered on a lot of cases. I finally told Beth we had to stop. When she asked why, I tried to let her down easy, so I told her I didn’t want to get involved with someone who had a kid.” He shook his head. “You don’t think somebody is going to do something like that. I mean, how could I have ever guessed? And Gould? I have damn good reason to think he’s capable of these killings. You didn’t know him back then, but he went nuts. Nuttier than now. When he found out what happened, when he found out I was the one who’d said that to her about the kid, he showed up at my door planning to kill me. And he might have succeeded if I hadn’t been having my weekly poker party, all cops. Somebody hit him with a stun gun, and he went down. We all agreed to keep it quiet, but now I wonder about the wisdom of that decision.”

Lamont might have been putting his own spin on the story, but everything he said made sense. She believed him. “I think we’ve covered what we can,” she said. “We’ll seal the door and let the crime-scene team finish up.”

Lamont handed her an evidence bag. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “Nobody sane kills her own kid so her boyfriend won’t leave her. Who does that?”

David’s wife.

CHAPTER 44

I
’m sending you some crime-scene photos, plus photos from last night’s assault on Jay Thomas Paul, the reporter I was telling you about.” Eyes on her computer screen, Elise dragged several images to her e-mail and hit “Send.”

“Got ’em,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Felix Drummond was one of the best handwriting analysts in the country, and typically even law enforcement had to wait months for a report.

“I appreciate your working me in,” Elise said.

“I’m all for helping to catch the bad guy if I can. I’ll call you with the results.”

“Thanks.”

She placed the receiver in the cradle and was about to call Jay Thomas to see how he was doing, when her cell phone rang. She checked the screen, and didn’t recognize the number. Without identifying herself, she answered with an abrupt and distracted hello.