The Collective (5 page)

Cait shrugged. “Like you said, look at me. Guy saw me coming and reacted the way your windshield would to an oncoming fly. It’s easy enough to get the drop on him if he assumes I’m no threat. And if you saw the video, you know that somebody had to step in. What would you have done?”

He gave a soft laugh. “Probably had my ass handed to me, but I get your point. Doesn’t mean there might not still be charges against you.”

“Not much I can do about that,” Cait said.

The detective looked her up and down again, but there was nothing creepy about it. He was checking her out with a cop’s eyes, not ogling her body.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

“Iraq,” she said. Half the truth had to be better than a total lie.

His eyes narrowed and he nodded, as if her answer explained everything. Maybe, to him, it did.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Get back to work. Somebody will track you down if there are any more questions.”

“Thanks.” Cait smiled as she slipped down from the hood of the police car and hurried back to the van. The rear doors were open and, when she reached them, she found Duffy leaning into the back, busting Jordan’s balls.

“Come on, man. We’re out of time,” Duffy said.

Jordan did not look up from the editing deck, where he was preparing the pre-recorded parts of their report for broadcast. His brown eyes were intense as he ran the images forward and backward, listening intently to the audio through big black headphones. Cait looked at the monitor and saw herself kick A-Train’s leg out from under him, saw the man fall and his wife go scrambling to safety, then saw the whole scene run quickly backward.

“Come on!” Duffy said, and he banged on the door to get Jordan’s attention.

Jordan snapped his head up, about to swear at Duffy, then hesitated when he spotted her there. Since the end of his tour, he had grown a thick, unruly beard that made him look almost Amish, but his smile still brightened her mood. Cait doubted she’d ever met a man as laid-back as Jordan. He had saved her life at least once in Iraq, and been her friend when nearly everyone else in their unit had turned from her.

Though, she had to admit, she did prefer him without the beard. It softened him a little, as if the hard man he had learned to be in Iraq, the capable soldier, was hiding from the world behind a fuzzy face. Cait found the man behind the beard more attractive. Not that her opinion counted, of course. They were friends and comrades, nothing more.

Duffy hadn’t noticed her arrival, but Jordan’s smile made him turn. The sportscaster looked like the kind of guy who spent far too much of his life playing tennis at a country club. Blond and blue-eyed, about thirty, the guy was a rising star. He was also a dick.

“Well, well,” Duffy said, nodding in some combination of approval, sexual innuendo, and uneasiness. “If it isn’t Boston’s newest media superstar. Way to make the news. When A-Train and his wife sue the station, that’ll be huge news, too.”

Cait gave a disgusted snort. “You think she’s going to stay with him?”

Duffy shrugged. “Happens all the time, women staying with men—especially famous men—who’ve beat them up. She’ll make excuses for him, just watch.”

“The guy is going to jail,” Cait said.

“Doesn’t mean they won’t sue,” Duffy replied. “Now get to work. We’ve got our live shot in about six minutes.” He turned to Jordan. “You all set?”

Jordan nodded, climbed out of the van, then turned to Cait.

“It’s all cued up.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “You did a good thing. I would’ve been in there myself in another second or two, and to hell with the job—”

“And he’d have kicked your ass,” Cait teased him.

“I may not have your skills, but I can hold my own,” Jordan said. “I did pretty damn well in hand-to-hand combat training.”

Cait grinned. “He’d have kicked your ass.”

Jordan smiled sheepishly. “No doubt.”

Cait laughed softly, but her good humor faded. “Listen, should I be worried? You hooked me up with this gig and I don’t want it to blow back on you.”

“Don’t think it for a second. First of all, Leyla’s got to be your priority, not whether I get some collateral damage because you stepped in to help someone. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be fine. How would it look if they fired you?”

Though they were only words, they helped. She smiled as Jordan departed, and then climbed into the back of the van. She told herself Jordan was right. It had been a good thing.

But nothing good would come of it.

Duffy had picked up his microphone and was smoothing his tie, but now he glanced up.

“Almost forgot,” he said. “Lynette asked me to tell you not to talk to anyone except the cops. No interviews until after they’re sure that nobody’s going to sue.”

No interviews. That was fine with her. Duffy had probably asked if he could interview Cait for the segment, and the station manager—Lynette Alfari—had shut him down.

“Whatever,” she said.

Jordan hefted the camera onto his shoulder, then headed around the front of the van to set up for the live part of the segment.

“Lynette also asked me to pass along a message,” Duffy said. “She wants you in her office at eight a.m.”

Then he was gone, following Jordan.

“Fantastic,” Cait whispered to herself. “My best night ever.”

His interrupted date with Molly had put Josh in a contemplative mood for the entire flight and the drive out to the crime scene. He wondered where the date would have led if work had not intruded, and pondered what kind of woman it would take to put up with a relationship in which she would always come second. Would any woman ever understand that? His ex-wife certainly hadn’t.

Throughout the flight, he had let his edginess out with humor. He felt like being funny, a little caustic, and just letting everything roll off of him. Sometimes, that was the only way to get through the job.

But he didn’t feel like being funny anymore as he followed Voss and Chang up the stairs. The whole house had been decorated in typical Florida coastal décor, all soft pastels and shell patterns. Even the framed photos of the family were shell-themed, but these had actual tiny shells behind the glass.

The father looked to have been in his late forties—ex-military, given the photos of him younger and in uniform—and the mother a lovely, dark-haired woman at least a decade younger. In most of the family photos, they were gazing at their twin boys with the kind of wonder only parents ever had. Josh paused to scrutinize one of the family photos more closely. The twins had dark tangles of black hair and deeply hued olive skin, even darker than their mother’s. He wondered if they were adopted or the product of a sperm donor. With the father’s fair skin and sandy hair, it seemed highly unlikely the boys were his biological children.

“Looks like the father was killed here in the corridor,” Chang began as they reached the top of the stairs. She pointed to a place on the pastel green wall where the plaster
had been dented. “There are no other signs of a struggle out here, but the crime-scene guys found hair caught in the cracked paint. They’ll probably match it to the dad. His killer either slammed him into the wall or got him off balance so that he fell against it.”

Voss had already taken a step past them, toward the open door of what appeared to be the master bedroom.

Josh studied the carpet under his feet. “No blood. What was the cause of death? Not the head trauma?”

“Strangulation,” Chang said, catching up with Voss. Apparently she had told them all she thought they needed to know about the murder in the hallway.

Josh didn’t move, staring at the dent in the wall. “What was his name again?”

Chang paused just outside the master bedroom. Voss had already gone inside. “Huh?”

“The dad. The colonel. Did he have a name?”

Josh already liked Chang. She seemed smart and competent and take-no-shit, and he admired all three of those qualities. And it didn’t hurt that she had a firm, petite figure her boring FBI clothes couldn’t hide, and lips that seemed on the verge of some kind of mischief. But when he saw the flash of self-recrimination that passed across her face in that moment, he liked her even more.

“Sorry. Of course he did. Philip Thomas Greenlaw, Colonel, U.S. Army, retired. Owns a cigar shop in Fort Myers, with another one supposed to open on Sanibel Island in October. His wife was Carla Jean, maiden name Santoro, and the twins were Michael and Neil.”

Josh nodded, letting the names sink in, so he knew who he was working for here. In ocean interdiction, assigned to hunt and capture drug runners and gun smugglers, they had rarely come face-to-face with the victims of the crimes they were trying to stop. They wouldn’t come face-to-face with the Greenlaws, either—their bodies had already been removed from the scene—but he had seen their pictures and now he had their names. As Troubleshooters, they were here to facilitate cooperation between agencies, not to solve crimes. But Josh was
on
this case, and he knew Rachael felt the same.

“Young to be retired,” Voss said.

Chang glanced at her. “Fifty-one. He kept himself in good shape. Carla was forty-two.”

“And the twins were adopted?” Josh asked.

“I thought you hadn’t seen the file,” Chang replied, frowning.

Voss gestured toward the stairs. “We saw the pictures. Not a huge leap.”

Chang glanced between Josh and Voss as if she was appraising them anew. “No, I guess it isn’t. The kids had been with the Greenlaws for two and a half years, but had only been their children legally for about five months.”

Josh looked again at the dent in the wall. “And now this.”

“Yeah. Now this.”

Voss headed into the master bedroom and Chang hurried after her. When Josh walked in, Chang was standing at the foot of the bed and Voss had already progressed to just inside the bathroom door. Neither woman looked at him. Chang’s attention seemed drawn by the tangle of sheets and the manner in which the pillows had been carefully arranged.

“The way we’ve got it figured, they were in bed together when they heard something out in the hall or in the boys’ room. Colonel Greenlaw went out to investigate and one of the suspects killed him. The second intruder—right now we’re going on the theory that there were two, but it could have been more—came into the room after Mrs. Greenlaw.”

Voss had her back to them. “And she ran for the bathroom.”

“Maybe she thought she could lock herself in,” Chang suggested.

Josh crossed the bedroom to stand behind his partner. Over her shoulder, he could see the shattered mirror and the broken reflective shards that filled the sink and littered the expensive seashell-patterned tile floor. Spatters of blood were everywhere, but not enough to indicate a stabbing or shooting.

“Cause of death?” Josh asked.

Chang’s nostrils flared in disgust. “Blunt trauma. Slammed her head into the mirror, then the sink. Caved in her skull.”

“Jesus,” Josh whispered.

Voss turned quickly, gaze dark and intense, and Josh and Chang both stepped out of her way as she strode into the hall again. They caught up to her quickly, but when Voss started farther down the hall, Chang held back.

“Sorry, I wasn’t kidding. I’m not going back into the twins’ room.”

Josh glanced at her. “Don’t worry about it.”

When he entered Michael and Neil Greenlaw’s bedroom, he expected blood, or worse—something gruesome. Instead, the bedroom showed no sign of the horror that had occurred. No blood soaked the sheets or painted the walls. The beds were rumpled and slept in, the pillows still carrying what might have been the impressions of the boys’ heads. Toys and picture books were scattered on the floor and shelves. A Winnie-the-Pooh border ran along the top of the wall. A ceiling fan rotated slowly, perhaps forgotten in all of the chaos of the past few hours.

Josh stepped back into the corridor and looked at Chang. “How did the boys die?”

Voss, walking around the twins’ room, perked up at the question, waiting for the answer.

“Actually, that was the entry point,” Chang said.

“The boys’ room?”

“They cut the screen just enough to be able to remove it. The window must have been open, and they locked it when they left. They even put the screen back when they were through, apparently hoping we’d be baffled as to how they got into the house.”

Voss came out into the corridor and the three of them stood looking at one another.

“So the twins were killed first,” Voss said. “And that was the sound their parents heard, the one Mr. Greenlaw came out to investigate?”

“Looks that way,” Chang confirmed. Then she looked at Josh. “To answer your question, we’re waiting on the M.E. to confirm cause of death on the entire family. I’m just telling you what we’re hypothesizing at this point. With the twins … pillows were found over their faces.”

“Suffocation,” Josh said.

Voss leaned against the wall, her shoulder jostling a framed beach scene. “All right. We’ve had the tour,” she said, studying Chang. “So what’s the terrorist angle?”

“You’ll get a full briefing,” Chang said, “but the nutshell version? The house is for sale. I’m sure you saw the sign. Three days ago—that would be Wednesday—the realtor brought two men by to look at the property. The Greenlaws weren’t supposed to be home—it’s bad form when showing a house, right?—but Mrs. Greenlaw had sent the colonel to the grocery store while she took the boys out to buy them new shoes.”