The Next Accident (13 page)

"Are they? A shocking number of people drink and drive every day without crashing. Look at Mandy, she'd already done it dozens of times before."

"Maybe he wanted an out. Think of it this way: even if we'd caught on right away, how are you going to prove who tampered with the seat belt weeks before a collision? That just leaves us with looking at who got her drunk. Victim was of age. Serving her isn't a crime, and letting her drive is back to being a civil matter, not criminal."

"Someone who wanted to plan a murder, but wanted to be cautious," Rainie murmured, then firmly determined, "no, I don't buy it. If you're going to go to this much trouble to kill someone, you're going to see it through. You're going to make sure you got the job done. Oh shit, we're idiots!"

She grabbed the magnifying glass and before Amity could react she was around the mutilated hunk of metal to the passenger's side. She pulled on the seat belt. It caught and held. Perfectly good, of course. It would need to be.

"You son of a bitch," Rainie said. And then Amity was holding the flashlight and she was running over the tight weave of the strap with the magnifying glass. "There! Right there!"

The fabric buckled and warped, a two-inch span where the fibers had been stretched as the SUV hit the pole, the seat belt caught, and a body flew against the strap.

"Meet passenger number two!" Rainie cried triumphantly, and then a heartbeat later, "Oh, Quincy, I am so sorry."

Society
Hill, Pennsylvania

The minute Bethie
opened her front door, her security system sounded a warning beep. She crossed the threshold and worked the keypad. As was her custom, she entered in the disarm code first, then requested a survey of the various security zones. All quiet on the western front.

Tristan shut the front door behind her. Then locked it.

"Nice system," he commented.

"Believe it or not, as part of our divorce decree, my ex-husband must provide basic security for the girls and me for the rest of our lives. Not that he minds. Quincy has been at his job a little too long; he sees homicidal maniacs everywhere."

"You can never be too sure," Tristan said.

"Perhaps." Bethie set down the picnic basket next to the entry table. It needed to be cleaned out, but that could wait until morning. She started humming, thinking about waking up with Tristan and the various possibilities for breakfast in bed. When was the last time she'd made omelets or biscuits or crepes suzette? When was the last time she'd started her day with anything more than black coffee and a boring piece of toast? She was so happy she'd gone out with Tristan today. And she was even happier that she'd taken these first few baby steps back into the land of the living.

She glanced absently at her answering machine and was surprised to see that she had eight new messages.

"Do you mind?" she asked, nodding her head toward the digital display. "It will only take a minute."

"By all means. Do you have some sherry? I can pour us each a glass while I wait."

Bethie directed him toward the small wet bar in her dining room, hoping her cleaning woman had been conscientious about checking the crystal decanter for dust; Bethie had last had a glass of sherry five years ago. Well, this was a night for new beginnings.

She picked up a little spiral notepad and hit play.

The first message was a hang up, from seven-ten that morning. The caller had just missed her: she'd left with Tristan only moments before. Then came another hang up. Then another. Finally, a person: Pierce calling shortly after noon. "We need to talk," her ex-husband said in that crisp manner of his. "It's about Mandy."

Bethie frowned. She felt the first prickle of unease. Another hang up. Another hang up. Then another one. The muscles in her abdomen tightened. She realized now that she was steeling herself for something bad, preparing her body for the blow.

It came at precisely 8:02 P.M. Pierce, once more on the machine. " Elizabeth, I've been trying to reach you all day. I'll be honest, I'm very worried. When you get this message, please call me immediately on my cell phone, regardless of time. Some things have come up. And Bethie – maybe we need to talk about Tristan Shandling because I tried to run a background check on him today and no such person exists. Call me."

Bethie's gaze came up. She fumbled with the volume switch on her answering machine but it was already too late. Tristan stood in the doorway, holding two tiny glasses of sherry and gazing at her curiously.

"You asked Pierce to run a background check on me?"

She nodded dumbly. The blood had drained out of her face. She felt suddenly light-headed, unsteady on her feet.

"Why, Elizabeth Quincy, you have finally surprised me."

Tristan set down the two glasses on a side table.
Run,
Bethie thought. But she was in her own house, she didn't know where to go. And then she was thinking of all those textbooks Pierce used to have in his office. The day she'd come home and found her girls staring wide-eyed at a pile they'd pulled down from the bookshelf, color photo after color photo of mutilated female flesh, naked, tortured bodies with hacked-off breasts.

"Who… who are you?"

"Supervisory Special Agent Pierce Quincy, of course. I have a driver's license that says so."

"But… but you have the scar. I touched it, I know!" Her voice was rising.

In comparison, he sounded increasingly serene. "Did it myself, the day you pulled the plug on Mandy. A sterile knife, a steady hand with the needle. There are certain things you should never leave to chance."

"Mandy… You knew Mandy… Her expressions, my nickname…"

"Have you seen me take any pills, Bethie? Haven't you wondered if a man with a brand-new kidney should drink two bottles of champagne? My cover is never perfect, you know. I like to leave the person a sporting chance. But you women insist on seeing only what you want to see – at least while you're falling in love. We all know it changes after that."

"I don't understand."

"Your understanding is not important to me."

"Pierce is a high-ranking FBI agent. You won't get away with this!"

He smiled thinly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his black leather gloves. "That's what I'm counting on. You know, I wasn't going to do this so soon. I was going to wait until the night you came to me, hysterical about what had happened to Kimberly. And then I was going to tell you how much she always hated you. Kimberly and Mandy. It was never their father who traumatized them, Bethie. It was you, "weak, overprotective, unforgiving you."

"Don't hurt my daughter. Don't you touch Kimberly!"

"Too late." He pulled on the gloves. "Run, Bethie," he murmured.
"Run!"

Greenwich Village
, New York
City

In
the middle of the night, Kimberly bolted awake. Her breathing was harsh and sweat had glued her T-shirt to her skin. She was shivering. Bad dream. She didn't remember of what.

She waited, focusing on breathing again until her heart finally slowed in her chest. Then she turned on her bedside light and padded silently into the kitchen. The door of her roommate's bedroom was closed. She could just make out the low undertones of Bobby's rhythmic snores. The sound soothed her. Bobby had a new girlfriend and hadn't been around much lately. That was his business, of course, but tonight she was glad that he was here. Someone else shared the tiny apartment. She was not alone.

She sat down at the kitchen table. She knew from prior experience that it would be a while before she would go back to sleep. Even then, she could not be sure that she wouldn't dream. Sometimes it was Mandy driving her Explorer while Kimberly tried desperately to grab the steering wheel. Sometimes it was herself, running through a long dark tunnel, seeing her father far ahead but never able to catch up with him. Once she dreamed of her mother. Bethie was dancing ballet in a beautiful white tutu and no matter what Kimberly did, she could not get Bethie's attention. Then a rift opened up in the floor, and Kimberly watched her mom dance right over the edge.

Anxious dreams from an anxious subconscious. Kimberly glanced at the phone. She should just pick it up. Call her mother. Call her father. Get over whatever it was she needed to get over.

But she didn't do it. She sat at the kitchen table. She listened to the deep sound of silence that exists only after midnight. And then, after minutes turned into an hour, she made her way back to bed.

Motel 6, Virginia

Rainie had just returned from her salvage-yard rendezvous, when the phone in her motel room shrieked to life. She glanced at the clock. Three A.M. She looked back at the phone. She wondered if the caller was Quincy or the hotshot lawyer Carl Mitz. Then she wondered which would be worse. She picked up the phone.

It was Quincy. "I'm in Philadelphia. At Bethie's house. She's dead."

Rainie said, "I'll be right there."

Society
Hill
, Pennsylvania

Rainie made the
nighttime drive to Philly in just over two hours. She ignored speed limits, rules of the road, and most standard courtesy. And she arrived in full-warrior mode.

Elizabeth Quincy's elite town house was not hard to find. Rainie simply drove into Society Hill and followed the garish display of flashing lights. A white medical examiner's van was illegally parked up on the sidewalk. A cluster of three police cruisers represented the ground troops. One older unmarked sedan would be the pair of homicide detectives; they'd had the decency to also park up on the sidewalk, trying to leave enough room for traffic to squeeze by on the narrow lane. Three larger, dark sedans, however, lined up as a single clog in the space the detectives had tried to leave. They would be the feds. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians, Rainie thought immediately, and wondered how Quincy was faring.

She parked a block back and walked up as the sky was just beginning to lighten with the first tinge of dawn. Half a dozen neighbors hovered in overpriced doorways, wearing silk dressing robes and Burberry overcoats and gazing at Rainie cautiously as she passed. The neighbors looked scared. The tall, narrow town houses sat shoulder to shoulder, and for all their impression of discreet wealth, they weren't that different from one long apartment complex. Now, a very bad thing had happened down the hall, and not all the money in the world could put enough distance between that and them.

Rainie arrived at Bethie's residence. Inside the hastily roped off perimeter, a young officer was guarding the scene, sipping coffee from Wawa's and yawning every two or three seconds. Rainie flashed her PI's license.

"Nope," he said.

"I'm working for FBI Agent Pierce Quincy," she countered.

"And I'm working for Mayor John F. Street. Fuck off."

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" She arched a brow, then dropped her voice to deadly serious. "Hey rookie, go inside. Find Supervisory Special Agent Quincy and tell him Lorraine Conner is here."

"Why?"

"Because I work with him, because he personally called me to this scene, and because you don't want to start your day getting your ass kicked by a girl."

"Like I'm going to start my day taking orders from one – "

"Officer."

Both Rainie and the young officer jerked their attention to the open doorway. Of all people, Special Agent Glenda Rodman stood there, wearing the same stark gray suit from the day before, except as she'd also been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, her dark hair was a bit more mussed around her face. Rainie thought the hairstyle was kinder, but mostly she was mortified at being caught in yet another losing battle.

"Special Agent Quincy has requested Ms. Conner's presence," Glenda informed the officer. "Do allow her in, and don't mind what she says. I understand that she's not a morning person."

"Oh, I like mornings just fine. It's people I can't stand."

"If you will follow me…"

Officer I'm-in-Charge grudgingly raised the police tape. In turn, Rainie flashed him a gloating smile, then immediately blanked her features before entering the scene. She had no sooner followed Special Agent Rodman into the foyer, when she was assaulted with the stench of blood.

She recoiled, caught herself, and for a moment, simply had to stand her ground. Special Agent Rodman had stopped as well. Her expression was patient, perhaps even kind. At that moment, Rainie understood just how bad it was going to get.

Blood was everywhere. Streaked across ecru-colored walls, splattered onto oil canvases, pooled on parquet floors and century-old silk carpets. In the foyer, the table had been toppled, the phone yanked out of its socket, and the answering machine dashed against a massive gold-framed mirror. Shards of glass riddled the floor, and the sweet smell of alcohol mingled with bodily fluids.

Jesus, Rainie thought. She couldn't get beyond that.
Jesus
.

Special Agent Rodman was moving. She led Rainie into the dining room, where crime-scene technicians were now dusting a gleaming cherrywood table for prints, while another pair of officers were rolling up the oriental rug to be shipped to the lab. Glenda paused again. She was providing a tour of the scene, Rainie realized. Giving discreet but effective highlights of events.

It would appear that the attack started in the foyer.

Given the spray pattern, the weapon was maybe a knife or blunt object. Elizabeth is ambushed. Elizabeth fights back. Elizabeth runs into the dining room. A gilded French lamp. Rainie saw it ripped out of the wall and flung across the room. The base bore a small round mark of blood and hair. His? Hers? She supposed it depended on who grabbed the lamp first. More spray patterns on the far wall. Someone had taken another solid hit, probably Elizabeth.

Bloody footprints on the oak parquet floor. Rainie and Glenda followed them into the Spanish-style kitchen, where a large butcher's block of knives had been overturned on the tiled counter. The smaller knives, paring knives, steak knives, had been knocked on the floor as someone – again him, her, who got here first? – reached frantically for the butcher blades. It had not gone well. More blood, smeared along the vast expanse of deep blue tiles, a larger print on the floor.

Rainie could see it now. Quiet, refined Elizabeth Quincy attacked, wounded, already dizzy from terror and blood loss, racing into the kitchen. Knowing she was overpowered and outmaneuvered. Desperate to even the odds. Then seeing her collection of knives. And making a desperate gamble.

Poor, poor, Elizabeth. Knives were always a bad choice for a woman. Blades required skill, strength, and reach, attributes better suited to a man. It was one of those things police officers got to analyze in case studies. Women who ran into the kitchen for a knife, almost always had it used on them instead. Bethie should have gone after a cast iron skillet. Something big and heavy that could punish an opponent without a great deal of accuracy.

Had she realized that as he caught her at the end of the counter? Had she considered her other options as she went down on the hardwoods, her bloody fingers scrabbling at the cupboard handles, desperate for support?

On the floor was a clear imprint of her hip and her thigh as she'd fallen on her side. But somehow she'd managed to fight him off, because the blood trail kept going. She had been tough. Or he simply hadn't wanted it to end.

"It's trickier in here," Special Agent Rodman murmured. "Follow the tape."

For the first time, Rainie noticed the masking tape forming a thin, zig-zagging line through the debris field. Smart, she decided, having once worked a large, complicated crime scene herself. By the time all was said and done, dozens of people would have walked through this house, searching for evidence and providing their individual areas of expertise. It would take weeks to sort it all out, and months to write it all up. Best to try and corral the intrusion from the very start, versus trying to sort out all the sources of contamination later, as she had needed to do.

Rainie tiptoed along the masking tape, following it into the hallway, where the burgundy runner carried wet splotches and the walls bore a cacophony of bloody handprints. The prints ran the length of the tight, claustrophobic space, an obscene version of sponge painting.
Jesus,
Rainie thought again.

"We think he did this postmortem," Glenda said.

"But the palm prints are too small to be his."

"They're not his."

" Quincy walked through all this?" Rainie asked sharply.

"Many times. At his own request."

They came to the master bedroom. Rainie didn't look at the bed right away. The ME and his assistant were standing over there and she did not want to see what they were studying that had already caused the assistant to turn an unnatural shade of green. She looked at the perimeter first. More shattered mirrors. Two lamps ripped from the wall. Another phone jerked from a nightstand. Pillows had been gutted, strewing feathers across the deep-pile rug. Perfume bottles had been shattered, leaving the horrible, cloying scent of flowers in a blood-ravaged room.

"Somebody had to have heard something," Rainie said, her voice no longer quite sounding like her own. "How could all of this go on without someone calling the police?"

"The previous owner was a concert pianist," Glenda said. "When he had the town house redone twenty years ago, he soundproofed the walls so he wouldn't disturb his neighbors."

"Who… who finally called the police?"

" Quincy."

"He was here?"

"He claims he drove here shortly after midnight, when he still couldn't reach his ex-wife by phone. He was worried about her safety, so he took a ride."

"He claims?" Rainie didn't like that phrase. "He
claims?"

Special Agent Rodman wouldn't meet her gaze anymore. "There is a stained-glass window broken in the master bathroom," she murmured. "One theory is that the UNSUB broke into the house earlier in the evening, and surprised Mrs. Quincy when she came home."

"One theory?"

"This house is equipped with a state-of-the-art alarm system. It never went off."

"Was it armed?"

"We are working with the security company now to determine that information. They should be able to provide us with a record of the system's most recent activity."

"So one theory is that a stranger broke in and ambushed her. The second would be that the attacker was someone she knew and trusted." Rainie could no longer contain herself. "You're looking at Quincy, aren't you? Goddammit, you suspect him!"

"No, I don't!" Special Agent Rodman spoke up in a low hush. Her gaze darted toward the ME, then she quickly bent closer. "Listen to me, Ms. Conner. It is not in my nature to share information about a case. And it is certainly not in my nature to needlessly provide details to some out-of-state pseudo-cop. But it would appear that you and Special Agent Quincy are friends, and he's going to need friends. We – meaning the Bureau – are behind him right now. Personally, I have spent all day listening to various sexual sadists leave not-very-subtle messages on his answering machine. We understand that there is more to this situation than meets the eye. We cannot, however, say the same for the locals."

"You're the feds, pull rank!"

"Can't."

"Bullshit!"

"Honey, there's this thing called law. Look it up sometime."

Rainie scowled. "Where is he? Can I talk to him?"

"Detectives willing, you can try."

"I want to see him."

"Then follow me."

Glenda headed back toward the hallway. Passing through the doorway, Rainie made the mistake this time of looking at the bed. She could not quite contain the gasp that rose up in her throat.

Glenda glanced at her grimly. She said once more, " Quincy needs friends."

Two plainclothes detectives had Quincy sequestered off in the one room that appeared spared in the attack. At any other time, Rainie might have laughed at the incongruous sight. This room had obviously been one of the girls', the walls papered in a soft yellow with tiny pink and lilac flowers, the twin bed covered in a matching comforter, and the canopy top draped with yards of dreamy white gauze. A white wicker makeup table sat against one wall, topped by an oval mirror and still bearing small photos marking a young girl's major passages in life – leaping in cheerleading practice, arms wrapped around a best friend, attending the prom. A dried corsage hung from a ribbon on the mirror, and a collection of brightly colored stuffed animals sat on the dresser top.

The room offered only a dainty, lilac-covered wicker bench
,
now occupied by one burly detective whose chin was nearly resting upon his knees. The other detective stood, while Quincy sat on the gauze-draped bed with a ruffled yellow pillow tucked against his thigh.
The Gestapo does Laura Ashley,
Rainie thought, and wished the sight of Quincy 's pale, tightly shuttered face didn't twist her heart painfully in her chest.

"What time did you say you arrived again?" the seated detective was asking. He had a single fierce, bushy
brow that overshadowed his eyes – Cro-Magnon man in a cheap gray suit.

"A little
after midnight. I did not glance at my watch."

"The
neighbor, Mrs. Betty Wilson, claims she saw the victim
return home with a man fitting your description shortly after ten P.M."

"I was not here at ten P.M. AS I've stated already, I did not arrive here until after midnight."

"Where were you at ten?"

"By definition, Detective, I was in my
car
at ten P.M., driving here, so I could arrive after twelve."

"Got any witnesses to that?"

"I drove here alone."

"What about toll receipts?"

"I never asked for any receipts. At the time, I didn't realize that I would need an alibi."

The two detectives exchanged glances. Victim's ex-husband appears evasive and unnecessarily hostile. Let's get the thumbscrews and brass knuckles.

Rainie figured now was a good time to interrupt. "Detectives," she said quietly.

Three pairs of eyes swung toward her. The two detectives scowled, obviously assuming she was a lawyer – who else would turn up at this time of night/morning? Quincy, on the other hand, registered no reaction at all. He had obviously seen his ex-wife's remains on her feather-strewn bed. After that, any further emotion would be superfluous.

"Who the hell are you?" Cro-Magnon did the honors.

"Who do you think? Name is Conner, Lorraine Conner."

She held out her hand authoritatively, and with the long-suffering sigh policemen reserve just for lawyers, Cro-Magnon conceded to shake her hand – with a crushing grip. "Detective Kincaid," he muttered. Rainie turned to his partner, a slightly built man with intense blue eyes. "Albright," he supplied and shook her hand as well while giving her a more appraising assessment. Rainie pegged him as the brains behind the operation. Cro-Magnon rattled the beehive. Smaller, less threatening guy took excellent notes.