The One That Got Away (5 page)

Zoë had the cab drive her over to Russian Hill. The neighborhood was awash with restaurants and bars. She went stag because friends were another casualty of the event. None of them treated her the same. Some blamed her for leaving Holli behind. It wasn’t that she disagreed with them, but she would have liked to know how they would have handled the situation. Others felt the need to treat her as though she possessed a terminal disease. No, it was better to seek the company of strangers. That way, she came without baggage and left without attachments.

She walked into Ferdinand’s. It was one of a dozen bars and restaurants she hit on a regular basis in the area. It had an upscale restaurant that served a professional clientele. Certainly not the kind of place for a mall cop making minimum wage, but she was an attractive, young woman. If she made a “friend” fast, she never had to pay for more than one drink or her meal.

The place was packed shoulder to shoulder, which was busy for a Tuesday night. She squeezed her way to the bar and ordered a cosmo, then grabbed a barstool when one opened up.

It didn’t take long for someone to fill the empty seat next to her. She put him in his early thirties. He wasn’t bad looking, but he let the expensive suit elevate his importance. He’d tugged his tie to one side in some manufactured attempt to prove he worked hard, but just one glance at his manicured hands said that perfecting his appearance was the closest he came to manual labor.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked.

She glanced at the watch on his wrist. Three minutes had elapsed since she had walked in. That was a near personal best for someone to hit on her. “No, it’s free.”

“Great. I’ve been on my feet all day. I’ll get up as soon as your people get here.”

“I’m hooking up with a couple of girlfriends later.” She smiled, which was something that came easy with strangers.

She liked how his smile widened when she made no mention of a boyfriend. Guys were so easy to hook. She pretended she hadn’t noticed the smile and continued with her tale.

“But knowing those two, they’ll be late. I don’t understand why I bother making plans.”

Lies came to her just as easily as the smiles. When she talked to strangers, she was a blank sheet. She could be anything she wanted to be, and men would believe it.

“Hey, we’ve all got friends like that. Have you paid for that drink?”

“Not yet.”

“As an apology for having lousy friends, that drink is on me.”

He signaled to the bartender. He told him that he was buying and that he’d have some Japanese beer she had never heard of. She liked how he insisted that he’d drink from the bottle in an obvious attempt to enhance his masculinity. They clinked the glass and bottle together in a toast.

“I’m Zoë.”

“I’m Rick,” he said and they shook hands. “Rick Sobona.”

“You said you were on your feet all day. What do you do?”

“Advertising. I’ve had Apple in the office all day for a pitch meeting. I say ‘I,’ but I really mean my team and I.”

She guessed it was real panty-lowering stuff for most airheads, but she saw through his star quality. If his firm had Apple in town, they’d be wining and dining them, and if that was happening and he was anybody, he’d be wining and dining along there with them. She didn’t bother pointing out the holes in his story. It wasn’t as if she was averse to exaggeration.

“And what do you do?”

“Accounting.”

He looked her up and down. “You don’t look like much of a bean counter.”

She pressed a hand to her chest in mock surprise. “Should I be offended? Are you saying I don’t look smart enough to be an accountant?”

“Oh, no, you look plenty smart,” he said with a sheepish smile, which quickly turned lascivious, “but you look plenty hot too.”

With a comment like that, he took it to the end zone a little too quick, but she guessed coming in alone, dressed the way that she had, she’d invited the first-to-the-finish-line type.

She smiled his compliment away. “You’re very sweet.”

The bartender came by and asked them if they wanted to see a menu. The offer elevated their relationship from people talking to people on the verge of something. They ordered food and a second round of drinks, and a third round when the food arrived. The meal helped soak up the alcohol. It was rarely her friend, and she was already feeling the effects of the three cocktails.

Sobona proved to be just as much of a lightweight as she was when it came to booze. The Japanese beers had dulled the sharp edge to his speech and forced his eyelids half-closed.

He leaned in close. “I was thinking, I don’t live far from here. Why don’t we grab a cab—hey, that rhymes—and go back to my place? What do you say?”

This was where things came to the tricky part of the festivities—the letdown. Rick Sobona was good for a free drink and making a dull weekday night interesting, but that was it. For all his bravado and desire, he wasn’t her type, and she wasn’t going home with him. She never went home with anyone. Not anymore.

One of the many flat screens above the bar caught her attention. The news was playing, the volume barely above a whisper and drowned out by the bar’s noise.
Breaking news . . .
chased across the bottom of the screen. The main shot was of a police cordon in front of one of the piers along the Embarcadero. In typical crime-scene fashion, uniformed officers held a perimeter, while onlookers crowded around in the hope of a glimpse. In the far distance, men in suits, probably inspectors, roved in and around the building. An inset showed a news anchor talking with their reporter on the scene. She wouldn’t have given the report a second glance if it hadn’t been for the headline—
Murder victim found suspended
.

Alarm bells rang in Zoë’s head. Her chest tightened up on her, and she found it hard to breathe. The lack of oxygen intensified the effect of alcohol in her bloodstream. It seemed to converge on her brain. Every time she tried to grasp what the TV was showing, the booze knocked her understanding loose, sending it skittering into vague recesses she couldn’t find. She took long, deep breaths. It stemmed the rising panic, but just for now.

Zoë snagged the bartender’s arm as he went by. “Can you turn the TV up?”

He looked at her as if she were crazy.

“I need to hear this.”

“Hey, I’m talking here,” Sobona whined.

She ignored him. “I need to hear this,” she repeated to the bartender.

He picked up the remote and raised the volume. There was a collective groan from the majority in the bar, who turned to see why the TV was allowed to cut into their lives.

She was making fists, tightening, then loosening. “Louder, please.”

“Planet earth to Zoë. Planet earth to Zoë. Rick speaking.”

“Just to conclude,” the field reporter said, “the body of a woman was found at Pier 25 earlier tonight. Details are vague right now. The SFPD hasn’t released any information, but according to eyewitnesses, the victim was naked, bound by the wrists, suspended from the structure, and possibly whipped.”

The fear slammed into her, the impact of it forcing her to grab the bar. The world spun, and when it stopped, she wasn’t in the bar or even San Francisco, she was naked, alone in a shed in the desert. It was happening again. It was happening here.

She grabbed her purse. “I have to go.”

“What?” Sobona said. “What’s going on here? Did I suddenly get boring? I thought we were moving this party.”

“I’m sorry. Another time.”

She spun around on her barstool and hopped off. She had made her way about halfway to the door through the wall of patrons when a hand grabbed her trailing arm. She whipped around to find Sobona holding her wrist.

“We aren’t done.”

The grasp was a mistake. She wasn’t the hapless victim she’d been in the past. She had learned the skills to defend herself.

Zoë didn’t argue or complain. She acted on instinct. With her free hand, she grabbed his thumb and jerked it back. He yelped and released his grip on her. She maintained the pressure. The simple maneuver drove his arm into his chest and him down to his knees to prevent his thumb from breaking. Zoë released her grip.

“You bitch.” The hatred behind the word seemed born more out of the public embarrassment than anything else.

Sobona lunged and met the heel of Zoë’s hand coming in from the opposite direction. It smashed into his nose with enough significant force to bring tears but not enough to break it.

“You never, ever touch a woman like that again,” she screamed in his face. “Do you understand me?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Neither Rick Sobona nor anyone from Ferdinand’s chased after Zoë. That didn’t mean someone wouldn’t call a cop. She couldn’t deal with that noise right now. There was too much going on in her head as it was. She needed the police, but not for this. She had to know if the murdered woman was linked to Holli. Had she known Holli?

She moved fast and grabbed the first cab to come her way. She told the driver to take her to Pier 25. One thing about the killer choosing an obvious landmark like Pier 25 was that it was easy to find.

She leaned forward in her seat, her hands balled into tight fists. Her body thrummed with the adrenaline coursing through her. She wished it was just a side effect of taking Sobona down, but it was pure fear. Fear of what had happened to her and Holli. Fear of what had happened to this murdered woman. Fear that it could be starting all over again for her.

Fear is the enemy
, she thought. It was one of Jarocki’s phrases. Fear clouded the mind, obscured judgment, and ruined recovery. She was in a state of panic and needed to calm down. She performed one of his breathing techniques. She sucked in air and held it for a second, before releasing it. She repeated it ten times and felt the fear ebb away with each breath. She wasn’t sure if Jarocki’s party trick worked because the forced injection of oxygen brought clarity to the brain or because the simple act of controlling her inhalations took her focus off her panic. Either way, it worked. She wasn’t calm, but she was in control of herself.

She caught the taxi driver eyeing her in his mirror. She must have looked crazy to him. Was she? Her reaction to the news story certainly felt nuts. She’d seen dozens of murder reports since the event and had never reacted like she had tonight, but the way this woman had been suspended screamed a connection with her case. She had to know if that connection was real. She didn’t care if she embarrassed herself in the process.

The cab stopped two blocks short of where she asked to be dropped, but with all the cops, camera crews, and onlookers, it was as close as anyone was getting. She paid the cabbie and jumped out.

She raced up to the crowd, but the wall of people in front of her gave her only glimpses of the developments beyond.

“Have the cops said anything?” she asked the people around her.

“They ain’t saying shit to us,” the man next to her said.

“All we’ve seen is people go in and come out,” the woman directly in front of Zoë said. “The body’s still in there because no one has brought it out.”

“Did anyone here see the body?”

She got a round of nos and head shakes.

“Did we see the body?” a woman snapped. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Zoë could ask her the same thing.

“Where’s the person who found the woman?”

“The cops have them,” a guy in his twenties said.

“Them?”

“I think two people found the body.”

“I heard it was just one person,” someone else chipped in.

This was pointless. No one knew anything, and if they said they did, it would just be speculation at best.

Zoë pushed her way through the crowd, then waved down a cop behind the cordon.

“Can I help you?” the officer said.

“I need to speak to whoever’s in charge.”

“Why?”

“I need some answers.”

“I’m sure you do, but this is an active investigation. There will be no press releases.”

She should have known she’d get the wall of silence. “I’m not asking just because I’m curious. I may have information.”

She held off from saying she might have encountered the killer, because her conversation was drawing too much attention from the now-interested crowd.

“Like what information? Did you know the victim?”

“Yes. No. That’s why I want to talk to someone. I might know something. I have information.”

The cop gave her that I’ve-heard-it-all-before look. “Please step back, miss.”

“No.”

Her blunt reply shocked him. He seemed lost for a moment, but he soon recovered. He looked her up and down. He took in the dress, the bare skin, and the makeup. He leaned in and sniffed her breath. “Have you been drinking tonight, miss?”

She groaned inside. “Yes, but what has that got to do with anything?”

“Look, if you don’t leave, I will arrest you for public intoxication. If you’d like me to call a cab, I’d be happy to do it.”

This cop was wasting her time. She shouldn’t go home and wait for the answers to come out in the news. Not knowing the truth would eat her up. There was no way she was waiting to find out, and she as sure as shit wasn’t letting this guy get in her way.

She spotted a couple of men in suits emerging from the building. Both of them were pulling surgical gloves off their hands. They had to be inspectors or at least have better knowledge of the case than this cop.

“Sure.”

She made a pretense of leaving, and just as the policeman turned his back, she ducked under the crime-scene tape and bolted for the men in suits. A cry went up from the crowd, followed by the cry of the cop, telling her to stop. She heard the thump-thump of footfalls on the pavement behind her.

“Excuse me, are you in charge?” she yelled out to the men.

A second later, both men raced toward her.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Stop,” the cop’s voice rang out from behind her again.

He sounded close and he was. He slammed into her, driving her to the ground. The cop took the brunt of the impact on his shoulder, protecting her, although her purse went flying and one of her heels shot off into the distance.