The Seventh Victim (45 page)

She vanished into the bedroom, and he made his way past several black-and-white photo images hanging on the dining room wall. It didn’t take a practiced eye to know they were worth money. The kitchen, glittering stainless steel and granite, looked as if it had just been cleaned. Hell, if a surprise visitor showed up at his apartment ... well, it sure as hell wouldn’t be this nice. He grabbed a cola from the fridge and popped the top. As the cool liquid rolled down his parched throat, he wondered how the hell he’d landed in his ex’s house.

Jo turned on the shower, kicked off her shoes and socks, and then leaned on the sink staring into the fogging mirror. She was grateful her expression looked calm and her cheeks had not flushed with shock. Brody Winchester. She’d heard he’d moved back to town but had hoped Austin was big enough for her to avoid him.

For several seconds she stared until the steam misted over all traces of her.

“Holy shit,” she whispered as she turned and pulled off her hoodie, workout shirt and pants.

She stepped into the shower and ducked her head under the hot spray barely noticing as it streamed over her body and rinsed the salty sweat from her skin.

Brody
f-ing
Winchester was in her house. Getting a soda out of her fridge. Brody
f-ing
Winchester was sitting on her sofa like it was old home week.

Brody
f-ing
Winchester.

Her ex-husband.

It had been fourteen years since they’d last seen each other. For several years after their divorce she’d dreamed of facing him again and demanding an apology. She’d imagined him seeing the error of his ways and offering sincere regret. The dream had sustained her for a time but after several years, she’d simply grown tired of being angry. And so she’d let Winchester go, truly believing he was out of her system.

And then she’d seen him standing in the gym, staring at her as if she were an odd curiosity. She’d been taken aback, lost her hold, and practiced speeches recited too many times after the divorce were forgotten.

She groaned. She’d invited him into her home. Offered him a soda. And a sandwich. “You were always a pushover around him.”

She willed the water to wash away her thoughts and disappointments.
Let go. Let go.
The familiar mantra lapped over her taking with it some of the emotion.

Brody’s arrival wasn’t personal. It was business. And he was acting like an adult, a professional. He wasn’t the newly enlisted twenty-two-year-old marine who had all the answers, and he wasn’t looking at her as if she owed him. Nor was she an awkward eighteen-year-old grateful for any kind of love and attention. She didn’t need him, not as she thought she had all those years ago.

The hot water beaded on her forehead. She was thirty-two. He was thirty-six. If they couldn’t act like grown-ups now when would they ever? The past was the past. Let it go and move on.

This time tomorrow her interview with Harvey Lee Smith would be over and Brody would be out of her life again. Case, hopefully, closed.

She shut off the water, toweled off, dried her hair quickly and dressed in a dark pencil skirt, white blouse and matching jacket. She put on her pearl necklace and earrings and as she promised was ready to leave within thirty minutes.

When she emerged from her bedroom, her cats had surrounded Brody. Atticus, a sixteen-pound orange cat, sat at the end of the sofa staring at Brody as if he wanted to attack. Shakespeare, a wiry black cat with a snub-nose tail sat on the floor out of his reach and Mrs. Ramsey, a small gray tabby, sat in his lap, purring as he rubbed her between the ears.

God, what he must think of her. All these years and she was still not only the nerdy smart girl, but also the single lady with the house full of cats.

She snatched up her purse and snapped it open. “Ready?”

He finished off his soda and gently nudged Mrs. Ramsey back onto the couch. As he rose, his gaze lingered on her a half a beat before he held up the can. “Yep. Where’s your trash can?”

Her first instinct was to take the can and throw it out for him. She’d have done it for anyone but him. “Under the sink in the kitchen.”

As he disposed of the can, she checked her wallet to make sure she had enough cash as well as her ID. She tucked in a notebook, extra pens as well as a point-and-shoot camera. “I’ll follow you to the airport.”

He moved toward her, hat balanced in his hand, each step measured.

When had she forgotten he was so tall and broad-shouldered? He’d been like that in college, possessing a room simply by entering. Age had certainly not whittled away his muscle tone. He was broader in the shoulders and his legs and his wrists had grown thicker.

He’d never been classically or pretty-boy handsome. Very male had been the best way to describe him. Age had not only wiped away the traces of youth, but had left his face with a rawboned leanness that bordered on menace.

“It could be a late night,” he said. “Better not to leave an extra car at the airport.”

No doubt his frame all but filled the front seat of that Bronco. “I don’t mind.”

“It’ll be easier if I drive.”

A rebuttal danced on the tip of her tongue and then she swallowed it. The more she protested the bigger deal she made out of the whole situation. And this was not a big deal. It was business.

“Fine.” Atticus meowed, jumped off the back of a chair. “Let me feed the cats.”

He held out his hat, indicating the way to the kitchen. “You’ve wrangled yourself a real herd here.”

“They kinda found me.”

“You’re a soft touch.”

“Maybe.” She opened the kitchen pantry, scooped out a mound of dried food and dropped it into three different bowls scattered around the kitchen and den. Atticus took the bowl by the bin. Shakespeare moved to his bowl under the kitchen table and Mrs. Ramsey ate behind the chair.

“That big red one runs the roost,” Brody said.

She filled a water bowl and set it beside Atticus. “I’ve had him a year. But as soon as he arrived he took over.”

“Is he growling?”

“He growls when he eats. Defense mechanism, I suppose. Vet thinks he fended for himself a good while. He was half starved and pretty banged up when he came to me.”

“Give the ’ol boy credit for surviving.”

“Let me check in with my neighbor and let him know I’ll be gone. There’s a fifty percent chance of rain this evening, and if we get grounded the cats will need to be fed.”

He followed her out the front door. “Still watch the weather every morning?”

Still eat Frosted Flakes in the morning?
The unexpected memory had her pulling the front door closed with a too-firm slam. She turned the key in the lock until the dead bolt slid into place. “The first personal reference to our short but brief marriage—the elephant in the room.”

He stood at the base of the stairs, one foot on the bottom step. “I never was good at pretending.”

“Cutting honesty from what I remember.”

He settled his hat on his head. He tightened and released his jaw. “There something between us we need to lance before we get this show on the road?”

“No.” Emotions tightened and released. She nodded toward the house to her right. “I’ll be right back.”

He studied her a moment. “I’ll be in the car.”

Not sure why she needed to push back over weather and memories of cereal, she hurried her heels clicking against the sidewalk’s cracked cement and dashed to her neighbor Ted Rucker’s front door. A couple of quick knocks and the door opened to a tall, lean man with blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

“Rucker,” she said. “I’m headed out of town. Could you check in on the cats if you don’t hear from me? I should be back tonight but you never know.”

He looked past her to Brody who stood outside his Bronco, arms folded over his chest. “Rangers?”

“Ranger Brody Winchester.” She never discussed cases. “I should be back late, but if the weather doesn’t hold we could be delayed.”

Rucker grinned. “I’ll feed The Three Musketeers. How’s that abscess on Atticus’s side?”

“The antibiotics you prescribed did the trick. Hopefully he’s learned not to tangle with the alley cat down the street.”

“We’ll see. He has a mind of his own.” He frowned. “Safe travels.”

“Thanks again.”

“Hey, when you get back why don’t we get coffee? We’ve been talking about it often enough and never make the time. We can catch up on neighborhood gossip?”

She laughed, already backing away. “Sounds like a plan.”

When she reached the car, Brody opened the door for her and she paused. “You’ve never done that before.”

“I have. Just not for you.”

No anger. No attitude. Merely facts. Not sure how to gauge his statement, she eased in the car and carefully adjusted her purse as he closed the door. When he slid behind the wheel, the Bronco’s large cab did indeed shrink to a far too small size. Large wind-chapped hands shoved the key into the ignition. That hand had gripped a baseball bat like it was a lifeline. That hand had once cupped her breast and ignited a need in her that had taken her breath away.

“It helps that you’re familiar with Smith,” he said as he fired up the engine and pulled onto the street.

Swallowing, she considered the road ahead. “He was one of the four serial killers on which I based my dissertation. I never spoke to him, of course. My sources were based on law enforcement records and some interviews.” She’d nearly dropped Smith from the paper altogether when she’d learned Brody had been the arresting officer. Pride wouldn’t allow her to seek an interview with Brody and stubbornness had kept Smith in her dissertation. “Is there more I should be aware of?”

“He was a substitute teacher who fancied himself a novelist. The next Poe.”

“He’d sit in his backyard, his burial ground, and for hours work on his short stories and books.”

“Born in Texas and graduated from Oklahoma University sum cum laude. His professors and many of the principals and teachers he worked with respected him. When he had a long-term sub assignment, lots of parents raved about him and requested he be hired permanently. But he refused all offers. He drifted around Oklahoma and Kansas for many years and then returned permanently to Texas twenty years ago.”

Brody threaded the car in and out of traffic and soon they were headed east toward the municipal airport. “I asked him why he moved back, but he never answered. My theory is that he wanted more space, more land and better weather, which makes for a longer killing season.”

“He was in his late forties when he moved back to Texas.”

“That’s right.”

She stared out the front window, rifling through the facts she had on Smith. “His primary burial ground was his backyard but another is suspected.”

“When he was arrested in the suspected disappearance of Tammy Lynn Myers three years ago, we got a subpoena to search his house and grounds. It didn’t take much poking around the backyard to see that the land had been disturbed many times. We spent weeks in that backyard excavating ten bodies. However, we never found Tammy Lynn Myers. We also found evidence in his house that suggested there were at least two other victims. They were also never found.”

“The medical examiner believed that the victims were buried alive.”

“Most of the bodies were so decomposed there was no soft tissue to examine. Then we unearthed a body believed to be his second-to-last victim, a woman he killed weeks before Tammy. The medical examiner found dirt in her lungs and stomach, clearly indicating she’d ingested dirt as she tried to breathe.”

A shiver traced her spine, as she thought about those women so desperate to breathe. “He never fought the charges.”

“No. In fact, he was helpful at times.”

“He was sentenced to death.”

“And has used the last two years filing every appeal he can.”

“He confesses then fights,” she said. “It’s always about control with him.”

He clenched his jaw making a muscle by the joint flex. “Looks like the cancer is the game changer now. It’ll kill him before the executioner.”

“Karma has its own justice.”

Without comment, Brody pulled through the gates of the small municipal airport and followed the winding flat road past the main building with a control tower and then toward the hangars on the north side of the property. He parked beside a hangar. “I asked them to gas up the plane before I left this morning, so the preflight shouldn’t take too long.”

“Can I help?”

“Naw, hang tight. I got it.” They climbed out of the car, and he unlocked a small door that led into the hangar, closed it and seconds later she heard the gears of the big hangar door grinding as the metal slid up and back. Inside the hangar stood a Cessna 150. The single prop, two-seater was painted white with red and black stripes. Brody took off his white hat and jacket and tossed both in the back luggage section of the plane. He attached a hook to the aircraft’s front wheel and easily pulled the plane out of the hangar. Within minutes, he’d inspected the plane’s exterior as if he had done the preflight check a thousand times before.

He opened the airplane door for her and waited as she climbed the awkward step into the plane. After closing the hangar door, he slid behind the yoke of the plane. His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned over and grabbed another preflight list kept tucked by the seat. The Bronco was spacious compared to the cockpit.

He put on headphones and handed her a set before he primed the engine with the choke and then turned the key. The propeller turned once and stopped but when he cranked the key a second time it turned and caught, quickly sending the propeller spinning so fast it vanished from sight.

Grateful for the loud hum of the engine that would make any conversation difficult, she settled back in her seat, put on her sunglasses, and for the first time since she’d seen Brody standing at the base of her climbing wall, allowed her mind to still.

As he spoke to the tower, he taxied to the runway and swung the plane around so that it rested on the runway’s numbers and faced due east. Without tossing her a quick glance he gunned the engine and the two were hurdling down the runway. Halfway, he pulled the controls back and the front wheels lifted effortlessly off the ground. Her stomach flip-flopped and she was glad now she’d had a small breakfast.