Touching Evil (26 page)

Nodding, Andy said, "If Brady had killed her, he would have been hiding in the deepest hole he could find and wouldn't have opened his trap, except to ask for a lawyer. Since he just found her, he figures he's safe. Stupid bastard."

"So she's dead?"

"Yeah, she's dead. Come on—let's go. You and Scott can ride with me."

They collected the others from the bullpen and went out to their cars. On the point of getting into his own car, Andy noticed Jennifer still on the sidewalk; she was looking around with a frown, obviously disturbed.

"What?" he asked.

"Did you hear something?"

"I heard a lot. Traffic, voices, a horn blowing a couple of blocks away."

She shook her head, moving toward the passenger side finally but still frowning. "No, something else."

Scott said, "I didn't hear anything weird, Jenn. What'd it sound like?"

"Just... I could have sworn somebody said my name, that's all. My imagination, I guess." She shivered visibly and got into the car.

Andy paused a moment to look around carefully, but he didn't see or hear anything unusual. Even so, he didn't dismiss Jennifer's uneasiness, especially added to the fact that someone had apparently gotten into her locked car not so long ago.

He looked around a final time, then got into the car, making a mental note to do something about security around the station. But that resolution was pushed to the back of his mind by the time they reached the address Brady Oliver had given them.

Loath to disturb any evidence, Andy stationed most of his people around the building with instructions to tape off the entire thing for forensics, while he went in with only Scott and Jennifer as backup.

Their flashlights showed them a dirty, ramshackle place that had long ago been stripped to its bare bones. The floor creaked underfoot, and as they entered they could all hear faint scratchy whisperings and scurryings.

"What the hell's that?" Scott demanded, jumpy and not apologetic about it.

"Rats," Andy told him. "You two stay behind me. We'll check out the room Brady said he found her in first."

With sudden realization, Scott said, "Rats ... If the lady's here and she's been dead very long—"

"Don't think about it," Jennifer urged him, her own voice a bit thickened.

Andy hesitated, wondering if he should have left the two of them outside. Both had witnessed scenes of homicide before, but he knew they were very involved in this case and that their emotions were heightened because of that. Still, even that was part of being a cop. He moved on, slow and careful.

The long hallway led to the back of the building, where there were half a dozen rooms, their doors long gone, and empty doorways with broken casings leaned drunkenly open. Andy wondered why the whole building hadn't collapsed long ago. He paused, shining his light around, then moved suddenly toward the doorway to the room on the far left corner.

He could smell the blood.

There was no need to go more than a step into the room. His flashlight found her immediately.

"Oh, Christ," Scott muttered.

Andy said nothing, but he heard Jennifer give a little sigh and didn't have to ask to know what both of them were feeling. Because he felt the same. Horror. Revulsion. Pain. And an overwhelming sadness.

Samantha Mitchell lay spread-eagled on a bloodstained mattress in the far corner. Her naked body was bruised and battered. Her eyes were gone, and her throat was cut almost ear to ear. The rats had indeed gotten to her body.

Even more horribly, a deep slash opened the lower curve of her rounded belly.

And between her thighs lay the pitifully small, curled body of her dead child.

Still connected to her body by the umbilical cord.

"From the moment we met, there was an unusual bond between Christina and me," Maggie said. "Maybe it was because she was the first of his victims to survive the attack, I don't know. Whatever the reason, we both felt it, that closeness."

"She mentioned your name a couple of times when I flew up to visit her," John said, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove. "Didn't say much, just that you were the police sketch artist and that you'd been kind to her. That's one reason I asked Andy about you after she died. And I saw you at the funeral."

Maggie was a little surprised by that; she had made a point of keeping back and being unobtrusive. "I didn't know you saw me then."

"I just caught a glimpse near the end. Didn't know who you were until I recognized you last week in that interview room." He didn't add that something about
her had stuck in his mind so that all these weeks later he had remembered her the instant he had seen her at the police station.

"I didn't get to spend much time with Christina," she said. "Just a couple of visits in the hospital, then three or four more after she went home. So much of her energy was just taken up with healing and with getting ready for all the surgeries she knew would follow."

John glanced at Maggie quickly, but he couldn't see her face clearly in the now-and-then glare of passing streetlights. "She talked about the plastic surgery?"

"Yes. She was realistic about it; she knew nothing would make her look the way she did before. But the acid had done so much damage, and she just wanted to look as normal as possible. She said . . . she didn't want to frighten children when she went out in public."

John was silent for a moment, then said, "That's one of the reasons I've been so sure she didn't kill herself. She wanted to live, Maggie, I know she did. She wanted to heal and go on with her life. She was strong."

"Yes, she was. Stronger than you know."

"What do you mean?"

Maggie drew a breath. "Once she got home, she had that elaborate computer system her husband had set up, and that new voice-recognition and reading program you arranged since she couldn't see the screen."

"Yes. I didn't want her to feel cut off from everything even if she wasn't ready to go out in public yet. Are you saying she used it for something else?"

"It probably shouldn't surprise you," Maggie said. "She was your sister, after all. She wanted answers, John."

"Answers? Are you saying she tried to find the man who attacked her?"

"She had all the information she'd been able to find on Laura Hughes, and of course she knew her own situation and background better than anyone else. She was convinced there was a connection somewhere, that the rest of us had been—blinded—by so many of the details that we couldn't see what was actually there."

"And she believed she could? Blind and virtually alone in that apartment, she believed she could find something everyone else had missed?"

"She did have a unique perspective. And she'd spent hours on end thinking about it. There really wasn't much else she could think about." Maggie sighed. "Please believe me, if I'd had even the slightest suspicion that what she was doing could have put her in danger—"

John abruptly pulled the car to the curb and stopped. He turned in the seat to stare at her. "Are you saying it did? Maggie—did Christina kill herself?" "

"No."

"No? Why the hell didn't you tell me this before? Christ, tell somebody—"

"Because I can't prove it, John." She kept her voice level. "Every speck of evidence in that apartment proves that she did kill herself. Andy and his people went over it with a fine-tooth comb, you know that. They even went over it twice, because you asked them to. You yourself went through her computer files, according to Andy; did you find anything?"

"No," he replied slowly. "At least, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unexpected. There was nothing about
the investigation, the other victim. No hint at all that she was trying to investigate on her own."

"That's what Andy said. He even had the department computer expert check it out when I asked him to, but there was nothing. If there was any evidence before she died, it was certainly gone afterward. Nobody found anything to point to an intruder or even a visitor. Security records for that night show no one entering the apartment, and even the fact that she'd given the nurse the day and night off seems to point toward suicide. The medical examiner was absolutely positive it was suicide, no reservations at all. I read his report. You read his report. According to everything they found, Christina wrote that suicide note on her computer, then put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger."

John drew a breath. "I hadn't even known she had that gun until afterward."

"Not surprising, since according to the registration, she'd bought it years ago, when she first lived alone in L.A., for protection. And since it hadn't been registered here in Seattle, none of us knew about it beforehand. But if you've been blaming yourself for not knowing, don't. If there hadn't been a gun, he would have done it another way."

"How the hell do you know that, Maggie? With all the evidence pointing the other way, how do you
know
Christina didn't kill herself?"

"I told you we had a connection, a bond." Maggie turned her gaze to the windshield, still working on holding her voice level and calm. "The night she died, I woke up ... hearing her scream in my mind. Feeling her pain. It was just a flashing instant, but clear. So clear I'll never forget it. And what she was screaming
was terror—and protest. She didn't want to die. The gun in her hand, pressed to her temple, wasn't under her control."

Jennifer was alone in the conference room, looking over the arrest report she'd requested from the Central precinct on David Robson, when Andy came in, looking harried and tired.

"Sanctuary," he muttered. "My kingdom for an hour or two of sanctuary."

"I'd grant it if I could," she said sympathetically. "But you know the minute the switchboard doesn't find you at your desk, the phones in here will start ringing."

"Yeah, I know." He sat down with a sigh. "You should be gone. How many hours have you put in today?"

"I'm off the clock."

"That's not what I asked you."

Jennifer shrugged. "Look, I didn't want to go home and figured I might as well be busy."

"Doing what?"

She tapped the report with a finger. "Following a very unlikely lead, trying to track down a transient who might have seen something helpful."

Andy grunted. "Where's Scott?"

"Gone for a pizza. We were hungry and he wanted some fresh air." She watched him, worried by the circles under his eyes and the tense line of his jaw. "I guess you haven't heard anything from Maggie? I mean, about her talking to Hollis Templeton?"

"No, nothing yet. And whatever she's got to say might not be relevant anyway."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Hell, no."

"Yeah. Our entire world does seem to have narrowed down just to this investigation, doesn't it?"

"You'd think." He sighed again. "The M.E. has promised to work on Samantha Mitchell ASAP, but neither one of us thinks he'll find anything new. One glance told him what it told the rest of us: She was alive when her throat was cut, and died from blood loss."

"Then that with the baby was done . . . after?"

Andy's jaw tightened even more. "A minute or two after, the M.E. thinks. The baby was probably still alive."

Jennifer hadn't expected that—or the jolt she felt hearing it. "Christ."

"Needless to say, we're going to try to keep that fact out of the media's hands."

"Does Mitchell know?"

"No, and if I have my way he never will."

She stared down at the arrest report. "Andy, is there something we're missing? Something we should have done and didn't?"

"Nothing I can think of. Don't beat yourself up about it, Jenn. We've had virtually no evidence, no witnesses able to give us a description, and no predictable pattern to the attacks—so far, at least. The closest we've come to a lead of any kind is thanks to you and Scott."

"Some lead," she said, sounding as discouraged as she felt. "We have a few sketches and photos of victims from a string of murders in 1934, and
maybe
our guy somehow got access to them, but so far the only thing we can be reasonably sure of is that he's going after look-alikes."

Before Andy could respond, the phone rang, and he picked up the receiver with a resigned grimace.

"Yeah?" He listened for a minute, absently watching Jennifer continue going through the file in front of her, then said, "Okay. Tell him I'm on my way."

When he hung up the phone, Jennifer said, "Our Luke again?"

Andy used the table for leverage to push himself to his feet. "Yeah, dammit."

"He's still refusing to ask the FBI for help?"

"He'd refuse to yell help if his pants were on fire, Jenn, you know that." He sighed. "But I think we need to bring John's friends in, and I mean officially. I'm about a breath away from calling the chief directly myself."

She shook her head. "Don't do that. We both know Drummond would never forgive or forget, and he could do your career a lot of damage."

'And maybe I don't give a shit."