TRACE EVIDENCE (19 page)

She crossed her arms on his chest and rested her chin on top, enjoying the rumble of his voice, the warmth of his skin against hers. "But your mother was determined."

He smiled. "She was like a dog with a bone. The more people told her it would never happen, the more determined she was to make it happen." His smile fell and instead his features tensed.

She reached a hand out and stroked it down his strong jaw. "You'll find her, Clay, I know you will. You're like the raccoon … intelligent and cunning and you have great hunting powers."

He looked as if he were about to protest, then simply sighed again. "I was thirteen years old when I decided I didn't want to be Native anymore," he continued.

"Why? What happened?"

"Every weekend Mom dragged me to the cultural center to participate in something. At the same time I was also on the junior high school football team. One Sunday afternoon I was dancing at the cultural center when I looked out in the audience and saw the football team members there."

Tamara saw what was coming. She knew the cruelty of children and how sharp the gibes of taunting could jab. She had experienced some of it herself when she'd been young.

"They were laughing," he continued. "Laughing and pointing at me and I was mortified. For the next two weeks at school they tormented me, calling me dancing Indian boy, decorating my locker with feathers and beads. I told my mother I would never participate at the cultural center again and I quit the football team."

"Kids can be very mean." She had a feeling there was more to the story, but she was afraid to press him. Childish taunts from silly kids wouldn't be enough to make a man hate his roots, hate the very essence of who he was.

She wanted to ask more questions, but was afraid. She didn't know if it was the darkness of the room that had allowed him to let down his guard and share just a little bit of himself, or the fact that they'd been intimate with each other.

"Yeah, there are a lot of mean people in the world. That's why I like doing what I do … helping put mean people behind bars."

"Are you good at what you do?"

"As good as I can be with the equipment I have. I'd love to work at one of the labs they show on those television shows. They have workspace and equipment that I can only dream about. Too much of the physical evidence I get has to be sent away to
Oklahoma City
for testing."

"But surely there are a lot of preliminary things you can do."

"Sure." He frowned. "But so far my work hasn't yielded results in the cases that are most important."

She flattened her hands and kissed his chest. "You'll find her, Clay."

"It's not just my mother I'm worried about. The person who killed Greg Maxwell and Sam McClane is still out there and nobody knows when another murder will occur." His hand caressed up from her hip and along the side of her breast. "And then there's you."

His warm hand made it difficult for her to concentrate on anything else. "You don't have to worry about me," she replied with effort. "I still think the vandalism is the work of a student, but none of them are crazy enough to play the legend out to the end."

"It's pretty damn crazy to take bear claws and mark up rooms with deer blood," he countered. He turned on his side so he was facing her. "And what's craziest of all is that I want you again."

"That doesn't sound crazy at all to me," she said, half-breathlessly, then went willingly into his arms as his lips met hers in a kiss that left no doubt of the desire that burned through them both.

* * *

Dawn was just breaking when the ringing of the phone awakened them. Clay sat up and fumbled for the phone on the nightstand, as alert as if he'd been waiting for the call. Tamara sat up as well, knowing that a dawn phone call could only mean trouble.

"I'm on my way," Clay said after listening for only a moment. He hung up the phone and was out of the bed at the same time. "Go back to sleep," he said to her as he pulled on a pair of jeans. "It's still early."

"What's happened?" she asked.

"There's been another murder." He pulled a T-shirt over his head. "I'll call you when I get a chance. In the meantime don't open the door for anyone." With these final words he left the room.

Another murder. Tamara sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. It was so difficult to imagine that while she and Clay had made love, while they had shared in the beauty of the physical give and take, somebody evil had been taking the life of another.

Chapter 12

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A
s Clay drove toward the center of town where Glen Cleberg had told him the body had been found, he went over the checklist of his job in his head. Approach scene. Secure and protect scene. Preliminary survey. Evaluate physical evidence possibilities. Photograph scene. Sketch scene. Detailed search and record and collection of physical evidence. Final survey.

He knew his job as well as he knew the beat of his own heart, but he needed to focus on something other than the warm, sweet woman who had been in his arms throughout the night.

Still, even knowing he was headed to a horrible crime scene, his mind couldn't release the memories of the night he'd just shared with Tamara. He'd known instinctively that she'd be passionate, but he hadn't expected the intense passion she'd shown.

He'd known instinctively that she would be gentle and tender, but he hadn't expected those traits to be tempered with a teasing sensuality that had driven him half-mad.

Almost as good as the sex had been the way their bodies had fit together so neatly as they'd slept. It was as if each had been made specifically for the other.

He'd felt a peace that he hadn't felt for as long as he could remember and for just a moment it seemed as if everything was right in the world.

He frowned and shoved these thoughts away, knowing he'd need all his concentration for what lie ahead. Besides, everything wasn't right with the world. He was headed to a murder scene and his mother was still missing. And there was no way in hell he would ever be the kind of man Tamara wanted and needed in her life.

Glen had given him precious little information, only that Tim O'Brien had been found naked and dead and on the sidewalk in front of the hardware store.

Clay didn't know Tim O'Brien well, although he'd seen him around town and knew he owned a real estate office. He'd been a good-looking man in his late thirties. And now, from what Glen had told Clay, he was the third victim of the Shameless
Slasher
.

"Dammit." Clay hit the dashboard with the palm of his hand, frustration eating at his insides. He could only hope that this time the killer had gotten sloppy and had left something behind … something that could point to a positive identification.

He saw the scene ahead when he was still a block away. Police cars were parked in the street and yellow tape shone in the dawn light, strung to protect and secure the area.

The crime-scene van was already there and he knew his partners, Trey and Burt were awaiting his arrival and instructions.

Preliminary survey, he told himself as he parked his car, grabbed his case and headed toward the scene. As he approached, his gaze swept the area before him, looking for anything that might appear out of place. Clues could often be found outside the secured area.

Trey met him near the scene. "Hell of a way to wake up," he said.

"You're telling me," Clay agreed. "What have you got so far?"

"Jason Sheller was the first officer on the scene. He said he was doing a drive-by, spied the body and immediately recognized what we had. He called it in and the chief instructed him to secure the area and not let anyone around until you got here."

"Good, so the scene has been contained."

"As far as I know nobody has gone inside the tape except the medical examiner who pronounced the victim dead."

"Time of death?" Clay asked as the two men approached the crime-scene tape where Burt stood waiting for them.

"According to the
lividity
and temperature of the body and the state of rigor mortis, he's saying that he's been dead between, five and seven hours."

Clay frowned. Too long for a body left out in the open. There already could be all kinds of airborne contaminants obscuring or confusing real evidence.

He stopped just outside of the taped-off area and looked around. He knew how important it was to .get a complete mental picture not only of the victim, but also of the surrounding area in order to properly process the scene.

It was a tough transition, from Tamara's warm arms and his peaceful sleep to this vision of murder. Tim O'Brien was on his back on the sidewalk, his nakedness looking as obscene as anything Clay had ever seen as the pinkish light of dawn played over the body.

The only thing more obscene than the stark nakedness of the body was the blood that decorated his chest and stomach from the multiple stab wounds he'd received.

"There's no doubt it's one of the
slasher's
," Burt said. "It's exactly the same M.O. and the signature of leaving the victim naked and out in a public area. I'm sure the wounds will show the same type of knife used in this one as the last two."

"We might as well get started," Clay said. The three men opened their cases and began to put on gloves and plastic
footies
.

As they were doing this, Chief Cleberg hurried over to Clay. He looked older than his years, harassed half-mindless, and he pulled Clay away from the other two men and leaned toward him conspiratorially.

"You've got to find something, Clay. You've got to find something to catch this madman. People are starting to panic and I don't have anything to tell them to reassure them."

"I'll do my best, Chief, but so far this creep hasn't left anything behind for us to work with."

"There's got to be something. Whoever is doing this has to be stopped." A wildness possessed Glen's eyes and the redness of his neck and face made Clay fear the man was on the verge of a stroke.

"Go home, Glen," Clay said. "There's nothing you can do here. Let me and my men do what you pay us to do. I'll call you if we get anything to go on."

Glen sighed and raked a hand through his thinning hair. "You sure you have things under control here?" It was obvious he'd rather be anywhere than here with the latest victim.

"Just leave me a couple of patrolmen to keep the
gawkers
away and maintain the integrity of the site, and I'll keep you posted."

In truth, Clay would prefer Glen not be on site. It was much easier for Clay and his men to do their jobs without the chief looking over their shoulders.

He breathed a sigh of relief as Glen nodded, bellowed several orders, and then headed for his car. Clay turned to Trey and Burt. "Let's get going. Hopefully we can finish up here before the morning crowd starts heading into town."

His hope to finish up before the streets filled with morning workers and traffic was short-lived. They had only managed to take photographs and draw diagrams before the first curiosity seekers began to crowd around the crime scene.

Clay released the body to the medical examiner as quickly as possible, not wanting Tim O'Brien, even in death, to suffer the indignity of his neighbors and friends seeing him naked in the morning sun.

Not only did they vacuum, bindle, collect and categorize each and every item that might have evidentiary value, Clay also studied the scene itself, trying to visualize how it all had played out.

As with the other two scenes, Tim's clothes were found near the body. They were bloodstained and folded neatly. The bloodstains indicated that Tim had been stabbed while dressed, then stripped naked after his death.

Why would a murderer take the time to strip the victims if not for the sheer humiliation of them? And how arrogant and in control he must feel as he took the time to strip the bodies.

There was a massive quantity of blood and Clay knew there was no way the murderer had walked away from this scene without Tim's blood on him.

Unfortunately, the laws wouldn't allow him to search each and every house in Cherokee Corners to see who might have bloody clothes hidden away somewhere. If the laws had provided such action, long ago Clay would have done a house-to-house search for his mother.

He couldn't think about her now. Nor could he entertain thoughts of Tamara, although thoughts about her' continued to intrude. He had to stay focused on the here and now, on the dead body before him and the clues the scene might provide.

Unlike at the other two scenes, a footprint had been left in Tim's blood. The sight of that footprint exhilarated Clay. Finally. Something left behind.

He photographed the footprint from half a dozen angles, then carefully transferred the print so that it could be used later to identify the type and size of shoe that had made it. At first glance it looked to have been made by a man's sneaker … around a size nine or ten, but he wouldn't know for sure until he got it back to the lab and did some comparison studies.

Jason Sheller hovered nearby, watching everything that was being collected, coming precariously close to running the risk of contaminating things as he crowded too near. "Why don't you go canvass the area and see if anyone saw anything," Clay finally said when Jason got too close to what he was doing.