Twisted (5 page)

Allison drove him back to the motel without talking. Her mind was tied up with Stephanie Snow and the smiling graduation photo she’d seen in the paper the other day. Allison hadn’t looked at the crime-scene pictures. Hadn’t wanted to. She’d been content to let more experienced investigators handle this one—until today.

Until she’d met Mark Wolfe.

She pulled into the pitted parking lot and slid into an empty spot beside his burgundy sedan. The rental car, the suit, the laptop. He was a fellow law enforcement officer, but in terms of lifestyle, they were worlds apart.

“You should put some ice on that welt,” he told her.

His eyes were almost black in the dimness, and the lights of the motel made the angles of his face stand out. A day’s worth of stubble darkened his jaw, and she thought he looked tired. He didn’t look old, though, as he’d hinted back at the bar. He looked experienced. Confident. Smart. It was a combination she found attractive, even though the confidence bordered on arrogance.

He reached for the door handle. “Don’t beat yourself up about today.”

She scoffed.

“You did fine.”

“It’s embarrassing. I walked right in on it, didn’t even realize it was happening.” She looked at him. “What was your tip-off?”

“Saw the car running out front.”

She’d heard the rest. He’d parked in back and quietly slipped in the door Sal had left unlocked after his smoke break.

“Bet you realized it before you think,” he said.

“What, you mean when he pointed the gun at me? Snaps for me.”

“You knew it before that. Think, Allison.”

It was the first time he’d used her name. She turned away and gazed out the window at the parking lot. She visualized the scene again.

“I guess, yeah,” she said, “I knew something was up.”

“Something felt off in the store.”

“It was Sal. He had this look on his face. Tight.” She glanced at him. “And then when he saw me, suddenly it was pure relief.”

“You’re a regular there. He knew you’d be armed.”

“And then there was the guy . . . I don’t know. Even from the back, I could tell he was a tweeker. His movements, his hygiene, everything.”

“All those silent cues you pick up on without even noticing. Your mind pulls them together and sends you a warning.”

Holdup.
She remembered thinking it even before she saw the gun. Maybe she wasn’t as oblivious as she thought.

She looked at Mark again and tried to read his expression. His tall, athletic build filled up her passenger seat. Her gaze settled on his long-fingered hands. No ring, but he hadn’t wanted to talk about that. She could tell she made him uneasy, which was okay. She liked to keep men off balance.

He pushed open the door and got out. “Thanks for the beer.”

“Thanks for saving my life.” She said it as though it was nothing, but they both knew she was serious.

He leaned a forearm on the door and ducked down to peer inside the pickup. “Get your lieutenant to listen to you about Stephanie Snow.”

“It’s not my case.”

He just looked at her. Something in his expression put the responsibility on her shoulders.

“It belongs to Jonah Macon,” she said. “He’s a good cop.”

“Then, how come you’re here and he’s not?”

She couldn’t answer that without being disloyal to her squad. Mark Wolfe was the outsider, and Jonah really did care. But he liked the suspect they’d already developed.

“Read the ME’s report,” he said. “Reynolds wouldn’t let me see it, but maybe you’ll have better luck.” He looked at her gravely. “And do it soon. November nineteenth isn’t far away.”

He started to slam the door, but she leaned across the seat. “Wait.” She looked up at him in the bluish light of the motel sign. It panicked her a bit for him to throw all this information at her and then leave. “What am I looking for?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said. “Pay attention to the hair.”

Allison kicked off her morning with a domestic and a purse snatching. By ten a.m. she had two men in custody and a caffeine headache, not to mention a boatload of reports to write.

She spotted Jonah in the bullpen.

“Glad I caught you,” she said, cornering him at his desk, where he was logging off of his computer and collecting his car keys.

“You been talking to the fed.” He stood and shrugged into his blazer.

“What, am I under surveillance now?”

“Sean saw you at the pool hall.” He gave her a look that was part big brother, part local cop defending his turf. “Guess you got your second wind last night, huh?”

“Guess so.” She sat on the side of his desk and peeked inside the white paper bag. “Such a cliché,” she said, and helped herself to a glazed doughnut.

“He tell you his theory?” Jonah asked.

“No, his favorite sexual position.”

His face hardened. “You want to be careful here, Doyle. Bender’s already got a lawyer involved. If you start circulating some new case theory and he hears about it—”

“No one’s circulating anything.” She chomped into the doughnut. The icing melted on her tongue and made the roof of her mouth sticky. “I just want to see what we’ve got.”

Jonah gazed down at her, and she was reminded of Mark Wolfe. Both men towered over her, but Jonah was bulky while Mark was just big. Maybe he’d played basketball at one time. He definitely had the build for it.

Jonah sighed and shook his head. He reached for a thick brown file in his in-box.

“Murder book’s in Reynolds’s office,” he said, referring to the official receptacle of all info in a homicide case. “This has the highlights—copy of the autopsy, initial police report, first round of interviews. You want to see the book, you’re going to have to go through Reynolds.”

“Why all the secrecy?”

“Just being careful. Like I said, the ex-boyfriend’s got a lawyer. A good one. We don’t need any screw-ups.”

Allison sucked the sugar off her fingertips before taking the file. It was heavier than it looked.

She glanced up at Jonah, who happened to be one of the best detectives she’d ever met. “What makes you so sure about the boyfriend?”

He waited a beat. “This hasn’t been in the news yet—”

“And you think
I’m
going to leak it? Thanks.”

He ignored the jab. “Stephanie Snow took out a restraining order on her ex the day before her disappearance. I interviewed the guy who served the papers, too, and Bender was pissed.”

“Timing’s pretty incriminating.”

“Tell me about it. I’ve worked more than a few cases where the restraining order was found at the scene of the crime.”

“Some men don’t take rejection well.”

“No shit.”

“But I’d still like to see where we are.”

“Have at it. You got anything to add, go talk to Reynolds. He’s holding on tight to this one.” Jonah looked at his watch. “I got a deposition in twenty. Put that back when you’re done.”

Jonah took off, and Allison carried the file into the same interview room where she’d viewed the convenience store video last night. As unpleasant as that had been, this was going to be worse by a factor of a thousand.

Her thoughts went to Mark Wolfe. Why was he so convinced this case was connected to the ones in
California?
You’ll know it when you see it,
he’d said, and she hoped he was right. She took a deep breath and opened the file.

The police report was on top, stapled to a sketch of the crime scene. Everything was stamped
COPY
. She flipped through the paperwork. No crime-scene photos, which made her both relieved and annoyed. She’d have to look harder for details about the hair. Allison found the ME’s report tucked beneath an interview with the dog walker who had found the body. The report had a coffee ring on the top page and was already smudged with fingerprints. Someone had spent time with this. Probably Jonah. And if Allison knew her colleague, he’d shown the report to Ric Santos for a second opinion. The two detectives weren’t the oldest on the squad, but they were the best, and they always sought each other’s input.

Allison had noticed because they so rarely sought hers. Not that she was bitter or anything—she hadn’t given them a reason to. She hadn’t proven herself. She had only one homicide case under her belt, and that was as a member of a task force. She was well aware that some people—particularly the older guys—thought she’d only been promoted to detective because she was a woman. It was possible they were right. But she’d worked her ass off, too. She’d put in a lot of long hours and she’d aced her detective’s exam, and now she was determined to show she could handle the job as well as any man.

She thought again of Mark. When she’d first met him, he’d been cool and detached, but at the bar last night he’d loosened up. She pictured him across the table from her with his sleeves rolled up, his hand settled comfortably around his beer. He’d looked relaxed as she’d shared
what little she knew about the case, but she got the impression that really, he wasn’t relaxed at all.

Allison skimmed through the ME’s findings. He described an arc-shaped cut from the victim’s left ear to her right. Sharp force trauma was listed as the cause of death. Manner of death, homicide. Scratches on the inner thighs. Signs of sexual assault. A rape kit had been collected, but the results weren’t included in the report. Probably not back from the lab yet, if the kit had even been sent. She’d check the status with Jonah. No mention of her hair.

Allison flipped to the next page and looked at the sketch. The ME, or maybe his assistant, had drawn little lines out from various wounds on the body and scrawled notes in the margins:
abrasion, lower left forearm. Missing, upper right incisor. Contusion, right temple.
Allison frowned. Bruises would mean her attack had been prolonged. Allison read one of the notes scrawled beside the head:
Cut.

That was it.

She flipped through the remaining pages in the stack. She reached the end and found a Polaroid clipped to the final page. Not an official crime-scene photo, but something taken indoors, with Stephanie Snow lying atop a steel table, her sightless eyes staring up into space. A bright rectangular light—in the autopsy suite, presumably—was reflected in both of her irises.

Allison picked up the picture and examined it. A chill skittered down her spine as she studied the jagged angle of Stephanie’s brunette locks. She’d been wearing a ponytail when she died.

The killer had cut off her hair.

The 7:50 to Washington Dulles was full, but the 9:15 wasn’t and Mark was able to get a row to himself. Now he sat in 26C with his computer balanced on his lap and his knees crushed against the seat in front of him. The seat beside him was occupied by a stack of files containing photos and descriptions that would have caused even the most seasoned homicide detectives to look away. Not yet noon and Mark had been through them twice already. He’d studied the pictures coolly and objectively, looking beyond the brutalized bodies for clues he might have missed all those years ago when he’d first joined the investigation. He’d gained experience since then, and he hoped something important would jump out at him now, but nothing had, so he’d set the photos aside and turned to his computer.

Alone in his room last night, Mark had gone through the old files and transferred his key case notes to his current laptop. It had been something to do to keep his mind off his insomnia. And his wife, who wasn’t his wife anymore. And a slender brunette who drove a pickup truck older than she was.

Mark scrolled through the document entitled
UNSUB CA
-39. He’d originally named the file
DEATH RAVEN
, but then thought better of it. It was the sort of moniker that would look good in a headline if some reporter should ever get wind of it. Better to keep it private.

The dread that had been building for days now settled heavily in his stomach as he reviewed the notes. He wished he was wrong, but he knew that he wasn’t. And he wished he’d managed to convince a provincial Texas
police lieutenant to take him seriously, but he knew that he hadn’t.

Mark had failed to accomplish his objective yesterday, and now it would probably take the death of yet another innocent woman to get anyone to believe that the unidentified subject who had been the focus of so much attention ten years ago was back. The UNSUB was on the hunt again, which meant Mark was hunting, too.

“Bloody Mary?”

The flight attendant smiled down at him, and he glanced at his empty plastic cup.

“Just the mix,” he said. “I’ll take the whole can.”

She handed over a can of spicy tomato juice and a fresh cup of ice. Another liquid lunch. High in vitamins, high in sodium. Kind of a win-lose, but he needed the fuel. After thirteen years living in airplanes and motel rooms, he’d learned to get his nutrients wherever he could find them.

Mark glanced at the woman in 25D. Blond, barely twenty, probably an undergrad. She had a chemistry textbook tucked into the seat pocket in front of her, but for most of the flight she’d been listening to her iPod. Now the little wires had disappeared, and the man next to her seemed to have spotted his opening.

“Run out of battery on you? Mine does that, too.”

The woman responded, and Mark knew he was about to get a lesson in Predatory Tactics 101.

“Name’s Jason.”

Pause. “Isabella,” she said.

“You from Washington?”

“Austin.”

“Me, too. Nice town. Taking a little vacation, though. Just hope I can get a cab.” His dark head moved closer. “It’s gonna be hell getting a taxi on a Friday like this. Business travelers and all that.”

Isabella’s hands fidgeted with the iPod, as if she wanted to put it on again. But she was in the conversation now, and she probably didn’t want to seem rude.

“You visiting family?” he asked.

“Friends.”

“Me, too. ’Course, they aren’t expecting me until tomorrow, so I’m cabbing it. Pretzels?”

“No, thank you.”

“I don’t blame you. Taste like cardboard. That’s what we get for flying roach class, huh?”