Текст книги "Blind Rage"

Автор книги: Terri Persons

Соавторы: Terri Persons
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Chapter 3

THE TUB WAS across the room, situated alongside the bay window. A brass bed, a vanity with an attached mirror, and a tall chest of drawers crowded the rest of the room. Pink shag carpeting covered the floor, and matching pink fabric dressed the bed and the bay window. Pink posters were tacked up on every wall, a pink Babe on Board road sign hung from the wall over the bed, and fuzzy pink dice dangled from the dresser mirror. The only things that weren’t overwhelmingly pink were the tub and its occupant.

From where Bernadette and Garcia stood just inside the threshold, all that was visible over the top of the white tub was a white leg thrown over the side. The porcelain and the flesh were identically pale, as if they were part of the same modern sculpture. The toes of the white foot offered the only splash of color, with nails that were painted pink.

Bernadette walked over to the side of the tub, her shoes squishing on the soggy carpet that surrounded it. “Why is it that all redheads look like spitfires when they’re alive …”

“And so damn dead when they’re dead?” asked Garcia, coming up next to her.

“Yeah. No one does dead like a redhead. It’s like their skin turns to wax or something. Why is that?”

“Maybe it’s because they’re so white to begin with,” offered Garcia.

“I’m sure there’s a scientific reason.”

The dead woman provided no opinion on the matter. With the one leg draped over the side and the other slightly bent at the knee, she was sprawled out on her back. Her arms were thrown up over her head and rested against the back of the tub. Her long hair fanned out in the shallow water and fell across her face, looking like the tendrils of some sort of orange sea plant. Her dead eyes—twin water bugs—peeked out from behind the hair.

Bruises dotted her legs and arms, showing she had flailed about. Constraint marks were visible around her shoulders, collarbone, and base of her neck. The water was murky; she’d defecated while she was struggling or her bowels had released after she’d succumbed. Bernadette hunkered down along the side of the tub. “She went kicking and fighting, the poor thing.”

“Seems so.”

She lifted one of the corpse’s hands off the back of the tub and scrutinized the fingernails, painted the same shade of pink as the toenails. “I don’t see any skin under her nails.”

“If there was anything to be had, CSI got it.”

“Right,” she said, and set the hand back down.

Garcia bent over, plucked something off the carpet, and held it in front of his face. A rose petal. Pink. The crime scene crew hadn’t bagged all of them. More were sprinkled in the dirty water. “What was this about?”

Bernadette picked a petal off the shag. “I’d say Miss Shelby Hammond was entertaining a gentleman.”

“Couldn’t a girl do that for herself? Sprinkle the water with flowers?”

“She could,” said Bernadette, dropping the petal back on the floor and standing up. “But it’d be strange, even for a psychology major who likes pink. A bubble bath is one thing. Rose petals are quite another.”

Garcia motioned toward the ledge that ran alongside the bay window. It was filled with melted candles in various shades of pink. “What about candles?”

“Girl might light candles for herself. That is still borderline weird in my book, but not over the edge like rose petals.”

“You’re thinking she got the tub ready for a soak with Romeo. She went in first …”

“And then he turned on her.” Bernadette walked around the tub to the windows and pushed aside the curtains. The miniblinds behind the curtains were folded shut. Spreading a pair of slats, she saw a duplex across the street. “What about the neighbors? Maybe they saw her with somebody over the weekend.”

“Minneapolis PD is on top of it.”

Bernadette went over to the vanity and studied the photos tucked into the frame of the mirror. They were all snapshots of Hammond with girlfriends.

“See any candidates for man of the year?” asked Garcia.

“Nope.” Bernadette lifted each of the photos, checked the backs, and returned them. Nothing. Nothing. One—with Hammond and another girl—carried neat script on the back: “To my best friend. Have a blast at college.” It made Bernadette sad and mad at the same time. “I really want to get this bastard.”

Garcia was checking under the bed. “Me, too.”

She took down another photo. A landscape shot. It had a red sticker on the back shaped like a stop sign, with a local phone number running across the middle. Underneath the number it said “Suicide Stop Line.” Bernadette stared at it, then told herself it didn’t matter if Hammond had contemplated taking her own life. This wasn’t a suicide. She slipped the photo back under the frame.

“Anything?” asked Garcia, standing up.

“Nada.” Bernadette started opening vanity drawers and poking around the clothing inside them. “Could have been a guy she picked up in a club. One-night-stand sort of thing.”

“I don’t see any obvious signs of sexual activity,” he said, nodding at the perfectly made bed.

“Could be they did it on the floor because”—Bernadette’s voice trailed off as she thought back to her college years—“Shelby’s bed was noisy and she was afraid a roommate would come home and hear.”

Garcia, while pressing down on the mattress with one hand and listening to the squeak, said, “Roommates told the police that Hammond wasn’t into dating. Didn’t go out to bars.”

Bernadette held up a packaged condom. “Roommates don’t know everything.”

“Hmm.”

She dropped the condom back in the drawer and closed it. “Did you tell your college roommates everything?”

“We didn’t talk,” said Garcia. “We drank and watched television.”

“Nice.”

Garcia said, “ME will let us know if he finds any evidence of sexual activity. Sexual assault.”

Bernadette went over to the chest of drawers and started riffling through the contents. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

“Minneapolis PD has already been through here.”

“Humor me,” she said, closing one drawer and opening the one below it.

He watched as she continued to dig. “What do you think?”

“I think she had a lot of pink clothes. I thought redheads couldn’t wear pink.”

Garcia went over to a closet, opened it, and stared with wide eyes. “Wow.”

Bernadette closed the drawer and looked over. The closet was jammed with pink dresses, blouses, shoes, and purses. “Was the wow for the pink or the mess?”

“Both,” said Garcia, shutting the door before something tumbled out. “If I have kids, I hope they’re all boys.”

“Something’s missing.” She put her hands on her hips and ran her eyes around the room. “Where are her textbooks?”

“Downstairs,” said Garcia. “Apparently the kitchen doubled as the study hall.”

“Laptop?”

“Computer forensics took it.”

“Cell?”

“Bagged. Cops are snagging phone records.”

“I don’t suppose they found anything juicy in her directory or on her redial.”

“Nope.”

Bernadette went back to the tub. Hammond was a small-breasted girl—her chest was as flat as a young boy’s—and her arms and legs were like toothpicks. Her hip bones practically poked through her skin. She looked thin in the photos, too. “Was she ill?”

“Why?”

“My arms are bigger than her legs.”

“And you’re pretty slender.”

“Thank you for not using the word skinny.”

“When the ME does his deal, that should uncover any illnesses,” said Garcia. “I know our people didn’t mention anything regarding an illness. Maybe the cops heard something. But like you said, she might not have told the other girls.”

“Have the parents been contacted?”

“They’re in Europe. Minneapolis Homicide is trying to track them down.”

Bernadette bent over the tub and brought her face close to that of the dead girl’s. “Maybe she was anorexic or bulimic. That wouldn’t be something she’d share with friends or family.” She peeled down the bottom lip of the open mouth. “Her teeth look funky.”

“From stomach acid?”

Bernadette stood straight. “The other victims, some of them had eating disorders, too.”

“They had a lot of problems, which is why the suicide rulings weren’t hard to swallow,” said Garcia.

“The angry villagers aren’t going to swallow this one,” she said. “They’re going to break out the torches.”

“We’re reviewing the earlier drownings,” Garcia said defensively.

“We’ve got to step it up,” she said. “People are going to freak. They’re going to say we let a maniac run around unchecked.”

“The police are taking action. We’re taking action.”

She walked back and forth along the side of the pink bed. “We’re passing out Prozac and telling people to take the ‘How to Tell You’re Depressed’ quiz.”

“The others could still be suicides.” He nodded toward the tub. “This could be completely unrelated.”

“All the victims have been young college women with problems. All drowned. In every case, there were no witnesses. These can’t be a string of coincidences. If that’s not enough, look at the rate. Since April, it’s been one a month. Clockwork.”

“If we count La Crosse, it’s one a month. If we don’t count La Crosse—”

“We’ve got to count La Crosse.” She leaned against the side of the bed.

“Do you think we’ve gone from the river to a tub?” asked Garcia.

“You know what that tells me? That tells me the killer needs a more intense experience, a more up-close-and-personal drowning. He could crank it up in other ways, too.”

“How?”

“The next killing might not be spaced so far apart.”

Garcia dragged his hand over his face. “What do you want from me?”

“What do you want from me?” she asked. “Minneapolis Homicide is all over it. Our Minneapolis office is all over it. Milwaukee sent an asshole and an agent. They’re tripping over each other interviewing roommates.”

“It’s Minneapolis PD’s case, first and foremost. I can’t do shit about that. It doesn’t become yours unless—”

“Unless I prove that we’ve got a serial killer.”

“What do you need to do that?”

She got up from the side of the bed. “The files, going all the way back to the first one.”

“The one in April? That was a suicide for sure.”

“Why?”

“There was a note.”

“I want the note. I want the file. Did notes come with any of the other ‘suicides’?”

Garcia’s brows knitted. “I think the second one … no … they found a scarf she’d dropped on the bridge. No note.”

“That’s right. I remember reading about the scarf. A convenient clue left for the cops. I want that scarf, too.”

“What’re you going to do with that thing? Think you might try using your—”

“I might.”

“Flag me beforehand. I’d like to be there, if that’s okay.”

Garcia was unlike any of her previous supervisors. While the others didn’t want to know exactly what she did or how she did it, Garcia wanted to watch. “I’ll flag you,” she assured him.

He stuck his head into the hallway and turned back to her. “Coast is clear. No one to bug you if you want to try a fast one right here.”

She surveyed the pink room. Since the bed was neatly made—with a pile of pink pillows resting in an artful arrangement against the headboard—Garcia was probably right that Hammond and her visitor hadn’t had sex on the mattress. Nothing to touch there. The woman had probably filled the tub herself. The killer had touched the porcelain at some point during the struggle, but after so many victims, she suspected he was clever enough to wear gloves. “I don’t know, Tony. I hate quickies. Let me wait for the scarf. I’ll bet the murderer left that scarf for the police to find.”

“You really think those river drownings were murders staged to look like suicides?” His eyes traveled to the leg dangling over the side of the tub. “There was no attempt to make this look like a suicide.”

“Could be he figures this is so outside his previous MO, we’d never tie it to the river deaths.” She pointed a finger at Garcia. “Let’s let him think that. Let him think we’ve made no connection between this and the river deaths. He’ll get cocky and make a mistake. Plus it’ll keep a lid on the rioting citizens. Tell the cops and the ME to talk like this thing is an isolated murder.”

“That won’t be hard. The police still don’t buy the idea that the river deaths are anything but suicides.”

“Doesn’t sound like you believe they were murdered either.”

“I’m waiting to see what you come up with.”

“Fair enough.” She started for the door. “Make sure the cops keep us out of it.”

“Again, not hard. They love keeping us out of it.”

“Our public information guy didn’t blab to the media that we’ve got agents in this house?”

Garcia followed her out into the hallway. “We treat reporters like mushrooms. Feed ’em a load of shit and keep ’em in the dark.”

“That’s a line from a cop movie. A police detective says that’s how he treats federal agents.”

“That’s our line. They pilfered it from the FBI and turned it against us. Bastards.”

The two agents stepped to one side as a man and a woman from the Hennepin County ME’s office clattered up the stairs and into the hallway with a stretcher carrying an empty body bag. They unfolded the gurney’s legs, and then the woman reached over and unzipped the flat sack, preparing it for an occupant.

“Can we take her?” asked the man.

Garcia thumbed over his shoulder. “Last bedroom.”

“One of your fellas downstairs told me he was going to be there for the autopsy,” the woman said.

“Agent Thorsson?” Garcia asked.

“Yeah. He told me to tell you,” said the woman.

“That’s awfully nice of him to keep me updated,” Garcia said with a tight smile.

“Thorsson,” Bernadette said under her breath.

The two agents fell silent as they watched the grim pair wheel the hardware down the hallway. There were few sights as chillingly final as that of the medical examiner’s gurney on its way to pick up a corpse.

BY THE TIME Garcia and Bernadette left the house, the sea of blue uniforms had thinned out considerably. The pair stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, taking in the epitaphs on the decorative tombstones. “I like that one,” said Garcia, pointing to See! I told you I was sick!

Bernadette turned away from the yard and pushed her sunglasses tighter over the bridge of her nose. “I’ll be in the cellar if you need—”

Garcia snagged her elbow. “Cat. Wait a minute.”

She pivoted around to look at him. His face was knotted with worry. She pulled off her shades. “What’s the problem?”

He glanced up and down the sidewalk to make sure they were alone, then said in a lowered voice, “As you were coming up the stairs, I caught the tail end of your conversation with Thorsson.”

“For God’s sake, I was just giving him grief. I’m not going to crack up and—”

Garcia raised his hand. “I know, I know.”

She fingered her sunglasses. “It’s been six months since the shooting, Tony. I’m over it.”

“No one gets over it.”

She squared her shoulders. “I’m handling it, then. Okay? Seriously, why bring it up now? Is it because Thorsson opened his big mouth?”

“Between that mess and this case and your own history—”

“My history?”

“It’s just that—well, you seem so resistant to the possibility that the river deaths are suicides. It’s like you’re taking it personally.”

Her mouth dropped open as she realized why Garcia had been hesitant to bring her into the drownings, and she didn’t know if she should be angry or touched. Torn between the two emotions, she stumbled over a response. “I’m not … It’s not personal.”

“You sure this isn’t dredging up some bad stuff? Want someone to talk to tonight?”

“The only reason I talked to a shrink after the shooting was because you made me,” she said. “The last thing I need is to go back to one of those operators.”

He gently squeezed her shoulder. “I was talking about me, Cat. You want me to come over?”

Before answering, she studied his face. She thought she saw something new there but wasn’t certain. “I’m good, Tony.”

“You sure about that?”

She nodded. “I’m sure.”

“I’ll check in tonight, with an ETA on those files.”

“The scarf, too. Don’t forget the scarf. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

While Bernadette walked back to her car, she replayed the expression she’d seen on Garcia’s face. Was it concern beyond that of a boss for an underling? Her eyes must have been playing tricks on her. She slipped her sunglasses back on her face.

Some days she despised her damn eyes.

With those damn eyes, Bernadette could see things. She could hold something touched by a murderer and watch through the killer’s eyes. Problem was, her talent wasn’t a science. She could be seeing through the murderer’s eyes in real time or be observing something from recent history. An execution could pass before her eyes, or she could be saddled with mundane scenes of everyday life: A pair of hands scrambling eggs for breakfast. An old movie on a nondescript television set. The pages of a paperback book at bedtime.

If she landed in the murderer’s eyes during his dreams, she saw bizarre images that would be no help at all to a case. She’d suffered through the visions of maniacs who were hallucinating because of their drunkenness or drug use or mental illness. Again, no use when it came to solving a crime. She could misinterpret what she saw (not hard to do since her vision was filmy when using her special sight) and lead an investigation in the wrong direction. Send the bureau running after the wrong person. Even in the most ideal settings (she often went to empty churches to help her concentration) she came up with blanks. Conversely, it could come on unexpectedly with a casual brush of her hand. Each time she used the sight, it sapped her of energy. Worst of all, it could put her in the same emotional state as the killer, leaving her furious or frightened or homicidal.

Certainly she’d had successes over the years—otherwise the bureau would have cut her loose a long time ago—but her missteps were what attracted the most attention from the front office. A transfer routinely followed the failures. She’d landed in Minnesota the previous May after getting shuffled around Louisiana, where her co-workers had nicknamed her “Cat” because she had weird eyes like the South’s Catahoula leopard dogs. She had a brown right and a blue left.

Garcia liked calling her Cat, and she didn’t complain. He’d asked for her when none of the other bosses wanted her. She was thrilled to be back in her home state, even though she had no close family left there. The farm had been plowed over by developers. Her parents and only sibling, a twin sister, were dead. So was her husband.

HEADING BACK downtown, Bernadette steered the Crown Vic onto the interstate. Halfway to St. Paul, the traffic slowed and then stopped. “I hate cars,” she muttered, and tried to see around the minivan parked in front of her.

While waiting for the logjam to break, she struggled to keep her mind off of the skeletons that the drowning case was bringing to the surface. She punched on the radio and turned up the volume on an ancient Rolling Stones tune, hoping to blast away the memories filling her head. The last thing she needed was to relive that sunny September day, three years ago, when Michael hanged himself on the water with his own boat rigging.

Chapter 4

BERNADETTE WAS STUDYING the directions on the back of a frozen turkey dinner when she was interrupted by a knock.

“Cat. It’s me.”

She tossed the carton onto the counter and went to the door. Garcia was standing in the hallway with a pizza box in his hands. “Hope you don’t mind. I slipped inside the building right after one of your neighbors went outside. The front door doesn’t shut all the way unless you force it. You should tell the caretaker—it’s dangerous and should be fixed.”

“I’ll add it to the list.” She inhaled. “Sausage and green peppers and onions. Now that’s dangerous.”

He looked past her into the open loft. “I thought I heard someone else in here.”

“I wish. Can’t remember the last time I had a date.” She pointed to the CD player. Sinatra was launching into another song. “You must have heard the Voice.”

“Right.” Garcia adjusted his grip on the box. “You didn’t eat already, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Let’s tear into it before it gets cold.”

She directed Garcia to the kitchen. “Set it down. I’ll get the plates.”

He dropped the box on the table. Dipping his hands into his trench pockets, he produced a wad of paper napkins. “We don’t need plates.”

“Beer, wine, or water?”

He peeled off his trench and blazer and draped them over the back of a kitchen chair. “Beer for me. A beer would be good.”

“St. Pauli okay?” she asked as she headed to the refrigerator.

“Perfect.” He spotted the carton on the counter and pointed at it. “Lean Cuisine’s on the menu at my house at least once a week.”

Embarrassed, she retrieved the turkey dinner and shoved it back in the freezer. “Cooking for one sucks. What can I say?”

“Aren’t we a couple of pathetic singles?”

She pulled a beer and a bottle of Chardonnay out of the refrigerator. “You didn’t have to make a house call. I told you I was fine.”

“I know you’re fine,” he said, loosening his tie. “I was in the neighborhood. It was dinnertime.”

“Right,” she muttered, and popped the top off the St. Pauli.

AFTER POLISHING OFF the pizza, Bernadette took one end of the couch and Garcia sat on the other. He was working on his second St. Pauli while she held her second glass of white wine in her hand.

She propped her stocking feet up on the coffee table. “When do I get those files?”

“I’ve got to wrestle them away from Thorsson. He and his partner were digging into them tonight.”

“Thorsson. You shouldn’t let that moron anywhere near those files.”

“I hate it when you kids fight.” He kicked off his shoes and pushed them under the coffee table. “Can’t we all just get along?”

She took a sip of Chardonnay. “Watch. He’s going to hang on to them just to tick me off.”

“I won’t let him hang on to them.” Garcia took a bump off his beer. “I’ll get them off him first thing tomorrow.”

“Should I swing over to Minneapolis and pick them up?”

“I’ll come by the cellar with them. I’ve got a meeting over at the St. Paul cop shop.”

“Don’t forget the—”

“The scarf. I know, Mom. I’ll remember.”

“I caught the six o’clock news,” she said. “Television played it just the way we wanted. There wasn’t even a mention of the other drownings.”

“That’s enough work talk, okay?”

She took a sip of wine. “Fine with me.”

Garcia pointed across the room, to a chrome and red Honda parked in a corner of her condo. “Your trail bike or motocross bike or whatever you call it. I swear to God I see dust on the seat.”

“You do.” Rather than leave the bike in the condo garage or on the street, she routinely sneaked it up in the elevator so she could keep it under her sight. It hadn’t seen much action lately.

“When you gonna take the thing out for a ride? You should get some mud on it before the snow flies.”

“You’re right. Maybe this weekend, if the weather holds out.”

“I wouldn’t mind going with.”

Surprised by his request, she paused before answering. “Sure.”

With his beer bottle, he motioned toward her DVD collection. “Why don’t we pop in a movie?”

She set her glass down on the table and went over to the rack. “What’s your pleasure? Something scary? A comedy?” She took down a copy of The Departed. “How about a police flick?”

“I hate cops-and-robbers movies. They never get it right. Bunch of bullshit. Comedy sounds good.” He polished off his St. Pauli and set the empty on the table. “I could use a laugh after what we saw today.”

“I second that,” she said, and started riffling through her Adam Sandler movies. “Help yourself to another beer.”

“In a bit.” Garcia yanked off his tie and tossed it on the table. “That’s better. I hate those things.”

She looked over and nodded to his chest. “You must hate your dress shirt, too. You’ve got sauce all over it.”

He looked down. “This is my lucky shirt.”

She went over to him with her hand out. “Give it to me, and I’ll run some water over it, so the stain doesn’t set.”

He stood up and started unbuttoning. “Do you mind? My wife bought me …”

His voice trailed off, and she knew why. Garcia’s wife was dead, her car run off the road by an unknown driver years ago. Bernadette preferred her own tragedy; at least she knew whom to blame for her spouse’s death. The uncertainty continued to haunt Garcia. “Give it here. It’ll just take a minute.”

As he peeled off the shirt and passed it over to her, their eyes met. “Appreciate it.”

“Not a problem,” she said. Garcia wore a tank T-shirt under his oxford, and she couldn’t help but notice the well-muscled arms and the six-pack rippling through the cotton. She went over to the sink, turned on the water, and held the fabric under the stream. “The stain’s coming out.”

“Great.” Burying his hands in his pants pockets, he walked around her condo while she worked on his shirt. “So … any visitors recently?”

“Visitors?”

“You get what I mean.”

Garcia knew she could see her dead neighbor, August Murrick, the former owner of the condo building. “Mr. Murrick hasn’t made an appearance in quite some time,” she said.

“Really?”

“Really.” She wasn’t lying.

“What happened? Why’d he hit the road?”

“I have no idea why he took off.” That she was lying about. She’d never confided to Garcia that she and Augie had been intimate once, before she realized he was a ghost. For weeks, she rebuffed his efforts to get her back into bed. He finally got the message and disappeared for good over the summer. She prayed Augie had gone to a truer heaven than a converted warehouse on the banks of the Mississippi.

“He sounded like an interesting character,” said Garcia, stopping to examine the movie titles.

“Oh, he wasn’t all that interesting.” She turned off the faucet, wrung out the wet shirt, and held it up over the sink. “Good as new. How lucky is that?”

“Thanks a bunch,” said Garcia, coming up next to her.

She pivoted around and found his body inches from hers. “Glad to … do it,” she stumbled, and felt her face heating up.

“Maybe we should forget the movie,” he said evenly.

She nodded and said with the same careful lack of emotion, “I’ll put this in a plastic sack for you.”

While she dug under the sink for a bag and stuffed the wet shirt into it, he slipped his shoes back on and pulled on his blazer. “Thanks for the brew.”

“Thanks for dinner.” She handed him the bagged shirt.

He grabbed his trench coat and headed for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Wait,” she said after him, retrieving his tie from the coffee table.

He turned around. “What, Cat?”

“You forgot your tie.”

As he took it from her, his hand locked over hers. “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” he said hoarsely.

“You sure you can’t?”

“More sure than I’ve ever been of anything.” He released her hand, opened the door, and stepped into the hallway.

Bernadette watched his back as he headed for the elevators, putting his trench coat on as he went. She wished like hell he’d turn around and come back. At the same time, she knew that would be a huge mistake for both of them.

He glanced back, staring at her while she stared at him. Raising his hand in a small wave goodbye, he stepped into the elevator and disappeared.

She waved back to the empty corridor and closed the door. Resting her forehead against the wood, she cursed with frustration. “Shit, shit, shit.”

THERE WAS a period after her husband’s death when she’d lost the taste for sex. Then she found herself sleeping around too much, picking up strangers in hotel bars and going to their rooms. Since coming home, she’d struggled to find a middle ground between the nun and the slut. While her night with Augie had thrown her off balance, her relationship with Garcia was sending her into a tailspin. Far from being just a boss, he was becoming her friend, and buddies as hot as Garcia were hazardous.