The answer came to me quickly. “Bodies are smaller than cars, and easier to hide in the woods. Plus, you leave a body in a car, you’ve definitely got a murder on your hands, but if someone recovers Kendra’s car soon, then there’s still this question of where she might be. Or even if she could still be alive. Until you have a body, you have no hard evidence of murder.”
It was Candice’s turn to nod. “And you leave less trace evidence behind without a body in the trunk,” she said. “This guy, whoever he is, really thought this through. And he’s smart.”
“Which makes him even more dangerous.”
Candice didn’t comment, because something else on my diagram caught her attention. “Hold on, here, Sundance—you think Kendra was stabbed in the back?”
“Oh, that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly either, Candice. I know that she was taken by surprise from behind, and when I first focused on her initial attack, I felt that she thought she was in the presence of someone she trusted, turned her back to him, then was struck by something sharp from behind. The area where I think she was struck was at the small of her back, and her legs immediately went out from under her. She felt somehow incapacitated—paralyzed even—by that first blow.”
Candice’s brow furrowed. “But the police found no trace evidence of blood at Kendra’s house.”
“I know, which is why I can’t say with any certainty that she was actually stabbed with a blade.”
“Could it have been a shot?”
I blinked. “You mean like from a gun?”
“No. Like from a syringe. Maybe the killer stuck her with a syringe filled with a paralyzing agent.”
I mulled that over for a moment. “Possibly,” I said. It made sense in a way, as it would explain the lack of blood splatter found at the scene. Even if the killer had cleaned up after himself, he was likely to leave behind at least a drop or two that the CSI techs would have discovered. “The one thing I can tell you is that how Kendra was immediately incapacitated is the biggest clue in fingering her murderer,” I said.
Candice cocked her head. “Say what?”
“I feel like this guy may have tried this before with another girl,” I explained, feeling out the energy as I went. “There’s a pattern here.”
Candice eyed me keenly before she shot out of the chair and hurried through the door. I got up a little more slowly and headed into her office, where she was already tapping on her keyboard. “I’m sending Brice an e-mail,” she said without looking up. “I’m asking him to check his database for missing women who fit Kendra’s profile within the past three years.”
I hovered in the doorway until she was finished. When she looked up, I asked, “Now what?”
“We wait,” she said.
And wait we did. An hour went by and I busied myself by playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. Candice did something equally productive—she played Scrabble.
Another hour went by and we finally got an e-mail reply from Brice. “He’s sent the list,” she told me, pressing the print command and moving over to her printer. After looking at it, she frowned and handed it to me.
“Eight women,” I read, “all reported missing from their homes in the middle of the day, but all their cases except three have been solved and the perps are either dead or in jail. Well, at least we’ve got three unsolved cases to possibly match to Kendra’s.”
“Not so fast, Sundance,” Candice told me. “Look again at the location of those three unsolved.”
“Two in Laredo and one in El Paso. Yeah, so?”
“Border towns,” Candice said. “Kidnapping is big business these days in places like that.”
“And most of the others are from high-crime cities like Houston and Dallas,” I remarked. “None of them are from Austin or Travis County.”
“We live in a nice safe city, Abs.”
“That’s probably what Kendra thought too.”
Intuitively I knew that none of the names on the list from Brice were connected with Kendra’s killer, but I’d felt so strongly that I’d been onto something. I just knew the person responsible for killing Kendra was following a pattern. And then I thought of something. “What if he recently moved here?” I said.
“Who?”
“The killer!” I was getting excited. “Can you have Brice check the national database?”
Candice’s eyes widened. “Abs, that’s gonna come back with literally dozens of names.”
My shoulders sagged, and Candice took the sheet from me. “Listen,” she said, “how about I have Brice run the list and we keep it handy while we work the case. We can compare any suspects we develop against the list to see if there’s a match and go from there, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. That’s a good compromise. And speaking of suspects, did you get a chance to look into Kendra’s BFF?”
Candice returned to her desk and motioned for me to sit too. “I did,” she began, “but I didn’t find much in her financials or her credit report to indicate Bailey might have been motivated to kill Kendra to gain control of the Web site and take all the profits for herself.”
“What’d you come up with?” I was convinced there was some sort of Bailey connection to Kendra’s disappearance, but what that was I hadn’t quite figured out yet.
“Well, for starters, Bailey likes to shop. In fact, Bailey likes to shop a lot. But for the most part her credit is clean, and she pays the minimum on all her credit cards each month on time.”
“You mean her husband pays them on time,” I muttered.
Candice grinned. “Probably. Still, it appears that Bailey comes from money. Her former address before she got married puts her in the heart of some very pricey real estate. Even assuming she lived with her parents, you can’t find anything in that Dallas neighborhood for under two million.”
I whistled appreciatively. “There’s more you found out.” I was reading Candice’s expression.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “We were wrong to assume that Bailey doesn’t have a job besides what she earns from her half of the Web site. Mrs. Colquitt is a model for a local modeling agency here in town. And she does pretty well for herself, actually. She’s not quite at six figures, but she’s not far from it. Plus, I did a few calculations and made some calls last night to some of Kendra’s sponsors, and according to my figures, the Web site can’t be bringing in more than sixty to seventy thousand a year. Especially not in this economy.”
I sighed. Why couldn’t any of this be easy? “And yet,” I insisted, “I still think Bailey had something to do with all this. There’s a link in the ether that keeps connecting Bailey to what happened to Kendra.”
“Is that thread anything your radar can pin down?” Candice asked me.
I stared at the floor for a long couple of seconds, but, try as I might, I couldn’t pull the thread close enough to put words to it. “The best way I can describe it is that whatever happened to Kendra started with Bailey. Other than that, I’m sorry, but it’s too nebulous for me to define.”
Candice closed the lid to her laptop and rested her elbows on top of it. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll put Bailey on the back burner for now. If you get any more insights that point to her, we’ll take another look in her direction.”
“Sounds fair.” I got up to stretch and relieve the pain in my hips.
“How’s your physical therapy coming along?” Candice asked, obviously catching my stiff rise from the chair.
“Oh, crap!” I exclaimed, turning my wrist to check the time. I’d completely forgotten about my appointment that morning.
With a hasty wave I left Candice’s office in search of my purse and keys. Even if I made every light, I’d still be ten minutes late.
An hour and a half later I walked painfully back into the office. My hips were killing me and I was grouchy after my session with my physical therapist—who’d decided to pack an hour’s session into forty-five minutes.
“Hey, there, Hopalong,” Candice called as I gimped past her office on the
way to mine.
I muttered something (it might’ve contained an expletive) and kept on trucking. Just as I was about to settle into my chair, Candice appeared in my doorway. “Don’t sit down,” she ordered.
I stood there, half bent, ready to plop my butt into the chair, and stared at her. “I seriously need to take a load off, Cassidy.”
“Then sit down in the car. I’ve managed to arrange a meet and greet with Tristan.”
Although it sounded familiar, my brain at first had a hard time making a connection. “Who?”
“Tristan Moreno. Kendra’s husband.”
I rolled my eyes and eased myself into the chair—“Defiant” is my second middle name. “Can’t you just go talk to him?” I asked wearily.
“Of course I could.”
I exhaled happily, leaned back in the chair, and closed my eyes. “Good,” I said. “Thanks, partner.”
No sooner had I gotten that out than I detected a slight movement behind me, and as I snapped my eyes back open, the chair was nearly pulled out from underneath me. “Hey!” I cried when I was roughly rolled away from the desk and pushed forward toward the door at an alarming rate of speed. “What the freak are you doing, Candice?!”
“As I said,” she told me, the strain of pushing my chair making her voice tight, “I could go talk to Tristan alone. But I’m not going to. I need that radar of yours to feel him out, Sundance, and letting you sit here and grouse about your hips all day isn’t going to help anyone. Including you.”
At the door Candice whipped me around and I almost flew out of the seat again. “Quit it!” I yelled, but it was no use; Candice was tugging me backward through my office door, and even though I reached out for the doorframe, she was too quick for me and all I grabbed was air.
Once we were through the door, Candice whipped me around again, and she pushed me down the short hallway at breakneck speed. “Are you crazy?” I shouted. “What the hell has gotten into you?”
Candice ignored me and said not a word until we reached the front lobby. She stopped only long enough to spin me around backward yet again, yank open the door, and drag me out into the hallway.
“Candice!” I cried, really alarmed now, because if I tried to launch myself out of the chair I’d most certainly hurt myself. “Quit. It!”
“Nope,” she replied in that most annoying determined tone she often took with me.
“My cane!” I protested, trying to claw the air behind me. “Just let me go back and get my cane at least!”
But I’d obviously touched a nerve with my partner, who continued to propel me all the way down the hallway, right up to the elevator. Only then did she let go of my chair and step in front of me while pushing the DOWN button. “You want to walk without your cane at your wedding, Abby?” she asked as the bell above the elevator dinged and the doors opened.
I didn’t say anything. I knew where this was headed.
Candice put her purse against the door to prevent it from closing, while waiting for me to answer. “Well, do you?” she demanded when I continued with the silent treatment.
“Yes,” I said meekly.
Candice nodded, came around to the back of my chair again, and tipped the whole thing forward. I barely got my hands out in front of me before she dumped me out onto the floor. “If you truly want to walk without that cane, Sundance, then it’s time to start practicing.”
“Why are you being so mean to me?” I shrieked when she grabbed hold of the chair and shoved it back down the hallway away from me.
“I’m not being mean,” Candice said, finally turning away from me to pick up her purse and walk casually into the elevator. Putting an arm out to hold the doors, she said, “For the past month I’ve barely seen any improvement from you, even though I know you’re going to all your physical therapy appointments. You should’ve let go of that cane two weeks ago, Abs. It’s time to walk, honey.”
My lower lip was quivering and I was on the verge of tears again. Candice had once trained me into shape, and I’d quickly discovered that her methods were all drill with equal parts sergeant mixed in.
And I knew that this was another form of her tough-love method, but the truth was that she had really struck a nerve. I’d thought the exact same things she had about my slow recovery. I’d plateaued and wasn’t making any further progress. I wanted to let go of the stupid cane so badly, but I felt too unsteady on my feet without it. But maybe she had a point. Maybe all I had to do was let go and take a chance.
“Fine,” I said. If Candice believed in me, then I knew I could do it. Slowly, using the wall, I stood up straight and tall, and Candice gave me a nod of encouragement. Squaring my shoulders and fixing my gaze on her, I lifted my right leg, felt my left hip go out, splayed my arms wide for something to grab onto, and, finding nothing, went headfirst straight into the back of the elevator, striking it headfirst with a loud whump!
Once the stars clouding my vision cleared, I was able to make out Candice’s half-amused, half-concerned face hovering above me. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be right back with your cane and an ice pack.”
Chapter Seven
“Is there a bump?” I asked, holding the sad excuse for an ice pack she’d brought me to my forehead as Candice weaved her way through traffic.
“No,” she said without looking.
I narrowed my eyes at her but found that hurt, so I relaxed them immediately. I now had a killer headache. Pulling down the visor, I gazed at my wound in the vanity mirror. I had a pretty good welt and a slight scratch hovering over my right eye.
“That’s just great,” I grumbled. “Something to go with my scorpion sting.”
Candice finally decided to look guilty. “Do you want me to take you to the doctor?” she asked sweetly.
I pushed the visor back into place. “No. Thanks, though.” Then I focused on our mission and asked, “How do you want play this? Did you want me to keep the psychic guns holstered?”
Candice drummed her fingers on the top of the steering wheel, and I, for one, was most relieved to see her hands actually on the steering wheel. “I don’t think so. I’m going to say that with Mr. Moreno we should be blunt and honest.”
My brows shot up (mistake!) and I put the nearly melted ice pack against my bump again. “You really want to tell him I’m your psychic sidekick?”
“Yes.”
“But that shut down Kendra’s parents,” I said, already wondering why I was fighting her on this.
“Yes,” Candice repeated before she elaborated. “Obviously, Kendra’s parents didn’t abduct her.” I saw her eyes then dart sideways to me. “They didn’t, did they?”
“I highly doubt they had anything to do with her murder.” There hadn’t been a hint of that in the ether.
“Right,” my partner agreed, turning her gaze back to the road. “People who aren’t guilty can afford to be skeptical of your abilities. People who are guilty can’t.”
“Ahhhh,” I said. “I get it. If I go in, all psychic guns blazing, we can see how nervous or interested that makes him.”
Candice pointed a finger gun at me. “Bingo,” she said. “But only show off your skills if he asks for a demo, Abs. I just want to inform him about your superpowers and see what he gives up first.”
“Got it.”
We arrived at the Moreno residence five minutes later, and I was relieved to see the news crews had abandoned the area for the time being. Still, Candice parked down the street in front of another house and said, “Don’t want some nosy reporter running my plates and leaking that Moreno is meeting with a private eye,” she said. “We should try to keep as low a profile as possible for the time being.”
I shrugged and got stiffly out of the car. Between my physical therapy and that stint in the elevator, it was a miracle I was still ambulatory. “You okay, Sundance?” Candice called over the top of the car. I thought it was nice that now that I’d managed to give myself a hematoma, she was finally showing some concern.
&nb
sp; I winced and hobbled around to her side. “Ducky,” I said, not really meaning it, but for the time being I thought I could suck it up.
Candice walked nice and slow, thank God, and we went up the Morenos’ driveway and around to the back. “Tristan told me to come to the rear door,” Candice explained. “He’s stopped answering his front door altogether.”
I felt a twinge of empathy for the guy. I mean, at this point we didn’t really know if he had anything to do with Kendra’s disappearance or not, and if he didn’t have anything to do with it, then he had to be suffering not only the loss of his wife, but also all the unwanted attention and accompanying innuendo from the press corps.
Still, as we waited for him to answer Candice’s knock on the back door, I worked to push that aside and gather my impressions of him with an open mind.
Tristan Moreno wasn’t at all what I had expected. Tall, broad shouldered, and surprisingly handsome, he answered the door with a polite but wary smile. “Miss Fusco?”
Candice stuck out her hand. “Please, call me Candice,” she said, then turned to me. “Tristan, this is my partner, Abigail Cooper.”
Tristan shook my hand, and I found it warm and dry. “Please come in,” he said, stepping to the side.
We entered the cozy pale blue kitchen, with white chair-rail molding, matching white cabinets, and travertine tile floors. The space was large and inviting, and the atmosphere still had a residual warmth to it.
That, to me, was important, because so often when I enter a home where a couple is having problems, I can pick up on the energy of their arguments. I looked for any telltale signs of that in the ether but felt more a sense of neutrality in the space. If this couple argued, they either did it quietly, or they did it in a room other than the kitchen.
I eyed Tristan again with curiosity. Although he was still smiling politely, I could see the slight strain about his eyes. There was also this underlying fear that he was trying hard to conceal, and yet he wasn’t nervous about meeting us. That was evident from his dry palm and the energy surrounding him.