“Well, if it makes you feel better, you didn’t stalk me or anything. We’d spoken on the phone about that victim earlier that day, so you had my number. You called me that night, sounding so sad. I told you that I’d listen. I gave you my address, so if you’ve been worried about stalking me, then don’t.”
“I was, actually.” He rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Thank you.”
“What do you remember about that night?” she asked even more carefully.
“Touching you. Watching you come apart. Falling asleep in your arms.”
“All very good answers,” she said lightly. “What else do you remember?”
“I remember that I’d been here, at this condo. Scarlett and I were waiting for Deacon and Faith. Deacon and I had a big argument and he was pissed at me. He had a right to be. We hadn’t been getting along and it was my fault. All my fault.”
“What happened? I mean, why were you not getting along?”
“I was a shithead. And jealous of him. I helped him get the job with Isenberg, when she was setting up the joint task force. I’d left Homicide to work Personal Crimes and there was an opening. Deacon had been on a joint force back in Baltimore and he needed to come home because Greg was out of control at school and needed him. It was a perfect fit. D was coming off a high-profile case—a serial killer who’d buried his victims in West Virginia. He was golden. I gave his name to Isenberg and she jumped at the chance to bring him in. I was happy for him. Really. Until it all fell apart.”
“Paula,” she murmured.
“Yeah. I’d been working Personal Crimes for three months. That’s as long as I lasted,” he said bitterly.
“Hey,” she chided. “Don’t criticize yourself. That’s a hard assignment. Lots of cops transfer out. Even your old partner did. He told me so.”
“Yeah, Hanson did transfer, partly because of me. He watched me lose it after Paula was killed. Had to put me back together. After that, I think it was harder for him to compartmentalize the way he’d done before. I feel bad about that, because he was good at that job. Lasted a helluva lot longer than I did, that’s for damn sure. But now he’s back in Narcotics and I’m back in Homicide, so it’s like we both stepped back to our comfort zones.”
“No shame in that.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged and she knew he hadn’t believed her. “Anyway, Hanson put me back together after I watched Paula get killed, but he didn’t use a strong enough glue. I came back to Homicide . . . not the same. And then Deacon was there, running the show.”
“You resented him?” she asked and he hesitated.
“Not Deacon himself. But his success? The respect he got? Yeah. I resented that.”
“Respect from whom? Not Isenberg. She gets you. Not Deacon or Scarlett. And not Faith, although you caused trouble for her at the beginning.”
“I know.” He’d been sure that Faith was in cahoots with a murderer when in reality she’d been a target, much like Meredith, her life threatened over and over again. “I regret that more than you know. I was jealous of Deacon for that, too. At the time it felt like he was taking it all—the job, the respect of my boss, and he got the girl.”
She blinked at that. “You wanted Faith?”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “She’s not my type at all.”
She arched a brow, only half teasing. “She’s a redheaded, gun-carrying, opinionated child psychologist.”
He tilted her chin so that his gaze locked with hers. “But she isn’t you.”
Meredith’s lips curved. “That was another really good thing to say.” She snuggled against his shoulder. “So what happened the night you came to me? The first time?”
“Deacon thought I’d put Faith in danger. She was safe, surrounded by cops, including me, but Deacon was livid. He’d just come from a gruesome crime scene and he was so upset. But he was moving on the case too slowly, at least in my mind. At the time I thought that he was so worried about keeping Faith safe that he didn’t care that the killer was holding an eleven-year-old girl hostage.”
“Roza,” Meredith murmured. She knew the girl well, had treated her after her rescue. And then she gasped softly. “Oh. Oh, Adam. Roza was eleven last year when all that happened to her. Just like Paula.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Nobody else made that connection.”
She pressed a kiss over his stuttering heart, her lips warm against his skin. “To be fair, I don’t think you’d told anyone about Paula, except maybe your boss at the time.”
“No, I hadn’t. I couldn’t. Hanson knew, and Nash Currie knew, but only because they were standing next to me when it happened.”
“Who is Nash Currie?”
“One of Personal Crimes’ IT guys. He was trying to track her computer’s IP signal. But I couldn’t tell anyone else about it. I tried, but it was like there was this disconnect in my mind. I’d think of her and my words would . . . I don’t know. They’d just disappear.”
PTSD, she thought sadly. He’d suffered all alone. “But you can talk about her now?”
“A little. My shrink has helped. I still . . . react when I think about her, but it’s not that raw, debilitating panic anymore. It’s just garden-variety panic.”
“I get that, too. Everyone has their public face. Most people never look past mine. Even my friends.”
“Because you wear it so well. I didn’t. I was a pathetic mess. I accused Deacon of ignoring what was happening to Roza, that she’d die because he was moving too slowly. He said he knew what was happening to her. He’d been to the morgue, seen the victims.”
“But you saw Paula actually die and that’s different than attending to the aftermath.”
He frowned. “I told you that, too?”
“Yes. You were sketchy on the details. You kept saying, ‘So much blood.’”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “There was that.”
“Who was Paula? I mean, who was she to you?”
He swallowed hard. “A little girl who asked me for help. But I couldn’t save her.”
She brought his hand to her lips. “You don’t have to tell me any more.”
“I do. Because even though I started drinking when I was a kid, I could always stop. After Paula, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I was awful to my family and my friends. I pushed Hanson away. His dad, too, even though he’d always been there for me. Always the good dad that mine never was.”
She felt a sliver of relief. “I’m glad you had someone who was good to you.”
“Dale Hanson, Wyatt’s dad, was that guy. Coached me in Little League, was always encouraging me. Went to father-son events with me when my own dad was too busy or too drunk. Dale kept trying, even after I pushed him away. But I pushed everyone away—Isenberg, Deacon, and Dani . . . I even pushed my mother away because she wouldn’t see me without bringing my father and he kept calling me a sniveling coward.” She stiffened in his arms, so he tipped her chin up and kissed her mouth softly. “And I shouldn’t have even brought him up because he’s nowhere close to the most important person I pushed away.”
“I want to kick his ass,” she whispered fiercely, hating Jim Kimble.
“That actually helps. The most important person was you, by the way.”
She smiled at him. “I was hoping so.”
“But back to my point. I was an asshole. It’s a wonder anyone still talks to me.”
“Detective Hanson said I should make sure you knew that you had people who cared about you, even if you didn’t want to accept it.”
“I do now. But it’s hard to see the support around you when you’re mired in shit.”
“I know,” she soothed. She laid her head on his shoulder, her fingertips softly petting the hair on his chest. “How did Paula die, Adam?”
She felt his body bracing itself. “Her throat was slit. On Skype.”
Inhaling sharply, she held the breath for a long, long moment. “Oh,” she finally breathed mournfully. “And you saw that?”
“Yeah. She’d been kept in a cage. Not a small one. More a cell.”
“By whom?”
“She didn’t know his name. He only locked her up at night. Or when she was ‘bad.’ Her word. Other times she was left to roam the house freely, but the doors were locked and the windows made of hurricane glass. She’d tried to break out, but was never able to. One day, she e-mailed me, out of the blue. She’d seen a news report on TV about the youth baseball team I was coaching. There were deaf kids and hearing kids on the team. The report showed me signing to them. Gave my e-mail at the bottom of the screen in case other deaf kids wanted to join. She saw me signing and knew I’d understand her.”
“Oh.” Comprehension filled the single syllable. “She was deaf?”
“Yes. She’d watched her captor send e-mails, but when she’d tried in the past, the computer was always locked. One day it was left unlocked and she contacted me.”
“From whose account?”
“Her captor’s. We checked it out thoroughly, but we never turned up an owner.”
“What did she say in the e-mail?”
“That she was scared, begged me to help. But she didn’t know where she was, just that she was out in the country. That when she looked out the window, she didn’t see anyone or anything.”
“You couldn’t track the e-mail to an IP address?”
“No, and we tried. So hard. It had been bounced off of so many proxies by the time it got to us that Nash couldn’t track it.”
“What was Paula’s situation?”
“Kept locked away. Isolated from the world, she had access to a TV and a computer. Of course it was being monitored. We knew that. That the computer was left unlocked right after she saw me on the TV news was too coincidental.”
“Of course.” She sighed. “So Paula signed?”
“Enough that I could get the general gist. She remembered having a family once. A nice one, she said. But I never knew if that was her imagination or those memories were real. Anyway, I told her how to use Skype because her signing was better than her typing and because I was afraid her e-mail was being monitored. That made everything more urgent, like we had to find her before he came back and punished her for reaching out.”
“Even though he might have set her up to be caught.”
“Exactly. She talked to us three times over Skype, for just a little while each time. Nash Currie tried to trace the signal, but he couldn’t. I kept looking for clues as to where she was. I had ICAC examine the recordings I made of each call. They had all the experience on what to look for, but they were at a loss, too. There was nothing to give us her location.”
Meredith kissed his jaw. “And the fourth call?”
“It started out like the others. Then I heard a door slam on her end. She didn’t hear it and I told her to hide, to disconnect, but it was too late.” He buried his face in her hair. “He wore a mask. Only showed his eyes and his mouth. He was big. And she was small. Frail. Poor nutrition. She didn’t have a chance.”
“She was just a little girl,” she murmured.
He swallowed audibly. “I wanted to help her. So much. She was so alone. And then . . .” His voice broke. “He started slicing at her skin and she was screaming, but it was . . . rusty screams, because she didn’t use her voice.” His breathing became shallow and rapid. “He kept smiling at the screen. Like he knew I was there. Then he’d cut her again.”
“And you were helpless.”
“I just stood there. And watched. And then I started hoping he’d just . . . finish so she wouldn’t suffer anymore. Which made me feel like a monster,” he confessed, “wishing for the death of a child so that I didn’t have to hear her suffering.”
Meredith’s sigh was shaky. “Adam . . . You can’t feel guilty about hoping that. She was suffering. Whoever killed her wanted to hurt you, too. Maybe not you specifically, but whichever cop had the bad fortune to be her lifeline. He could have dragged her away. He could have cut the connection. He didn’t. He was playing with you, like a cat with a mouse.”
He stilled against her. “But why? What would he have gained?”
“That’s a damn good question, don’t you think? Whoever killed her wanted her to pay for trying to get help. But he also wanted to send CPD a message.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” he murmured. “Well, he didn’t have to worry about CPD. We never did find out where she’d been held. Where she died.”
“You never found her body?”
A laugh broke free, bitter and cold. “Yeah. I found her.”
Again she shifted to see his face. “Where?” She wanted to look away, to avoid the misery in his eyes, but couldn’t make herself do so.
“Trunk of my car,” he whispered.
New horror filled her and she framed his face with trembling hands. “He left her for you to find?”
He nodded. “We’d gotten a tip that someone might be being held against their will in this house out in the country. On a farm.”
“You thought you’d found her.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t the same place. We checked the place from top to bottom, but it was a false tip. When we got back to the car, the trunk had been forced open.”
“She was there?”
He nodded. Cleared his throat, but could say nothing.
“And?” Meredith prodded gently. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
He nodded again. Closed his eyes, then opened them, latching onto her like she was his lifeline. “He’d . . . burned her,” he whispered.
“How do you mean?” she asked so very quietly.
He looked away. “Gasoline. She was . . . unidentifiable.”
She couldn’t control her flinch. “Then how did you know it was her?”
“She had a bunny, a stuffed toy. It was the only toy she had. That she’d ever remembered having. It had been placed on her. Or what was left of her.”
“Oh my God. You still see her, don’t you? How could you not?”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “I had to get rid of the car. That’s when I got the Jeep. But I’d still see her, every time I went to sleep. I’d wake up screaming. Unless I got drunk first. That was the only way I could get any sleep.”
She lifted her hand to his cheek, cupped it. “I understand. I really do.”
Nodding, he sighed heavily. “I really hope you do. But I have to tell you the rest.”
So this would be it, she thought. They were finally getting to the part for which he’d been making amends all over town. She settled herself against his side once more and prayed again that she’d say the right things.
Chapter Sixteen
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sunday, December 20, 9:25 a.m.
Linnea finished the oatmeal and eggs served by Sister Angela. This nun didn’t have Sister Jeanette’s kind smile. In fact, her face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl.
“More toast?” Sister Angela asked, hovering over the toaster.
“No, ma’am.” She was full, like she hadn’t been in so long. She’d always lied to Andy when he’d brought her food from Pies & Fries, telling him she wasn’t hungry because she knew he was going hungry to feed her. “But thank you.”
They were alone in the shelter. There were masses being said in the church upstairs, the loud blast of the organ shaking the ceiling above her head from time to time. Linnea had been spared attendance when she begged off, citing her own battered appearance. The bruises from Friday night had bloomed, covering half her face in a dark purple that could never be covered by any makeup known to man. Or God, for that matter.
Sister Angela sat at the table. “What are your plans today, Denise?”
Denise. “I need
to make a phone call. But not from here.”
Sister Angela nodded soberly. “You don’t want to be traced here. I know where you can make the call. Would you like me to take you?”
Linnea’s mouth fell open in shock. “You would do that?”
A small smile bent the nun’s severe mouth. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Her gaze dropped to the bowl she’d all but licked clean. “I’m not a nice person.”
The nun’s hand, gnarled and twisted with arthritis, came to rest atop hers. “We kind of deal in second chances here,” she said. “Would you like to be a nice person, Denise?”
Linnea nodded. She knew it would never happen, that she’d never have the kind of respectability she’d always craved, but if she was gonna die soon—and she knew she was—she wanted to go out doing something good. “That’s why I have to make the phone call.”
“All right. I know where there’s a pay phone.” The nun dug into her pocket, then dropped two quarters on the table. “Although I think calls to 911 are free,” she said. “Do you want me to walk with you?”
Yes. Please. But Linnea shook her head. “I’m . . . grateful. I am. But if I’m seen, anyone around me could be hurt. And I don’t want you to get hurt, ma’am.”
Sister Angela’s eyes softened. “Those are the words of a nice person, Denise.”
Huh. “Maybe you’re right. If I had more time—” She cut herself off. Dammit.
The nun frowned. “What do you mean, more time? You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
And that’s not much time. But Linnea made herself smile. “You’re right. I do.” She slid the quarters off the table and put them in her own pocket, feeling the scrap of paper already there. “Is there a library nearby? I need to use the computer.” Because she needed to find the “–ruber Academy” and little Ariel’s teacher, Miss Abernathy.
It was possible that Ariel’s paper had been left in the SUV’s seat pocket by a child belonging to someone other than him or his thug. But it was also possible that the kid could lead Linnea to his true identity and his address.
“There’s a library a few blocks away. You’ll need to show your ID to use a computer.”