Virtue Falls

  Now he had the paperwork from the Banner case to examine, and all night to do it in. Good thing he wasn’t going to sleep anyway, not after almost scoring with Elizabeth today in the truck. He’d march right into her room and give it another hot shot, except if she didn’t yield, he’d wonder if she couldn’t stand to sleep with a pathetic loser whose father beat him up, and if she did yield, he’d wonder if she did it because she felt sorry for the pathetic loser …

  No use telling himself he wasn’t a pathetic loser, that that was the memory of his father yelling abuse in his mind. As Elizabeth would say, he knew that logically. But what the hell did logically have to do with emotions that snapped at his courage and ripped at his heartstrings?

  Better concentrate on the work at hand. When it came to this kind of research, he knew himself to be the best on the force, and thus in the world.

  He shuffled through the reports. Found the one he wanted, the one that identified the fingerprints on the scissors.

  Misty. Charles. And three others, unidentified.

  Not surprising. In any given household, scissors got used by a lot of different people: residents and visitors. Lots of people had never been fingerprinted, so again, not surprising to have unidentified prints. Yet the failure of this report was that it didn’t mention the position of the prints.

  People handled scissors by the handles, of course, unless they were handing them to someone else, and then they grasped the blades.

  But someone, the killer, had held the handles of the scissors backward, and slashed and stabbed and killed. The fact that those fingerprints hadn’t been specifically located and proven to be Charles Banner’s showed gross negligence on the part of the investigator. And that investigator knew it, too, because this paper hadn’t been scanned and included in the report pertaining to the case.

  Garik was glad Mike and Courtney had left town, because Dennis Foster had a lot to answer for.

  Garik looked at his computer, and sighed. He’d stalled long enough. He had to check in with Perez and tell him what was going on, and for that, he needed Elizabeth’s phone.

  So he made his way through the sitting room to the open door of Elizabeth’s bedroom. Not that he wanted to; after his confession this afternoon, he didn’t want to see her again tonight.

  But he sucked it up and knocked on her door.

  “Come in,” she called.

  He swung the door open. “Can I use your…”

  She sat on the floor, clad in a man’s oversized white shirt, her right hand pressed on the floor, her fingers spread wide, frowning as she put polish on her nails.

  “… phone?” he croaked.

  She didn’t look up. “Sure.” When he didn’t move, she added, “It’s on the night stand.”

  He crossed the room, picked it up, noted the signal was strong, and headed for the door. He shouldn’t say another thing, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to ask. “What are you doing?”

  “Painting my nails.”

  “Painting your nails.”

  “Yes.”

  He rubbed his head and wondered if he’d fallen into another dimension. “Where’d you get the stuff?”

  “From the resort’s spa.”

  “Oh.” He supposed that made a weird sort of sense. Except … “I didn’t know you knew how.”

  “Just because you never saw me do it, doesn’t mean I don’t know how. I learned in college, when I was a shoe model.”

  Women. Did they ever make sense? “You painted your nails so you could model shoes?”

  “The photographers loved to take photos of me doing this.” She stood, struck a pose, and cupped her boobs with her own hands.

  He halted in midstep.

  The polish was red. Her shirt was white, and unbuttoned to the middle of her chest. She was barefoot. She was not wearing a bra. And her cleavage swelled, rich and sinful as whipped cream. “It sold shoes. Shiny, high-heeled, fuck-me shoes.” She let herself go, sat back down, and returned to painting her nails.

  “Yes. I can see it would.” Somehow he got out of her room, across the sitting room, and into his bedroom without falling to his knees and begging that she sit on his face. Because he was in control of himself.

  Either that or he was a rank coward who was afraid of being rejected.

  Plugging Elizabeth’s phone into his computer, Garik brought up the FBI’s secure instant messaging, logged in, and and typed a message to Tom Perez. Got the contents of the evidence box for the Banner case. I’m sending you the scissors via Priority Mail, or however else I can wrangle it. Still no mail service, but as soon as I get it sent, I’ll give you the heads-up so you can be on the lookout.

  Five seconds later. Did you get the evidence by legal means?

  Best not to ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.

  You know the shit I’m getting because you’re missing in action? Why should I do this for you?

  Garik rubbed his hands together, and typed, Hey, you’re right. I’ll send the scissors from the infamous Banner murder case to someone else to get the prints. Maybe … let me think … that detective with the Las Vegas police. What’s her name? Alexis Long. Didn’t you sleep with her for a while? She would do me a favor to have a shot at this celebrated piece of crime history. And she’d be gettin’ all that publicity when it turns out Charles Banner didn’t commit the murder …

  Mail me the scissors.

  I don’t want to get you in trouble.

  Mail me the scissors.

  If you insist. If you really want them.

  Mail me the fucking scissors.

  Of course, boss.

  A pause. Then, You have any reason yet for thinking Charles Banner didn’t do it?

  Not all the reports got uploaded to the online case file.

  This reply returned immediately. Juicy.

  The sheriff is one scary dude.

  Suspect?

  Right now, my number-one. But there are others. Garik thought about Marrero. He liked Marrero for the crime. That slimy little bastard.

  Then he thought about Rainbow, about that grip she’d had on his arm earlier today. She was a big woman, strong, with man hands, and Elizabeth had named her as a possible for Misty’s lover.

  Dr. Frownfelter with his weird psycho obsession with Charles. Who else had Margaret named?

  Are you just entertaining yourself, or is there real cause for suspicion?

  “You suspicious bastard,” Garik muttered, and typed, I’m just entertaining myself.

  Don’t get yourself killed entertaining yourself. Keep in touch.

  Will do.

  A knock on the door connecting to the suite made Garik jump, turn, and look.

  Elizabeth leaned against the doorsill, white men’s shirt brushing her thighs, red bottle of polish in one hand, girly paraphernalia in the other. “Can we talk?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Elizabeth didn’t wait for an answer. She walked past him toward the bed, and she smelled good, like citrus and cinnamon. She sat on the floor, and spread out her nail supplies. She put her foot on a little white drop cloth, stuck some foam thing between her toes, unscrewed the lid on the polish, and started painting her toenails.

  He tilted his head, trying to see … to see …

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Um…” Trying to see your panties?

  She clarified, “What’s with the papers?”

  Garik tore his gaze away from her upraised knee and glanced at his desk. Shit. The evidence was all over the place. The evidence Mike stole for him. The evidence Garik had promised to keep secret. Evidence clearly marked with a red stamp that said EVIDENCE REPORT and in the upper left-hand corner, BANNER MURDER in black magic marker.

  He started gathering the papers, squaring them up with each other, keeping the writing turned away from her. “Mike brought me a bunch of old papers from high school. Teenage boy stuff, you know.” Lame.

  But Elizabeth bought it. “Okay,
I won’t look.” She wasn’t watching him, anyway. She was observing her own hands as they carefully dabbed red polish on her little toe. “I was thinking about the stuff you told me this afternoon.”

  Oh, God. She wanted to talk about his big, whimpery confession.

  And to think he had been grateful she wasn’t interested in the evidence.

  A quick glance proved she had finished with one foot, and she had both legs stuck straight out in front of her. Which was better than the other pose, except that she wiggled the red-painted toes and smiled at them … Damn, that was endearing.

  Picking up the pink envelope, he started sliding the papers inside. “Do we have to talk about this afternoon?”

  “No…” She pulled her other foot in close and put it on the drop cloth. She shook the bottle of polish—

  With this leg up, the light on his desk shone in at the right angle, and—

  She wasn’t wearing any panties.

  Like a Disney character whose animator dropped the brush, he froze, eyes bugged, jaw dropped, fingers clenched around a pile of papers.

  He could see … everything.

  Through the buzzing in his ears, he heard her say something …

  Something like, “But I feel closer to you than I did this morning.”

  And he came back to life.

  Think, Garik. She’s wearing a see-through shirt unbuttoned to her navel, she’s doing girly stuff with her fingers and toes, her hair is tousled, she smells like flowers, and she’s not wearing panties. She has something on her mind besides talk.

  Well. She could just think twice about that.

  He stuffed the rest of the evidence into the envelope, placed it up on the top shelf of his closet, walked over, and stood over the top of her. He clenched his fists on his hips. He scowled. He said flatly, “I do not want to be your pity fuck.”

  She looked up, all the way up, taking a flatteringly long time to make the journey. “Really?”

  Wait.

  She had a point.

  Did he really care about his pride if he was going to get—

  No, damn it. He didn’t want her to have sex with him because she felt sorry for him. “Yes. Really.”

  Her gaze wandered back down his body, lingering on the bulge in his jeans, which didn’t mean anything except that he hadn’t been laid for over a year and that circus in his pants had a mind of its own, and she said, “Why would I pity you? If I pitied you, I would have to pity myself.”

  Her lips were moving, but he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

  She went back to work on her toes. “I always wondered why we connected when we had nothing in common. Turns out we have everything in common.”

  Garik frowned. Elizabeth was such a strange girl. He knew that. He’d always known that.

  But her feet, especially her painted toes, were looking good. Sexy. Flirty. Seductive …

  She continued, “We were both kids who survived the worst kind of trauma—our fathers hurt us, destroyed our lives, made us the objects of scorn for our peers. Yet look at us! We’re successful adults with good careers and you know what? We’re pretty well adjusted.” As she worked on the little nails at the outside of her foot, she concentrated hard, her tongue massaging her lower lip as if that would help her get this right.

  And it might. As he recalled, she had a very talented tongue.

  When she finished dabbing the last of the polish on her tiniest toe, she grinned in triumph, capped the polish, and looked up again. “We’re made for each other.”

  She was starting to make sense. That meant his brain was compromised by lack of blood flow. So he retreated to his desk and sat down in his chair. “You’re saying because we both had trauma in our childhoods we’re a match?”

  She laughed. Gently, but she laughed. “Honey, we didn’t just have trauma. We had the kind of stuff that makes most people alcoholics or drug addicts, or makes them go to bed and pull the covers over their heads and never get up.”

  She had a point.

  But so did he. He was straining, straining, to remember he did not want to be her pity fuck.

  So he said the thing guaranteed to make her run away and never look back. “I’m in therapy.”

  She didn’t leap to her feet. She rose in a leisurely fashion. She looked at him. She straightened her shirt, tugging it down like it mattered whether she was covered or not when in fact he’d just seen the most toothsome display of female goodness he ever remembered in his whole life. Or maybe only since their divorce. But the fact was, he couldn’t remember ever having spotted it displayed so temptingly, so innocently, so … naughtily.

  She strolled over to the desk—strolled, her long legs moving deliberately—and stopped with her knees against his knees. She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders. Her full lips moved, purposefully articulating each word. “I’ve been there, too. I’d go back if I felt like I needed to. How about you?”

  How about him? Well. Her shirt was unbuttoned down to mid-boob and when he looked left, he could see inside, all the way to the pale swell of one breast. He couldn’t quite see her nipple; it was hidden by a fold of cloth. When he looked right, he could see the pale swell of the other breast, and about half of her buff pink nipple.

  He looked right.

  “So?” She shrugged.

  Shirt and boobs shifted and moved.

  She said again, “Therapy helped me. How about you?”

  He cleared his throat. “I didn’t think so. But yeah. Maybe. Since I got here, I’ve thought a few of the things the therapist said might be valid.”

  “Because if the study of psychology helps you track a serial killer, then it has validity?”

  “Possibly. But also, there’s a difference between a psychotic human mind, and a normal human mind.”

  She cupped her hand under his chin and lifted his face so his eyes met hers. “If there is such a thing as a normal human mind.”

  “Gotta be.”

  “Says who?” She was mocking him, her big eyes wide and amused.

  “I do.”

  “So you have a normal human mind?”

  “Sure. Normal.”

  “Then explain why we shouldn’t do this.” She slid one knee onto the chair with him. Slid the other knee onto the chair with him. And sat, with her legs spread, on his erection.

  He thought his heart was going to explode.

  No. Wait. The explosion was going to take place a lot lower.

  But he thought he sounded almost normal. “Because my jeans are in the way.”

  She chuckled, warm and throaty and charmed. “You’re right. That’s a shame.” She kissed him on the lips, slid her tongue inside his mouth, tasted him and sighed with pleasure. Pulling back, she said, “I wonder if I can remember how to work a zipper.” She slid her fingers into his hair and massaged the back of his neck and head, pressing the heel of her hand against the tense muscles, easing away stress and anxiety and replacing them with something much, much more potent.

  He was being seduced. He knew he was being seduced. He knew he didn’t have a choice—he was going to yield, and yield fervently and thankfully. But he couldn’t help it. One question gnawed at his mind. “What did you mean, it explains a lot?”

  She shook her head slightly. “What?”

  “This afternoon, after I told you about my father, you said, ‘That explains a lot.’”

  “Oh.” She gathered her thoughts. “Your father. Knowing about him explains why you don’t like to talk about yourself, your past, your feelings. You loved him, and he abused that love in every way possible. So you’re afraid if you love too much or show it too freely, the person you love will rip you apart. Then you’re afraid you’ll become your father, and hurt that person in return.” She relaxed against Garik again, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and leaned her forehead against his. “You keep closed up to protect yourself, and to protect me. But I have never been afraid of you, Garik Jacobsen.”

  “P
erhaps you should be, because now you know the truth.” Or … most of it.

  “Yet here I am, a logical woman with acute and trained observation skills, and I’m open to you in every way.” She snuggled closer, rested her breasts against his chest, and smiled into his face. “Trust me, Garik. I see you as you really are.”

  He stared at her, trying to breathe, trying to think, trying to figure out the hole in her reasoning. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t, because there wasn’t one, or because he suffered from testosterone poisoning.

  Either way, he had no choice. If there was one thing their time apart had taught him, it was that he needed Elizabeth. He needed her body, her mind, her heart, and he would do whatever it took to win her. Really win her. And keep her this time.

  He unfastened another button on her shirt. And another. “You have an advanced intellect.” Her breasts now almost escaped from the material. Almost. “So if I can do this, certainly you can—”

  She pressed her hips closer, spread her legs wider.

  The heat of her vanquished thought, and speech.

  “If I remember correctly, sliding down your zipper is like opening a really great Christmas present.” She leaned back, her hands against his knees, her chest thrust out. “Guaranteed to bring joy all the—”

  He slid his arm inside her shirt and around her back, baring her left shoulder and left breast. He lifted her to his mouth and tasted her nipple.

  Now she forgot how to speak.

  During the years of their marriage, he had dedicated himself to the study of what gave her pleasure. He knew how to ease her into desire, to take his time, to build her enjoyment … and his. He licked her softly, swirled his tongue around, then suckled with increasing pressure.

  She writhed in his lap, her fingers digging into his thighs, and when at last she gave a low, deep moan, he lifted his head.

  She opened her eyes. At the sight of his smile, they narrowed. Sitting up straight, she yanked at the hem of his T-shirt until he raised his arms and let her pull it off. She pressed her palms to his chest until she felt his heart jump, then slowly she trailed them down toward his waistband. With firm, deliberate movements she popped the button on his jeans and eased the zipper down. “Look at that,” she said. “I did remember how. Let’s see what else I remember.” Now she smiled, her lips open, as she slipped backward off his lap.