Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) Page 10

“Yeah,” he answered, looking at her. There was a sudden warmth in the room, the intimacy that had always been there between them, despite the walls.

  She shook her head, breaking the moment. “We talked. I gave her the contact info for a good therapist I know, although of course she’s only visiting here. But she has medical services through her university and she can go there. Cutting is a huge issue these days; every college has to deal with it. She can get help if she wants it.”

  “Does she want it?”

  The shrug Rachel gave was like Tyra’s. “She talked some. That’s a release. Whether she chooses to pursue help . . .” She lifted a hand.

  True, Erin was an adult. It was her choice. But Roarke was sure that Rachel was the best therapy Erin could have had at the time.

  So he’d kept his promise to Cara for now.

  Rachel was watching him. “Are you going after Jade, then?”

  “We’ll have to find her, yes.”

  Her lips were pressed tightly together as she shook her head. “You know what DeShawn was, don’t you? A guerilla pimp. Shauna’s a foster kid, no great student, but trying her best in a lousy system. She was walking home from school in Oakland and he grabbed her off the street. She’s thirteen. Kidnapped, held hostage, and gang-raped by Butler’s friends for a few days to take the will out of her. Then he drugs her, puts her out on International Boulevard with instructions to bring money back, beats her if she doesn’t, beats her every time she looks toward a door or a window. When it’s convenient to him, he sells her to Ramirez. That’s the man who was killed last night.”

  Then she slammed her hands down on the desk and swept an arm across it, sending a pen jar, a binder, several books, a coffee cup flying. She pounded her hands flat against the suddenly bare surface. “Who cares? Who cares?”

  For a split second Roarke was rooted to the floor in shock. Then he crossed to the desk.

  “I know, Rachel.” He reached across the desktop to put his hands on her shoulders, but she jerked back in her chair. She was pale and breathing hard.

  “If one thing happened to me that happened to that child, I would drink bleach. I would cut up my wrists. I would kill myself any way I could.”

  “I know—”

  “Someone should just take a blowtorch to all of them. Pimps, johns, the whole fucking lot of them.”

  She was shaking, halfway between fury and tears. Roarke knew the signals. In ordinary circumstances he would have stepped to her, held her, said with his body what he couldn’t say with words. But the circumstances weren’t ordinary and never had been. There was too much between them . . . and not enough.

  “Rachel . . .”

  Her eyes were closed now, and she rested her elbows on her desk and her head on her hands. “Just go.”

  And in the end, he did.

  Chapter 15

  The San Francisco Bureau had several crack Evidence Response Teams that handled crime scenes and lab work for the office. As far as Roarke was concerned, Lam and Stotlemyre were the best techs in the division: one a reed-thin, energetic, unflaggingly cheerful Vietnamese, the other a hulking, methodical German American. The two men had worked together so long that no one in the office ever referred to them separately: it was always “Lam and Stotlemyre.” The Supreme Court had ended the ban on same-sex marriage in California in 2013, and in some part of his mind Roarke had been expecting a wedding invitation ever since. But San Francisco or not, the Bureau was still the Bureau. No one asked, and no one told.

  The techs had been on Roarke’s list to visit, but as he crossed the Federal Building’s blue-veined marble lobby on the way toward the elevator, he got a text from Lam that sent him straight up to the lab:

  Got something for you. Maybe.

  The two techs were huddled at a lab table with a comparison microscope between them. They looked up in tandem as Roarke walked in.

  “Got your message,” he told them.

  The techs nodded, and Lam stood.

  “I was taking a blood sample from the razor to send in for rush DNA testing, but I typed it first. It’s a mixed sample. Meaning there are two types of blood on it. One type is a match for DeShawn Butler—”

  Roarke’s pulse elevated. “So the other blood could be the killer’s.” And if Jade’s blood type is on record anywhere—

  The two techs exchanged a glance. “We’re thinking maybe not,” Stotlemyre said.

  Roarke frowned. “Not the killer’s blood?”

  Lam jumped in to explain. “The second type is rare, AB negative. Less than one percent of the population has this type.”

  Roarke could feel a revelation coming from the prickling of his skin. “So who do we know who does?”

  “Daniel Ramirez,” the two answered simultaneously.

  Roarke stared at the techs. “It’s the same murder weapon Lindstrom used?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Stotlemyre warned.

  “It’s still just a blood type,” Lam agreed. “We have to wait for DNA results to know for sure if it’s Ramirez’s blood. I pulled some favors to get a quickie analysis.” And before Roarke could ask, he added, “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.”

  “But the odds . . .”

  The techs exchanged a glance. It was Stotlemyre who answered.

  “The odds are . . . odd.”

  Roarke looked from one to the other. “You’ll let me know—”

  “As soon as we do,” Stotlemyre promised.

  As Roarke rode the elevator down to his own floor, his mind was already reeling with the implications. Two pimps killed with the same weapon. Not just reasonable doubt. Exculpatory evidence.

  If Cara’s odds of walking out of jail had improved with Jade’s disappearance, they’d just shot up astronomically now.

  And if the blood proved to be Ramirez’s, the only explanation Roarke could think of was that the killer had deliberately left the razor with that blood evidence linking the two crimes.

  He tried to slow his spinning thoughts so he could work it through.

  The murder weapon in the Ramirez case had never been found. Jade had been on the scene; she could have picked up the razor.

  And kept it for two weeks? But why? Surely she couldn’t have been planning this kill all that time?

  The idea was statistically so beyond the pale that he was already rethinking whether Jade was really DeShawn’s killer, even though the timing made her the most likely suspect.

  But is she? The most likely?

  Who would be more likely to plant evidence to exonerate Cara?

  He thought suddenly of the bloody knife he’d taken from Erin’s hotel room. The hotel room that was just steps from the park where Ramirez had been killed.

  Should I have that knife tested, too? Compare Erin’s blood with the blood on the razor?

  He almost turned back to the lab but realized that the point would be moot if the blood tested out as Danny Ramirez’s. Which they would know soon enough.

  Leave it, he decided. We’ll see what we see.

  He could hear voices in the conference room as he walked down the hall, but there was instant silence when he entered the room. Epps and Singh turned to him simultaneously from opposite sides of the long table.

  The atmosphere was strained. It felt for a moment almost as if his agents had been fighting.

  “I’ve just been up to the lab,” Roarke began. “Lam and Stotlemyre—”

  “We know,” Epps said tautly. “Same murder weapon. At least that’s what fucking Molina is going to say.”

  That explained Epps’ level of agitation. “We don’t know for sure yet,” Roarke said. “Any progress on the other cases?” he asked, though he could guess the answer from the look on Epps’ face. Singh’s expression was harder to interpret.

  “We are racing the clock,” she said, echoing Mills. �
��If there had been a case close enough to file, I would have said so.” Her tone didn’t change, but Roarke sensed a rebuke to Epps in it, unusual for Singh. “But Agent Jones and I will be checking with every agency again to see if there is something that can be done to move any one of them forward.” She sounded dubious, and Epps looked angry. And Roarke was a little tired of Epps being angry.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m going to check in with Mills.”

  As he moved out of the office, he heard steps after him and knew by the weight of them that it was Epps. More than that, he could feel his agent’s eyes boring into his back. Roarke stopped in his tracks and turned on him. “What? What is it—?”

  “Mills? You’re going to see Mills? Or just that general direction?”

  Roarke was momentarily struck into silence. So Epps knew about his visits to Cara. Or guessed. He could wait for the explosion, or he could just have it out. “Okay, let’s hear it—”

  “You were doing what with Rachel Elliott last night?” Epps demanded.

  “I went by the House,” Roarke admitted.

  “You didn’t go by. You took Elliott out of that house in the middle of the night. Just in time for that girl to disappear before the prelim.”

  Roarke stared at him. “You think I planned that?”

  “Just before the prelim. Can’t buy that kind of timing.”

  “Do you also think I somehow engineered the murder of that scumbag by a sixteen-year-old girl?”

  His agent stared back, tall, dark, and murderously angry. “I think at this point you could’ve planted the razor yourself.”

  Roarke was staggered. “You are way out of line.”

  Now Epps was in full-tilt fury. “I’m out of line? I am?”

  Roarke felt his own blood rising. They were close to blows now, and he summoned everything in him to stand down. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  He turned to walk down the hall. Epps called out behind him.

  “Talk about what? Name it. Talk about what, goddamn it!”

  Roarke walked on, nearly blinded by his rage.

  Chapter 16

  He didn’t go to the jail. Epps had made at least that much of an impression.

  He got as far as the Civic Center garage, then called Mills and briefed him on the talk with the girls at the Belvedere House, which boiled down to a personal motive for Jade to kill DeShawn, but not a single clue to her whereabouts.

  And then he drove home. The fog was so thick he had to hunch over the steering wheel, squinting out at the vague shapes illuminated by the hazy line of his headlights. His fight with Epps was still ringing in his mind.

  Rage had dissipated, replaced by guilt. Guilt about lying to Epps, guilt about using Rachel. Above all he was taunted by the same questions he’d been struggling with since he’d learned of Jade’s disappearance.

  Were there signs? Should I have known?

  Known what? That she was holding on to the razor that Cara killed Ramirez with? That she would kill DeShawn and plant the razor, knowing it would create reasonable doubt about Cara’s guilt?

  How could I have known? How could anyone?

  Back in Noe Valley, he did the inevitable circling for parking and scored a space just a block and a half away from his apartment. By San Francisco standards, practically in his own front yard.

  As he got out of the car and headed for his building, his head was still full of the scene from the alley and the rest of the day. The pimp sprawled in his own blood. The look in Shauna’s eyes when she asked Roarke if Jade had killed him. Now that he was thinking about it, so eerily reminiscent of Jade asking about Cara’s killings . . .

  He was pulled from his thoughts by his own instincts, like an early warning system: an urgent flash of certainty that something needed his attention. He scanned the sidewalk, the pools of darkness beneath the trees. A cold breeze moved the shadows . . . but there was no one.

  He relaxed, but not completely, and moved up the concrete steps to the gated stoop of his building, still on alert. As he pushed the key into the gate’s lock, he heard a step, and he spun, his hand reaching for his weapon.

  A figure stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at him. A slim, slight shadow in dark pants and a hoodie. A kid? he had time to wonder. Jade? Erin?

  He stared down into the dark. What he could see of the face was young and androgynously feminine: short dark hair, dark eyes, a sharp nose.

  “Take your hands out of your pockets,” he ordered.

  She complied, slowly withdrawing hands from her hoodie. She held her empty fingers up ironically. “Feeling a little jumpy, Agent Roarke?”

  The voice was slightly hoarse. An accent in the vicinity of New York.

  “Who are you?” Roarke demanded.

  The girl/woman smiled slightly and responded in that gravelly voice. “You can call me Bitch.”

  Instantly he knew. The blogger.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she continued.

  “It’s way past office hours,” he told her. “And this isn’t my office.”

  “I don’t think you really care about that,” she answered, and privately he had to admit she had a point.

  “Did Molina send you?” he demanded.

  “Molina?” she asked with exaggerated innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I thought I could buy you a drink and we could talk about DeShawn Butler.”

  Now everything in him was on alert. “What do you know about Butler?”

  The young woman’s voice went flat and hard like slate. “I know he was a predatory fuck, like Danny Ramirez. I know he sold teenage girls on the street because it’s a safer gig for him than selling drugs. How much lower can a person be, Agent Roarke?”

  Roarke moved down a few steps but kept his distance and watched her hands. “I don’t disagree, but where are you getting your information?”

  “The streets are talking. Lots of interested parties. Everyone wants to know about Cara.”

  Roarke felt himself tensing in spite of himself. “What about Lindstrom?”

  “She’s not the one who should be locked up, here. And I think you know it.”

  He said the only thing he could. “We have laws in this country.”

  “The laws aren’t working.”

  He knew he had no counter to that. But if there wasn’t the law, what was there?

  “So that’s the plan?” he asked sharply. “You’re going to make her into a heroine?”

  Her eyes drifted someplace far away. “There are lots of plans. Lots of them. And we don’t have to make her into anything. She is what she is.”

  Roarke knew that for a fact. But before he could answer, the blogger added, with a slight, distant smile. “Maybe it’s time.”

  For the second time that day, he felt spectral fingers on the back of his neck. “Time for what?”

  “Time for a reckoning.”

  He looked down on her, and she up at him.

  “So. DeShawn Butler,” she said. “Any thoughts on that little bit of karma?” She waited expectantly.

  He was about to speak, then realized that in the middle of a media blackout he’d ordered himself, he was talking to a journalist, and one whose reach he didn’t even want to contemplate.

  “No comment,” he said. He turned back up the steps and unlocked the gate of his apartment, leaving the blogger outside in the dark.

  Chapter 17

  She wakes with It crouched outside the cell, watching her.

  She sits up in the dim gray cube, her heart pounding in her chest, every instinct on alert. The barred door swings open, and Driscoll’s long shadow slides into the cell.

  It slowly smiles at her, and she sees jagged teeth. “They want you in Health Services,” he tells her
in a voice leering with anticipation.

  In the other bunk, Kaz lies on her side. Her eyes are wide open. She does not move, does not make a sound. Her gaze meets Cara’s, one sickened, terrified look, then she shuts her eyes and stays still. It is the only thing she can do.

  Cara stands up from the cot. Every muscle in her body is tensed to fight. It’s time. Even possibly the final stand.

  She will need to kill . . . or kill herself. She has rehearsed it in her mind a hundred times, a thousand.

  Not in the cell, though. He will not do anything in the cell.

  She turns to be cuffed and waits passively, controlling her breath, while she holds her elbows subtly splayed. She learned to slip through cuffs when she was twelve. She has practiced ever since, folding her body as she drops into a crouch, stepping back over her wrists . . . then standing in one fluid motion, bringing her cuffed arms up to use as a battering ram or slipping chained wrists over a neck. She can do it in seconds.

  The guard’s fingers close tightly around her arm, digging into the muscle. She feels the scaly grasp, smells the stinking breath of the Beast. She does not flinch. He pulls her out of the cell and shoves the door shut. The automatic lock clangs into place.

  They walk down the dark, foul corridor, past the cells where some inmates lie sleeping and others lie still like Kaz, frozen in fear, willing themselves silent.

  She breathes slowly, in rhythm with her steps. Balancing herself on her legs, feeling the strength in her thighs and hips, stilling her racing heart, focusing rage in her hands and fingers. And rehearsing the moves in her head. Drop to a crouch, step through with right foot then left, unfold to standing. Every muscle connected to another, connected to her bones, powered by will. And her nails carefully bitten to razor sharpness.

  It will not have her.

  The guard is behind her, pressing up against her now. “I know who you are,” It croaks, the familiar rasping voice.

  “I know what you are,” she replies, too low for anyone but It to hear. She grounds her feet on the floor, her thighs over her knees, ready to drop.

  There is a rattle down at the end of the corridor, and a second guard steps from the shadows at the end of the hall.