What Lies Behind
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What’s up on O Street?
She knew it wasn’t too late for him; he was a night owl, especially now that he was seeing FBI Agent Jordan Blake. He’d be up, one way or another. She sent another, this time to Xander.
Miss you.
She poured herself a finger of Ardbeg, thought about it, brought the bottle with her to the couch. Sat down. Took off her boots.
Waited.
Didn’t know exactly what she was waiting for.
She spared a glance at the file folders on the coffee table in front of her. She’d left them scattered carelessly in frustration before climbing the stairs to bed. Crime scene and autopsy photos spilled out of the manila folders, coupled with her notes and Baldwin’s notes and toxicology reports, all jumbled together on the smoky glass. She’d pulled all the autopsy reports from the files and stacked them neatly on the side table; they were her reading material and were proving to be an even bigger frustration than the case itself. This massive, sprawling, unnamed and unacknowledged case.
There were so many pathologists, coroners, methods, regulations, jurisdictions. No one did a postmortem exactly the same, much less were handling several of the individual cases as if there was a criminal component. She’d begun to feel she was interpreting without a Rosetta stone.
When John Baldwin had talked her into coming on board the FBI as a consultant to the behavioral analysis unit, BAU II, to work with his infamous group of profilers, he’d promised she could pick her cases. True to his word, he’d brought her to Quantico, gotten her set up with passes and emails and paperwork galore, then set her loose in the BAU file room. They had so much work, and so few people to handle it, any help was welcome.
And whether she was trying to prove her worth to her new team, or to herself, she’d chosen the big daddy of them all. A stack of files that were getting dusty, because no one could manage to link them, even though there was a single similarity between each victim—every woman was from the same hometown. New Orleans.
She’d seen the box, labeled Cold Case. Read the previous profiler’s report. There was nothing tying them together. The women had died by various means. Stabbings and stranglings and gunshots, one a cardiac arrest from a drug overdose, even a bridge jumper. Nothing highly unusual, nothing esoteric, nothing sexually motivated or even creepy. On the surface at least.
Baldwin had a feeling about the cases, had spent years compiling the ones he thought fit a pattern, and she’d learned to trust his gut when it came to crime. Despite the sometimes innocuous causes of death, the link to New Orleans shouted “connection” to him. But he couldn’t definitively tie all the cases together, nor could anyone on his staff.
Sam had looked through the files in the storage room, shaking her head. The murders did seem unrelated—they were spread all over the country, with different MOs, different murder weapons, different victimologies of all ages and races and socioeconomic levels. And yet, like Baldwin, she sensed the tenuous thread holding them. All of these women had been murdered by the same person. She could just feel it. There was something here. This was a series. Eight of them at last count, over more than twenty years.
Baldwin had just added what he thought might be number nine to the stack, a young woman named Olivia Rives, who’d been found shot to death in Minneapolis last month.
Nine dead. Multiple jurisdictions. No apparent links outside of a hometown and a profiler’s hunch.
A nightmare.
She shot the Ardbeg, poured another and gathered up the thick stack of papers on the side table. No sense going back to bed just this moment. She’d read a while more, keep filling her brain with the disparate notes of nine different autopsy reports by nine different doctors and coroners.
Maybe this time, something would be different.
Chapter 3
McLean, Virginia
ROBIN SOULEYRET’S PHONE rang at 3:23 a.m. Eyes snapping open, she saw the number on the caller ID. Surprised, she palmed the receiver. “You know better than to call in the middle of the night unless someone is dead. So who died?”
There was silence.
“Amanda? What is it? Are you okay?”
Nothing. Then a click.
That was odd. Robin sat up in the bed, realized she was still naked, glanced at the empty spot beside her. Felt the pillow. It was cold. He’d left. She tamped down the feeling that churned in the pit of her stomach. Annoyance? Relief? Sorrow? She didn’t know, but this was their deal. No strings, and definitely no feelings. They were just filling a need for each other.
With a sigh, she reached down and grabbed the shirt she’d been wearing off the floor, pulled it on and dialed Amanda’s phone back.
It went straight to voice mail. Her sister’s lilting voice filled her ears. “This is Mandy. You know what to do.”
Robin tried to keep the irritation from her tone. Well, most of it, anyway.
“You woke me up, little sister. Care to call me back, tell me what’s up?”
Lying back against the pillows, she stared at the ceiling. Wished Riley hadn’t been in such a hurry to split. She wouldn’t have minded making him breakfast. Just this once.
The room was dark around her, empty, but not lonely, never lonely. She’d chosen this life, known what it would be—all work, and no play. No real lasting relationships, with friends or lovers, no kids, no normality. Just a constant string of challenges, issues to be overcome. She’d realized long ago she was just an ant among other ants in a very strange hill, crawling across the world, bumping into a crumb here and there. Some were even big enough to take back to their queen.
Which made her think about Amanda again. She tried the phone once more, to no avail.
A vague uneasiness flooded her system. Maybe Amanda had dialed her number accidentally. Butt-dialed her. Or decided what she wanted to say wasn’t important enough to wake Robin in the middle of the night.
“Fat chance of that, you little bonehead. Where are you?”
She’d never get back to sleep at this rate. She got up, made a pot of strong Turkish coffee, measured in some sugar so it would be orta s¸ekerli, just sweet enough to add to the flavor, bring out the chocolate notes without overwhelming the richness. She inhaled the fumes as it began to boil, craving the dark, deep taste.
Her Turkish friends would be aghast at her drinking coffee in the middle of the night, but as she liked to point out to them, she was an American, not Turkish, and by God she’d drink it whenever she wanted—in the morning, before her dinner, in the middle of the night. So there.
Cup in hand, she made her way through the cottage to the back porch. The sky was as dark as the coffee, beginning its losing battle with the sun, which was still three hours off. She redialed Amanda’s phone.
Nothing.
Took a sip of the coffee, listened to the night things chirping and crawling in the bushes, imagined the birds and mice having an intimate, elegant cocktail party under the bough of the fir tree. Breaking bread with the enemy. Her specialty.
When she’d finished the coffee, she knew it was time to make the call. She hated to do it, but she had no choice. Mandy was her little sister, headstrong and brave, but prone to getting herself into situations that involved delicate extrications. The girl seemed to live for close calls, and she managed well, considering. She’d only asked for help once, a month ago. Robin had been forced to turn her down, unable to break away from her own messed-up world to help. They hadn’t spoken since, and Robin was missing her impetuous sister.
She dialed the number.
Listened to the greeting.
Punched in an extension.
Waited a moment, then hung up.
A heartbeat later, the phone rang.
She answered, surprised to hear Riley’s voice on the other end. “Robin?”
“What are you doing on the desk? I figured you’d be at home, sound asleep.” Or in my bed, sound asleep. Or wide-awake, an even better scenario.
The unspoken words shimmered around her, golden threads of need and desire. She needed to get a handle on these nascent emotions, and quickly. Riley wasn’t thinking about champagne and roses and candlelight every time he bedded her, she knew that. Of course, Riley didn’t see the glorious colors dancing around his words, either.
“I got called in. There’s been an incident in Georgetown.”
The golden threads dissipated with a pop and something like fear skittered up her back. She didn’t recognize the sensation right away. She hadn’t been afraid in a very long time.
“Anything I can do?” she said, careful to stay neutral.
Riley’s voice cracked a bit. “I’m comin’ over. You sit tight.”
Riley was from Texas, and no matter what, when he was upset, or tired, or drunk, little bits of an accent floated through his teeth, tripping off his tongue in blues and reds, like the flag.
The quivery, uncontrolled feeling coursed through her again. It was fear, she thought—deep, abiding, acrid and horrible. It filled her nostrils and played along the edges of her skin. “Riley. Tell me right now. What’s happened?”
His great gusting sigh scared her even more. Riley was a rock. Nothing rattled him.
She already knew what he was going to say, felt herself sliding out of the chair, to the cold concrete patio, as if being closer to the earth would help cushion the blow.
“It’s Amanda, Robin. She’s been killed.”
The stark word danced around her, sharp needles poking and prodding.
Killed. Killed. Killed.
You knew you should have helped her. Why didn’t you swallow your pride and call?
She’s dead, and it’s your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
“That’s not possible,” she whispered.
But it was true. She could feel the emptiness in the world. The spot that housed her sister, always tangible and reachable, was gone.
She dropped the phone, didn’t hear Riley say, “I’ll be there in five minutes. You stay put.”
Amanda.
Mandy.
Gone.
Black. Black and gray, swirling, choking, drawing her down, the words covering her like a scratchy blanket, drawing tighter, suffocating.
It is your fault, Robin.
Chapter 4
Georgetown
DARREN FLETCHER PULLED up to the crime scene with the remnants of a hurried to-go cup of coffee in his hand. He parked, drained the cup, grimacing—the coffee had gone cold, and bitter with it—and waited for the caffeine to hit his system so he wouldn’t yawn in front of his team. It didn’t work; he felt a jaw-cracking one coming on. Ducked his head down, let it overtake him. He’d been asleep when the call came.
The yawn made him feel better. More alert. He dropped the coffee cup into the drink holder and got out of the car.
Every crime scene was the same. There were the usual crowds of neighbors clustered together along the sidewalk. Yellow crime scene tape was wound around the stop sign at the corner of O and Wisconsin, effectively blocking traffic from driving down the street. He expected the same was true at the other end of the block. Nodded to himself. They were handling things well.
A patrol officer held the clipboard, standing relaxed against a tree. He straightened when he saw Fletcher.
“Evening, sir. Got us a mess.”
“So I hear. Who’s on it?”
“Detective Hart’s talking to the witnesses right now.” He gestured down the sidewalk, where Fletcher’s old partner and now lead detective stood by a pair of girls, both tearstained and rumpled. “Dude’s girlfriend found them. They’re pretty shook up.”
“I bet. Thanks, Hernandez.”
Fletcher signed in, went down the stairs. He could smell the blood before he saw it. When he stepped through the hall into the main room, with all the crime scene lights burning brightly, the blood seemed chaotic in its motion, streams and spatters of red going everywhere.
He sighed. A long night ahead for his team.
They all knew Fletcher liked to look at things by himself. Two crime scene techs saw him come in and melted away, allowing their boss a clean scene to walk through.
One said in passing, “Watch the blood in the hall. It’s pretty thick as you go into the bedroom.”
Fletcher nodded his thanks and walked through by himself once, placing things. The tech was right. The blood was thick and smeary, almost as if the body had been dragged into the bedroom from the living room.
As he entered the master, he saw a woman’s body leaning against the bed, arms by her sides, a crumpled marionette. Her skin was blue; milky, slitted eyes stared at nothing. Skids of blood stained the carpet, the bed, the walls. Life’s blood, clearly. A six-inch blade lay quietly on the comforter, next to a small, dirty-white plastic tent with a green light inside to designate a significant piece of evidence, and the number seven written on it.
Crime scene markers.
There was another green-lit one on the dresser, perched next to a piece of paper.
He’d been told this was a murder-suicide. Here was the murder.
The suicide was not present for his own party. He’d been transported to George Washington University Hospital, in extreme distress.
The crime scene was messy, unwieldy, complicated. Not the worst he’d ever seen, but bad enough. It would take a week to sort through all the blood. And with two victims, it would cost him a mint. He couldn’t help but see the dollar signs—he had a budget now, new responsibilities. He needed to keep control of things. And DNA testing was expensive. A necessary evil, of course, but pricey all the same.
The note was on the dresser, a page ripped from a notebook, written in a slanting hand, the letters blocked, like an architect’s script, but leaning heavily to the right, as if the building plans attached to it were sliding down a hill.
You made me do this.
He left it there, made his way out of the apartment, up the stairs, breathing deeply of the city air, happy to let its gassy stink clear his sinuses of the reek of death. Spared a quick glance at the tall back windows of the house one street over. Samantha Owens lived there, and he was surprised she wasn’t over here already, marching around, giving orders. Of course, she wasn’t a part of his world, not really, just an interesting bystander who brought him the strangest cases.
He liked the idea of her working for the FBI. She needed the challenge.
The lights in her bedroom were dark. He shook off thoughts of his friend. He needed to attend to his witnesses before they were useless.
Emma and Cameron were their names. Both undergrad students at Georgetown. Both highly intoxicated still, though scared into some semblance of sobriety. Underage, too, of course, which meant trouble for whoever was serving them tonight, but he didn’t spare more than a moment’s thought to that issue. Not his problem.
The taller of the two was standing by the squad car, her arms wrapped around her body as if she could hold herself together. He imagined she’d never seen anything like this. It would scar her for life. And the other one—prettier, softer, but...less, somehow, than her friend—was well on her way to being medicated by the EMTs. The horror of violent death took people differently. Some freaked out, some got quiet. Some enjoyed the ruckus, found ways to make it all about them. Others shook, and were never right again.
Hart nodded to him as he approached. He looked as tired as Fletcher felt.
“Hey, boss. This is Emma Johnson. She found the victims. Cameron Saint, her friend. They came to visit Mr. Cattafi this evening and found them.” He gestured back toward the house.
The girl Hart had identified as Emma kept glancing at the house. Her voice was soft, hurting. “Is Tommy going to make it?”
Fletcher could smell the liquor on her breath. She’d been crying; her eyes were red and puffy. “I don’t know, ma’am. Can you run me through your night? Tell me what happened?”
“I just wanted to stop by and see him,” she said.
“They’d broken up,” Cameron added. Emma came to life, anger on her face as she gave her friend a nasty look.
Her friend shrugged. “What? You did. He was there with another woman, anyway. And he tried to kill her. You dodged a bullet, you ask me.”
Emma sighed in disgust, turned to Fletcher with old eyes. “We’re on a break. I still have my key. He’s been really busy lately. School’s been really hard on him.”
“Where does Mr. Cattafi go to school?”
“He’s an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown. He’s going to cure cancer. Already has.”
“Mmm-hmm. And you broke up when?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Did you know he was seeing someone new?”
The words were small. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“Where were you tonight?”
“Just...all over the place. Barhopping.”
“And people can confirm this?”
“Oh. My. Gawd. You think I had something to do with this? Are you mental?”
“Careful, Miss Johnson,” Hart said.
“My father will be very interested to hear your accusations. Do you have any idea who I am?”
Fletcher stopped himself from laughing. “No, Miss Johnson. I have no idea who you are, nor do I care. Now you can settle down, or we can have this chat in my office. Do you want that?”
“Calm down, Emma. He’s not kidding,” Cameron said.
Emma huffed a bit, then raised her chin. “No. I don’t care to continue this line of questioning without a lawyer present.”
Hart glanced at Fletcher, who nodded. Hart whipped out his cuffs, turned Emma Johnson around and calmly placed them on her wrists, all the while ignoring her squeaks of shock at his rough treatment. “When my father hears this, he’s going to get you fired!”
Cameron groaned and leaned back against the police cruiser. She met Fletcher’s eyes as if to say, Hey, I can’t do anything with her when she’s fired up like this.
“Miss Saint? Would you like to continue this conversation, or would you, too, like a lawyer present?”
“Yes, sir, I would. I mean, no, sir, I’m all good.” Flustered, she continued. “Emma didn’t do this, sir. She’s been with me all night.”
“Shut up, Cameron. We need to get my dad’s lawyers here.”
Cameron drew herself up and gave her friend a baleful glare. “You shut up, Emma. You’re making a fool out of yourself.” And to Fletcher, “We have fake IDs—we were in Mr. Smith’s most of the night. You can check. They booted us and we walked up here. She wanted a booty call. She’s just drunk. She gets stupid when she drinks. Let her go, please. We stumbled into this, and we don’t know anything.”
Her words rang true, and Fletcher nodded. “Did you see anyone in the neighborhood as you were walking here? Anything that stood out? Cars that seemed suspicious, people who were out of place?”
Cameron looked at the ground, then back to him. “Sir, I apologize, but I had a lot to drink tonight. I wasn’t noticing much of anything besides where to put my foot next to make it up the hill, and then tossing my cookies when I saw all that blood. Besides, it’s Georgetown. There’s always a bunch of people around. I didn’t notice anyone who looked wrong, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, either.”
Emma had had a change of heart. “There was a jogger. That’s the only person I saw. But it was a woman. She was coming down the hill.”
“Young, old? Hair color?”
“She had a baseball cap on, and those reflective sneakers. That’s all I remember.”
Fletcher believed her. “All right. Unhook her, Hart.”
Emma looked like she was about to say something, but Cameron shook her head and she stopped. Hart released the cuffs, and Emma rubbed her wrists and muttered, “Thanks.”
Cameron grabbed her friend’s hand. “Can we go now?”
Fletcher did his best disappointed-dad routine. “You two behaved incredibly irresponsibly tonight. You could have been killed. I hope you realize that. Now, give me the fake IDs.”
“Yes, sir,” they chimed in unison.
They dug in their bags and came up with the bits of plastic. He pocketed them. “Detective Hart will make sure you get home all right. I’ll most likely want to talk to you again, when you’ve had a chance to sober up, and clean up. Give him all your information. And, girls? I hear about you doing anything out of step again, I won’t be Mr. Nice Guy. You hear me?”
They nodded, and Fletcher jerked his head toward the car. “Get them home,” he said to Hart, then walked back to his own car.
What a mess. What a huge mess.
His phone was sitting on the console. There was a text from Sam—sure enough, she had noticed the hubbub. He was tempted to go knock on her door, let her make him a decent cup of coffee. Her boyfriend, Xander, was addicted. They always had some sort of delicious brew on hand. But the text was over an hour old. She may have gone to bed when she didn’t hear back from him.
He sent her a quick note back, then got started with the paperwork.
There’d be no sleep for him tonight.
Chapter 5
BIRDS. ALL SHE could hear was birds.
Chirping, singing, flitting against the glass feeder. Sweet little songbirds going mad outside the window.
Sam cracked open her right eye, then the left, pulled herself upright with a little groan. Touched her forehead, saw the remnants of the Scotch in the glass on the coffee table. Papers fell to the floor in a cascade, a gentle susurration off her chest.
She’d fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for something... She couldn’t remember.
Thor saw her stirring. His head shot up, and she could swear the dog smiled.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get your breakfast in a minute.”
He woofed softly, set his muzzle on his paws.
She picked up the papers, stacked them carefully. Remembered to put Sausalito on top. She wanted to revisit that scene. A houseboat in the northern part of the city, abandoned and neglected. It stood out among the brighter, shinier, newly constructed and renovated, not only because of its dilapidation, but because its owner visited only once a year, in the summer, and when a body had been found in the salon, the owner hadn’t come to see to things.
Something there.
The sirens. O Street. She remembered now. Flipped on the television, knowing well enough that if it were as bad as she suspected, the local news would be all over it.
They were talking about the weather. Sunny and chilly all week, some rain here and there, then a series of perfect D.C. fall days ahead.
She grabbed her phone. Fletcher had texted her back, sometime around three in the morning. She hadn’t heard the ding.
Bad one. Double stabbing. One deceased, one in ICU. Sirens wake you up?
Then a second text, ten minutes later.
Apparently not.
She smiled, his sarcasm evident, started to write him back, then jumped as the phone began chirping in her hand. Xander. She answered with a smile. She really did miss him.
“Hi, babe.”
“You were up late.” His voice was deep, still rough with sleep, and she felt like he’d wrapped her in his arms from afar.
“Something happened on O Street, late. Double stabbing. Cops everywhere. I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“Are you okay? Was it someone we know?”
“I don’t think so. I’m fine, just tired.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I was on all night.” He yawned. “Vigilance never sleeps.”
“You haven’t gotten any sleep? You need rest, Xander.”
“I know. I’ll grab a few winks in a minute. I wanted to talk to you first.”
A shimmer of absurd pleasure shot through her. Even exhausted, he wanted her.
“Is the job going well? Nothing dangerous happening?”
“It is. All’s well. We’ll be wrapped shortly, and I can come home as soon as we put these guys on a plane back to London. I have good news, though. We already have a gig for next week.”