Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) (5 page)

“I saw you leaving. It’s cool if you don’t want to grab coffee
. I just wanted to see if maybe you wanted to do something tomorrow. I mean, I figured you were tired or something.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just… You know what
? Maybe I could use the company. Coffee would be great.”

8

Sarah knew she shouldn’t be driving, but the coffee shop was far away. As she sat in her car and debated
, the man came back up to her window and said, “Hey, I don’t think either of us should drive outta here. There’s a cab right there.”

“Sure.”

The man held the cab door open for her, and she climbed in. He got in right behind her and gave the driver an address to the nearest coffee shop, a place called Rose Garden.

“I don’t even know your name,” Sarah said.

“Michael. You’re Sarah, right?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Your name tag.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling silly for not realizing she was still wearing it. She snapped it off and slipped it into her pant
s pocket. “I don’t think I’ve seen you there before.”

“No, it’s my buddy’s bachelor party
, so we started the night out here. They’re heading off to a strip club, but I’ve never liked those places.”

“Yeah, right,” she said with a smile.

“No, seriously. My mother, briefly, just in college, had to do that. You know, single mom, my father ran off, left her without a penny and all that. So, no, I can’t go there. I just keep thinking the girls are forced to be there to feed their kids at home, and it makes me feel bad.”

“Well, either you’re really sweet or you’re really a scumbag to make something like that up.”

He grinned. “Guess we’ll never know for sure.”

The coffee shop was cr
owded, like most places in Philadelphia near Pennypack Park. Most of the city was deteriorating with drugs and crime, but certain spots shone as brightly as Los Angeles or Manhattan. This neighborhood, which Sarah had chosen to live and work in very deliberately, was one of the best in the city.

They stood in line and ordered two coffees. Sarah had hers black without any sugar or cream. They grabbed a table by the window
, and Michael pulled out her chair for her.

“I’ve never actually been in here,” he said.

“I like the feel of the place. It’s mostly college kids. They have a real… kind of optimism about the world, ya know? Like it hasn’t changed that about them yet.”

“Or maybe they’re just naïve?
” he said.

“Yeah, maybe. Either way, I like it.”

“So are you from here originally?”

Sarah sipped at her coffee. It was hot to the point
of burning her tongue, but she didn’t mind. “No, Lancaster County. Born and bred,” she said with a sigh she didn’t mean to give.

“Really? Farm girl, huh?”

“You could say that,” she said, staring into her coffee.

“I’ve never been.”

“So what about you?” she said, wanting to get the spotlight off of her.

“Oh, I’m a Philly boy. Pretty boring actually. I’ve never really been outta the East Coast. Boston’s as far as I’ve been.”

“I’ve always wanted to travel. I’ve never been out of the state.”

“Really? Not even to
, like, New York or DC?”

She shook her head.
“Nope. Philly seems far enough from where I grew up. But I’ve been seriously playing with the idea of maybe moving to California.”

“How come?”

She shrugged. “Just the sunshine, I guess. I’m really sensitive to weather. And the beach. I really want to lie around on the beach.”

He sipped at his coffee, grimaced, and then pushed the cup away. She could tell this wasn’t the ideal first date he
’d had in mind.

“Can I ask you something, and
will you promise not to get mad?” he asked

“I guess so. That’s not really
something I can promise, though,” she said.

“Fair enough. But try not to get mad ’cause I’m just curious.”

She sipped at her coffee again. The temperature had gone down enough that it was enjoyable. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“Did you really beat up another girl to get that job?”

She snorted, nearly spitting up her coffee. “Who told you that?”

“That other bartender. The male one, not the woman.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t beat her up to get the job.”

“Then what happened?”

“She attacked me and accused me of sleeping with her boyfriend. We just happened to be up for the job at the same time.”

“So did you?”

“Sleep with her boyfriend? No, I didn’t. She was thinking of someone else. But she didn’t realize that until after.”

He smirked, playing absently with some sugar packets on the table. “
He said you put her in the hospital.”

“She took a swing at me
, and I raised my arm. She hit my elbow and, like, broke one of her fingers, I guess. That’s hardly my fault.”

“Well, it’s a cool story. I don’t think you should change it.”

She smiled, swirling her coffee with her finger. “You wanna get outta here?”

He looked stunned
for a moment and then nodded. She took his hand, and they ran out into the warm night air.

At sunrise, Sarah woke with an epic headache
. Her face, neck, shoulders, hips, and legs all screamed. She rolled out of bed and realized she was at home. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Michael with his face planted firmly in the pillow, asleep. This was why she preferred to be out at their place. She couldn’t very well leave him here to go through her things.

He stirred, realizing she was awake, and tried to reach for her. She brushed him away and
got up.

“Where you going?” he said with his eyes still closed.

“The bathroom. You better get ready, too. I have some stuff I have to do today.”

“Oh, wow. I’m getting kicked out already, huh?”

“Not kicked out. I just have some stuff I need to do. I’ll call you tonight, though.”

“Ouch. I’m guessing I shouldn’t be waiting by the phone for that one.”

She stopped and smiled. “No, probably not. Look, you’re a nice guy, but I’m just not ready for anything serious.”

“Yeah, I figured. I better, ah, get going then.”

She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She heard him come to the door, but he didn’t say anything. She heard footsteps, and then her front door opened and closed.

Sarah stared at herself in the mirror and exhaled. Michael was a perfectly good man. What was it about her
that pushed them away so quickly? A piece of her felt like it was rotting. Something deep inside her that she couldn’t find and excise. It was hidden, but it was powerful.

Before Sarah could get into the shower, her phone rang. She stepped out of the bathroom, making sure Michael was gone, and then answered it. It was a call from the bar.

“Hello?” she said.

“Sarah, it’s Trevor. Hey, I know it’s your day off
, but I was wondering if you could come in tonight?”

“Sure. Somebody call in sick?”

“Yeah, you could say that. Jeannie’s in the hospital.”

Her stomach dropped. “For what?”

“I don’t know. I got a call from her mom saying she’s in the hospital and she can’t make it to work for the next few days.”

“Do you know which hospital?”

“Hahnemann, I think. Why?”

“I’ll cover for her. Thanks.”

Sarah hung up, threw on some sweats, and ran out the door. She realized halfway down the hall that she’d forgotten her keys and had to run back and grab them.

9

Giovanni Adami was woken by the sound of his doorbell. He was nude, the way he preferred to sleep, and he stumbled out of bed and slipped on his boxer shorts. His apartment was small, just a studio with a kitchen the size of a closet, but the view out his living room window was a park across the street. He glanced out of it now and saw the sunshine glimmering through the leaves before he answered the door.

Agent Rosen stood there looking sternly at him. “You not up yet?”

“It’s only eight.”

Rosen brushed past him into the apartment. “Gotta get up early and go to bed early. It’s the only way to stay healthy. Get dressed. We’re meeting with someone.
You got a cat?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’m allergic.”

Giovanni walked to his closet, which was in the same room as his bed and the couch, and pulled down a black suit with a white button-front shirt. “Who we meeting with?”

“Melissa Archer. Nathan’s mother.”

“Yeah?” he asked,
going into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“Yeah. I want to know if he had any
cousins or close friends that he would have shared his life with.”

“You think that’s wh
o it is? Someone close to him?”

“Who knows? A lot of time
s copycats are just psychotic stalkers that become obsessed with a particular subject. So it could be that. But those are much more difficult to find. First, you exclude the impossible. Then whatever’s left, no matter how improbable, must be true.”

“Mickey Parsons
would always tell us that,” Giovanni said as he brushed.

“Yeah, helluva agent. You were lucky to have him in the academy. I was actually his partner for about a year. He had a logic about this…
insanity we see every day. He could just… make sense of it.”

“I heard he retired.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all headed down that road.”

“Spock said that too
, you know.”

“Who?”

Giovanni looked back at him. “How old did you say you were?”

“Just hurry up.”

Giovanni finished brushing and put on his socks and shoes. He ran a brush through his hair and put on his watch and holster.

“Why do you live here?” Rosen asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s
not the best neighborhood. You can afford something better with what the Bureau pays you.”

“
Our entire job is moving around. I don’t want to fall in love with a place only to leave it a few years down the line.”

Rosen nodded as he scanned the apartment. “Makes sense
, I guess. Let’s go. I’ll drive.”

Unlike Giovanni’s car, Rosen’s was the
standard-issue sedan, a Ford the Bureau kept in the motor pool at least five or six years past its prime. But the interior and exterior were spotless, and as Giovanni got in, Rosen took out a handkerchief and wiped at a spot on the windshield before getting in and pulling away.

“So wh
at about where you live?” Giovanni asked.

“
The condo is just a rental because it’s close. I have a house in Fairfax. When you get as close to retirement as I am, they don’t move you around anymore. You just kind of run out the clock.”

“You always been in Behavioral Science?”

“No, I started in Organized Crime. But they shuffled me around a few times after September Eleventh. This is just kind of where I landed.”

“Really? I thought mo
st agents fought to get in here.”

Rosen
grinned. “Only the new ones, who don’t know better. We have more requests for transfers than any other division. You know why?”

Giovanni shook his head
, though Rosen wasn’t looking at him.

“It’s because most people don’t want to know what’s really going on in the world. If they knew, truly knew, how much danger we’re in every
day, how could they live? Take these cars flying past us. With the kinetic energy they’re producing, they could demolish this car. Disintegrate us to nothing. And the other drivers might be mentally ill, they might be sick, they might be angry, not paying attention… they may even want to kill someone. But no one thinks about that when they get into their cars. There are things we can’t explain and just stay blind about. In Behavioral Science, a lot of that is exposed. This isn’t for everybody.”

Giovanni stared out the window and thought back to his days in Iraq. A young man had been firing on their position from acro
ss a street. They lit him up from all sides. When his unit got over there to look at the bullet-riddled corpse, the “young man” turned out to be a ten-year-old boy. The rest of the unit didn’t care, or at least pretended they didn’t. But Giovanni stayed behind, staring at the mangled body. The boy’s eyes were open, his head tilted toward Giovanni as if glaring at him accusingly. That face had never left him. It was always there.

The neighborhood Melissa Archer lived in was primarily small family homes in a typical suburban setting. No liquor stores on the corner, no markets with bars up on the windows. The neighborhood appeared safe, the type of place you’d want to raise a family.

They parked on the curb, and Rosen had his eyes locked on a brown house with shutters closed over all the windows. An overly large padlock hung from the gate to convey that whoever was inside definitely didn’t want to be disturbed.

“Follow my lead,” Rosen said as he got out of the car.

Giovanni fell behind. Technically, Rosen wasn’t his boss—just an agent with seniority. But he had a leadership quality about him that told Giovanni he had a lot to teach. Still, Giovanni wondered what exactly Rosen had done not to be promoted further. With his time in the Bureau, he should at least have been a special agent in charge of a field office, if not higher.

Rosen got to the gates and eyed the padlock. He glanced around to make sure no one was wat
ching and then hopped the three-foot fence.

“Um…” Giovanni stammered.

“What? We’re not searching her house. I just want to talk to her.”

Giovanni looked both ways and then hopped the fence, too. He strolled up to the porch, making sure no neighbors
had just seen them.

“What’re you so nervous about?” Rosen said.

“We’re trespassers.”

He s
norted. “Please. The NSA’s reading congressmen’s email, and hopping a fence makes you nervous.”

Rosen pounded on the door
far more aggressively than he needed to. The whole situation made Giovanni nervous. He was too new to understand all the rules, and definitely too new to be breaking them. The last thing he needed was a black mark in his file already.

A woman came to the door and said, “Who is it?” without opening.

“FBI, ma’am. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Nathan if we could have a minute of your time,” Rosen bellowed.

A long silence followed, and then the rattle of chains and the clunk of locks sliding open.

Melissa Archer was petite, almost frail. A woman probably in her late sixties or early seventies, her hair was still a deep brown, but the spots on her skin betrayed her age. Giovanni noticed her hands were trembling.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ma’am, I’m Special Agent Arnold Rosen, and this is Special Agent Giovanni Adami. We’re investigating a string of homicides that we believe you may be able to help us with.”

Ms. Archer looked from one to the other and back. “
Oh dear. Well, come in.”

They entered
her home. The first thing that struck Giovanni was how bare it was. Not a decoration or photo anywhere. This woman was at the end of her life, but there was nothing here to remind her how she had lived.

The furniture was covered in plastic
, and as the two men sat down, the covering crackled as if it had never been used before. Ms. Archer was preparing something in the kitchen and came out a moment later with cookies and juice.

“I’m okay,” Giovanni said.

Rosen took a cookie and a glass of juice. He drank a sip before taking a bite of the cookie. “I’m sorry about what happened with Nathan,” he said after chewing.

“He was my
boy. I have two girls, too. One’s in San Francisco, and the other is in Canada. As far away from this town as they could get, I guess.”

Rosen nodded as though he knew exactly what she was talking about. “Nathan was a good
-looking boy.”

“Oh
, he had a lot of girlfriends. They were always coming in and out of the house. I kept telling him that it wasn’t proper for a young man to have so many girlfriends, but he would just say, ‘Mom, that’s just how it’s done nowadays.’ He loved going on dates.”

Giovanni wondered how many of his dates ended up in some ditch. Though three b
odies were attributed to him, Giovanni knew it took a while for these types of perpetrators to be caught. The real number, he guessed, was probably double that.

“Did he have any close friends?” Rosen asked. “Anyone
that was over here all the time? Maybe they had sleepovers. Things like that.”

She shook her head. “No. Nathan always preferred girls to spending time with boys. He didn’t play sports or anything like that. When he wasn’t on his dates
, he liked to keep to himself.”

Rosen took another bite of the cookie and placed the rest down on a napkin that Ms. Archer had put in front of him on the coffee table. “Ms. Archer, can you think of anyone in Nathan’s life that would want to copy what he did? Perhaps an uncle, cousin… anyone.”

“No. Why would anyone want to do that? I’m not delusional, Agent Rosen. I know the evil my son brought into the world. But he was still my son. I can’t stop loving him, no matter what he’s done.”

“I understand,” he said solemnly. “Could you do me a favor? If you think of anyone that might, I don’t know, walk in his shoes, could you give me a call? This man has killed six young women so far. We need to stop him, Ms. Archer.”

“Of course. Please leave your card, and I’ll call if I think of anything.”

As Rosen was taking out a card, Giovanni scanned the steps leading upstairs. Dirty shoeprints came in from outside, the backdoor in the kitchen, and headed upstairs.

“Does anyone else live here?” Giovanni asked.

Ms. Archer looked surprised
—maybe because he hadn’t spoken the entire time. “No. It’s just me now. My husband left us when Nathan was a child. When he was gone, it was just me and Nathan.”

Giovanni nodded
, a gnawing sensation in his gut, and he realized he felt bad for Melissa Archer. That her son would put her through what he put her through, not to mention the mothers of the victims he took from the world.

Rosen stood up
, and Giovanni followed. They said goodbyes and thanked Ms. Archer for her time. As they walked to their car, Giovanni glanced back at the old house and saw her watching them through the shutters of a window.

“We done for the day?” Giovanni said. “I got some paperwork back at the office.”

“Almost. One more stop.”

“Where?”

Rosen took out his cell phone. He dialed a number he had saved in his contacts and said, “Yeah, Steve, this is Arnold. I need a skip-trace done on a Sarah King. I don’t have a middle name or birthday, but she’d be twenty-one or twenty-two now. From Lancaster County… Yup. Thanks.”

“Seriously?” Giovanni said.

Rosen sat on the hood of the car and looked down the street to where a few children were playing. His eyes fixed on them a moment, and he began to grin.

“You have any kids?” he
asked.

“No, not married,” Giovanni said.

“Best and worst thing in life. I have a son. I don’t know where he is. Last I heard he was bartending in Las Vegas.”

Giovanni joined him on the hood. “You don’t talk?”

“No. He… forgot to call me on Father’s Day last year. He said it was ’cause he just forgot, but that’s not why. He’s got a drug addiction. Heroin. Me and his mother saw it early. We tried everything—every program, every method, tough love, no love, over-loving… nothing did it. The drug won in the end.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” He exhaled through his nose. “Try and explain drug addiction logically to me, Giovanni. People willingly destroy themselves and everyone around them. It’s inexplicable. There are just some things you can’t explain.”

“I don’t believe that. Everything has a cause. An explanation.”

“When I was ten years old, and this dates me, but when I was ten, my brother and I shared a bunk bed. On July third of 1971—and I remember that date because it was the day before Independence Day and we were supposed to drive to Lake Mead for that. But I woke up on July third, and I saw my brother asleep in his bed. I went and peed in the bathroom we shared, and I came back out, and he was sitting straight up in bed, as white as a ghost. And all he said to me was, ‘Jim Morrison’s dead.’ We were huge fans of The Doors back then. There wasn’t a radio or TV in our room. There’s no way he could have known that. It didn’t even hit the States until later that day. News didn’t travel as fast as it does now.”