Don't Look Back (15 page)

He held up his hands in mock surrender, then his face turned serious. “AFIS grabbed a hit off the ribbon on your little photo gift.”

Familiar fear tugged at her lungs, stealing the breath from her. She forced it away.
Deep breath. You’re safe. All is well. God is
good. When I am afraid . . .
“Who?”

“A guy by the name of Evan Johannes. We’re heading out to his house now. We’re taking a hostage negotiator and a SWAT team with us just in case he has a victim there.”

“Where does he live?” Her heart slammed against her chest, her breathing felt constricted. “I want to come.”

“Absolutely not.” Sam reached over and gripped her fingers. Jamie pulled away.

“Dakota?”

“No way. You stay put. If this is our guy and he sees you . . . no, it’s too dangerous.”

“Then let me know immediately what’s happening.”

“Immediately.”

Dakota shoved the earpiece further in his ear and took his position outside the home of Evan Johannes. A small house set on about one acre of land. A fenced backyard contained a dog that started yapping his head off as soon as the surveillance van pulled to a stop across the street.

Two unmarked cars parked down the street along the curb, ready for backup.

Dakota and Connor studied the blueprints of the house that had been provided by the county. Dakota shook his head. “No basement.”

“So?”

“How does a guy keep victims inside on an upper level without the neighbors hearing the screams, et cetera? It doesn’t seem likely.”

“Guess we’re about to find out. You ready to roll?”

“Ready.”

“I’m going to call his home and see if he answers.”

The phone rang and rang. Connor clicked off. “Not answering.”

“All right, let’s get in there.”

Followed by about twenty other law enforcement personnel, the two of them exited the van and headed toward the house. The bulletproof vest felt heavy, the adrenaline surging in his blood a natural high. Excitement and anticipation thrummed through him. They were going to get this guy. And finally maybe Jamie would be free of her past and the nightmares that haunted her.

Connor stood to the side of the door and raised his knuckles to pound on it. “Evan Johannes! Police! Open up!”

Silence.

Dakota shifted. Sweat made a ticklish path down the middle of his back.

Three more times Connor rapped and called out.

Dakota wasn’t concerned the guy would slip out the back. They had officers in place all around the property.

Weapon ready, he nodded to the officer who held the battering ram.

A loud
wham
and the door flew open.

He and Connor led the swarm into a living room that stunk.

Bad.

At least a hundred degrees in the house, the sweat that had trickled before now started to pour. Breathing shallow breaths through his mouth didn’t help the familiar sweet sickly stench he’d smelled before. In his gut, he knew what they were going to find.

From his peripheral vision, he saw an officer go to the left. Felt one go to the right. Dakota headed straight down the hall.

“Clear!” he heard from the kitchen.

“Clear!” from the first bedroom.

In his earpiece, “Garage is clear.”

He swung around the edge of the door into the next bedroom and grunted. “In here!”

He felt Connor come up behind him. “Aw, man . . .”

“How long you think he’s been dead?”

“Couple of days? Serena will be able to tell us for sure after she gets her hands on him.”

Dakota approached the body, careful not to touch or step on anything. “Bullet hole to the head.”

“That’ll do the job if the throat slashing doesn’t.” He pointed to the yawning gap just below the man’s jaw. Flies swarmed the wounds and Dakota grimaced.

“Yeah, I noticed that. Seems a bit of overkill, doesn’t it? Either one of those would have killed the guy.” Blowing out a rough sigh, Dakota turned to one of the other officers. A kid who didn’t look old enough to shave yet, much less be on patrol. “Give the ME and Crime Scene Unit a call, would you?”

“You got it.” He whirled and left, looking a little green around the edges. Probably his first homicide. Dakota didn’t hold that against him, he was having to work at holding the contents of his own breakfast where they belonged. The smell did it to him every time. It would take days to get it out of his nose.

Connor studied the corpse. “What do you make of it?”

“We need to get a picture from when he was alive and see if the waitress from the restaurant can confirm he’s the one who delivered the package.”

He looked around the room but didn’t see any pictures of the deceased. In fact, he didn’t see any pictures at all. “I’ll check the den area.”

“He doesn’t really resemble the sketch the artist did, does he?”

“Too hard to tell. Could be him, but . . .” He shrugged.

“All right, let’s get out of here before we contaminate this area any more than we already have.”

“I need some air anyway.”

They exited the room and headed back down the hall. More flies buzzed around the trash can in the kitchen.

Back outside, Dakota pulled in a lung full of fresh, if hot and muggy, air. His stomach settled, he met Serena and the CSU team as they pulled into the drive. Yellow crime scene tape flapped in the wind. A handful of neighbors stood on their porches watching and wondering at all the excitement.

Several officers began questioning them, trying to see if anyone had seen anything or noticed anything strange over the last few days.

Serena, runway-model beautiful with a mind like a steel trap, greeted him. “Got another one for me, huh?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Between you and Connor, I sure do have job security.”

“Hey, it’s not our fault,” he protested. But he knew she was kidding. A little levity before facing such ugly seriousness.

Dressed for the job in a Tyvek suit, gloves, and a mask that hung around her neck for the moment, she nodded. “I’ll tell you what I can as soon as possible.”

“Thanks.”

She left, CSU right on her heels.

Connor had started doing a little questioning of the neighbors himself, so Dakota got on the phone with Jazz. “Can you dig up everything you’ve got on this Evan Johannes guy?”

“I’m already ahead of you,” she said. “Jamie called and asked me to find out more about him a minute after you left. He’s thirty-seven years old, was laid off from A-Textiles six months ago. Divorced three years ago, no kids. Ex-wife is now living in England with her second husband and has been since the divorce was final. As far as I can tell, they’ve had no contact in those three years. Mr. Johannes grew up here in town. Parents deceased, one brother and two sisters. I talked to the brother and it seems Mr. Johannes is estranged from all of his siblings due to an arrest for indecent exposure at a theme park two years ago. No more incidents on record. That was his one and only.”

“Bank records?”

“Broke. Getting ready to foreclose on the house.”

“All right, thanks, Jazz.”

“Not a problem, call me if you need anything else.”

Dakota hung up and motioned for Connor to join him.

Connor loped across the lawn and Dakota relayed the information to him. Connor shook his head. “Laid off six months ago. That explains why the power was shut off in the middle of a heat wave.”

“This guy doesn’t meet George’s profile.”

“No, he was probably just a pawn. I’m guessing he was paid to make that delivery.”

“And was killed for his efforts.”

“No witnesses. No one’s going to miss a down-and-out jobless man estranged from his family.”

One of the CSU team, Jake Hollister, came out of the house, an evidence bag in hand. “Thought you might be interested in this.”

Absently, Dakota noticed the ambulance pull up and unload a stretcher containing a black body bag. “What is it, Jake?”

The stretcher passed by him and into the house.

Jake shook the bag. “Two one hundred dollar bills.”

“Where’d you find those?”

“Under the bed.”

“Loose?”

“Yep.”

Dakota looked at Connor. “Okay, that supports our theory that he was paid off.”

“Did you find any pictures of the guy?” he asked Jake.

“No, but we’re not finished. Julie’s working on the den. I’ll let her know you need a photo of him.”

“Thanks.”

Connor wondered. “How do you think our psycho and this guy knew each other?”

“Who knows? Could have been anywhere.”

“I’d ask Sam to check out the guy’s computer, but the power company said they cut his power off two months ago. I have a feeling that’s not the connection.”

“Yeah, and no cell phone.”

“But he had two hundred dollars under his bed.”

“He didn’t have time to spend it.”

“So, if we’re right, this guy was killed the same day he delivered the package.”

“That’s my take on it.”

“Mine too.”

“Come on, let’s go fill Jamie in.”

14

Jamie hung up the phone with a frown. Her nerves felt scraped raw. Had they found him? What was going on? Why hadn’t they called?

Refocusing her churning thoughts was no easy task, but standing around stewing about something she couldn’t change wasn’t doing anyone any good.

Her hand still clutched her cell phone. She’d called her parents’ house and gotten the answering machine – again.

After dropping her family concerns in Jamie’s lap, Samantha had received a call requesting her computer expertise. She’d protested that she was on leave. The caller said something else and Sam had bolted from Jamie’s office with a wave and a “we’ll talk later.”

With a forceful forefinger, Jamie punched in her parents’ number one more time. And got the answering machine. Same story with their cell phone numbers and voice mail.

Rats.

Should she risk going over there? What if
he
was watching and followed her?

She called Samantha’s phone.

“What?”

“Have you managed to get in touch with Mom or Dad?”

“Not yet. I’ll call you in a little while. I’ve got a missing kid.”

That was the hurry. And why Sam was willing to come off her leave and go back to work. Kids did it to her every time.

Just like they did Jamie.

The girl on the slab, Lisa, was no more than a kid. She may have been nineteen years old, but in Jamie’s eyes, that was still a baby.

She returned to Lisa’s side and pulled back the sheet. Now that she’d thawed out, the putrefaction process had sped up to the point that the odor was getting offensive. She needed to be placed in the freezer until cremation could be done.

Slowly, Jamie’s mind gnawed on the facts as she stared down at the girl whose life had been cut short. Why had she been placed in an environment where she would be found?

“Why that building? Why a dry ice freezer? And not buried like the rest of them. Why deviate from your pattern?” she wondered aloud. She looked at the x-rays still posted on the wall. Broken bones. Healed bones. Branded on the upper left shoulder.

No doubt about it. It was the Hero. Jamie’s skin crawled just thinking of him by the only name she’d ever called him.

“Why a freezer full of dry ice instead of a hole in the ground where she might go undiscovered for years? What were you thinking? What was the point? Did you expect her to be found long before now? Did you even care if she was found at all? Or,” Jamie drew in a deep breath, “were you hoping she would be found long before now?”

Was she
talking
to
him
?

Maybe.

She wanted to understand. Almost as much as she wanted to bury her head under a pillow and believe that this nightmare would just go away.

But she couldn’t do that.

Her phone rang making her jump. Heart pounding out a rhythm to match her ring tone, she snatched up the phone. “Hello?”

“Simone and Karen,” Mark said.

“It’s the same guy,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Thanks, Mark, I’ll get your tickets to you soon.” She hung up without waiting for his response, her mind already clicking through what she knew and what she needed to do.

Staring down at Lisa, she could well imagine the girl’s terror during the weeks leading up to her death. Caused by the man who called himself “the Hero.” A sociopath still out there walking the streets, watching her . . .

A disturbing, terrifying thought occurred. “You wanted
me
to see her, didn’t you? You knew once I heard about the branding, I’d have to see her for myself.” Her stomach turned in on itself as her voice dropped to a mere whisper that echoed in the silent room, “How long have you been watching me?”

A whistle sounded down the hall and her nerves bunched, then relaxed. Then tightened once more. Dakota. With shaking hands, she pulled the sheet back up over Lisa and met him at the door. Still in full tactical gear, the FBI logo prominently displayed, he stepped inside. Grimaced. He didn’t like the smell of dead bodies any more than she did.

Jamie moved back a bit to give him some space. Sweat had plastered his hair to his head. His handsome face had a few new grooves in it. And she thought he was the best thing she’d seen all day.