Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) (15 page)

“I don’t think you’re gonna find what you’re looking for, Rache.” Mason had been watching me intermittently as he drove, and being even more quiet than usual.

“And what is it you think I’m looking for?”

“A link. A physical one. Between you and those girls.”

I sighed, staring at but not seeing the open file in front of me. I’d been skimming all of them, but this one had a hold on me and wouldn’t let go. The photo clipped to the inside of the folder showed a pretty girl with a big unapologetic afro and eyes that held sadness beyond their years. Her name was Halle Chase. She’d been in foster care since she’d turned ten years old. According to the birthdate given in the file, she was over nineteen now, and had been on her own for a year and a half. In all that time, no one had known or cared where she was or what she was doing. No one had checked in to see how she was getting by, or whether she was alive or dead.

“I think this thing is something you’ve always had, Rache.”

“You haven’t known me for always,” I said, because it was an easy answer that didn’t really say anything at all.

“Think about it. Think about how you always knew what people looked like when you were talking to them. How often did that inner vision turn out to be right?”

I shrugged, pretending I hadn’t given that any thought at all. The truth was, I’d given it a lot of thought. I’d even done the math. So far as I could verify, my inner TV set had given me an accurate image about ninety-two percent of the time. Way too much to be just a twenty-year series of lucky guesses.

“You had that ability long before you got the cornea transplant. You call it an extra-sharp use of your other senses, honed by years of blindness forcing you to rely more on them. You say you hear things behind and beneath someone’s voice, that you sense their emotions almost like a scent. You did all of that before the transplant.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So it wasn’t hearing or smell that told you when Amy was in trouble last Thanksgiving. You knew it before her mother even called to tell you she’d never arrived. Remember?”

I lifted my head, looked at him in profile. He looked back at me, met my eyes head-on for a second. “Are you saying
you
think I’m psychic?” I asked softly.

He shrugged. “I’m saying it’s the same thing as my cop instinct. I get hunches. Gut feelings about things. I’m right a lot of the time. There’s not a cop out there that hasn’t experienced that.”

“But they wouldn’t be caught dead claiming to have E-S-fucking-P.”

“I don’t give a damn what they call it. You have it, too. A version of it. Its bigger, badder brother. You’ve got instinct on crack. It’s no different, except in intensity. That’s what I’m saying. And I’m saying it’s exactly what you’ve always said it was. Another sense getting supercharged to make up for the one you were lacking.”

“Right. Just not one of the other four that actually exist.”

“Just not one of the other four we know about,” he corrected. He was quiet for a long moment, then he said, “You’ve got something, Rache. I’ve known it from the beginning. And I think you’ve been trying real hard not to know it for even longer.”

“Yeah, yeah. You gonna buy me a cup of coffee or what?” I had my finger on Halle’s face and a dark, dark feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Only if we can have a doughnut, too.”

“Only if we can buy an extra one for Myrtle. She’s been neglected all week long.”

“Your wish is my command.”

He got off the 81 and drove into my little town, passed my road and then swung right into the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through lane.

His cell phone chirped while the girl was handing him two cups of coffee and a paper bag through the window.

He handed everything over to me and picked up the phone, looked down at the screen and swore. “They got a hit on one of the girls. A Jane Doe found in the New Mexico desert six months ago.”

I looked at the open file folder with the three-by-five glossy photo paper clipped to it. “Halle Chase,” I said softly. I didn’t even need to ask.

He looked at me sharply, then at the file folder. “Damn, woman, this is getting almost eerie.”

“You think it’s eerie for you, try being me for a day.” I looked sadly at the doughnut bag, my appetite gone.

12

T
he body of Venora LaMere was in the morgue in the basement of Binghamton General. The autopsy had been done by Dr. Jack Nagawa, who’d come down from Syracuse to tackle the job. Broome County didn’t have its own FP, but we were fortunate to be close enough to the Salt City to borrow one of theirs from time to time. In this case, we’d borrowed their best. I knew Dr. Nagawa’s name because I’d seen him on Court TV. The guy was kind of a big deal.

He’d just completed the procedure, and Chief Sub had asked him to stick around a bit longer to compare notes with the autopsy done on Halle Chase six months ago in Taos, New Mexico. That file had been emailed and was waiting for us when Mason and I arrived at the morgue. We had to take the elevator down to the sublevel of the hospital, and we emerged into a cold, gray hallway lined with extra-wide wooden doors. Mason led me through a set of them into an even colder room. Still gray, lined with drawers just like you see on TV detective shows. A couple of stainless-steel gurneys, sans sheet-draped bodies, thank God, stood around, and there was a huge double sink nearby. A set of scales. A tray with stuff on top that was draped with sterile paper. I didn’t want to know what instruments that paper covered, but I imagined scalpels and bone saws.

Dr. Nagawa was as good-looking as a Japanese rock star—compact, buff, with dark hair that looked like some beautiful groupie had just finished running her hands through it. I knew this because Amy was something of a Japanese rock-star groupie of late, and was constantly making me watch YouTube videos and telling me how hot they were.

He met my eyes and smiled like he knew what I was thinking. “Hello, Ms. de Luca. It’s very nice to meet you. I’m familiar with your work.” He extended a hand.

“I’m familiar with yours, too.” I shook his hand, hoping he’d washed really well, and then
flash!
I saw it buried to the wrist inside a body. I let go fast and tried to blink away the image, while the chief introduced Rock Star Nagawa to Mason.

Vanessa wasn’t there. I presumed she wasn’t back yet from the prison, though she had to at least be on her way by now.

The chief had a laptop under his arm and said, “There’s an office down the hall we can use. They sent someone down to open it up for us.”

“Then what the hell are we doing in here?” I asked. But my eyes were drawn to the third drawer from the left, bottom level. I knew that was where Venora was. Poor goddamn kid.

I didn’t know how I knew that. No extra-sharp sense of hearing, smelling, touch or taste had told me. But I didn’t have a hair’s width of doubt about it.

So was this the new norm for me? Because I didn’t freaking like it.

I hurried out the door into the drab-as-dirt hallway again, feeling like maybe the walls might start closing in pretty soon. The others filed out behind me, following Chief Sub down the hall. I got a couple of concerned glances but not much else. Not till Mason came out, anyway, and walked straight to me. He plopped his giant hands firmly on my shoulders.

Close call, though. The guy was good for me.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Am now.” I took a deep breath, nodded hard and smiled at him. “Stop looking so damn worried. I’m fine.”

And touched. Right to my sarcastic, shallow, “don’t take this shit too seriously” heart. Damn him.

He gave my eyes a lingering exploration, then, with a nod, took my hand and walked me into the office at the end of the hall. I saw the chief and Nagawa notice and pretend not to. Then, from behind us, the voice I loved to hate.

“Well, doesn’t
that
explain a few things.”

“Fuck you, Cantone,” I told her without even looking over my shoulder.

“You wish,” she snapped back at me. Then she squeezed past us and around to Dr. Nagawa. “Good to see you again, Jack.”

“It’s a shame we only meet when someone’s been murdered,” he replied, looking up only briefly. He was leaning over a long Formica meeting table, the chief’s laptop open in front of him. Never breaking eye contact with the screen, Nagawa pulled a chair out and sank into it.

Agent Cantone hurried around the table to look over his shoulder. “What is this?”

“It’s the autopsy of a New Mexican Jane Doe who turned out to be one of the missing girls.” Chief Subrinsky pulled out a chair and nodded at Mason and I to do the same, so we did. Cantone stayed standing. “Dr. Nagawa?” the chief said.

The intense doctor nodded and spoke. “Both women had marks on their ankles and wrists that suggest they’d been bound. In the case of the girl from New Mexico—”

“Halle. Her name was Halle.” Rude to interrupt, but dammit, called for.

Dr. Nagawa nodded. “Probably quite frequently and over a long period of time. The marks go deep and had begun to callus.”

I looked at Mason, who looked at the chief, who looked at Cantone, who asked, “You think they were held prisoner?”

“I think they were kept in restraints, in Halle’s case on a regular basis. I can’t speculate on anything beyond that. This one—” he looked at me, gave an almost imperceptible nod “—Halle, died from a shot to the back of the head. She’d had recent intercourse, and while a condom was used, there was enough genetic material for a DNA sample.”

“That’ll help,” the chief said. “If we ever get a suspect to compare it with.” He nodded at Mason. “How long has Halle been missing?”

Mason looked at me, because I’d read the files and he’d done the driving. We’d made several calls on the way and had a rough time line. “The last time anyone saw her was August, year before last. She’d been working eight-to-five at a convenience store and staying in a friend’s vacant apartment. The employer was named in the file, so we were able to contact him, and he pulled her work record. Said she’d worked late on August fourteenth, until 8:00 p.m., then didn’t show up on the morning of the fifteenth. She was supposed to start at eight, as usual.”

Dr. Nagawa nodded. “The Taos ME notes symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency. A loss of pigmentation, an inflamed liver...”

“What does that mean?” Mason asked.

I answered softly. “Lack of sunlight.”

Dr. Nagawa nodded at me, eyes locking on mine, a little smile of approval crinkling the corners, making me think he was older than my first estimate of about seventeen. He had that kind of face. Most women wouldn’t know whether they wanted to make out with him or adopt him. Except for Amy, of course. She’d know exactly what she wanted to do with him.

But he was also talking. “She was pregnant,” he added.

We all felt the shock ripple through us. “That’s probably why she was killed,” Mason said softly.

“She’d been spending most, possibly all, of her time indoors,” Dr. Nagawa continued, listing what he knew in a dispassionate, clinical tone.

“I spend most of the winter indoors, Doctor,” Cantone said. “Why don’t I have those symptoms?”

“Everyone gets exposed to the sun’s radiation. Through windows, in the car, just opening the front door. And more so in that part of the country.”

Cantone looked at me, and I looked back at her. No windows? No car rides? No exposure to sunlight? In Taos?

“She was held prisoner. Long-term.” Mason said what we were all thinking.

“Yeah, but in freaking New Mexico?” I asked. “How can that have anything to do with this? With Venora and Stevie and Lexus?”

“She came from here, same as all of them,” Cantone said. “She’d aged out of foster care just like Lexus and Venora, and she could’ve been connected to the judge, same as Stephanie. But what’s the connection with this—” she consulted her notes “—Amy Montrose?”

“Mistaken identity,” Mason said. “Pure and simple.”

She nodded and turned to the chief. “Any sign of Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend, Jake Kravitz?”

“No, but we have an all-out manhunt under way. We’ll find him.”

“I still don’t think he was involved,” I said.

“Him being cellmates with the brother of Amy’s kidnapper and the ex-boyfriend of one of the victims is just coincidence, then?” Cantone asked me.

She wasn’t being sarcastic.

I shook my head. “No such thing as coincidence. It has to mean something. And I hate to say it, but the judge is as big a common denominator as Jake is. Maybe bigger.”

The chief nodded slowly, pushed his chair back away from the table and stood up. “Then it’s time we push him harder. He’s not telling us everything.”

“You can’t push him very hard while he’s unconscious, Chief,” Mason said.

Chief Sub nodded. “He’s awake and stable. They’ve moved him out of the ICU. Marianne called, said he was asking for me. I’m heading upstairs to see him now.”

He reached past Nagawa to close the laptop and then picked it up. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“I’ll have a report with my findings on the second victim sent to you tomorrow, Chief Subrinsky,” he said, rising and shaking the chief’s hand again.

We all filed out, crowded into the elevator and rode it up. When it hit the ground floor it stopped and Dr. Nagawa, who was standing right against my side, pressed something into my hand, then got out, saying a polite goodbye to everyone and giving me a particularly lingering smile.

Oh, hell.

The doors slid closed. Mason glanced down at me, and I knew that he’d noticed that smile and was looking to see if I had. Or maybe to see what my reaction was. “What?” I asked him, wondering when the hell I could gracefully stop playing Nancy Drew and go the fuck home. I glanced down at the paper in my hand. The guy had given me his phone number.

“Nothing.” He said it in a tone that meant “something.” Then he added, “Last stop before home, I promise,” reading my mind better than I could read tea leaves. (That was sarcasm. I cannot read tea leaves. I mean, not unless someone lines them up in the shapes of letters.)

The doors opened again, and we spilled into the hospital corridor and followed the chief to Judge Howie’s door.

Chief Sub went into the room, and as the door opened wide I glimpsed the judge in his bed, cranked upright, Marianne sitting beside him. A nurse was hanging an IV bag. The blinds in the window behind her were pulled up, admitting the maximum possible amount of sunlight into the room, and I thought for a minute about how much Halle Chase would’ve liked to see sunlight before she died.

Judge Mattheson caught Mason’s eye and waved a hand. “You might as well come in. This will be for the record.”

So Mason and I went in behind the chief, and Cantone came in behind us. The nurse pushed a few buttons on the IV pump and hurried out of the room. Man, talk about overkill. She had the puffy hat, surgical mask, gloves, even the goggles. Whole nine yards. That was weird, wasn’t it?

“Why was she dressed like she just came out of a leper colony?” I asked.

“You should go, Marianne,” Judge Mattheson told his wife.

“I’m staying.” She took his hand in hers and held tight. “Whatever it is, I’m here for you, Howard.”

He met her eyes, and something really beautiful passed between them, completely diverting me from the dark shiver that had just crept up my spine for no apparent reason.

“I’m so, so sorry, Marianne. I’m so, so sorry.” He pulled her hand to him and bent his head over it, kissing the back of it.

Gooey emotions bubbled up in my chest. He lingered there, mouth on her hand, eyes closed. And it was really sweet, until it went on just long enough to slip over into uncomfortable.

About two beats after that it turned from uncomfortable into
something’s fucking wrong
when he slumped over her forearm.

“Howard?” Marianne whispered.

The chief grabbed Judge Howie’s shoulders and pushed him back onto his pillows. “Howard! Nurse! Get a nurse!”

People were crowding into the room now, shoving us unceremoniously out of the way. The first nurse to the bedside yelled to the one behind her, “Call a code and clear this room!”

I got out of the way, stumbled down the hall a few steps, then turned around and practically stabbed Mason in the chest with my nose.

The chief hurried out with an arm around Marianne Mattheson, Cantone right behind them. They came our way, but the judge’s wife turned to look back toward the room, one hand hovering near her mouth. The chief tugged her on until we all came to the waiting room, where she stopped and couldn’t be coaxed farther. And then we just stood there, and maybe I wasn’t the only one eyeing the comfy-looking sofas and well-stocked vending machines with lust in my heart. But we didn’t go in. We stayed around Marianne like it would help her somehow, and watched people rushing in and out of that hospital room. Each time the door swung open, we were afforded a glimpse inside. We saw the paddles being applied. We saw the exertion of battle in the faces of the staff. And we saw when that look turned to crushing defeat, and all the activity ground to a sudden and devastating halt.

Marianne collapsed, and Mason and the chief scrambled to gather her up and carry her into the waiting room to a sofa. I was still staring at the door opening and closing, but more slowly now. Giving me strobe-effect pieces of something I couldn’t put my finger on just yet. I didn’t realize I was walking toward the door until Cantone fell into step. “What? What is it?”

I looked at her face, wondered if she was fucking with me or serious. She sounded serious. “There was something off about...”

The door opened one more time, and a nurse inside the judge’s room demanded, “Who the hell hung this?” She was staring at an IV bag.

“That nurse,” I said. “It was that nurse!” I burst back into Judge Howie’s room, and Cantone ran the other way, toward Mason and the chief and that murderous nurse. As I skidded to a stop, the nurse with the IV bag in her hand lowered it and said, “You can’t be in here.”

“I want to see that IV bag,” I said. “Come on, I’m with the police. And he was a judge. We’re not fucking around with you here. I want to see that bag.”

She lifted it up, held it out. “Hang it up like it was,” I told the nurse. “And try not to touch it any more than you already have. And...and we might have to fingerprint you for comparison, so don’t go anywhere. Okay?” I pulled that straight out of my butt, but it sounded right.