As she danced across the stage, fighting to retain control,
Cassidy considered the weeks ahead, especially two upcoming concerts in Texas.
That’s where it will happen
, she realized.
That’s what he’s waiting for. And when he comes for me, no one will be able to stop him
.
W
hat’s wrong here? I wondered. What’s wrong?
I’d stared at the woman’s body for a full fifteen minutes. Elizabeth Cox was thirty-six, a slender woman dressed in an expensive St. John knit suit, the jacket a bold black-and-white hound’s-tooth over a narrow black skirt. Her soft Italian leather heels had severely pointed toes. The responding detective theorized that Cox had arrived home from work that Friday, sat on her bed atop a thickly tufted tapestry bedspread, rested her back against her ornately carved eighteenth-century headboard, and aimed a 9 mm pistol at her right temple, inches from where her coiffed dark brown hair pulled tight into a perfectly executed French twist, just behind her almond-shaped eyes rimmed in thick mascara-lined lashes. This woman, who had money, beauty, position, and power, apparently found her life so untenable that she then pulled the trigger.
The bullet entered in front of and slightly above her right ear, traveled nearly straight through her skull, and blew out the left side of her head, leaving a trail of destruction and a cavernous wound that spewed brain matter and high-velocity blood spatter all over
the headboard and faux-painted wall. A bloody mist covered the body, ruining her pricey suit and the exquisite bedspread. The gun lay beside Cox’s extended right arm, near her hand. A typewritten suicide note lamenting a failed love life rested on her lap.
I thought I’d find More in life than business and financial Success, but that didn’t happen. I needed More to inspire me to go on. I am Sorry. To those I leave behind, PLEASE FORGIVE ME. I Never meant to hurt anyone. I needed someone to love. I needed to be loved. Please Forgive me.
Success was an understatement. Elizabeth, a.k.a. “Billie,” Cox ran Century Oil, one of the most lucrative medium-size oil companies in Houston. Oil had been on a roller-coaster ride for two years, the past six months headed straight up. With the price of a barrel skyrocketing and money spurting through the oil industry faster than crude from a gusher, Century had reported profits of $100 million in the previous quarter alone. Cox was the youngest and highest-profile woman in the inner circle of the Houston energy business. Her bedroom was on the second floor of her six-thousand-square-foot River Oaks mansion, which sat on an acre of Space City’s priciest real estate.
How bad could your life have been?
I wondered.
Come on, Billie. What’s really going on here?
“You planning to tell me something about this case or just stare at that photo,” my boss, Captain Don Williams, barked.
The captain glowered down at me from his vantage point, three feet above, as I sat at my home-office desk, digesting the police file on the Cox case. Even when I stood, the captain had a formidable advantage. I’m not a small woman, five-foot-six, 130 pounds or so, a bit wide in the hips, but he’s a former University of Texas basketball player, a broad-shouldered man, with dark brown skin and a thick-
boned jaw that locks into place when he’s unhappy, as he was now. He’d been patient with me, bringing the photos out to the ranch, not asking me to go to the office or the scene. But then, he’d been handling me with kid gloves ever since the previous spring when the most grueling investigation of my career, the Lucas case, went south and nearly destroyed my entire world. For months after, I didn’t know if I’d ever wear a badge again. Coming back had been slow, a six-month leave followed by half-pay with the understanding that I review case files at home. How long would his patience last?
The truth is that I have something of an ace in the hole. I’m one of only two women Texas Rangers, but that’s not particularly important. What makes me unique is that I’m the only one in the department FBI trained in criminal profiling. When a law enforcement agency anywhere in the Lone Star State needs an assessment of a scene or help narrowing a list of suspects, I’m the one they call. Plus, the captain and I have history and a healthy respect for each other. I’d counted on that for nearly a year, to cut me enough slack to work through my situation at home.
“Why are we involved in this case?” I asked, giving him a wary glance. His eyes narrowed and the captain frowned.
“Sarah, let’s not worry about that. Just look it over,” he said, motioning at the thin file on Billie Cox’s death, the one I held in my hand. “This is simple. Just give me your thoughts.”
Something didn’t smell right—the captain’s answers, I mean. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the authority to look at the case. The Texas Rangers are a branch of the Department of Public Safety, DPS—we report to the governor—and our jurisdiction is the entire state. It’s tradition. Back in the days of Stephen F. Austin, my predecessors got their name by patrolling the vast Texas range.
That said, since the commotion the year before, I hadn’t strayed much outside my own fence line. Half an hour from Houston, the
Rocking Horse Stables lies on the outskirts of Tomball, a small town that’s being swallowed up by the city. I live with my mom, Nora Potts, who makes her living baking fancy cheesecakes for caterers and boarding horses for folks without the land to stable them. My jailers are Mom and my twelve-year-old, Maggie. It hasn’t been a particularly hard time. The Rocking Horse is a pretty pleasant place to watch the world go by.
What bothered me about the Cox case file was that we rangers rarely step into a case uninvited. “Well, this file says Houston P.D. and the medical examiner have both already ruled Cox’s death a suicide. They didn’t ask for my opinion,” I said, glancing up at the captain. “Is there some theory that they aren’t shooting straight with the investigation? Some reason to be suspicious of the local uniforms?”
“No, nothing like that,” the captain said, waving off my concerns.
“Why then?” I pushed.
The captain sighed. “Damn, Sarah. Nothing’s easy with you. The truth is that Billie Cox has a sister, Faith Cox Roberts. She’s been calling the governor’s office and her state senator, saying Billie wouldn’t have killed herself, demanding a full investigation,” he said, irritated. “But that’s not important. All the director asked for was a look-see. You tell me this is a suicide. I tell the director, who conveys your take on the case to the governor. That done, we’re clear, before we rile up anybody on Travis. We’re out of this, clean and quick.”
Travis was 1200 Travis Street, the address of Houston P.D.’s skyscraper headquarters, the building where the chief of police offices are, in the center of downtown. What the captain implied was that, unless we had to, he saw no reason to irritate a department we work closely with, one where we count on good relationships to get things done.
“You do think this is a suicide,
don’t you
?” he prodded.
“Well, I guess,” I said, squinting up at him.
“Hell, Sarah, there’s a note, the gun’s right where it should be, they got her prints off it, the damn thing is hers, and her hand tested positive for gunshot residue,” he said. “Show me a single piece of evidence that suggests this isn’t just some rich woman who decided she’d had enough and wanted out.”
There he had me.
“I can’t. I’m not sure it is any more than a suicide,” I admitted. “But the scene looks too perfect. All that’s missing is the bow.”
“That’s it? It looks too much like a suicide to be one?” the captain fumed. “Sarah, if we’re going to bash heads with the locals, give me something I can use to justify our take to the governor, some reason to step on toes.”
I’d hoped the questions would get easier. They weren’t.
“You know, I’m just not sure,” I said. “Maybe this is a suicide. But . . .”
“That’s not like you,” he said. “You’re usually pretty quick on the draw when it comes to zeroing in on a case. Why in that Lucas mess—”
“Yeah,” I said, cutting him off. I had no desire to ever again rehash the worst case of my career, one that sent me across Texas hunting a twisted killer who ultimately set his sights on me. “Captain, give me overnight to study the file. Maybe I’m just a little rusty.”
As soon as I heard myself say it, I regretted the choice of words.
“Rusty is right,” the captain said, storming through the barn door I’d unwisely swung open. “You know, Lieutenant Armstrong, that Lucas case happened in spring, and now it’s nearly spring again. I’m as sympathetic as anyone, but we need you back. You can’t do cases justice sitting out here on the ranch.” With that, he pushed the paperwork back into the Cox file folder and closed it. “If you’d been in the office, we would have called you to the scene on this one, given
this woman’s position in the business community. You wouldn’t be looking at photos three days later trying to figure out what happened.”
“I know,” I agreed. Then, mistake number two, I pushed that door open even wider. I couldn’t seem to help myself. “I can’t say that I’m not having the same thoughts.”
“Why not then, Sarah?” he asked, softer. “Why not report in tomorrow morning? It’s time.”
My slips weren’t unintentional. The truth? I wanted my life back. As much as I loved the ranch, being tied to the place grated on me. I’ve got to admit that I’m headstrong, maybe even downright stubborn. A lot of us rangers are. Back in the bad old days, when rangers fought warring Mexicans, Ranger Captain Jack Ford pretty much said it all about how a ranger sees a situation, when he ordered, “Whip them, and then talk of treaties.”
So I was eager to work full-time again, but I wondered if Mom and Maggie, especially Maggie, were as prepared to put the past behind us. They’d faced the devil with me, and I couldn’t force them to move on until they were ready. Still, the kid did seem stronger. And how long could I stay in lockup? Oh, it wasn’t really a hardship. I left whenever I wanted, went wherever I wanted, as long as it didn’t have anything to do with a crime scene and a murder.
“Tell you what, Captain. I do want to come back,” I confessed. “I didn’t know if I would, but I miss my work. Leave this file with me overnight, and I’ll talk to Maggie and Mom and have answers for you on both matters in the morning. Fair enough?”
The captain, looking more pleased than I’d seen him in a long time, reclaimed his sharply creased, silver-belly Stetson off my work-table, flicked off a bit of flesh-colored clay stuck on the rim, and nodded. “Fair enough. We need to get all this behind you, Sarah. I’ll drop in early tomorrow morning, on my way to the office, for the file and your answers,” he said. “We need you back where you belong.”
______
My combined home office and workshop is on the second floor of the garage. The captain left, and I proceeded to tidy up. When he’d arrived, I’d been working on a skull. I’m a bit of a contradiction. My college degree is a double major: psychology and art. Instead of my original career plans, using art to counsel traumatized kids, I utilize my psychology training in my profiling, diagnosing crime scenes and suspect lists. And in my spare time, I sculpt clay faces on unidentified skulls, hoping someone will recognize the dead and claim them, and that it’ll help put away a killer.
Lately, I’ve had a lot of spare time.
We rangers are a close-knit bunch, and we take care of our own. In my case, that’s meant a lot. My husband, Bill, was a ranger, too, actually the reason I got into law enforcement. When he died two years ago, the captain and the whole department closed in around Maggie and me, offering help. Then, last spring, crisis number two, a case we were lucky to survive, and again Captain Williams and the good souls in the office were patient and understanding. Even the folks in ranger headquarters, in Austin, didn’t push. But the captain was right. It was time for Maggie, Mom, and me to stand on our own feet again. It was time for us to pick up our lives.
My hands were rough from tending stock on the ranch, and I had to soap up twice to remove the last of the clay. My forehead felt tight, and I took the rubber band out of my dark blond hair, letting it bunch out around my shoulders. A long-standing tradition of neglect left it verging on wild. One of these days, I’d have to splurge on a good haircut. Maybe even a new shampoo and conditioner. Of course, there didn’t seem to be any urgency, no one to impress. A year ago, I had a new man in my life, an FBI profiler named David Garrity. We met in the thick of the Lucas debacle, partnered up for
the investigation, and got tight fast. To my disappointment, he hung around briefly afterward but suddenly stopped calling.
Since David Garrity’s departure, worrying about my looks wasn’t high on my list.
Outside, the fresh air hit me with the heavy scent of pine after a rain, and Maggie and Strings were on the porch putting up her telescope. These last days of February already felt like spring. Winter on Texas’s Gulf Coast doesn’t have the punch it does up north, and the thermostat hovered around sixty. But at just after six, dusk was crawling in. It appeared that Maggie and her best friend, Strings, more formally known as Frederick Allen Jacobs Jr., planned to take advantage of the situation with a little stargazing.
“Hey, Mrs. A,” Strings shouted when he saw me. His dark eyes were playful behind wire-rimmed glasses, dangling low, and his skin was the rich hue of coffee with cream. He scrunched up his broad nose and pushed his glasses back with one finger. “Are you going to watch tonight?”
“Watch what?” I responded. Strings shrugged at me. Obviously, I was supposed to know. Maggie, who was on her knees positioning the telescope’s spindly legs, peeked around the porch railing at me and frowned.
“I’ve been talking about this for a week, Mom,” she said. “The Alpha Centaurids are at their peak, and the weather’s good to see them tonight.”
“Oh, I forgot,” I said, stating the obvious. Then, to prove I’d retained a tidbit from her lectures, I added, “Meteors, right?”