The Next Victim (25 page)

What weighed on him was the possibility that O'Brien
had
been killed, and that his death was somehow linked to Sloane's. The possibility that because of Erling's prior involvement with the victim, he'd missed some major angle in his investigation.

The irony was that he'd moved on emotionally. Truly. In the months since Sloane had broken it off, he'd come to see that ending it was for the best. The affair had been wrong. A quick tonic for the building loneliness inside him, but not a lasting cure. He was sure Sloane felt the same way. Her murder, though, had stirred emotions and memories he'd managed to relegate to the safe harbors of his psyche. She'd been on his mind constantly. Along with uncomfortable misgivings about himself.

Erling prayed silently that John O'Brien's death was the tragic accident they'd assumed it was.

He looked over at Michelle, who'd just hung up the phone.

"Good news," she said. "Tucson PD passed along the name of a woman who thinks she might recognize our Jane Doe. Someone who used to come into the beauty supply shop where the woman works."

At last, something positive. Erling felt the mantle of gloom lift. "Let's talk to her."

Michelle dialed the number, then mouthed "answering machine" to Erling. She left a message and hung up.

"No address?" he asked.

"Just the name and number."

He sank back down in his chair and tapped his fingers on the desktop. Casually, he turned again to address Michelle. "Have you found anything new on John O'Brien's death?"

"Not exactly." She reached into her desk for an Altoid, then offered Erling the box. He shook his head.

"I haven't had a lot of time to give it," she continued. "But if what the sister says is true about the mayonnaise...and that he'd gone through rehab and stayed clean for all those years..."

"He wouldn't have been the first person to backslide. Especially given the situation. Being a prime murder suspect has got to ratchet up the stress levels."

"True. But it's also a good cover-up for murder. And the murder of a prime suspect raises all kinds of questions." Michelle stood, brushed her trouser legs straight, then sat back down. "I think it might be helpful to reexamine our work in the Sloane Winslow case."

This was what Erling had been dreading. "You're assuming they're related."

She nodded. "I did have a chance to glance over our interviews with people who knew Winslow. It probably wouldn't hurt to talk to Reed Logan and A. J. Nash again. They might be able to point us in some new directions. And maybe a couple of individuals at the charities she was involved with."

"We did that."

Michelle squinted at him. "So what? Aren't you the one who's always telling me it pays to ask the same questions a couple of different times? There's
always
something new that comes out."

Erling nodded. She was right. It was just that in this case he was afraid of what that new information might be.

"The only thing that's jumped out at me so far," Michelle said, "is a comment by Winslow's neighbor Janet Fisher--the one who found the bodies. She mentioned she thought Winslow had been seeing someone last spring."

Erling's nerves were suddenly taut. "Do we know who?" he asked hoarsely.

"Nope. Mrs. Fisher could be wrong, of course. She was a royal pain, if you recall. Trying to claim her fifteen minutes of fame by piggybacking onto the tragedy. I talked to her again yesterday afternoon. She said she thought the guy might have been someone well known because Winslow was so circumspect about the whole thing. Personally, I suspect Winslow just wanted to distance herself from the woman."

"Right." Erling hoped he didn't sound too eager to agree.

"Anyway, the dead girl is top priority right now."

"Right," he said again, grateful for the reprieve.

An hour later, the woman who thought she might recognize their Jane Doe called back. No, she didn't really know the girl. And no, she couldn't recall her name, except that it might be Harley or Hayley or Heidi or something similar. Michelle took down the woman's address and asked if they could come by and speak to her in person.

"What do you think?" Michelle asked Erling.

"Definitely worth a follow-up interview, but I'm not holding my breath."

They were just out the door when Erling's cell phone jangled and he recognized Mindy's number.

"Hi, honey."

"Dad, I forgot the disk that has my paper on it! It's due in two hours."

"What paper?"

"The one that's due today. In Soc. 101."

How had she managed to leave the thing at home knowing it was due? The carelessness of the young sometimes astounded him. "You've got time to get it, don't you?"

"I've got class in five minutes. And the teacher always gives us a quiz on the reading. Can you go home and get it for me?
Please
." She drew out the last word for an entire breath. "I hate to ask, but I'm really stuck."

"What about your mom?"

"She's got a classroom full of kids," Mindy explained as though he were dense not to have known.

And I've got a homicide
, Erling thought. But Michelle could handle the interview alone, and it was likely to be a bust anyway.

He sighed. "Sure. Tell me where it is."

"Thanks, Dad. You're the greatest. Really, I owe you big time."

Erling felt a glow all the way to the marrow of his bones. It wasn't often anymore that he got that kind of gushing admiration from his daughter.

Erling retrieved the disk, taking a moment to wonder at the hollow quietness of the house at midday. Rarely was he the only one home, and while Deena claimed to love having the house to herself, Erling found it oppressively empty. He got back into the car, drove to campus, and pulled up to the spot on Euclid where he and Mindy had arranged to meet.

Mindy was already there, nervously checking her watch and bouncing on one leg and then the other. When she saw him, she rushed to the curb and reached through the open window for the disk.

"Thank you sooo much. You're a lifesaver."

"Guess you've learned a lesson, right?"

"Do you always have to lecture?" She turned away in a huff, then stepped back again and leaned into the car to kiss Erling on the cheek. "Thanks. I love you."

Good thing he was wearing his seat belt, Erling thought, or he'd be floating so high he'd be right out of the car.

He'd gone only a couple of blocks when Michelle phoned him. "You don't have plans for this evening, do you?"

"Why? You've got something?"

"I think so."

"The shop clerk remembered more?"

"No, that was a washout. I mean she tried, but it wasn't like she actually knew the girl. But get this. I checked with the Tucson PD to see if names like Harley or Heidi or Hayley had come up recently in any of their cases."

"Had they?"

"Not exactly. But a couple of weeks ago a Good Samaritan found a purse in the parking lot of a Burger King on Oracle. No credit cards or driver's license inside, but it did contain a City of Tucson library card for someone named Hayley Hendrix."

Adrenaline pumped through Erling's veins. If she was their girl, they'd cleared the hurdle of identifying her. "Anything else in the purse?" he asked.

"Sunglasses, make-up, the usual. I checked with the phone company, and there's no listing for anyone by that name. But with so many kids using cell phones these days, that doesn't mean much. Let's see if we can get the library to release her address and phone number. If not, we can try for a cell phone listing."

Erling grunted. "You know how libraries are about patron privacy these days. We'll probably need a warrant."

"We shouldn't have trouble getting one." Michelle sounded exhilarated. "I think we may have finally caught a break."

Erling looked back down at the sketch on his desk. "God willing," he told the girl silently, "we're going to find out who did this to you and bring him in."

When Kali picked up the box of John's personal effects from Logan Foods the next morning, she was curiously disappointed to find A. J. Nash wasn't in.

That brought her up short. Why should she care whether Nash was there or not?

Screw it
, she told herself as she headed back to the parking lot. She didn't need complications like that in her life right now. She set the box in the backseat and climbed into her car, then thought that as long as she was there, she should try to see Reed.

Rather than trudge back through the heat unnecessarily, she called on her cell phone and after giving her name was put through to Reed's voice mail. There was at least a fifty-fifty chance he'd refused to take her call.

Screw him, too. Pushing the annoyances from her mind, Kali headed off to try to find Hayley's apartment. As she'd been doing for the last two days, she kept a watch out for beige sedans. She spotted a surprising number, though none appeared especially suspicious. Most likely, the whole idea that she'd been followed was nothing but a product of her overactive imagination.

She drove down Tyndall, keeping an eye on traffic while scanning the rows of apartment buildings on either side. Ten minutes later and one street over, she pulled up in front of a squat, two-story cinder-block structure bearing a sign that read VISTA HEIGHTS. There was no vista that Kali could see, unless you counted the auto repair shop across the street, and given the flatland location, "heights" wasn't particularly apt either.

The building was
U
-shaped, with an outside stairway and no main entrance. There was no landscaping, just hard-packed dirt and asphalt, but a pool was centered in what might euphemistically be termed a courtyard. A plastic lawn chair had fallen, or been tossed, into the deep end of the pool, and the water's surface was covered with an oily green film. Leisure living was apparently not the selling point of Vista Heights.

Kali found the row of mail slots and scanned the residents' names. There was a Hendrix listed for #11. With a little exploration, Kali found the unit on the first floor, in a dark corner near the laundry room and Dumpster.

She knocked on the door, hoping for a roommate or, better yet, Hayley herself, although she didn't hold out much possibility of that. Kali was sure Hayley was the girl in the police sketch.

Her knock went unanswered. A door opened down the hallway and a scruffy-looking young man emerged, heading for the parking area.

"Excuse me," Kali called after him. "Do you know the woman who lives here?"

"Nope."

"Has she been home recently?"

He ignored her and kept on walking.

Kali headed back toward the mailboxes. Next to them she'd seen a unit marked MANAGER. She knocked on the door. She could hear a television going inside, a program with laughter and lots of clapping. Another knock, and finally the door opened. An older woman with thinning hair peered out at Kali with obvious displeasure. She was wearing a shapeless housedress and smelled heavily of cigarette smoke.

The woman scowled. "You want something?"

"I was hoping I could talk to you about Hayley Hendrix. Unit eleven."

The manager's eyes showed interest. "You going to pay her rent?"

"She hasn't paid?"

"Not this month. Far as I can tell, she's up and left." The manager crossed her arms over her scrawny chest. "Doesn't surprise me. Kids these days, they sign a lease but it don't mean nothing. Now I got to get it cleaned up and go to all the trouble of filing an eviction notice and finding another tenant. That is, unless you're here to pay up."

Kali shook her head. "Was she usually prompt with the rent?"

The woman muttered something under her breath. Her lips were full and loose. "That's the kind of tenant we get nowadays. Can't trust a one of 'em. Half of 'em don't even speak the language." She eyed Kali. "What do
you
want with her?"

"My name's Kali O'Brien. I'm an attorney working on a case she's involved in."

"Trouble, huh? Doesn't surprise me none."

"Why's that?"

The manager shrugged. "That girl don't exactly keep regular hours, if you know what I mean."

"You think she was into something criminal?"

The manager bristled. "I didn't say that."

"What, then?" Hayley worked at a strip club. Maybe she'd taken "private clients" on the side. "Were there men coming and going?" Kali asked.

The woman's mouth grew pinched. "I wouldn't allow that. This here's an up-and-up apartment house. Nothing illegal. I'd be the first to call the cops." She craned her neck forward, angled her head toward Kali. "She kept to herself mostly. 'Cept for stiffing me on the rent, she was an okay tenant, I guess."

The visit had been a waste, Kali decided, except that she was now more certain than ever that Hayley Hendrix was the dead woman the police were trying to identify. She hadn't skipped out or stiffed the management; she'd been murdered.

Kali took a step back, ready to leave, then on impulse asked, "Do you think I could have a look inside?"

"The girl's apartment? I don't think--"

Kali took out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to the woman. "You've checked to make sure she's not injured, haven't you?"

"She's not there. I looked."

"It wouldn't hurt to check again. Make sure she hasn't been back. I'll just tag along."

The manager eyed the twenty, and Kali pulled out a second one. She'd spent more on bribery in the last two days than she normally did on food for a whole week. Not that she minded, especially if it helped her prove John innocent.

"Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to take another look," the woman said. "We'll have to clean it out before we can show it anyway. You wouldn't be interested in renting, by any chance?"

Anything to get in. "You never know," Kali told the manager. "I might be."

"Let me get the key." The woman retreated into her apartment and returned a moment later with a large key ring. They proceeded to unit 11, where she inserted the key and opened the door.