Twisted (17 page)

He glanced up at Jonah. “No landline?”

“Just the mobile. We ran the account already. Nothing unusual.”

He flipped through the bills again. Only four months’ worth—not even enough to warrant a filing system.

Mark sighed. Twenty-three years old. Young enough to be his own daughter, if he’d ever had one.

Just four years younger than Allison Doyle.

“No computer, either,” Jonah said.

“That’s unusual.”

“She used the one at work, evidently. And used her phone for e-mail.”

Mark headed into the bedroom and flipped on a light
switch. Most of the space was taken up by a queen-size bed with a floral bedspread and coordinating pillows. The bedding was rumpled. On the far wall stood an oak bureau with all the drawers slightly open. The mirror above it hung askew. The smooth surfaces in the room showed traces of fingerprint powder, and Mark looked at smudges regretfully. It was one of the many things that would be painful for Stephanie’s parents to see when they mustered the strength to come in here and pack up their daughter’s things.

Mark walked into the bathroom. A pair of black high heels lay on the floor beside the vanity cabinet. A wicker laundry hamper sat beside the door, and a black skirt and ivory blouse had been draped over the lid. Her work clothes, presumably.

Mark tried to visualize her last minutes in her apartment. She’d come home from her unpaid job, probably tired and restless. She’d changed into running gear. A plastic cup beside the sink contained an assortment of elastic bands, and he pictured her standing in front of the mirror and pulling her hair into a ponytail before heading out for a run. She’d stopped to collect her iPod, too, which had been found in the woods near the jogging trail.

Mark disliked iPods. He didn’t understand why so many otherwise intelligent women made a habit of disabling one of their key warning systems every time they went out to exercise. How many homicides had he worked where the victim never even heard her attacker coming?

The iPod bugged him for another reason. Where had she downloaded her music?

Mark stepped back into the bedroom. Jonah stood in the doorway, patiently waiting for him to finish second-guessing his team’s work.

“Her computer at her job,” Mark said. “You know if she kept music on it?”

“No idea. Why?”

Mark’s phone buzzed inside his pocket. He checked the number. Allison.

“Wolfe,” he said briskly.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m celebrating my rare night off by making something for dinner that doesn’t come from a freezer. You like spaghetti?”

He didn’t say anything. Clearly, she hadn’t listened to a word he’d said earlier.

“Hello?”

“I’m thinking.”

“It’s spaghetti, Wolfe. Not a marriage proposal. I’ve got some ideas about the case.”

He glanced at Jonah on the other side of the room. He was going through the nightstand drawers now.

Mark sighed. “What time?”

“How about eight? I’m just getting home from the store.”

“That works.”

He ended the call and shoved his phone in his pocket, almost sure he was making a mistake. But it would be a working dinner. She’d be wearing something besides pajamas.

He hoped.

Mark’s gaze homed in on the stack of books and magazines on the nightstand. He crossed the room and moved the stack aside to reveal a slender black tablet.

“Bingo,” he said, opening the case. He looked at Jonah. “An iPad.”

“Shit, how’d we miss that?”

Mark tapped the screen. It was out of battery, but that could be remedied quickly enough.

“I’ll take it in,” Jonah said.

“I need some time with it. I want to see what she’s been doing online.”

“Let me run it by our CSI first,” Jonah said. “This is the kind of thing she might carry around with her. Could be someone’s prints on it besides hers.”

Mark was still thinking about the overlooked iPad when he arrived at Allison’s half an hour later. Missed evidence was a bad sign, and it didn’t do much for his confidence in the local investigators.

Allison’s parking lot was crowded, and one of her neighbors was having a party. She opened the door looking ticked off.

“You’ll have to ignore the noise,” she said. “My neighbor’s a rabid Cowboys fan.”

Mark stepped inside, and the aroma from the kitchen made his mouth water.

“You started already.”

“Just the garlic and onions.” She walked into the kitchen and he forced himself not to stare at her hips in those jeans. She wore a black T-shirt and had thick woolen socks on her feet. There was nothing at all sexy about the outfit—except that he’d developed a weakness for this girl, and it had nothing to do with clothes.

He was attracted to her, and it was starting to get in the way. It had gone from being a fleeting annoyance
to an ongoing distraction. He found himself thinking about her when she wasn’t around—and when she
was
around, which was worse. She’d be looking at him, talking about the case, and he’d be standing there thinking about her mouth or her hands or, hell, her
hair
, and wondering what it would look like fanned across his pillow instead of up in one of those no-nonsense ponytails she wore to work each day.

“Mark?” She turned and gave him a quizzical look.

“What?”

“I asked how it went at Stephanie’s.”

“Fine. How’d you know I was there?”

“Sean told me.”

Of course. News traveled fast in small-town police departments—yet another reason he needed to be careful here. Some patrol officer had probably already noticed the rented blue Taurus parked in front of this apartment.

Allison pulled a beer from her fridge—same brand as last time—and twisted off the top for him.

“Thanks.” He leaned back against the counter and watched her. She took a swig of her own half-finished beer and turned to the stove.

“So, what’d you think?” She stirred something in a big soup pot and looked up at him.

“The apartment may not generate any real leads. Our UNSUB was most likely a stranger to her. He learned about her online. It’s unlikely he visited her home.”

“But you wanted to see it anyway.”

“I like to be thorough.”

She lifted an eyebrow at that as she transferred some browned meat from a skillet to the pot.

“Want to help?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She handed him a manual can opener and plunked a few cans beside him: stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, black olives.

Mark hadn’t cooked in a long time, and he realized he missed it. He missed a lot of things—cooking, sleep, sex—but lately his life had become one long workday, punctuated by some long-distance runs to keep him sane.

He glanced at Allison in her sock feet. She seemed more relaxed than he’d ever seen her.

“You’re making this from scratch?”

“I can’t eat it from a jar,” she said. “My maternal grandmother’s Italian.”

“Ah . . . that explains it.”

“What?”

He opened up the cans. “Your coloring. And your attitude.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“It’s definitely good. The attitude. You’ll need it in this profession.”

“Well, my grandmother had quite a lot of backbone, if that’s what you mean.” She added the contents of each can to the pot and stirred. “But if I really wanted to take after her, I’d be married with about five kids by now. And I wouldn’t use tomatoes from a can. Blasphemy.”

She glanced up at him. “You have any kids?”

Mark had been wondering when she’d get around to that. Women always asked. They had a strong interest in what sort of emotional baggage a man carried around, unlike most men Mark knew, who didn’t give a damn. There were agents he’d worked with for ten years who’d never asked him a single personal question, even during
his divorce, which had been public knowledge at the time. Trisha was a defense attorney in D.C., and their circles tended to overlap.

Marked sipped his beer. She was still waiting for an answer, and his silence had raised a red flag.

“No kids.”

“You sure?” She smiled. “You had to think about it there.”

“My line of work doesn’t tend to produce good fathers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

And here was the minefield of too-personal issues he’d wanted to avoid.

“I spend my days studying the very worst men are capable of.” He waited for her to meet his gaze. “It’s ugly stuff. I don’t believe in happy endings anymore, Allison. I’ve seen too much shit.”

She turned to face him, tipping her head to the side. “Kind of a sad way to live, don’t you think?”

“No.”

She reached an arm around him, and he stiffened. She pulled a half-finished bottle of red wine from the counter behind him and uncorked it.

“
I
think it is.” She poured a bit of wine into the sauce and stirred. “Have you always been like this?”

“What, cynical?” He folded his arms over his chest. He didn’t like to talk about himself so much, and he wasn’t sure how he’d allowed it to happen, especially with her.

“I mean, did your job make you cynical about people, or did you grow up that way and, hence, go into law enforcement?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the FBI Academy . . . not the kind of thing you just stumble into. Pretty elite group. And they don’t get paid much, compared to some of the other things you could probably do with a Georgetown law degree.”

She turned and looked at him with that frank expression he’d come to expect from her.

“I’m guessing most people are drawn to the Bureau because they have at least
some
level of faith in humanity,” she said. “It’s about helping people, right? Working for justice. If you’re a
complete
pessimist, what would be the point?”

He watched her talk, uneasy with what he thought she was getting at.

“Maybe you’re not as cynical as you think,” she said.

“I could find a few people who’d tell you otherwise.”

“You mean your ex-wife?” She gave him a knowing look. “I take what people’s exes say with a grain of salt.”

Mark reached for his beer. “Why do I feel like I’m being psychoanalyzed all of a sudden?”

“Me?” She widened her eyes with mock innocence. “Psychoanalyze
you
? Never. I only have a few measly psychology courses to my credit.”

She took some herbs from her pantry and sprinkled them into the pot.

“My dad was from a family of cops, but he became a firefighter.” She looked at him and smiled. “I know—almost the same thing, right?”

“Almost.”

“He worked here in town, eventually became an arson investigator. Growing up, he used to tell me he was a fire detective.”

“And he died . . . ?”

“When I was twelve.”

Christ, no wonder she had a cop complex. He’d sensed it from the beginning. But she had a daddy complex, too, which was much worse. Some selfish middle-aged asshole was going to come along and take advantage of her someday. But it wasn’t going to be him.

“I probably would have been one, too, if I thought I could handle the physical aspects.”

“Women do it.” He picked up the new topic and ran with it.

“Yeah, but not a lot of women who look like me.” She waved a hand at herself. “I’m not exactly built for it. And those hoses are damn heavy. But I always knew I wanted to help people in some sort of law enforcement capacity. So I got my degree in criminology and landed at the police academy.”

“The physical requirements there weren’t challenging?”

“Ha. They were hell. First day, I could barely do a chin-up. But I got my butt in gear, managed to improve. Size isn’t everything.” She turned to stand in front of him, hands on her hips. “Fact, I’ve learned to use it to my advantage.”

“Like you did in that holdup?”

She looked stung, and he immediately wished he hadn’t said it. The holdup would be a sore subject for her. The worst label any cop could get was to be called unsafe.

“I meant that I learned not to make threats I can’t back up,” she said. “I don’t go shooting my mouth off, telling some two-hundred-pound drunk I’m going to
kick his ass if he doesn’t cooperate. I’m not afraid to call for backup when I need it. And I’ve learned it’s a lot easier to talk somebody to jail than to drag him there.”

“Good for you. Talking is preferable to force. Most of the time.” Mark could recall a few moments when force was the only option, and he hadn’t hesitated to use it.

Hesitation could get you killed. He hoped she knew that.

She took a swig of her beer and eyed him sullenly.

“Didn’t mean to pick on you about the holdup,” he said.

“No, you’re right. It was poor judgment.” She sighed. “Live and learn, right?”

She crouched in front of a cabinet and took out another big pot. She filled it with water and shook in some salt.

“Linguini okay?”

“Great.”

“Good, ’cause that’s what I’ve got.” She took a package down from the cabinet and put a finger to her mouth. “Shh. Packaged noodles. Don’t tell Gram.”

Mark watched her move around her kitchen as the sauce simmered. Some of the tension he carried around seemed to drain out of him. She had music playing in the other room—something soft and bluesy. Her kitchen smelled amazing. Mark hadn’t had much of a home life in years, and he felt a pang of regret over what he’d lost. He didn’t miss Trisha, really. And he knew for a fact that she was better off without him—only two years since their divorce, and already she had a new husband and a baby on the way. What he missed was companionship. Sometimes he came home from a long day or a business
trip and he walked into his empty, silent apartment, and he couldn’t help wondering how things might have been different if he’d paid more attention to the people in his life and not just his work.

Allison picked up her beer and looked at him. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“You’re looking serious again.”

He cleared his throat. “You said you had some ideas about the case.”

She poured a few drops of olive oil in the water, then added the noodles.

“Right, so I’ve been going over the victim profiles you copied for the task force. All eight cases. Had them spread out on my rug in there—they covered the whole thing.”