Unforgivable (14 page)

Mia looked at the screen. She leaned closer to study Sam’s face, his posture, his clothing.

“Is it possible someone could have lifted this picture from the Internet, like from a Facebook page or something?”

“It’s possible.”

Mia studied his smile, zeroing in on the gap where his upper central incisor had been little more than a week ago. This was a recent shot.

“Is it possible someone changed the color of his coat? Maybe with a software program?”

“Absolutely,” Alex said. “I can do it right now.”

A few keystrokes, and the red zippered jacket Sam was wearing in the picture turned purple. Dread pooled in Mia’s stomach as she realized how easy this had been and yet how much planning had gone into it.

“I think this picture was taken Saturday at the zoo,” Mia said. “Sam was wearing green that day, but everything else is the same. He went missing for about half an hour, and it turned out that he was off with some stranger who’d offered him candy.”

Alex’s expression darkened. Part of her job with the Cyber Crimes Unit involved running down child predators who used the Internet as their playground, and Mia knew she’d seen some devious schemes used to target kids.

“That could work,” Alex said. “Most cell-phone cams are pretty subtle, so Sam might not have been aware that he was being photographed. And that encounter could explain Sam’s voice on the phone call. This guy could have recorded it.”

“You’re saying he got Sam to yell my name?” Mia
sat back, surprised. Sam hadn’t reported anything like that to her. Neither had the social worker. Or the SANE nurse.

“Maybe he was lurking around while you and Sam were hanging out together. He could have recorded it then.”

The idea made her cringe. Someone had been right there watching them, and she hadn’t even realized it.

“And what about tracing this message?” Mia’s temper started to kick in as she gazed at the screen. “I want to know who did this.”

“I’d like to know, too. This took planning. Whoever this was not only got hold of Sam’s picture but also found out where he attends school and went out there to get this shot. Someone went to a lot of trouble to scare you.” Alex paused. “Any idea why someone might do that?”

Mia could tell Alex knew she wasn’t getting the full story. But until Mia figured out what was happening, she couldn’t afford to trust anyone besides her sister.

You speak a word to anyone, Sammy is dead.

The kidnapping might have been staged, but the threat behind it was very real. And whoever was making the threat had figured out Mia’s Achilles’ heel.

Alex watched her, waiting for an answer.

“I’m not sure,” Mia said. “I’d probably understand all of this better if I knew where this e-mail came from. Can you find out?”

“Probably, but it’s going to take some effort. This doctored photo wasn’t just slapped together. Someone used a sophisticated program.”

“Not a bad merge. How’d you spot it?”

Both Mia and Alex turned to see Ben standing behind them, leaning casually against one of the desks. Mia’s nerves jumped. She didn’t want to let yet another person in on this.

“The shadow,” Alex said.

Mia’s need for information overcame her apprehension. “What shadow?”

“Yeah, I’m seeing it now,” Ben said. “Good eye.” He leaned over and pointed to the screen. With his rimless glasses, faded jeans, and sloppy T-shirt, he could have been your average twentysomething computer geek. But after working with him on a few cases, Mia was no longer fooled by his laid-back demeanor. The man was off-the-charts smart and a virtuoso on anything with a microchip. “See this?” He pointed at Sam’s face. “These shadows are sharp. This looks as if it was taken outdoors on a sunny day. The background shadows? More diffuse. Not quite as much contrast.”

Mia stared at the picture. The difference was very subtle, but it was there.

“Who did this, anyway?” Ben asked. “It’s really not bad.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Alex said. “Someone phonied up a picture of this child and faked a kidnapping.”

Ben quirked an eyebrow. “Hope his parents didn’t pay a big ransom.” His gaze veered to Mia.

“We ran down the phone number earlier, but it looks like they used a spoof card,” Alex said.

“You get this on e-mail?” Ben asked Mia. At her hesitation, he said, “I can tell this kid’s related to you. There’s a strong resemblance.”

“E-mail,” she told him. Her stomach tightened. She still couldn’t believe this was happening.

“He used a Yahoo account,” Alex said. “I haven’t had a chance to trace it, but I’m guessing it’s a dead end.”

He nodded. “Shoot it over to me. I’ll see if I can get an ID through the cell phone.”

“From the e-mail?” Mia asked, puzzled.

“No, from the picture. Oh, that’s good, Ben! And damn it, I wish I’d thought of it first.” Alex turned to Mia, obviously energized by some brilliant idea Mia didn’t understand. “If this photo was taken with a camera phone, we might be able to trace the number.”

“I thought you said he used a throwaway phone?”

“To call
you,
” Alex said. “But probably not to take the picture. If this guy took the picture with a cell phone, it was probably his real phone. Then he likely e-mailed it somewhere to doctor it up on a computer, using a software program. Ben’s thinking we might be able to find digital tracks leading back to the phone itself. From that, he can run down an ID.”

“You can do that?” Mia turned to Ben.

“I can sure as hell try.”

Jonah signed the crime-scene log and ducked under the tape. He followed the muddy path, taking care not to step outside the route staked out with orange twine. A couple of guys from the sheriff’s office nodded as he made his way down the soggy slope.

“Over here.”

Jonah recognized Ric’s voice and turned to see him silhouetted in the headlights of a crime-scene van. So much for his visit with Mia. Jonah walked over, and it took him
a moment to realize that the bulky man standing beside Ric was the medical examiner. In a zip-up camo hunting suit, Froehler looked like the Michelin Man.

“Park ranger found her,” Ric said.

Jonah looked at the tall portable light that had been set up near the body. Several crime-scene techs were crouched beneath it.

“Age?” Jonah asked.

“Hard to tell,” Froehler said. “I’d say twenty? Maybe older? I’ll have a better estimate sometime tomorrow. And I know your next question. Yes, she was beaten. Was she dead beforehand? We’ll find out at autopsy.”

“What do you
think
happened?” Ric asked.

“As I told the sheriff, read the report.” He glanced in the direction of the body, and something in his eyes changed. “But if you want my first guess, blunt-force trauma. Someone smashed that girl’s skull in. Repeatedly. But if you quote me on that, I’ll flat-out deny it.”

Froehler picked up his bag of gear and trudged off to his car.

“He’s done already?”

“Until the autopsy,” Ric said. “He got here an hour ago. We got a late invitation.”

“From who?”

“The sheriff. He knows about the Meyer case, gave the chief a heads up.”

They started walking toward the lake, and Jonah tried to ignore the bitter wind. The temperature had dropped again, and Froehler’s hunting getup wasn’t looking like such a bad idea now. Jonah scanned the area, but it was
tough to see much. Only a small patch near the lake had

been spotlighted.

“Same MO?” Jonah asked.

“No.”

“Knife wounds? Duct tape?”

“Didn’t see any.”

Their boots made a slurping noise as they neared the water’s edge. They stopped near a huddle of investigators in white jumpsuits.

Jonah looked at Ric. “So, why are we here?”

“See for yourself.”

The bloated corpse lay facedown in the mud. Her arms were spread out on either side of her, but her ankles had been bound with rope and fastened to a cinder block. Jonah pictured someone tying her up like that and was struck by the utter coldness of it.

“Notice anything?” Ric asked him.

“Besides the hair?”

“Yeah.”

The victim had long blond hair, like Ashley Meyer’s, but so did a lot of women. He kept looking. One of the crime-scene guys stood up, obscuring their view, and Jonah was left with the grotesque afterimage of the swollen body.

“Well …” It was the first thing he’d noticed, so he tossed it out there. “She doesn’t look that bad, considering.”

“Considering she’s been in the water? Yeah. That’s what I noticed, too.”

They were standing on a slope covered with mud and plants. “They just drain the lake?” Jonah asked.

“River authority opened the flood gates Sunday, lowered
it about six feet. We’ve had below-freezing temperatures since then. Helps narrow the timeline.”

“How long’s Froehler think she was underwater?”

“Wouldn’t commit. But he said probably not more than a day. Two, tops.”

“Santos.” A deputy waved them closer, and they stepped into the halo of light.

Jonah noted the gray skin, the slimy debris tangled in the hair. A weight settled over him. Every victim he saw made him think of someone’s parents. Ric looked on with a stony expression, maybe thinking about his own daughter.

“You were asking about knife wounds?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing on the torso,” the deputy said.

The body-removal team rolled the victim over and onto a sheet. Jonah clenched his teeth and forced himself to look at her face, her body. His gaze stopped on her hands, which had already been bagged for transport in order to preserve whatever evidence might be trapped under her fingernails.

“What about the hands?” Ric asked, following the same train of thought. “Any cuts? Defensive wounds?”

“That’s what I was going to tell you,” the deputy said. “Her hands were sliced up good.”

After just a few hours of sleep, Ric went in early to work on the only solid lead he had in Frank’s murder investigation: a scrap of brass no bigger than a kid’s thumb.

But the shell casing got him nowhere.

The Fort Worth detective who’d worked the case was dead. The case files were in storage, and it would take at least twenty-four hours to send someone into some basement
closet to drag them out. And the one person who had any primary knowledge of the case—a beat cop who had been a rookie at the time—was out sick.

Ric cursed as he hung up the phone, but the sight of his partner’s six-four frame charging across the bullpen lifted his hopes.

“You’ve got something,” Ric said when Jonah stopped at his cube.

“Damn right I do.”

“Tell me it’s about the Hannigan case.”

“The motel room murder. Maintenance guy at the motel just ID’d the last man seen entering her room from a photo lineup. We’ve got a suspect, and he’s got a rap sheet.”

Ric leaned forward as Jonah slapped a photo array onto his desk. “Which one is he?”

“David Corino, a.k.a. Spider. He’s a pimp out of San Antonio.”

“Spider? Where do they come up with this shit?”

“Hell if I know.”

Ric studied the mug. The DOB beneath the picture put Corino’s age at twenty-six, but he had the teeth and face of an old man.

“Looks like a tweaker. What’s on his sheet?”

“Just what you’d expect,” Jonah said. “Couple of busts for possession. Did a two-year stretch for burglary. Most recently, he got caught up in a raid on a meth lab down in Bexar County. Prosecutor gave him a pass to flip on some of his buddies.”

“And he’s running girls, too?”

“Looks like. And meth. Remember the victim had some onboard at the time of her death?”

Ric sat back in his chair. “Any chance we can link him to Ashley Meyer?”

“Highly unlikely,” Jonah said, confirming Ric’s first take. “He’s got an alibi for the time of her murder.”

“You already talked to him?”

“Not yet, but I made some calls. Day after Christmas, they sacked him up on those drug charges. He was a guest of the Bexar County taxpayers until two days ago, when he decided to flip.”

“Takes him out of the running for the Meyer homicide,” Ric said. “Even if the ME got the time of death off by a day or two, it still wouldn’t work.”

“So, if this guy pans out, we were right,” Jonah said. “The murders aren’t related.”

Ric’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “Santos.” He listened carefully, then stood up and grabbed the jacket off the back of his chair.

“Where’s the fire?”

“That was Rachel,” Ric told him. “She’s got Mia Voss sitting in her conference room waiting to talk to us about the Meyer investigation.”

“Why can’t she talk to us here?”

“I don’t give a shit where she talks to us. Sounds like we’ve got a break in our case.”

Rachel Patterson swept into the conference room wearing a pinstripe suit and a mantel of confidence befitting a prosecutor with a ninety-percent conviction rate.

“Detective Macon, glad you could make it. Where’s your partner?”

“Should be right behind me. He had a call come in—”

Ric walked into the conference room and nodded
at the district attorney as he tucked his phone into the pocket beneath his gun holster. His gaze slid to Mia, and her stomach did a nervous dance.

“Good, you’re here.” Rachel placed a legal pad at the head of the conference table before pulling out a chair and sinking into it. “Let’s all have a seat, shall we? I have to be in court in twenty minutes. Dr. Voss?” The prosecutor’s ice-blue eyes settled on Mia. “You have something for us?”

Mia cleared her throat. She felt Ric’s and Jonah’s gazes on her as she folded her hands together on the faux-wood table. She’d spent much of the past twelve hours mentally rehearsing what she planned to say, and she was determined to do it with a steady voice.

“I’m here about the Ashley Meyer case.”

The prosecutor’s brows arched. Mia shifted her attention to Jonah, then Ric. An expectant silence filled the room.

Mia zeroed in on Rachel, because she couldn’t stand to look at Ric.

“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. My mistake, actually.”

“What sort of mistake?” Rachel asked.

“It has to do with the evidence. The physical evidence. That you all sent to the laboratory for testing.” Oh, God, she was already fumbling her speech, and she’d barely started.