Vicious (16 page)

The date of birth was chiseled into the stone, month, day and year. Where the date of death should have been were two words:
Very Soon
.

The name inscribed in large, sweeping letters across the front was
Daniel T. Burnett
.

13

Birmingham Police Department, 3:00 p.m.

Harper stretched a map of the city on one end of the case board. Lori added new notes beneath the photos of victims and the persons of interest they had so far. As of now, the video was all they had on the Thomas murder. Not one soul in the building had seen or heard a thing until the music woke the closest neighbors. Evidently the two women, if they were indeed the killers, had set the timer on the iPad for the music to go on at just the right time. Neighbors would be roused and the cops would be called. All accomplished long after they were gone.

Officer Cook was still interviewing the young man’s coworkers. No forensic reports were back yet. Hayes was coordinating the surveillance details. Wanda and Lil’s homes were on the top of his list. Jess had called her sister as soon as they’d left Wanda’s. Lil assured Jess she hadn’t seen any strangers in her neighborhood, and she promised to cooperate with the detail assigned to her. A call to Mr. Louis had been next. He needed a detail, too, though he insisted the extra trouble wasn’t necessary. Jess had added one to Dan’s parent’s home as well. They couldn’t take any risks with the people closest to them. Corlew outright refused to have a cop following him around. Jess didn’t want to know his reasons. The business of private investigations occasionally skirted the law. Corlew would be no exception just because he was an ex-cop.

The department’s budget was going to take a major hit. Something else to put Dan in the hot seat with the mayor and it was her fault.

For almost twenty years her job had been to help find the monsters among society. She had made the decision to put herself in harm’s way by going into this line of work. It was just wrong for her family and friends to suffer because of her choices.

Don’t dwell on what you can’t change. Do what you have to do.
Agonizing over what wasn’t right in all of this wouldn’t change a thing.

Jess reread the lines in her notes she’d reviewed twice already. The ability to concentrate eluded her. They were almost forty-eight hours into this investigation and she couldn’t seem to catch up. Her mind wouldn’t stay focused. She was relying heavily on her team for interviews and fieldwork. Generally, she preferred to be involved in as much of that work as possible herself. Not this time. As much as she wished she could blame it on hormones, it wasn’t that at all.

What she felt was guilt. These people were dead because of her.

She set her notes aside and stood. Lisa Templeton had come here for a new beginning. A fresh start. Instead, she and the woman she loved became ensnared in Spears’s evil scheme. Now both were dead. Burgess’s family had come to Birmingham and identified her body. Templeton’s, on the other hand, had chosen not to bother. Instead, they had ID’d the body from a photo faxed to the police department there. One last injustice to a woman who only wanted to live her life her way. When the body was released, it would be shipped like a box of fall bulbs to her childhood home to be planted.

Home
. Jess closed her eyes. Wherever it was, it should be a place where you felt happy and safe. The homes these victims had chosen had cost them their lives.

Her eyes flew open and she stared at the faces on the case board. Fury blazed a path through her. And here she was feeling sorry for herself.

“The house where you and your sister grew up is here.”

Harper’s voice jerked her to attention. She adjusted her glasses and moved to the case board to view the map. He circled the Irondale address where she had lived until she was ten with her parents. The sergeant was wrong about growing up there. That part of her life had ended abruptly at age ten. She and Lily had been snatched away from their home and dropped off in Druid Hills to live with Wanda.

Even with loving parents and a cozy little home, they hadn’t been safe from the ugliness that fate had thrown in their path.

“Your sister’s home in Bessemer is right there.” He made another circle. “This is Lori’s old apartment and the one you rent from Mr. Louis.” Harper circled those two, and then glanced at Jess. “The chief’s house is here.” One last spot on the map was ringed in red. “Did I miss anything, ma’am?”

“I wish I knew, Sergeant.” How far back did she go? Did she consider the homes of kids she’d known in school? She’d had her share of sleepovers. It was impossible to guess how deep Spears would dig to find relevant details about her past. “With what little we have to go on, it seems reasonable to say he’s targeted places where significant life events took place.” She glanced over at Hayes. “Do we have someone at the Irondale house yet?”

Hayes was still on the phone but he gave her a thumbs up.

She breathed a little easier, but she feared their efforts would never be enough. “We’re casting stones in the dark, Sergeant. Hoping to hit the objective.”

Lori moved into their huddle. “I spoke to Chief Burnett’s secretary.”

“Is he on his way?” Jess cringed at how needy she sounded. Dan should know about this. Either his phone was dead or he was in a meeting. As much as she hated to admit it, now she knew how he felt when he couldn’t reach her. She didn’t like it.

“She said he and Chief Black are at Oak Hill.”

“The cemetery?” Had there been another murder? She looked to Harper. “Is something going on over there?”

“Nothing I’ve heard about.”

“Sheila said she’d give him the message.” Lori held up her cell. “Do you want me to call him directly?”

“I guess not.” If he was in the middle of a briefing or some meeting with city planners, there was no truly pressing reason to disturb him. Not at this point anyway. Jess rubbed at the lines on her brow. “Let’s release the photo of the blonde to the public. See if anyone recognizes her. Call Gina Coleman. Maybe she can expedite things at her station.” The city’s television sweetheart could get the ball rolling. Coleman had been helpful to the department and to Jess in the past.

“That could be a problem,” Hayes said as he approached, “if it turns out the women are nothing more than friends of one of the residents. People love filing lawsuits.”

“No one in the building recognized her,” Lori countered. “Or had guests who left at that hour.”

“Maybe,” he nodded toward the photo taken from the video footage, “if they’re working girls it’s possible no one wants to remember seeing them.”

“Thomas most likely brought them home with him, but since no one we’ve contacted knows where he was earlier that evening, we can’t confirm it.” Jess wanted to scream. They’d had no luck tracing the number of the phone that sent the text with the video. They needed more. Something.
Anythin
g.

“Maybe Cook will find someone who knows where Logan was and who he was with,” Harper suggested. “He’s still pounding the pavement.”

“Am I sending out the photo or not?” Lori looked to Jess for a yay or nay.

“Send it to Coleman first. Tell her to move fast, and then send it to the others.” Jess wasn’t waiting. These two killers—if these women were their killers—were working way too quickly. “Lieutenant,” she turned to Hayes, “you and I are taking a walk down memory lane.”

Hayes glanced at the map. “Irondale?”

“That’s right.” Jess walked to her desk and grabbed her bag. “Sergeant, you and Detective Wells go through the lists of friends and coworkers for all three victims. See if they have any in common. Run through those closest to the victims first and see if anyone recognizes the blonde. Somebody somewhere has to know her.”

“On it, Chief,” Harper assured her.

Jess hadn’t been back to the Irondale house since she left Birmingham at eighteen. She hoped whoever resided there now was still breathing.

Twentieth Street South, Irondale, 4:05 p.m.

Lieutenant Hayes parked at the curb in front of the house that Jess had once called home. She hadn’t expected it to be abandoned. The local detective Hayes had spoken to while they were en route said no one lived in the house. From the looks of things no one had lived here for a very long time.

One less surveillance detail.

Seeing the house this way startled Jess a little. It looked nothing like the home she recalled. Most of the windows were boarded up. Pale blue paint peeled from the wood siding. The yard was a jungle, overgrown with weeds more than waist deep. The house next door was gone entirely, leaving a chimney standing among the wilderness of tangled bushes. On the opposite side of the street an old store was boarded up. Memories of her and Lil skipping across that street for ice cream filtered through her mind. Pigtails flopping as they giggled and acted silly the way young girls will.

Summers were spent in the backyard climbing trees and running through the sprinkler her mother used to water the lawn. Alabama summers could be hell on lawns and gardens. Some days her mother would prepare a picnic basket and the three of them would spread out on a blanket beneath the big maple tree Jess loved climbing. Their father was always on the road. But his homecomings were vivid recollections of hugs and presents and special dinners.

Wanda’s tales of how Jess’s mom had been afraid of her husband, of how she feared for their lives, shattered the pleasant memories.

“Do you want to go inside, Chief?”

Jess shifted back to the present. There really was no need to even get out of the car.

“Yes,” she decided. They were here. They might as well have a look.

Hayes went through the usual routine. He got out, surveyed the street, and came around to her side of the car. When he opened the door, she climbed out and spotted her personal BPD detail parked nearby.

Dan still hadn’t called her. What could be so important at the cemetery that he wasn’t taking calls?

Just wait until he nagged her again about ignoring his calls
.

The sidewalk was cracked and grass had taken up residence wherever there was a gap in the old concrete. The heat and humidity were oppressive. She pulled at her blouse. August couldn’t be over soon enough.

“Let’s try the front door,” she suggested. She had no desire to wade through the overgrown yard to have a look around back.

Two steps led up to the porch. Sagging boards creaked with their weight. A tree had sprouted in an area that was completely rotted through. Bird nests sat on every available ledge overhead and the tops of the doors and windows. Hooks that once supported a swing at one end of the porch remained, but the swing was long gone. The remembered sound of laughter rang in Jess’s ears as images of her and Lil swaying back and forth on that old swing played inside her.

“Is this breaking and entering?” Hayes tested the door.

It was nailed shut but it didn’t look as if it would take much effort to change that. “We have exigent circumstances, Lieutenant. Since this house fits the profile of our crime scenes, we have to operate under the assumption there may be a victim inside.”

He scrutinized the door. “Works for me.”

Jess glanced around the street. Not that there was anyone who might wonder what they were doing. When had this little section of the neighborhood died?

A lot could change in three decades. She’d always pictured this place as staying exactly the same. Even now, she half expected her mother to come out the door shouting for her and Lil to come in for dinner.

The door burst inward. Jess jumped. She stretched the kinks from her neck, squared her shoulders and followed Hayes inside. The house was as dark as a dungeon.

“I have a flashlight in the car.”

“I’ll just wait here in the shade, Lieutenant.” One of the perks of being the boss was that someone else had to do the running. It was certainly cooler in here, musty and dank, but cooler.

She checked her cell again. Still nothing from Dan.

By the time she’d scrounged up her penlight, Hayes had returned with his flashlight. “Lead on, Lieutenant.” This was one time she was more than happy to have someone else go first.

The front room was littered with trash. Discarded food containers and various items of clothing. No decomp smells, thank goodness. Whoever had left the mess it had been a while ago. The ash and remnants of firewood scattered across the hearth suggested the mess had been made last winter. Homeless folks often spent cold nights in abandoned houses. The floors were dirty and dusty but there were no tracks in the dust. Backed up the conclusion no one had been in the house for several months at least.

Moving toward the dining room, Hayes suddenly stopped. The beam of the flashlight he carried paused on the wall above the doorway that separated the living area from the dining room.

It took several seconds for the words scrawled on the wall to penetrate the state of shock and disbelief that instinctively swaddled her brain.

Welcome home, Jess
.

6:01 p.m.

Jess sat on the top step as members of the crime scene unit went in and out around her. The sound of hammers and drills played like a twisted score to the comings and goings of the characters in this bad movie in which she was the leading lady. Lori and Harper had arrived. Harper and Hayes had decided to remove some of the boards over the windows to allow some light air inside. Local cops had shown up with the necessary tools. BPD’s crime scene unit showed up eventually with lots more lights. Every crack and crevice of the house would be explored.

Lori had started with the closest neighbor to get some recent background on the property. When had the last residents lived here? Had they seen any strangers in the area? Any noise coming from the abandoned house or store?

The intruder who’d left the message had come in through the back door. The tracks in the dust on the hardwood in that part of the house were recent.

This was the only real home Jess had known as a child. Somehow, the intrusion felt more injurious than the break-in last month at her house in Stafford. This marred those early years—innocent years—and damaged the few precious memories she had of her parents. It made her sick to her stomach.