Weakest Lynx (16 page)

Dave’s voice drifted out of my phone, asking the guy for identification. “I have to be careful about this. They only told me your name and organization when they sent me down here for the meeting.” He sounded nervous. I imagined him wiping his palms on his thighs before he extended his hand for a handshake. The guy used my formal name, “India Alexis Sobado.” Definitely about me. And I definitely wanted to know what was going on. Thanks, Dave!

“I understand you’ve got background on the situation,” the Gavin voice said.

“Shit, yeah. I’m not only lead detective on the India Sobado case, I’m a longtime family friend. This is personal.”

“Understood. And as a close friend, you’ve been involved from the beginning—is that accurate?” Gavin had the cadence of a man who was used to barking orders. Used to having them obeyed without question.

“Lexi—we call India ‘Lexi’—brought me this problem two days after she got the first letter. Crap. I had no idea it would get this crazy. She’s a beautiful girl. Innocent. No family. Exactly the kind of girl who would attract unwanted attention. I’ve seen men follow her around. I knew this time she’d picked up a sicko—but … Fuck. Had I any idea we were dealing with a lunatic serial killer … shit.” I never heard Dave cuss like this before, and with a stranger no less. A few expletives itched at my lips, too.

“She got the first poem, and she brought it right to your attention?”

“No. The first poem showed up on her wedding day, a Wednesday. The next day, Thursday, her husband shipped out to Afghanistan. She brought it to me the day after, on a Friday.”

“She had no idea who sent it?”

“We had nothing. Nada. Zip. She’s a smart girl—good at puzzling things out. She tried. Lord knows we both did. The letters kept coming in. Twenty-six. They pointed nowhere. Had the other cases been in the system, we would have seen the MO, and I would have intervened. Sealed files, my ass. I need some coffee, you want a mug?”

“Thanks. Black.”

The sound of a chair pushing back screeched through my receiver, and the clinking of ceramic. A siren wailed nearby. They must in the conference room up at Police Headquarters.

“Tell me your role in this. What do you need from me?” Dave asked.

“The FBI contracted us to provide Mrs. Sobado with a safe house and guard until the perpetrator is apprehended. We’ve also been hired to find the guy and do the capture.”

“That’s big money. They’re going out of agency to contract on this?” Dave sounded surprised. I was surprised—did the FBI do that for stalkers like mine? Seemed improbable.

“As you now know, there are six similar cases still unresolved. All of those other victims had connections to various agencies. FBI doesn’t want to feed this guy anything, if he happens to be in-house. We’ve checked your story and alibis, read the witness reports. You’ve been cleared. It’s our task to have limited communication with law and no contact with media until this is wrapped up.”

“The other women, you said they all had law connections? What do you mean exactly?”

“The other victims were either the daughters or the wives of law officials. Seems each victim represented a different agency—CIA, FBI, Treasury, and so on.”

“Lexi isn’t law, so how does she fit the pattern?”

“Undetermined. Her husband is a Special Forces operator—maybe this guy’s branching out to military now. The last girl was the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of Secret Service leadership.”

“That’s what happened to Arnold Pauly’s girl? Shit. No wonder there’s plenty of money behind this capture.”

Keep going, Dave. I wanted this information. Ask him why they sealed the files. Why wasn’t this on the news? A story this big? Surely if Pauly’s daughter had been a target, some journalist would have pounced on it.

“I guess it makes sense why they’re taking this away from the usual players and bringing you guys in,” Dave mused. “Before the attack, I never heard of the other cases. Six, huh? All East Coast stuff? And no major media? No heads up at the station? Even if the files were sealed.”

Thank you, Dave.

“They’re trying to keep these cases quiet for a number of reasons … It wouldn’t help to get a copycat going out there.”

Dave blew out his breath. “That’s the damn truth.”

“Let’s start at the beginning. When did Mrs. Sobado get the first poem?”

“When she was living at the motel, after the apartment fire. February twenty-third, her wedding day,” Dave said.

“Besides showing the letter to you, what else did she do? How did she react?”

“She acted normal. She didn’t tell anyone but me she had this going on. I knew all of this wore at her nerves, but she kept going with her life. She took precautions, kept her dogs with her most of the time. Had a good alarm system put in place, you know?” He paused. “She was pragmatic. Didn’t take it lightly. She didn’t let it ruin her life, either.”

“The alarm was engaged when Mrs. Sobado went out that night?” Gavin asked.

“Yeah, and reengaged the minute she got home. When we broke in, we set off the alarm system.”

“That’s curious.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And besides that, did she take any self-defense courses? Pick up a gun?”

Dave laughed softly. “Lexi is five-foot-six, hundred and twenty-five pounds, but man, she can take anyone down.”

“How’s that?” Curiosity laced Gavin’s voice.

“She studied martial arts with Master Wang, a former officer in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. She’s damned good.”

“I understand she trained for the police? Was she thinking about joining the force?”

“She shoots at the range with Stan and me or one of her other friends. Comes down every once in a while at Christophe’s request. They like to spring her on the new recruits. She reminds them to be humble and respectful—never judge a book by its cover.”

A machine by my bed beeped, startling me; I steadied my thoughts to try to avert the adrenaline.

“Lexi’s friendly with lots of the area cops. She’s got a good reputation. Friendly. Kind. She acts real young, soft, girly—it’s like a costume she wears. You’d never guess she’s skilled. My captain tried real hard to recruit her once she reached the age requirement. Command thought she’d be good at undercover.”

Dave was being uncharacteristically loquacious. He didn’t usually open his kimono like this. Who was this guy chatting Dave up? And what did he have to do with my case?

“This gets curiouser and curiouser. Do you think her connections with police training helped make her a target?” Gavin asked.

“Not many people know she has any link with the department other than cop friends, and firing-range staff. The men who’ve gone up against her on the mat aren’t gonna share those stories around. They’re gonna try to live them down.”

“I understand you two were together at your house prior to the crime,” Gavin said.

“No,” Dave said, “we were all over at Justin Fowler’s, across the street from Lexi’s. Redskins played Steelers. Lexi brought over a pot of chili. Then she watched the game for a while.”

“She went home alone?” Gavin asked.

“Lexi couldn’t sit still. Restless. Stir-crazy. She kept looking out the windows and fidgeting around. Finally, she said she had the heebie-jeebies, and asked us to watch her walk home. Beetle and Bella were at their trainer’s.”

“These are her dogs, right?”

My dogs. What would have happened if I hadn’t taken Beetle and Bella to the Millers? Would I be here now? Would they be hurt? Or worse? My heart squeezed. A miscalculation. A huge whopper of a mistake to take them. But damn it, I had played by Stalker’s terms for eight months. This could have gone on for years. Life had to be lived; at least I had to reach for my goal of normalcy. Huh—what was it Mrs. Miller said to me? I was cut from a more colorful cloth? Right now my cloth was colored blood-red and head-trauma blue.

“Yeah, her dogs. Me and Justin got up and walked her home. When she unlocked the door, she turned off the alarm. We waited around while we heard her turn the locks and the beeps that told us the alarm was back on. Then we went back to Justin’s to finish watching the game.”

“Do you know if she had a weapon?”

“Lexi had her Ruger in her hand when she went into her house. I found both her guns on her bedside table after the ambulance left.”

“Huh.”

Yeah. That was my thought, too. Would it have made a difference if I had my weapons in the bathroom with me? No. I didn’t think so. Even if the Springfield had been in my hand … When the cloth came up, I would have dropped the gun to reach for the flip—I wouldn’t have shot behind my back.

“What did your reports tell you about what happened?” Dave asked.

“They indicate you found her naked, bound, sliced, and pistol whipped.”

Bound? … Yes, I remembered now. My hands. My ankles. Limbs on fire from lack of blood. The gag … suffocating on my snot. Shit.
Stop thinking about it. You’re going to dump adrenaline, and you won’t get this information!

“Sliced? Shredded is more like it. From what I can figure,” Dave said. “He got to her in the bathroom, before she got into the shower. Her clothes were in the laundry hamper, and the tub felt dry when we put her in to get the vinegar off her cuts.”

“Go on,” Gavin said.

“We documented the things smashed by the sink—a drinking glass, a perfume bottle … We found a damp rag on the floor. Forensics says it had been saturated in high-grade chloroform.”

Chloroform. Wait. Chloroform was a controlled substance—not available to the public. Could this guy be a scientist? Academician? How would he get hold of chloroform? He’d need some legitimate channel …

“Where did you find her?” Gavin broke into my thoughts.

“The adjoining bedroom, on the floor, bound at the ankles and wrists. No signs of struggle. She was out when he tied her.” Dave’s voice sounded hollow and tight at the recounting. “At some point, she must’ve started to come around. He had gagged her with the tape, wound it around her head a bunch of times. She worked it loose with her tongue—that’s what saved her life. From what we can tell, after he sliced her, the guy poured a bottle of vinegar over her torso, and she screamed. Fucking hell.” Dave’s voice ratcheted up. “That scream’s gonna haunt the shit out of me for the rest of my life—like a goddamned banshee call.”

“At this point, you were still at Justin’s?” Gavin’s voice sounded counterpoint calm to Dave’s turbulence. My turbulence.
Breathe, Lexi.

“Watching the game. The time between our leaving her and her scream would have been less than forty minutes. When she screamed … I figure that’s when he must’ve hit her with the gun, because her voice ended abruptly. It wasn’t like she ran out of air, or it tapered off. It was midscream, and then nothing. We raced over. The house was locked up. I elbowed the window to break the glass, and the alarm sounded. We can’t figure out how this piece of shit got in or out.”

Damn! I hoped Dave would have figured at least this much out and could tell me. How did Stalker get in? How did he get in? How in the hell did he get to me?

“Two of the guys saw him running down the street,” Dave continued. “And chased after him. Mrs. Martini turned on her porch light, and the perp turned to look back, so the guys saw his face and described him to the police. They’re sure they could pick him out of a line up from the tattoo on his face. They worked with a police artist, and Lexi confirmed the rendering. Have you seen it?”

The rendering. How horrifically painful was it to see Stalker’s face even in a drawing? And the adrenaline dump that had followed was vicious. The artist got him spot on from what I remembered, though I only saw part of his face in the mirror. He had on the ventilator … ah, chloroform. Of course.

“What’s her medical status?” Gavin asked.

“After Lexi got to the hospital, they had a plastic surgeon work on her for about six hours. He was gluing her back together—not enough flesh to sew. Her only other injury is her head.”

“She wasn’t raped or sexually molested, correct?” Gavin asked.

“No. Thank God,” Dave said.
Thank God!
Another pause. Bet he was wishing for a shot of whiskey right now. I knew I was. “Her torso’s painful. Her head’s gonna take a while to heal. When she’s up, she sometimes experiences vertigo. Her eyesight gets fuzzy. She’s dizzy and nauseated. She can fall down from that, though she’s not passing out. I understand the brain swelling is causing her to have these crazy adrenaline dumps.”

“And how does that affect her?” Gavin’s voice was methodical, running down his laundry list of required information.

“I haven’t seen it happen to her. Lexi described it to me. She gets a feeling she’s in danger, and then her heart starts beating really fast, she perspires, which makes salt get into all of those cuts. She says the pain is almost unbearable—like the vinegar.”

The screaming agony of my adrenaline dumps
was
unbearable. Vinegar on slash marks magnified. The feelings exploded my senses. Every synapse in my body fired all at once, all rational thoughts annihilated, limbic survival mode of hell.

“As the adrenaline works its way out of her system, she shakes and cries. Then she needs to sleep. Basically passes out with fatigue,” Dave said.

Escaped. I escaped into my exhaustion. Then I’d wake up terrified I would ever feel that way again.

“What are the doctors doing to help her?”

“The nurses apply soft, cool, wet cloths to get the salt off, and to stop her from sweating. If it’s the nice nurse, she’ll hold Lexi’s hand and talk to her about everyday stuff until Baby Girl calms down and falls asleep.”

“They aren’t medicating her? Giving her Valium or something?”

“It’s not like they haven’t tried, Lexi’s refusing the medication.”

“She’s medically noncompliant?” Gavin’s voice tightened perceptibly. He obviously didn’t like the idea of noncompliance. Definitely military. And none of his damned business what meds I decided to take or not to take.

“On this she is,” Dave said. “She says she’d rather be in pain and have all of her faculties than fuzzy and maybe dead.”

T
here was a pause, then, “That’s impressive.” I could hear respect for my decision in Gavin’s voice. “Most people in her position would be begging for relief. I can understand her thought process. She’s seen him. She’s a threat. Double danger.”