What Burns Within (19 page)

“We still have to watch the rest of the security footage.”

“We will, but right now it’s time for us to go to church.” Tain stood up and popped the tape out of the machine. “This guy didn’t just bump Lindsay. He bumped into Luke Driscoll. Maybe the devoted youth leader can give us a description.”

Ashlyn laughed. “You’re such a cynic.”

“Me, Ashlyn? You’re the self-proclaimed atheist.”

“Agnostic, Tain. And I’m not talking about faith in higher powers. I’m talking about faith in people.”

“In our line of work? Why the hell should I have faith in anybody?”

“You just shouldn’t be so quick to suspect the worst in everyone.”

“I don’t. I happen to think it’s highly unlikely you’d go on a killing spree.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Of course, it could happen by accident if I let you drive,” he said as he snatched the car keys off her desk.

“It could happen on purpose if you keep talking,” she muttered, following him out the door.

“Preliminary indications are that she died around midnight, one AM. Ligature marks are obvious, and there’s petechial hemorrhaging to support strangulation as the cause of death. Once she’s on the table you’ll know more. That’s all I’ve gotten from Burke so far.”

“Any idea what he used?” Craig asked.

The FIS officer held up an evidence bag with a few neckties in it. “Looks like he double wrapped them together, twisted them a bit to make it like one thick cord and pulled for all he was worth.”

“Not that she stood much of a chance. She looks like she was barely five feet tall, and her hands were bound. Any idea if he brought this with him?”

“No such luck. They belonged to the husband.”

Craig glanced at Daly as the FIS officer walked away.

“So it was an impulse, not planned,” Daly said. “Not like the blindfold and gag and rope that he brings with him.”

“And if he’d planned to kill her from the beginning, why not just use the rope? He didn’t need to wrap it around her hands half a dozen times.”

“Something happened. Something set this guy off.”

They watched as the body of Nitara Sandhu was carried past them. A sudden cry came from the room across the hall, and a man lunged forward, falling to the floor as officers tried to hold him back from intercepting the body.

Raw grief. Craig swallowed. Every time he looked into the eyes of one of the living victims it felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. Now, seeing this man collapse in a heap, crying…

“I’ve got to talk to Inspector Hawkins. We’re going to have the press all over us now.” Daly put a hand on Craig’s shoulder. “You call me if you need anything.”

Craig swallowed and nodded. They could still hear Mr. Sandhu crying as officers moved him back into the other room. “I think we might need victim’s services down here.”

Daly glanced at the other doorway, his shoulders drooping slightly as he sighed. He nodded at Craig. “I’ll call them for you.”

Come on. Somebody having an affair, sneaking out on their folks,
anything. No neighborhood is this clean
.

Craig rubbed his forehead. It would be nice if there were places filled with people who were inherently good. Some
Leave It to Beaver
land where the residents did all the normal family things and nobody ever got in serious trouble.

He double checked his notes. There wasn’t one house on this street he hadn’t been to, and he didn’t have a single clue or lead. No, nobody had heard anything. Around midnight? You must be joking. Everyone was asleep.

Craig walked down the road that intersected with the Sandhus’ street. At the next intersection, he turned left and began working his way along the homes that shared a lane with the road the Sandhu house was on.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. He knocked on the door to the fourth house.

The woman who answered seemed to be descending back into the earth at a measurable rate per hour, the door handle just barely within her reach. She offered an automatic smile as she blinked up at him and reached for the glasses dangling from the chain around her neck.

Craig smiled back and sighed. The lenses on her frames were almost as thick as the panes of glass in the door.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Constable Nolan,” he said, holding his ID about three inches from her wizened face. “I was wondering if I could ask you some questions.”

“You know, don’t you?” she said, peering up at him with wide eyes.

“I know?”

“I’m pregnant. We should run away.”

“Gran. Alec, geez. What the hell are you doing, letting Gran answer the door to strangers?”

A lanky teenager rushed down the narrow hall, ducking at the last second to avoid a head-on collision with the chandelier.

“Don’t let him take me,” the woman cried, grasping Craig’s arms with her clawlike fingers. “He wants me to himself.”

Craig opened his mouth to speak but realized he didn’t know what to say. The boy lunged forward, pried Craig loose from her grip and led her away.

“Come on, Gran. Alec,” he called.

Another boy, half a head shorter, stepped into the hall and took the woman’s hand. “Let’s get a snack,” he said, disappearing with the woman, who was now prattling on about whether or not they should take the kids and leave the farm.

“Sorry.” The elder teen shrugged. “Alzheimer’s.”

Craig nodded and held up his ID. The boy’s eyes narrowed as he studied it, and then his lopsided grin returned. “I’m planning to go to the Depot. Right after graduation.” The smile faltered for a split second. “My dad says I have to have a degree before I chase after some thankless job that’ll suck the life out of me.”

“It’s not a bad idea to have a degree anyway. Most of us do now.”

“So what’s this about? You’re plainclothes, so you can’t be here about the backyard parties at the end of the street.”

Craig felt his eyebrows pinch together. “Well, I’m not, but tell me about them anyway.”

The teen shrugged and moved onto the step, pointing down to the end of the block, the end of the street Craig hadn’t been to yet.

“See that house there? The one with the satellite dishes on the edge of the roof, right on the corner? Well, they’re always getting complaints, making the cops come by late at night to make them shut the music off because they have these parties in their yard that get pretty loud. My dad told us to stay away from them because they got busted for dealing pot.”

Craig made a note. “Did they have a party last night?”

The teen nodded. “Yeah.”

“Any idea what time they were in the yard?”

“Midnight, I guess. My mom works the three to eleven shift at the hospital, and she usually gets home around eleven thirty. She’d been here long enough to make herself a snack and go yell at Alec for not cleaning his room. I was on my way to bed, and the music came on. Always the same
boom-boom-boom
, making the dogs bark and the windows rattle.”

“So they had it on for a while?”

He shrugged. “I put my headphones on.”

“I didn’t get your name.”

“Ryan Lewis.”

“Did you see or hear anything else last night?”

Ryan’s mouth twisted as he shook his head. “Why? What happened?”

“A woman on the next street was murdered.”

His ruddy cheeks blanched. Then the boy seemed to get even taller. “I wish I could help.”

“Maybe you can. Here’s my card. If you hear anything, let me know. I don’t want you to go around snooping,” Craig said, trying to mimic the stern tone Daly always used on him for lectures. “But maybe you could ask your mom if she saw or heard anything last night when she came home from work. Even the tiniest thing that doesn’t seem important to her could give us a lead.”

Ryan nodded, his mouth set in a firm line. “I won’t overstep. But I will ask my mom.”

“Thanks,” Craig said, starting down the steps. He was halfway down the front walk before he turned around. “And ask if she saw anyone unusual around in the past week or so. You never know.”

The teen nodded, his curly brown hair flopping with the motion, making Craig smile as he walked away. He pictured a slightly older Ryan Lewis in the red serge with his long hair getting measured by a frowning Steve Daly before Daly launched into a lecture about regulated appearance code.

“What the hell is going on out there, Daly? We’ve got some sadistic rapist terrorizing the women of this city, and now he’s graduated to murder. What’s being done to put a stop to this?”

Daly looked up from his desk. He was beginning to feel like all he did was sit at work, offering hollow answers about cases they couldn’t make headway on. “Open cases nationwide are being reviewed, and we’re looking at local known offenders who might fit the particulars.”

“That’s management speak bullshit and you know it. What’s being done right now?” Inspector Hawkins slammed his hand down on Daly’s desk for effect.

As though he needed to drive the point in. Daly waited until Hawkins’s red cheeks deflated a bit and he sank into a chair. Then Daly answered.

“Craig is out canvassing the area, trying to find witnesses. He’s been through the crime scene and will review all the evidence. He’s on top of this.”

Hawkins stopped rubbing his chin and stared at Daly as his cheeks went white and then flushed.

“Your little prodigal is working his ass off, is that it? What’s Lori doing, making coffee?”

Daly felt his neck burn. “I haven’t got a clue what she’s doing—”

“Don’t you think it’s your responsibility to supervise her too? You have to stop pandering to that kid of yours and be a real team leader, Daly.”

“You have a son who’s an RCMP officer in this district too, Dennis.”

“This isn’t about me, is it?”

Daly clenched his hands into fists and leaned forward. “I don’t know what Lori is doing because she never bothered to show up for work this morning. And she didn’t think it might be important to phone in sick or make up some excuse and let us know what the hell is going on.”

The color drained from Hawkins’s face a second time. Finally, he sprang up from the chair and turned on his heel.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he paced the room, arms folded across his chest, with his head down. “I’m just worried. We’re going to take a beating over this.”

“Look, I know we are. I don’t know what more I can do. These rapes are right across the Tri-Cities. We’ve increased the overtime and circulated every bit of information possible to all officers. At this point, with no profile, with no geographic area to concentrate on…” Daly shrugged. “We’re up shit creek.”

Hawkins stopped pacing. “And what are you going to do about Lori?”