When the Storm Breaks (6 page)

“D
o you have your car?” Sean asked Aidan as they walked out of the hospital.

“No. I left it at the station and caught a ride down here. I figured we could start going over the case on the way back.”

“Roach Coach sound good for dinner?” Sean’s question was absentminded as he walked out of the elevator and across the hospital lobby.

“Bring it on, baby.”

Sean smiled. They’d both eaten worse—and been thankful for it—than the questionable offerings of the mobile catering van that usually parked near the police station.

Sean unlocked the police-issue sedan and folded his long legs under the wheel. His intellect was warring with his frustration as he tried to decide what to do next. He wasn’t surprised that there had been another murder. What he couldn’t believe was that they had an eyewitness who didn’t remember enough to describe the scene of the crime, let alone the murder suspect.

He rubbed his neck tiredly. He hadn’t managed more
than a couple of hours of sleep last night, and those had been sitting in a chair next to Claire’s bed. Even worse, the last day had involved one disappointment after another. He was having a hard time coming up with a way to turn things around.

“It’s a tough break,” Aidan said.

“Stop reading my mind.” Sean’s voice held no heat. He and Aidan often depended on their uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking.

“Doesn’t take a psychic, buddy. You’ve given these two cold cases a lot more than your others. You thought we had a big break and now it’s gone—it shows, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I want to solve the cases. No one deserves to be gutted and left to die on the street, no matter what she does for a living. But am I losing my perspective here, imagining the connection?”

Aidan’s response was immediate. “No. My instincts say the links are there. We just need to find a way to prove it and catch this guy.”

“It would be hard to get a warrant citing ‘instinct’ for probable cause. We need something to break this open.” Sean tapped an irritated beat on the steering wheel. “A week ago if we thought we’d have an eyewitness to a connected murder, we’d have been doing fucking back flips. Now we’re just doing laps.”

“Let’s see what comes back from the forensics team before we decide whether we’re wasting time or not.” Aidan spoke carefully, sensing that Sean’s legendary self-control was wearing thin.

“We should have a sketch out to the public—maybe one of the kids hanging around the crime scene during the investigation might have seen something,” Sean said forcefully. “Or some old lady with insomnia who looked
out her window at the right time. One corroborating witness, and we’re onto this bastard!”

Aidan knew that Claire was at the heart of his partner’s frustration. “She’s trying her best,” Aidan said.

“I know that. You think I blame her?”

“No. And I don’t blame her either.”

Sean sighed slowly. “Sorry. Guess I need some sleep.” He sighed again and tried to remember the last time he’d seen his bed. “Hell, I know you’re frustrated, too.”

“Yeah, though probably not about the same thing you are.”

“Huh?”

“I think we both know the real reason you’re so tense has big dark eyes and is lying in a hospital bed down the street,” Aidan said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what you think it means. Even half-dazed in a hospital gown, that’s a good-looking woman. And it’s damn sure she’s smarter than that houseplant you brought to last year’s Christmas party.”

“Claire is a witness on a case,” Sean said. “Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.”

“Oh, come off it. If you’d touched her hands or arms one more time
I
was going to start getting hot and bothered.”

Sean was irritated. True, Aidan had an unnerving ability to understand what made most people tick, and he’d been practicing on his family for years. But Sean had worked very hard to suppress the attraction he felt for Claire. To have his nose rubbed in it pissed him off.

“She was scared and in pain, that’s all,” he said neutrally. “You know as well as I do that physical contact can be a powerful tool in the interview process, especially when the victim is feeling fragile.”

Aidan snorted. “Fragile, my ass. Claire could probably go one on one with my boot camp drill sergeant and win.”

“Look, I needed information and she needed some warmth and human contact. That’s all there was to it.”

That was all he would let it be. Claire was a witness on his case, and she was feeling vulnerable after having her life turned upside down. The last thing he needed was for her to pick up on the attraction he was feeling. He winced at the picture that formed in his mind—the lead investigator, sucked in by the false intimacy of an overnight vigil, hitting on a witness as she lay in her hospital bed. Christ, if he was reduced to trolling the ER for fresh prospects, it really had been too long since he’d been with a woman.

Sean ignored the voice in his head that said Claire would appeal to him even if he’d just come from a week-long stay in another woman’s bed.

Aidan looked at his quiet partner. “Okay, so what’s your plan?” he asked, settling back in the seat. Knowing Sean, he’d already figured a way to attack the case from a new angle.

“Assuming the captain lets us take a hot case,” Sean began.

“He will. He’s desperate for detectives after that double homicide in Adams Morgan.”

“Anyway,” Sean said, “if we get the case we’ll go full-court on Mendes’s life. If nothing comes of that, we’ll interview Claire again. Maybe by then she’ll remember something useful.”

Sean didn’t add that backing off Claire would also give him a welcome break from her presence, allowing him to be more objective about her.

“Hmmm,” was all Aidan said.

“What?”

“I’m not sure how well Claire and the words ‘back off’ go together. Sure, she’s quiet now, but she doesn’t strike me as the type to quietly wait around until you’re ready to play with her again. Hell, she’ll probably be calling you for daily updates once she’s feeling better.” Aidan chuckled.

“She won’t even get out of the hospital for a couple of days. She’ll have plenty to keep her occupied, and so will we after the forensics team is done. Meantime we’ll divide up and interview Mendes’s fellow workers and boyfriends, ex-husbands, handymen, butchers, bakers, the whole lot, and see if anything pops.”

Aidan asked without real hope, “You want Mendes’s private or professional life?”

“Professional. It’s your turn to soothe angry, grieving parents.”

Aidan sighed but didn’t argue. “In between all that we should get a list of men Claire might have seen coming or going from the Camelot office building last night.”

Sean shrugged. “If there’s time, or if everything else comes up empty, I’ll contact the dating service Claire visited and see if we can get more details about her appointment. Maybe she saw someone who reminded her of the killer. Hell, it’s remotely possible that she saw the real one.”

“Makes me wonder,” Aidan said.

“What?”

“If ‘serial murder’is listed as a profession or a hobby in a dating catalogue.”

“I’m betting on profession,” Sean said. “And we’re dealing with a guy who loves his job.”

Washington, D.C.

Saturday evening

“A
brutal murder has sent shock waves through a quiet D.C. neighborhood today. Good evening, I’m Mitzi Michele. On this hot July night, the grounds of Rock Creek Middle School should be empty, but instead they are teeming with D.C. police officers. Homicide investigators have set up a command post and cordoned off part of the schoolyard where a young Hispanic teacher was killed late Friday night.”

The man watched the Barbie doll reading from the teleprompter on the weekend edition of the 11 o’clock news. He’d been going over the online news all day, looking for details on the lead story in the nation’s capital. But the Web stories, while titillating, lacked the punch of melodramatic presentation and video footage. He turned the volume up as the anchor switched to the reporter in the field.

“Thanks, Mitzi. Second-year teacher Renata Mendes was stabbed to death late last night or early this morning,
and police are still searching desperately for clues here at the scene.”

He snorted. The police were fucking idiots. He was too smart and planned too carefully—he never left any clues behind.

“Mendes, pictured here in her graduation ceremony from Glenview Teacher’s College, had apparently stayed late to plan a weekend retreat for a student government group she led. That retreat, sadly, has been canceled today.”

The man tuned out the reporter’s babble and studied the photo of the pretty young teacher with dark hair and eyes. She was perfect, really. The whole experience would have been perfect too, but for the stupid bitch who’d literally stumbled over them.

He bunched his hands into fists. Yes, he’d deliberately selected an area where there was a risk of discovery—that just added to the rush. But he was supposed to have controlled the situation and taken care of anyone who’d come along. How could he have known he’d be discovered by a woman who ran like an Olympic sprinter?

Anger boiled to the surface again as he remembered how the woman had slipped through his fingers. He’d never lost control of a moment like that before. He hadn’t been able to think about anything else in the last twenty-four hours.

“We spoke to some of the victim’s students, as well as her family, and as you can imagine they are absolutely devastated.”

Good—his favorite part. The lamentations and tearful remembrances of the victim’s family and friends. He waited for the familiar curl of arousal through his body,
but it didn’t come. He concentrated harder on the television report.

“We spoke with the victim’s mother this afternoon in a Channel 6 exclusive. Here’s what she had to say about her daughter’s violent murder.”

The camera view switched to a matronly woman in an old housedress. Her double chin trembled, and black tears ran down her heavily made-up face.

“My poor Renata. She was a good girl, she straighten her life around. She grew up in Southeast D.C. Maybe she had some trouble with boys and drugs in high school, but she get herself out of the neighborhood and go to college on a scholarship. The first person in the whole family to graduate from high school, but she never forget about where she come from. We were so proud of her.”
The woman stopped speaking and began to sob.

No, the teacher certainly hadn’t forgotten about where she’d come from. That’s how he’d found her in the first place. She’d been leaving the house of the woman now blubbering on the TV. He’d followed Mendes as she’d walked alone through an area where crack deals and five-minute “dates” were arranged on the corner of every street. Then he’d watched her home-to-school routine for days while he’d planned his next move.

In the end, she’d died just like any other whore from the streets where she grew up.

He waited again for the arousal that usually came when he remembered one of his knife games, but he felt nothing. All he could think about was the woman who had ruined everything. He opened his robe and began to masturbate, but his body refused to respond.

With an angry sound he threw the remote control onto the coffee table and paced around his apartment. The television
droned on, more tear-jerking stories about how wonderful Renata Mendes was in life, how tragic her death.

Even the shocked faces of her sweet young students failed to arouse him. He turned to do another circuit of his large living room. It wasn’t fair. This was the only pleasure he had in his controlled life, and it had been ruined. What good was slicing these women if he couldn’t get off later thinking about it? If he couldn’t get off remembering and fantasizing about every aching, hoarded detail of the acts?

He stopped next to an elegant cherry wood chest along the wall of the dining room. His hands trembled faintly as he opened the lid to examine the items inside. He took a pair of disposable gloves from the hospital supply box nestled in the chest, then pulled the top item out.

Turning it over in his hands, he studied the smooth grain of the black leather clutch purse. It was top quality, really fine stuff—unlike the teacher’s cheap straw bag. This was the kind of purse a lady would carry. Of course, a lady wouldn’t have blasted him in the face with pepper spray like he was a common thief.

She’d pay for that, just like she’d pay for ruining his game.

He caressed the smooth leather with a gloved hand. He reached inside, plucked out a matching black wallet, and set the purse aside. Opening the wallet, he studied the driver’s license. His lips moved as he read what had already been committed to memory.

“Marie Claire Lambert. Five feet five inches and one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Black hair, brown eyes. No corrective lenses, organ donor.”

He closed his eyes and tried to picture her as she’d been that night. But his blood lust had been running high when
she’d come across him. He hadn’t noticed any particular details about her appearance.

“You’re right, Mitzi, the police really have very little to go on.”

The man looked toward the television set again. Obviously the reporter was wrapping up his remote shot and was mouthing the rehearsed banter with the anchor back at the station.

“I did ask Captain Michaels about witnesses or investigative leads, but he told me he was not free to comment. Inside sources hint at an eyewitness or forensic evidence, but officially the police have no comment about this murder, the latest in a series of murders within the Hispanic community. Back to you in the studio.”

So, there seemed to be an eyewitness? Then why weren’t there any sketches or descriptions being released to the media? Maybe the bitch had been hurt in her fall down the stairs. Or maybe she just wasn’t talking to the police.

Either way, he’d have to take care of her. Not too soon, because everything had to be perfect this time. He needed to plan carefully, a process that was often arousing in itself.

He felt the first hint of sexual tension in his body and eagerly looked down again at the driver’s license. As he studied the Georgetown address, he knew he would make things right.

But this time he would do it with style.