Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (29 page)

“Any idea what time he left?” she asked Huxley, but it was Rick who answered again.

“I’m thinking around seven-thirty, maybe quarter to eight?” He frowned. “I’m not absolutely certain.”

“Professor?” she asked.

His cheeks flushed slightly, and he took the picture back from his assistant. “I’m not sure. I was elbows deep in washing suds so I couldn’t swear to anything in court.”

“You were both there all night?”

“Yes.” Huxley nodded decisively.

Rick’s eyes widened, and his lip curled slightly.

“What is it?” she prompted.

Rick shook his head. “He just doesn’t seem like the type, that’s all.”

“You know better than most that people don’t wear their crimes on the outside,” the professor admonished.

“Yes. I do know that.” Anger flashed in the research assistant’s eyes. “But you’d think with our knowledge and expertise we’d be able to see some psychological red flag to warn us about dangerous individuals—or liars. I mean we served him dinner and then he went and raped and murdered two young women?” He put his hand over his mouth. “What good is what we do if that happens?”

“Knowledge is key,” the professor argued, leaning back in his chair. He had an irritating habit of reducing crime to intellectual statements. “I’d be more worried that he’s confessing just to get a warm place to sleep and three square meals a day.” He handed the photograph back to Erin and checked his watch. Time for his lecture. She got the message.

“Okay, thank you both for your time. I’ll let you get to work.”

She headed out and was surprised to find the corridor now full of students milling around. She paused just outside the office to jot in her notebook about the timeline. The sound of raised voices seeped under the door though the words were indistinguishable.

The professor burst out of the room, looking furious, and almost ran into her.

“Excuse me.” He paused and then brushed past her. “Late for class.”

Surprised, she watched him stride purposefully away. Rick followed more slowly, locking the door behind him.

He watched his boss with a pensive expression on his face. “He’s under a lot of pressure,” he said quietly.

Erin narrowed her eyes. She wondered what kind of pressure a professor might be under.

“Fancy a coffee?” Rick asked, checking his watch as the students in the hallway started to dissipate into lecture theaters.

She was woozy with fatigue and gave a tired laugh. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I have to go talk to campus security.”

He smiled and nodded. “Next time, then.”

“I look forward to it.” She said goodbye and headed down the hallway and pushed through the heavy door to the stairwell. She smacked straight into something solid—Jason Brady. The impact was so forceful, she almost fell on her ass. He grabbed her by the upper arms and in the same moment seemed to become aware of who she was. Immediately he lifted and slammed her into the wall at the top of the stairs. The air left her lungs, and she gasped for oxygen. A wheezing sound escaped her lips as her eyes watered.

His eyes burned with hatred as he stared into hers, pressing his body forcefully against her, pinning her in place. Her heart raced. Sweat bloomed from every pore. She struggled, but she couldn’t reach her weapon or move her arms and legs more than a few inches. Her glance slid left, and she realized how easy it would be for him to pick her up and throw her over that balustrade. He could toss her onto the unforgiving concrete steps and from this height she’d be dead. He followed her gaze, and the expression in his eyes hardened, as if he was weighing the implications. His grip tightened until pain streaked along her arms and her lungs seized.

No one was around. No one would ever know.

Finally, he came back into himself. He drew in a shuddering breath and stepped back, letting go of her as if she was poisonous. Then he strode away, slammed through the massive door, making it hit the wall with a crash, the noise echoing like a gunshot through the entire building.

Her legs buckled. She collapsed to the floor, trying to draw breath into her scorched lungs, surrounded by the stench of fear and sweat.

Was her job really worth her life?

She pushed up against the wall and gripped tight to the banister as she hobbled down the stairs like some drunk. She thought about Cassie, and Mandy, and Rachel, and Mary, and all the other girls in this town who she’d been there for when they’d needed her.

They were worth it.

Every one of them was worth dealing with assholes like Brady. She straightened her backbone and drew in a tight breath.

Darsh had been right about one thing though, she conceded. She needed backup while working on campus. She put in a call to Cathy Bickham and told the officer to meet her over at campus security.

*     *     *

Darsh sat opposite
Peter Zimmerman. Waiting. Ully Mason cleared his throat, but Darsh didn’t say a word. He knew a way to a Marine’s heart.

Unfortunately, that gave him time to think about last night.

The fact Erin could turn it all off as soon as the sun came up had him questioning everything he knew about sex and women. He tried not to let it bother him. She was right that no one could know about their night together. But the reminder that what they’d done was a dirty little secret pissed him off. He wanted more, but she wasn’t willing to give it a try. She wasn’t cold-hearted, but she was a coward.

She’d disappeared on him this morning. Told him she didn’t want to sit in with him on this interview because she had something important to do. Truth was she was avoiding him. It had been the intimacy, the exchange of confidences and trust that had scared Erin enough to make her back away so completely. She’d made herself vulnerable, and it had scared the crap out of her.

He got it, but he didn’t like it.

Finally someone came in with the coffee and bacon roll he’d requested. He nodded his thanks and they left. He pushed the savory snack across the table. Zimmerman didn’t wait for an invitation. He dug into the fragrant sandwich and grabbed one of the three coffees that now sat on the table. He swallowed a mouthful of food, then drank greedily.

“Mr. Zimmerman, my name is Agent Darsh Singh. I’m with the FBI.”

“Don’t answer to that name no more,” the guy said around a mouthful of food.

“I’m not about to call a US Marine ‘Stinky Pete,’” Darsh told him honestly.

The blue coveralls the prisoner had been given to replace his confiscated clothing were so large they hung off one shoulder. Bones protruded against skin, indicating years of poor nutrition.

“When’d you leave active duty?”

Zimmerman wiped the grease off his face, but it coated his beard. Ully Mason thrust a napkin across the table. Zimmerman scrubbed at his face with the cuffs of his clothes and thanked Officer Mason with a glare.

He turned his attention back to Darsh. “Two thousand ten. Did five tours.” A hint of pride snuck through the resentment.

Five tours, but he was living on the streets? Darsh believed in personal responsibility, but what the fuck? What was wrong with this country that they didn’t take care of their veterans better than this?

“I did three years with the Thundering Third,” Darsh told him quietly. “I obviously wasn’t in for as long as you were.”

Something sparked in Zimmerman’s eyes. A sense of shared experience, the brotherhood of the US Marine Corps. Pride. Darsh was going to need that to connect with this man and discover the truth about what had happened on Monday night.

“Fall of Baghdad?” asked Zimmerman.

Darsh nodded.

“I heard it was a good fight.” Zimmerman paused in his eating to wash down his food with another mouthful of coffee. “See the statue topple?”

The towering statue of Saddam Hussein that had dominated Firdor Square until the Marines had arrived to pull it down. “My buddies were the ones who tore it down.” Almost started another battle by raising the wrong flag afterwards. The actions of a good officer had averted disaster. At least they had that day. It hadn’t been long until the locals became less friendly.

“You were part of all that?” Ully Mason was suddenly interested in more than his skin color and FBI job title. Or maybe the antagonism had more to do with his obvious interest in Erin—personal and professional.

“A small part.” Darsh conceded. “With a big rifle.”

There was no way around getting personal in this interview or revealing things about himself that he generally didn’t talk about. Maybe it was just as well Erin wasn’t here.

“I was part of the mobile sniper units. What did you do?”

Zimmerman’s eyes flashed. “I heard about you guys. First time they’d done it that way. Worked a treat.”

Darsh nodded, resigning himself to the conversation. The USMC snipers had deployed as fast reaction units on the battlefield, rather than hunkering down and waiting for targets to come to them.

“You guys saved my buddy’s ass when the Republican Guard attacked that hospital.”

Darsh remembered the incident. The hospital had been commandeered to treat the wounded, but Saddam’s men had attacked, even though the place was teeming with their own people. Snipers had picked off the Republican Guard through the windows and saved a lot of lives. They’d gotten lucky.

“That was my job. What was yours?” He was trying to remind this man who’d fallen so low that he’d once been a proud Marine with a worthy cause.

“I was a gunnery sergeant.” Zimmerman wiped his mouth again. Stared into his coffee.

“What happened?” Darsh asked quietly.

“Usual.” Those bony shoulders bobbed, but he pushed the empty plate away and rested his elbows on the table. “Went to war. Came home to find my wife fucking my best friend. Got out. Started picking fights. Started drinking. Fucked up. Ran away like a baby.”

“Why’d you run away?” Darsh asked.

Zimmerman’s bloodshot blue eyes met Darsh’s. Intelligence shone in the depths. Intelligence and pain. “You know why.”

“I want you to tell me.”

Zimmerman leaned back in his chair and for a moment looked like he was going to clam up. Then he leaned forward again and laid his fingers on the tabletop and stretched them wide. “DUI.”

Darsh knew there was more to it. “Getting a DUI was worth an outstanding warrant?” Darsh made it sound like the most stupid decision ever. He wasn’t far wrong.

Zimmerman’s expression hardened, and his lips compressed. “Not just a DUI. I ran over my little girl.” Darsh watched Zimmerman struggle to swallow. “She was playing on her bike in the driveway, and I ran her over.”

“She wasn’t badly injured. You took full responsibility for your actions at the time.”

The guy looked up with devastation in his eyes. “I crushed her bicycle. You should have seen it, the wheels all mangled and twisted. That could have been her. I called the cops and the ambulance, but we were lucky, she barely had a scratch on her.” The look in his eyes was far away. “Even then I couldn’t stop drinking. The idea I’d hurt her one day when I was too drunk to know it…ate at me. So I left. By the time I remembered I was supposed to be in court I was already in Illinois.”

“You never went back?”

He shook his head. “It’s easier to be a bum where people don’t know you.”

“You were ashamed,” Darsh stated.

Anger flashed. “Of course I was ashamed! Still am. And the idea of them seeing me like this?” Self-loathing etched his features. “Can you imagine the horror of having a father like me? A husband? It’s better for them if they think I’m dead.”

This guy was a decorated soldier who’d gone to war for his country. Frustration ripped through Darsh. He knew the military was tough on families, but Jesus, did circumstances really have to come down to this? “Tell me what happened Monday night.”

His eyes shifted again. “I told the detective yesterday. The pretty one.”

“Tell us again,” Darsh demanded.

Unease filled Zimmerman’s eyes. “I had a meal at the shelter and then took a walk. Saw one of the girls and followed her into her house.” He raised a shaking hand to his brow. “I was drunk. I don’t remember much.”

“You don’t remember the rape and murder of a twenty-year-old girl?”

Zimmerman’s skin blanched an even unhealthier shade, but he kept quiet.

“Where’d you get the handcuffs?”

Zimmerman squinted at him in confusion, then his expression cleared. “Found ’em.”

“What, just lying around with keys?”

He shrugged. “People leave all sorts of shit around. They dump it over the bridge. I pick it up.”

“Did you pick up the sheet when someone tossed it over the bridge, Peter?”

“Nah, I told you. I stole it from that girl’s bed.”

“After you raped her.”

Zimmerman nodded, eyes hard now.

“Did she remind you of your daughter, or your wife?”

He blinked. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“She had long black hair, like Maria, and Katy.” Darsh shrugged. “I thought you were maybe substituting—”

Zimmerman went for him then. Darsh dodged and held his hand out to Ully Mason so the officer didn’t interfere.

“Did you handcuff her and rape her on the floor to get back at your wife and daughter? Maybe for not rescuing you from your shitty life after you went to war to protect their freedom? I mean, you come home from a tour, and she’s doing your best friend? What sort of bitch does that?”

“Don’t say things like that about my wife.” Zimmerman stood, shaking with rage, his frame ravaged by starvation and years of heavy drinking. “My family are good people. They don’t need to know anything about this. I handcuffed and raped that girl because I was drunk, horny, and she was there. No other reason.” His voice broke. “They don’t need to know anything about this,” he repeated. “Just put me in front of a judge and lock me up.”

“You’d rather do life in prison than go back to Texas and face your family for a DUI? You are one crazy motherfucker.”

The guy glared at him. Ully Mason shot him a disbelieving look but kept quiet.

Darsh opened the file that sat in front of him and pulled out two head shots of the victims. He slid them across the table. “You like hitting women?”