Dead Ringer (21 page)

A
horn behind her blared and she realized the light had turned green. "I'll see
you at two and if that means you have to fire me, then so be it."

She
hung up, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and punched the gas. Anger
roiled inside her. Her cell phone rang. She didn't need to glance at the phone
to know it was Brett. She turned off the phone and headed to her house. She
parked in front and dashed up the front steps.

When
she pushed through the front door of the house, a heavy haze of sawdust lingered
in the air. A machine blared in the kitchen. Todd was sanding floors today. The
cabinets were coming today. Todd was friendly and liked to chat, but she didn't
have the patience for small talk so she bypassed the kitchen and dashed
upstairs to the second bedroom, where she kept the photo album tucked in a box
under the bed.

She
flipped the pages of the album until she found the picture of her mother and
Jenny. The caption read
Irene and Jenny Thornton celebrate their fortieth
birthdays.

Kendall
had forgotten that Irene and Jenny shared the same birthday. She moved to her
bedside and pulled out a phone book. She scanned the
T
's until she found
Mrs. Jennifer R. Thornton. Shoreham Drive.

She
dialed the number. Her heart raced.

On
the third ring the phone was picked up. "Hello." The woman's voice was old,
fragile.

Kendall
cleared her throat. "I'm looking for Jenny Thornton. She was a friend of Irene
Shaw."

Silence
followed. "Who is this?"

She
gripped the phone. "This is Kendall.
Irene's daughter."

"Kendall.
I haven't seen you since you were a toddler." Running water from a tap in the
background shut off.

Her
throat felt dry. "I was wondering if I could come by and talk to you about
Mom."

"Sure,
honey, when?"

Emotion
welled inside her. The hectic pace of these last few months had pushed thoughts
of her mother from her mind. She'd almost thought she was immune to the grief.
Now she realized she wasn't. Her mom would be so disappointed if she knew about
this search. She shoved the guilt aside.
"Now."

"Sure.
You come on by. I'd love to see you. My word, it's been so long."

The
distance of the phone annoyed Kendall. She needed to see Mrs. Thornton, look
her in the eye when they spoke. "Thanks."

Kendall
hung up the phone and hurried down the stairs. Todd had turned off the sander,
and when she reached for the front door he poked his head out of the kitchen.
Sawdust covered his hair. "Ms. Shaw. I thought you'd left for work."

She
forced a smile. "I forgot something. I was just heading back out."

He
nodded as he dug his hand into his pocket. "I found something I thought you
might be interested in."

"Please
don't tell me you found rotted floorboards or a dead body behind the wall."

He
grinned.
"Nothing so serious."
He pulled a small
mirror from his pocket. "Found this behind the wall."

She
crossed the hallway toward him and accepted the mirror. Trimmed in silver, it
fit into her palm. The silver had tarnished and the glass had grown dull. It
wasn't an expensive piece but it possessed a charm. She turned it over and
scrawled on the back was the initial
E
.

"Where
did you say you found this?"

"It
was behind the cabinets.
Must have been put there when the
last kitchen renovation was done."

"That
would have been in the late fifties."

He
shoved worn, calloused hands through his dark graying hair.
"Maybe.
Likely some little girl tucked it away and then lost track of it."

She
turned the mirror over in her hands trying to imagine the owner. A flicker of a
memory danced at the edge of her mind and then it was gone.

He
took a step back. "Well, I best get back to work. And you look like you're in a
rush."

She
tore her gaze from the mirror.
"Yeah.
Thanks, Todd."

"Glad
to help. And you'll be glad to know that your cabinets are on schedule. I gave the
manufacturer hell when he told me he was going to be late."

The
renovation had been so important to her just days ago and now it felt so
unimportant. "Thanks."

She
tucked the mirror in her pocket and left him standing in the hallway. The cold
morning air bit her skin as she dashed toward her car. Just in the last few
minutes, the heat had dissipated and the interior was cold again.

She
slid behind the wheel and fired up the engine. She glanced at her phone and saw
that she'd missed two calls. She checked the numbers. Brett. For the first time
since she'd taken the job as news anchor, she wondered if she'd made the right
decision. Money and fame hadn't satisfied her as she'd thought they would.

The
muscles in Jacob's lower back bunched painfully as he pushed through the doors
of the conference room. The
county's
four other
homicide detectives were waiting when he strode in. At the head of the table
was his boss, Sergeant David Ayden. To the right sat Zack and across from him
sat Detectives Nick Vega and C.C. Ricker. Vega was a New York transplant who'd
lived in Virginia fifteen years. Dark hair hinted at Hispanic heritage. C.C.
had red, curly hair and an athlete's short, compact body.

Jacob
laid his folder on the table, opened it, and removed head shots of the two
victims
pre-and postmortem. He moved around the conference
table to a dry-erase board, where he hung up the pictures with magnets.

Jackie
and Vicky were from opposite ends of life. Jackie's straight, conservative
haircut contrasted with Vicky's short, spiked hair with purple and red
highlights. Vicky had painted her nails black and had six tattoos. Jackie had
neatly trimmed nails, no polish, and no tats.

Still,
the women shared stunning similarities.
High cheekbones.
The shape of their lips.
And their vivid green eyes.

David
sipped his coffee. "Do you think we have a serial killer?"

Leave
it to him to voice the fear lurking in all their minds. "Before we go there
let's look at what we have so far," Jacob said.

David
nodded.
"Fair enough.
I want my facts crystal clear
when I go to the chief."

"Jackie
White is our first victim.
Thirty-eight.
Separated.
She and her husband fought a month before she
died. Several of her neighbors heard the exchange. He left before anyone
thought to call the cops. He had motive and opportunity. The last sighting of
Jackie White was on a surveillance tape on Friday night. A man approaches her;
then she vanishes from view."

"Is
Phil White linked to the second victim?" Nick asked.

"No,"
Zack answered. "He has an airtight alibi for that murder. He was marrying his
pregnant girlfriend in a church in Northern Virginia. There were twenty
witnesses."

A
rumble of disapproval echoed in the room.

Jacob
shuffled through the file in front of him. "Vicky Draper, age thirty-five. Did
five years for drug trafficking. She's been out of jail two years. Her motel
room was chockful of prescription drugs. She was last seen on Friday morning.
She and a friend of hers were drinking. She went out for more tequila and never
came back."

Jacob
nodded toward the pictures. "Both women were strangled from behind. Both the
bodies appear to have been kept in a sitting position before being moved.
White's lividity discoloration is more pronounced and suggests the killer kept
her body longer."

Zack
took over. "Dr. Butler believes the killer had very large, powerful hands. Both
women's larynxes were crushed. Both women had rope burns on their wrists and
feet."

"We
have victims who share similar facial features and they both were wearing
identical charms," Jacob said. "Each charm was inscribed with a different
name."

Zack
continued. "Gold, oval shaped with a name inscribed on them. '
Ruth' on White and 'Judith' on Draper."
His gaze settled on
Vega and Ricker.
"Anything on the necklaces?"

Nick
drew circles on the legal pad in front of him.
"Nothing.
We've hit at least thirty jewelry stores. No one knows anything. We've got
detectives in robbery scanning the Net and checking pawnshops as well."

David
tapped his pencil on the edge of his legal pad. "So how is he choosing his
victims?"

"We
don't know yet," Jacob said.

"Ruth
and Judith are women in the Bible," Nick offered.

David
pressed his fist to the spot above his right eye as if he had a headache
forming. "So we have a religious freak on our hands?"

"My
Bible is lacking," Jacob said. "What else can you tell us about these two
women--Ruth and Judith. I mean the ones in the Bible."

Nick
shrugged.
"Both very virtuous.
Ruth stayed with her
mother-in-law during a great famine. And Judith was a bit of a warrior who
helped save her people from the enemy."

C.C.
folded her arms. "I'm impressed, Nick."

He
shrugged. "Thank Sister Mary Margaret, my Sunday school teacher in the third
grade. She made us memorize a good bit of the Bible."

"It's
not only the mode of murder but the charms that link these killings," Jacob
said.

"Which
brings us back to the Bible theory," David said.

A
headache throbbed behind Jacob's eyes.
"Maybe.
But I
don't think so." He flipped through the pages of his file.

"Why?"
David challenged.

Jacob
tapped his finger on his thigh. The Bible theory looked good on paper but his
gut told him it wasn't the key to this case. "I don't know."

David
arched a brow. "Did these women grow up near each other?"

C.C.
rechecked her notes. "No. Jackie was an only child. She went to VCU and got a
degree in teaching. Her parents were older. Both passed about eight years ago.
Vicky was a foster kid. She bounced around a lot but never could be placed.
Trouble from day one."

Two unrelated backgrounds.

Jacob
tapped his thumb on the table. The killer saw something in these women that had
attracted him to them. Was it simply the brown hair and similar facial
features?

David
tapped his thumb on the file. "Send a report to ViCAP and CODIS. Let's see if
our guy did this thing somewhere else."

"I
did that last night," Jacob said.

"Good.
These killers don't always just pop up out of nowhere. Often killing is the
last step in a string of events."

It
was early afternoon when Nicole sat in Carnie Winchester's office and flipped
through the pages of the prospective parents. The couples all looked so happy.
The descriptions all conveyed their palpable desire for a child.

All
were quite capable of giving her child a good home.

She'd
narrowed her list down to three couples. She couldn't put into words how she'd
narrowed the search. She just knew.

The Latimers.
The Davidsons.
And the Snyders.
They all lived in Richmond. All spoke of
love, quality parenting, stable marriages, and nice homes. The Latimers had a
son, Billy, who was eighteen months old. The Snyders owned a jewelry shop. The
Davidsons had a golden retriever.

They
were all perfect.

So
why did she feel more frightened than she did when she first walked in here?

Nicole
cupped her hand under her belly and rose. She crossed the room and moved to the
picture window. Frost covered the glass. The sky was gray and it looked like
the city would get more snow.

The
baby kicked as if to remind Nicole that she was waiting for her to make a
decision.

The
door opened. Carnie stood in the doorway. She held two cups of tea. "I thought
you could use a break."

Nicole's
shoulders sagged with relief. "I wish that would solve all my problems."

Carnie
closed the door. The two women met halfway and Nicole accepted the hot cup of tea.
Decaf.
Herb.
Just as she'd asked for the other day.
Carnie had
remembered.

"So
have you made any progress?" Carnie always kept her voice light and soothing.

"I've
narrowed the pile to three."

"May
I look?"

"Sure."

Carnie
sat on the couch, sipped her tea as she stared at the profiles. She nodded.
"They're all very good families. They all desperately want a child."

"I
can see that." Nicole faced the window. "Then why can't I choose one?"

"It's
a big decision, Nicole. Maybe the biggest you'll make in your life."