One Scream Away (3 page)

Fingers of dread crawled across Neil’s neck. He paced, trying to talk himself out of it, but the possibilities rose in his mind like specters: The possibility that Anthony Russell had lied about Gloria in order to strike a deal with the DA. The possibility that a jury might have sprung him, had he gone to trial. The possibility that when Neil turned his back on his family in order to catch a murderer, he’d caught the wrong man.

And the right man had murdered a woman in Seattle last night.

“Neil, you knew the Gloria Michaels case better than anyone. Come take a look at it. We can catch the next shuttle back to Virginia.”

Neil narrowed his eyes. “Why is a lieutenant in Arlington, Virginia, looking at a murder three thousand miles away?”

“Seattle PD asked me to check on someone. The dead woman’s cell phone was used to call a woman in my precinct the night of the murder.”

“Who?”

“Her name’s Elizabeth Denison.” Neil combed his memory for the people he’d once connected to Anthony Russell. He couldn’t come up with anyone named Elizabeth Denison, but then that was no surprise. Because Anthony wasn’t involved in this. “You talk to Denison?”

“No one home. I put a car on her street to wait. Then the Gloria Michaels bells started clanging, and I decided to come see if you wanted to look at it.”

Neil blew out a curse. Hell, no, he didn’t want to look at it. For nine years, he hadn’t concerned himself with such futile things as right and wrong, good and evil. He was nothing but an exorbitantly paid guard dog. Jungles, mountains, deserts. Places where he never bothered to ask if he was guarding the good guys or the bad guys, where all that mattered was getting off the first shot.

Fuck it. That was his motto now, and it was a far cry from the words inscribed on the federal shield he’d once carried.

He braced his arm against the wall and tipped his forehead onto it. “If you’re right,” he finally said, “I killed an innocent man.”

“Innocent? Anthony Russell was shooting at you. He left a bailiff paralyzed for life.”

“He was in custody because I collared him for Gloria.”

Rick stepped closer. “He was a murderer with a rap sheet as long as your dick. The only reason it matters whether you were wrong about him doing Gloria is the chance that her real killer hit Seattle last night. You get that?”

I get it
, Neil thought but was somehow afraid to breathe. If he did, it might infuse new life into his veins, might make him start caring about something again. He’d sworn that off nine years ago.

But even as the warnings trolled through his mind, his hand slid into his pocket, a battered piece of ribbon and plastic squeezing into his palm. He held it tight, closing his eyes against the worst possibility of all.

If he’d been wrong about Anthony Russell, then Mackenzie had died for nothing.

That thought almost buckled his knees. That, and the thud of something landing hard on his conscience. The body of a Seattle dancer.

He pulled his hand from his pocket, leaving the barrette in its hideaway. He took a deep breath and looked at Door Number One, knowing he wouldn’t choose it, and that Jill Something was going to wake up there alone. A better man might have felt guilty about that, the kind of man who had room on his conscience for such things.

But Neil didn’t. Too many corpses there.

L
ila Beckenridge of Bellevue, Washington,” Rick said in a low voice after they settled into the plane seats. He pulled out two file folders and handed them to Neil. “She was leaving a rehearsal, stopped at a convenience mart, and never made it home.”

Neil opened the folder containing crime scene photos. “Whoa,” he said, biting back the taste of bile. A gruesome pair of eyes stared up at him. “He carved on her?”

“Cut off her eyelids. That’s them on the ground.”

Neil angled the page, winced. “Jesus,” he said and sifted through the pictures, trying not to be disturbed by how Lila Beckenridge seemed to watch him through the crusted blood and dirt on her face. He forced himself to note more mundane details. An inch above her temple sat the bullet hole—small and black and ironically tidy, like a period at the end of a story no one yet knew. A bruise darkened her right jaw, but aside from her face, she looked almost neat: Her arms were bowed out at her sides like a frozen ballerina, her blouse tucked in and skirt pulled neat around her knees. She was stringy thin, and the close-ups of her wrists showed what appeared to be rope burns. A couple of other shots focused on holes in the ground, as if she might have been staked down before she died.

Neil swallowed and opened a second folder labeled “E. DENISON.” “Is this all you’ve got on the woman at your end of the phone call? Driver’s license and house deed?”

“Hey, I’m not FBI. Besides, there’s nothing to have. Don’t know why someone’s calling her.”

“Someone? You mean the murderer.”

“Or Beckenridge.”

Neil thumbed through the report. “The call was made just after midnight. Beckenridge’s time of death is estimated between six and twelve.”

“
Estimated.
How many times have you seen a medical examiner’s opinion changed by an autopsy, especially when the body isn’t fresh?”

Occasionally, Neil thought, but not often enough to assume error. Neil might have been out of the game for a while, but he hadn’t forgotten the three basic rules of criminal investigation. Rule Number Two: Everyone in the chain is as dirty as its dirtiest link.

The woman named Elizabeth Denison was in a chain that included a murderer. It didn’t make her a criminal herself, but it did mean she was in the loop long enough to know something about him. Something that would lead them to him.

He shifted, uneasy with the faint throb of excitement in his chest. None of this meant anything was going to change about Gloria Michaels’s murder. There were similarities between her case and this Lila Beckenridge—enough to raise eyebrows—but there were differences, too. Chief among them were nine years and three thousand miles. If Gloria’s killer had been on the loose all that time, where had he been?

Of course, Neil wouldn’t know the answer to that. Because Neil had spent that time hiding behind M16s and a convenient motto.

The plane hopped, wheels skidding on the runway. They taxied to the gate and Rick put away the folders. “You ready?” he asked.

Neil had a sudden longing for Jack and Jill.

“Come on,” Rick said. “We’ll find you a razor, a coat and tie. We’ll pound the pavement a little, go talk to Denison. Find out why she got a phone call from a dead woman.”

The lazy feel of a Saturday evening glazed Denison’s neighborhood—long shadows stretching across manicured lawns, the smell of charcoal in the air, a group of kids putting together a game of four-square in the street. The kids darted to the curb when they saw Rick’s car, poured back into the street with their ball and bucket of chalk after he rolled past. Half a block up, a lady getting her mail waved at them like they must be old friends simply because they were on her street, and at a driveway on the right, a man waited for his beagle to finish peeing on someone’s tulips. He nodded and returned Rick’s salute from the steering wheel.

“Mayberry,” Neil muttered and downed a handful of aspirin with a swig of oily coffee. “Wonder what Ms. Denison’s neighbors would think if they knew about her buddy out west.”

“Yeah, well, keep in mind that she might not know whoever’s calling her. No need to go in there all scary and mean.”

“You made me shave and put on a suit,” Neil said. “How can I be scary and mean with my good looks hanging out?”

Rick snorted.

“It’s the scar, isn’t it?” Neil ran his finger along the pale, jagged ridge that ran from his left earlobe to his chin, jogging under the crook of his jaw. Made him look like his cheek had once been torn from the bone.

It had.

“It’s not the scar, asshole,” Rick said. “It’s the way you come off all the time. Intense, dangerous. Screwing the world.”

“Women go for all that dark, leashed power.”

“You’re not trying to get this woman in bed; you’re trying to get her to
talk
. And in case you’re thinking about waving pictures of Lila Beckenridge in Denison’s face, forget it. We’re gonna keep the murder under wraps until we’re sure she’s connected.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Hey, Lila Beckenridge’s cell phone coulda been picked up and dialed by anyone.”

“Pansy,” Neil said, but Rick didn’t bite. He parked along the curb and unwrapped a new roll of Tums, popping three or four into his mouth. For the first time Neil noticed how the years had piled up: Lines were etched into Rick’s broad, Slavic brow, deep grooves digging around his mouth. At forty-two, he looked fifty and downed antacids like a food group.

He also, come to think of it, hadn’t mentioned Maggie on the trip back. Bragged about the three boys and waved around pictures of his new baby daughter, but he hadn’t spoken of Maggie even once.

Huh.

Neil cocked his head, waiting for him to finish the Tums. “You okay, man?”

“Look,” Rick said, turning to him. “The department’s got some legal stuff going, on account of us jumping the gun last year, screwing up a man’s life. Like that first suspect from the Olympics’ bombing in Atlanta, remember? Well, this guy committed suicide after we started hounding him.” He paused, frowning at something only he could see. “He was innocent.”

“Ah, man.”

“We’re in court over it right now. So no matter how much you
want
this Denison woman to know the murderer, I can’t accuse her of being involved in anything until I’m sure. Besides,” he said, glancing down the street, “look around. Ten bucks says any woman living here in Beaver-Cleaverville don’t know squat about a murder.”

“You’re on,” Neil said, following Rick’s gaze to Denison’s house. It had a quaint feel to it, with butter-yellow siding, azaleas blooming in the yard, three ferns hanging from the porch. A good match for the petite, pretty woman in the driver’s license photo.

But all that did was bring Rule Number Three to mind: Things are never as pretty as they seem.

Denver, Colorado
1,694 miles away

T
he moment Chevy saw her he knew she was the next to die: She parked a ninety-something Buick LeSabre in Lot F, Row 12, a good distance from the entrance to the Fuller Cancer Treatment Center. She wore a long peasant skirt and clogs, and her stride was slow, distracted. The fact that she talked on the phone as she walked was a point in Chevy’s favor. But what really sealed her fate was the colorful turban that marked her as a chemo patient.

Yes, she was the one.

Adrenaline surged. Chevy straightened, wanting to take her now. She was only thirty yards away, coming closer. Then again, it was four-thirty and broad daylight. And every second he debated it—now or later, now or later—she stepped that much farther from him and closer to the temporary safety of the visitors’ entrance.

He waited five seconds too long and smacked the steering wheel.

“What’s the matter?” Jenny asked. She’d been dozing in the passenger seat.

“Too risky. I’ll have to wait.”

“Fraidycat,” she teased, but Chevy wasn’t in the mood and turned to snap at her. Only the look on her face stopped him. She was pale and gaunt, the hollows of her eyes more pronounced than usual. Traveling had been hard on her—the late run from Seattle, then waiting for Chevy the next day while he took care of business in Boise. They’d lost a whole day on the road while he arranged to have the dolls sent on the appropriate dates, cleaned out his bank account, and emptied his safety-deposit box.

But now they were in Denver, and things were moving. Beth Denison’s second gift had just walked into the hospital.

He pulled a picture of Beth from his breast pocket. It was worn, a rip where he’d torn it from an issue of
Antiques
magazine slashing through her elbow, fold lines scoring her body like the crosshairs of a rifle. But her face was clear enough, and he smiled at the knowledge that on that pretty cheek was a remnant of their time together. During all the years in prison, he’d wondered if she remembered him. The scar told him she must—every time she looked in a mirror.

He closed his eyes, turned the ignition just enough to get power, and pressed Play on the tape player in the dash.

“You bastard… I don’t understand.” Gasp. “Stop!” Broken breaths.

Her panic touched him like the hands of a lover. The beginning of her well-deserved suffering.

Stop. Rewind. Play.

“You bastard… I don’t understand.” Gasp. “Stop!” Broken breaths. “H-how?”

Stop. Rewind. Play.

“Chevy?”

Jenny’s voice snapped him back.

“Are you going to call her again?” she asked.

“I can’t,” he said. He turned off the tape and took a deep breath, trying to unravel the knots of tension that balled in his groin. “Not yet. You know I had to get rid of Lila Beckenridge’s phone.” He looked at the doors through which the turbaned woman had gone. “It won’t be long until I have a new one.”

“I don’t know why you like listening to that tape. She just sounds mad to me.”

“Scared, Jenny, not mad.” An edge of anger pressed down. Chevy loved Jenny, but she didn’t understand the process. She didn’t comprehend what it took to silence the singing.

And she wasn’t well. She hadn’t been well since the night they’d met Beth Denison.

“Whatever you say,” she said. “You’re ‘The Hunter.’ ”

“Stop it,” he snapped. The Hunter. That’s what the press had dubbed him during his trial for the murder of Anne Chaney. The prosecutor’s big sound bite all those years ago had been that women weren’t in season when Chevy put a bullet in Anne Chaney’s back, at the edge of a lake known for its elk and eight-point deer. They took some heat for the comment, as well as for the crass reference to a second woman, dubbed “the one that got away.” But the press seized upon Chevy’s nickname and it stuck: The Hunter—capital T, capital H. Jenny thought it was funny, but it had always irked Chevy. He was no hunter. A hunter lies in wait, unnoticed, and strikes in the blink of an eye. Snap, you’re dead, and you didn’t even know I was there.