Sense of Deception (23 page)

Candice twisted to look into the backseat and said, “Being married to you is a real picnic, ain't it, Sundance?”

I offered her my most winning smile. “The good times just keep on rollin'.”

A
fter dropping Candice off, I headed north and west to the address of the dry cleaner's I'd lifted from the file on Tuyen Pham. I wasn't at all sure what I'd find, but my intuition was sending me there, either because I'd pick up a valuable clue or because Dutch was about to finally figure out that I'd been driving around with his dirty shirts in the back of my car for two weeks. My crew—the spirit guides tasked with looking out for me—were all about keeping my marriage intact.

The dry cleaning business itself was a pleasant enough looking place: a stand-alone building with parking in the rear and a cute dark green facade with a window box full of flowers and a little bench outside. The presentation gave it a homey look.

Most dry-cleaning places I'd been to were far more utilitarian, and I was just a teensy bit thrown by the fact that the outer appearance of this one was so charming. I think I might've been expecting something more sinister.

Still, I shrugged it off, got out all of Dutch's shirts (dropped one or two on the ground while I was at it), and headed down the long drive toward the front door. As I rounded the corner to go inside, I
came to an abrupt halt. Heading in just in front of me was none other than Don Corzo, carrying a toolbox and wearing a blue work shirt.

He smiled pleasantly at me as he pushed open the door, and I gasped as I recognized him. “Holy shit!” I squeaked. (No way does swearing at the sight of a serial killer cost me a quarter.)

Corzo suddenly paused midway through the door.

I gripped Dutch's laundry.

Corzo dipped his head back out to give me another look.

I put two and two, and two, and two, together, which in my crazy math world added up to four dead girls.

Corzo's eyes narrowed.

I stood there frozen, still adding, dividing, and multiplying, all synapses firing at once as questions with obvious answers bulleted through my mind. Hadn't I read in Wendy McLain's file that she'd once lived above a dry cleaner's? And hadn't one of the photos of Donna Andrews's murder scene been in the parking lot of a strip mall with a dry cleaner's in the background? Didn't the air-conditioning units at most dry cleaning places run continuously because of the heat produced by the dryers? They'd break down a lot, wouldn't they?

Corzo began to ease back out of the doorway.

My head pivoted as if turned by an unseen force to look across the street. The restaurant where Misty Hartnet had worked as a waitress was in plain sight three blocks down.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Corzo take a slow step in my direction.

Turning my attention back, I looked at the storefront I stood in front of. Tuyen Pham had worked here. Tuyen Pham had been strangled and left in a park, just like the other three girls, only her body had been hidden, because, knowing we were onto him, her killer had changed up his pattern.

Corzo took another slow step toward me.

I stared at him.

He inched forward.

I blinked. And blinked again.

He bared his teeth. He knew I knew. And then he dropped his toolbox, raised his hands, and lunged.

I threw all of Dutch's shirts in his face. Corzo's outstretched arms blocked the laundry, but some of the shirts landed over his head. Instead of running, I took a page out of the self-defense course Candice had been teaching me and reached forward to grab Corzo's collar, simultaneously sticking my leg out and pulling him forcefully forward while twisting my upper body to the side.

His legs tripped over mine and he and the laundry went sprawling to the ground. I then let out a war cry and pounced on his back, jamming my hand into the back of his head and driving his face onto the concrete. The expletive he'd been in the middle of uttering was cut short by a pretty sickening crunch. And still I didn't let up. Driving my knee into his left shoulder, I yanked at his right arm, twisted it behind his back, then switched knees and pulled his left arm back.

It was over in about five seconds.

Also, that's about how long it took to have Agent Cox come to my rescue. “Jesus!” he shouted as he got close enough to help me secure Corzo's hands. “I saw the whole thing!”

The folks inside the dry cleaner's also came pouring out to see what was happening. “We saw it!” one of the women said to Cox. “We saw him try to attack her! And she took that sucker
down
!”

Cox grinned at me. “At least we'll get him on assault,” he said to me.

I winked at him. “Nope, Agent Cox, you'll book him on at least one count of
murder
!”

Cox's brow arched. “You know something I don't?”

“He murdered Tuyen Pham. APD has been investigating her case for about eight months. I've got a copy of the murder file in my car, and if you look into it, you'll find some evidence linking Corzo to her murder, but I'm not sure what, and I can't direct you any more than that.”

Cox's grin widened as he yanked a dizzy and bloody Corzo to his feet. “That's okay, Cooper. I trust you.”

Coming from Cox, that was kind of a big deal.

As it turned out, however, I was absolutely right. Cox and the rest of the Austin bureau descended on the evidence collected by APD in Pham's murder like a group of ninjas. By ten o'clock they had the ultimate prize. The medical examiner had discovered a bit of duct tape on Pham's wrists. As it happened, under a microscope, the slightly frayed ends of the duct tape from Tuyen's wrist had
exactly
matched the slightly frayed ends of a roll discovered in Corzo's trunk. It was found stuffed under the spare tire, in a plastic bag containing a black ski mask, black leather gloves, rope, and directions to Stephanie Snitch's apartment.

I just knew he'd taken a shine to her during the trial.

And, according to a receipt produced by the dry cleaning store's owner, two days before Tuyen had disappeared, Corzo had come to repair the overworked air conditioner.

After giving my statement, I'd gotten the heck out of there; I didn't want to taint the case for trial. As it stood, Corzo's attorney was going to have a hard time explaining why his client had attacked me completely unprovoked.

“How'd it go?” I asked when Dutch came through the door around midnight.

He shuffled over to me, looking exhausted but also a bit elated. “We've got him solid for Tuyen Pham. The duct tape alone could
nail him, but we also had our crime lab sift through the trash bags collected from where Pham's body was found, and you'll never guess what they found.”

A white flower blossomed in my mind's eye. “The white carnation?” I asked. It was a trademark of Corzo's, and I was surprised that he'd been dumb enough to leave it near Pham's body. But then, he was an arrogant son of a bitch.

Dutch pointed a finger gun at me. “Bingo,” he said. “I'm not surprised APD missed it,” he added. “By the time they found the body, the flower had dried up and wasn't recognizable amid the other flora.”

“That'll connect him to the other three girls,” I said, with a satisfied smile.

“It will, but we also have a link that's even stronger in the Misty Hartnet case. As you know, she was found with duct tape residue on both wrists, and Oscar says he swears one of the trash bags we collected from the scene had a bit of tape in it. He's having the crime guys request it from storage and go back to look for the duct tape in the morning.”

“I thought Oscar was on vacation.”

“He heard we nabbed Corzo for attacking you and came down to help us process the evidence we yanked from APD on Pham.”

Dutch then laid out the rest of the incriminating evidence found on Corzo, including the stuff found in his trunk, the map to Stephanie Snitch's house, and a photo of Tuyen coming out of the dry cleaner's, which was taped under the liner in the back of his trunk along with a photo of my friend Stephanie. “I don't know where he hid all that stuff when we checked his vehicle six months ago, but he's pretty stupid to be carrying it around, knowing we were on to him,” Dutch said.

“He got cocky,” I said, feeling it in my gut. “After the mistrial,
he figured he was untouchable. Add to that the news story that Len Chen Cheng was arrested by APD for Pham's murder, and he probably would've been on his way to Stephanie Snitch's house within the week.”

Dutch rubbed his eyes. “We called her, you know.”

“You did?”

My hubby yawned. “Yeah. Wanted her to know just in case Corzo has a sidekick we haven't heard about.”

“He doesn't,” I said. I'd felt out Corzo's energy so many times that I was certain he worked alone.

“Yeah, well, maybe we also wanted to rub it in a little. She cost us our first case, and we wanted her to know she'd been marked as a target by the very serial killer she'd helped to walk.”

“Ah. How'd she take it?”

“Not well.”

“Shocker.”

“We're all still reeling down at the bureau.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “The bitch.”

“That'll cost you a quarter,” Dutch kidded, wrapping an arm around me.

“Worth it.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, leaning over to nuzzle my neck. “Which is why I'll sponsor it. In fact, if you search my pocket, I'm pretty sure you'll find a roll of quarters. Or I'm just happy to see you.”

As it turned out, Dutch was very,
very
happy to see me. We spent the night cuddled together, enjoying the high of putting another bad guy behind bars.

The next day Oscar called me before I'd even finished my coffee to say, “The buyers' financing on that house fell through!”

“Quelle surprise,”
I said flatly.

“We're going to submit my offer this morning.”

“Drop your price by five grand, Oscar,” I said to him. “No, wait. Drop it by ten.”

“But Bonnie told me in this market, it might be smarter to offer close to asking.”

“See, now, that's why I sent you to Bonnie, because she's smart and she knows her stuff. But as I'm currently sitting here, feeling out the ether, I can see that your offer is a smidge high and you can safely drop it by five grand and still have it snatched up. Trust me, honey. You'll get it.”

“Thanks, Cooper,” Oscar said, excitement in his voice. “I'll call you back!”

“Of that I'm sure,” I said, stifling a yawn as I hung up with him. A sound rumbled out from the bathroom. Dutch was in the shower. Singing. Which he often did after showing me his roll of quarters. It'd be sweet if my adorable husband could carry a tune. Ah well. He had other “attributes.”

While I was wistfully thinking on those very attributes, there came a knock at our front door. I cinched up my robe and padded out through the living room to answer it. Candice stood there looking so put together it made you want to hate her. “
Why
do you
always
have to look so gorgeous?” I said, blocking her way into my home.

She arched an eyebrow. “It's a gift?”

I grunted and stepped aside. “It's not fair, ya know.”

“Life never is, honey.” Candice gave my arm a gentle squeeze as she crossed the threshold.

I poured her a cup of coffee and told her all about my encounter with Corzo. She'd no doubt heard it from Brice, but she still wanted to hear it from me too.

“Brice was the one on the call to Snitch,” Candice confided
when I was done. “He flat out told her she should apologize to you, because you'd pretty much saved her life.”

“Really?” I said. “Brice actually said that?”

“He did.”

“What'd she say?”

“That she'd think about it.”

I rolled my eyes. Hell would freeze before I ever got an apology from Stephanie Snitch. Which was fine, because if she apologized, then I'd have to accept it, and I sorta liked being mad at her.

Changing the subject, I said, “Did you come over here to tell me that? Or is there something else you can update me on? Like maybe the video footage from Home Depot came in?”

Candice lifted her mug in a silent toast. “That radar of yours never quits, does it?”

“Not on a case like this. How many hours of footage is there to go over?”

“Three cameras from three different angles covering paint and tools for roughly a five-hour period from eight a.m. to one p.m. for six days brings it to roughly ninety hours of footage.”

“Wait, I thought Allen said it was between nine and noon?”

“He did. I added an hour on each end to be thorough, and I requested the footage from June fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth of two thousand four, and the week before, just to cover our bases. I figure we can start with the week of the fifteenth, and if we have to go back a week, at least we'll have the footage.”

I groaned. “That's still gonna take us forever.”

“You can fast-forward through a lot of it,” she said.

“Wait,
I
can fast-forward through it? What about you?”

“I'm still working on figuring out what Faith Wagner is hiding.”

“Turn up anything interesting?”

“Mostly I'm turning up nothing, which is the most interesting thing of all.”

“Why is turning up nothing interesting?” I asked, refilling Candice's cup from the carafe on the table.

“Because she's living pretty high on the hog for someone whose tax returns suggest she couldn't afford more than a cheap one-room studio.”

“So how is she paying the rent?” I said, getting where Candice was headed. “Benefactor?”

“That's my thinking.”

“Landlord?” I asked next, remembering the great big house next door to Faith Wagner's cottage.

“Alicia Hudson,” Candice said. I assumed she'd had time the day before to at least figure that much out. “She's worth big bucks. Big. But what her connection to Faith is, I can't figure out. Skylar's dad passed away in early two thousand. He'd divorced Faith years before, and didn't leave her any money as far as I could tell. She married three more times, and was most recently divorced in two thousand six. What's interesting about the timing is that she filed for divorce from husband number four the day after her daughter was convicted of murdering Noah.”