The Next Victim (2 page)

That was one of the things Sloane had liked about living in this part of Tucson. It wasn't as affluent as some of the newer gated communities, but the houses were all set on large lots, many of them an acre or more, and the neighborhood landscaping had matured to the point where plantings provided a screen. They'd made love one night out in the yard under the black, star-speckled sky. Erling remembered the soft breeze that grazed their skin, the lilac scent of Sloane's hair, and the rough texture of the nubby blanket beneath them.

The crime scene photographer reached into his equipment bag. "I'm about done here unless there's something in particular you want."

"You get both stills and movies?" Erling asked. His voice was gruff with the invasion of memories.

"Right. And I checked with Crawford about shots of the vics."

"When do you think you'll be able to get us prints?"

"Later today good enough?"

"That the best you can do?" Erling asked.

The photographer capped his camera. "Afraid so."

"I guess it's good enough, then." He turned to Michelle. "Anyone notified next of kin yet?"

"Boskin and Dutton are on their way to the brother's. Maybe he can give us more on the girl."

"Let's hope so."

Independently, Michelle and Erling walked the crime scene, taking their own measurements, making their own sketches. Erling pulled out his palm-sized digital camera and shot the room from a dozen angles. The crime scene photographers did a terrific job, but he liked to have his own pictures, too, because they sometimes jogged his memory and filled in the details of his sketches.

"What's your take?" Erling asked as they worked. "First impression."

Michelle rocked back on her heels and frowned. She was wearing dark, form-fitting slacks and a cream-colored silk shirt that draped softly over the swell of her breasts--her standard uniform for the job, even when she was called out in the middle of the night.

He'd initially resisted being partnered with her because he'd considered her a lightweight, or worse. But Erling had come to see that despite the eye-catching body and head of soft, brown curls, she was as earnest and intense as anyone he'd worked with before. A little too intense sometimes.

"I'd say there's a good chance the killer was someone Winslow was familiar with," Michelle replied. "Either that or she was comfortable enough with what she saw that she had no qualms about letting him in. There's no sign of forced entry, and both victims were dressed in street clothes, so it's not like they were rousted from bed in the middle of the night. The lights are on, and there's an open bottle of brandy on the counter."

Had she been entertaining a new lover? Erling wondered. But the girl, Olivia, was in the house. He doubted Sloane would bring a man home under that circumstance.

Michelle gestured toward Sloane's body. "Looks like the killer went for her first, and while she was trying to fend him off, the younger woman surprised them. He got Mrs. Winslow in the head, probably standing close to her. The girl...my guess is that the autopsy will show she was hit from farther away."

"Not bad for someone who's only worked a couple of homicides," Erling said. Michelle had worked vice in Phoenix before moving to Tucson and signing on as a detective with the sheriff's department.

She acknowledged the compliment with a slight twist of her head. "Doesn't mean it's right."

"No, it doesn't, and it's good to remember that."

"You get locked into a mind-set too soon," she said, parroting one of Erling's favorite adages, "and you'll miss the important stuff."

"Guess I've hammered that one home."

"You might say that." This time there was the faintest hint of a smile. "Shall we check the rest of the house?"

Erling took a deep breath to still the pounding in his chest. Sloane's house. Sloane's things. Rooms charged with bittersweet memories. He wasn't sure he could manage it.

Finally he nodded. "Now's as good a time as any."

A canvass of the home was standard procedure for detectives in instances like this. The techs processed the actual crime scene, but careful inspection of a victim's personal possessions revealed a lot about his or her life. Some of it interesting, most of it dull and irrelevant to the murder. Sometimes, though, they got lucky. A receipt, a phone number, a photo, some small tidbit that would eventually lead them to the killer.

But normally the detective and the victim were strangers.

Erling and Michelle spent the next forty minutes going through dressers, files, desk drawers, wastebaskets, and medicine cabinets. He was half afraid he'd find something that marked his own previous presence in the house, and equally fearful of discovering that Sloane had obliterated his memory. He almost smiled when he found the copper and bronze pendant he'd bought her for Christmas last year laid out on the velvet lining of her jewelry drawer.

"Looks like she was a stylish woman," Michelle said at one point.

Erling shrugged. "I wouldn't know about that."

He paused at a familiar sight on Sloane's bureau: a framed picture of Sloane and her brother, Reed, taken during a family barbecue. Her fair skin was virtually unlined, her blue-green eyes sparkling with humor. And often, Erling recalled, with mischief. He felt an ache in his gut, a longing somewhere deep inside him that was less about her death than his own loss.

It had been a brief affair, six months and fourteen days, to be exact. Over since early May. Him like a panting mongrel around a pedigreed bitch in heat. Her words, but they resonated as much as they stung. His behavior was nothing to be proud of. Erling had known that even then. Still, he'd wanted to hate her for ending it. There were times he'd come close. But he'd certainly never wished her dead.

By the time he and Michelle finished their canvass of the house, the sun was just rising over the hills near Sabino Canyon. Morning was Erling's favorite time of day. Blue, cloudless sky, wide and open, the air soft, just beginning to build to the blinding heat of day.

Leaving the house, he saw that the media were already out in force. A cameraman from one of the local news channels shoved a camera in Erling's face. His cohort held a mic.

"Detective Shafer," the reporter shouted, "what can you tell us? We understand there's been a homicide inside. Two victims. Was one of them Sloane Logan Winslow?"

"We're not prepared to make a statement at this time," Erling barked.

He could only hope Boskin and his partner would be able to notify Sloane's family before they learned about her death live on television. Erling figured the murders would be the lead story on the morning news.

John O'Brien pulled his Porsche GT3 into the Logan Foods garage and parked in his reserved space, nosing the bumper up to the sign that read EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT. The left side of his jaw was still numb from his morning visit to the dentist. He checked in the rearview mirror for drool, then brushed an errant speck of amalgam from his cheek before pulling his briefcase and jacket from the passenger seat.

With a flicker of irritation, he noted that Reed Logan's slot was empty. John had raced from the dentist's to be in time for their one o'clock conference call with Goldman Sachs, and Reed wasn't even back from lunch. Not surprising really, given Reed's propensity for being late, but irksome all the same. At least A. J. Nash, their chief counsel, would be on hand for the call and probably better prepped than anyone else there.

Skirting the main entrance to the building, John took the private, side doorway that led directly to the executive offices, thus saving himself a pro forma smile and cheery good morning to the layers of receptionists and clerical staff stationed along the public approaches. As he neared his office, he saw his secretary, Alicia, of the long scarlet nails, huddled at her desk with Reed's secretary, whose knockout body made the state of her nails irrelevant. The two women were clutching wads of tissue and dabbing at their eyes. The latest boyfriend fiasco, John decided. There was at least one a month.

"Oh, Mr. O'Brien," Alicia wailed. "I'm so glad you're here."

Perhaps not a boyfriend problem, after all. A mishap at one of the stores maybe? That would explain Reed's absence. John felt a knot of tension form in his chest. Things were dicey enough for him already with the board of directors.

"I told you I'd be late," John offered, in case Reed or A.J. had been ranting about his absence.

"You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"About Mrs. Winslow. It's been on the news."

"Sloane? What about her?"

Alicia choked back a sob. "She's dead."

John's mind reeled. It took a moment for the words to register.

"Murdered," Alicia explained.

Reed's secretary chimed in but John heard none of what she said. Heard nothing but the pounding of his own pulse in his ears. He gripped the edge of the desk to steady himself.

Sloane, dead. Jesus.

Suddenly, he realized that the women had stopped talking and were looking at him strangely. "Are you okay, Mr. O'Brien?" Alicia asked. "Maybe you should sit down."

"I'm fine." He swallowed. "Just in shock, is all."

"We all are."

"How did it happen?" he asked.

"She was at home. They think it happened sometime Tuesday night. Mr. Logan had to identify her"--Alicia's eyes welled with tears--"her remains. She was shot in the head."

"Tuesday night?"

Reed's secretary nodded. "Mr. Logan called from home to tell us. He won't be coming in today."

"No, of course not." John felt as though the floor at his feet had given way. Mumbling something about canceling the conference call, he bolted for his private office, where he tumbled into his chair, then stared blankly at the wall in front of him.

Sloane was dead.

She'd been so alive when he'd left her that night--hotheaded and impatient as usual. A veritable tornado of edicts and complaints. How could she be dead?

His mind flashed on an image of Sloane at fifteen. His freshman year at USC, John had gone home with Reed for Thanksgiving. Fraternity brothers, roommates, both so full of themselves their heads were the size of weather balloons.

And Sloane hadn't been the least impressed. "Strut and show," she'd told her brother. "You're a moron and so's your friend."

She'd been a beauty in the making even then, despite the thick glasses, a mouthful of braces, and the perpetual scowl. John could see her, hip jutted to the side, arms crossed, railing against the evils of capitalism and narrow-minded people, which in Sloane's adolescent mind encompassed ninety-nine percent of the country.

By eighteen she'd shed the glasses and the braces, and much of the attitude. And John had learned she never scowled in bed.

She'd more than scowled at him Tuesday, however. He cringed at the memory of their angry exchange. Their
last
exchange, he realized with horror.

"Go rot in hell, Sloane."

She'd regarded him with her ocean-green eyes and lifted her chin ever so slightly. "Easy for you to say now. But that doesn't change what is. The real question is, just how much of a bastard are you?"

John pressed his palms against his eyes and tried not to think about the bombshell that had precipitated their argument. She'd been wrong about him. He wasn't going to run away this time.

He sat up straight and glanced at the time. Top of the hour. He flipped on the radio and waited through an excruciating five minutes of national news and weather before the newscaster got to the local headlines.

"Police are confirming the murder of Sloane Logan Winslow and a second woman at the Winslow home in the Tucson foothills sometime Tuesday night. Mrs. Winslow was the vice-chairman of Logan Foods, a family-owned grocery chain with stores throughout the Southwest, and along with her brother, Reed Logan, held a controlling interest in the company. The identity of the second victim has not yet been released. The police have several leads but have named no suspects to date. With neighbors understandably nervous, police are cautioning vigilance, though they believe the attack may not have been random."

That was it. The newscaster moved on to other matters.

John was numb. He knew he should go to Reed and offer condolences, but first he needed to get a handle on his own emotions. Shock, disbelief, sorrow--they roiled and churned inside him.

And in the corner of his mind, something else. At first it was just a spark, come and gone before it really registered. Then, like a wildfire fueled by high winds, it consumed him.

His name was bound to come up.

He experienced a flutter of uneasiness in his stomach.

Should he call Kali? His hotshot younger sister was a lawyer in California now. They could hardly be called close, but she wouldn't turn her back on him. Still, he hated for her to think he'd gotten in touch only because he needed help.

And he didn't need help. Not yet.

Finally, he buzzed Alicia and told her he was going to see Reed.

Reed's wife, Linette, answered John's knock on the door of their sprawling Mediterranean-style home.

"Am I intruding?" John asked. "I just heard about Sloane."

"No. I think it would do Reed good to see you." Linette Logan stepped back, inviting John into the cool interior. She was in her early thirties, a dozen years younger than her husband, with a delicate face and a sleek cap of coal-black hair. Despite what must have been a difficult morning, she looked as though she'd taken time with her appearance. Her cotton shirt and khaki capris were fresh and crisp, the navy belt, earrings, and sandals well coordinated. Her lipstick was fresh, pink and glossy.

"How's he holding up?" John asked. He supposed he should offer Linette some sort of condolence, but truth was, he doubted she really cared that Sloane was dead. She'd never struck him as caring about anyone but herself.

She made a so-so gesture with her hands. "I don't think it's really sunk in yet. Come on," she said, leading the way. "He's out back. Staining the gazebo."