Aim to Kill (11 page)

“I’m okay,” she mumbled, tearing herself from his steady gaze. Taking stock of the crime scene, she let the emotions fade away and put her control firmly in place.

The familiar ritual of evidence collection grounded her. She took a deep breath, gathered her strength, and tried to forget that Zack was still watching her. She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck.

She watched as a woman, not much taller than she, squatted to photograph possible evidence. The flash of the
lightbulb
comforted her. Familiar. Though she now worked primarily in the lab, at the beginning of her career, when she’d been a field agent, she’d been assigned to the Evidence Response Team out of the San Francisco field office. She’d worked some big cases. A cross-jurisdictional serial killer her largest.

But that was ancient history. She joined the Quantico lab nine years ago, leaving the FBI and fieldwork after only a year. Sometimes she missed it, like now, watching trained professionals doing their job. She wanted to be with them.

Right.
She didn’t work well in a team unit, which was why she’d joined the lab. True, it could be considered a promotion, and with her Ph.D. and science background, the lab was a better fit for her anyway. But had she functioned better in the group she would never have left the FBI. She found it hard to open up to others, and when you worked closely with the same eight or ten people in a high-stress operation, you needed to be able to relax, let off steam, shoot the breeze. Not Olivia. Ever. And the stress of keeping up her defenses almost tore her apart.

Quantico was better. Less interpersonal pressure, more independence. Solitary work, just her and the evidence. That was what Olivia was best at. Depending on herself to get the job done. Not on anyone else.

Olivia realized that Zack and the sheriff had been talking to each other for the past several minutes. She focused on the conversation.

“Since the coroner is downtown, do you want me to handle the autopsy?” Zack was asking the sheriff.

“Fine,” Rodgers agreed. “I’m sending my crime team to the Seattle lab with the evidence, instead of to the state lab. What’s mine is yours.”

“Likewise.”

They shook hands in agreement.

“What’s the Federal interest?” Rodgers asked Olivia, but he glanced at Zack.

“We suspect that this killer has been active in several other states for many years,” she said. “It took time to connect the dots, particularly since there were suspects for some of the crimes.”

“Do you—” Rodgers began, then shut his mouth as he gestured
downslope
at the approach of Vince Kirby.

Zack turned in the same direction. “Aw, shit,” he muttered. “How the hell did he find out about this so soon?”

“Not from my unit,” Rodgers said, disgusted. “But I wouldn’t put it past him to have a spy somewhere inside.”

The sheriff was probably right, Zack thought. The reporter had too much inside information printed in his rag to just be lucky. He had people on the inside, probably more than one. Bastard.

Kirby smiled at them, looking a little too long at Olivia, who was shivering in her heels and standing dangerously close to the searchlights. To keep warm, no doubt. Zack wanted to give her his jacket again, but he sensed she’d balk at the offer.

“This is a crime scene, Kirby,” Zack said.

Kirby stopped just on the other side of the bright yellow police tape and smiled like the Cheshire Cat, his features oddly shadowed and blue under the fringe of the lamps. “That’s pretty obvious.”

“What are you doing here?” Zack jammed his fists into his pockets, primarily to keep from decking Kirby. Every time the condescending prick approached, Zack itched to wipe the smirk off his long, narrow face with one well-placed blow.

But every time he wanted to hit Kirby, he wondered if it was because he blamed him for Amy’s death, or because he blamed himself.

“I’d think that would be obvious, too.” Kirby looked beyond them to where the crime-scene techs were finishing up their job. “Same guy?”

“No comment,” Sheriff Rodgers said. “I’ll be issuing a statement in the morning. Feel free to come by headquarters about eleven.”

“Hmm.” Kirby pulled out his notepad and pencil. “Let’s see—Detective Zack Travis out of his jurisdiction. Young girl’s body found. Blonde, or so my sources tell me.” He looked at Olivia and grinned. “Well, Travis, bringing your dates with you to murder sites. Didn’t know that was in the manual. But you’ve obviously moved up a notch. This one looks like she can read beyond ‘See Dick Run.’ ”

Zack pulled his hands from his pockets and took a step forward. “Get out of here, Kirby.”

“I need a statement.”

“I’ll give you—” Zack took a deep breath when he felt a firm hand on his forearm. Almost as quickly as Olivia had touched him, she pulled back, but the quiet power of her pressure halted his momentum enough to realize Kirby was baiting him.

He couldn’t let Kirby get to him. The past was the past; he couldn’t see Amy’s face every time he looked at her boyfriend. Sometimes, though, it was damn hard to forget and leave the past alone, especially when it made him bleed.

The sheriff stepped between him and Kirby. “I’ll give you a statement away from the crime scene,” Sheriff Rodgers said.

“But I think—”

“I don’t care what you think, Kirby. I will not tolerate contamination of my evidence by having you here. Take it or leave it.”

Kirby glanced at Zack, then Olivia. He winked. “When you’re done with Detective ‘Make-My-Day’ Travis, come by the paper and I’ll show you how a real man treats a lady.”

Zack shifted uneasily and glanced at Olivia. The last thing he wanted splashed across the front page of the paper was that the Feds were involved in the investigation. And Kirby wouldn’t let it stop there. He’d lambaste the police department, the sheriff’s department, and everyone else in between.

Olivia didn’t say a word. She arched a single eyebrow at Kirby, her expression cool, detached, and disapproving. It was Kirby who squirmed under her visual reprimand, and Zack couldn’t help but be impressed at the power Olivia wielded with a simple look.

Kirby cleared his throat. “I’ll come by the station tomorrow, Travis. Still on swing shift, right?”

“Talk to the chief, Kirby. I have nothing to say to you.”

“Right.” He winked at Olivia. “I was just teasing you, you know. Travis’s bark is worse than his bite. You could do a lot worse than him.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Zack wondered. Kirby being
nice
?

“Let’s go.” Sheriff Rodgers led Kirby over the rocky ground to where they’d parked at the clearing below.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” Zack told Olivia, though he was still trying to figure out if Kirby was playing some sort of game where he didn’t know the rules.

“I have nothing to say to a reporter.” She sounded irritated.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, her face impassive. “Give me a little credit, Detective. The last thing I want is the press to focus on my presence instead of what’s important.

“And what’s important now is finding this killer before another child dies.”

Brian Hall stared at his reflection in the filthy, scratched mirror of his pathetic apartment. The bitches next door were going at it again, screaming at each other, using language Brian had learned only after being in prison. Bitch One, the chick who looked like a dyke, had lost her job as a busboy—busgirl?—and Bitch Two, the druggie, wanted money for her fix.

The mirror shook when something metal hit the common wall, and Brian wanted to go over there and pummel the two bitches into silence.

How could he think? How could he plan with the two of them going at it all the fucking time? At least in prison there was silence. Anything above normal conversation could get you dinged. Yeah, there were fights that broke out time and again, but at night—like now—it was usually quiet. Peaceful.

Brian put his hands on the wobbly dresser and peered closer at his face. He was old. His life was over. His face looked tired, his blue eyes too pale. Bloodshot, too, because he hadn’t been sleeping so good. He ran a hand over his buzz cut. He’d gone down and paid ten bucks to the barber—ten bucks!—for the cut. He had to. His hairline was receding and the shorter his hair, the less he noticed how little he had. In prison he hadn’t cared.

His mouth had turned into a perpetual scowl. He tried to smile at his reflection, but it was no more than a sneer.

He had no life. No one would hire him, except as a busboy in some greasy restaurant where the slop people actually paid for was worse than prison food.

No one gave him the time of day. It didn’t matter that he’d been proven innocent. He’d been in the joint for three decades. No one really
believed
he was innocent.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he stared at the top of the scuffed dresser. The dull blued steel of the .38 glinted at him in the artificial lamplight. He’d bought it off the street behind his god-awful dive apartment. He was shocked at how easy the deal went.

He picked up the gun with shaky hands and stared down the barrel. “My life is over,” he said, his voice hollow and tinny.

He put the gun in his mouth, the metallic taste making him cringe. Tears streamed down his face. His entire body shook as his right hand curved around the gun in order for his index finger to reach the trigger. It felt awkward. Wrong.

But slowly he depressed the trigger. He felt the hammer pull back as the trigger reached the halfway point. It resisted, as if the gun itself told him wait, don’t do it, and then . . .

Click.

The gun was empty; he hadn’t loaded it. Sinking to the floor, he sobbed.

His mother was scared of him, but he blamed that on his cousin Toby. He had no home, no friends. Nothing was as it had been when he went to prison.

Angry, he wiped the tears from his face. Look what that bitch had turned him into! A whiny, sniveling old man.

“Stupid
cunt
, I’ll kill you!”
Another piece of furniture hit the wall next door as the bitches continued to rant.

Pathetic. He was
pathetic,
sitting on the threadbare carpet that might have been beige years before, but was now brown from years of
pathetic
losers like him living in this
pathetic
flat.

Retribution. He had to do something to the people who’d destroyed his life. But what? What could he do to pay them back for the life they’d stolen from him?

He slowly stood and shuffled over to the lopsided Formica-topped table in the corner that passed for a kitchen with a pitiful refrigerator that didn’t keep beer cold and a two-burner stove top. A journal rested on the table, a ninety-nine-cent spiral-bound pad he’d picked up at the supermarket. Ninety-nine cents for this little piece-of-crap notebook with forty pages in it.

He sat at the solitary chair and placed the gun carefully in front of him. Turning the page, he stared at the names of the people who had framed him.

Hamilton
Craig.
Damn attorney. Not only did he convict him, he argued six times against paroling him. Brian couldn’t find his home address, but he learned the asshole was
the
district attorney for the county. Brian knew exactly where he worked, and he’d never forget what the bastard looked like.

Gary Porter.
The cop was retired, and Brian couldn’t find his address either, but he had an idea: First, take care of Hamilton Craig. Then follow the cop home from the funeral. If he was lucky, that bitch would be there too.

The bitch who started it all:
Olivia St. Martin.

If it weren’t for her, he’d never have gone to prison in the first place. She lied to the cops, said she’d seen him take her sister, which was bullshit because he hadn’t. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that she was a little kid at the time; she had still lied, and that’s that. She would have to pay big time, the icy bitch. For the accusations every time she came to oppose his parole—like it was his fault her stupid mother had killed herself. She even said once that he should have been dead.

“Had justice truly been served, this man wouldn’t be sitting here today; he would be buried in the cold ground after receiving a lethal injection.”

Oh, yes, he had plans for Ms. St. Martin.

First he’d take care of the damn attorney, then the cop.

He would save the best for last. Olivia St. Martin would be sorry she’d ever lied about him.

She would pay for her crimes.

CHAPTER

10

Olivia hated autopsies, but she’d always held her own in the few she had observed. Sheer will to control her emotions enabled her to maintain a calm demeanor while watching the coroner take apart and put back together a dead human body.

She’d never witnessed the autopsy of a child, but she would remain a professional. A scientist. She could do this for Jillian Reynolds and Missy and all the victims of whom the press now called
The Seattle Slayer
.

She took a deep breath and glanced at Zack. He stared straight ahead at the door through which the coroner would emerge. His face was all hard angles and rigid, as if he, too, were waging an internal battle.