Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series (25 page)

“Rape?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yep. In Portland the victim’s were beaten to death, and in Trenton more variations with a knife, only a lot messier than the first time around.”

“Were any of the victims men?” I asked, curious to see if my suspicions rang true.

“Actually, yes,” he said. “How’d you know? The fourth victim in the Portland murders and the third victim in Trenton were both men. And they were both sodomized. Tell me what you’ve got.”

“The same,” I said. “Third victim was a doctor, older man, purported suicide by hanging at first glance, but when I got him on the table I realized he’d been raped as well. He wasn’t found nude, so I didn’t even suspect a rape. Our guy doesn’t care about leaving his DNA lying around.”

I heard papers shuffling across the phone line and knew Agent Carver was checking for the same. “I’m not seeing it here,” he said. “He didn’t leave anything behind with these victims.”

“I guess maybe that’s why he feels like he can with the victims here in Bloody Mary.”

“I’m going to fax everything I’ve got to Jack’s office,” Carver said. “I want you to call me if you need help. He’s gotten three, but in all the cases except the one where he buried them alive there were four victims. And I think that’s just because they never found the fourth body.”

“We’ll call if we need you,” I assured him and disconnected.

My brain was tired, and I was seeing double. I heard the fax machine ring and start to whine out sheets of paper. I lay down on the floor to wait for them to finish. Jack was still in the shower, and it wouldn’t hurt to rest my eyes for a few minutes. And if a few tears fell it was only because I was too tired to control them.

I woke disoriented and weirdly enough, floating, but it turned out it was only Jack, picking me up off the floor and sitting down with me cradled in his lap. I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in his familiarity and comfort. He wiped the traces of tears off my cheeks with his thumb and kissed the top of my head, then my cheeks, my chin, my lips.

My breath hitched painfully, and varying emotions bombarded me. Confusion, love, anger, sorrow, and not the least of which was attraction. Not good. As if my life wasn’t complicated enough.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“Shh. . .It’s okay. Me too,” he said. And we sat there for a while, each lost in our own thoughts, but it was only so long before the real world intruded again. I awkwardly dislodged myself from Jack’s lap and moved to the chair on the other side of his desk.

Jack’s office was Spartan to say the least. He’d once told me he’d work out of the back of his car and not have an office at all if it would let him hire one more cop. The blinds on the windows were bent and only attached to the window frame by years of dust. The gray carpet was worn and threadbare in places, and his desk was metal and dented on every side like it had been dropped down a couple of flights of stairs. There were no plants or photos anywhere around, nothing personal to try and cheer the place up a little.

“Was that Carver on the phone?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, he’s faxing a few open cases he thought would peak your interest. He’s got similarities in several different states that could be our guy. The only difference is that he didn’t leave any DNA at the previous crime scenes, so you might not be able to tie him to our murders without a confession.”

“And it might not be our guy at all.”

“Possibly. But this feels right, especially after what I found out during the autopsies. Dr. Hides was raped,” I said. This news got Jack’s attention, and he had his cop face back in place, ready to absorb the details. “Carver told me there were two male victims who had also been raped in two separate cases.”

Jack got up and went to the fax machine, flipping through until he found the pages he wanted. “Son of a bitch. What did you find on the tox screen?”

“He had way over the legal limit in his system punched up with a couple of painkillers. I found that he did show signs of early cold symptoms, so him calling Janette Taylor and cancelling his appointments was probably legitimate. There wasn’t anything in his stomach other than the liquid he’d consumed before he died,” I said. “Hey, while you’re over there make me a copy of those pages.”

He did as I asked and brought them back to me. “Seems early to start out the day that way. Do you think he was planning on killing himself anyway? Booze and pills?”

“Could be, but he didn’t have enough in his system to do anything but knock himself out for a few hours, and I don’t remember seeing the pill bottle lying around anywhere.”

“There wasn’t one gathered into evidence,” Jack said, confirming my suspicion.

“Which means that Dr. Hides was given the drugs by the killer, and he took the rest of them with him when he left. What he had in his system is not normally a fast acting drug. It usually takes twenty to thirty minutes to seep into the system, but the alcohol probably helped speed up the process, slowing his reflexes and bringing on extreme lethargy in about ten minutes.”

“He didn’t have to drug the women to overpower them,” Jack said. “Why’d he change his pattern?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to take any chances with a man. Hides wasn’t a big man, but he was bigger than the women. And maybe in a neighborhood like that, where the houses are practically on top of each other, he was afraid to make too much commotion in case there were any neighbors within hearing distance.”

“The deputies who canvassed door to door didn’t come up with anything useful. Everyone they talked to said they didn’t notice any cars up or down the street besides ours when we pulled up, and no one noticed any strangers walking around.”

I gave this a couple of minutes thought and drew a few conclusions, but I wanted to see what Jack thought so I let him continue before I voiced my own opinions.

“So let’s say that the killer parks his vehicle a couple of blocks away and walks the distance to Dr. Hides’ residence. There are several businesses with crowded parking lots close enough to get there quickly and back without anyone noticing. He cuts up the side of the house and goes right to the front door like his patients do.

“There was a back door leading in through the kitchen, but I’d think it would be unlikely for him to enter that way because the backyard is fenced with a padlock. We didn’t see any signs of disturbance in the back yard. There was still a little snow on the ground and everything was pristine. And if this guy was wrapped up in a coat and scarf no one would be able to distinguish any features if they did happen to catch a glimpse of him.

“There were signs that Dr. Hides had been holed up in his office working. There were a couple of patient files on his desk, a box of Kleenex, some juice and cough drops. He’s busy trying to concentrate on work and ignore the cold when he hears the doorbell. He’s irritated at the interruption, maybe thinking one of his patients showed up anyway even though he cancelled. He gets up to answer the door, leaving everything as it was on the desk, and opens the door to the killer who probably made his way inside the house by threatening the doctor with a weapon of some kind.

“There were no signs of struggle, so the doctor must have followed directions, thinking he’d be fine as long as he did what the man said. Suppose the killer enters the house with the doctor at gunpoint, and they head upstairs to the second floor because he doesn’t want to have to haul the doctor up the stairs himself. Too much work. He tells Hides to take the pills and drink the alcohol to keep him from struggling, and as soon as they take effect he rapes him. We found the doctor only wearing his robe, but there were some pajamas found inside the laundry hamper.”

“So he takes Dr. Hides’ pajamas off, rapes him, puts the robe back on him while he’s still disoriented and groggy from the drugs, puts the noose around his neck and throws him off the second story balcony.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. It’s better than anything else we’ve got at this point.”

“He was taking a chance being in there so long,” I said. “At the minimum, he would have been there between forty-five minutes to an hour between walking to and from the house, the rape and then searching for the files.”

“Dr. Hides’ keys were found on the desk. After he was through throwing the doctor off the balcony, he put the pajamas in the dirty clothes hamper, grabbed the keys and took the two files. He locked the file cabinets back up and put the keys back where he found them. Cleaned up after himself to make it look more like initial suicide. He’s well organized, and he’s had a well-thought out plan with every murder. I’d say it took him no more than half and hour inside the house.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to when he didn’t bother to disguise the other victims with apparent suicide. Why’d he change this time around?”

“Not a clue,” Jack said, shrugging. “What about Amanda Wallace? Did you find anything similar in her system?”

“I didn’t find alcohol if that’s what you’re asking,” I said. My brain was fuzzy and tired and my heart hurt just a little, so I laid my head on Jack’s desk and looked at my feet. “She was eight weeks pregnant, Jack.”

“Christ, what more could happen during this case. Do you think Colburn knows?”

“No, he would have said something when we met with him yesterday. But she knew. I’ll have to check to make sure, but I’d bet anything that she had an appointment with her OB the morning she cancelled her regular appointment with Dr. Hides.”

“This is a mess. I’m going to have to tell Colburn the news,” Jack said, rubbing his face.

“He’s got a right to know about the baby. All we have to worry about now is the riot between Harvey Wallace and Colburn when this news makes its way around town. I’m hoping to God her funeral doesn’t end up like a battle ground. Sorry to hear about Harvey moving Amanda to the Here and Gone, by the way.”

“It happens,” I said. At this point I was ready to shut down the funeral home for a few weeks and hibernate with a few dozen books and a bottle of gin. “I think you should tell Colburn about the baby, but why don’t we keep the news just between the three of us? The Wallace’s are going to have a hard enough time dealing with the way Amanda died. Knowing about the baby will just bring them more pain. Her children deserve to keep as many good memories as possible of their mother.”

“Fine by me,” Jack said. “I’d prefer not to have to open that can of worms anyway. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep, Jaye? You look like hell.” He pulled me up out of the chair and gave me a hug, rubbing the back of my neck in slow circles. It felt so good to lean on someone for a minute that I rested my head against his chest and could have fallen asleep where I stood. 

“If I wasn’t so tired I’d hurt you for saying that. But it’s probably true, so I’ll let it pass this once.” I took a shaky breath and knew I needed to get it all out. “I’m sorry if I let you down yesterday. I was wrong. About everything.”

I hoped he knew I was talking about Brody because I didn’t want to have to go into detail. It was still too raw for me to think about, much less speak about. It’s never good to find out that someone doesn’t want you or love you enough. “I wasn’t thinking straight,” I said. “But I’ve got things under control now. I’ll do better next time.”

“Ah hell, Jaye. You have never once let me down since I’ve known you. I was a bastard for doing things that way, and I should be the one apologizing. But that doesn’t mean I’m not glad that you’ve come to your senses about other matters.”

He ran his hand over the back of my hair out of habit and pushed stray pieces behind my ears.

“I’ve got to head back over the Alexandretta Boutique in a couple of hours. Marie called and told me one of her other employees saw a man in a black SUV drop Fiona Murphy in front of the store one day. I’m going to see if I can get a description. I tried to stop by and talk to her yesterday morning before I picked you up to go see Harvey Wallace, but it turned out she called in sick, so it was a bust.”

I felt like an idiot. Jack had had a perfectly legitimate excuse for being in Nottingham yesterday morning, and I felt lower than slime for even considering that he’d had anything to do with murder.

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” he said.

I pulled out of his grasp and reached for my bag, shoving the papers Jack had copied inside. I had to concentrate to put one foot in front of the other without falling over from exhaustion.

“Oh, and Jaye,” he said, stopping me before I made it out the door. “I think you and I have some things to sit down and talk about when all this is over. It’s time, don’t you think, to get things out in the open?”

I wanted to pretend like I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was all too afraid the dynamics had changed between us and exactly what that would mean to our friendship. I was thinking after this was over I should probably take a vacation to some tropical island for a month or two. Or maybe I’d join a convent and never look at a man again. If I’d had more energy I would have run like crazy from the look in Jack’s eyes. It wasn’t one I’d seen before, and it wasn’t one I was sure I wanted to see.

Hmm. . . Something to think about.

Jumbled pieces of information were rearranging themselves in my brain to make a coherent thought. There had been something pricking at my memory ever since I’d talked to Agent Carver, but I couldn’t bring it to the surface. I’d have to put it on hold until I was horizontal for a few hours.