Heart of Ice (6 page)

Living with Grandma had taught Elizabeth the basic rules. At Grandma’s she had learned that you were either a giver or a taker, predator or prey.

And Cassidy Shaw had all the hallmarks of prey. The corners of her mouth turned up any time Elizabeth praised her job, her highlights, her French manicure. And turned down any time Elizabeth mentioned calories, age, looks, or career advancement.

Elizabeth had a gift. Within a few minutes of meeting people, she could identify what they liked least about themselves. Did they think they were too shy, too fat, too ugly? She knew. If it was worth her while she then pretended to accept them exactly as they were: shy, fat, poor, bulimic, whatever. Even if they disgusted her. To deepen the bond, she would reveal that she secretly shared the same flaw as her newfound friend.

She could be whatever anyone needed. Patriotic or prissy. Worldly or naïve. Strong, if someone longed to be dominated. Submissive, if they wanted to dominate. She might pose as a celebrity, a suffering artist, a misunderstood spouse. Sometimes her lies came so easily that she almost believed them herself as she heard them come out of her mouth.

Elizabeth adjusted her message to match whatever she saw in the recipient’s face, read in the body. The feedback allowed her to build and maintain control—at least until she was done. Or bored. Her most recent best friend had lasted just long enough to cosign the loan for Elizabeth’s new car.

All Elizabeth had to do was to give people what they longed for. Or pretend to give it to them, which was basically the same thing. After that it was like the Latin saying Elizabeth had learned at the Spurling Institute—
quid pro quo
. A trade. For as long as she needed them, she offered people acceptance, love, understanding. And in turn, people gave her what she needed. Money. Power. Sex. Secrets. Admiration. Thrills.

Now Elizabeth tried out another topic, like a fisherman casting a new lure into the water. Leaning closer to Cassidy, she whispered, “How come if this is a health club, the men all look so schlumpy?” She cut her eyes to two guys drinking coffee a few tables away. One man’s shorts and sweat-stained T-shirt were accented with black socks and brown shoes. His friend had a comb-over that consisted of about five extremely long strands of hair curled in a spiral.

“Men,” Cassidy said with a shrug.

But Elizabeth caught the shadow that crossed her face. She gave her imaginary line a tug. “I’ve had terrible luck with men. Sometimes I think that all men are just, just . . .”

“Users?” Cassidy supplied.

“Exactly.” Hook, line, and sinker. Elizabeth took a sip of her tea. “What about you? You can’t be single, can you?”

“My last boyfriend—well, he had some issues. And he took them out on me.”

Elizabeth bit her lip. “I dated someone like that.” She hadn’t, of course, but she trusted her mouth to come up with the right words even before her mind knew what they were. “He seemed to think he wasn’t abusive if he didn’t leave actual bruises. Instead he just did a number on my self-esteem.”

Cassidy’s next words came in a rush. “Once Rick pulled a gun on me.” She put her hand over her mouth, looking surprised.

Around Elizabeth, people readily offered up their secrets.

“Yeah, like that made him some big man.” Elizabeth snorted.

“I sprayed bathroom cleaner in his eyes.”

“Good for you!” Elizabeth made a mental note. Maybe this one wasn’t as weak as she looked.

Cassidy looked around, leaned closer. “I don’t tell too many people the details.”

The first part of The Game was to win the other person’s trust. But you didn’t really win until he or she was willing to give you whatever you needed.

Elizabeth continued to exchange stories with Cassidy, only hers were just that: stories. She didn’t tell her new friend about Ian. Let her think they had loneliness in common.

As she wove her web, Elizabeth thought that Cassidy offered so many possibilities. Her clothes were expensive, so she probably had money. And she seemed to know everyone, name-dropping like crazy.
My old boyfriend, the radio host. My pal, the mayor. My good friend, the federal prosecutor. My other good friend, the FBI agent
.

Elizabeth didn’t like the sound of those last two. She’d seen prosecutors and even FBI agents up close. They were the enemy. They only existed to entrap people. They didn’t understand that sometimes you were forced to do something distasteful. That it was a matter of self-defense. She filed their names away. Allison Pierce and Nicole Hedges.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow them to get in the way of her playing The Game.

CHAPTER 10

Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse

C
olton Foley had been arrested six days ago. Two days later he had gone before a judge. Declaring Foley both a flight risk and a possible risk to the community, the judge had denied bail. Now Allison had only a little more than three weeks to give a grand jury cause to indict him for the crimes attributed to the man the media had dubbed “The Want Ad Killer.”

The judge had signed Foley’s arrest warrant after Allison showed him several pieces of evidence. The first were surveillance videos taken in hotels where the three women had been found murdered. Each showed a dark-haired man wearing a baseball cap and a navy-blue Columbia jacket walking down a hotel corridor or through a hotel lobby. The second came from an Internet service provider that had tracked an e-mail sent to one victim back to Foley’s seven-story condo building. And the third was a videotape the FBI had secretly made, beginning at dawn the day before, of every man who entered or exited that building. The videotape showed a man with the same color hair, the same physique, the same gait, and even what appeared to be the same Columbia jacket, walking out of the building and then getting into a car registered to Foley. Of course, Colton Foley wasn’t the only five-foot-eleven guy with brown hair who lived in the condominiums. The clincher was an e-mail the victim had sent to a friend shortly before she died. In it, she had said her next client was a med student.

But Colton Foley was no dummy, and neither was his lawyer, Michael Stone. So Allison had to move carefully and make sure the case was airtight.

Mike Stone was Portland’s premier lawyer—if you were in deep, deep trouble. He took on clients other lawyers avoided—swim team coaches accused of child molestation, surgeons who had operated while three sheets to the wind, bank presidents caught embezzling millions.

When you were in the fight of your life or your career, Stone was the guy you wanted sitting at the defense table. If you could pay his steep fees, you got the slickest lawyer in town, one who always had an ace—or two or three—up his hand-tailored sleeve.

Foley’s parents certainly didn’t have the money. His mother was a cashier, his father a TriMet bus driver. But the med student did have a great-aunt who had plenty of money and who was sure that “dear Colton could never have done these terrible things.”

Just being defended by Stone was a sure sign that you were involved in something embarrassing or off-putting. But if you were one of the people who came to him, then you couldn’t afford to be choosy. Couldn’t afford not to pay his high fees. Because otherwise Stone would be more than happy to leave you to the services of a public defender.

Allison checked her watch. 11:58. Getting up, she turned on the small TV in her office to Channel Four. Cassidy had told her that Stone had announced plans to hold a press conference at eleven. The media-savvy Stone had picked a time that would ensure it would get the most play. Most stations wouldn’t risk a live news conference in case it turned out to be filled with nothing but hot air, but the eleven o’clock time frame allowed them just enough time to film and edit a two-minute segment.

Allison would never have gone—it would show weakness—but she would watch all the coverage and order transcripts. The catnip Stone had offered the media was Foley’s fiancée. Until now, she had been in hiding. Stone had promised that she had something important to reveal to the press.

After briefly running through the day’s top national and local stories—flooding in Ohio, a child left stranded on a MAX rail platform, a tease about the week’s weather—the news anchor cut away to Mike Stone standing in front of a bank of microphones in what looked like a hotel conference room.

In ringing tones, Stone said, “My client, Colton Foley, is not guilty of these ridiculous trumped-up charges. I am confident that at the end of the day, given the facts of this case, the lack of evidence, and the faulty investigation, my client will be freed. Colton has the full support of his family, his friends, and his fiancée, Zoe Barrett, who is with me here today. I have not received any document or report or piece of evidence other than what I heard in the courtroom. All I have at the moment are words—no proof of anything.”

Seeing as how Stone’s clients literally lived and died by words, Allison found it grimly amusing that he dismissed them so blithely. But it was true that they needed more evidence to convict Foley. The search of the condo that he shared with his fiancée had turned up a roll of duct tape and a single pair of plastic flex-cuff restraints—no gun or weapon, and nothing from any of the victims.

Stone continued, “The police completely searched my client’s condominium but found absolutely nothing of any significance. A roll of duct tape? Heck, if that’s all it takes to be guilty of these crimes, 75 percent of Portlanders could be indicted.”

A few of the reporters laughed.

“And as for the plastic handcuffs, Zoe has a few words she would like to say.”

The young woman, her eyes downcast so that her shoulder-length blonde hair obscured her face, stepped to the microphone. “This is very embarrassing for me to say, but Colton and I sometimes used those plastic restraints to play games.” She exhaled, and the microphone caught how her breath wobbled. “They were my idea. Of course, I had no idea that my personal and private life would have to go on display to right this travesty of justice. I love Colton and will continue to stand by him until he is freed and we can resume our wonderful life together.”

Oh, honey
, Allison thought as she looked at the trembling girl.
Did someone put you up to that? Or was your boyfriend clever enough to have covered his own tracks in advance
?

Then it was back to the news anchor. “Our own Cassidy Shaw was at the press conference this morning, but neither Foley’s attorney nor his fiancée took questions.”

The camera pulled back to show Cassidy sitting next to the anchor.

Cassidy looked into the camera, and it was like she was looking right into Allison’s eyes. “I understand the crime lab is trying to link the single plastic restraint found at Foley’s condo to the ones that bound the victims’ hands. But Foley’s attorney is right—the federal prosecutor needs more than circumstantial evidence to win this case.”

I
t was dark by the time Allison got home. As she walked up the path, the rhododendron in front of her rustled. She stopped, the back of her neck prickling. You couldn’t be a federal prosecutor for five years without making enemies. Was one of the many threats she had received about to become a reality? Should she scream for Marshall, try to get back in her car, dial 911?

But before she could move, a voice broke the stillness.

“Ally?”

“Lindsay?” Her sister. The perennial bad seed. Or the bad penny, always turning up.

Allison had been sixteen and Lindsay thirteen when their dad died. As their mother lost herself in loneliness and a bottle of brandy, Allison became the adult and Lindsay became the troublemaker. Each finding her own way to cope. Only Lindsay’s had led to a rap sheet by the time she was eighteen. She had even spent six months in the Spurling Institute. As an adult, her life wasn’t much different. In and out of jail, in and out of rehab, off-again, on-again boyfriends with problems of their own.

Accompanied by the sound of snapping twigs, Lindsay pushed her way out of the bushes. Allison hoped it was just her hiding place that had left her black hair so tangled, the overhead porch light that made her eyes and cheeks dark hollows. The prettiness, the enthusiasm, the energy that had been there at thirteen had long ago dissipated. Now, at thirty, Lindsay looked far older than her older sister.

Allison was torn between crossing her arms and reaching out to hug Lindsay. She compromised by leaving her hands dangling loose by her side. “Why are you here?” How many tears, how much money, how many sleepless nights had Lindsay cost her?

“I need a place to stay. I broke up with Chris. For good this time.” Lindsay swiped the hair from her eyes. “And I’m clean, Allison. I really am.”

Which of those things were true? Any of them? Lindsay couldn’t seem to keep away from Chris. And she couldn’t seem to keep away from drugs. Pot, coke, and for the past few years, meth. At least, as far as Allison knew, her sister had never done any needle drugs. Thank heaven for small favors. Of course, she still might have Hep C or HIV, but if she did, it hadn’t come from sharing a needle.

“Why aren’t you at Mom’s?” Allison worked to keep her voice neutral.

“She won’t let me in. Mom stood in the door to our house—our house!—with the chain on and said she couldn’t. Said her counselor told her she had to let go of me.” Lindsay’s voice broke. “But where am I supposed to go, Ally? What am I supposed to do?”

Allison was on the verge of echoing her mother’s words. Then she thought of Peter. Peter asking Jesus, “How many times must I forgive my brother? Up to seven times?” And Jesus’ answer, “Not seven, but seventy times seven.”

She reached for her sister’s hand while she found her house key with the other. “Come on in.”

And Allison prayed she was making the right choice.

CHAPTER 11

Bridgetown Medical Associates

T
he white paper on top of the examining table crackled under Nic’s thighs as she shifted restlessly. Her fingers reached up and found the lump. Still there. At odd moments during the day—and even while she slept—she kept touching it. Trying to prove to herself that she had been wrong.