Hold Back the Dark (3 page)

Aimee couldn’t begin to imagine how far back Taylor’s therapy had just been set. As if any of that mattered now.

Hot tears filled her eyes. Her relationship with Orrin and Stacey had been strictly professional, especially with Orrin, who had always struck her as chilly and distant. Still, they were gone, irrevocably and completely erased from the world. It wasn’t right. How could this have happened? And now that it had, what would happen to Taylor?

Josh made sure Smitty was stationed outside Taylor’s bay with orders to call if the girl started to talk, and headed out of the hospital with Elise. He was relieved that there were no TV crews waiting for a glimpse of Taylor or to ambush Elise and him with questions, but he knew that wouldn’t last long. There’d already been at least two crews at the Dawkin house. Two upright citizens killed in their nice house in the Pocket? Blood smeared on the walls? A catatonic teenager? The news crews would be on this like white on rice and twice as sticky. He probably should have warned Dr. Gannon about it. Speaking of which…

“What’s your take on the shrink?” Josh asked. Elise had great instincts; he’d learned to trust her judgment of people long ago.

“Mmm mmm mmm,” Elise cooed as they reached the parking lot. “She’s a looker, all right. I’d sure like to have that swing in my backyard.”

Josh snorted. “Don’t try to talk girls with me, Jacobs. Where’d you hear that, anyway? A construction site?”

She laughed. “Just tryin’ to be a full-service partner, big guy. She is most definitely your type, right down to those ‘Hot for Teacher’ glasses.”

“I don’t have a type.” Those quiet, smart ones weren’t his style at all. Holly hadn’t been anything like that, except for the graduate student thing.

“And I’m Paris Hilton,” Elise said, unlocking their sedan and getting behind the wheel.

Josh snorted again as he got in. “Not unless Paris gets one heck of a tan.”

“Disparaging remarks about my ethnic background? I’m wounded!”

Josh looked at his watch—almost four a.m. “Well, Paris, don’t you think you should be getting back to your penthouse suite?”

“As soon as Clyde gives us the down-low on whatever he’s found.” She headed toward Broadway.

“You want me to talk to the PIO?” The public information officer would need the basics to give to the press soon, and Josh didn’t mind talking to Mark Elder. The guy was ambitious, but he wasn’t an ass.

“Okay by me,” Elise said.

Josh’s eyes were starting to droop by the time they turned into the parking lot for the coroner’s office and forensic lab sandwiched between the DMV and the UC-Davis Med Center’s Broadway building. They walked past the metal sculpture that Josh always thought looked like an elongated surfboard stuck into a rock, and buzzed to be let in.

Clyde was waiting for them on the second floor, practically dancing from foot to foot.

“Calm down, buddy,” Elise said, dropping into a chair. “You don’t want to burst something.”

“You’ll never guess!” the lab tech said. “You won’t believe it.”

Josh leaned against a desk. “We won’t bother trying, then. What’s up?”

“All that stuff on the walls? All those rectangles and circles?” Clyde looked from one to the other. “The girl did it. She painted that wall with her own blood.”

D
awn began to streak the sky as Aimee drove down the alley behind her building and pulled up to the grated gate on her garage. She pressed the button and let her head fall back against the seat while the gate creaked its way upward. Exhaustion was catching up with her.

She pulled through the gate, parked in her assigned slot, and took the key from the ignition, her movements slow, like someone moving underwater. She felt as if she were drowning, this nightmare of a night dragging her down.

Aimee locked the car and went to the elevator, her hand never far from the canister of pepper spray in her purse. Her thoughts whirled back to the first time she’d met the Dawkins. Stacey’s fear and revulsion about her daughter’s behavior had been clear.

“She’s cutting herself with a razor blade,” Mrs. Dawkin had said, her voice trembling, looking almost nauseated. “On purpose.”

“Deep cuts?” Aimee had asked. She needed to differentiate between the kind of cutting that signified a failed suicide attempt and the shallower cutting that seemed nearly pandemic among teenage girls these days.

“Not deep. Just enough to make herself bleed. Please, Dr. Gannon, tell me why my baby is hurting herself this way,” Mrs. Dawkin had pleaded with her.

If only it were that simple.

If only half the time, the parents didn’t already have all the information they needed to understand why their baby was hurting herself.

Was there even more to it than Aimee had thought? Had Stacey Dawkin known more than Aimee realized? Had that gotten her killed?

The elevator doors slid open and with a quick glance to make sure the car was empty, Aimee stepped inside. She pushed the button for the third floor and leaned against the wall while the elevator rose.

Besides cutting, Taylor had been experimenting with alcohol and marijuana, skipping class, and generally isolating herself from the friends she had treasured only a few months before, hanging with a new crowd that wasn’t a stellar influence. Actually, everything had started to fall apart for Taylor.

At first Taylor’s parents had thought that it was just a phase, something Taylor would grow out of, like Pretty Ponies and the Backstreet Boys. Then Stacey had walked in on her daughter in the bathroom, seen the cuts on Taylor’s thighs and breasts, and panicked.

Orrin Dawkin had been concerned but had remained calm, possibly even a little bit detached. It was hard for some fathers to stay connected with their teenaged daughters. All those hormones, all that burgeoning sexuality. It changed everything.

The elevator doors opened and Aimee glanced up and down the hallway as she stepped out. Empty. No surprise there, at five-thirty in the morning. She walked to her apartment, where she clicked the lock shut behind her and put on the security chain. Her tight shoulders and neck relaxed and she sagged against the door, glad to be back safe in her cocoon.

It would be pointless to go back to bed now. She wouldn’t sleep, even though she was exhausted. She set her keys on the table by the door and headed to the kitchen. Acid churned in her stomach, and the thought of coffee made her a little queasy. Toast, she decided. A little comfort food. One of her clients, a middle-aged woman coping with the stresses of being trapped in the sandwich generation with elderly parents and dependent children, had described eating more than a dozen English muffins at one sitting as a way to deal with having to take her mother to the cancer center one more time. She’d talked about melted butter the way Aimee had heard junkies talk about heroin.

Aimee didn’t get a butter-high, but the toast did help settle her stomach. She put the coffee on.

A knock at the door made her jump. She looked through the peephole. Damn, she’d forgotten to call Simone. There was no way she was going running this morning.

Aimee undid the chain and the deadbolt and let her friend in.

“You’re not dressed,” Simone said, clearly dismayed. She had on running tights and a tank top and was bouncing on the toes of her running shoes. “Well, I mean, you are dressed. Just in the wrong stuff.”

Aimee smiled. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Are the novels of Cormac McCarthy pretentious and misogynistic?” Simone replied, following Aimee into the kitchen.

“You are
so
going to have to get over him winning the Pulitzer.” Aimee grabbed two mugs from the cabinet.

“No, I don’t. It’s a bone I’ll be able to gnaw on for the rest of my natural life.” Simone sighed as she sat at the granite counter and looked around at the open loft. “Your place is always so clean. I want my house to be this neat and restful.”

“You should probably have thought about that before you had the three kids and adopted the two dogs.” Aimee poured two cups of coffee and pulled the half-and-half out of the refrigerator.

“I also wish I had your metabolism, and could have half-and-half and not gain weight.” Simone poured a liberal amount of cream in her coffee anyway. She was two inches shorter than Aimee and about ten pounds heavier, but she carried it in all the right places.

“I gain plenty of weight.” Aimee sat down at the counter, braced her elbows on it, and covered her eyes, which suddenly felt scratchy.

“Rough night?” Simone asked.

“You could say that,” Aimee replied from behind her hands. “A two a.m. phone call about a client.”

Simone’s nose wrinkled. “Bummer. Say what you will about the sorrows of writing copy for the biology department’s newsletter, they never have middle-of-the-night emergencies. Was it bad?”

Aimee nodded. “And probably going to get worse.”

Simone patted Aimee on the back. “Sorry.” She’d learned not to ask for particulars about Aimee’s clients; she just listened to whatever Aimee could share and offered sympathy. She was worth her weight in gold. “Will it at least be over soon?”

“I’m guessing I’ll be out of it by tomorrow. She needs to be institutionalized—at least for a while. And once a patient is committed, the psychologist who had the case isn’t generally wanted anymore.” The new doctor would want to make his or her own diagnosis and treatment plan.

Whoever took over the case was going to be starting from square one without any of the background and history Aimee had with Taylor. On the other hand, maybe someone looking at it with fresh eyes could be of more assistance. Things were very different now for Taylor than they had been twenty-four hours ago.

“There’s no way I’m running this morning. Why don’t you go ahead, and I’ll join you tomorrow morning. Okay?”

Simone hopped up and gave Aimee a quick squeeze. “Sure. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll call tonight and check on you.”

Aimee locked and chained the door after her. Great—Simone would call and check on her. She didn’t like being treated like a piece of fine china; she wasn’t that fragile anymore. She hated feeling like an item on someone’s to-do list. Defrost chicken for dinner. Check on Aimee. Pick up dry cleaning.

She refilled her coffee mug. She might as well take a look at Taylor’s file before she handed her off to her new doctor. Maybe there was something there that could help with the investigation. Something whose significance she’d missed before.

Josh and Elise had given the PIO enough for the
Sacramento Bee
to run a two-paragraph teaser about the murders on the second page of the Metro section, and the morning TV news shows would have a few facts to go along with the footage they’d taken at the house. The press would want more soon, but Elder thought he could hold them off for a while. Good thing; there wasn’t much to give them yet.

The chief, however, had made it clear that there better be something sooner rather than later. Josh had expected to get heat from up top; he just hadn’t expected it this fast.

After meeting with the chief, they’d each headed home briefly. Josh had showered, changed, and dropped a few crickets into the cage of his gecko, Dean. The lizard was pretty much the only pet that could withstand his sudden and prolonged absences. Dean didn’t exactly greet him at the door, but he did hiss and then slurp up a cricket. If that wasn’t love, what was? He was all the company Josh needed most nights; Dean might be a little grouchy, but he never talked during the game or drank the last of the beer.

When they returned to headquarters on Freeport, the M.E. had left a message that he already had preliminary autopsy results on the Dawkins. He must have put a hell of a rush on it; the screws were clearly being turned on the M.E. as well.

Josh and Elise climbed into their city-issued white sedan and headed up Freeport toward the morgue, past the strip malls filled with check cashing stores and nail salons and the occasional fast food restaurant.

“It’ll be faster if you cut over on Sutterville and tack over on King,” Elise said.

“Do I kibbitz when you drive?” Josh shot her a look.

“No, but you sigh a lot.”

“Fine. I’ll go up King.” He hung a right and then a left.

At the morgue, they flashed their badges and were buzzed through. The forensic pathologist was waiting for them in the autopsy bay.

“Whatcha got for us, doc?” Elise asked, popping her gum like a teenager.

Dr. Halpern smiled his too toothy and whitened grin. “What might make you consider spending a little more quality time here?”

Josh shook his head. Halpern had had a little crush on Elise ever since she was a cadet, and he flirted with her whenever they came in. Elise either didn’t mind, or had decided it was worth it to get autopsy results faster.

Elise fluttered her eyelashes. “Well, a cause of death on that double that came in last night might soften my heart a little.”

Josh rolled his eyes.

Halpern waved his hand in the air. “You’re setting the bar far too low, m’dear. You’re worth so much more.”

“I’m all ears,” Elise said, perching on the stool next to Halpern’s desk.

“Well, your forty-seven-year-old male died between eight and ten p.m. last night from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by blunt force trauma. The lamp found at the scene is undoubtedly your weapon. I found flakes of the copper plate finish from the lamp base in the head wound.”

Josh nodded. No surprise there.

“Your female vic had a slightly different story to tell.”

Josh settled down in the chair across from Halpern, braced his elbows on the arms, and steepled his fingers. “Do tell.”

“She was strangled. I’m guessing with some kind of electrical cord, probably the cord from the lamp used to kill her husband. It was missing, you know.” Halpern smiled and leaned back in his chair.

Elise looked over at Josh, brows slightly raised. Josh raised his, too, and shook his head. Why take the cord? What made it necessary to take it? Or worth potentially being caught with it?

“Here’s the interesting part, though. The male vic was killed wham bam thank you, ma’am. The female? He took his time with her.” Halpern stood up and motioned them over to where Stacey Dawkin’s body lay on the cold metal gurney. “See how there are multiple ligature marks around her neck? I think he toyed with her. Choked her almost unconscious, released the cord and let her think she might still have a chance, then choked her some more. Based on what I’m seeing here, he went through that cycle three or four times.”

Josh was known for his iron stomach; he was used to walking out of these autopsy bays and then going to order a gyro. But what the doc had just said made him a little sick.

“She fought,” Halpern said. “She’s got something under her fingernails. We’re sending it on for analysis. Clyde’ll have more details for you later.”

Josh had been a homicide cop long enough to understand how a person could be driven to take another’s life. But to savor it? To prolong it and enjoy it like that? “Sadistic son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“Absolutely.” Halpern lifted the lower part of the sheet that covered Mrs. Dawkin. “Look at her knees.”

They were red and rough.

“Rug burn,” he explained. “I think the bastard made her crawl, after he bound her hands and covered her mouth with the duct tape.”

“He made her crawl?” Anger rose in Elise’s voice. Then a connection dawned on her face. “The marks in the carpet—the ones too short to be drag marks. The bastard made her crawl to her own death.”

“We don’t know it’s a he yet, Elise,” Josh said, keeping his voice even. He understood her anger, but feeding it would get them nowhere.

Elise threw him a caustic glance. “Strangulation is a man’s crime. And that kind of freaky control and power game? You
know
that’s a guy thing. Any sign of sexual assault? On the male or the female?”

Josh knew why she was asking. Sexual assault was rarely about lust. It was about being in charge, giving and taking away; it was about control. The way choking someone until they were almost unconscious and then letting them live for a few moments longer, over and over again, was about control. Whoever had done the choking probably had the right mind-set to also be a sexual predator.

“Nope. Nothing like that at all,” Halpern said.

Elise shook her head. “There’s no way that little girl back in that hospital did this, Josh.”

“Little girl?” Halpern asked.

“The victims’ daughter,” Josh replied. “We found her at the scene. She’s totally shut down and we can’t get her to talk.”

“I should know more about the height of your perp once I figure out all the angles here. I wouldn’t rule anybody out yet, though,” Halpern said. “But she’d have to be an awfully angry little girl. And I agree with Elise on this one. Choking is a man’s crime.”

Josh sighed in relief. Neither of them had wanted to think the kid was the murderer. The only thing worse than kid criminals were the kid victims. The look in their eyes never left him. The betrayal. The hurt. The confusion. The pain. Nothing would ever be the same for them again. They’d never trust easily again, never be able to erase the marks left on them by violence. Those were the ones who broke his heart.

“By the way, the male vic’s got rug burns on his knees, too,” Halpern continued. “He may have been killed more quickly than his wife, but our perpetrator made him crawl to his death, too.”