I'm Watching You (7 page)

She’d caught him by surprise with that one. Hah. But he covered his temper quickly and with admirable aplomb lifted a brow. „I choose not to give credence to rumor, Miss Richardson. Especially rumor as preposterous as that one.“ He tilted his head in a half nod, a smooth and graceful exit move. „Now I must be getting back to my family.“

Her image turned back to the camera. „That was industrialist Jacob Conti with sympathy for the family of Paula Garcia, but relief that his son is home tonight. Back to you.“

Zoe stopped the tape and ejected it. She’d dupe the segment onto her master later, the tape she used to capture all her more interesting moments. A portfolio of sorts. She stood, absorbing the feel of silk sliding down her legs as her robe fell into place. She loved silk. This robe had been a gift from one of the mayor’s aides. They’d scratched one another’s political backs for a while. She smiled. Then they’d scratched other itches for a while longer. In her honest moments she could admit she missed him, but she mostly just missed the silk.

Soon she’d be able to afford her own silk. Soon she’d be able to afford anything she wanted. Because soon it would be
her
face,
her
voice America trusted for its news. She paced her small living room restlessly. She needed a story. So far she’d done pretty well shadowing relentless pursuer of evil and overachieving Girl Scout, ASA Kristen Mayhew. Her gut told her that if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it. She tapped a French-manicured nail on her silk sleeve, wondering what was first up on Kristen’s agenda tomorrow.

Thursday, February 19,

12:30 a.m.

The computer monitor glowed in the darkness of the room. The Internet had made the world a very small place indeed. The name he’d drawn from the fishbowl resided on Chicago’s North Shore, in one of the city’s most affluent communities.

He wouldn’t be able to get to Number Seven where he lived or worked, he thought. He’d need to draw him out, to lead him to the place he’d chosen for just such a purpose.

He glanced at the stack of envelopes, gleaming an unnatural white in the streetlight that filtered through the curtains. But first he had some work to do.

Chapter Five

Thursday, February 19,

6:30 a.m.

CSU had the site prepped and ready when Reagan pulled his SUV up to the Arboretum. Inside the building, tropical plants flowered. Outside, what little grass could be seen was brown and shriveled. A light rain- fell. Jack had erected a tarp beyond the parking lot, over a narrow span of grass in the shadow of the El tracks above. CSU must have found something.

Bracing herself against the cold, Kristen slid down from the high seat of the SUV and picked her way across the icy sludge in her sensible shoes, Reagan’s big body beside her. He slowed his pace to match hers and she was grateful, for he acted as a windbreak. He’d pulled up to her house at one minute ‘till six this morning, a bag of bagels and lox on the front passenger’s seat of his SUV. So she was treated to yet another ethnic delicacy and found she liked the lox nearly as well as the gyro the night before.

Jack was pacing outside the yellow tape when they approached, his face grim. „Come and see,“ was all he said. One of Jack’s men knelt, shining a flashlight at the ground.

No, not the ground. What the light illuminated was not snow-covered dirt. Horrified, Kristen could only stare as her blood ran cold.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. It just didn’t fit
.

„I’ll be damned,“ Abe muttered under his breath. „Who are Sylvia Whitman, Janet Briggs, and Eileen Dorsey?“

„Ramey’s three rape victims,“ Kristen heard herself reply, still staring at the beam of the flashlight. At the marble marker bearing the three names. And dates.

It was a grave marker.

Her eyes jumped up to meet Reagan’s. „The dates are their birth dates to the day of their assault. He…“ She swallowed back bile.

Reagan shook his head. „It doesn’t make sense.“

Mia jogged up behind them, her breath turning to fog in the air. „What doesn’t make sense?“ Then a quiet, „Oh, God.“

Kristen shook herself. „You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. Besides, if something had happened to even one of these three women, I’d have been informed.“ By one of their irate boyfriends or husbands who had so bitterly blamed her for dragging their women through the hell of testifying only to suffer again when Ramey was acquitted. She still felt the sting of their anger, of the accusations she hadn’t tried to defend. She pushed back the guilt and stared at the marker at her feet. „It’s for remembrance,“ she said. „For the victims.“

Abe nodded to Jack. „Let’s start digging. Be careful with the marker. The dirt under it might have retained some trace evidence. Are there markers at the other sites?“

„I’ll find out“ Jack gestured them back, out of the way of the team. „This is going to take a little while. The ground is pretty frozen.“

They backed up, still standing under the tarp which provided shelter from the light rain. And they watched as the team carefully dug.

„I made a list of the victims, their families, anyone associated with the three cases,“ Kristen said as a shovelful of frozen earth landed in the growing mound close to her feet.

„Another bad night?“ Mia murmured, her eyes trained on the diggers.

„You could say that.“ She’d tried to go to sleep, but visions of
him
staring in her window kept her far too tense to sleep. Every creak and whine of her old house just made it worse. Finally, she’d given up. „I also ran a list of all the defendants I unsuccessfully prosecuted and separated them out by the ones who got off on technicalities versus legitimate defenses.“

„How many were there?“ Reagan asked.

„I had to replace my printer cartridge midway through,“ Kristen answered dryly. „Did wonders for my professional self-esteem.“

„So how many could you have won?“ Reagan asked, his tone practical. She’d wondered the same thing herself and had been compulsive enough to do the math. „Twenty-five percent, maybe,“ she said honestly.

„Twenty-five percent with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight.“ Reagan made a humming sound in his throat.

„That means on seventy-five percent you wouldn’t have changed a thing. That sounds pretty significant to me.“

Her first instinct was to take his words as lightly as he’d likely meant them. But she glanced up, found his blue eyes trained on her face, and knew he’d been quite serious. Awkward pleasure warred with a nagging feeling of deja vu. And because dealing with the deja vu was far less uncomfortable than accepting his praise, she focused on his face with a frown. „I know we’ve met. Last night you said my hair was up. What did you mean?“

His mouth opened, but his first words were drowned out by Jack’s shout.

„We’ve got something. Come and see.“

Reagan and Mia lurched forward. Kristen’s approach was a little more tentative, hindered by her skirt even in her sensible shoes. She rounded the pile of dirt and gingerly stepped to the edge of the three-foot-deep hole. And swallowed hard.

He was right
, was her first thought.
We’re lucky it’s winter
. Had it been summer, the flesh would have been so decomposed it would have been unrecognizable. But being winter in Chicago, the body was fairly well preserved. Enough that she could provide a positive ID.

„It’s him. Anthony Ramey.“ Her voice was shaky, but she doubted anyone would fault her for it. Jack’s men wore identical grimaces that said they’d rather be fingerprinting anything anywhere than be here, in the hole with a decomposing body. Mia pressed a handkerchief to her face and walked around the hole to get a view from a different angle.

„Most of him, anyway,“ Mia said through the handkerchief. „Hell, Kristen, your humble servant sure did a job on Ramey. Nothing like a little vigilante justice with a biblical twist.“

It was true. Nude and rotting, the body of Anthony Ramey had been laid to rest minus his pelvic region. In its place was about a baseball-sized expanse of nothing.

„Eye for an eye,“ Kristen murmured, wishing to high heaven she’d brought along a handkerchief of her own. Even with the benefit of Nature’s freezer, the body’s odor was enough to turn her stomach and suddenly she felt like cursing Reagan’s kind breakfast gesture. Bagels and lox threatened to gag her.

„Shotgun?“ Reagan said to Mia, and she nodded.

„Probably.“ Mia crouched to get a closer look. „Definitely not the same gun that brought him down. Probably done after he was dead. The Polaroids don’t show any pelvic damage.“

„The ME can tell us for sure,“ Reagan said, crouching beside Mia. „What’s that?“

Mia squinted over the edge of the handkerchief. „What’s what?“

Reagan pointed to Ramey’s throat. „That pattern around his neck.“ He got down on his knees and bent down for a closer look, then looked back up at Mia. „Could be ligature marks from strangulation,“ he said. „Jack?“

Ligature marks.
Oh, no
, was all Kristen could think.
No, no, no
.

Jack brushed some dirt from Ramey’s neck with a soft-bristled brush. „Looks like it.“

Mia swung around to look at Kristen, her eyes narrowed. „Kristen, didn’t Ramey – “

Kristen’s mind was already there. Her gut tightened, the implications far too disturbing to contemplate. But contemplate they must. „He would come up to his victims from behind and strangle them with a thick necklace-like chain, but only to cut off their air supply so they couldn’t scream. When they stopped struggling, he stopped strangling, then dragged them off to a dark part of the parking garage to rape them. It was the chain that the defense said police obtained through an unlawful search of Ramey’s apartment. If we’d had that evidence, I could have gotten the conviction. But the jury never saw it.“

„So we have a copycat,“ Reagan said, still staring at the ligature marks.

Kristen shook her head, seeing from Mia’s expression that she understood, that any way it turned out, this would be very bad. „That was a detail we never gave to the press.“

Reagan’s head turned slowly, his expression as dark as Mia’s. „Then – “

Kristen nodded. „He’s got access to restricted data.“

Mia stood up and brushed at her slacks. „Or he’s one of us.“

Reagan’s breath hissed out. „Shit.“

Thursday, February 19,

7:45 am.

The bagels and lox were still in her stomach, but they weren’t happy to be there any more than Kristen was happy to be standing at the makeshift grave of three young men who’d taken the lives of two children so heedlessly. Once again their humble servant’s map had been accurate and once again he’d left behind the headstone.

Carved with the names of two little kids who’d never see the age of eight.

Jack had radioed ahead to the uniforms guarding the final scene, where they’d presumably find the body of Ross King, and sure enough, waiting for them was a headstone with the names of six innocent victims of a hideous theft of their childhoods. Their trust. Those six boys had testified so bravely, it still made her heart ache. They’d relived their terror and trauma to a closed courtroom, empty but for the boys’ parents, the judge, the defense attorney, Ross King, and herself.
And the jury
. She’d forgotten about the jury.

„Their names weren’t released,“ Kristen said out loud, and both Mia and Reagan turned to stare at her. She blinked, bringing their faces into focus. „The names of King’s victims were never released. They were minors. The arresting officers knew and the lawyers knew and the jury knew. I forgot about the jury.“ From her briefcase she pulled out the printouts she made during the night. „Here’s the list of anyone associated with the three trials. Victims, family members, anybody who testified. I ran copies for both of you.“ She handed each detective a stack. „But I forgot the jury. It may not mean anything, of course. The Ramey jury wouldn’t have known about the chain, but the King jury knew the names of his victims.“

Mia flipped through her stack. „Wow. How long did this take you?“

„To get the list, about ten minutes. I keep a personal database of all my cases so the hard work was already done. It took three hours to print it all up because my home printer is ancient.“ She frowned, watching Reagan’s face darken. „What?“

He looked up, his blue eyes cold. „There are cops on this list,“ he said too softly.

Kristen felt her stomach gurgle, a sure sign of stress. As always, she pulled into herself, growing still. It was one of the most valuable skills she possessed. She met Reagan’s gaze unflinchingly. „Of course there are. They participated in the investigation.“

Twin flags of dark color appeared just above Reagan’s clean-shaven cheekbones. „And for too long they’ve watched the guilty go free?“ he said, quoting the killer’s letter.

Kristen clenched her jaw, but kept her voice level. „You said that, not me. But it’s true. And now we know he has an inside track.“ A glance from the corner of her eye showed Mia watching the exchange with a puckered brow.

Reagan riffled through the pages impatiently. „Where are the lawyers, Kristen?“

„They’re on there. All defense attorneys and their staff.“

He dipped his head, an intimidating move she wasn’t entirely sure he did on purpose. „What about your office? What about the prosecutors?“ he asked, his voice falsely calm.

She let out a quiet breath. „You’re looking at her, Detective Reagan.“

„But you have assistants, right, Kristen?“ Mia asked neutrally. „Secretaries?“

Truthfully, she hadn’t considered that fact, but it was only fair and complete to add everyone to the list, especially now they knew he had an inside track of information. „I’ll revise the lists and send them over to your office after lunch.“ She shouldered her laptop case, readjusting the weight. „I’ll see you later.“