Killing Fear (7 page)

The atmosphere was sexy, the allure was sensual, but no stripping, though she allowed it for private bachelor and bachelorette parties. It was all image. All on the outside. The public persona.

Much like her. Few saw the real Robin McKenna. That was the way she wanted it. Needed it.

Screw the men in her life. Seriously, what did she expect from them? First her father got her mom pregnant and told her to have an abortion because he didn’t want to pay for a kid. Then her first college boyfriend who, when he found out she was a stripper, brought all his friends to watch her perform. And did she give the performance of her life, before breaking up with him. The problem was that word traveled fast and just because she was a stripper, the guys on campus thought she’d be an easy lay.

She’d become a stripper in the first place to pay for her college education. Her first week on campus she’d answered a casting call for dancers in a school production. She’d gotten the part, but the rehearsals conflicted with her schedule and she reluctantly backed out. The production’s dance instructor, Brandi, told Robin that she moonlighted as a stripper and thought Robin would fit in at RJ’s. “And RJ pays well. You do your job, you get paid a helluva lot more than waitressing at some grease pit.”

At first, Robin didn’t think she could do it. But she found she had a knack for putting on a show. For creating an image that she wanted people to see. She put up necessary shields to protect her from the catcalls and the letches, and she danced so well she made great tips and RJ was happy. Or as happy as the sour old man could be.

Robin kept her two lives separate after that first boyfriend humiliated her. She never told the guys she dated what she did, and since she was in college they didn’t always assume she also had a job. The lack of honesty bothered her, but her heart needed to be protected. In her childish fantasies, she believed that when she fell in love, when someone loved her, it wouldn’t matter that she was a stripper working her way through college.

She’d kept the secret from Sean for over a year. They were in love. He proposed when she was a senior in college and he was a pediatric resident at a local hospital. He loved her,
said
he loved her, and wanted to marry her. So she told him the truth.

“Slut.”

She could still hear him whisper that word with such hatred and disdain.

She pushed back the tears. What had she expected? She’d taken her clothes off in front of men for money. Money to pay for college and help support her mother, but as Sean pointed out so crudely, she could get a different job that didn’t require her showing horny men her tits.

How could love turn to hate so fast?

Sean had been the last man in her life for a long, long time. Until she opened her heart just a little, just enough to make it bleed again.

She opened the club’s back door and walked down the hall to the Back Room. And there he was, sitting alone at
her
bar. In
her
club.

She’d seen Will Hooper on the news, but that was nothing compared to his physical presence. She couldn’t swallow, could barely move, her heart pounding loud in her ears, her eyes dry. He saw her at the same time, put down his coffee mug, and stood. He was tall, over six feet, lanky, and far too sexy. He could have been a model, with those GQ good looks, sun-bleached brown hair cut short on the sides and longer on the top, strong jaw, and dark ocean-blue eyes. But he wasn’t a sex god or a model, he was a cop. A cop who hadn’t trusted her, even when she thought he understood her. A cop who hadn’t loved her as she had loved him.

Robin realized that her act, her public persona, was all she had. No one believed she had anything inside, anything that needed love and respect and care. All she was to men was a body, a smile, and a wink. And whose fault was that? Stripping had been her choice. She had only herself to blame.

“Hi, Robin.”

She walked behind the bar, putting the solid mahogany counter between them. She pulled a water bottle out of the cooler. Opened it. Drank half of it. Tried to slow her racing heart, cool her hot blood.

He’d hurt her, betrayed her, and still she reacted to him. Still she remembered his lips on hers, felt his hands on the back of her neck. She’d once felt like she was the only person in his world, the only woman in his universe.

An act. Like her, Will Hooper was all about the attitude. The public act. Did he care about anything or anyone other than himself?

“Shouldn’t you be out looking for a certain psychopathic killer?”

His jaw tensed. “I’m heading the task force—”

She cut him off. “I saw the news conference.” She wanted him out of her club. Her emotions were too exposed, her fears too raw. She could picture herself falling into his arms, letting him hold her. Touch her. Kiss her. Make love to her. In Will’s arms, she had felt
safe.
Real. Loved.

But she wouldn’t do that to herself. She was far too valuable a human being to allow her body to be used by a man who didn’t respect her, who didn’t love her, who didn’t believe in her.

“Robin, please—”

“I don’t want you here.”

“Hear me out.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t listen to his excuses. She didn’t want his lies. “I can take care of myself, Will. I’ve been doing it a long time. I did it before you came into my life, and I did it after you left. I’m ready for Theodore Glenn. I won’t let him walk away.”

Will’s temper rose, his face deepening in color, his jaw even tighter. He leaned forward. She stood firm.

“Dammit, Robin! Listen to yourself. The Lone Ranger. Just because you have a gun and some self-defense training, you think you can protect yourself against that crazy bastard?”

She leaned forward, hands on the bar. “You investigated me?”

“Damn straight! I had to find out where you lived so I could increase patrols in your neighborhood. I ran your record and found out you managed to snag a concealed carry permit. Well, good for you. But do you think that Glenn isn’t prepared?”

“Oh, and only you, the big and mighty Will Hooper can stop him?” She barked out a laugh. “A lot of good you did for Anna!”

Robin had gone too far. She saw it in Will’s face. He pushed back from the bar. Hurt and angry. Just like her.

She swallowed her own guilt. She was just as much to blame for Anna’s death as Will. Maybe even more so.

What Will was about to say, Robin didn’t know. His cell phone rang and he turned from her, answered it. “Hooper.”

A moment later he exclaimed, “What the fuck happened? Where were the—” He stopped, glanced at Robin with a mixture of anger and worry. “I’m on my way. Call Detective Kincaid and have her meet me there.”

He hung up and stared at Robin with a pained expression. “Sherry Jeffries, Theodore’s sister, is dead.”

SIX

Sherry Glenn Jeffries had lived in El Cajon, a suburb north of San Diego. Technically out of the jurisdiction of SDPD, Police Chief Causey had been called when the arriving officers identified the victim.

Will arrived before Carina. The Jeffries lived in a two-story house in an upper middle class neighborhood where similar two-story homes stood close together. Judging by the size of the trees, the neighborhood was less than five years old.

Sherry and her family had a confidential address. How had Glenn found out where she lived?

“Detective Hooper?” A uniformed cop approached. “I’m Lieutenant Ken Black.”

Will nodded. “Thanks for calling us so quickly.”

They stood on the driveway. The garage doors were open and Will saw the corpse lying on the floor right by the inside door. Glenn had waited for her in the garage. For how long?

“What happened?” Will asked Black.

“When Mrs. Jeffries didn’t pick up her daughter from school, the principal called the house and got no answer. Normally they wouldn’t do that, but Mrs. Jeffries had told the school that Ashley’s uncle was in town and might want to harm the girl. When Mrs. Jeffries didn’t pick up on the house or cell phone, the principal phoned Dr. Jeffries at the hospital.”

Sherry Jeffries’s husband was a surgeon, Will recalled.

The lieutenant continued. “Dr. Jeffries called police to check on the house, then went to pick up his daughter. He has a solid alibi. He was in surgery when the teacher called, had been since ten this morning.”

It was common to immediately rule out the spouse or boyfriend whenever a woman was killed.

“Police arrived on scene and when there was no answer, they walked the perimeter of the home. Looked in through the window of the garage door and saw the body. The officers called for backup, broke in to determine whether the victim was still alive. She wasn’t. When backup arrived, they searched the house and found no one. However, the killer left a message in the kitchen.”

Carina drove up then and joined them. Will filled her in. He wanted to see the message, but said, “Let’s check out the body first.”

Sherry Jeffries had died quickly. Her neck had been broken and she lay crumpled on the smooth concrete floor next to her minivan. Her purse and keys lay next to her body. A dead cat lay on top of her. Will vividly remembered Sherry’s testimony about her brother killing her kitten in front of her. This psychological torment practically screamed Theodore Glenn.

Sherry Jeffries’s wallet had either fallen out of her purse, or was dropped there. “Has the body been photographed?” Will asked.

“Yes.”

Will pulled on gloves and picked up the wallet. Empty. Credit cards gone, no money.

But this wasn’t a robbery. Glenn might have needed the money, but he didn’t kill his sister for it.

He killed her for revenge.

“Let’s see the message.”

They walked through the house. In the kitchen, the crime scene techs were still working, so Will and Carina stood back.

“Shit,” Carina murmured.

Will stared at the message meant only for one person.

On the wall of the breakfast nook, Theodore Glenn had written in black permanent marker:

William, once again I killed right under your nose. I’m surprised they let you keep your badge seven years ago, but I suppose that professional ethics mean little to cops who plant evidence and fuck witnesses.

If you think you can save her, think again.

He was talking about Robin.

“Will, what does he mean?”

Will didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His entire body filled with a fear he’d never known before, a foreboding that told him Glenn’s sick games had just begun. If Will hadn’t just left Robin—with a marked car outside the Sin—he would have immediately gone to her.

“Will?” Carina asked softly.

He ignored her, gave her a glance that said,
not here, not now.

“Save who?” Carina asked, skeptical, still pushing for answers. “Who’s he talking about? The daughter?”

“Robin McKenna.” Will cleared his voice. “Anna Clark’s roommate who testified against him. Or he could mean Julia Chandler or the old woman who saw him leaving Brandi Bell’s house.” But Will was just saying that. Glenn was talking about Robin, no doubt in his mind.

“You talked to them today, right?”

“I talked to Robin and Julia,” Will said. “I sent patrols to talk to the other witnesses who Diaz couldn’t reach on the phone.” And he’d just spoken to Sherry this morning. She of course had heard about the prison break. She’d been scared.

“Connor is going to flip.”

“Lieutenant, would you mind if I asked our criminalists to work with yours?”

“No problem. We contract with the Sheriff’s Department for most crime scene work. Our lab is bare bones.”

“Thanks. I’ll have them send a team immediately.”

Will would never forget when Sherry Jeffries told him and Julia the story about her cat while they prepared her for testimony.

“No one believed me. Theodore was a perfect kid. A straight-A student. Never raised his voice. Kind and polite. But with me he was different. Jekyll and Hyde. And he broke my kitty’s neck, looking at me the whole time. Watching my face, my reaction, my pain.

“I buried Muffin. I cried and buried him. Theodore dug him up that night and put the body in my bed. I woke up in the morning with my dead cat at my feet.”

Sherry hadn’t been a good witness. She’d fallen apart on the stand and she had no firsthand information about the murders. With her history of juvenile delinquency and drug use, it didn’t matter that she’d been clean for more than a decade before the trial. When on the stand, the judge sustained every one of Glenn’s objections. Nothing Sherry said was on the record. Only during the penalty phase did her testimony help.

Now she was dead.

“How did he get her address?” Carina asked the same question Will had been thinking. “I thought she’d moved since the trial.”

Will’s stomach dropped as the only plausible answer sunk in. “Call a patrol immediately and send them over to Carl and Dorothy Glenn’s house.”

The elder Glenns were alive and hadn’t seen their son. Will believed them.

But Will’s instincts told him that the only way Glenn could have found out where Sherry lived so quickly was through their parents. He called Jim Gage, head of their crime lab, who’d just arrived at the Jeffries homicide. While the Glenns hadn’t
seen
their son, he could easily have walked inside, even with the unmarked unit watching the front of the house.

The Glenns were distraught over the death of their daughter, yet didn’t believe their son had killed her. Will didn’t push it, not wanting to add to their anguish. They’d never believed their son capable of the heinous crimes of which he’d been convicted.

Carina came back from her inspection of the house and motioned for him to follow her out. “There’s a key under the mat at the back door. Want to bet the Glenns have always had a key under their back mat?” Carina had also found an address book on the top of the Glenns’ neat desk. She had bagged it. “Sherry’s current address and phone number are in here.”

Will confirmed the information with the Glenns. They’d lived in the same house for forty-two years, since they married. For all those years, they had a key under the mat.