Mortal Sin (66 page)

“I told you, Henry,” the woman said to her husband. “I’m Penny Hoffman.” Mrs. Hoffman extended her hand nervously. It was cold, dry, and fragile, like the woman in front of her. “This is my husband, Henry. I knew it was you.” She gripped her purse tightly with both hands, the straps worn and frayed. “Do you believe in divine providence?”

Touchy subject. Max answered, “Sometimes.”

David was standing to the side, watching the situation. He was always on alert, even when it was wholly unnecessary. Ever since the incident in Chicago last year when Max had been attacked in a parking garage by someone who hadn’t wanted to hear the truth on her show, David was suspicious of everyone.

Even little old ladies.

“We just flew in from Phoenix,” Henry said.

“For our granddaughter’s wedding,” Penny added. “Last year, we were here for a funeral.”

“My condolences,” Max said.

Penny blinked back a sheen of tears and smiled awkwardly. “Our other grandchild. Jessica’s brother, Jason.”

“Penny,” Henry said, taking his wife’s hand, “Ms. Revere doesn’t want to hear about this now.”

Penny continued. “The police say they have no leads.”

The way she said “no leads” had Max’s instincts twitching. The police may have no leads they shared with family, but there was always a lead—and it was obvious by her tone that Penny had her own theories.

In Max’s experience, murder was almost always personal. There were stranger murders and serial killers, but they were few and far between. Most victims were killed by those they trusted most. A friend. A spouse. A parent. A child.

David cleared his throat. He grabbed Max’s red case from the conveyor belt. He’d already retrieved his smaller khaki bag. He wouldn’t have checked it at all, except he’d packed a gun.

“They need to go,” Henry told Penny. “It was very nice to meet you, Ms. Revere. Very nice. You’re even prettier in person.”

“Thank you,” Max said. “If you’d like to write me a letter about your grandson’s case, here’s my office address and email.” She pulled a card from her pocket.

She received hundreds of letters and emails a week from families wanting her to do any number of things from proving a loved one innocent to a killer guilty. Most dealt with cold cases and contained few leads. She didn’t have time to investigate all the unsolved murders she heard about, and she couldn’t always solve the ones she investigated.

But she always gave the families whatever truth she found. For better or worse.

She took a pen out of her pocket and wrote on the back. “Here’s my personal email.”

Henry took the card but Penny looked upset. “I have written. Twice.”

By the sound of her voice, she hadn’t received a response. A sliver of anger ran up Max’s spine. Her newest assistant was going to have some explaining to do if she wanted to keep her job. All emails and letters must be responded to within a week. Max had drafted four form letters that fit most situations, and what didn’t fit, she was supposed to review.

Henry said, “We thought you might be interested in the case since Jason was killed at Atherton Prep.”

Max was speechless—a rarity. She’d graduated from Atherton College Prep thirteen years ago, but no one told her about this murder. The second in the history of the campus.

“When?” she managed to ask.

“The Saturday after Thanksgiving.”

Nearly five months ago.

“I’ll be in town all weekend,” Max said. “I’d like to hear your story. I can’t promise I’ll investigate, but I will listen.”

They both smiled and tears moistened Penny’s eyes. Max didn’t want to see tears. Especially genuine tears like Penny’s. “Thank you. We’ll be here for two weeks. You don’t know what this means to us.”

Max had Kevin’s funeral tomorrow, and she was meeting with Jodi in an hour—she was going to be late—and then there was her own family she had to deal with. That she could put off.

“Where are you staying?”

“The Embassy Suites in Redwood Shores,” Henry said. “Our son said we could stay with them, but they have so many last-minute things to do for the wedding, we didn’t want to be a bother.”

Max smiled. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have been any trouble. I can meet you at your hotel tomorrow morning. Is eight too early?”

Penny said, “We always rise at dawn.”

David was giving Max his version of the evil eye. For him, it was a sterner frown than he normally wore.

Max attached her laptop case to the top of her suitcase and said good-bye to the Hoffmans. She and David stepped out of the terminal and into the spring morning, a cold wind rolling off the Bay that made her shiver. It had been seventy degrees and clear when she left the Miami Airport at six a.m.

They walked down the wide sidewalk toward the rental car shuttle stop.

“Why?” David said.

She didn’t answer his question. “Call Ginger. Tell her to find the letters the Hoffmans mentioned and get them to me, verbatim, before she leaves the office today. I want to know why I didn’t see them in the first place.”

“Maybe she thought you had enough on your plate. Or maybe she didn’t see them at all. They could have come in when Ashley was still in the office. Or Josh.”

Max didn’t want to think about Ashley. What a train wreck. And Josh? Every time she thought about him, she wished she could fire him all over again.

Max didn’t have a great track record with office managers. David had been with her for eighteen months—in that time, she’d gone through six office managers. So far, Ginger had been here four months. Two more weeks and she’d win the prize for longest assistant.

They stopped under the shuttle sign. David handed Max his cell phone. “It’s Marco.”

“He’s calling you, not me.”

“Because you haven’t been answering your phone. This is the third time he’s called me.”

Max didn’t take the phone, so David answered. Max tried to ignore the conversation as she looked for any sign that the shuttle was near. It was nowhere in sight.

“She’s right here,” David said. “No, she didn’t lose her phone.”

Max swore under her breath and took David’s phone from his hand. “I didn’t answer my phone because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“You have to talk to me sometime, sweetheart.” FBI Special Agent Marco Lopez spoke low and clear, working double time to control his Cuban temper.

“Not today.”

“You intentionally left before I saw the news.”

“I told you yesterday I had a funeral in California.”

“You didn’t tell me that you filed your article, and you had plenty of time to record a three-minute spot for the local news. You exposed my informant and jeopardized my case!” His voice rose in volume as he spoke.

Max had a lot of experience remaining calm while talking to Marco. “Your informant put one of his hookers in the hospital for a week and thwarted the investigation into Candace Arunda’s murder.”

“He was my only link to the Garbena Cartel!” Though Marco was born and raised in Miami, his parents had both come from Cuba, and when he got angry and spoke fast, he adopted a hybrid Americanized Cuban accent.

“I’m not rehashing this with you,” she said. “I told you why I was in Miami when you asked last week.”

“You should have warned me.”

“Last time I gave you an early copy of an article, your boss attempted to have it scuttled.”

“That was nine years ago!”

“Fool me once,” she said.

“Dammit, Max! You avoided me because you
knew
you overstepped this time.” She pictured Marco pacing his office, his free hand opening and closing.

“
Overstepped
?” Max took a deep breath. Marco, more than anyone, could raise her blood pressure. “Is that what you call exposing the truth about the brutal murder of an underage prostitute? Is an ‘in’ with the cartel more important than justice for a seventeen-year-old girl?”

“Don’t twist what I said! You know I care. You should have given me twenty-four hours to clean up this mess. Ramirez would have been in prison either way.”

“Your team screwed up, another girl was in jeopardy, and I’m supposed to give you time to fix it because we’re having sex? Garbena is costing you your soul, Marco.”

David cleared his throat. Maxine didn’t care about attracting an audience as much as her assistant, but she stepped farther away from the other travelers waiting for the shuttle.

“You’re the most frustrating woman I’ve ever known!”

“I’ve never lied to you, Marco. I wish you could say the same to me.” She hung up and returned David’s phone.

Her stomach was twisted in knots. She wished she could have left things differently with Marco.

“You should have told him before you left,” David said.

“He knew why I was in Miami, and he lied to me.”

“He couldn’t tell you—“

Max rarely interrupted, but she didn’t let David finish. “He
lied
. He didn’t say, ‘Max, I can’t talk to you about this case,’ which he’s done in the past and I accept. This time, he deliberately gave me false information to protect his criminal informant, and then he expected me to put it in print. You know as well as I do that Marco and his team want the big fish, and if innocent guppies get eaten in the process, it’s collateral damage.”

“You still should have told him. He shouldn’t have read it in the morning paper.” He glanced at her, understanding widening his eyes. “You intentionally sabotaged your relationship. Why?”

She didn’t answer right away because the shuttle pulled up. There were five of them, and Max sat in the back row of the twelve-passenger van. David sat next to her. Maybe because of David’s appearance, or her previous phone conversation, the other passengers crammed into the front.

David was perceptive. She may not have consciously wanted to end her mostly-off relationship with Special Agent Marco Lopez, but it was primarily physical. They had a long history. But she couldn’t allow her libido to control her career-sense. She never had in the past, and just because she had feelings for Marco didn’t mean she’d allow it to happen now.

“In the nine years I’ve known Marco, I’ve never lied to him,” Max said after the van started moving. “I’ve never told him I was someone I’m not. He thinks he can change me, and every time I see him, we screw like rabbits and he tries to get me to bury my story. When I don’t, he accuses me of not caring who I hurt. I’m tired of explaining myself to him, and I’m not going to change just to please him.”

“I give you six months.”

“For what?”

“To find a story to cover in Miami so you have an excuse to go back.”

Max laughed, a deep, throaty, genuine laugh. “That’s why I love you, David. You remind me that I am flawed.”

He smiled, which made the two-inch jagged scar across his left temple almost charming. “It’s the least I can do.”

The shuttle van pulled up in front of the rental car kiosks. David had previously taken care of the arrangements and handed her the paperwork. While the other passengers disembarked, Max said, “Marco needs to find a sweet Cuban girl who likes his macho bullshit and does what he says when he says it. I’m done.”

She thought saying it out loud would make her feel better, but all it did was remind her how rigid she could be. How no matter how much she cared about someone, she couldn’t—she
wouldn’t
—compromise her core values for them. She had no doubt Marco felt the same way, which left them at an impasse.

A dark sense of melancholy overcame her. It was, truly, over.

Book 2 in the Maxine Revere investigative reporter series, on sale April 7, 2015

Investigative reporter Max Revere has won a coveted interview with suspected serial killer, Adam Bachman. She meets him in this interview from Chapter Two of COMPULSION. Enjoy this exclusive excerpt!

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Adam Bachman was twenty-seven but looked younger in the too-large, dark-gray suit and slim navy tie. Max suspected his attorney had intentionally brought him a suit that didn’t fit, to make the young man appear more vulnerable and less threatening to the jury. His brown hair had been neatly trimmed, and his hands—which were cuffed in front of him—immaculate and soft. He was neither fat nor thin, attractive nor ugly. He was, in fact, average and pleasant looking. On the surface, he looked trustworthy—the kind of guy people would be immediately comfortable with. The kind of guy people are surprised when he’s not what he seems. He looked
nice.
If ever there was a person who fit that boring word, it was Adam Bachman.
Every interview Max had done leading up to today confirmed that no one thought
very
nice
Adam Bachman could have done anything so violent.

Max smiled and sat down across from Bachman. It was a wide table—she wouldn’t be able to touch him unless she reached all the way forward—but she had no intention of getting that close. He’d suffocated five people.

Seven if you’re right, Maxine.

But she wasn’t going to lead with her theory.

“Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Mr. Bachman. Per your request, there are no cameras here, just a tape recorder. That’s to protect you as much as me. But also as you requested, the tape will not be publicly aired.”

He didn’t say anything, simply stared at her with a half-smile. It was the smile of someone with a secret, but she suspected his expression meant nothing. He might want to get under her skin, or he might just not know how to start. He may intend to play games with her—it wouldn’t be the first time a killer tried to manipulate her.

She said, “Because we only have twenty minutes, I’d like to get right to my questions.”

He nodded. Again.
Great
. If he didn’t talk, she’d have nothing to write. She could see the headline now:

Mute Man on Trial for Murder

She knew her questions by heart, but glanced at her notes to ground herself. Her goal in this meeting was to find a thread that she could pull on the disappearance of Jim and Sandy Palazzolo. The couple, in their mid-fifties, had been on their second honeymoon. They’d checked out of their hotel a year ago and had not been heard from since.