Secrets in the Shadows (27 page)

“You really want to do that, or are you guys having fun at my expense?” he asked her, his tone brusque.

Stacy lowered her hands and cleared her throat. She fiddled with the straw in her cup and finally glanced at him, her fingers tapping furiously on the table. “I wouldn’t be opposed to dinner.”

Their eyes met and a silent message passed. He nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll pick you up around six o’clock?”

“That’s fine,” she mumbled. “Six is fine,” she repeated a little louder when Maria kicked her. “Sounds good.”

“Okay.”

Stacy was quiet for a full minute after he walked away. She sat there, just staring at Maria, who looked back at her innocently. “I can’t believe you just did that,” she said in a furious whisper.

Maria just smirked at her and took a sip of her tea. “Did what? Got you a date with a guy who’s been drooling over you for at least two years?” When Stacy just glowered at her, Maria nodded. “Yep, I did that.” Raising her napkin to her lips, she pointed at Stacy’s plate. “You’d better eat while it’s still hot.”

Stacy gave her another hard look and turned her attention to her food.

“Seriously, though,” Maria said after a few minutes. “You’re both nice people, and you deserve some happiness. The worst thing that could happen is you go out, find out you don’t have anything in common, and go back to your regular lives. On the other hand, if you get married and have kids, I fully expect you to name the first one after me.”

“It’s not that I don’t—Maria, he’s a head-patter.” If she hadn’t been so embarrassed, the expression on her friend’s face would have sent her into gales of laughter.

“He’s a what?”

“A head-patter. A ‘don’t worry your pretty little head, let the big, strong man take care of you,’ head-patter.”

“Okay, and what’s wrong with letting someone take care of you now and then?”

Frustrated, Stacy wrapped her hands around her drink and pretended to strangle it. “Nothing, every now and then. But I guarantee our relationship won’t make it past the first time I have to be a cop around him. He doesn’t have the temperament to let his ‘woman’ be strong and independent.”

Maria narrowed her gaze. “Want to bet?”

Stacy held out her hand, and they shook. “What are the terms?”

“Whoever wins gets a mani/pedi paid for by the loser?”

“I’ll take that bet.” Finishing her sandwich, Stacy asked about the status of the fliers. All business now, Maria reached into her purse and pulled out a folder. Opening it, Stacy was amazed by the results.

“Wow. This is impressive. I never would have believed you could get this much detail from the little you had to work with.”

Maria gave a small satisfied smile, and took a bite of her salad. Swallowing, she said, “Thanks. I had good source material. The video quality was great, really top of the line, and that made my job a whole lot easier. I was able to calculate height and build pretty easily.”

There were two fliers, one for the apparent killer and one for the mystery ‘date.’ They contained approximations of the men’s build, height, and race, and were ready to be released to law enforcement and media outlets if necessary.

“Did you find out much from her attorney?” Maria asked.

“Oh, yeah. This case is going to be an even bigger mess than we originally thought.”

“Is that possible?”

Stacy fell silent as Carla came over to check on them. “You ladies need anything else? Dessert, maybe?” She looked at Stacy as she said this, knowing the detective had a sweet tooth. “I have a fresh baklava in the back, still a little warm.”

Stacy groaned. “Carla, if I ate here every day, I’d weigh three hundred pounds. You know I can’t resist your baklava.”

The older woman smiled. “Maria, how about you?”

“No, but thanks.”

Taking their empty plates, Carla told them she’d be right back with the dessert. As she walked away, Stacy noticed that all the other tables had emptied while they were talking. “I’d like to show Carla the fliers. She sees a lot of people come through here every day. What do you think?”

“You’re the detective.”

Stacy sighed, her grin belying her words. “That’s just your go-to answer, isn’t it?” Her friend shrugged and smiled, not saying anything. “We were hoping to keep this under wraps, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible once word gets out about what the attorney told me today.” She put her elbows on the table and ran her hands over her face. “Apparently, Charity Vaughn was not our victim’s given name.”

Maria blinked with shock. “Do what? Holy crap. Does Ethan know? Wyatt?”

“Not yet. I’m supposed to brief everyone this afternoon at three-thirty. You’ll be there, right?”

“Of course.”

She groaned and rubbed her shoulder where it met her neck. “This was already a messed up case, but now? I’d hate to have to be in Wyatt’s shoes when this hits the fan.”

Carla returned with the baklava, and Stacy moved the folder off the table and into her lap. “Carla, we need to ask you to take a look at something for us, if you don’t mind. You’ve heard about the murder over at the art gallery, I assume?”

“Oh, yes. It’s been on everyone’s minds today. I’m surprised you didn’t get bombarded with questions as soon as you walked in the door.”

“Oh, she did,” Maria chimed in, “but Andre came to the rescue and made them leave her alone.”

Carla shared her smile and looked at Stacy, who was blushing a little. “What is it you need me to look at?”

Stacy handed her the fliers. “Have you ever seen either of these men before?”

The older woman frowned, her brow wrinkling. “I think—do you mind if I show these to Dimitri and Andre?”

“No, that’s fine.”

Carla walked over to the counter and shouted back to the kitchen. When Andre came to the door, she asked him to bring his father and come out front for a minute. Coming back to Stacy and Maria’s table, she pointed to the alleged killer.

“I don’t know him,” she said, her voice filled with certainty. “I’ve never seen him before. This other guy, however, I know.”

The men walked up, and she showed them the paper. “Who is this guy, Dimitri? I know his face, but I can’t think of his name.”

Recognition dawned on Dimitri’s face. “He’s that new doctor over at the Primary Care Clinic.” He looked at Andre. “Remember? He stitched up Max when she cut her hand a couple of weeks ago, and he’s been in here a few times for meat. I forget his name.” He turned back to Stacy and Maria. “These your bad guys?”

“They’re persons of interest, but that’s all.” She moved her gaze to Andre, who had picked up the papers and was studying them closer. “Can you remember his name?”

He shook his head. “No, I can’t, but I bet Max can. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him the whole time she was getting stitches. I do remember that he said he hasn’t been in town very long, only a couple of months. You want me to call my sister and ask her the guy’s name?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind. Just don’t mention why we need to know, if you can avoid it.”

He made the call. When his sister answered, he asked her if she remembered the name of the doctor who stitched her up. She responded, and he thanked her, and hung up without letting her ask any questions.

Carla raised her brows at her son. “You’ll pay for that later, you know.”

“She’ll get over it.” He laid the flier down on the table. “Your guy’s name is Chad Ormsby.”

Stacy pulled the flier to her and wrote the name across the bottom. “You said he’s an M.D. at the Primary Care Clinic?”

“That’s right,” said Dimitri. “For what it’s worth, he sewed Maxi up all nice and neat. She barely has a scar, and it was a bad cut.”

“Thanks, everyone. This really helps.”

“Have either of you seen the man on this second flier?” Maria asked, tapping the paper. They shook their heads.

“If he’s been in here, it’s not while I’ve been working. If you ladies don’t need anything else, I’d better get back to work.” Dimitri excused himself, and headed toward the kitchen. Carla followed him.

“I guess we’d better be going, too.” Gathering the papers, Stacy stood. When Andre stopped her, she frowned.

“Do you have a second?”

With a nod for Maria to go ahead, she cleared her throat. “Sure. What’s up?”

He hesitated. “Were you serious about Friday? Dinner, I mean?”

Stacy wet her lips and rocked back on her feet a little bit, cheeks turning pink. “I’m sorry if Maria embarrassed you. She means well, but she speaks sometimes before she thinks.”

Scowling, he asked, “So you don’t want to go out?”

Throwing caution to the wind, she gave in to the inevitable. “I wouldn’t mind going out Friday evening, if you don’t have other plans. I don’t want to interrupt your schedule or anything.”

His expression was still fierce but softened a little at her words. “Is six o’clock still good, then?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Six is fine.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. He took the pen she was holding clenched in her hand, and wrote a number on the back. “My cell number.” He handed her the card. “Call me if you need to. If your schedule changes or something. Or if you just want to talk.”

Stacy took the card, fingering its edges. “See you at six.”

Walking across the street to the courthouse, she cursed. She’d had the chance to turn down the date, but something inside her told her to keep it. Entering the courthouse, she pushed Andre to the back of her mind. She had a lot of prep work to do before the meeting that afternoon.

The afternoon briefing was a very tense affair. Once everyone was assembled, Ethan went over the pertinent points he and Jason had found in the journals and tapes from Charity’s apartment.

“We cataloged everything. We have one hundred ninety-six journals, and one hundred seven miniDV tapes. All the tapes are about sixty minutes long, and it looks like she had a motion sensor on the camera, so that it would only record when she hit the button or when there was movement in front of the sensor.”

“These tapes only record for sixty minutes, and she was pretty frugal with their use. She seemed to record enough of the encounters to identify her partners, but not the whole ‘date,’ if you will. Like Bert suspected, she had a button built into her phone system she would hit when she wanted to start or stop recording, and a similar button on the security keypad by the front door.”

Jason added, “When we watched the last tape again, we noticed the ‘jumps’ in the time stamp, and that’s when we figured out what was going on.”

“So if she hadn’t been meticulous about the way she recorded, we never would have gotten the shots of her killer, would we?” Wyatt asked.

Ethan shook his head. “Nope, not a chance. As it was, we only have a couple minutes of him on tape, and most of that is sound and flashes of movement.”

The sheriff perched on the edge of the table, studying the board depicting the crime’s probable timeline. With arms crossed and a pen dangling from his fingertips like a cigarette, his tension was palpable. Standing, he turned and looked down the table at the boxes and stacks of evidence. “How far have we gotten in reviewing all this?”

“We got everything organized by date, and we split into teams. We weren’t actually able to start reviewing until about ten last night, and Jason and I were here until early this morning,” Ethan said. “I’ve been reading journals, and Jason’s been doing tapes. I’ve finished six journals, and I’m starting on the seventh.”

“Jason?”

“I’m starting on the ninth video now. I’m able to get through them pretty quickly because I can fast forward through most of the actual sex once I’ve gotten a good shot of her partners.”

“That’s not been pleasant, I’d imagine,” Wyatt remarked.

Jason made a face. “So far, she’s had five different male partners, and the tapes are dated from March fourteenth through April fifteenth, three years ago.”

“Who were the men?” Stacy asked. “Were you able to recognize them?”

“Some.” He was grim as he reached for a bottle of water. “I know two of them well, and one by sight. Not sure who the other two are, but I logged the time stamp on the tapes so that Maria can pull their pictures off. So far, I’ve been treated to seeing my own uncle and cousin getting naked with Charity, as well as Reese Bolen.”

Stacy snorted. “That’s no surprise. Reese Bolen tries to nail everything in town that wears a skirt and some things that don’t.”

Maria agreed. “I can’t tell you how many times he’s hit on me. Turning him down has almost become a ritual.”

Wyatt frowned, then turned to Jason. “John and Barney? Not together, I hope?”

“No! Please, God, don’t put that image in my mind. It’s bad enough, as is.” Shuddering, he rubbed his eyes. “So far she’s just had one partner at a time, and I hope it stays that way. And it’s only been men so far.”