Unforgivable (13 page)

“Good thing, too,” Ric said. The gun was nicknamed the “cop killer” because of its ability to penetrate Kevlar.

Black passed the pistol to Ric. He admired the olive drab finish, the tightly checkered grip, the tactical light beneath the barrel. Ric had never seen one of these up close, but he knew a lot of SWAT guys who liked them.

“Nice,” Ric said, although everyone in the room knew that was a gross understatement. He handed back the weapon.

“We were just killing time. Scott ran down that brass from the Hannigan crime scene.”

“You matched the gun?”

“The shell casing.” Black opened a cabinet and put the pistol away alongside an impressive array of handguns. “I ran it through IBIS.”

“The ATF database?” Ric asked.

“Right. We’re working on our own database, but it isn’t operational yet, so we still have to go outside to get our comparisons.”

“And you got a match?” Ric glanced at Jonah and saw the gleam in his eye. His partner wouldn’t have called him all the way out there just to look at some cool toys.

“Take a look.” Black led him across the room to a computer workstation. He tapped a mouse, and the image appeared on flat-screen monitor on the wall beside him.

“Picture on the left is from the shell casing recovered on the shoulder of Old Mill Road,” Jonah said.

The screen was about twice as big as his TV at home. It showed a circular shell casing with marks from the firing pin. “That’s most likely from the round that hit Hannigan.”

“On the right’s another image from your crime scene. This cartridge case was recovered from the ditch. Identical markings.”

“Probably the round that hit Mia,” Jonah said.

Ric gritted his teeth as he stared up at the screen. The idea of someone putting a bullet through that soft flesh of hers made his blood boil. A few inches to the left, and Ric could have been at two funerals today.

“Here’s the third one.” Black tapped a few keys, and a new image popped up, nearly identical to the other two, only this one was slightly grayer. “This was in the database. Same firing pin marks. Also, whatever weapon ejected the shell casing at your crime scene ejected this one, too. The extractor marks match.”

“Where’s it from?” Ric looked at Jonah and knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Fort Worth,” Jonah said. “I put in a call right before you got here.”

“What kind of case?”

“Homicide. Groundskeeper at a country club turned up with a bullet in his brain. They found him on the side of the road. Shell casing was recovered from the ditch right next to him. It’s an open file. Six years old.”

“Also, I took a look at the bullet collected by the ME at autopsy,” Black said. “It was a little misshapen, but I ran some tests. Your murder weapon is going to be a forty-caliber Glock. Besides the rifling marks on the projectile, we’ve got the shells. The Glock uses a flat-tip firing pin, which leaves a distinctive mark on the primer of the casing. Most firing pins are round and leave a round dimple on the primer. You recover any candidates yet?”

“Not yet,” Jonah said.

“Well, if you do, gimme a yell, and we’ll do a test fire for you.”

“If we get our hands on a weapon, you’ll be the first to know,” Ric said.

Fifteen minutes later, they exited the Delphi Center and headed for the parking lot.

“Not the first Fort Worth murder case that’s come up lately,” Jonah said as they tromped down the steps.

Ric glanced at his partner. He’d told him about the cold case in Fort Worth, although he’d omitted the part about Mia’s dream. He hadn’t wanted to make her sound flaky. Why he was protecting Jonah’s opinion of her Ric had no idea.

“You think it’s a coincidence?” Jonah asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Yeah, but what do you
think
?”

Mia’s rental car was parked in the front row, beneath a security light. Ric walked over to the Aveo and touched
the hood. Warm. She’d just arrived. He glanced over his shoulder at the row of windows glowing at the top of the building.

Ric looked at his partner. “I think I’ve never been a big believer in coincidences.”

Mia’s eyes blurred with tears as she stared at Sam’s picture on her computer screen. Where had this come from? Who had sent it? She would have given anything for the magical ability to crawl into the photograph with Sam and see who was standing on the other side of that camera lens. Maybe Alex could tell her. She was no magician, she was the closest Mia knew, at least when it came to computers. If anyone in the lab’s Cyber Crimes Unit could provide Mia with some desperately needed answers here, it was Alex Lovell. And Mia needed answers, needed them badly enough to return to the very last place she wanted to be right now, a place so flooded with unpleasant memories that just standing in the room was unnerving.

“What are you doing?”

She gasped and spun around. Ric Santos stood in her doorway, and for an instant, she thought she was imagining him.

His gazed homed in on her computer screen. Mia glanced down, panicked. Could he see the image?

“Oh, you know.” She eased her body in front of the screen and forced a smile. “Just working late. More reports.”

Ric’s gaze lingered on her eyes, and she knew he knew that she was lying. Or at least nervous. Why hadn’t she bothered to close her door? Because she’d only planned
to be in there a minute, just long enough to collect her laptop and take it across the hall to show Alex, who was waiting for her right that very second.

Ric stepped closer, and Mia tensed. “Kind of late, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

He glanced at her computer but didn’t react. Maybe he thought it was a screen saver. She reached over casually and put the system to sleep.

“So.” She turned around to face him. “What are
you
doing here? It’s almost ten.”

“I was down in ballistics.”

“How’d you get up here?”

“Bumped into Ben in the parking lot after I noticed your car. He offered me an official escort.”

Mia’s brain kicked into gear. Ben was in cyber crimes, and he and Ric knew each other from the cold case they’d worked on last summer. That meant Alex wasn’t alone in the computer lab, and Mia was going to have to be careful about what she said. She shot a longing glance at the door. Alex was probably waiting for her, and from her tone of voice on the phone earlier, Mia knew she had somewhere else she wanted to be. Mia did, too. Anywhere but there. She had to get rid of Ric.

“What’d you do with your coat?”

Her gaze snapped to his. Her coat? She opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. Her coat was on the floor of her bedroom, alongside her shredded panty hose. Every stitch of clothing she’d had on today now reeked of smoke from that incinerator.

“That ski vest’s not gonna cut it.” Ric nodded at her
bare arms. “It’s supposed to dip below twenty tonight.”

He was right. In a T-shirt and jeans, she wasn’t dressed for the weather. But after spending the afternoon with Vivian and Sam, she’d been in a hurry. She’d been in a
huge
hurry to drive out here and get answers to some of her questions, specifically, how had someone faked the kidnapping of a little boy when two teachers, a principal, and the boy himself claimed he’d been safely inside his school all day long?

Alex was the only person Mia knew who might be able to answer that. If Mia could just get rid of the detective standing in her office, eyeing her suspiciously.

He knows I’m guilty.
The thought flashed through her brain, but she banished it. How could he know?

“You’re right.” She managed another smile that was so phony, her cheeks hurt. “I should have checked the weather.” She tried to keep her hands steady as she folded shut her laptop and zipped it into her computer bag. She felt Ric’s gaze on her as she hitched the bag onto her shoulder.

“You’re headed home?”

“Actually, I am. I just have to swing by the computer lab and talk to someone for a few minutes.”

He stepped closer, and his dark brows knitted. “Something wrong?”

“No. Why?” She made her eyes wide and tried to look clueless while her pulse pounded in her ears.
He knows everything. Someone saw me. He’s not here for ballistics—he knows what I did.

He reached up and brushed a lock of hair out of her face. It took every ounce of her self-control not to burst into tears. Yes, something was
very
wrong. And if he
kept looking at her with those concerned eyes, she was going to break down and tell him everything.

“I’ll walk you,” he said, and it was all she could do not to heave a sigh of relief.

She led him out of her office. The computer lab was right down the hall, which meant only a few more seconds of dodging his questions. She remembered what her sister, the lawyer, always said—the best defense is a good offense.

She turned to look at him. “How was the funeral today?”

“Okay.”

At his obvious discomfort, she pressed harder. “Any progress on Frank’s case?”

“No.”

And whaddaya know? The conversation fizzled.

They passed the DNA lab, where a couple of her colleagues were burning the midnight oil. One looked up from his microscope as she passed. Mark. He’d been there earlier, when she’d taken the evidence. Had he noticed her shaking? Did he look suspicious now? Her composure vanished, and her pulse started racing again.

“Mia?”

“What?” She glanced up at Ric.

“I said, how’d it go in court? Did you give Pickerton a run for his money?”

“Oh. No, not exactly.”

Her court appearance felt light-years ago. In a way, it was. And in that moment, she realized that her career would be forever divided into two phases: before and after what she’d done that afternoon. That afternoon
was pivotal. Irrevocable. And she’d be dealing with the fallout for the rest of her career—if she still had a career, which was highly doubtful. She felt that tightness in her chest again, that gaspy feeling, as if there wasn’t enough air. What was she going to
do
?

When they reached Digital Imaging and Cyber Crimes, Alex glanced up from her computer and got up to come open the door. She eyed Ric curiously through the window.

“Want me to wait?” Ric asked. “We can grab some dinner after?”

Mia swallowed hard. He was watching her mistrustfully. He knew something was up.

She forced another smile. “How about a rain check? This could take a while.”

Alex pushed open the door, and Mia slipped through without a backward glance. She couldn’t handle Ric right now; he was much too observant, and she couldn’t take another cross-examination.

“What was that about?” Alex asked.

“Nothing. Should we set up at your desk?” Mia glanced around the room and noticed Ben at the back, clacking away on his keyboard.

“Works for me.”

In seconds, Alex had Mia’s laptop open and the e-mail forwarded to herself so that she could manipulate it on her own computer.

Mia’s stomach tightened as Sam’s smiling face appeared larger than life on Alex’s screen. Guilt swamped her. She couldn’t believe her nephew was caught up in this nightmare.

“Can you trace the message?” she asked anxiously.

Alex’s fingers danced over the keys, but she didn’t say anything as she opened windows and read lines of text that looked to Mia like gibberish.

“This file was altered before it was sent,” Alex mumbled. “Disguised, you might say. However”—
tap-tap-tap
—”there are a few things left to work with.”

More clicking at the keyboard as Mia gnawed her thumbnail. Alex muttered. Mia held her breath. Finally, she couldn’t stand it.

“I need to know where he got this photo,” Mia said. “I need to know how this happened.”

She needed to understand how someone had managed to send her this picture of Sam standing in front of his school, in front of a book-fair announcement that had been posted on the school marquee just that morning, when everyone, including Sam, said he hadn’t set foot outdoors all day long.

“Gimme a minute,” Alex said.

Mia took a deep breath.
Patience.
But her nerves were raw, and the adrenaline that had been rushing through her system all day was starting to take its toll.

After destroying critical evidence in an active murder investigation, Mia had rushed back to her car, only to discover that the caller had hung up. Without a word about Sam. Sick with fear and yet terrified to call the police, Mia had called her sister, launching a frantic search for Sam, who turned out to be sitting safely in his math class at Cedar Hollow Elementary. Despite the assurances of the principal, both Vivian and Mia had shown up at the school anyway to make sure there was no mistake, which there wasn’t. Sam was fine. Maybe a little baffled by all
the grown-ups popping their heads into his classroom but fine.

Mia had spent the next half-hour in the front seat of her sister’s Volvo, spilling her guts. She’d told Viv everything, start to finish, and they’d both shed tears. But then Vivian quickly moved on to practical matters, such as what to do next. They’d come up with a plan—one for Vivian and Sam and another for Mia.

Mia’s plan involved appearing to follow the caller’s instructions while she figured out what the hell was going on. Her sister’s plan was more complicated, but it should keep her and Sam safe.

“I think I see what happened here,” Alex said, jerking her back to the present. Mia looked into her friend’s chocolate-brown eyes and felt a wave of trust. Before joining the Delphi Center, Alex had managed what amounted to a civilian-run witness-protection program. She knew how to keep secrets.

“Are you listening, Mia? You look a little dazed.”

“I’m listening.”

“Okay, what you’ve got here is a picture within a picture. In other words, it’s a fake.”

Mia wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but something in Alex’s tone told her she couldn’t. “There’s a problem, isn’t there?”

“In terms of Sam’s safety? I’d say yes, there’s a major problem.” Alex pointed at Sam’s face. “The image of your nephew is from an actual photograph. So is the image of the school. The doctored part is these images together. They’ve been overlaid. It’s a pretty good job, too. If it weren’t for this new software I’m test-driving, I might have missed the signs.”