While not the gigantic declaration of love I was hoping for, at least with these two, it was a start. “Good for you,” I told her. A short silence followed that and I asked, “So what now?”
Candice got up and walked toward the door. “Now that you’re fed and watered, I’m off to the Apple Store to replace the Mac.”
I made a face. “It was in the car with us yesterday, wasn’t it?”
Candice nodded. “Yep.”
“Did you lose everything?”
“No, thank God. I back up my laptop every night, and I was smart enough to scan the girls’ files into my computer the day I made copies—so it should be easy to just transfer the data and print them out again. I should only be gone a couple of hours and I can bring you back some lunch after I’m done with the data transfer.”
“You and your technobabble,” I said. “You know what I hear when you say stuff like that?”
Candice grinned. “What?”
“Blah, blah, blah, laptop, blah, blah, blah, copies, blah, blah, blah, lunch in two hours.”
Candice sighed dramatically. “I’ll pull you into the twenty-first century yet, Sundance,” she said, then turned to the door. She seemed to have second thoughts, though, and pivoted back around to me. “Say, while I’m at the Apple Store, did you want me to replace your phone for you?”
I perked up at that. By some miracle, my purse had been recovered by the firefighters when they dragged Candice’s car out of the river, but the phone was toast. “Oh, man! I’ve wanted an excuse to buy an iPhone forever! I can write you a check,” I said, wondering where I’d put my checkbook when I’d unpacked the other day.
Candice slung her purse over her shoulder. “Forget about it,” she said. “This one’s on me.”
My eyes widened. “You sure?”
Candice stepped through the doorway. “Yep. It’s the least I can do after almost killing you yesterday. Are you going to be okay for the next couple of hours?”
“I should be fine.”
“Great. I’ll be back with some lunch around noon.”
Dutch came home at six to relieve Candice. She’d spent most of the afternoon putting together the soggy notes from the river with what she’d managed to recover from her backup hard drive. She also called Patrice’s mother and apologized for not showing up for the interview, saying only that we’d had car trouble. The two talked on the phone and scheduled another meeting for the following Monday.
After Candice left, Dutch retrieved something from the car. It was gift wrapped. “Awww!” I exclaimed when he handed it to me. “You got me something?”
“I did,” he said. I thought it was adorable how his chest puffed out a little like he knew he was all that and a bag of cheese puffs.
I ripped open the package and stared at a brand-new BlackBerry. “Uh . . . ,” I said, completely surprised.
“To replace the phone you lost in the river,” he said. “I know you didn’t really like your old one, and I thought this might be a good fit for you.”
“Uh . . .”
“It has e-mail and a camera and great service. And don’t worry, it doesn’t have a GPS signal embedded in it. I’ll be completely unaware of your every move.” That had been a sore spot for us in the past.
I laughed nervously, just as my brand-new iPhone chimed with an incoming text.
“What’s that?” Dutch asked, glancing to the side table where the iPhone was still making noise.
“Nothing!” I said quickly while holding up the BlackBerry and trying to distract him. “This is the greatest gift in the whole world, Dutch! Thank you!”
Dutch nodded but ignored my efforts to distract him. Instead he reached over and picked up the iPhone. “Incoming text from Candice,” he said, eyeing the screen. “She says she’s so glad that you and she now have the same phone.”
When he looked back at me, I gave him the biggest smile I could muster. “I can return the iPhone!”
Dutch sighed and handed me Candice’s gift. “Have you already set up your playlists?”
I felt a pang of guilt. I’d spent most of the afternoon buying songs on iTunes. “Maybe?”
He took the BlackBerry out of my hands. “How about I swap this out for a sound dock so you can play your tunes in here?”
I fluttered my lids at him. “I think I love you.”
Dutch chuckled and got up. “I’ll make us some dinner. And then there’s something I want you to look at.”
After dinner he handed me a file. “What’s this?” I asked, opening it and immediately wishing I hadn’t. “Gah!” I said, eyeing the grizzly crime-scene photo of the body of a man—sans head—covered in bruises and burns and cuts. Clearly he’d been through some kind of hell before his head was lopped off.
“Sorry. Forgot the first photo is a rough one.”
I closed the file. “Thanks, at least, for letting me eat dinner before showing me that.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a smile. “Did you get anything?”
“Did I get anything? Like, you seriously think I’m going to take one look at that god-awful picture and tell you who done it?”
Dutch smiled patiently. “It’s a lot like those other two cases. Remember the other two men who were found decapitated? You said you didn’t think they were drug related but that there was a definite connection between them?”
I blinked. “Oh, yeah,” I said, opening the file back up but avoiding the photos and flipping to the written details. “Similar MO here.”
“His body was found about a month after Felix Lopez, in April of two thousand nine. The only thing we can find that connects the three cases is that they all lived within the same two-mile radius.”
While Dutch was talking, I was taking in the facts on the page I was skimming. Avril Brown was an eighteen-year-old male of mixed race. He’d been living in Houston with his single mother until he got into serious trouble at the early age of fourteen when he’d participated in the gang rape of a thirteen- year-old girl. He’d been tried as an adult, but because he’d made a deal with the DA to identify the other assailants, he’d spent only two years in jail before his release.
The notes in the file documented interviews with friends, family, and acquaintances, who all swore that once Brown was released from prison and taken in by his paternal grandfather in Dallas, he’d turned a major corner and been really trying to get his act together. At the time of his death, he was on his way to completing his GED, was working forty hours a week at his grandfather’s mini- mart, and often helped some of his elderly neighbors with odd jobs around the hood.
“I talked to the grandfather this morning,” Dutch was telling me. “He swears on his grandson’s grave that Avril wasn’t involved in any gangs or narcotics dealing.”
“But this has the signature of a Mexican Mafia hit,” I said. The clincher was the decapitation. “Have they found the head?”
“No.”
“He was tortured,” I said. “That’s different from the other two cases.”
“Yep.”
“He either knew something or it was personal,” I added, feeling my way along the energy. “Someone tortured him to get information or wanted him to really suffer before he died.”
“What could he know?” Dutch asked me.
“I have no idea,” I said. “But I don’t think this was drug related. There’s something else here. It’s like, someone wanted information, but they also really wanted Brown to feel the pain. I don’t know who he pissed off, Dutch, but it was someone with a grudge.”
“One of the guys he accused in the gang rape?”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure my radar agreed. “Maybe,” I said. “It might be worth taking a look at who Avril turned over to get a lighter sentence. If one of them got out and tracked Avril down, then he could have been involved in the murder.”
“But what about the other two guys?” Dutch pressed. “How do they relate to that theory?”
I rolled my head from side to si
de trying to relieve the stiffness. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe the three guys knew each other—I mean, they were living in the same two- mile radius. Maybe they were friends, and if Avril was the last one killed, then maybe the first two were killed to get information about where Avril was.”
Dutch’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t like he was hard to find, Abs. A basic records search brought him up right away.”
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, so I know it doesn’t add up, but I have to be true to what my gut is saying, and it says there’s a connection.”
Dutch took the file back. “You’re sure?”
I closed my eyes and focused all my intuitive power on the three dead men. “I’m sure.”
Dutch leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, Edgar. I’ll take some guys off the other stuff you’ve given us and put them on this.”
“Good,” I said, but deep down I was really afraid it wasn’t going to make a bit of difference and that the one missing piece in how these three deaths were connected was the most urgent to identify.
Dutch and I spent much of the weekend taking it easy and recovering from our various flesh wounds. And I would have been happy to continue being a lounge lizard if it weren’t for the fact that I couldn’t shampoo my hair. What was worse was that I’d also been advised by the discharge nurse not to brush it, as if I wasn’t careful, I could end up pulling out one of the staples.
I missed the shower something fierce—baths just weren’t cutting it—and I didn’t know how I was going to make it a whole two weeks before I could scrub-a-dub-dub under the showerhead.
Monday morning Dutch headed in early, probably to talk to Harrison about the Avril, Felix, and Jason connection, and a bit later Candice showed up with a hot cup of coffee and an enthusiastic, “Ready?”
For the record, I was not ready. “My hair looks like crap.”
“It looks fine,” she lied. “Just pull it back with a scrunchie and let’s roll.”
“I can’t go out looking like this!” I protested.
Candice wheeled me around and trotted me into the bathroom. Being very careful, she managed to comb out some of the worst patches, and pull my locks into a ponytail with a triumphant, “Ta-da!”
I made a face in the mirror. “Maybe I should wear a bag. You know, like the Unknown Comic?”
“Or you can stop worrying about it and come on already. We’ve got to get to Patrice’s mom’s by noon.”
I sighed dramatically and shrugged into my jacket. “Fine.”
Candice drove at very moderate speeds all the way to Dallas, which impressed me, because I will admit I was a little nervous when we went outside and I saw that the yellow Porsche had been replaced by a red one.
“This the new car?” I’d asked.
Candice shook her head. “Just a rental. The other one was fully insured, thank God, but I don’t know that I’m going to stick with Porsche. I need a few more days behind the wheel to be sure this is the make and model for me.”
At least in the loaner the navigational system was working and we found Loraine Walker’s house without issue.
We parked in the drive and headed up the cement walk, which was badly cracked and in need of repair. The same could be said of the house. It looked like it had seen far better days. The once white paint had faded to a dirty gray, peeling in several patches, while the worn shutters hung limply at odd angles.
The flower beds and lawn were strewn with weeds and debris, making the place appear cluttered. The wooden steps leading to the front door creaked loudly, protesting our weight, and somewhere around back a dog barked. Candice knocked and we waited several seconds before the door was pulled open.
A woman in her mid to late forties stood opposite us. She appeared haggard and defeated. Her large brown eyes widened slightly when she saw us, but other than that, there was little expression. “You the investigators?” she asked.
“We are, ma’am,” Candice confirmed, extending her hand. “I’m Candice Fusco, and this is my associate Abigail Cooper.”
Loraine pumped Candice’s hand only once before she let go and waved us in. “Might as well get this over with,” she said.
She didn’t have any hint of an accent; in fact, there wasn’t much in her voice at all. Her tone was flat and somewhat hoarse, the product of too many cigarettes or too much hard living.
The house smelled terrible, like must, sweat, and smoke all overpowering my nostrils together. I noticed right away the lit cigarette on the far side of the room next to an easy chair. Loraine sat down and immediately picked it up, striking that smoker’s pose with one arm across her middle and the other arm propped up on it by the elbow. “What you wanna know?”
She said the words “What you” like “Whatchoo,” and given the hoarseness of her voice to my ears, it sounded like a sneeze.
Candice took a seat on a nearby chair, and I decided to stand and let my radar feel the space out.
“As I said on the phone, we’re investigating the abduction of two other little girls about the same age as Patrice when she went missing,” my partner began.
“Patrice drowned,” Loraine said, and there was a note of sorrow in her voice as she spoke her daughter’s name.
Candice clasped her hands together. I could sense she was working to be patient with this woman. “Yes, ma’am,” Candice said. “I’ve read about your daughter’s death in the newspaper and I’m so sorry for your loss. But I’m not sure that what happened to Patrice was an accident.”
For the first time since we’d entered the shabby home, there were signs of life in Loraine’s eyes. “You don’t?”
Candice shook her head. “That’s why I wanted to talk with you, Mrs. Walker. After looking into these other two abductions, we think that perhaps your daughter might fit the profile of these other two cases.”
“You think someone took her and murdered her?”
“We think it’s a possibility.”
Loraine took a long pull off her cigarette. Her fingers shook slightly as she inhaled. “I been telling that to the police for years,” she said. “But they don’t want to listen. They said that Patrice walked all the way to that pond and fell in. They said she was the cause of her own death, but I knew different. I knew that child wouldn’t’a done that. Patrice couldn’t swim and she was scared of water. She didn’t even like to take a bath. She wouldn’t go there on her own, nuh-uh.”
“What can you tell us about the day that Patrice disappeared?”
Loraine jammed her bud into the ashtray on the table and immediately reached for a replacement. Once she had it lit, she said, “Was a Tuesday. I remember ’cause I had to work the afternoon shift at the hospital.”
“You worked at a hospital?”
“I’m a nurse,” she said, and seemed to catch herself. “Was a nurse. I had my license pulled last year ’cause they said I stole some OxyContin.”
Neither Candice nor I commented on that admission. I knew that Loraine had stolen the drugs—I could see the guilt in her energy—and I’m pretty sure Candice picked up on it too. “What time did your shift start?” Candice asked, steering us back to the topic at hand.
“Three. Patrice usually got home around three fifteen, and she’d call me and leave me a voice mail when she got in to let me know she was safe. But that day I didn’t get no voice mail, and we was really busy too, so I didn’t have a chance to call her until my break at seven.”
“Did you speak with her?”
Loraine shook her head. “She didn’t answer the phone. So then I got worried and called my neighbor to go over and check on her, but Patrice wasn’t home and my neighbor said it didn’t look like she’d come home from school.”
“Did you call the police?”
Loraine bit her lip and lowered her eyes. “No.”
Candice and I exchanged a look. “No?” she asked.
Loraine took a deep ragged breath. “Patrice was only ten years old. She was mature for her ag
e, but I was scared the police would ask me why she was home by herself and call CPS on me. I had just gotten my nursing license and we was living in my mama’s house—she was in hospice by then—and Mama said that me and Patrice could stay there rent free until I could save up enough to get us our own place. Weren’t no one to look after Patrice but me, and I had to work to put food on the table.”
“So when did you alert the police that she was missing?”
“The next day, after I spent all night looking for her myself.”
I could tell that Loraine had been harshly judged for that decision. It showed in her eyes as she stared defiantly at Candice, as if she was waiting for her to say something cruel like Loraine should have known better.
“That must have been a very difficult call to make,” Candice said kindly. “I’ll bet you’ve second-guessed yourself about waiting to place that call a thousand times since then.”
Loraine looked surprised. “More like a million times,” she said. “I knew I could lose Patrice either way.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Patrice smoked her cigarette for a minute before saying anything else. “The police didn’t find her until six weeks later, and I knew the minute that patrol car stopped in front of my house she was dead. They told me they found her in a pond a mile away. I told them that if that’s where they found my baby, then they needed to find out who killed her ’cause Patrice wouldn’t go there by herself. She just wouldn’t.”
“What’d they say?”
“They gave me some bullshit about letting the medical examiner determine the cause of death first. If the ME could say it was a homicide, then they’d investigate.”
“And the medical examiner couldn’t rule out that Patrice had accidentally drowned, so they dropped the case?”
Loraine made a derisive sound. “I’m a nurse, miss. I know what happens to a body that’s been left in a pond for weeks on end. With no other evidence, wasn’t no way they were gonna say that Patrice didn’t drown on her own.”
Candice glanced at her notes, then asked, “In the days leading up to Patrice’s disappearance, did you notice anyone out of place in the neighborhood?”
Again Loraine made a derisive sound. “There’s a lotta folks in that hood gotta get by any way they can, miss. So there’s a lotta other folks comin’ and goin’ that’s outta place, if you know what I mean.”