Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) (9 page)

She was so sweet, it was a shame I was going to have to kill her later for that comment. Hair the color of honey, a few crow’s-feet at the corners of her amber eyes, a few freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She wore a simple black dress, but I got her as a jeans-and-cowboy-boots sort of woman. She liked country music, and she went to church and meant it. I liked her so fast I almost scared myself.

I said, “I’m not sure it’s reached that point yet.”

She let go of my hand and returned hers to the older woman’s shoulder. “Marianne,” she said, “this is Rachel de Luca, the author.”

Marianne blinked twice as she looked at me, then her penciled-in eyebrows arched. “The author. Oh, my. This is bizarre, isn’t it?”

I frowned at her, not too clear on what she meant or even whether
she
was. I’d already decided she’d been drinking, but now I wondered if there was something else in Marianne Mattheson’s bloodstream. Her pupils were pretty dilated.

“Why do you say that, Marianne?” Liddy asked.

“Because...because Stephanie has her books. Audiobooks, I mean. I bought them for her before she...”

Liddy aimed a quick glance at Marianne, who stopped running off at the mouth.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’m clearly interrupting something here.” But maybe I’d found a way in with the judge’s wife. And who knew what I might learn from her. “Marianne, I can see you’re upset. I know about your daughter’s condition. I was blind for twenty years, so I understand how she must be feeling.”

“I know. I know, that’s why I...” She bit her lip, lowered her head. Her hair was gray at the roots and sorely in need of a trim. I bet the look was short and sleek when she kept it up, but she’d missed an appointment, maybe more than one. Something had been stressing her out for longer than her daughter had been missing. The accident. The blindness. Her daughter’s refusal to accept it. I thought about my mom. I’d only been eleven. It must have been a similar kind of hell for her to accept that her child’s eyesight was gone. But she’d never let on. Not so much as a hint.

Whatever Marianne had started to say, it looked like she’d decided not to finish. So I had to end this. It was getting a little awkward. “Well, if you ever want to talk...” I flipped a card out of my clutch, trained by years of networking among the rich and famous to always have some on hand, even though this wasn’t the same kind of thing at all.

On second thought, it kind of was. This was all part of Mason’s audition for the role of Binghamton police chief. And me being auditioned as the girl most likely to become chiefette.

“Just call me, okay? Maybe I can help.”

Marianne smiled crookedly at me and nodded, and I figured it was enough. I sent Liddy Subrinsky an apologetic smile and said, “Nice meeting you. Thanks for inviting me to your gorgeous home.”

“Thank you for coming. Maybe we’ll find some time to chat later on.”

“I’d like that.”
Can I ask her how to get what she has with Chief Sub? Can I ask her what there is to adore so much about the grouchy old paunch-bellied gray-haired coot anyway? Probably not the latter. Maybe the former, though. How do you
do that?
How do you do it for
forty years?

I heard Marianne whispering to Liddy, “Everything happens for a reason. That’s so true, isn’t it?”

That’s right, lady. You met me for a reason. So you can spill what you know about your daughter and I can help Mason find her. Let’s not take all night about it, either.

I spotted Mason again out by the patio bar, deep in conversation with Judge Howie. They were off in the shadows, away from other people, so clearly it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to interrupt. I made my way to the inside bar instead, deciding a vodka with Diet Coke wouldn’t impair my abilities, and that I’d already accomplished tons tonight without even trying.

I eased up to the bar and said, “Vodka Diet, please. Do you have Svedka?”

Smiling and nodding, the bartender reached for a glass. I relaxed and looked around. Ice chinked into the glass, followed by the glug of the Svedka bottle and the hissing of soda bubbles.

I felt the approach of a hunting horndog about three-point-five seconds before he showed up beside me and said, “Unique drink order.”

“I’m a unique girl,” I said, turning to look at him. Hey, wait, I knew him. I’d seen his face on Stephanie Mattheson’s phone. He was Kirk Something. Good-looking, dark curly hair, kind of a little-boy charm to him.

“I like unique,” said the missing girl’s boyfriend.

“You don’t like
this
unique,” I replied.

“Try me.”

I shrugged. “Lesbian dominatrix. With herpes.”

He actually backed away, the way you would back away from someone with really horrible breath, you know? Hands up, sort of grimacing in a “don’t let it get on me” way.

“I’m kidding,” I said, so he’d relax. “I’m Rachel de Luca. Came with Mason Brown. You’re Stephanie’s boyfriend, aren’t you? Kirk...something.”

“Mitch Kirk,” he said, regaining his composure quicker than I’d expected. He was good. “You know Stephanie?” he asked.

I sipped my drink without answering that. “I was expecting to see her here tonight. Her folks being such good friends with your uncle. Where is she, anyway?”

He shrugged.

“Is she okay?” I asked him. Then I looked down at my drink and tried to shut off my visual circuits. When I really wanted to feel what was going on with someone, it was easier if I closed my eyes. But doing that in public looked...weird, and I didn’t want people to think of me as a weirdo.

Okay, a lot of people already did. From those who knew I wrote self-help books that claim you create your own reality, to those few who knew I sometimes helped out my favorite cop using senses not among the top five. Senses I’d developed over twenty years of living with only the top four.

But as I had often written, what others think of me is not my business.

“Why do you ask?” he replied.

I shrugged. “’Cause her mom is kind of having a mini-meltdown over there, and she’s not here, and I can add two and two. You two break up or something?”

“Of course not.” But I’d lost him. He was scanning the room now, and he stopped scanning when his eagle eyes picked out Marianne Mattheson. “Excuse me, I’d better make sure she’s okay.”

And he headed toward her.

I watched him go. She seemed glad to see him when he reached her, and he tucked her arm inside his and walked her out of the house and onto the patio, still scanning the crowd until he found her husband, interrupting his conversation with Mason. The little bastard.

The judge shook Mason’s hand, then turned to his wife and apparent future son-in-law, and the three of them left. Not a word of goodbye to their hosts. Nothing. Just walked off the patio and onto the path that led to where all the cars were parked.

Mason was staring after them, too, but when they were out of sight, he turned and found me with his eyes. He started toward me as I started toward him. I wondered if anyone looking at us would sense the connection I’d sensed between Chief Sub and Liddy. I tried to see in his eyes what had been in the chief’s. I tried to feel what I imagined Liddy felt like when she looked across the room at her husband of forty years, but I had no idea if it was even close.

Damn, this relationship stuff was hard.

We met in the middle. He said, “Saw you getting to know Mitchell Kirk. You get anything?”

“Besides hit on, you mean?”

A really pissed-off expression crossed his face. I saw it, and something inside me did a secret little happy dance while he rapidly averted his eyes. “Doesn’t say much for his devotion to the judge’s daughter, does it?”

“Nope. But then, she’s not too devoted to him, either, if all those calls to Jake were any indication.”

He nodded.

“I told the chief I had to leave early. Kids make a damned fine excuse.”

“They really do. People get pissy if I say I have to get back to my dog.”

“It’s sheer prejudice,” he said. “But I used it in advance, and we’ve been here an hour. That’s sufficient. You ready to start the ‘thanks for having us’ round?”

“Beyond ready,” I said. He reached around me, resting a hand on my hip and steering me through the crowd. Leaning close to him, I whispered, “Did you ask Judge Howie why he didn’t tell you that he railroaded his daughter’s ex?”

“I didn’t put it exactly like that.” He took my empty glass and dropped it on a passing waiter’s tray. “He said, and I quote, ‘You’re a cop. I didn’t think I’d have to spoon-feed you details that are on the public record.’”

“Ouch. And did you ask about the name Venora?”

“Yes, I did,” he said. We were approaching the chief and his wife, who were smiling, arm in arm, clearly happy. We stopped nearby, waiting our turn among the well-wishers. “He said he’d never heard it before.”

“Oh.” I frowned up at Mason, ’cause I’d picked up on something in his voice. “Then why am I feeling like you found out something major?”

“Because he was lying,” he said.

* * *

Venora was cutting again.

“Girl, you got to stop that,” Lexus said. It was the wee hours of the morning, according to Stevie’s best guess. Lexi said it was getting lighter, said there must be windows somewhere down the hall beyond their cell, because the light made its way to them. None of them were sleeping. “You gonna kill yourself, you keep that shit up.”

“Leave her alone, Lex. She’s not hurting anything.”

“She’s hurtin’ herself!”

“The opposite, really. She’s self-medicating,” Stevie said.

“What?” Lexi was leaning over the side of her bunk.

“She’s making herself feel better.” Stevie turned to face Venora, even though she couldn’t see her. “That’s why you do it, you know. Cutting releases the same chemicals in your brain that an antidepressant would. You probably oughta get on something when we get out of here.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know enough to tell you to try snapping yourself with a rubber band or pinching yourself instead. It’ll do the same thing, with less damage and no risk of getting some nasty infection.”

“Rubber band. Shit.”

Stevie shrugged and tried not to take the pouty, petulant tone of the girl’s reply personally. “I read a lot about it in college. Cutting. Eating disorders. Drug abuse. I was planning to go into youth counseling. Maybe even psychology. Wanted to work with teenagers. You know, before my life got derailed.” She wondered briefly why she was opening herself up to the other two. It wasn’t like her. Something about being with them seemed to have tweaked a long dormant part of her to life again. They were teens, really troubled teens. The kind she’d always wanted to help. That was probably it.

“How’d it happen?” Lexus asked. The bunk above squeaked as she rolled into a more comfortable position. “You goin’ blind, I mean?”

“Car accident. The other driver was drunk, veered into my lane. Forced me off the road. My car rolled and flipped down a steep grade.”

Lexus swore and Venora whistled softly.

“They had to cut the car apart to get me out. There was a metal rod stuck into my brain.”

“Holy shit.” Lexi leaned over the bed again. “You lucky to be alive.”

Stevie sighed. “I’ve been miserable about it.”

“Who the hell wouldn’t?” Lexi asked.

“Lots of people. Rachel de Luca, for one.”

“Rachel de-who?”

Stevie sighed. “Nobody. Never mind. It’s just hitting me that I’ve been kind of a nasty bitch to everyone who’s tried to help me. I mean, I knew I was. I just thought I’d have time to get over it and make it up to them eventually. Now maybe I never will. You don’t think about that when you’re throwing your hissy fits, you know?”

“Yeah,” Venora said softly. “I know.”

“I just hope I get the chance to tell my mother I’m sorry.” Stevie choked up a little.

“You will.” Venora’s cutting had stopped. Stevie heard fabric rustling, like she was changing clothes.

“She cuts on her belly,” Lexus whispered. “So no one gonna see.”

“I can hear you, you—” Venora stopped herself when a door opened down the hall and they heard those familiar footsteps, along with shuffling, scuffling sounds. Stevie tensed and sat up on the bunk, feet on the floor, ready to spring. “Get ready,” she whispered urgently. “It’s now.”

Lexi scrambled off the top bunk and took her position near the barred door. They’d discussed this, planned, practiced.

Stevie got her broken hairbrush from under the mattress. Venora would have her bar of soap shiv in her hand.

The steps came closer. The muffled pleas of another girl, bound and gagged, came with them. Number Four sounded terrified. Then the cell door opened.

“Now!” Lexi shouted.

Her job was to grab the cell door and yank it open wider, pulling their captor inside with it. It sounded as if she’d done it, so Stevie scrambled off the bed and lunged at where the Asshole would be if it had worked. She held the smooth handle in her palm and slammed the pointy end into what she sincerely hoped was some part of him. Lexus and Venora were doing the same.

The Asshole sent the new girl stumbling away from him as he grunted, swore and jerked away from her, taking her weapon with him, and then he punched Stevie in the face. She landed hard on the floor next to the bound and struggling newcomer. But she scrambled to her feet again and lunged forward, because the fight was still going on. She would attack with her hands, her feet, her—

A gunshot rang out.

6

M
ason got the call at 7:00 a.m. It was a Saturday morning, and he’d intended to sleep. It seemed to him that planning to sleep in was the surest way to guarantee an early morning wake-up call. But that was part of being a cop, and he’d never really wanted to do anything else.

“Shit, I’ve got to get out of here,” Rachel whispered while he groped for his cell phone on the nightstand. “The kids are gonna wake up anytime now.”

“I don’t think we’re really fooling them,” he said. “Josh, maybe, but—” He found the phone, picked it up. “Brown, what is it?”

“Mace, it’s Rosie.”

Mason rolled back onto his pillow, and watched Rachel pulling on a pair of jeans. And then he thought how lucky he was. ’Cause,
damn.
“Hang on one sec, Rosie,” he told his partner. “Let me grab some clothes before we get ambushed in here.”

“We, huh?” Rosie said in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge tone of voice.

Mason chose not to respond as he set the phone down and looked for his clothes. He’d thrown them off in something of a hurry once the kids had finally gone to sleep last night.

After the party, he and Rache had gone to her place just long enough to pick up Myrtle and a change of clothes, then they’d headed back to his house for the evening. The whole teenage crew had wanted to stay over, so they’d assigned Josh to Jeremy’s room and let Rachel’s nieces take Josh’s. He grabbed a clean pair of jeans and quickly put them on.

They had
not
allowed Christy’s boyfriend to join the slumber party. He’d asked, but he had a car and no reason not to get his ass home, as Rachel had put it. Christy wanted to go with him. Rachel said no. When Christy demanded to know why, Rachel had walked up to the guy, who towered over her by a foot, reached into his jacket pocket and yanked out a tiny plastic zipper bag with a joint in it. “That’s why. Any questions?”

“How the hell...?” Rex demanded.

“Fuck you, kid. I could smell that a mile away. And here’s a news flash for you. If you’re dumb enough to bring pot to a cop’s house, you’re way too dumb to date my niece. Out. Now.” She’d pointed at the door.

He’d left. Christy had rolled her eyes and stomped upstairs to mope. Jeremy had insisted he hadn’t known about the weed, nor had anything been smoked in Mason’s house. Mason believed him because
that
he would have smelled.

He dug in the dresser for a fresh T-shirt, while watching Rachel. She leaned toward the mirror, wrinkling her nose at her reflection, trying to force her hair into some semblance of order with her hands. It wasn’t helping.

His feelings for Rachel had grown even bigger when he’d watched her boot the jock out the front door last night. He hadn’t identified what those feelings were just yet, but he was starting to worry that they might be evolving into the big
L,
which scared the hell out of him, because she didn’t want anything that big and serious, and neither did he.

Rachel was staring at him, having caught him staring at her. Her jeans were unbuttoned, and she was wearing nothing but a bra on top. She winked, pleased with herself, and pulled on a tank top and a denim shirt. Then she picked up her clothes from the night before and tiptoed out of his room.

“Mason? You there?” said the tinny voice from the phone. That wasn’t Rosie’s voice anymore. It was the chief’s.

He grabbed the phone fast. “Sorry, sir, I was distracted. What’s up?”

“We’ve found a body,” Chief Sub said softly. “A girl.”

Mason straightened. “Is it her?”

“Don’t know. I’m on my way to the scene now. Rosie’s with me, but he’s limited, with his leg. I need you. Meet me there.”

“I’m bringing Rachel,” he said, blurting it without forethought. “I need her on this, Chief.”

“She’s not an official consultant.”

“It’s not an official case.”
Yet.

“All right. Bring de Luca. Just tell her to keep her head down and stay under the radar.”

* * *

I phoned my sister from the passenger seat of Mason’s Black Beast and asked her to go pick up her still sulking firstborn (by about seven minutes) daughter. Misty wanted to stay and hang out with the boys, and Myrtle would be happy and well cared for by Joshua. They’d all be fine. Jeremy was making everyone breakfast when we left, and he’d seemed okay.

He really did seem okay more and more these days. I didn’t think he’d liked Christy’s jock boyfriend anyway. Last night he’d seemed as glad to see him go as I had. I believed Jere about not knowing about the weed, and I told Mason so.

I could see the load that took off his shoulders. See, I thought, my
powers
came in handy every now and again. Then I rolled me eyes, ’cause the word
powers
was so ridiculous it didn’t even make a good internal joke.

A half hour later Mason pulled the car to a stop in a vacant lot behind a small strip mall. A big wine-colored SUV was already there. The chief’s, I presumed. I saw Rosie sitting in the passenger seat.

Mason vanished before my eyes, and his alter ego, Detective Brown, took his place.
He
was sharp, focused, undistractable, unshakeable and dead serious.

We both got out, and I followed him over to the SUV. Rosie nodded hello, then focused on Mason.

“Chief’s already down there. So’s Joe Kramer. Go left about a hundred yards. Ambulance drove right down.”

Mason nodded. I followed him down a scraggly incline to the sidewalk-wide stretch of pavement known as the Rail Trail, where Triple Cities area health nuts walked and jogged. Where employees at the nearby businesses came to sit on benches during their lunch breaks to eat and smoke. Where locals walked their dogs, and most of them even remembered to bring little bags to clean up after them. This section of the trail ran alongside the Susquehanna River.

“Was that a crutch Rosie had next to him in the car?”

Mason nodded. “He got a bad sprain playing basketball with the boys. I told him he was too old.” He met my eyes for a second, and I thought,
There you are.

“Who’s Joe Kramer?” I asked.

“Crime scene photographer.” And he went right back into cop mode.

We hit the paved trail and headed in. I could see the ambulance, which had squashed the neat gravel shoulder on one side of the trail, driving over it. The chief and the medics were pointing at the river.

When we reached them I saw why. It was a beautiful spot, really. Lush young grass, still light green and naturally short. A wild apple tree, just starting to blossom in the palest pink imaginable. I thought the scent was heady, and apparently the bees bumbling from one flower to the next agreed. The river burbled and tumbled over rocks in the shallow bend at the edge of the trail. The sun streamed down, sparkling on the water. It was the kind of spot you’d choose for a picnic.

Except for the body that had apparently run aground in the shallows. Water rushed around and over the girl. Her hair was dark because it was wet. Impossible to tell the color from here.

I stayed under the apple tree, and tried to tell my brain to think about the aroma and the petals and the bumblebees, and not that a girl was lying dead in the water right now. Or about Stephanie’s already broken mother getting the news that her daughter...

Yeah, I wasn’t having much luck not going there, was I?

Mason was pulling on a borrowed pair of waders from one of the first responders, a paramedic. Another man, one I presumed to be Joe Kramer because of the camera in his hand, already had a pair on.

The jogger who’d probably called this in sat in the grass near the water’s edge, staring and rubbing the goose bumps off her arms, though it wasn’t cold outside. She looked like a nice woman. Thirty, maybe. Wedding ring, probably had a couple of kids. Short blond hair with long sideswept bangs. I could feel her from here. Her heart was all tied up in knots over the dead girl.

Mason and Joe Kramer waded into the water and out to the body. Kramer took a few shots, then moved to another position and took a few more from the new angle. He did this until he’d taken shots from all sides of her, and then Mason took the girl by her shoulders. I knew he was being as gentle as he could when he pulled her off the snag and into the deeper water. Her body floated, and he just steered her all the way to shore. The medics met him there, with a gurney collapsed to its lowest height. They’d stretched an unzipped black body bag over it. Joe Kramer handed his camera to one of them; then he and Mason lifted the girl onto the gurney, water running from her in streams, and the medics carried it back to the trail, set it down and raised it to its normal height.

My eyes were glued to that girl, my brain pulling up pictures of Stephanie Mattheson and telling myself to look at this girl’s face and compare, but nothing was computing. Probably because I kept getting stuck on the big bloody patch on the front of her blouse. I assumed that was what had killed her. Even when I forced myself not to look at that anymore, I still couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I didn’t want to see the judge’s daughter. Like it mattered, right? She was somebody’s daughter, either way.

One slender arm dropped over the side of the gurney, and I found myself staring at her hand. It was a young hand. Small and feminine. Long but ragged nails with old pink nail polish all chipped and fading. And on her forearm, a series of scars. Recent ones. Like hash marks, five of them, each a couple of inches long.

I frowned and moved closer. “Mason, her arm...”

“I see it.” He nodded at the photographer, who snapped a few close-ups.

Mason was wearing gloves. They reminded me of the kind women are supposed to wear while washing dishes. You know, because we’re pure and made of sugar and will melt in dirty water.

He pushed the sleeve of her blouse up higher on her arm, then checked the other one, which was not within my range of vision, but apparently there were similar marks there, because more photos got taken.

The chief stood beside the stretcher with his head down and one hand on his forehead. “I knew Stephanie, and even I can’t tell if it’s her,” he said.

My eyes disobeyed me then. I looked at her face. It was all puffy from being in the water, and tinted blue.

“Did Stephanie have any scars, Chief?” Mason asked. “What about that accident that blinded her, was she—”

“Yes, of course. There’s a scar on her head, right about here.” As he spoke, he leaned over the girl, holding out a hand and snapping his fingers rapidly.

The photog handed him a pair of gloves, and the chief pulled them on hurriedly, then squinted and leaned closer, moving the hair on the back of her head. “It’s hard to see, with all this hair.”

“There was another surgery,” Rosie called. We all turned to see him hobbling along the trail with a crutch under one arm. “Her spleen was ruptured, wasn’t it, Chief?”

I was still under that apple tree, between the body and Rosie on the trail. I turned to see the chief’s response to Rosie and noticed Mason hadn’t. He was looking at me. I met his eyes briefly, knew he was checking to see if I was okay. Well, I wasn’t, but I was a helluva lot better off than the girl on the gurney was. I gave him a very slight nod, and he nodded in response. Then he turned back to the girl and carefully lifted her blouse. And then he got the oddest look on his face.

“Chief?”

The chief lowered the hand that was shielding his eyes from what he feared was the body of his friend’s child. I couldn’t help myself. I walked across the tender spring grass and, standing opposite Mason, I looked at the girl’s exposed torso.

There was no surgical scar. There were names carved into the skin of her belly.
Lexus Carmichael, Stephanie Mattheson, & me, Venora LaMere

Something happened to my head for a second. I swayed forward and automatically shot my hand out to catch myself. I touched the dead girl’s hand instead, and there was this flash. I saw her lying on her back on a bunk bed, looking down at her belly and scratching her skin with a metal rod that looked like it was slightly heavier than coat hanger wire.

It was there and gone, just that fast.

What the fuck was that?

“You okay, Rache?” Mason asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. You see the names?” Venora, I was thinking. Venora, the same name Amy said her kidnapper had called her.

“I see them.”

The chief was staring at the names, too. Mason said, “Venora was the name Rachel’s assistant said her kidnapper called her during that episode last November.”

Chief Sub frowned. “Can’t be coincidence. And Stephanie’s name is there, too. She was with her.”

“It’s all connected,” I said softly.

“Good God.” The chief shook his head. “So have we got one killer abducting young women one after another? Or some kind of ring?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “But there’s no question now that the judge’s daughter is in trouble. We have to make this case official.”

Chief Sub nodded. “Oh, it’s official all right. I told him last night that was happening today no matter what.” Then he looked at the dead girl again, reached out and pulled the body bag closed over her. “Get her to the morgue,” he told the EMT. “Tell the ME not to touch anything. We need a forensic pathologist on this.”

“Got it, Chief.” The medic zipped the body bag closed.

“Mason, we need to find the connection between these girls. And include Rachel’s Amy Montrose in that. There’s got to be something.”

“Yes, sir.”

I felt the judge’s approach before I heard his wheezing, and I heard his wheezing before anyone else. Judge Howie came hurrying down the path toward us. He was deathly white. Almost gray.

“Where is she?” Then he focused on the body bag on the gurney. “Is it her? Tell me it’s not her!”

He was breathing like a lifelong smoker walking up a hill, looking nothing like the controlled, contained man I’d seen at the party the night before. He staggered to a stop, his hands on his knees, eyes fixed on that body bag, and Chief Sub hurried over to him and put his hands on the older man’s shoulders like he was steadying him. “It’s not her, Howard. It’s not Stephanie.”