The Vision (31 page)

locked before he left.

Then again, Audrey still wasn’t opening her door. He’d tried her home phone, her cell

and her business number, and there had been no response, only her cheerful normal voice

on the first two, and her “business” voice on the last, explaining that it was very

important to leave a message, then make an appointment to learn what the future held.

“Are you going in?” Adam demanded.

He’d promised Nikki he would. He had the tools in his car to pick a lock like Audrey’s.

He could do it easily enough.

“Shit,” he swore out loud.

Adam Harrison just stared at him.

Jay threw his arms up in the air. “You’re the great medium. Do I need to go in? Is she

there? Is it life or death?”

“I’m sorry. I’m more of a coordinator than a medium,” Adam said, totally unruffled. Of

course he was unruffled, Jay thought. This wasn’t his home, his life. These weren’t his

friends. Key West and all that happened here would fade from his memory once he

stepped on a plane and moved on to the next…whatever.

“Are you going in?” Adam repeated.

Jay swore again, his language worse. He paced in a circle, then faced Adam.

“Yeah, what the hell. I can live on the fish I catch, I guess,” he muttered. “Stay here.”

He left Adam at Audrey’s door and went to his car for his tools. He wondered just how

discreetly he was going to be able to pick the lock. Genevieve had asked him to do this,

he reminded himself. But frankly, Genevieve didn’t have the right. He didn’t have the

right to do what he was about to do.

Probable cause…

Yeah, probable cause. Please, God, let someone else—like the brass—believe that was

true.

He felt like a thief himself, as he carefully worked the lock.

“If you see anyone coming…” he started to tell Adam. Then he just swore again. “Never

mind. What can they do? Call the cops? I am a cop.”

The door opened. They both just stood there for a full minute.

“Audrey?” Jay called.

They stepped in. They both stood quietly at the entry for a moment. “Audrey?” Jay called

again. “Don’t touch anything,” he told Adam.

“Of course not,” Adam said with his customary smooth Southern dignity.

Jay walked through the small house. There was nothing to indicate there had been a

struggle anywhere.

Until he picked the lock, he thought ruefully, there hadn’t been any damage to the door

whatsoever.

So, either Audrey had simply gone out…

Or she had let someone in. Who had then…

The bed was neatly made. Either Audrey had never gone to sleep the night before or

she’d gotten up and made her bed this morning before heading out to…to not have

breakfast with Adam Harrison. Nope, she must not have gone to sleep at all.

With a sinking heart, Jay walked back to Adam. He shook his head. “She didn’t sleep

here. But as you can see, there’s no sign of a disturbance.”

“Where do we go from here?”

Jay looked down with a sigh. “Lots of paperwork. I can’t get started on Audrey till

twenty-four hours have passed. At least Marshall has been gone long enough to be

considered a missing person.”

He walked past Adam, speaking aloud. “I need someone to agree to a crime-scene unit in

here quickly. Shit! She opened her door to anyone with an appointment. Then again, she

must have opened her door to someone really late, and now she’s not here.”

“I’ll be combing the city,” Adam said quietly as they left.

“Yeah, you do that,” Jay muttered. “You just do that.”

It slowly began to register on Genevieve, just as she swam around to see the corpse’s

face, that the woman was blond. Audrey was a brunette, with a touch of red in her hair,

much like herself.

Not Audrey. Not Audrey!

For a moment the rush of relief eased the agony of what she was about to witness. Then

the sad truth and blood-chilling horror set in again.

She’d never seen the woman before. She was wearing the bottom half of a bathing suit.

Her breasts were bared.

Her eyes were open.

She stared at Genevieve in lifeless horror.

Genevieve blinked, freezing in the subtropic water. The woman was floating by the coral

because she was attached to it. A rope around her ankles had tangled itself in the field of

staghorn. Her ankles were chafed and bloody. She had fought desperately to free herself.

She hadn’t been killed where she was, Genevieve registered dully. The rope had broken

off from whatever weight had originally held the woman beneath the water, but too late

for her to escape.

The woman’s bloody ankles were now of tremendous interest to dozens of fish, all

swimming frantically about, taking tiny bites.

Genevieve’s stomach heaved.

She nearly screamed, despite her regulator and the fact she was more than sixty feet

beneath the surface, when hands fell on her shoulders. Startled, she turned.

Thor.

His expression was grave. He sternly indicated that she shouldn’t touch the body, then

signaled that she should surface. Her mind in a fog, she nodded. She realized he had

summoned Brent Blackhawk, who had been exploring the seabed fifty feet to their left.

Brent swept effortlessly and silently over to them. Nikki in his wake.

Genevieve saw the horror with which the other woman viewed the floating corpse. But

she immediately joined Genevieve and tugged her topside. Genevieve realized they had

to radio in the information as quickly as possible, not that the police could possibly help

the woman now, but she deserved justice.

As she swam upward alongside Nikki, Genevieve felt a new rush of ice in her veins

again, wrapping around her heart.

Two bodies. Two blondes killed in the same way.

There wasn’t just a killer loose in the Keys.

There was a serial killer at large.

For Thor, the worst part of it was the fact that he recognized the woman immediately.

She was the hooker who had propositioned him outside the hotel.

So recently alive, and now so newly dead.

He wasn’t sure why he felt it was important to remain by the body until the police divers

came, but he did. It seemed to take an eon. Brent Blackhawk stayed with them, neither of

them touching anything, just staring into her sightless eyes until the police came.

A pall seemed to sit over the boat when they surfaced. They’d come here seeking treasure and history; they were finding horror and tragedy.

Jay Gonzalez was topside in a police craft that had tied on to Thor’s boat. After doffing

his scuba gear, Thor moved over to the other boat.

Jay looked grim. “It’s definitely not Audrey, right?”

“Right.”

“Thank God,” Jay breathed.

“No sign of her yet?” Thor asked.

“None. Another body, no sign of Audrey or Marshall. What the hell is going on here?” he

asked, sounding frustrated.

And scared.

“I recognized her,” Thor told him.

“What? Who the hell is she?” Jay demanded.

“I don’t know who she is, but I know what she did for a living.”

“Another hooker?”

Thor nodded. “She was outside Adam’s hotel the other day. I don’t know if she was

staying there or not, but she was looking for johns on the street.” He hesitated. “I actually warned her to be careful.”

“You didn’t take her up on anything?”

Thor felt a bolt of anger surge through him. Then he realized Jay was only doing his job.

“No.”

“All right, but she spoke to you, you knew she was a hooker, and you warned her to be

careful. What then?”

“She told me she had to make a living. And that was all. She headed down Duval Street,

toward the water and the bars, looking for customers. I’m assuming she found someone.”

Jay nodded. “Yeah. She found someone, all right.”

“Maybe the killer is getting sloppy. That would be something, at least,” Thor said.

Jay winced. “In other words, this may have been going on for years, but he’s getting

careless and drowning the girls too close to shore?”

Thor nodded.

Jay nodded grimly in return. “Or maybe he’s only just now made his way down to the Keys. Or he’s just gotten started and he’s an idiot incapable of securing a body to the

ocean floor. Who knows? All I know is that now I’ve got two corpses, two missing

persons, a bunch of ghost hunters—and no fucking answers.” He looked across the water

and shook his head. “Who the hell would have suspected, when Gen first thought she saw

a body, that it would turn into this?” he asked morosely. He looked at Thor again. “You

can take your crews in now. Tell them—all of them—that I may have some questions.”

As he spoke, the police divers surfaced, one man calling out to him.

They had brought the body up on a light canvas stretcher designed to preserve whatever

evidence might have remained on the corpse.

He heard a startled exclamation and looked around.

The borrowed police boat was anchored about twenty feet away. Lizzie, Zach, Bethany,

Alex and Jack were standing at the stern, watching.

He didn’t know who had cried out.

He looked over at his own boat.

Brent, Nikki, Victor and Genevieve were also staring at the sad remains of a life gone

tragically bad.

“Take your crews in,” Jay repeated curtly.

“Right. And you’ll let me know the minute you find anything out?”

Jay stared at him. He could imagine what the man was thinking. Yeah, right. I’m a cop,

you’re not. Count on it.

Jay lowered his head. Maybe he’d regretted his own thoughts, unspoken but clear.

“Hell, yes, I’ll get back to you. You’ll just pull some of your government strings, if I

don’t, right?”

“I would appreciate it,” Thor said simply, then hopped from hull to hull, returning to his

own boat. He shouted out to Jack on the other vessel, “Bring her in.”

There was silence as the boats raced across the water, returning to dock at the resort. The

police boats weren’t far behind.

News traveled fast. A crowd—being managed by uniformed officers—had formed

around the docks.

Strangely, there was a sense of excitement in the air. As if people felt they were being a

part of history, rather than witnessing a tragedy. News had traveled fast. It seemed

everyone already knew it was another hooker who had been found, so as long as you

weren’t a hooker, you were safe.

Thor was still tying down when the police cruiser came in, when the corpse was removed

from it in a body bag. One of the cops had been as sloppy as the killer.

The bag wasn’t fully closed.

As two officers managed the weight, the top gave way. The woman’s face was clearly

visible, eyes still staring.

Thor heard a startled gasp from behind him.

He turned to see Bethany gaping at the corpse.

She saw him, and instantly, a shield came up over her eyes.

“You knew her?” he asked sharply.

She shook her head vehemently. “Knew her? No, I didn’t know her.”

“But you’ve seen her before?” he asked.

“Hell, yeah,” Jack announced from behind them both. “She’s Victor’s blonde.”

16

I n his wildest dreams, Victor couldn’t have imagined this.

The interrogation room was like those he had seen on television—stark.

And the way the detectives spoke to him…He kept wondering what the hell had

happened to “innocent until proven guilty.”

Jay wasn’t there. He assumed the powers that be had decided Jay was too close to him,

and that others should do the baiting. Because it was baiting, nothing more.

Detective Suarez was lean, dark and sharp-looking. Mertz…well, even without the name,

Victor would have been reminded of Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy. Mertz was stout,

balding and sixty-ish.

But he wasn’t very funny.

“How many hookers have you done in?” Mertz demanded.

“Why did you kill her? And the one before?” Suarez asked.

“Don’t be a jerk. This is a death penalty state. Death penalty. We can keep you from the

needle, Victor. We’ll help you—if you help us.”

“Where’s your friend Audrey? What happened? She isn’t the type you like to kill, so

what happened? Did she suspect you were the murderer? You were walking her home,

right? She said something, so you conned her into going with you so you could toss her

overboard somewhere, too, is that it?” Mertz suggested.

“I didn’t kill anyone!” Victor exploded, thinking back to the way he’d ended up here.

One of the officers had walked up to him pleasantly enough, explaining that they would be talking to everyone from the boats, because of the circumstances surrounding the

finding of both bodies.

Of course, he knew the dead woman. Knew her in every sense of the word.

“I thought she liked me. I didn’t know she was a hooker at first,” he’d told Jay.

“They just want to talk to you at the station. Don’t worry. It’s routine. Help us out,” Jay

had told him. “Please.”

So polite at first.

And now…

“She’s dead, buddy,” Suarez said. “That means you killed her.”

“Yeah. That happens when you weigh someone down and dump them in the water,”

Mertz added.

“Talk to us. We’ll help you,” Suarez said.

“Come on, buddy. The others, they were strangers. Whores. You know what I mean? But

Audrey was your friend,” Mertz pressed.

“To the best of my knowledge, Audrey is alive and well.”

“And missing,” Mertz said.

“I walked her to her door. I watched her enter the house. I heard her lock the door after I