Unspeakable (6 page)
Elaina stared at the twine, struck by the idea.
“
And how do we know it came from him?” she asked. “Maybe Breck left it.”
“He didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because.” Troy gave her a hard look. “They found it in Gina’s case, too. He leaves it every time.”
Elaina continued to look queasy, so Troy hugged the coast as he headed back in. He felt her behind him as she silently gripped the chair.
She hadn’t liked him poking holes in her profile, but that was too damn bad. Sure, the profile sounded good in theory, but given the demographics around here, it didn’t narrow things down a whole lot. Troy had never cared much for mind hunters. Most of them stayed holed up in their basement offices, rattling off psychobabble while the real cops rolled up their sleeves and worked the cases. If criminal profiling was Elaina’s thing, she was going to have an uphill battle getting anyone around here to buy into it. Next best thing to fortune-telling, as far as Breck was concerned.
Troy glanced back at Elaina and saw that she still had that uneasy look. Her nose was pink, too, and she’d forgotten sunscreen. She wasn’t from around here, evidently, but he didn’t know her background. He needed to do some digging and find out just how green a greenhorn she was.
She squinted at something up ahead, and he followed her gaze.
“What’s going on?”
“Dunno,” he said. But as they neared the marina, it
became clear something had gone down during their little sight-seeing cruise. Cars and news vans filled the LIPD parking lot.
“Breck’s holding a press conference,” Troy guessed, turning into the cove. They glided past the police station, and Elaina turned to stare at the crowd.
Troy pulled into his slip without touching the dock. He hopped out and tied the bowline to a cleat, then held out a hand for Elaina.
She barely glanced at it as she stepped onto the pier without help.
“I hope your police chief knows what he’s doing,” she said. “If he releases too much detail, he’ll compromise the investigation.”
“That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. The man hates reporters.”
“But he talks to you?”
Troy walked across the pier and surveyed the situation. Breck was talking to the media—or more likely, deflecting their questions—from the station house steps. Cinco stood on the sidelines. Troy caught his eye, and he joined them on the lawn beside the marina.
“What’s up, Cinc?”
He glanced at Elaina. Then he eyed Troy’s muddy sandals and seemed to put together where they’d been.
“Good news and bad news,” Cinco said. “We got an ID. Girl’s name is Whitney Bensen.”
Troy felt Elaina go rigid beside him.
“What about Valerie?” she asked.
“That’s the bad news,” Cinco told her. “Valerie Monroe is still missing.”
• • •
Jamie’s stomach clenched as she watched the television. “Are you seeing this?”
She glanced across her apartment to where Noah sat camped out on a beanbag chair beside a pack of Oreos.
“Noah? Are you
watching
?”
But he was intent on his Nintendo DS. “Shit!” He glanced up finally. “What the hell, Jamie? I’m trying to concentrate.”
“They identified that victim from the park. And now they’ve got
another
girl missing. Maybe she’s the one we saw on the mainland. I’m calling the cops!”
Jamie lunged for her phone, and Noah shot up from the floor.
“What are you, crazy?” He jerked the phone from her hand. “What are you gonna say, huh? How you were walking along and stumbled into some dead girl and how you
didn’t
tell anyone?”
“That was your idea! I wanted to call nine-one-one!”
“Great plan, James. Call the cops out there when you got dope in your car and Ecstasy stashed in your backpack. I’m on fucking probation.”
She bit her lip and glanced past him at the television.
“Just chill out, okay? Let the cops handle it.”
She looked up into those blue eyes. Which were bloodshot, of course. Why did she get mixed up with these guys? All her life, she’d been a magnet for beautiful, do-nothing men with zero ambition.
“Come on.” He kissed her forehead and wrapped those muscular arms around her. “The cops’ll figure it out. There’s nothing we coulda done, anyway. She was dead, remember?”
Jamie tensed. Yeah, she
remembered.
The image of that mutilated girl had been haunting her for days. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t eat. She was turning into a mental case.
She wrapped her arms around Noah and held on. She felt better somehow.
“What about an anonymous tip?” she said. “I could just stop by a pay phone. Call the sheriff’s office.”
“Shit, don’t you watch TV? They’ve got surveillance cams, like, everywhere. And they can trace your cell. You call anyone, they’ll be at your door in no time. Trust me, okay? Just let it go.”
Jamie closed her eyes and listened to the broadcaster drone on. “. . . two vicious deaths in just three months at this sunny coastal paradise…”
Make that three deaths. Or four, if this other missing girl wasn’t the same one they’d seen. Jamie thought of the corpse, and her stomach turned again.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine.”
But she wouldn’t look at him. She knew what she had to do.
Coconuts had been Troy’s favorite fishing hole once upon a time. But blender drinks and half-wasted twenty-year-olds had lost their appeal, and it had been years since he’d set foot in the place. He spotted Cinco bellied up to the outdoor bar underneath a thatched roof. In board shorts and a T-shirt, his friend looked off-duty. But looks could be deceiving.
Troy took the stool beside him and flagged the bartender.
“Anything interesting?”
Cinco shrugged. “Not yet. Place is just getting going, though.”
Lito’s bikini girls spent their mornings sleeping off hangovers. They hit the beach all afternoon. About an hour after sundown, they’d start working their way down the two-mile stretch of shoreline known as the Strip. Coconuts was the most popular destination by far, dominating the scene with loud music, cheap drinks, and waitresses who wore tops made of actual coconuts.
Troy surveyed the crowd. “How many hits you get on Whitney Bensen’s credit card?”
“Two,” Cinco said.
“And Gina Calvert was here, too?”
“Spring break,” Cinco said. “She spent money here four nights in a row.”
Troy nodded. Could be a coincidence. But it was one worth pursuing, which was why Cinco was here on his night off, poking around. Of all Breck’s men, Cinco looked the youngest and was the least likely to stand out.
The bartender slid a Dos Equis across the counter. Troy took a swig and pivoted his stool so he could look at the crowd. Half of them were in the pool, where the long swim-up bar gave everyone a chance to check out the goods before making a play.
“You think he’s here?” Cinco asked.
“Could be.” Troy scanned the faces. Everyone was in pickup mode, but most seemed to be in groups. Fraternity boys, probably down from Austin. Their guy would be solo. Troy was no profiler, but he knew that much.
“So.” Cinco tipped back his beer. “Elaina McCord. Not your usual type.”
Troy glanced at him.
“Kind of uptight,” Cinco said. “Pretty, though. And smart. She’s already figured out she needs to make herself useful, quick, or she’ll be back to serving warrants and running background checks in Brownsville.”
“How do you know what she does in Brownsville?”
“Spent the afternoon with her at the station house, tracking down records. She’s putting together a suspect list.”
“And you’re helping her.” Troy shook his head. Not a great strategy on Cinco’s part. Breck wouldn’t like it. But Cinco was a sucker for a pretty woman, always had been.
“They’re combing the bay tonight,” Cinco said.
“Who, Breck?”
“And the sheriff. And the Coast Guard. So far, nothing.”
Troy doubted they’d find anything tonight—Whitney Bensen was all over the news. But then, maybe this guy wanted to make a splash. Elaina had said he was “ego driven,” so maybe he’d like the challenge of dumping another body right under the authorities’ noses.
“Breck still hung up on the copycat theory?” Troy asked.
“Not with this other woman missing. Even without the Mary Beth Cooper murder, he’s pretty sure we’re looking at a serial killer.”
Troy frowned down at his beer. Cinco had hit on a nerve, and he knew it. According to Troy’s first successful book, Mary Beth Cooper died at the hands of Charles Diggins, a man now serving life without parole in the state pen. Diggins raped and murdered eleven women—mostly Latinas—up and down Highway 77 between Victoria and Brownsville. His territory became known as El Corredor de la Muerte, the Corridor of Death. Diggins claimed to have killed Mary Beth Cooper, and his confession had been so detailed, police had believed him. Troy had interviewed the guy twice up in Huntsville, and he’d believed him, too.
Now Troy was seriously questioning Diggins’s story, along with his own judgment. If Troy had detected a lie all those years ago, could he have tipped off investigators before this new rash of killings?
“Anyway, we’ll know for sure when the labs come back.”
“The toxicology?”
Cinco nodded. “The ranger they sent down, he’s got a rush on everything at the state crime lab. Should be something back soon. Media’s already made up their minds, though. They’re calling him the Paradise Killer.”
The bouncer stationed at the beach entrance stopped a slender brunette. Elaina flashed her ID, and he waved her through. Troy turned and watched her walk across the patio.
“If she’s got ketamine on board,” Cinco was saying, “we’re definitely dealing with the same scumbag.”
Elaina glanced around briefly before claiming a stool way the hell at the other end of the bar. It was barely five seconds before some beefcake surfer claimed the stool next to her. She smiled up at him, and Troy gritted his teeth.
“T? You listening?”
His attention snapped back to Cinco. “Huh?”
“I said we should have it by Monday. The tox report. Even tomorrow, maybe, if this ranger has enough pull.” Cinco’s phone buzzed, and he checked the number. “I gotta take this.”
Troy’s attention veered back to Elaina. She wore a dark green T-shirt and khaki shorts, and she looked more like a Girl Scout leader than a beach bunny. But the outfit wasn’t slowing this guy down. He’d noticed her legs, obviously, and that silky dark hair. Kind of hard to miss.
Troy sipped his beer and let his gaze slide over her. Where was her Glock? Maybe she had a backup piece, something small that she’d hidden somewhere interesting. Troy watched her steadily and resolved to find out.
• • •
Coconuts was a predator’s playground. And it only took half an hour and two come-ons for Elaina to understand why.
The entire place was designed to make flirting easy and sobriety difficult. Competition permeated the warm, chlorine-scented air as people vied for attention at the swim-up bar, on the dance floor, and around the water volleyball net. For the less active, there was the beach, where a row of lounge chairs had been conveniently arranged in the shadows, away from the music and tiki torches.
It was just the sort of nightspot Elaina’s father used to warn her about when she was a teenager. Not that he’d needed to. Elaina had never owned a fake ID, and by the time she was old enough to drink legally, she was more interested in graduating from Georgetown than picking up men.
“Need a refill?” The bartender nodded at the drink in front of her, a frozen concoction called a Señorita-something-or-other. The first guy—Brad—had recommended it to her.
“No, thanks,” she said, stirring the drink. It had come in a coconut with a pink umbrella sticking out of it. She’d meant to use the drink as a prop, but then most of it had disappeared without her noticing.
“Hey, I’ve got a question for you.” Elaina smiled at the bartender as he lined up a row of glasses under the taps. “You get a lot of regulars here, or is it mostly tourists?”
He tipped a glass skillfully. “Tourists, pretty much. And rig workers.”
“Rig workers?”
“Roughnecks off the oil rigs, out in the Gulf. They come in sometimes, looking to hit on the out-of-towners.”
Soft targets, Elaina thought. This place was full of them.
“These rig workers, are they on some kind of schedule, or do they just come and go?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, really. They’re just around.”
“Are they around tonight?”
He looked past her, out at the pool, as he loaded the drinks onto a tray. “Nah, don’t think so. Tonight’s surfers and frat boys.”
Elaina stirred her drink and looked out over the scene. She took a sip, and her straw slurped. Yummy. Potent, but yummy.
A waitress called in an order and then leaned back against the counter to wait. She sighed deeply and adjusted her coconuts.
“Busy night?” Elaina asked.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Not busy enough.”
“I’m Elaina,” she said, sticking her hand out.
“Kim.” She wiped her hand on her apron and shook.