Aim to Kill

PROLOGUE

Livie
tilted her head toward the late-afternoon sky and frowned, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “Missy,
pul-eeze
.
I
wanna
go home. It’s
gonna
rain.”

“You
want
to go home because it’s
going
to rain,” Missy said without looking up from her book.

Just because she was in fourth grade and had straight A’s and was on the honor roll, Missy always corrected her words.
Livie
hated it, but her sister was going to be a teacher, after all, and needed to practice.

The wind came down in a gust before tapering off to a tickling breeze. “Missy, I’m
cold.
”

Her sister rolled her eyes and breathed that loud sigh she had when
Livie
was
annoying
her. It meant
Livie
was being a pest.

“Ten minutes, okay? I want to finish this chapter.”

“Fine.”
Livie
pouted.

She picked up her shovel again and absently played in the sand, digging and watching as the grains fell slowly to the ground. She loved the park, but not when they were the only kids there.

The swings were her favorite.
Livie
always pumped her legs faster and harder to see if she could go all the way around the top, but she hadn’t made it yet. Her daddy called her fearless. Missy said she was stupid. And her mother told her she’d break a leg one day and learn her lesson.

Tomorrow was Halloween.
Livie
was no
scaredy
-cat, but last week she’d watched a movie about ghosts and she didn’t want to be outside after dark. The rule was they had to be in the house five minutes after the streetlights came on, but
Livie
wanted to go home
now.
The sun had already dipped below the
Pattersons
’ two-story house with its pretty pink trim.

“Missy,”
Livie
begged.

Her sister ignored her and
Livie
threw down her shovel. She stood and walked over to the swings at the far side of the playground. She didn’t feel like flying today, so she swung back and forth without effort, her arms pimpled with
goosebumps
as the wind gusted in bursts of anger. Red, orange, and brown leaves skittered across the ground as the wind drove them away.

Livie
liked spring better, when everything was green and bright and sunny. When the fog didn’t dampen every morning, sometimes not going away until lunchtime. But spring was a whole six months from now.
Livie
would be six next spring. She counted the months in her head.
May, June, July, August, September, October
. . . she was five and a half! Yesterday she’d turned five and a half!

She jumped off the swing and turned to run back to Missy to tell her what she had just figured out. She stopped.

Missy wasn’t alone.

A man was talking to her. He was really tall, although not as tall as Daddy, and not as old as Daddy either. He wore no coat. Didn’t he know you could catch a death of a cold in this weather if you went outside without your jacket?
And
he’d colored on his arm with blue marker.

Livie
started toward them, a tickle in her stomach that didn’t feel quite right. Missy didn’t seem scared, but then
she
hadn’t watched the ghost movie last week.
Livie
bit her lip. She didn’t want to be a crybaby, but she wanted to go home. Right now. And if she had to cry to get her way, then she’d do it. Missy gave in when she cried.

“Missy?” she called.

The man turned and looked at her and his eyes did something funny, squinty-like. He grabbed Missy’s arm. “Come on.”

“No!” Missy shouted and tried to pull away.

Livie
ran toward them. “Let my sister go! Let go!”

The man picked Missy up just as
Livie
reached them. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she knew strangers weren’t always nice and this man with the blue bird on his arm was holding Missy over his shoulder.

Before
Livie
could grab Missy, the man hit her.
Livie
fell to the ground and couldn’t catch her breath. Her mouth tasted funny, like when she’d lost her first tooth that summer. She tried to scream, but gagged on her spit.

She stumbled as she got up, tears blurring her vision. The man had Missy and he was running across the grass to the street. “Daddy!”
Livie
yelled through her sobs. “Help! Help!”

The bad man pulled open the door of a black truck and threw Missy in. When she tried to get out, he hit her with something that looked like a big stick, then ran to the driver’s side and drove off.

Missy didn’t try to get out again.

Livie
cried as she ran all the way home.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

Her father yanked open the door, his face full of worry. “Olivia! What’s wrong? Where’s Melissa?”

“A m-man took her!”

Mommy screamed and Daddy grabbed
Livie’s
arm and pulled her into the house. He pushed her at her mommy and started running out the door. “Call the police!” he shouted as
Livie
sank into her mommy’s safe arms.

The brief hug ended.

It was the last hug she would ever receive from her mother.

CHAPTER

1

The day Olivia St. Martin’s life turned upside down for the second time began like any other.

She inserted two slides onto the glass plate of the microscope and bent over the lens, adjusting the magnification until the minute carpet threads became clear. She recognized a match immediately, but went through all the points of commonality for her report and indicated them on the lab sheet. When she was done, she used the microscope’s built-in camera to photograph the matched fibers, removed the evidence with latex-covered hands, and preserved it in a sealed case to prevent contamination.

She signed the report, then reviewed the file to make sure her team had finished processing all evidence in the
Camero
murder. Everything appeared in order, though DNA hadn’t reported in yet. A foreign pubic hair had been retrieved from the victim and sent to the CODIS unit to be analyzed and run through the database. Contrary to what was implied on popular television, DNA matching was a slow, laborious process largely dependent on staff and resources.

Olivia loved her job and had been well rewarded: last year, she’d been promoted to director of Trace Evidence and Materials Analysis at the FBI’s Virginia-based laboratory.

The door opened and Olivia glanced up as Dr. Greg van Buren walked in. Her ex-husband’s grim expression surprised her: Greg was generally either amused or thoughtful, rarely depressed.

She arched her eyebrow as she closed the file folder.

“Olivia.” Greg cleared his throat. Beneath his wire-rimmed glasses, his clear blue eyes narrowed with concern. He shifted uneasily and glanced down. Something was wrong.

Her chest tightened. “What is it?”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Tell me.”

“C’mon, Olivia.”

Her legs weren’t completely steady when she stood, but she kept her head up as she walked down the hall with Greg. They were on the top floor of the three-story building, but took the stairs rather than the elevator to the main level.

Outside, a wave of hot, humid air washed over Olivia. She scrunched her nose. The cotton lining of her skirt instantly stuck to her legs and she resisted the urge to adjust it. She’d never get used to these sticky East Coast summers. She’d thought once Labor Day had passed, the weather would cool; no such luck. She never thought she’d miss the San Francisco peninsula’s gray mornings, but she’d trade humidity for fog any day.

She studied Greg’s demeanor and posture—something was very wrong. Her stomach flipped. She was impatient for him to tell her, yet it might well be something she didn’t want to know.

They walked past the stone plaque in front of the FBI laboratory, erected when the new facility opened in 2003.

B
EHIND EVERY CASE IS A VICTIM—MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD—AND THE PEOPLE WHO CARE FOR THEM.
W
E DEDICATE OUR EFFORTS AND THE NEW
FBI
L
ABORATORY
BUILDING
TO THOSE VICTIMS.

Olivia rarely allowed her emotions to surface, in public or private, but the sign never failed to move her, reminding her there was always more than one victim in every crime. That the dead left behind people who loved them. Family, friends, and often whole communities mourned, sometimes so deeply they resembled an empty shell, gutted. All the survivors had left was their hope that the guilty would be punished for their crimes.

“
Liv
, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Greg stopped walking and they stood in the shade of the building. Two smokers loitered in the designated smoking area a few dozen feet away. A faint trail of stale cigarette smoke hung in the still air.

“I don’t understand why they don’t move the smoking area farther away,” Olivia said, delaying the conversation.

Greg frowned. “Olivia, this is important.”

His tone set Olivia’s entire body on edge. She turned and stared at his aristocratic profile. His long face, chiseled nose, deep-set eyes. Greg van Buren—a distant relative of the former president—was attractive in a quiet, preppy way. He was familiar, soothing.

“All right, so tell me.” She tried to disguise her tension under an air of disinterest.

Pain clouded in his eyes. And worry. “Hamilton Craig called me today.”

“Why in the world would Hamilton call you?” She had seen the district attorney just three months before, when her sister’s killer was up for parole, which had rightfully been denied.

Craig was growing old and had announced he’d be retiring at the end of his current term. Olivia now asked, “Is something wrong? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Greg said. “It’s about Hall.”

Olivia closed her eyes. She couldn’t think about Brian Harrison Hall without conflicting emotions. Pain. Sorrow. Victory. Emptiness. Satisfaction that he was in prison, where he belonged. Rage that he hadn’t been put to death. Her sister was dead because of him; he should have met the same fate. But the California Supreme Court tossed out the death penalty shortly after his conviction, so every three to five years he went up for parole.

She hadn’t missed even one of Hall’s six parole hearings. She would do anything to keep him behind bars.

“What?” Outwardly, she was calm. Composed. Professional. Inside, her nerves vibrated at an uncomfortable pitch.

“His attorney petitioned for a DNA test. The police had preserved evidence including pubic hair samples. So there was something to compare Hall’s DNA with. The court granted the request last month. The
California
state lab issued their report this morning.” He paused, running a hand through his short-cropped hair. “I don’t know how to say this except flat out. No match.”

Olivia was certain she hadn’t heard Greg accurately. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “No match to what?”

“Hall’s DNA does not match the pubic hair found on your sister’s body.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Her voice was reasonable. Her words were not, but she didn’t care. There had to have been a mistake.

Evidence doesn’t lie.

“Hall’s being released tomorrow.”

“No. No,” she said, shaking her head. “It can’t be. He killed Missy. He killed her. I saw him.”

She spoke matter-of-factly. She
had
seen him. She remembered the black truck. The blue eagle tattoo. The tattoo still on his arm. His blond hair. The truck was his—the evidence had proved it.

She hadn’t known anything about the investigation when it happened thirty-four years ago. But she’d read the reports multiple times since. Memorized them. Olivia knew every grisly detail of what Brian Harrison Hall had done to her sister. Fibers from the floor mats of his truck were found on Missy’s body. Her blood was found on his front seat.

The murdering bastard.

“Hamilton faxed me the report. I read it carefully. I called the
California
state crime lab and talked to the technician who ran the comparison. There’s no mistake,
Liv
.”

“No.
NO!”

Her shout startled both of them. She never shouted. She never raised her voice. Greg reached to touch her arm.

“Olivia, let me help—”

She jerked away. “I want to see the report.”

Before Greg could dissuade her, she stormed off toward the side doors, slapping her ID card on the keypad to regain access to the building. She heard his footfall behind her as she yanked open the door to the stairwell and raced up to the third floor.