Carved in Darkness (31 page)

The ring—
her ring
—hidden by her shirt, burned a hole in her chest.

It was too much—the memories of the way things had been, the way Tommy was looking at her now. She stood—amazed she could without passing out.

“Will you excuse me?” she said. She headed for the parking lot, making herself measure her steps, slow and even, weaving her way through the dining room—picking up and carrying with her the stares of everyone she passed.

FIFTY
-
SIX

S
ABRINA KNEW PEOPLE WERE
staring at her, but she kept moving—pressed on, stopping only when she reached their rental car.

She leaned against the front fender, pressed her palms together, wedging them between her knees to hide their shaking. Drawing in a wobbly breath, she closed her eyes for a moment, trying for just a few seconds to shut out the world around her.

Her phone rang. Strickland. She hit Ignore. It rang again three seconds later.

She snapped. “FYI—when someone ignores your phone calls, that means they don’t want to talk to you,” she all but barked into the phone, her tirade met with a second or two of silence.

“Oh, is that what that means? I always just thought it meant you were a stubborn bitch,” Strickland said, biting back.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t have time—”

“Yeah, I hear ya. Nothing says
sense of urgency
like a dead girl with your name written on her arm.”

Shit.
“Who caught the case?”

“Robbins and Carr. Hospital surveillance picked up the car that dumped her. A dark, late-model sedan. Didn’t catch the plates or a look at the driver, so your name on her arm is pretty much all they have to go on. Oh, and the fact that the charge nurse positively identified you and a man matching O’Shea’s description as being what she thought were relatives. Said he was wearing a SFPD shirt. They’re looking to bring you both back in for questioning.” He went quiet for a second. “They’re some talk of the murder weapon used to kill Sanford. That there’s a chance it has your prints on it.”

The bat. Somehow, in the middle of this waking nightmare, she’d somehow managed to forget that there was actual forensic evidence that could land her in prison.

She had to call Nickels, warn him. Once the lab came through with DNA and prints, a warrant would be issued for her arrest. She’d left the state pending a murder investigation. If Richards or Mathews found out that Nickels had helped her—

“Vaughn.”

“I have to go.” She moved to hang up the phone.

“Goddamn it, don’t hang up on me.” His angry tone stopped her cold.

“I’m trying to do what’s right by you.”

“I’m a grown-ass man, and I don’t need you to protect me—I need you to trust me. For once … just trust me,” he said.

She sighed. “I do.”

“Prove it. Body count is at three. Start explaining.”

She hesitated, but only for a second. “Call Val—she’ll explain everything.” She hung up and sent a quick text to Val.

When Strickland calls, tell him everything.

The bell on the diner door dinged again. She looked up to see Michael walking toward her. He carried a pair of boxes, one beneath each arm. “You okay?” he said, leaning against the car next to her.

“Yes.” She looked to the box under his arm. “What’s in it?”

He dropped one of them on the hood, slid it across until it bumped into her hip. “The package from Val probably won’t get here until tomorrow. Until then, this is your new best friend.”

FIFTY
-
SEVEN

T
HE GUN WAS BEAUTIFUL—MADE
her pair of SIG P220s look like a couple of Saturday Night Specials. A Colt Super .38—matte chrome with an extended grip. Government issue. No serial number. In the box next to the gun were extra clips and a suppressor. She stared hard at it for a few seconds, waited for fear to grip her like it usually did when she found herself confronted with the person Michael had become.

Instead of fear she felt something else. Something fierce. Vengeful.

It felt good.

She didn’t ask where they were going. She already knew. Their plan had been to stop by the diner on their way to the house Lucy had lived in. She figured Michael knew the way.

She filled him in on what Strickland had told her. The description of the car that dumped the girl at the hospital had him quiet. Too quiet.

“What is it?” She looked down at her hands, needed something to do. She started loading clips from the box of ammo on the seat between them.

He bounced a look between her and the road. “I’ve gone through every police report filed in Jessup for the last twenty years.”

“So?” She kept feeding the bullets into the clip, each kiss of metal against metal making a
click, click, click.

“The file on what happened to Bauer is thin. Not much more than a few crime scene photos and the autopsy report,” he said.

This was about her father. “And?”

“In evidence is a notebook—one of those flip-top jobs cops keep in their pockets.” She knew what he meant. She used to use one before she switched to the voice-recorder app on her cell. An old-school cop like Billy Bauer would still carry one.

“Anyway, the last entry was just a quick notation—
dark blue, Chevy four-door
,” he said, turning off the main road onto a single-lane dirt strip that led off into the trees. It was hardly more than a dirt path, choked and cluttered with untrimmed trees and bramble.

“What kind of car does Carson drive?” she said, her voice tight, each word punctuated with a
click, click, click.

“I’ve never seen him drive anything but the JPD Blazer, and nothing else is registered in his name.” They’d reached the end of the drive, so he killed the engine. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have another car stashed somewhere. It’s an easy thing to do.”

She nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go ask him.”

Michael could see the house as it once was. The front door Sophia had insisted on painting a bright, splashy red. The slate blue shutters—the tire swing in the front yard Sean made for him.

“This was my parent’s house,” he said. “When we started all this last year, I asked Lucy to move in, take care of things for me when I was away.”

“And she was closer to her friends this way. You took care of her.”

“We took care of each other,” he said even though the words felt like a lie.

They left the car, barely cleared the gate before Carson stepped out onto the porch. He puffed out his chest and used his grip on his gun belt to hitch up his khakis. “One more step, O’Shea, and I’ll have Zeke haul you in for trespassing. It’d be just like old times.”

The threat didn’t even break his stride. “It’s my house.”

“It’s my crime scene,” he said with a smirk flicked at Sabrina. “Looks like you and your lady-love are gonna have to find another place to shack up.”

Michael instinctively reached for the small of his back, his hand closing on nothing but empty air. The Colt was still in its box, sitting on the front seat of the rental car behind him. Good thing; if it’d been within reach, he would’ve unloaded the clip into Jed Carson’s face without a moment’s hesitation. Carson’s hand dropped to the butt of the 9mm on his hip. He laughed a little when Michael came up empty, but it was a nervous sound and he kept his hand where it was.

Shifting his gaze to Sabrina, Carson leaned against the porch post. “You might want to think about the kind of company you keep,” he said to her. “This one here’s not looked on too kindly round these parts. Being seen with him, you won’t have an easy time of it.”

His eyes dropped to Carson’s gun. It’d take him all of three seconds to strip it from him and another four to pistol-whip him into a coma.

Seven seconds total. The thought made him smile.

Before he could make his move, Sabrina reached out and gripped his arm. She squeezed, the pressure telling him to stay put. He watched her pull her badge off her waist and flash it.

“I’m Inspector Vaughn with the SFPD, I’d like to talk to you for a minute if I could, Chief Carson,” she said.

Carson flicked his gaze at her badge before letting it settle on her. He smiled. “Well, I’d be obliged to do any number of things with
you,
Miss Vaughn. But if it’s talk you want, you’re gonna have to put your dog in the car.” Carson cut him a vicious grin.

Michael snapped his head in her direction, glared at her. “No fucking way.”

“Ten minutes,” she said and gave him a look that said
be reasonable
. He said nothing, just pulled his arm from her grip and walked away. He passed through the gate, could see the Colt sitting on the front seat. Getting into the car with it was a really bad idea.

FIFTY
-
EIGHT

S
ABRINA WIPED HER HANDS
on her jeans and forced herself to take a few steps forward. “Chief Carson—”

“SFPD? Long way from home, ain’t ya?” Carson said, taking a few seconds to look a little closer at the badge she’d flashed him.

You would know.
“I’m here investigating a homicide I believe has ties to a murder your department investigated about a year ago—Frankie O’Shea.”

He looked past her, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. She knew Michael was back there somewhere—that he hadn’t gotten in the car. She could feel him staring at them, knew she had only a few minutes before he got tired of waiting.

“He the one that brought you here?” He cut his eyes back to her face before she could answer. “No matter. You’re wasting your time, Inspector. My murder and my town ain’t got nothing to do with you and yours, so if it’s all the same … ”

“It is the same—right down to MO and signature.” She looked away for a second, trying to rein in her emotions before they ran away with her. “Do you know what an enucleator is?”

“A nuclear what?” He looked at her like she was crazy, but she knew he wasn’t as dumb as he was pretending to be.

“An
enucleator.
The term is used to describe serial killers who remove their victims’ eyes. They’re rare. Combine that with his penchant for marking his victims by stabbing words into their stomachs and you’ve got a unique signature.” She took a half-step in his direction, forced herself to look at his face. “Frankie O’Shea had her eyes removed and so did my victim in San Francisco. Both of them had words stabbed into their stomachs. They were killed by the same man, I’d bet my life on it.” She forced herself even closer, had to be able to see his eyes when she said what came next. “And that same man killed Melissa Walker.”

“What happened to Frankie O’Shea was a tragedy—an
isolated
tragedy. And what happened to her doesn’t have anything to do with Melissa.” He took a step back. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Isolated? Really?” She pointed at the door behind him. “Did Lucy Walker still have her eyes when you found her? What word did he stab into
her
stomach?”

His face closed tighter and tighter with every word she spoke. “I’m not at liberty to divulge particulars on this or any other ongoing investigation.”

“I think we both know that you’re at liberty to do whatever the hell you want around here,” she said.

“Now, you wait just a—”

“Did you kill them?”

He took a step back, stared at her in stunned silence. “Kill them? You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am. Dead serious.”

“Melissa died a thousand miles from here. What would I have to do with that?”

“You followed her to Yuma,” she said. “How’d you find her?”

“I didn’t follow her. I applied to UC San Diego my senior year. She took off around the same time I left for college,” he said, but that wasn’t the end of the story and they both knew it.

“You told Tom she called you—said she wanted you to come be with her,” she said.

“I lied. A way to hurt Onewolf. A way to make her mine, I guess.”

“That doesn’t explain how you found her.”

Carson sighed, gave up. “Fate. Destiny. Dumb luck. Whatever you want to call it. I walked into that restaurant in Yuma and saw her waiting tables. At first I thought I’d gone shithouse crazy. No way did I walk into some truck stop a thousand miles away from home and run smack-dab into her, but I did.” Carson look at her, shook his head. “Some buddies and I were on our way home from a football game in Tucson. We took a booth in the back and when it was time to leave I told them I was staying, that I’d jump a bus back in the morning. I spent the rest of her shift watching her, thanking my lucky stars that I’d been given another chance … but I was too chickenshit to take it. Her shift ended, she put her coat on, told some Mexican girl she was walking home, and left.”