A Righteous Kill (19 page)

One of the many reasons Hero needed Agent Ramirez in her life right now had been illustrated in their conversation on many levels. Luca was looking for a monster amongst her friends and associates, something she couldn’t seem to bring herself to do no matter how much she understood the imperative. And yet his role overreached that in her estimation. This self-imposed savior, this John the Baptist, thought
she
was the monster. If Agent Ramirez was some kind of evil bloodhound, she was glad he didn’t bark up her tree, so to speak. She hadn’t known it until this moment, but she’d needed to hear his reassurance that her intentions to be a kind and positive person exempted her from his dark brand of cynicism. His words pleased her more than any compliment she’d ever received.

Not you.

Sometimes in her most quiet, solitary moments, she wondered if she’d truly deserved to be spared. If her life was worth the trouble and cost of all this. Father Michael had told her she’d been saved for a purpose, that God had blessed her with a second chance at life. At redemption. Often, she found herself wondering from what sin she needed to be redeemed. Or if she believed in the concept of sin at all.

So she didn’t allow herself many quiet, solitary moments. Hell, she barely allowed herself sleep anymore. Because that line of thinking was a rabbit hole to madness and she didn’t have the strength. Not while trying to stay one step ahead of a serial killer.

When Luca turned onto her street, it wasn’t just the interruption in the lines of the road that jerked Hero out of her reverie. Splashes of red and blue painted alternating warnings across the tree tops.

Luca’s curse was long and foul as he sped down the lane almost choked with greenery.

Hero’s throat closed and she had to breathe through an open mouth. She shouldn’t make assumptions. A lot of wealthy older folks lived on this road, including Angora. The emergency response could mean anything. A house fire. A heart attack. A security system malfunction. Mrs. Gardner, her neighbor two doors down, could have gone into premature labor with her twins. Wasn’t her husband away until Sunday?

But even as she tried to reason herself through panic, a chilly intuition seized her spine in its unrelenting grip and was validated as they took the corner with a squeal of tires. The lights of several Portland PD patrol cars reflected off the rain-slicked street in front of Angora’s grand estate.

“No,” Hero croaked through her tight throat.

Her home had become a crime scene. Again.

Chapter Fourteen

“The attempt and not the deed confounds us.”

~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Every light in the mansion blazed as shadows moved from window to window, though the major contingent of police seemed to be focused on the front porch. Someone had smashed Angora’s prize azaleas. She was going to be so pissed, that is if she wasn’t— Oh God.

Hero threw off her seatbelt, and leapt out of the car before it even came to a full stop, ignoring Luca’s barking protests. Plunging through a group of her gathered neighbors, she thought she’d have to duck under crime scene tape, like they did on TV, but there was none. She ran uninhibited toward Vincent Di Petro, who was standing on the porch at the periphery of six or so officers with a phone to his ear. He hung up the moment he saw her and stowed his phone in time to catch her shoulders.

“Angora?” Hero cried by way of panicked question.

“She’s inside,” Vince said. “No one’s hurt.” His grey eyes found a point above her head. “I was just calling you. Bea said your cell was off.”

Hero remembered asking Luca to silence it for the meditation class.

“What happened?” Luca demanded from behind her.

One of the uniformed police officers turned from the cluster to face the Feds. At well under six feet, he had to look up at everyone but Hero. “My partner, Crandall and I were performing our hourly drive by and Crandall saw a figure run into the woods from the yard.” The officer’s nameplate said
R. Daniels
. Daniels and Crandall, that would never be a primetime crime fighter show. “We called for backup and followed on foot, but he had already disappeared into the trees.”

Hero didn’t understand. “All this for a shadow that ran into the woods?” She motioned to the umpteen police cars.

Daniels scratched his scalp through prematurely thinning hair that clashed with his round yet handsome young face. “Well, Miss Connor, there was a message.”

Hero had to swallow her heart as it tried to leap into her esophagus. Good thing her throat was still mostly blocked by her initial surge of anxiety. “A message?” she whispered. Not another animal head. Not more blood. She couldn’t take any more blood.

Daniels didn’t take his eyes off her as he motioned for the officer behind him to give him something. A bouquet of wilting purple Rhododendrons was pressed into his latex-gloved hand. The plastic around the blooms crinkled noisily. “Not those, the note!” he gestured impatiently. A note card appeared, already protected in a clear plastic evidence bag.

“The note came with the flowers?” Luca clarified.

“Excuse me, but who are you?” Daniels didn’t meet Luca’s eyes as he asked the question. Hero still thought he was very brave.

“I’m Special Agent Luca Ramirez, the lead investigator on the John the Baptist case.” Luca’s voice was closer behind her than she realized. She assumed he produced identification, but couldn’t imagine from where. He sounded pissed, but in control. Hero became very aware that if she leaned back, his solid, warm body would be there to prop her up.

Swallowing the overwhelming impulse, she reached for the note, instead.

Daniels glanced at Vince, who nodded, before handing it over.

The nondescript card had no florist imprint, just a little embossed curly border. In hurried, blocky, hand-written capital print it said:

I’M WATCHING YOU ALWAYS.

I PROMISE TO SAVE YOU AGAIN.

Below the script was a three-lined smiley face, which Hero found the creepiest about the whole thing. She stared at the flowers. Such a lovely vibrant purple color, but for the brown patches of decay beginning to eat away at the blossoms.

“Which way did he run?” Luca demanded.

Daniels pointed northeast into the back yard. “We combed the woods all the way down to the riverbank. There are just too many places to hide.”

Luca said something evocative in Spanish. A Latino officer who was helping to fingerprint the porch covered a laugh with a fake cough.

Hero scanned the precisely groomed tree line and shivered again. He could be out there in the darkness. Watching.

“This handwriting doesn’t match that of the note left with the goat head,” Vince pointed out to Luca. “What do you make of that?”

“Could there be two JTB’s?” Daniels speculated.

“That’s not the assumption the FBI is working under,” Vince said carefully. “Serial killers are known to work alone.”

“What about Dean Corll?” Crandall joined the conversation, looking rather hard and military next to his baby-faced partner. “Didn’t he have a few accomplices? Same with the Freeway Killer in California, didn’t he recruit young boys to help him?” He looked over Hero’s head and gave an involuntary jerk. “I—uh—I read a lot about this kind of stuff,” he seemed compelled to add.

Hero turned to look behind her. What was it about Luca that caused these negative reactions? His expressionless face wasn’t exuding any particular kind of menace. At least, not more than usual. Sure his black eyes were glittering with a cold and deadly glare but they kind of always did. Maybe she and Vince were just used to it? She mentally shrugged and handed him the note.

“I’d better not hear anything about accomplices in the press,” he warned the officers before studying the note.

“Course not,” Daniels rushed to comply.

Crandall nodded vigorously, though Luca wasn’t looking at him.

Vince put on latex gloves and reached for the bouquet still clutched in Daniels’ hands. “I’ll take these to the lab. I want to process them for more than prints.”

Daniels eagerly handed them over. “Rhododendrons. The flowers mean
beware.
” He nodded ominously. At everyone’s incredulous stare he added sheepishly, “My fiancée owns a Florist shop in Laurelhurst.”

Luca grunted in response, but stepped away, staring at the note as though it held the answers he’d been looking for.

Vince picked up the investigational ball. “You get a good look at the trespasser?”

Abashed, both officers shook their heads.

“It’s a real dark night and I only caught a glimpse,” Crandall said by way of apology. “He seemed big, but not
that
big.” He gestured toward Agent Ramirez. “And tall, but not
that
tall.” Again, the head inclined toward Luca.

Vince gave him his quintessential East Coast smirk, disarming and dangerous all at once. “Would you say he was medium height and build? Average, maybe?”

“No,” Crandall didn’t sound too sure. “He was definitely taller than average, but bulky too, like he might have on a huge coat or something? So his size was somewhat hard to make out.”

“Jesus Christ,” Luca muttered in disgust, which surprised Hero, because he hadn’t looked like he’d been listening. Neat trick, that. Something she’d have to remember.

“Well excuse the fuck out of us, Agent Observant, but its dark out here with barely a streetlight. I was driving and Crandall said he had nothing with which to gauge approximate height.”

Hero was trying to decide if Officer Daniels was courageous or just plain stupid. If she’d have pegged either of them with bravado, it would have been Crandall, but the hard-looking man just stared at Luca with an equal mixture of trepidation and anticipation.

She knew exactly how he felt.

Luca’s head lifted very slowly from the note, and Daniels’ indignant scowl faltered a little, but he stood his ground.

“You had the trees,” Luca said after ten full seconds, his genial smile showed just a few too many teeth and was a shocking contrast to the cold fury in his eyes. “Why don’t you show me about where he disappeared and maybe it’ll help you to remember where the top of his head was in relation to the forest.”

The partners glanced at each other before Daniels took in a deep breath and stepped off the porch. Hero kind of wanted to give him a hug. He looked like he needed it.

Crandall followed reluctantly. If he hadn’t been the one to spot the intruder, Hero doubted he would have gone. Which went to show how wrong first impressions could be.

Hero found herself thinking that, despite his height and lack of obvious physical prowess, Officer Daniels’s fiancée was a protected and lucky woman. She hoped the florist realized that.

“And its Agent
Ramirez
, for future reference,” Luca added with a chilling half smile when Daniels reached him.

The officer nodded once, and in the puzzling way of men, the moment was over and they went to work.

Hero shook her head, feeling a little whiplashed.

The flower paper crinkled as Vince stepped closer to her. “How you doin’?” he asked. “Need to sit down?”

She smiled up at him, but it felt brittle. “I need to check on Angora.”

“I’m here, darling.” The woman in question tottered toward her, gaining four inches from platforms that belonged in the seventies beneath flowing fawn cashmere slacks. “I had to reapply my face. Those first two officers caught me in such a state of
déshabillé.
” She tossed the hair of her shoulder-length platinum wig behind her shoulder, uncovering an indecent amount of diamonds hanging from her ears.

Hero threw her arms around the woman, careful not to disturb her artful appearance. “Are you all right, Angora? I’m so sorry about all of this.”

Angora cooed and patted her back a few times. “Don’t be. Anything that brings Portland’s own Italian Stallion to my door…” Hero took her cue to pull back so Angora could receive her due from Agent Di Petro. The Bostonian didn’t disappoint, he laid it on thick, twinkling grey eyes and everything.

“Mrs. Steinman, don’t you look a picture.” He pressed her offered hand between both of his, flashing a flirty smile.

“Oh, I just love your accent, it’s so—crude.” Enough sex dripped from the last word, there was no way it could be insulting.

“Really though, Angora, I think we should talk about me moving out until this is all over. These flowers were left on
your
porch, not mine,” Hero insisted gently.

Angora pursed her rouge lips and
tut-tuted.
“Are you kidding? This is the most excitement I’ve had in
ages
. I can rub it in Angelique de la Croix’s botoxed face. She’s always bragging about her
liaison
with that dangerous mobster in Chicago. Like we care who she slept with thirty years ago.”

This time when Hero smiled, it felt genuine. “Consider it, seriously,” she urged. “I worry about your safety.”

“You’re such a love.” Angora squeezed her hand. “But as they say,
Mi casa es su casa
, no matter what. Which reminds me, where is that tall Latin lover of yours?”

Vince chuckled and motioned over to the trees where Luca and the two officers were measuring approximations. “Careful, Mrs. Steinman, I might be the jealous type.”

Offering him a beatific smile, Angora took his arm and led him down the front porch toward the gawking neighbors, leaving Hero to look after them. “All men are the jealous types, Vincent, regardless of what they may claim. Now tell me, when is the press going to get here?”

Hero’s eyes watched them the entire way down the front walk, her eyes glued to the rhododendrons clutched in Vince’s gloved hands. He stopped at his SUV and took longer than a minute to secure them into whatever storage the lab would require.

The activity of the surrounding officers processing the crime scene turned into a distant buzz. Hero wanted to be rid of them all. She didn’t want to talk to the press. Didn’t want to see anyone right now, but couldn’t bring herself to go into her apartment without Luca. So she stood on the porch and watched him, his vibrant green shorts glowing when they caught the light from the house.