Beauty & the Beast (17 page)

Tess took her weapon and badge from the desk drawer, grabbed her coat, purse and Cat’s spare key, and headed out the door. She thought about calling JT back to tell him where she was going, but she didn’t want to hear him tell her she was “just being silly.”

She drove to VinCat’s building in an unmarked “company car.” As soon as she stepped inside the darkened apartment, a gross, piney odor hit her and made every muscle in her body tense. It reeked like someone had spilled a whole bottle of disinfectant.

“Heather?” she called as she flicked on the light.

No answer.

She immediately drew her weapon, quickly chambered the first round, and dropped the safety.

“Heather, it’s Tess. Are you okay?” She advanced with the department issue automatic lowered, holding it in a two-handed defensive position that she could switch to gun-aimed and-blazing in a heartbeat.

When she reached the living room and hit the light switch, Tess froze. She saw the signs of a struggle… and worse. Someone had splashed disinfectant all over the couch, but the darker blotches on the seat cushion and backrest looked like blood. And a lot of it. The sheer size of the stains told her that someone had most certainly died in Cat and Vincent’s living room.

Oh no, not Heather. Please not Heather.

But as far as she knew there had been no one else in the apartment since Cat and Vincent left.

The horror of what might have already happened made her teeth clench and she let out a soft moan through her nose. A homicide so close to home, to someone dear, turned a seasoned murder cop into an instant civilian. Tess started to hyperventilate, but caught herself before she completely melted down.

Nothing is certain. Not yet. For Pete’s sake, keep it together. Do this by the book.

Tess squeezed her eyes shut, took five deep, slow breaths, and let her inner cop kick in.

She moved quickly through the apartment, turning on all the lights, scanning it over the sights of the pistol, checking each room just long enough to verify it was empty. Satisfied that she was alone, she holstered her weapon, took out her Mini Maglite, and walked carefully back to the couch. The intense spotlight revealed two small, closely spaced holes in the seat cushion, pretty much in the center of the stain.

A double tap. From the hole diameter, a nine milli or .380 auto.

Tess leaned closer, avoiding touching or standing on anything. She saw a tiny crescent of white bone, the size of a fingernail clipping, clinging to the frayed edge of one of the holes, and down inside it something pale glistened in the bright light.

It looked like it could be brain matter.

Head shot.

There was nothing visible on the floor directly in front of the stain. Holding her breath, Tess knelt down and swept the flashlight under the couch. The beam lit up a scrap of white plastic about half an inch wide, a quarter inch long, and roundly pointed at one end. Tess could see the fine ribbing on the side facing up. She didn’t have to fish it out to know what it was. A piece of zip-tie.

It had been an execution.

Oh God, Heather…

How was she going to tell Cat? What was she going to tell Cat?

Tess started crying and couldn’t stop. The dam had burst. She jumped up and hurried away from the couch, not wanting to contaminate evidence. She found a tissue in her pocket and sobbed into it. When her shaking finally stopped, she put the tissue away and turned to look at the couch.

Procedure was crystal clear, but what if what had happened here was beast-related? With Cat gone, there was no one in the division she could trust to keep it under wraps. She had to call it in ASAP and notify CSU, no doubt about that, but first she needed to piece together some of the facts. And she had to hurry.

As Tess returned to the bedroom, she held the flashlight between her teeth and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The duvet that she remembered as a gift from Cat’s wedding shower was missing from their bed. She checked the closets and under the bed. It was definitely gone. The obvious conclusion—that it had been removed and used to conceal the body during transport—made Tess shudder.

Move on. Do the job.

The lacy edge of something black beneath one of the bed pillows caught her attention. She carefully lifted it by a corner. Vincent and Cat would never have left their underwear jammed under their pillow like that. Not in a million years. When her spotlight passed over the floor something scattered on it twinkled. Then she realized the picture frames on the dresser had lost their glass. She opened the drawers and found the clothes in a jumble. Someone had made a half-hearted effort to straighten the bedroom after it had been tossed.

Every room in the apartment had been gone through in the same fashion and hurriedly restored to order.

Tess had a lot of unanswered questions.

Was it a solo intruder or a team?

Who are they?

What were they looking for?

Did they find it before they left?

The more disturbing ones came last:
Whose brains had been blasted into the couch cushion? Where is Heather?

Tess walked back to the apartment door and shined her light on it. It had not been forced; the locks and jamb were intact. She swept the light lower and noticed a symmetrical dent in the wood about six inches from the bottom and three inches from the facing edge. Some of the paint was missing and the flakes were on the floor below the wall molding and the thick metal doorstop that stuck out of it. Someone had slammed the door back hard. Like they had shouldered their way in after the locks had been opened. But Heather wouldn’t unlock the door to a stranger.

Could it have been the new boyfriend? God, they knew nothing about him except that he came from India or Bangladesh and had some kind of elite job as a systems designer or programmer for a big New York firm. Heather didn’t understand what he actually did for them so she couldn’t explain it to Cat.

In a terrible way, that made sense. Heather had no luck with men, was always getting hurt—but never like this.

Tess stepped out into the hall, turned off the hall light, then checked the outside of the door. When she aimed the beam of her Maglite at a narrow angle to the surface, it revealed shiny mirror-image smears on the edges of the door and the jamb. Without touching either surface she moved her face into the gap. Whoever had deposited the smears was taller than she was, and they had left behind a cheek print. Not admissible identifying evidence unless DNA could be collected from it, but it helped Tess flesh out a timeline of events.

Someone—most likely Heather’s boyfriend, but not confirmed—had forced his or her face between door and jamb and held it pressed there hard and long enough to leave a visible trace on both sides. Heather was not strong enough to have held the door partially open with someone larger pushing on the other side. Tess stepped back into the apartment and examined the safety chain. It looked fine, but when she shined her light on the slot that the chain tab fit into and leaned closer she saw the bottom of the slot bulged slightly—it had bent but it had held. A beast would not have been stopped by a little chain. A beast would have torn the door off its hinges and not bothered with zip-ties or a handgun.

Heather had known who was on the other side, and had unfastened the chain to let that person in. That and the intact door pretty much ruled out a beast-related crime. It was looking more and more like the new boyfriend was involved. That after Heather dropped the chain, he had shouldered the door open and broken into the apartment. The classic prelude to domestic violence.

Could it really be that simple? That horribly familiar?

Young female picks the wrong guy?

After the crime of passion, had the boyfriend ransacked the place looking to gather up any incriminating evidence? What could Heather have possibly brought with her that would incriminate him? Tess made a note to check Heather’s apartment right after she made her calls. She started with the dispatcher and made the incident report, then phoned the head of CSU directly.

The third call was going to be the hardest, and Tess knew it would only become more difficult if she didn’t jump in with both feet.

She took a deep breath and dialed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

In the
Sea Majesty
’s enormous laundry room, Number One smiled grimly at the ironies of life. The cop had finally worn the jacket but lifting the chip—if she still even had it—had proved impossible. It was a pity that Two had proven to be so myopic and difficult. Two had been the pickpocket, not One. But now Two was dead, the body wedged in the cabin bathroom. One had to assume that the corpse would be found. Successful assignments did not hinge on luck. It was time to step it up. Time to start the fire.

The unattended washers and dryers were running full blast. They were checked on the hour. One had twenty minutes to make the magic happen. Aware of the location of every security camera, One kept to the shadows, knocking back and forth against metal and wood as the ship rocked. Carrying a small case of supplies, One entered the room where the dry lint that had been gathered from the dryers was stored until docking at Hilo, where it would be taken off the ship and disposed of.

Lint was highly flammable.

The storage area was supposed to be airtight, but One had figured out how to secure several doors so that they would remain open in the roughest of seas—a wise precaution, since the storm was building.

The lint was kept in plastic bags. A simple twist tie was all that stood between One and the fuel required for the flames. Gloves on. Show time.

Eighteen minutes.

Luckily, there were no cameras in this room, and the cameras in the laundry room were easy to disable. No witnesses as One opened the plastic bags and sprinkled the floor of the storage room, the laundry, and the halls with the soft, powdery lint. However, One was armed, and had no hesitation about using the plastic weapon again if someone appeared unexpectedly.

Soon there was a blanket on the floors approximately three inches deep. One sneezed hard. It was a lot of lint, but not enough to create a fire big enough to send passengers and crew to the lifeboats—unless it spread. One unscrewed the sprinklers for the fire suppression system as well as the redundant backups and opened more doors along the passageway so that the fire could travel. Then One hurried to collect the secret weapon—cans of gas from the ship’s stores for the outboard motors on the lifeboats, carefully gathered and placed in a locker as close to the lint room as possible—a Herculean effort considering the short amount of time One had had between hatching the plan and being forced to execute it. Hiding the bodyguard’s corpse underneath the lifeboat had provided the spark—no pun intended—of inspiration for using the gas. One dumped gas all over the lint and the warm, clean sheets, towels, and passenger laundry, watching the pungent liquid spread.

Five minutes. Maybe this was too close. Maybe when the laundry attendants came to transfer the loads from the washers to the dryers, there would be some more deaths if One wasn’t finished. Not that One cared.

Stay on target.

One stepped out of the room and pulled a can of hairspray and a lighter from the case. The lighter transformed the hairspray into a blow torch. The fine lint and gas ignited in a fireball. The blast pushed One backwards. The fire was much larger and hotter than anticipated.

Gasping, One raced ahead of the flames, lurching from side to side as the ship struggled in the storm. One nearly fell, grabbed the rail of the stairway, and took the steps two at a time as the fire pursued inches behind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Heather woke up on her side, on a cold, damp concrete floor. When she rolled over onto her back, burning pain lanced through her butt cheek and she let out a little yelp. It wasn’t the only place that hurt. Her head ached and there was a throbbing goose egg behind her ear. Both her right shoulder and elbow were bruised and she couldn’t straighten out that arm without wincing. She had a dim memory of hanging from a high window, then losing her grip when the gun fired. The rickety table and chair had broken her fall, but it was still onto unforgiving concrete.

She blinked up at the ceiling through her tears, trying to force her eyes to focus.

The table and chairs were gone. She was not alone.

Svetlana stood by the open cell door, water bottle in one hand and the other hand open, palm up. “You take aspirin for pain.”

There were three white tablets in her hand.

They
looked
like aspirin.

Her butt hurt. Her head and shoulder hurt. She didn’t care if they were cyanide. She gulped them down.

“Thank you.”

“Asshead shoot,” Svetlana said. “I could not stop. You lucky he bad shot. He aim for head. You not hurt bad. Just little bruise.”

Heather didn’t feel lucky. And she wasn’t reassured about the scale of her injury. Asshead had a big gun that shot a big bullet. She envisioned some gruesome Frankenstein scar on her otherwise perfect tush that she would have to explain to every future boyfriend. “Oh that? I got it when I was kidnapped by the Russian mob. He was aiming for my head…”

Heather struggled to her feet. It hurt to put weight on her left side; the pain radiated from her rear cheek up her back and down her leg. She tried to look over her shoulder at her behind, dreading what she would see. The stretching of her lower back made her butt hurt even worse and she gave up.

“Am I bleeding?” she asked the Russian. “Do I need stitches? Are you going to get me a doctor?”

“No. Bullet tear jeans back pocket. I look inside seat of pants, it nothing, just little scrape on skin. If you want, we find Band-Aid…”

It didn’t feel like a scrape. It felt like she’d been kicked by a horse.

Svetlana reached out and softly patted the back of her hand. The caring, intimate gesture and the earnest look in the woman’s eyes took Heather by surprise.