FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series (27 page)

“No.” Letting him know she was aware he’d tried to buy beer at Dick’s that March night when Lisa had disappeared, she asked, “Do you remember that night?”

He put his hands up, palms out. “Hey, he didn’t sell me any. And I wasn’t the only one trying it, not by a long shot.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, and I’m not busting your chops about trying to buy beer. I just want to know if you saw anything. Did you hang around outside, or come back after you got thrown out? See anyone suspicious in the parking lot who might have been paying particular attention to Lisa?”

Mike, finally realizing she truly was here for another reason, crossed his arms. “Mitch hauled my ass home and dumped me in the driveway at around midnight.”

Mitch had been at the tavern? The bar owner had said he’d had the teen thrown out; he just hadn’t mentioned who had done the throwing.

Why hadn’t her trusted deputy mentioned it? Maybe at first, when everybody had thought Lisa had skipped town, he hadn’t thought it relevant. But now, knowing she was murdered, he should absolutely have said something.

“What did you do afterward?” she asked, not wanting Mike to realize how stunned she was by the tidbit he’d inadvertently provided.

“Nothin’. Stayed home. Isn’t that what all nice, wholesome teenagers are supposed to do?”

He wouldn’t know a wholesome teenager if he landed on one.

She wasn’t sure she believed him. Mike’s cocky attitude was back again, now that his father was out of earshot and he’d realized Stacey wasn’t going to rat him out for the crap he’d pulled at the doughnut shop. Frankly, she wondered why he’d been worried. From what she knew about Mr. Flanagan, he’d probably have some kind of that’s-my-boy macho reaction to the news that his kid had been leading a gang of boys in frightening a teenage girl. Mr. Flanagan was the type who’d laugh if his sons beat up other kids, who’d had them out hunting out-of-season by the age of four, who’d been horrified when Mitch had decided to be a cop. Father of the year.

Mike suddenly smiled. A nasty, knowing smile. “You want to know what was up with Lisa? Man, that girl was drunk as shit, dancing with every guy like she’d give it up right there on one of the pool tables. My dick of a brother tried to get her to leave with us, but she laughed in his face. He sure was pissed.”

She kept her face blank. Mitch hadn’t just been there; he hadn’t merely seen Lisa in passing. He’d interacted with her. And nobody at the tavern had thought to mention that.

Could be they figured she already knew, since Mitch worked for her. Or could be they were scared to mention it, knowing how highly Stacey thought of her chief deputy.

Whatever reason, she needed to find out exactly what had happened between Mitch and Lisa—both that night, and before it.

Damn.
Yet another name to add to her list of people to question. Mitch, her brother, his best buddy. That list was growing more personal by the minute.

And more disturbing.

F
rom all reports,
Amber Torrington had been a snotty, mean-spirited teen, liked only by her parents, because they had to, and by her boyfriend, because she put out.

Maybe because she was only missing, not officially dead, those who knew her felt free to speak badly about her. Her so-called friends, her boss at the clothing shop, the security guard who’d heard her shouting at her boss from five stores away—they’d all sung a familiar refrain. Spoiled brat, vicious temper. Not generally liked.

Dean tucked away each bit of information as he accompanied the local police conducting interviews Sunday. Each confirmation of what she’d been like convinced him that Amber’s personality was significant to the investigation. The reason niggled at the back of his brain.

“Girl’s address says the family’s rich. Once again, he didn’t make any effort to grab somebody who wouldn’t be missed,” Mulrooney commented as they walked toward the mall security office. Stokes strode on the other side of him, carrying an evidence bag containing the spent .22 shell casings they’d found in the tree line skirting the upscale shopping mecca. She would take them back to D.C. for analysis. None of them had any doubt they’d prove to be from the same rifle as the third case, when the cameras had also been shot out.

“No, he didn’t,” Dean muttered. “Or to even pick up her phone, or move her car.”

“Either he was in a hurry, or he thought he was covered by shooting out the cameras and overhead lights.” Out of shape, Mulrooney huffed a little as the three of them strode through the quiet mall, which was pretty empty on this summer Sunday afternoon. Well, empty except for the media crews busily sniffing for any dirt and broadcasting the slightest unconfirmed detail to the world.

“He couldn’t count on having a lot of time for the guards to check out the department store alarm,” Dean said. The one the unsub had, undoubtedly, caused.

Jackie finished his thought. “Or even that they’d all go. One of them might very well have done his damn job and stayed behind.”

Funny how quickly the three of them had landed on the same page. They had fallen into an immediate rhythm on this, their first major case. Every idea was considered, its merits debated, all with professional respect it had taken years to earn in ViCAP. Blackstone’s CATs were already becoming a team, right down to Lily and Brandon, whose phones had to be growing out of their ears by now with all the phone calls they’d shared.

Mulrooney said, “If one had stayed behind, maybe he’d have noticed the feeds from the other end of the mall going out one by one and come to investigate before the unsub had time to subdue Amber.”

Possible. But the guy had worked fast. And he was an excellent shot.

Made him wonder if Stan Freed owned a rifle. Made him doubly wonder just what kind of weapons Warren Lee kept stockpiled out at his place.

“You notice how he picked a real piece of work this time?” Mulrooney asked.

“Uh-huh.” He’d definitely noticed. And suddenly the detail that had been nagging at the back of his brain clicked in. He stopped suddenly, right in the middle of the mall. “In the other cases, Jackie, you said the interviews on the previous victims all hinted that they were difficult.”

Jackie nodded. “Yeah. They were headstrong. Which I took to mean bitchy.”

Just like Amber. There was the connection. “We’ve been thinking they were different from Lisa only because of their financial and social situations, not their personalities.”

Mulrooney saw, too. “Meaning he must have known what each of them was like.”

Dean nodded. “Yes. But how would he know that about them?”

“Unless he’d been studying them.”

Bingo.

They knew that in another case a friend had come forward about a strange man watching the victim weeks before she’d disappeared. They’d already suspected he had to have picked out his victims in advance based on proximity and circumstance. Now they knew it was more than that.

He’d actually gotten to know them, and perhaps targeted them for their personalities.

“He’s been inside this mall.” Dean started walking again, his gait quicker this time.

Mulrooney and Stokes matched his pace. “Probably even within the last few weeks,” Jackie said, “since he knew she’d be working Friday night.”

He’d followed Amber. Stalked her. He’d chosen her, made his plans, and then waited for the right moment, the right auction, to make her his next victim. He knew her schedule and her habits.

“He might very well be on a mall security tape from one of his previous visits,” Dean said.

“You think he believes he’s doing the world a favor by killing mean girls?” Mulrooney asked as they passed a cluster of giddy young shoppers.

“Lisa wasn’t a mean girl,” Jackie murmured. “She was a lost girl.”

A sad, abused lost girl whose father had died and whose mother might as well have, too, for all the care she took to protect her daughter.

“Right,” Mulrooney said. “She was pathetic. He was experimenting. Then on to the main events. The challenges: successful women, attractive women, family women.”

None of whom, apparently, had been nice women.

Reaching the mall office, they met up with the head of security, a guy named Baker, who’d been playing a game of cover-my-ass since the minute they’d arrived. With good reason.

He’d neglected to check out a surveillance camera covering the back of the mall, which had stopped working Friday around five. That camera might have revealed the unsub lurking near the Dumpsters, the loading dock, or the nearly hidden employees-only entrance of the store where Amber worked.

He’d left the video surveillance room unattended because of an alarm at one end of the mall, bringing his entire security team with him for what had turned out to be a broken glass door, shot through from a distance.

Finally, he hadn’t bothered to check out the car left overnight in the parking lot, despite all the other unusual activities in the mall that night. The asshole had decided some kids were playing pranks, shooting off a BB gun.
Frigging moron.
He deserved to be fired.

But for now, they needed his cooperation.

“How long do you keep the mall security tapes?” Dean asked the man the moment they strode into his office.

“They recycle every twenty-four hours.”

Damn.

Seeing Dean’s frustration, the man mumbled, “But there’s a backup. The files dump to a server that holds on to them for a week before automatically purging them.”

One week. Would the unsub have risked stalking his victim within a week of taking her?

Mulrooney had obviously had the same thought. Lowering his voice, he murmured, “The auction came up quicker than anybody expected.”

Meaning he might have moved up his schedule. Accelerating could have made him sloppy. Made him take risks. “And he knew she’d be working,” Dean muttered, figuring the store wouldn’t have made up the schedule more than two weeks in advance.

It was worth a shot.

“We need those backups,” he told the guard. “Right now.”

He showed up
at her house late that night.

Stacey had just gone to bed when she heard a car pull into her driveway. Two possibilities immediately came to mind: Dean. Or the bastard who’d killed Lady. One had her wishing she’d worn something at least a little attractive to bed, rather than a long Ravens jersey and gym shorts. The other had her reaching for her nine-millimeter, which was right beside her, on her bedside table.

Grabbing it just in case, she shifted her bedroom window blinds to the side, trying to make out the vehicle. And she realized there was a third alternative.

“What are you doing here?” she asked her brother a minute later when she yanked open her front door.

Tim stared at her, surprised that she’d answered before he’d knocked, which told her he hadn’t been certain he was going to. Instead of answering her question, he mumbled, “You finally cut down those ugly bushes.”

“Come in,” she said, seeing a strange look in his eye, one she didn’t like. He’d worn that expression quite a lot in the first few months after he’d been released from the military. It was vacant. Haunted. Traumatized. “Please.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

She took his arm, tugging him inside when it looked like he might leave. At first worried he’d driven over here drunk, she grabbed his chin, studying his eyes, trying to smell anything on him.

He saw right through her. “I haven’t been drinking,” he muttered.

She believed him. Tim might have come home an angry stranger, but he had never tried to cover up his drinking. And he’d never been able to disguise his glassy-eyed, heavy-lidded reaction to too much alcohol. “Want some coffee?”

“It’s not too late?” he asked, following her into her small house.

“It’s not like I’ll sleep tonight, anyway.” Her head was too full for that. Full of Dean and what had happened the previous evening. Full of the case and questions about what was happening today.

She’d seen the news; it had only inspired more questions. The pictures of that pretty blond girl, however, would almost certainly inspire nightmares. So, no, she wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.

Not entirely trusting him not to leave if she let him out of her sight, she said, “Let’s go in the kitchen. I have junk food.”

A ghost of a laugh emerged from his mouth, though he made a visible effort not to smile. He’d had several surgeries, but the scar tissue on his face meant any attempt at a smile would result in only a lopsided sneer.

It broke her heart whenever she looked at him. His left profile was perfect, about as handsome as any man could possibly be. His right wasn’t.

She was the younger sibling, but was well used to being in charge. Taking his arm, she pulled him with her, then sat him down at her small table. Grabbing boxes of cookies and bags of chips, comfort food she generally tried to avoid but had really needed lately, she dumped them in front of him, then made coffee.

He twisted apart his cookie and ate the icing, just like he had when they were kids. Simple pleasures. How he must have missed them all those years.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she sat down across from him.

“I heard about the dog,” he said.

She waited, wondering how much he’d heard. She hoped her neighbors hadn’t gossiped all over town.

“Dad’s pretty broken up.”

She nodded, glad he didn’t know the rest. Tim might not be his old self, but her protective older brother still existed inside that scarred shell. He’d be just as furious and worried as their father if he knew the truth. “I know. Did he call you?”

“Yeah. I went out to see him this afternoon. Helped him plant some flowers on the grave. He wanted sunflowers; I guess Lady used to love to dig in them.”

Her heart twisted, and Stacey made a mental note to plead with her neighbors to keep the questions she’d asked today to themselves. “I’m glad you were there for him, Tim.”

Being needed by someone else was probably the best thing that could happen to her brother right now. It might keep him from dwelling too much on all the things that had gone wrong in his own life. “So,” she asked, “did you come here tonight to talk about Dad’s dog?”