Killer Heat (10 page)

Sidling up to the window, she parted the curtains to stare out at the empty, second-story landing. “So…why'd you call me earlier? What's happening with the body?”

“The M.E. finished the autopsy two hours ago.”

“And?”

“The victim was raped before she was killed.”

She didn't want to acknowledge that. “Anything else?”

“She has a small tattoo on the inside of her right thigh.”

Francesca experienced a surge of hope. She couldn't imagine such a straightlaced teacher getting a tattoo.
Maybe that corpse wasn't April Bonner, after all. But when she hung up so she could call Jill and ask, she didn't like the answer. Yes, April had such a tattoo.

They'd found her.

Francesca explained the situation as gently as she could. She even spoke to Vince, who got on the extension. The Abbatiellos were understandably broken-hearted; it made her feel terrible that she could offer no solace, except the promise that she'd do all she could to bring April's killer to justice.

By the time she said goodbye, she was clammy with sweat that wasn't entirely due to the minimal air-conditioning in Heather's apartment. Pressing her forehead to the glass of the picture window in the living room, she called Jonah back. “It's her. Jill just told me they each got a butterfly tattoo on April's thirtieth birthday.”

“You might want to have her draw a picture of it, just to be sure,” he said.

“I will—tomorrow. Let's give her and Vince tonight to deal with their grief.”

“They'll check the victim's dental records, too,” he said, “but it sounds pretty certain.”

“That means Butch is the killer, Jonah,” she said.

“We don't have any proof of that yet,” he reminded her.

“In a way, we do. He was done with her. He'd already buried her. He would've left her where she was if it wasn't for me.”

“How do
you
figure into this?”

“Digging her up and leaving her for the police was his way of taunting me, scaring me, making me feel powerless.”

There was a long pause. “I hope you're wrong about that.”

“I'm not. He's proud of his work, as Finch said earlier. And he wants to prove his superiority to the police. He's left all the other people he's murdered in the ground, hasn't he?”

“As far as I know. We're the ones who dug up the bodies in Dead Mule Canyon.”

“Exactly. Are you prepared to tell me it isn't the same guy? You think we have
two
killers going around raping and beating women to death in such a sparsely populated area? No. He dug up April because of me, to show me what I have to look forward to.”

“Don't even say that,” he said. “Anyway, I've convinced Finch that we need to keep an eye on Butch. They'll be watching him.”

“Starting when?”

“Tonight, I hope. If they're not there now they should be soon.”

That news brought some relief, at least for the moment. She could go home tomorrow and enjoy a short reprieve from the anxiety that'd been pumping through her blood like oxygen. But what if one week led to the next and Butch never acted suspicious? The police couldn't sit there indefinitely. He could outwait them. What with budget constraints, it wouldn't even be hard—a few weeks, a month at most. And then…

Something jumped from the roof onto the landing, causing Francesca to rear back. She dropped her phone before realizing it was only a cat. A
black
cat…

“What's wrong? Francesca? You there?” Jonah's voice came to her as if through a tunnel when she retrieved her cell.

“Sorry. I was…startled by a cat, that's all.” She
managed a laugh but, with her heart still racing, knew it only revealed how frazzled she was.

“You okay?”

“Of course,” she said. But she couldn't help being a little spooked. Maybe it was her imagination, but that cat seemed like a harbinger of doom. It stared boldly up at her with its unblinking, tawny eyes. Then it twitched its tail and sauntered away.

So what if it was black? she told herself. She wasn't superstitious.

“Fine. Call me if anything comes up,” Jonah said.

“You do the same.” A click confirmed that he was gone.

Trying to relax despite what they'd learned, she drew a deep breath, but before she even set her phone aside, another call came in—from Unknown Sender.

H
aving lost sight of the cat, Francesca let the drapes fall into place and answered her phone on the way back to her laptop. “Hello?”

“Is this Francesca Moretti?”

She didn't recognize the voice, and it was a little late for a sales call. “Yes…”

“This is Dean Wheeler.”

“Who?”

“Paris's brother.”

Thinking this had to be a referral from a previous client, she sank into the seat she'd occupied earlier. “I'm afraid I don't remember a Paris.”

“Paris Vaughn. Butch's wife?”

She'd been about to shut down her computer, but as she heard this, her fingers hovered in midair. Was her caller the slim young man who'd watched the events at the salvage yard with such ambivalence? It had to be. He spoke as if she should know him. “What can I do for you, Dean?”

“I wanted to tell you I've found your purse.”

She closed her laptop without bothering to power it down. “What did you say?”

“The purse you lost?”

There'd been no “losing” involved. Butch had stolen it from her. But she didn't insist on the truth. She preferred to see where this was going. “You're prepared to return it to me?”

“Of course, now that I've found it.”

She listened for proof that Dean wasn't alone but couldn't hear anything—no voices, no television, no car engine in the background. “I appreciate that. Where was it?”

“In the salvage yard, just like you thought. Isn't that strange? I don't know how we missed it.”

Could Dean really expect her to believe it had been overlooked, when she knew exactly where she'd dropped it and under what circumstances?

What was going on here? Was Dean trying to do her a favor? Or was he somehow in league with Butch?

“Your wallet's inside and everything,” he added, as if she should be inordinately pleased.

“And my phone?”

“Yep. That, too.”

“How'd you get my number?”

“It's on your checks.”

Of course. Her address was there, too. Her business cards provided her office information. Her telephone contained a complete list of all her friends, clients and associates, as well as a detailed calendar of upcoming appointments. Her video card gave the location where she rented her movies. Her key ring held the supersaver card for her local grocery store. Heck, anyone who got hold of her purse could even tell what kind of tampons she used.

She'd never considered just how much information her purse might reveal about her—until she'd lost it.

“Would you like to come by and pick it up?” Dean was saying.

Had he forgotten what had occurred during her last visit? This guy wasn't quite…
normal.
He acted as if she and Butch liked each other, as if there'd never been any trouble. “I don't think so, Dean. That brother-in-law of yours is a bit too dangerous for me to feel comfortable walking onto the property again.”

“Oh, Butch won't care if you come. He told me I could call you.”

She felt her eyebrows slide up. “He did?”

“Of course. He doesn't need a woman's purse.” He laughed as though he found the words
Butch
and
purse
in the same sentence incredibly funny.

So why would Butch return her belongings? Because he already had all the information he could get and wanted to draw her back to Prescott? Or was there another reason for making it available to her?

“Are you coming?” he asked.

She'd already canceled her credit cards; it was too late to save them. But she could sell her old iPhone, and she'd spent nearly three hundred dollars on the purse itself. Then there was her driver's license. Just avoiding a trip to the DMV was worth trying to make some sort of arrangement. “Can you meet me somewhere off-site?”

She hoped that by getting Dean alone and away from the watchful eye of his brother-in-law, she might be able to talk to him. If Butch was really the person who'd killed all those people in Dead Mule Canyon, the members of his household must have noticed
something
amiss.

“I don't know about that,” Dean hedged. “Butch said to have you pick it up here.”

“I could ask the police to get it for me.”

“No, I don't think he wants the police to come back.”

Was this a personal challenge, then? Was Butch trying to determine how frightened she was? Whether or not he'd managed to cow her with his middle-of-the-night appearance and the stomach-turning proof of what he'd done to April Bonner?

If so, making her fearful had to be important to him. It was possible that he intended to strip away her sense of well-being and security, make her paranoid, before he finished her off. In that case, she probably stood a better chance of putting off a life-and-death encounter if he believed he hadn't yet attained his goal.

He hadn't, had he? Okay, so she didn't go home tonight. And maybe she spent too much time looking over her shoulder and jumping at anything that moved—like that damn cat. But she wasn't about to let him win whatever he'd started between them. “So what are you saying?”

“You can pick it up here if you want it.”

Her mind ran through various scenarios. She supposed she could go in with a wire, have the police waiting in the wings in case of trouble. Maybe Butch would threaten her or do something that would make it possible for Finch and Hunsacker to arrest him. Getting him off the street would certainly be worth the risk, especially if they could hold him until they gathered enough evidence to prosecute him for April's murder.

“Fine,” she said. “When?”

“Tomorrow?”

“What time?”

“First thing in the morning.”

“Ten is the earliest I can make it. As Butch knows,
from having driven to my house yesterday, I live two hours away.”

“Are you hoping I'll confirm that he was gone?”

“And if I am?” Dean was odd. Different. Would his testimony even help?

“I was sound asleep last night,” he said.

“And the other nights? He's left before. I'm sure of it.”

“I don't want to talk about Butch. There are too many other interesting subjects.”

“Like…”

“Your friends.”

“What about them?”

“They're
really
nice. And they think so highly of you. You should be proud.”

Francesca brought a hand to her chest. “What are you talking about?”

“Adriana and Josephine and Heather. I like them all.”

Josephine was her aging neighbor. After having both knees replaced two weeks ago, she could barely get around. No way could she defend herself against someone like Butch. “How would you know my friends?” she breathed.

“I called them earlier, when I was trying to get hold of you. I went through your address book. I like the way you categorize. You make it easy to tell friends from clients. I even left a message at your office with that nice Heather person who said she's your assistant.”

What the heck? Bracing the phone with her shoulder, Francesca shuffled through the messages she'd set aside. Sure enough, there was one from Dean Wheeler. Because it didn't mention her purse—just his name and
number—it wouldn't have meant a thing to her even if she'd seen it.

“I'm glad you kept the same cell number,” he said. “You never pick up at home.”

Could he be as oblivious as he was making it sound? Or was he laughing at her? “The line's been cut.”

“Really?”

Had he already known? She couldn't quite tell…. “Really.”

“How long will it take to get that fixed?”

She ignored the concern in his voice, wasn't sure she could trust him. “The telephone company will get to it as soon as they can.” Due to recent layoffs, they had a backlog of work orders and couldn't send someone out right away. But she didn't add that.

“That must be a relief. Well, just so you know, Adriana's been trying to reach you. You should give her a call. She's worried about you getting your purse back. She even offered to drive over here and pick it up.”

So why had Dean refused? Francesca was curious about that, but didn't ask. She didn't want to make Adriana a focal point. The last thing she needed was for the people closest to her to come to the attention of someone like Butch or his odd brother-in-law. “No reason to drag my friends into this. We've got it covered, right?”

“Now we do. I'll let you go. But please tell Heather I hope her son sleeps through the night.”

He knew where she was staying! She got the feeling he'd been following her, but it was more likely that he'd spoken to Heather just before she'd left the office to pack Francesca's overnight bag while Francesca was at the Apple store. Regardless, like Butch—maybe because of Butch—he was trying to frighten her.

“Quit it,” she said flatly.

“Quit what?”

“Mentioning my friends. They have nothing to do with you or Butch or whatever's going on here, so just leave them out of it.”

“What do you mean ‘going on'? I was only trying to be nice.”

If that was true, why did she have alarm bells going off in her head? “It's Butch I'm worried about,” she said.

“He's not what you think he is, Francesca. Really.”

The way he used her first name, as if they knew each other, grated on her, too. “Tell April Bonner that.”

“Who?”

“The woman your brother-in-law met last Saturday at the Pour House. Her body turned up this morning outside the Skull Valley Chocolate and Handmade Gifts shop, less than fifteen minutes from your house.”

Another voice came on the line, this one louder and blatantly taunting. “You sure it wasn't a mannequin?”

Francesca recognized Butch's laugh. “You think it's funny?”

“I think
you're
funny,” he said, still laughing.

“Why'd you move her, Butch? Don't tell me you went to all that trouble just for me.”

The laughter suddenly stopped. “
Nothing's
too much trouble for you.”

Swallowing hard, she gripped the phone more tightly. “Good. Because the forensic evidence you provided will come in handy when the investigation moves into the prosecution phase.”

She hadn't said
if;
she'd said
when.
And she'd been bluffing. She couldn't say for sure that the police or the M.E. had been able to glean
any
forensic evidence. They'd taken samples. Now they had to wait for the lab
results. But she wasn't all that hopeful. It wouldn't be easy to get foreign DNA from a body that'd been buried, disinterred and dumped elsewhere, especially a body that was in such an advanced stage of decomposition.

Still, she'd succeeded in turning the tables on him. Tension came across the line as palpably as if he'd started swearing at her.

“You don't scare me,” he ground out.

“You don't scare me, either,” she lied. “See you in the morning.”

As soon as she disconnected, Francesca dropped her phone on the table and laid her head on her arms. As much as she wanted the whole situation to go away, it was far from over.

 

Francesca felt Jonah glance in her direction every few seconds while he drove. When she'd called to tell him about the conversation with Dean and Butch, he'd already left Chandler, but he'd insisted on coming back to get her. He said she'd be safer with him than staying anywhere Butch might look. But as far as Francesca was concerned,
safe
was a relative term. Being around Jonah risked things besides physical injury or death.

They needed to get to Prescott with plenty of time to prepare for tomorrow, however. She had no idea how long it would take the police to get her set up with a wire and put the proper surveillance in place.

Besides, despite an abundance of restless energy, she didn't feel like driving two hours on her own. They'd taken her car because they hadn't wanted a change to alert Butch that the police might be involved, but Jonah had the wheel. She wasn't sure she'd ever been quite so exhausted or upset, and couldn't say whether she'd been right to stand up to Butch or not. But after talking
to Dean, she wasn't as worried about herself as much as her friends. Her iPhone contained
everyone's
address, everyone who was remotely important to her. That meant Butch and Dean knew where Adriana lived with her husband and two kids, where Josephine lived—alone since her husband had died three years ago—and where Heather and Sean resided in that subsistence-level apartment. He even had her parents' phone number and address, here in Arizona and where they were staying in Montana, should he care to take advantage of it.

Would he try to hurt someone she loved? Should she warn everyone immediately? Or wait and see if a threat really materialized?

She didn't want to throw her entire circle of family and friends into a panic. But by the time she knew whether the threat was real, it could be too late….

Jonah broke into her thoughts. “How's April's sister holding up?”

“Not well.” Francesca would never forget the quiet sobs that'd come across the line. What had happened to April made no sense. She'd been such an unlikely victim. She hadn't been living on the fringes of society as a hooker or a crack addict. She'd been a straight-A student who'd become a third-grade teacher—Teacher of the Year, two years prior. She volunteered at the library and was kind and helpful to children at school who didn't have a nurturing family. “Jill feels guilty on top of her grief, which makes it worse,” she explained.

He slung an arm over the steering wheel. He was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and had showered and shaved since she'd last seen him, but even with his cheeks smooth and his hair combed, he wasn't the polished type. He was a “take me as I am” kind of guy who didn't bother with tattoos, earrings, cologne. Fortunately
for him, he had more than enough assets to pull off his minimalist approach.