Pretty Dead (12 page)

The building was old and not very functional, but Elise couldn’t picture herself in a modern office on the outskirts of town. It wouldn’t feel right. She liked the brick building and the location. She liked being in the heart of the city; she liked that the station was a part of the neighborhood. Whenever anybody brought up the topic of moving, Elise would point out that having a police department downtown established a stronger police presence.

Or maybe she just disliked change.

Major Hoffman’s door was as old as everything else. A window of beveled milky glass was held in place by rusty nails from another era. Elise knocked and received the standard invite from the other side. Stepping into the room, she was fully braced for an awkward encounter. What she wasn’t prepared for was the sight of her father sitting in one of the heavy wooden chairs positioned along one wall.

Much like the first time she’d seen him, not that long ago, he was dressed in faded jeans, scuffed and ancient work boots, and a button shirt, the cuffs frayed but clean. He was thinner than she remembered, his face more gaunt. Beside him sat David Gould, his hands clasped between his knees, eyes trained on the floor.

David, Jackson Sweet, and Coretta Hoffman.

What the hell?

David looked uncomfortable, Sweet unreadable, and Hoffman, sitting behind her desk, had that air of authority she never seemed to put aside.

“Detective Sandburg,” Major Hoffman said in formal greeting. She was dressed in a blue suit that complemented her skin tone. Nearby on the wall was a framed photo of her with a white dog that looked like a miniature poodle. Elise had a hard time imagining David in that picture. “I’m sorry about your black eye and the circumstances under which it came about.”

Elise touched her face, feeling the stickiness of the makeup she’d applied earlier to hide the bruise.

“I heard Jay Thomas Paul broke it up,” Hoffman added.

“I think it would have ended the same way regardless of his presence.” Elise would have felt better about giving him credit if not for the Twitter business.

Hoffman motioned to an empty chair. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“Suit yourself.” The major shrugged. “As you already know, we’ve contacted the FBI to request their aid in solving the murders of these young women. After much discussion with Detective Gould about the case, I’ve decided to also enlist the help of someone else.”

A
fter much discussion with Detective Gould.

Really?

Jackson Sweet was watching Elise with silent intensity.

The man had a strange way of unplugging from his surroundings. Just a body in the room. So deceptive, because he seemed to be able to turn himself on and off. Kind of like a cat that could wait hours without moving. And then something imperceptible shifted, and even though there was no discernible change, his presence expanded. Just sitting there, hardly moving, watching her.

Had she imagined the change? Then she had another thought. David, powerful in his own right, dimmed next to her father, dimmed and almost vanished. Her father would be in his late fifties now, yet she could feel his power. It was something charismatic leaders had. Something serial killers had.

Then Major Hoffman dropped the bomb, and the room got weirder. “Mr. Sweet has agreed to consult on the case.”

Now both men were staring at her, David with the look of someone braced for conflict, Sweet with something more like a smirk of defiance.

Elise thought about how her father had snuck around behind her back to meet with Audrey after school. And now . . . Now he was worming his way into Elise’s work life. He’d also been at the Murphy crime scene. Why? Curiosity? Or was it more than that? Another question: Had
he
approached Major Hoffman?

“That’s ludicrous,” Elise said. Maybe not the best choice of words, and certainly words she shouldn’t have spoken to the chief of police. “He has no qualifications,” Elise went on to explain, speaking as if her father weren’t in the room. “Unless being dead for thirty-some years qualifies him.” Now it was her turn to smirk.

“I shouldn’t have to remind you that Mr. Sweet was a sheriff years ago,” Hoffman said.

“That’s right,” Elise told her. “Years ago. The world was different back then. This is like calling in a psychic, or . . .” She locked eyes with David. “Did you know about this?”

Hoffman answered for him. “It was my idea.”

“Do you know what the press will do with this information when they find out?” Elise asked. “They’ll say we’ve called in a witch doctor to help with a case we can’t solve.”

Hoffman sat up straighter in her chair. “I’m hoping we can keep it quiet for a while. And if the press finds out—which they will—we’ll deal with it. It won’t be the first time they’ve ridiculed us, and it won’t be the last.”

“I can’t be a part of this,” Elise said.

“You don’t have a choice,” Major Hoffman told her. “The mayor wants this case solved immediately. Immediately, or heads are going to roll. He’s already reached beyond Savannah for help, but now he’s threatening to get rid of all of us. Everybody. You, me, Detective Gould, and Detective Avery. We’ll all be out.”

So in desperation she’d called in a flimflam man.

“I want you to make a copy of the case file for Mr. Sweet. Everything. Every minute detail. I want him to be privy to it all.”

Elise was beginning to doubt the major’s sanity.

She made one final attempt to reason with the woman. “So what if he was some sort of self-proclaimed sheriff for a few years, back before cell phones and the Internet? That’s nothing. Hell, he could be a suspect. Did you think of that? This all started after he decided to return from the dead. And the way he’s been lurking around crime scenes . . . suspicious.”

“That’s enough, Elise,” Hoffman said, her tone a warning.

But Elise was winding up. “The man’s been living underground for decades.” She pointed at him without looking in his direction. “Things have changed. Yes, he has a reputation for getting the truth out of people, but I call BS on that. You’re grasping at a myth. You know how it is here. People embellish. People make heroes out of criminals. And the stuff about Jackson Sweet? It’s
folklore.
Nothing but folklore. Bringing him in on the case is like calling in Harry Potter.”

David let out a loud snort—his first comment. The sound had her spinning around in time to see him put a hand to his mouth to hide a smile.

Ass.

“This is a waste of time,” Elise said. And David. His betrayal was so deep. Her father. His relationship with Hoffman. They all seemed a tidy little group, and she was on the outside looking in.

She had to get away from them before she said more she shouldn’t say. “Is that all?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

Hoffman gave her a long look, then replied, “Yes.”

Elise turned to Sweet, whose only movement since she’d stepped into the room had been a slight turn of the head. “I’ll get everything to you by tomorrow.”

Then she left, David on her heels.

“Elise.”

She ignored him and kept walking, down the hall to her office.

David followed her inside. She slammed the door, spun around, and without a hiccup, shoved him, a hand to each of his shoulders—the kind of attack she’d never launched on anyone until recently. First Jay Thomas, and now David.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Elise demanded. “How long have you known? Was it something you and Hoffman cooked up?” With each question, she shoved.

“Stop.” David didn’t fight back, and that annoyed her even more. And he’d been uncharacteristically quiet in Hoffman’s office. That annoyed her too.

She shoved him again. Not like a cop, but like some kid in the school yard.

“I said, stop,” David said.

She shoved.

In an exasperated movement, he grabbed her, spun her around, and pressed her face to her desk, her arm pinned behind her. He didn’t apply much pressure, just control. She could continue to fight him, but the undignified position reset her brain.

“Ass,” she muttered, her mouth against the morning’s folded newspaper. “You ass.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” David said.

“Bull.”

“Hoffman asked me what I thought about her decision to bring your father in. I told her you wouldn’t like it.”

She believed him, even though Hoffman had called the conversation she’d had with David a discussion. Even though she’d made it sound as if he might have played a part in Sweet’s presence here today. But Elise had never known David to lie.

“Did you get eight down?” David asked.

It took her a few beats to realize he was talking about the crossword puzzle under her nose. She laughed. Bless her own heart, she laughed. Leave it to David to defuse a tense situation.

“The last passenger pigeon,” David said. “That was the clue.”

“You’ll have to talk to the guy with three names.”

“Are you gonna quit shoving me?” David asked as he loosened his hold on her.

Elise nodded, and he released her. She straightened, rotated her shoulders, and adjusted her neck. Then, without looking at him, she walked away.

CHAPTER 17

V
ic Lamont.

It didn’t sound like a real name. What it sounded like was one of those names Hollywood studios gave their actors back in the fifties. But you could bet David had done his research on his ex-partner. Birth name. Parents were Lois and Harvey Lamont, second-generation United States citizens, Victor’s French grandparents having immigrated in the late 1800s. Lamont himself was known to toss some French around, but David always suspected he knew about ten or twenty words, total. And now the ass was droning on and on about the killer’s profile.

It was the morning after the meeting about Jackson Sweet. Fifteen minutes earlier Major Coretta Hoffman had introduced Lamont to the room—a crowd made up of about twenty officers plus Jay Thomas Paul and Jackson Sweet, Sweet standing against the wall in the back of the room, hands in his pockets, Jay Thomas sitting next to Elise. Jay Thomas and Elise occupied the front row, smack in the center, like a couple of good students, while David sulked in the back, yesterday’s unfinished crossword puzzle braced against one knee, the printed profile Lamont had supplied abandoned on the floor beside David’s chair.

If David were to pick it up and look at it, he knew it would say the same stuff Lamont was going on about. Killer was a white male, about thirty years of age. Probably had a couple years of a trade school but dropped out before he finished. Blah, blah, blah. Profiling 101. And then Lamont went on to embellish his description, from the way the guy dressed to the kind of movies he watched and the kind of books he read and the kind of car he drove.

“Chevy Caprice. And as far as personality traits—this is a guy people made fun of, someone who would never in a million years attract the attention of the women he’s killing.”

And everybody ate it up. Just
ate it up
. David wanted to kill someone himself.

He’d tried to get out of coming to the briefing.

“Just grab a copy of the profile for me,” he’d told Elise when they’d discussed it earlier in their office.

She’d given him that look that said she didn’t want to get all bossy on him. And then Hoffman had sent him a text, telling him she’d see him there.

Coretta didn’t know about Lamont. Didn’t know about the history he and David shared. Why? Because when David had applied for the job at Savannah PD, he’d left out that stuff, of course. And David was pretty sure he wasn’t going to tell her now either. Which went to show just what kind of relationship he had with the major.

Not wanting to make things worse than they already were, he’d come to the briefing. But he’d taken a seat as far from the podium as possible and only glanced up once or twice, enough to note that Lamont hadn’t gotten fat and bald the way David had hoped. He was trim and in shape, and he seemed to have a full head of dark brown hair. But there was still time for hair loss. Always time for hair loss.

“David.”

The sound of Coretta’s voice cut through his childish thoughts. He looked across the expanse of people seated in front of him to lock eyes with Coretta, while trying to ignore the man standing beside her. “Yes, Major?”

“Do you have anything to add to Agent Lamont’s profile? Or anything you want to add to the conversation?”

He sometimes wondered if she went out of her way to publicly humiliate him in order to squelch any rumors that they might be sleeping together.

“No.”

He looked back at the crossword puzzle. Eight down:
The last passenger pigeon.

What the hell did that mean? Last passenger pigeon?

Extinct?

No, that was seven letters. He needed six.

“Are you sure?” Coretta asked. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been busy jotting things down.”

David reluctantly tore himself away from the folded newspaper. Coretta was waiting. Damn, he could get himself into some messes.

His gaze tracked to the left, enough to take in the crisp jacket, the white shirt, the maroon tie. There was that clean jaw, plus that rigid and unreadable expression on Vic Lamont’s face. Old-school FBI. David wanted to jump to his feet and shout,
You fucked my wife!
Instead, he tucked his pen behind his ear and leaned back in his chair.

He was pretty sure he was the antithesis of Lamont. And maybe that was his reaction to his days in the FBI. Rather than crisp and tidy, David’s white shirt with the turned-up sleeves was rumpled, and his jaw needed a shave.

He nodded as he gripped the newspaper with both hands, hands that were shaking a little. Just a little. “Eight down. Do you know the answer to eight down?”

Lamont’s demeanor shifted slightly. Taken aback. Confused. “Eight down?”

“
The last passenger pigeon
. And it’s not ‘extinct.’ Too many letters.”

While he said this, David kept his eyes on Lamont. Never blinking, never wavering. And he sure as hell didn’t look at Coretta. He didn’t want to know what kind of expression she had on her face. And he sure as hell didn’t look at Elise, who was probably at this very moment furrowing her brow and shooting him a harsh warning.