Pretty Dead (26 page)

“That’s not true. How about me? Do
you
trust
me
?”

Chuck straddled Jay and began working his way down his body, leaving a trail of kisses as he went. “I do, but only to a point. I’m not going to tell you my last name, and I’m not going to give you my bank account number.”

“So you’ll share your innermost thoughts, but you won’t tell me your last name?”

“Brown. Charlie Brown.”

Jay laughed. “No way.” Then he whispered: “The rope is in the paper bag.”

Chuck paused and looked up at Jay. “You’re delightful.” The bed shifted as he pushed himself away and walked to the bag Jay had left on the low dresser. “Ah, you really came prepared, I see,” Chuck said. “You have other toys in here as well.”

He dug around and found the knife. “What’s this for?”

“The rope.”

“Or maybe your protection?”

“No.”

Chuck cut four pieces, closed the knife, and stuck it in his pocket. Then he crawled back onto the bed, fashioning loops around Jay’s wrists and attaching the other ends to the headboard. He did the same with Jay’s feet, until the reporter was spread-eagled and helpless.

“You really are way too naive,” Chuck told him.

“I just wanted you to know how much I trust you.”

Chuck pulled the knife from his pocket and opened it. He looked at the blade, then dragged it gently across Jay’s chest, near a nipple. “I could cut you wide open,” he whispered, leaning close, his breath brushing Jay’s cheek. “Wide open.”

Jay’s heart thudded. “Okay, I changed my mind. You’re freaking me out.” At the same time, he was thinking that
this
was the
oomph
his piece on Elise and David needed. If he lived.

“Isn’t that what you wanted? To be freaked out by a strange man?”

Chuck pressed the blade into Jay’s stomach. Not deep, but enough to hurt, enough to pierce the skin and draw blood. Then he moved the blade down lower until Jay felt the cold steel against his penis. “Maybe I’ll take a souvenir,” Chuck said.

Jay let out a whimper of fear.

“Or maybe I’ll just kill you.”

Jay inhaled, ready to scream. Chuck’s hand clamped down over Jay’s mouth, silencing him.

CHAPTER 41

D
ressed in the conservative pajamas that looked like they belonged in a sixties sitcom, Elise sat cross-legged on her bed, a lamp casting a shadow over the photos spread in front of her. It was late. The house was quiet, and Audrey was asleep down the hall with Major Hoffman’s dog, Trixie, curled up beside her.

One by one, Elise picked up the photos, examining them closely and looking for anything she might have missed. Most police departments had gone digital, but she still liked having the eight-by-tens to examine.

Many times she’d been engaged in an event, something fun, maybe a gathering where photos were taken. And afterward, looking at the photos, she’d wondered if she’d been there at all because the pictures told a much bigger story than the one she recalled.

Same with crime-scene images.

She shuffled through the shots, taking a few notes as she went, stopping when she came to an eight-by-ten of a handprint on Hoffman’s thigh. She stared at it a moment, got out of bed, went through the briefcase she’d left on a chair near the television, and dug out the file on the mayor’s daughter. She riffled through the photos to find the one she was looking for. A handprint bruise. Carrying it back to the bed, she placed the image next to the one taken of Hoffman.

As she compared the photos, Elise sank back down on the mattress, tucking a leg under her and reaching for the phone to call John Casper.

“Yeah.” His voice was thick and groggy.

Elise checked the clock on the dresser. Just after midnight. “John, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

He pulled in a deep breath, the kind that went along with trying to wake up. “That’s okay.” She imagined him rubbing his face. “What’s going on?”

“I’m comparing crime-scene photos of the Hoffman and Chesterfield cases, and both victims have a similar hand bruise.”

“I thought it was decided that the two cases have nothing to do with each other.”

“It was, but these photos . . .”

“All the DNA collected will go into the database, so if there’s a match, we’ll know about it regardless.”

“But that’s just DNA.”

“Right. I’m not following.”

“I’d like you to compare the images. Tell me what you think.”

“I can tell you right now. It won’t matter. Bruising is in no way specific, unlike a bite mark. Even if the images looked identical, it would mean nothing. Well, unless you had more evidence. A lot more evidence.”

Elise sighed. “I’m grasping.”

“Go to bed. Get some sleep. Let’s talk in the morning.”

“Good night. Sorry to wake you.”

“No problem.”

She disconnected.

John Casper dropped his iPhone on the mattress, closed his eyes, and tried to fall back to sleep.

Wasn’t going to happen.

He finally tossed the covers aside, slipped into a pair of jeans, grabbed his phone and keys, and headed for the morgue. During high traffic, it could take more than a half hour to get there. Tonight he made it in ten minutes.

He parked in the lot, punched in the code for the back door, and stepped inside, hitting switches. Fluorescent lights buzzed and sequenced on, starting at the door and moving down the hallway into the deeper recesses of the building.

In a single drawer of their massive filing system, John dug out the images Elise had referenced on the phone. And, just as he’d thought, they were nothing that would be admissible in court. Yes, the prints were in the same location, but there the similarity ended.

He sat there awhile, thinking about making coffee, when he had another idea. Using his passkey, he gained access to the evidence room.

The length of time they kept evidence varied, but recent homicides could still be found on the shelves. He located the boxes he was looking for and carried them, one at a time, back to the lab.

Elise’s smartphone rang. She groped blindly across the mattress, located the ringing device, picked it up, and produced a sluggish hello.

“Casper here.”

Elise looked at the clock: 1:28 a.m.

“I couldn’t get back to sleep after you called, so I hit the morgue and compared the images you were talking about. Like I thought, they aren’t anything. But”—his voice rose—“I decided to compare some of the evidence.”

Elise pushed herself to a sitting position. “Yes?” She was wide-awake now.

For once, John got straight to the point. “I examined black fibers found at both scenes and found a match.”

“My God. Are you sure? How close is the match?”

“I’m no expert, but I’m guessing one hundred percent. This is a lot better than a handprint.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

“It’s highly likely that whoever killed Hoffman also killed the Chesterfield girl.”

More important, it meant David either committed both murders or he was innocent.

“Get those samples to our fiber expert in Atlanta,” Elise said. “Hopefully he can tell us where they came from. With any luck it won’t be something mass-produced.”

CHAPTER 42

S
avannah had a reputation for being weird. In fact, the city embraced it, just like it embraced ghost tours and all the
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
rah-rah. It was great for the economy. But Bud had lived in the city five years, and so far he hadn’t seen anything any weirder than stuff he’d witnessed in Atlanta before his retirement.

A little after 3:00 a.m., Bud stepped from his row house on Alice Street to take out his black Lab, Sadie. She was getting old, and her bladder was weak, so their middle-of-the-night walks up and down the block were a common event.

Bud heard the noise before he saw anything. It came from maybe two blocks away, the intensity increasing by the second.

Screaming. Hysterical screaming.

“Come on, Sadie.”

He pulled the dog back toward his house. She balked and squatted in the grass while the sound increased. Bud didn’t make it far before he spotted someone running down the middle of the street, arms flailing, head back, screaming and babbling incoherently.

Bud tugged at the leash again. Instead of following, Sadie began to bark, deep and threatening, even though Sadie wouldn’t hurt a fly.

The person in the street heard her and changed course, heading straight for them. Now Bud could see that the man was naked as a plucked chicken. Probably high on meth or something. He thought all of this while Sadie lunged, her barks becoming more frantic as the guy zeroed in on them.

Bud tugged Sadie, harder this time. She reluctantly gave up some ground, but not without a fight as Bud continued to bring her around to his way of thinking—which was to get the hell out of there.

If she’d been some little dog, Bud would have scooped her up and run into the house and called the cops. But she was big and overweight, and there was no way he could lift her, not with his bad back.

Lights appeared in some of the neighboring houses, and a few doors opened. Hopefully somebody else would call the cops. Hopefully the guy didn’t have a weapon.

The naked man barreled down on Bud and gripped him by the arms. The force of the rapidly moving body caused Bud to stagger, then catch himself while the dog continued to bark.

“Help me!” the man said.

Under the lamplight, Bud saw that the man had curly hair and was maybe in his early forties. To add to the oddness of the scene, Bud noted that he had writing on him. On his face, his arms, his stomach.

“Help me,” the man repeated.

Along with the writing, the man’s face was bleeding, and he had cuts across his stomach. He threw his arms around Bud and hung on.

Bud didn’t touch him. He just stood there with the leash in one hand, the other hovering over the man’s shoulder, unable to decide whether he should give him a reassuring pat or push him away. At least he could be pretty sure his new friend didn’t have a weapon.

The man sobbed and babbled incoherently, clearly terrified.

Sadie’s barking was drowned out by the sound of sirens.
Thank God
. Now that help was on the way, Bud gave the man a gingerly pat. The guy flinched, but didn’t let go.

Two cop cars arrived, one after the other. Sirens were cut, doors slammed, flashlight beams moved across the sidewalk to illuminate the man’s face.

Decipio.

The same word, written over and over.

Bud felt a chill travel up the back of his neck. The prostitute killer wrote words on the girls he killed. Bud had heard about it on the news. And if he remembered correctly, the killer used a black marker. But the other victims had been young women in their twenties, two of them hookers, which was why Bud hadn’t been worried and why he was on the sidewalk in front of his house at 3:00 a.m.

“What seems to be the problem here?” a big barrel of a man asked, his flashlight blinding.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” another cop added with amusement. Apparently cops thought naked people were funny.

The naked man was still hanging on.
The cops think we’re lovers.
Bud tried to extricate himself, but his new friend wouldn’t let go. “I’ve never seen this guy before in my life,” Bud shouted over the sobs. “He just came running down the street.”

“Hey.” The cop put a hand on the hysterical man’s back. Another cop appeared with a blanket and spread it over his shoulders. “Why you wandering around with no clothes on?”

The man loosened his grip on Bud. He straightened and grabbed at the edges of the blanket, tugging the fabric around him. “Somebody tried to kill me,” he said breathlessly, his voice shaking.

“Let’s get a better look at you. Why don’t you step back.”

The man staggered and straightened, squinting at the flashlight beam. After a long second, the cop addressed his partner. “You seeing this?”

“Yep.”

“Who are you?” the cop asked.

“I work for the
New York Times
. I’m a reporter.”

“And I work for the
Wall Street Journal
,” the smaller cop said. Both cops laughed.

Annoyed by their behavior, Bud asked, “What’s your name, son?”

“Jay Thomas Paul.”

“Why don’t you tell us everything that happened,” the cop who seemed to be in charge said. “Were you at a party?”

“You need to call Detective Elise Sandburg,” Jay Thomas Paul told him. “She’ll vouch for me.”

The cop shifted on his feet while continuing to eyeball Jay Thomas Paul. “How do you know Detective Sandburg?”

“I’m a reporter. I work for the
New York Times
,” he repeated. “I’ve been shadowing her and Detective Gould for an article. You need to call her. Let me talk to her. I need to talk to her.”

“You.” The cop pointed at Bud. “Stay where you are.”

Bud wanted nothing more than to go home, go to bed, and forget this ever happened.

The cop looked over his shoulder at his partner. “These are probably the rantings of a lunatic, but we’d better get Detective Sandburg on the line.”

The other officer pulled out his phone and made the call.

CHAPTER 43

I
got a naked guy here. Says he knows you.”

An hour and a half after John Casper’s fiber discovery, Elise scooted up in bed with the receiver pressed firmly to her ear. Sleep was beginning to seem like something reserved for other people.

“Can you repeat that?” Elise asked. She must have heard incorrectly.

“Give me the phone,” someone near the calling officer said. “Give me the phone!”

A shuffling noise, then another voice began babbling incoherently.

“Who is this?” Elise demanded.

“Jay.”

“Who?”

“Jay Thomas. The guy with three names. Listen, Detective. I was almost killed tonight. This guy tied me up and had a knife, but when he fell asleep, I managed to get away.”

“Are you okay?” Elise asked with concern. He might annoy her, but she’d hate to see anything happen to him.