Sea of Suspicion (18 page)

“They’re going to get brought into this anyway when their mother stands trial for murder, don’t you think?”

Judy had no more killed Tracy than he had. An emotion he didn’t recognize stabbed him in the chest but it wasn’t pain. It felt uncannily like relief and Nick wondered if Ewan was right. Maybe he had hung his entire life on finding Chrissie’s killer and wouldn’t know what the hell to do with himself if he found them. But he had made a vow to his dead wife and he wouldn’t let anything, not even his own pathetic inadequacies, get in the way of that promise.

He scanned the files for information. Finally found what he was looking for.

“Brady and Molly are studying abroad?” He’d get someone to check the passport office and airlines for travel details.

Judy tapped her finger against the desk. Stared at the table, not looking at him, not cooperating anymore.

“Callie’s the only one living at home now, isn’t she?” Nick asked.

Fear flashed in her eyes. “If you touch my daughter, I’ll—”

Nick leaned closer and laughed in her face. “You’ll what? You’ll kill me?” He jerked to his feet, stuffed all the pieces of Tracy Good’s death back into the file. “I don’t think so.”

Susie survived the day. It hadn’t been easy and her hand still throbbed from the punch she’d landed on Jake, but it throbbed gloriously. She let herself into her dark cottage, keyed off the alarm system and threw her bag to the floor.

Images of Nick filled the space. In the bedroom. The living room. The kitchen. And it stung like salt in a wound that he hadn’t called. Stupid, stupid woman.

She walked over to the couch and straightened cushions, trying not to remember how they’d got jumbled in the first place. She was falling for him, that rough charm and unexpected compassion, even though she knew he would break her heart.

Rafael had gone AWOL after his meeting with Nick and late this afternoon Jake Sizemore had been escorted from the building by uniformed police officers.

Susie frowned. She had called her mother. “Not even the president could get that woman out of that mess if she murdered two women in cold blood. The most he could do is get her extradited to serve time back in the U.S. But if her family is in Britain, what’s the point?”

What indeed?

Her muscles ached, from stress, from sex, from assaulting a fellow biology prof. She rolled her head around her shoulders, energy fizzing inside her like a shaken can of Coke. She needed a shower but decided a run first might work off the tension in her muscles and clear her mind of Nick Archer fever.

She changed into workout gear, reset the alarm and locked the door behind her, hanging her keys on a cord around her neck along with a whistle. It was full dark now but the moon was on high beam, lighting her way like a giant personal spotlight. The Heathcotes’ house was dimly lit as if someone inside was watching TV or reading a book. She’d drop in on them tomorrow before work, make sure they were okay. But right now she wanted to avoid Lily’s all-knowing gaze. Nick might not mean to hurt anyone, but he was damned good at it.

She jogged along the path to the beach, the sand stretching east for at least half a mile. Shadows raced over the shore as clouds billowed overhead. The sand gave slightly beneath her feet until she reached the harder packed surface of the intertidal zone. Her heart rate rose. Her breath became deeper, her lungs stretching in that first response to the increased need for oxygen. It was an easy pace, a kick-back-and-cruise pace.
Sensible. Steady
. Just like her. For some reason it irritated the crap out of her, so she pushed harder. Kicked her legs faster against the beach, pounded the sand, pumped her arms until her breath came in deep bellows and her leg muscles began to burn.

Running was like sex without the fireworks. Images of Nick rose again in her thoughts, but Susie blocked them out and pushed harder, nearing the end of the beach in an all-out sprint. Suddenly she tripped and sailed through the air. Plowing through the sand, skinning the palms of her hands a split-second before she collided with a boulder. The smell of the incoming tide and the scream of gulls chased her into oblivion.

Ever since Lily had kissed him with something other than brotherly love, the earth’s axis had felt dislodged and out of whack. Now Nick sat across from Callie Sizemore and wondered if he’d finally lost it. But who else would Judy Sizemore protect except her children?

Callie had only been eleven years old when Chrissie died, but he’d once threatened his mother with a knife and he hadn’t even been nine.

He started running through the structured interview questions, monitoring her responses for what she said and how she said it.

“Do you know why I’ve asked you here today, Callie?” He forced himself to smile, but his fingers were squeezing his notes so forcefully the paper crumpled. “You don’t mind if I call you by your first name, do you?”

She shook her head, her thumbnail never leaving the slight gap between her front teeth.

“I need you to answer the questions out loud so the recorder can pick it up. Think you can do that?” Nick watched her closely, looking for a clue this scrawny young woman was a cold-blooded killer. It seemed absurd, but his mind couldn’t let go of the idea now he’d latched onto it. Judy wouldn’t lie to protect her cheating, worthless prick of a husband. And though Nick had never experienced a mother’s love, he’d seen the depth of the emotion in Emily Heathcote and Amy McKnight.

Callie’s lips tugged into a pink pout. “Yes, you can call me Callie, and no, I don’t know why you want to talk to me.”

“Who do you think might have committed this crime?”

“That’s your job. I have absolutely no idea.” Looking bored, she stared up at the darkened windows.

“Why do you think someone would do this, Callie?”

She shrugged, obviously not giving a damn about the victims. His teeth locked as anger began to grow inside him. All her responses pointed to a guilty woman and despite his need to find Chrissie’s killer, to solve this decade-old mystery, he didn’t want his wife to have been murdered by a kid.

Chrissie had loved kids. They’d planned to start a family just as soon as she’d written up her Ph.D., but Jake Sizemore had beaten him to it.

Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe she hadn’t died alone. If God and Heaven did exist, maybe Chrissie had her child with her for eternity.

Callie nibbled the skin of her cuticle until it bled. She shifted, braced her hands on the table as if to stand. “Can I go now?”

“No. You can’t, not yet.” Nick forced his voice to be gentle. Warm. “Tell me why you wouldn’t do something like this?”

“Me?” Her eyes flashed with surprise. “I thought we were talking about Mom.”

Nick leaned forward. “I’d appreciate your take on things. I need to understand exactly what happened. Can you tell me why you would never have done this?” He kept his expression mild even as something dark shifted inside his belly.

“I couldn’t do something like that. My parents are highly respected in our community. We go to church.” She sat back as if that were an alibi etched in granite.

Nick imagined throwing the door open and yelling, “They go to church for God’s sake! Let them all go!” But the BTK killer in Wichita had been a church deacon. “Where were you the night Tracy Good was killed?”

“I don’t know why you even care about that cheap little slut.” Loathing filled her eyes as she switched fingers to chew her other hand.

“Your mother confessed to killing Tracy Good because she was having an affair with your dad.” He felt irritated and unsettled, by Lily’s kiss and thoughts of Chrissie being murdered by an eleven-year-old kid. “You must have met her?”

Callie shrugged, silent and sullen, as if he was wasting her time.

“You didn’t like her?” he persisted.

“What was to like?” The twist of her lips was scathing. “Spreading her legs so my
dad
could fuck her?” She laughed. “Come on. She was a stupid cow in a long line of stupid cows.” She held his gaze with her oversized eyes and he glimpsed answers he didn’t want to see.

He tried a different angle.

“What do you do, Callie?” He looked at his notes even though he knew the information by heart. Let her think he was slow and didn’t recognize a sociopath when he saw one.

“I go to university here and help Mom at home.”

“But your attendance record says you haven’t been to a single lecture or practical class this term?”

She shrugged. “I don’t need to go to class. I always ace the exams.” Her eyes held sparks of defiance.

Maybe she did. Her records at the university said she had an IQ of 146, but she hadn’t finished the first year of her undergraduate degree yet, because she was lazy, unmotivated.

Was murder a challenge? Just to see if she could beat the judicial system? The law?

“How’s your girlfriend, Detective?” Callie asked. Her smile turned glacial.

A shiver of something he didn’t recognize passed through him. Fear? He kept his face expressionless. Susie was fine and he wasn’t so easily played.

Callie picked up her water with her right hand and sipped, sending him a flirty smile. It settled in his stomach like sulfur.

“Do you remember the night Christina Archer died in South Africa?” He let the silence hang, listening to the tick of the clock on the wall. He waited for her to fill the silence, but even though he was the one experienced at interrogation she didn’t say a word. “You were only a kid. You probably don’t remember.”

“I remember.” She gave him a wide smile as if they shared treasured memories. “The police there were hopeless, couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.” She rapped her fingers in an incessant tattoo on the desk. “Must drive you mad not knowing what happened to her.” There was more in her eyes now. Amusement. Knowledge.

Something violent lurched inside him, but he held himself still, not knowing exactly who was the cat and who was the mouse in this little exchange.

“It must be hard knowing she was going to leave you for a man old enough to be her father.” Her foot tapped in time to her fingers. “Doesn’t say much about you, does it? You must have been a piss-poor husband and a shitty lover.”

Piss-poor husband he would concede.

“She was going to have a baby.” He lowered his voice, forcing her to lean forward and pay attention. “Your daddy was going to replace
you
with Chrissie’s little bastard. Would have been a cute kid too. Chrissie was better-looking than that old hag you call a mother.”

Callie raked at his face and he jerked back to avoid being scratched. Vicious little bitch.

“Not after the sharks finished with her she wasn’t.”

“How would you know?” he goaded. “You’d have been tucked in bed like a baby.”

“And you’re just as stupid as those South Africans.” Her eyes narrowed, her lungs pumping tiny breasts against the sheer fabric of her sweater.

He had her. He knew he had her. “Did you kill my wife, Callie?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she taunted.

“Did you kill Christina Archer? Yes or no, Callie, for the record.”

Her eyes shot up and to the right. “No.”

Liar…but proving it was another thing. He let out a breath.

“Where were you the night Tracy Good was murdered? I know you weren’t home.” It was a guess, but he knew he was right when her eyes shot to his.

“That bitch was ruining my life, making Mom miserable, making Dad behave like a friggin’ moron—again.” She rolled her eyes, twitched her foot beneath the table. “Why do women chase after him like that? He’s an old man. It’s disgusting.” She started working the nail on her index finger. “At least you look like you might be worth the effort—if you can get it up.”

With her big eyes she looked slightly amphibian. He leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out beneath the table. It took her a moment to take the bait, but she ran a foot up his calf and back down again.

Hatred slithered in his stomach like eels.

“What were you doing last Saturday night between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.?” he asked, ignoring the insidious sensation her touch aroused.

“Hmm…” Her cheeks formed tight little apples when she smiled. “I was in the Student Union doing, I believe, a Brazilian.” She slipped her tongue out and touched it to her top lip.

Defeat roared through him and his body felt as heavy as lead. After all these years, he was never going to nail Chrissie’s killer. He was never going to be able to make things right.

Nick reached out from a long way away and clicked off the recorder. Time stretched out like the moment before death. Blood slipped through his veins like barbwire.

He’d never get a conviction in a court of law.

But he could kill her. Right here in this room he could reach out and seize Callie Sizemore by the throat, crush her windpipe and watch her slowly suffocate. He could be the avenger. He could deliver justice.

His life would be over, but it would feel good. It would feel really, really good.

Sound amplified in the small room. His breath rasped through a sandpaper throat as Callie mutilated her fingernails. He shuffled papers in his files, avoided looking at Sizemore’s daughter who sat oblivious to her fate, watching him with soulless eyes. She looked like a waif, a fawn. But he knew she was a monster.

An image of Susie flashed through his mind.

He recited the rosary in his head. In Latin. Reached out and grasped the trailing edge of his humanity before it disappeared forever. He went to the door, opened it and found his boss standing there, her chest heaving as if she’d sprinted all the way there.

They exchanged a long silent look before he slipped out of the room.

Nick ignored occasional greetings from his colleagues and sat in front of his murder board. Tracy Good’s photograph was surrounded by pictures of suspects. Jake Sizemore, Judy Sizemore, Rafael Domenici, Callie Sizemore. It went round and round in circles and he couldn’t tie it down. Christina’s murder board would have the same people, except for Domenici. Nick pressed his hand over his face. He was on a bloody merry-go-around where all his prime suspects alibied one another.

He needed proof.

Rage burned inside, but he ignored it, the way he’d ignored it for years so he could do the job. Eleven-year-old Callie had something to do with his wife’s murder. But proving it without a confession would be impossible. Had she acted alone? Or had all the Sizemore kids ganged up to get rid of the threat to their family?

Jake had no alibi for Tracy’s murder. But there was no physical evidence to tie anyone to Tracy Good except the DNA of Rafael Domenici and Tony Scott, the latter who claimed to be in Glasgow the night of the murder. Officers had done a preliminary check with the kid’s parents to confirm the guy’s alibi but now he needed them to follow up with something solid like a surveillance photo from a street camera. They had Tracy’s recording of sexual intercourse with her boss—more damning than his sperm. It provided motive, which no one else appeared to have.

Tracy Good hadn’t meant enough to anyone else for them to kill her.

Nick ran his hands over his scalp, glanced at his phone and knew he should call Susie. He wanted to hear her voice.
Leave her out of this
. Instead he stared at the list of suspects and wondered what he was missing. Skinny narcissist Callie Sizemore, the classic sociopath. Judy, wild-eyed aging wife and overprotective mother. Jake Sizemore, the blackmailed boss, and Rafael Domenici, addicted to sex.

Tracy hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Her murder had been clinical and cold.

Judy hadn’t killed anyone, he was as sure of that as the pope was Catholic. But she’d perverted the course of justice and made him believe, however briefly, he’d fulfilled his vow.

Okay, Archer. Do the job.

He needed to find out exactly what time Callie and Rafael had been in the Student Union, and he needed to request polygraph tests for each of the Sizemores and Rafael Domenici, and a psych evaluation while he was at it. He scrubbed a hand over his face and glanced at his watch. Ewan would be tucking his kids in bed and making sure his wife didn’t choke to death on her own spit. That left Nick with a lot of legwork and not a whole lot of chance to sleep.

He picked up the phone and dialed Susie. The dial tone droned in his ear and after thirty seconds he laughed. He’d imagined her sitting home waiting for him to call.
What an ass
.

Water hit her with a blast. Susie reared to her knees, shocked into consciousness as another wall of water crashed over her head and sent her under. The current gripped her body and started to drag her out to sea. Dela’s face flashed through her mind—dead at the surface, blood on her lips from a ruptured lung. Susie choked back the panic rushing through her limbs as she scrambled for purchase.

She clawed harder into the sand. It anchored her enough so that the next wave thrust her forward. She would
not
die in the sea. She would not let that giant entity suck her up and spit her out like flotsam. She staggered to her feet and whirled in a disoriented circle. The moon was gone. So was her flashlight. Mist cloaked the beach in an icy glaze, visibility reduced to a few feet. Confused, she oriented herself to the waves and stumbled out of the water.

Wet clothing clung to her body like saggy skin. The wind seemed to come direct from the Arctic and stabbed into her skin like knives.

A cry came out of the darkness and Susie froze. Was it an animal? Or a woman crying for help? Survival instinct had her crouching in the sand like a beast. Lightheaded, she spread her fingers on the cold sand, restrained a whimper as yet more icy water soaked her skin.

Silence echoed through the sea mist as if someone or something listened attentively. Hysteria and panic welled up, the pounding of her heart resounding through her ears like drums. Desperately she drew in one slow deep breath, and then another. She ignored the way her heart fluttered and the panic eventually receded. The woozy sensation stopped whirling inside her head. The cry came again and she looked around, trying to stare through the fog.

Was it a wild animal she’d heard? Maybe the fox they’d seen on the road the other night? Or could it be Emily out for another deranged ramble?