Ten Times Guilty (14 page)

“You were awfully quiet in there. What’s the matter? Is it getting to you?”

Reese said nothing. He had wondered the same thing. He headed for the ER doors.

Cooper kept pace with him. “She’s lying, you know.”

“Why don’t you ease up a bit, try being human again.”

“Take lessons from you, you mean?”

Reese stopped and looked at her, jaws working. “Take it easy, Cooper, this isn’t the Peterson case.”

Her face flushed a deep red. Her eyes narrowed.

“She’s lying and you know it,” she said in a low voice. “If you want to pussyfoot around to make up for the past, that’s your business. I’ve got a job to do.”

“You don’t think she was raped?”

“Oh, no question she was raped. I just think she’s hiding something and I intend to find out what it is.”

With a scathing glance at Reese, Cooper turned and walked away, her heels clicking on the tile.

***

Reluctant to go home, Reese drove aimlessly around the city. Nothing about his apartment appealed to him. It was just a place to sleep and shower, a place to where he’d retreated after Julie walked out last year. Contrary to departmental regulations that a police officer must live in the same city he worked, Reese had rented a small place in the north suburbs, as far away from the old neighborhood as he could get.

He was afraid to go home. He’d just sit in front of the TV, waiting for the dawn, fighting his need for a drink.

Tonight, he just might lose.

He had hoped this was the one, that this vic would lead him to his guy. Instead, he’d taken one look at her and crumbled.

Dammit, Cooper was right. He was wracked with guilt and his judgment was off. So much so that he doubted his ability to do his job.

When he first saw Tracy’s battered face, every instinct demanded that he hunt down the bastard and pound his head into concrete. And when she looked at him with those soft brown eyes, he was reminded of another pair of eyes, and he had wanted to hold Tracy and never let anyone harm her again.

Cooper was right about something else. Tracy was hiding something. It had been almost painful watching her stumble for answers.

He should have stuck with hard questions instead of letting Tracy slide with half-assed answers and obvious lies.

Could he keep an emotional distance and do his job? At this point he didn’t know. But he had to try.

Ahead, the neon lights of a gas station blurred. He blinked, trying to ease his scratchy eyes. Cold seeped through his tired bones. Time to head home.

He swung north onto I-25 and exited on 104th Avenue. He cracked the window and took a deep breath, the fresh air clearing away the stale hospital air.

When he passed a Denny’s restaurant, he realized he hadn’t eaten all day. Their Grand Slam breakfast was good and plentiful, so he gave a signal and made his turn. Maybe hot coffee and something to eat would chase away the chill he couldn’t seem to shake. Probably just a band-aid to cover a festering wound, but right now, he’d settle for anything.

Chapter Nineteen

Karr parked his van across from the museum and angled so he could watch the front door.

At this black hour of the morning the lot was empty except for vehicles belonging to various night watchmen in the area. He was careful to park on the far side of the streetlight, in the shadows of a faded brick office building. He’d already changed license plates, using one of several he’d previously picked up from a salvage yard owner who, for the right price, didn’t ask questions.

The museum was quiet, so he’d sit tight and catch a couple hours sleep until it opened. He’d tell that red-headed hot pants some sob story about having to leave his shift early and needing his pay.

But he had to make sure it was safe. If that little bitch had turned him in, he’d have to think of something else for some fast bucks.

No, she wouldn’t rat to the cops, not that mousey little thing. Remembering the scared look on her face, he grinned. Zipping up his jacket, Karr leaned back and closed his eyes.

***

Reese turned onto his side, punched the pillow and lay quietly, trying to let his body drift into sleep. If he could get a couple of hours he would be okay.

The old apartment building creaked and groaned as it greeted the morning. A dog barked and howled. Crashing, slamming sounds came from a garbage truck as it emptied metal cans into its belly. From within the apartment complex a baby wailed.

Reese rolled onto his back. Flashes of lightning streaked through the window blinds and bounced on the ceiling. A roll of thunder followed.

Why had Tracy lied? Why would an assault victim protect the perp? Was it fear? Shame?

His phone rang. He let the machine pick it up. Cooper, with an edge to her voice, demanded he meet her at Tracy’s apartment. A few minutes later his pager beeped. He ignored that, too.

Maybe Tracy didn’t want a boyfriend or an ex-husband to know. Or perhaps she and the assailant had been having an affair and he got too rough. Maybe he had a wife and Tracy didn’t want her to find out.

But none of that rang true. He’d stake all his years on the job that Tracy was truly a victim.

He had to talk to her again, get her to tell what she knew. How could he do that without causing further harm? Right now she was in a fragile state, emotionally as well as physically. As long as she was covering something, demanding answers at this point could drive her further into silence.

Or, it could break her, something he didn’t want to risk. He had to get more information, and he needed to do it without Cooper’s abrasive manner. He had never liked working with a partner. He couldn’t think with someone at his side constantly suggesting and theorizing. Even though Cooper had more experience in sex crimes, it still boiled down to good detective work and gut instinct.

If he could trust what instinct he had left. He had to try. Maybe then he could sleep.

***

They thought it was because of the attack. Dr. Cole and the nurses assumed Tracy’s continuous need to check on Ritchie was because she had been brutalized.

They were right. But that wasn’t all.

It was the image of chicken necks that drove her to incessantly pick up the phone and call Diana.

She had seen Karr’s eyes. She knew he was capable of snapping her son’s neck as easily as she would snap a twig.

So she had to get out of the hospital, get Ritchie and go as far away as her small savings would take them.

Just as soon as she could walk.

She had spent the past few hours doing what the doctor ordered, trying to sleep, eating when she could. Medications helped ease the pain, and a Sitz bath and sprays kept the stitches bearable.

The headaches were violent and bouts of vertigo kept her in bed. Time, Dr. Cole told her. Time and patience.

How could she have patience when Karr was out there?

***

After a breakfast of coffee and aspirin, Reese headed for the station. Cooper had started a file on Tracy and placed it in the top drawer of his desk. Inside was a note with Cooper’s bold script.

“Don’t you ever answer your phones? I’ve got a raw throat and I’m going home. Strep in the family and don’t want to spread it. You take over, Sanders, and for heaven’s sake, do your job.”

Reese crumpled the note and tossed it into the can. He was sorry Cooper wasn’t well, but he felt like a parolee whose parole officer suddenly left town. If only his other problems would go away as easily.

“Christ almighty!” Detective Paul Haggerty, another twenty-plus-year veteran, entered dripping water, his jacket pulled tight around his chunky body. “Any more rain and we’ll have to build an ark.”

Detective Dean Parrish, an ivy-league man who was Haggerty’s new partner, followed right behind him. Although his Brooks Brothers suit was wet, nothing was out of place, including his neatly-trimmed blond hair.

Haggerty unbuttoned his collar, mopped his face with a handkerchief and made his way to a desk next to Reese, collapsing heavily in the chair. Parrish perched on the corner.

“You desk jockeys got it made,” Haggerty told Reese. “Staying in where it’s dry, sipping coffee and pushing papers all day.”

“Careful,” Reese said, grinning, “your age is showing.”

“You go door-to-door awhile. You try to get information from tight-lipped, door-slamming assholes.”

“What? And deprive this young man here of the opportunity to observe coercion at its best? Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Fuck you,” Haggerty said.

“Wish someone would, because it’s been too long since I got laid. Got any prospects?”

“Don’t know anyone that desperate.”

Reese laughed. “Did you get anything?” Both detectives were working with Cooper.

“You kidding? The usual. No one in a five-block radius saw or heard anything. Have you heard from Coop? She went home sick. Can’t ever remember that happening before.”

“Wouldn’t worry about her,” Davis chimed in. “If it came down to the plague or Cooper, I’d bet on Coop.” Their laughter filled the room, but it was laughter tinged with a grudging respect. Cooper had earned her way into their circle.

Reese turned his attention back to the file. Cooper had made reference to similarities between Tracy Michaels, Cindy Harris, and a former case now inactive, Anna Mae Foster. Check it out, Cooper had written. Reese retrieved the file from Clerical and discovered that the Foster case was inactive because she had skipped. Apparently, right after she returned home from the hospital, she vacated her apartment in the middle of the night and left no forwarding address. Routine questioning of her neighbors had led to zero—no one had seen or heard anything. She had called her Denver employer, Ace Construction, and instructed them to send a final check to a nearby post office box. That, too, led nowhere. DMV had nothing current on her.

Foster’s actions resembled someone on the run, and people ran when they were frightened.

Reese compared all three files. The MOs were similar and the DNA codes matched. All except Tracy’s. The lab was still working on her samples. Reese had a feeling that when the testing was completed, her results would match the other two.

Frowning, he retrieved his wallet and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He smoothed the faded crime lab report and compared it to the other two. Just as he suspected, the DNA matched.

Geographic profiling, a methodology sometimes used to determine a perp’s comfort zone when the crime scenes were within a certain distance of each other, wasn’t considered as the victims had been too scattered. He checked the victims’ addresses. All were from different areas of town, and all worked in different locations.

If they were attacked by the same man, how did the perp find them?

And what connected Tracy to the other victims?

***

Tracy called Diana again.

“Oh, honey,” Diana said, her patient voice full of sympathy, “Ritchie’s just fine. Just worry about getting well and forget this ever happened.”

Could she do that? Was it possible to go on with her life as if nothing happened?

No matter how much she wished it were different, there could be no life for her as long as Karr was out there.

Was he still working? Was he living a normal life, going to work every day, coming home, eating, sleeping, and acting as if nothing happened?

Her life was shattered. Everything she had planned was destroyed. Her only concern now was to recover enough to get Ritchie, to hold him close and never let anything bad happen to him.

Maybe then the knot in her chest would go away. Maybe then she could take a deep breath.

The door swung open and a young volunteer entered with a bouquet of flowers. She set them on the nightstand, looked at Tracy and gasped.

Tracy quickly averted her face.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the volunteer said. “I didn’t mean...” Red flushed her cheeks.

“That’s okay,” Tracy said, keeping her face slightly turned. Even though her bruised face was not her fault, she still wanted to pull the sheet over her head. Or not see anyone. The volunteer, about sixteen, looked like she wanted to sink through the floor. “You sure the flowers are for me?” she asked, trying to put the girl at ease.

“You’re Tracy Michaels, aren’t you?” 

Tracy nodded. “Who are they from?”

The volunteer checked the card. “Says they’re from The Denver Victorian Museum. Looks like several people signed it.”

The gang at work. How nice. When the volunteer left, Tracy reached for the card, then froze. Had Karr signed it? Surely he would have; it would seem strange to the others if he refused.

Her hands trembling, she studied the little white card, sitting so innocently in the flowers, the little card she couldn’t bring herself to touch. Even the thought of seeing his signature unnerved her.