The Shark (Forgotten Files Book 1) (9 page)

“Eddie Potter, the reporter,” she said. “He has friends in the department, I suppose.”

His scowl deepened. “Where did you see him?”

“He came to my house this morning.”

Sharp muttered a curse. “That’s not good.”

“I can take care of Potter and myself. Who’s the victim?”

“Her name is Vicky Gilbert.”

So Potter was right. “How did you identify her?”

“Isn’t this your day off?”

“I can’t take days off and do nothing. My kid is in school all day, and I can train Cooper and clean house only so much before I go insane.”

A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “There must be something else you can be doing other than chasing me.”

“Actually, there isn’t. This case is under my skin.”

He paused and studied her, his expression partly amused but mostly annoyed. “Vicky Gilbert was arrested last year for theft in Chesterfield, Virginia. She and a few friends decided to steal some dresses from a shop in the mall. Her mother paid the store for the stolen items and charges were dropped.”

“Charges went away, but the problems did not.”

“Exactly.” He pried the lid off the to-go coffee cup and sipped. “Could be any number of reasons on the menu: drugs, abuse, the call to adventure. I’ve heard all the reasons.”

Riley pulled off her sunglasses, fingering a worn earpiece. “You said her family is in Chesterfield?”

“Solid middle class from what I can tell.”

“And we both know that bad things never happen in solid middle-class families.”

He grunted. “You’re too young to be cynical, Trooper.”

“I see the world for what it is.”

“And what’s that?”

“Dark and scary. Do you have the address?”

“Yeah. I was planning to pay them a visit as soon as I checked in with my chief.”

“I’d like to tag along. I’ll have a different perspective than you, Agent Sharp. I work with runaways. I can help you. And maybe if I can find out who killed Vicky, I can put away Carter for the rest of his life.” She was like a dog with a bone. “Have you found Darla Johnson? She’s Jax Carter’s girlfriend.”

“We’re on the lookout for her.”

“Have Vicky’s parents called in a missing persons report yet on their daughter?”

“No.”

“Don’t you find that odd?”

“I learned a long time ago that there’re all kinds of dysfunctional families out there.”

“They are either glad she’s gone or think she’ll come back.” She calculated the time it would take to cut through the rush-hour traffic. The twenty-mile trip would take an hour tops. “If I come along, I’ll drive and you can get some work done.”

A sigh shuddered through him, making him look older than his thirty-seven years. “Pull your vehicle around in a half hour.”

“See you then.” She turned to leave and then snapped her fingers, remembering. “You aren’t allergic to dogs, are you?”

“What?”

“Cooper’s along for the ride.”

He shook his head. “Why not? The more the merrier.” Exactly a half hour later Sharp returned and slid into the passenger seat. As she pulled out of the lot, he tensed. Sharp wasn’t accustomed to riding shotgun.

As they drove in silence, she thought about the playing cards hidden in her house. A thousand miles and a dozen years separated her and the day someone had given her those cards. She had no forensic evidence or memories she could attach to the cards. And with Hanna’s adoption looming, just the suggestion of a link to a serial killer could derail the final judgment. Still, the cards couldn’t be ignored.

“Have you considered entering the murder in ViCAP?” she asked.

“The FBI database? Why?”

“The playing cards found with the victim are distinctive. The handwritten word
Loser
on each is a signature.”

He cursed under his breath. “Don’t make this more than it is.”

Gripping the wheel, she pulled herself up a little straighter. “I disagree. They have a distinctive look. I bet they’re custom made. It’s worth a shot.”

“Anything federal amounts to a shit-ton of paperwork.”

“I’ll do it.”

He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “You don’t want to deal with the feds.”

“You don’t like the feds?”

“We’ve crossed swords before.”

“But it’s the only hard evidence we have at the moment,” she coaxed. “You’ve got to admit the cards are different.”

He tensed as she sped up to merge into highway traffic. “The cards are unique.”

“Like I said, I can help.”

He glanced at her, eyebrow raised as if searching. “What aren’t you telling me?”

If a lead didn’t pop with ViCAP, she would tell him the truth. But right now she was betting the database could give him more than she could. “I know the cards are the key.”

“I’ll look into ViCAP. Right now, I want to talk to the victim’s parents.”

She loosened her grip on the wheel. “Sure.”

Thirty minutes later GPS directed them to a tree-lined street in western Chesterfield County. The acre lots were large for the county and the houses at least three thousand square feet, both indicators that this area was definitely upper middle class.

She parked in front of the tall brick colonial with neatly trimmed hedges in a freshly mulched bed out front. The driveway was aggregate, the landscaping professional.

“Does the dog need walking?”

“He’s good for now, but we’ll hit a rest stop on the way home.”

She left the SUV on, the engine and air-conditioning running. “What do I do?”

He grunted. “When we get inside, don’t say a word. Let me do the talking,” Sharp said. “No offense, Trooper, but without your uniform we look like ‘take your daughter to work’ day.”

“We don’t.”

“You do look young.”

As they got out, a man dressed in a dark suit stepped out the front door. Grinning, he had a cell phone pressed to his ear and a briefcase in hand. Smooth white teeth flashed as his polished wing tips caught the morning sun. He paused midstride when he saw them approach. The smile vanished as he spoke into the phone before hanging up.

If Dakota Sharp’s haircut and stance didn’t give him away as a cop, the dark suit did.

Sharp reached for his badge while maintaining eye contact. “Richard Gilbert?”

The man stopped, jangling his car keys in his hand. A thick aftershave scent wafted around him as if he’d just slapped it on his cheeks. “That’s right.”

“My name is Agent Dakota Sharp, and this is Trooper Riley Tatum. We’d like to talk to you about your daughter, Vicky.”

The man studied Sharp’s badge. “What has Vicky done? Has she stolen again?” Manicured fingers closed around the keys.

“No, sir, we don’t believe she’s stolen anything,” Sharp said as he hooked the badge back on his belt. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

“It’s been a month since she took off. She was mad at her mother and me when we grounded her after her last brush with the law. She’s living with one of her friends.”

“Friend got a name?” Sharp asked.

“I don’t remember.”

Riley fished her notebook from her back pocket. “By the looks of her, I’d say she’s been living on the streets during that time.”

Sharp cast a sideways glance toward Riley, but he let the comment slide. Neither mentioned homicide because people usually clammed up when they heard the
h
word.

When Mr. Gilbert did not answer, Sharp reached in his pocket for a stick of gum as if he had all the time in the world. “Is pinning down the date you last saw Vicky a tough question?”

“No. It’s not. Let me go inside and get my wife. Bonnie knows our daughter better than I do.”

Mr. Gilbert opened the front door, and the three of them entered the foyer. “Bonnie! Can you come downstairs?”

“What do you want?” she shouted back from an unseen room on the second floor.

“There are a couple of cops here who have questions about Vicky.”

“Vicky?” Footsteps hurried across the upstairs hallway.

Mrs. Gilbert rounded the corner. Heavyset, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt and her hair pulled up in a ponytail. Despite the puffy contours of her face, there were hints of a resemblance to Vicky.

Bonnie wiped her hands on a rag as she descended the stairs, pausing several steps short of the bottom. “What’s this about?”

“Wasn’t it last week when we saw her?” Gilbert offered.

Riley’s bullshit meter always worked well. Some of the officers in patrol called it her superpower. The human lie detector, others said. But it didn’t take a superpower or much police work to know Mr. Gilbert was lying.

Mrs. Gilbert kept wiping her hands as if she would never really be able to get them clean. “Is she okay? I’m worried about her.”

“When did Vicky run away?” Sharp asked.

“Hold on,” Mr. Gilbert said. “I never used the words
run away
. She became upset with us and moved in with a friend to cool off.”

“That’s running away, Mr. Gilbert,” Riley said.

“You have to be underage to run away,” Mr. Gilbert countered. “She turned eighteen a week ago.”

“That absolves you of a legal responsibility, but what about a moral obligation?” Riley couldn’t hide the annoyance burning under her tone.

Mr. Gilbert advanced a step, but Sharp edged forward, blocking his path. “Mrs. Gilbert, when did Vicky move out?”

“She didn’t run away. She went to stay with friends. She texted me several times a week and checked in. I knew where she was staying.”

“How long has she been gone?” Sharp asked.

“I’m not sure. But not long.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not exactly. No.”

Sharp studied the slightly frayed tip of his red tie before locking his gaze on her. “Who was she staying with last?”

“I’m not sure,” Bonnie said. “She has many friends and it’s hard to keep up. But she and Rebecca are very close.”

“When did she start staying with friends, Mrs. Gilbert?”

The woman hesitated. “About five weeks ago.”

Mr. Gilbert expelled a breath, cursing as he ran a hand through his hair. “Vicky didn’t like the house rules. She wanted to do what she wanted. She wasn’t interested in school. And then she was arrested for stealing.”

“She’s a senior in high school?” Riley asked.

“She was supposed to start her senior year, but the first days of school didn’t go well,” her mother offered.

They were retelling Riley’s life, she thought. “Did you only fight about school or the arrest?”

“She was upset,” Mrs. Gilbert said, glancing at her husband. Tears welled in her eyes. “She gets very upset sometimes. We took her to doctors, trying to figure out why she became anxious. It was exhausting. When she left, it was nice to have peace in the house.”

“Was she on medication?” Riley asked.

“Mood stabilizers,” Mr. Gilbert said. “But she never stayed on them long enough for the drugs to really work. She didn’t like feeling fuzzy, as she put it.”

“Where’s my daughter?” Mrs. Gilbert asked. “I want to see her. She’s gotten into trouble again, hasn’t she?”

Riley glanced at Sharp, and when he nodded she kept her voice steady. “Mrs. Gilbert, your daughter is dead. She was found along I-95 north of here.”

Chapped hands rose to the woman’s lips as she stifled a cry. “There must be some kind of mistake.”

“We identified her using fingerprints on file with the Chesterfield Police Department.”

Sharp watched them both carefully, his expression showing no signs of emotion. “There’s no mistake.”

Mr. Gilbert sucked in a breath like a boxer who’d taken a shot to the gut. “How did she die?”

“You’ve made a mistake,” Mrs. Gilbert said again. She made no move toward her husband. “Vicky isn’t dead. She’s staying with friends.”

As much as Riley believed this murder was connected to a bigger case, she couldn’t rule out that someone who knew the girl well had killed her. In over 70 percent of homicide cases involving a female victim, the killer was a loved one.

“We found her about fifty miles north of here,” Riley said. In the middle of the night, without traffic, the trip would’ve taken less than an hour. Maybe her father had a chance to win big money in a poker game. Maybe he was tired of Vicky’s outbursts.

“Vicky isn’t dead,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “I texted her two days ago.”

“Two days?” Riley noted the time in her book. Mrs. Gilbert might have received a text from Vicky’s phone, but that didn’t mean Vicky had sent it.

“Maybe it was four days. But she told me she was fine. She told me she had a lead on a good job.”

“What kind of job?”

“In a bar.”

“Did she give you a name of the bar, a boss, or a coworker?” Sharp asked.

“No,” Mr. Gilbert said. “I think I need to call our attorney.”

“Mr. Gilbert, there’s no need for an attorney now,” Sharp said. “We’re simply gathering as many facts as we can so we can solve your daughter’s murder. No one is going to get busted today for a kid running away or working in a bar.”

Mr. Gilbert’s grip tightened on his cell. “I’m calling our lawyer.”

“Richard. Please.” Mrs. Gilbert’s voice cracked. “This is Vicky.”

“Who has once again pulled us into a mess.” He turned from them all and dialed a number.

As her husband spoke into the phone, Mrs. Gilbert said to Riley, “She said it was good, honest work. I worried about the drinking, but she said that wouldn’t be a problem. She said they were sending her to get her hair and nails done. She was going to be a greeter. She was really excited.”

Vicky’s nails and hair were done, meaning the kid wove the lies with some truth. “Did she say where they were taking her to get fixed up?”

“A beauty salon, I guess. She didn’t say where.”

“And that was the last time you had contact with her?” Riley asked.

“Yes. That was the last time she responded back to me.” Tears welled in her eyes as if the news had finally taken root. “I text her every day. I’m always checking up on her. Sometimes she answers and sometimes she doesn’t.”

Riley kept her voice soft as if they were two friends having a chat. “What can you tell me about her life? Did the texts give you a clue?”

“She said she and her friends went to parties.”

“Friends have names.”