Unfinished Business (17 page)

I waited for them to move across the hallway
to Mother’s room, and then I took a few delicate steps into my own,
and stopped by the bedside, steeling myself to look at the dead
girl.

Oh, yes. She was definitely dead. Her eyes
were wide open, staring up at the ceiling fan that was revolving
slowly, and her chest didn’t move at all.

She was sprawled across my bed, on top of
the sheets and the comforter I hadn’t bothered to pull up when I
rushed downstairs and out in the middle of the night. A natural
redhead, with eyes the same blue as the sky outside, and pale,
almost transparent skin. It was hard to be sure how much of that
was due to natural coloring and how much due to blood loss. There
was a lot of blood, streaked on her arms and legs, dried in
rivulets on her torso.

I backed out into the hallway and closed the
door. And fumbled the phone out of my bag and dialed Grimaldi’s
number. “We need you,” I told her when she answered. By then,
reaction had set in, so my teeth were chattering. I plopped my butt
down on the top step of the staircase as the conversation
continued.

“At the hospital?”

I shook my head, even though I knew she
couldn’t see me. “The house.”

“What happened?”

“Dead girl,” I said. “In my bed.”

She muttered something. I couldn’t hear it,
but I’m sure it was a curse. “Stay there. Don’t move. Don’t touch
anything. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She hung up before I could assure her that
we weren’t planning to go anywhere at all, and we certainly weren’t
about to touch anything. Mother would just have to wait on her
bath, and so would I.

“Is she coming?” Dix wanted to know. He came
back out of Mrs. Jenkins’s room with Mother in tow. She glanced at
the closed door to my room.

I nodded. “She said she’d be here in ten
minutes.”

“Who?” Mother asked.

“Tamara,” Dix told her. “Detective Grimaldi.
This is her job. Homicide.”

Mother nodded. “I remember. She worked on
Sheila’s case.”

“We should go downstairs and meet her. But
first...” I went back to the door to the master bedroom and opened
it. The dead girl was still there, on the bed. Not that I had
expected otherwise, but it would have been nice if she’d been a
figment of my imagination.

“Darling...” Mother protested delicately
when I raised my phone and snapped a picture of her. And then
another, just of her face.

I glanced at her. “She doesn’t care.” And if
she was who I thought she was, she hadn’t cared about people seeing
her naked while she’d been alive.

I sent the pictures to Wendell’s cell phone
with the caption,
Is this Ginger?

And then I closed the door gently behind me
and descended the stairs to the first floor, hanging onto the
banister the whole way.

Grimaldi did indeed show up within ten minutes. When she knocked on
the door, we were all sitting around the kitchen table swilling
glasses of extra-sugared sweet tea, for the shock.

“I’ll go,” Dix said when the doorbell rang.
“You two stay here.”

He got to his feet. I wanted to argue—it was
my home, so I should be the one to let visitors in—but to be
honest, I didn’t feel up for it. And besides, he’d had little
enough time alone with Grimaldi since he came to town.

Not that there was anything romantic about
taking her upstairs to see a dead body, but he offered. I decided I
might as well take him up on it.

“Be careful, darling,” Mother told him.
“Make sure it’s the detective before you answer the door.”

Yes, indeed. I nodded. “Good advice.”

Mother looked gratified. Dix headed down the
hallway. After a few seconds we heard the front door open, and then
Grimaldi’s voice. The door closed, and footsteps headed up the
stairs to the second floor.

I made to get to my feet, but Mother shook
her head. “Let Dixon handle it,” she said. For a second I thought
maybe she’d sensed something going on between them, and wanted to
give them a few moments together, too. But then she added, “While
Rafael isn’t here, he’s the man of the house.”

I rolled my eyes, but stayed seated. I
couldn’t keep my mouth shut, though. “It’s my house, Mother. My
bed. My dead body.”

Mother shuddered. “Not
your
dead
body, darling. Thank the Lord. Someone else’s dead body.”

“Ginger,” I said. “Poor girl.” If she was
seventeen four years ago, she was barely twenty-one now. And
honestly, looked younger. “She probably has a family somewhere. A
mother and a father. Maybe brothers or sisters.”

“She was a prostitute,” Mother began.

“That doesn’t mean she deserved to die. She
certainly didn’t deserve to die like that!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mother told me.
“But individuals who engage in risky behavior often become victims
of crime.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that she was a
twenty-year-old woman—just a girl!—who was carved up and dumped in
my bed for Rafe to find!”

Mother had no answer to that. And at any
rate, the footsteps were now coming back down the stairs and down
the hall to the kitchen. “It’s Ginger,” I told Grimaldi as soon as
she walked in. “The prostitute from four years ago. Hernandez must
have found her again and finished the job Rafe stopped him from
finishing back then. And then dumped her here. In Rafe’s bed. As a
message.”

Grimaldi shook her head. “Unlikely. The girl
straightened up and moved away. She’s in a different state.
Hernandez wouldn’t have had time to go find her between the time he
left your boyfriend and this morning.”

“Maybe he had her already.”

She hesitated. “Possible. But it’s more
likely it’s just someone who looks like her. Ginger is twenty-one.
The girl upstairs looks no more than seventeen.”

“I took a picture of her,” I said, “and sent
it to Wendell. He hasn’t responded yet. But he’d be able to tell us
whether it’s her.” She. “He’d recognize her.”

Grimaldi nodded and took a seat at the
table. “We’ll figure it out. For now, tell me what happened.”

I told her what had happened. It didn’t take
long. We’d left the hospital. We’d driven home. The front door had
been open. We’d realized we’d left it open last night, but we had
decided to walk through the house anyway. We’d noticed the blood,
and we’d found her in my—in Rafe’s—bed.

And God, I could just imagine how he’d react
to this news. It was insult on top of injury, quite literally.

“Did you check the rest of the house?”
Grimaldi asked, and brought me back to myself.

“After we found her, you mean? No. We came
down here to wait for you.”

Grimaldi nodded. “Excuse me.” She got up
from the table and put a hand on her gun.

“Oh.” Mother turned pale, and I’m sure I
did, too. “You mean... he could still be here?”

“I’m sure he isn’t,” Grimaldi said, “but why
take chances?” She pulled the gun from the holster and checked the
clip. “Did you walk through the entire downstairs? Where did you
stop looking?”

“When we got upstairs and saw the blood
leading to the master bedroom,” I said. “Dix and Mother went into
Mother’s bedroom after that. Although I doubt they checked the
closet or under the bed.”

Mother shook her head, looking ashen.

“And you didn’t go up to the third
floor?”

I told her we hadn’t. “Do you want me to
come with you?”

“No,” Grimaldi said, with another of those
‘get-real’ looks. “Your boyfriend would have my head if he found
out I’d let you walk through the house looking for a serial
killer.”

“We don’t have to tell him.”

“He’d know,” Grimaldi said darkly. “Stay
here.” She turned to Dix, who had also gotten to his feet. “You,
too.”

“You need backup,” Dix said.

“You don’t have a weapon.”

Dix looked stubborn. “If you won’t let
Savannah go with you, I’m coming. You’re not going up there
alone.”

Grimaldi hesitated for a second, then
shrugged. “Stay behind me. And if he shoots me, go for my gun.”

“Not funny,” Dix told her.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t likely to be
here,” I said. “And anyway, what makes you think he has a gun? So
far, he’s cut everyone’s throat.”

Except Rafe’s, although he’d probably
planned to get to that point eventually.

Grimaldi sent me a look. “You always expect
criminals to be armed and dangerous,” she told me. “You’ll stay
safer that way.”

Right
. “Be careful.”

She nodded. “Come on,” she told Dix. “Let’s
go.”

“Just a second.” He turned to me. “If
something happens to me, will you take my girls?”

“Yes. But that’s not funny, either.”

“I’m sure Catherine will be happy to keep
the girls, Dixon,” Mother added, and then seemed to realize what
he’d asked. “What...?”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Grimaldi said
firmly. “Let’s go. Before I change my mind and leave you down
here.”

She set off down the hallway without waiting
for him, her strides long. Dix gave me a wink and scurried after.
Their footsteps receded up the stairs, and then we could hear them
walking around above our heads. There was the sound of doors
opening and closing, but nothing more sinister than that. Certainly
no gunshots. After a couple of minutes, I guess they had checked
the entire second level, and we heard them head up the next flight
of stairs to the ballroom on the top floor.

We sat in silence, straining our ears, until
there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs again, descending
this time. We hadn’t heard the sounds of an altercation, so it
didn’t come as a surprise when Dix and Grimaldi walked back into
the kitchen, safe, sound, and whole.

“Nothing?” I asked.

Dix shook his head. “No sign anyone had been
up there. He must have just dumped the girl and left.”

Grimaldi holstered her gun and dug out her
phone. “I’m still going to get a crime scene crew out here. And the
van from the morgue.”

Of course. That poor girl was still up
there, sprawled across my bed. The second hooker to die in one of
my beds in a month’s time. I hoped it wasn’t going to become a
regular occurrence.

Except Ginger—or whoever she was, although I
still leaned toward it being Ginger—hadn’t died there. There wasn’t
enough blood for that. On the body, sure. But not on the sheets.
Hernandez—and I don’t think there was much doubt in anyone’s mind
that he was the guilty party—must have killed her somewhere else,
and brought her here afterwards.

“Rafe isn’t going to be happy about this,” I
said.

Grimaldi shook her head.

“He’ll take it personally.”

“I’m fairly certain it
is
personal,”
Grimaldi said.

“‘You saved her once, but you couldn’t save
her this time’?”

“I was thinking more like, ‘I know where you
live and I can get to you anytime I want to,’” Grimaldi said. And
added, “‘And your little girlfriend, too.’”

I wasn’t the only one who turned pale. Dix
muttered a curse, and Mother looked ready to faint.

“I didn’t think about that,” I said.

“Maybe you should think about it now.”

Maybe I should. I’d really rather not, of
course, because it wasn’t much fun to contemplate. But yes, I
should.

And then, as I thought about it—as we all
thought about it—came the sound of the front door bursting open,
and heavy footsteps in the hallway. Grimaldi pulled out her gun and
pointed it at the kitchen door. I held my breath.

Rafe burst through the door at as much of a run as he was capable
of. It wasn’t very impressive, frankly. At the moment, he moved
both slowly and stiffly, but he
was
moving. Up, out of bed,
still dressed in just the drawstring pants the hospital had given
him. The white bandages around his torso and arm stood out in stark
contract to the dusky skin.

He lurched to a stop behind Mother’s chair
and braced himself, breathing hard. Mother stiffened her spine,
looking uncomfortable.

“You can put the gun down,” I told Grimaldi.
“I don’t think he’s going to hurt anyone.”

He scowled at me. “I wouldn’t be so
sure.”

“Why are you mad at me? I didn’t do
anything!”

“You left without saying goodbye,” Rafe
growled. “I looked up and you were gone. And then the phone signals
and you’ve found another effing dead body!”

Mother blanched.

“You’re scaring my mother,” I told him. And
then, because I knew he wasn’t really upset with me, he was upset
about the situation, and about the fact that I had left and was
alone and had to deal with this on my own, without him, I got up
from the table and went to put my arms around him. “I’m sorry I
didn’t tell you we were going. But you were talking to the boys. I
was just going to go home and take a shower and change my clothes
and then come back. It wasn’t going to take very long. I didn’t
expect this to happen.”

His arms came around me, too, and he stood
for a second, breathing into my hair. “I got scared,” he told me,
his voice low.

“I know.” I petted him. Gently, because of
the bandages. There were tremors running through his body. “But
it’s OK. There’s nobody here. It’s safe.”

“For now.” He shook his head. “You have to
leave.”

I straightened, to where I could look in his
face. “Have you lost your mind? I’m not leaving!”

“He knows where we live,” Rafe said.

“And your solution is that I should run
away? And leave you here? In your condition?”

“He likes to hurt women,” Rafe said. “With
me it was personal, but he prefers to hurt women. It’s a sexual
thing.”

Great
. Just what I wanted to
hear.

Not that I hadn’t already known that,
subconsciously. When a guy tortures and kills prostitutes, sex
usually plays a part in it somewhere.