Unspeakable (32 page)

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine.”

He shook his head but let it go as they made it down to the lobby and crossed the highway to the diner.

“Who’s coming?” she asked listlessly.

“
Ric. Weaver. Whoever’s around.”

“Cinco and Maynard?”

“I have no idea.”

Was she worried about walking in with him? He couldn’t have cared less, but he wasn’t sure she wanted to advertise their relationship.

Relationship. Troy cut a glance at her as they neared the entrance. He wasn’t quite comfortable with the word, but he couldn’t come up with a better one.

She glanced up at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” He yanked the door open, and she flinched at the arctic blast of air-conditioning.

“It’s
freezing.
”

“You’ll get used to it.” He spotted Ric, Weaver, and Cinco around Dot’s large corner booth. They watched him and Elaina approach the table. All three looked unhappy, particularly Weaver, who somehow managed to rake Troy over the coals with a three-second glare.

Elaina slid in beside her partner, and Troy followed.

“I was just telling Ric about the apartment,” Weaver said.

The waitress appeared, and they ordered Cokes and hamburgers all around. Troy asked for a chocolate milkshake.

“What about the apartment?” Elaina asked.

“No sign of forced entry,” the agent reported. “Door was unlocked. Purse on the counter this time, wallet out.”

“Contents?” Ric asked.

“Driver’s license, insurance card, photos, health club card, twenty-five dollars cash. None of the victims’ wallets look to have been pilfered.”

“
And her car?” Ric asked.

“At the marina,” Cinco said. “Along with her clothes.”

“So you’re thinking he keeps a boat there.”

“Actually, no,” Weaver told him. “He parks the victim’s car at a different dock each time, and we think it’s a diversion. The theory is, he has a boat someplace else, maybe a private slip somewhere.”

“Timing’s tight,” Cinco said. “Angela was at Coconuts at least until one-thirty. I saw her myself. Assuming he followed her home from the bar, he would have had to kidnap her, take her out on his boat, kill her and dump her in the wildlife park, then go back and plant her car at the marina, all before three-fifty.”

“What happened at three-fifty?” Ric asked.

“Patrol officer called in the abandoned Kia,” Cinco said. “Door was open. Angela’s clothes were inside.”

The waitress arrived with the drinks, and silence settled over the table as everyone unwrapped straws and started slurping. Everyone except Elaina.

“Your missing hikers,” Weavers said to Ric. “Were their valuables stolen?”

“Backpacks, clothes, car keys—all that turned up in a trash can not far from the trailhead. Their cars were in the parking lots, right where they’d left them, according to witnesses.”

“So he probably found them on the trails, versus kidnapping them at their homes and taking them there,” Troy said. “Why the change in MO?”

“Who knows?” Ric said. “Maybe being near the water changed things for him. He wanted to throw a boat into the mix.”

“Pretty bold move,” Weaver said.

“
What, using a boat?”

“That, but also the kidnapping. It multiplies the number of potential witnesses. Also increases the odds of leaving evidence behind.”

Troy glanced at Elaina. She was staring at her plastic cup, tracing a pattern in the condensation with her index finger.

“What’s your take, T?”

Troy’s gaze snapped to Cinco.

“Why go to their apartments and hotel rooms?” Cinco asked him. “Why not just take them straight from a bar to the dump site?”

“Who knows?” Troy said. “Maybe a bar is too busy. You ever seen the parking lot at Coconuts after last call? It’s a meat market. Besides, there’s been no sign of forced entry, so he’s probably got some sort of ruse. Something that gets them to open the door for him.” Troy eyed everyone at the table. Ric looked most interested, and Troy had come to realize over the past six hours that the detective was obsessed with this case.

The food arrived, and everyone busied themselves with ketchup and mustard. Elaina nibbled a french fry.

“But why a bar instead of a hiking trail?” Weaver said around a mouthful of food. “In the most recent five cases, all the victims have spent their last evening at the same bar.”

“You’re sure about that?” Ric asked.

“We’ve got their credit-card activity, along with eyewitness accounts. Every one of them was at Coconuts the night of her abduction. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, if he wants to do his thing in a nature preserve, why not just lie in wait and spring himself on some hiker?”

“
He works at night,” Elaina said quietly.

“What’s that?” Cinco asked.

“The mutilation. The part he considers his
work
—all that happens at night, under cover of darkness. Women don’t generally hike at night, and he couldn’t just grab them and carve them up in broad daylight.”

She leaned back against the booth now and looked out at the restaurant, avoiding all the gazes at the table. Weaver frowned at her.

“What happens now?” Ric directed the question at Weaver, who—for lack of a better candidate—seemed to be the designated expert on the workings of the FBI’s task force.

“There’s a press conference scheduled for tonight,” the agent said. “Loomis and Breck at the podium, feds and locals playing nice for the cameras. Autopsy happens”—he glanced at his watch—“right about now, as a matter of fact.”

Troy slid Elaina’s water glass in front of her. “Hydrate,” he murmured in her ear.

“The autopsy won’t produce much,” Weaver said. “We already know the victim’s identity, plus the cause and time of death are pretty evident this time.” He shook his head. “What I’d really like to do is round up every last surfer and frat boy at Coconuts tonight and hook them up to a polygraph.”

Elaina pushed her plate away and pulled Troy’s milkshake in front of her. She took out the straw and licked ice cream off the tip.

Troy’s gaze scanned the restaurant, looking for out-of-towners mixed in with all the locals. Tonight was tourists, mostly, along with a few media-types, easily
identifiable by their loosened neckties and wilted dress shirts. Evidently the Paradise Killer wasn’t having quite the negative effect on tourism the governor had anticipated when he’d sent a Texas Ranger down to lend a hand. Troy had hardly seen that guy all week, and the feds had clearly taken over.

He glanced at the fed beside him, relieved to see her working on his shake. It wasn’t as good for her as water, but at least it would put some sugar in her system.

What had she seen today? Or maybe it was the thought of how close they’d come to saving Angela Martinez that had put that haunted look in her eyes. She wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Troy had dealt with that kind of insomnia. He knew a cure for it, too, but he doubted she’d let him show her.

She pushed the cup away and leaned back against the booth. She looked out across the restaurant, and suddenly her dull expression was replaced by alarm.

“Uh-oh.”

“What?” Troy gazed out the window facing the Sandhill Inn. A man and a woman walked up the sidewalk together and entered the hotel. The woman, Troy would have known anywhere. The man, he vaguely recognized.

“I wonder why they’re here,” Elaina said.

“I have a feeling we’re about to find out.”

CHAPTER 20
 

What are you doing here?”

Mia whirled around at the familiar voice and gazed up into a pair of brown-black eyes. She immediately went on the defensive.

“I’m checking in,” she said crisply.

“Yes, but why?”

“Um… so I can have a bed for the night?” Mia accepted a pair of key cards from the clerk with the over-teased hair. She glanced back again and watched the muscle tighten in Ric’s jaw. Clearly, he didn’t want her here, and she found that interesting when for the past week he’d practically been pleading for her help.

She turned and handed one of the key-card envelopes to Ben, who was waiting beside their heap of luggage. The techie looked innocuous as always in his T-shirt and faded cargo shorts, and Mia could tell Ric had just this instant realized they were here together.

“The entire task force is booked here,” Ric said. “Do you realize that?”

She arched her eyebrows at him.

“You’re not
on
the task force,” he pointed out.

Ben eyed the detective curiously, probably wondering what his problem was. Mia was wondering the same thing.

“I didn’t realize being on the task force was a prerequisite for booking a room.” Mia turned a smile on Elaina, who’d just stepped into the lobby. Troy followed behind her, along with a young Hispanic man and a slightly older guy who seemed to be impersonating a sunburned raccoon.

“Mia.” Troy sauntered over, planted a kiss on her cheek. “Decided to join the party, huh?”

Elaina shot him a reproachful look, while Ric glared at him.

“Dr. Lawson, right?” Troy held out a hand to Ben. “Think I’ve seen you at the Delphi Center.”

Ben shook hands with Troy while Mia studied all the faces. Everyone looked either bleary-eyed or weather-beaten, and she could see this investigation was taking its toll.

“I hope to hell y’all didn’t come down to hit the beach,” Troy said.

“Actually, no.” Mia felt the weight of half a dozen expectant stares, including the desk clerk’s. “We’re here to work, not play. I think we’ve got some leads for you.”

Twenty minutes later, everyone was assembled together in the honeymoon suite. Elaina had just finished stacking files against the wall in a futile effort to make enough space for everyone. Between the people and the paperwork, it was a full house.

“Which do you want first, good news or bad?” Mia asked from the sofa.

“Bad,” Elaina and Troy answered in unison. She shot a look at him across the room. He was leaning casually against the wall, but the tension in his shoulders told her he felt anything but casual. Elaina was edgy, too. Mia and Ben’s arrival had given her a jolt of energy, and she was impatient to hear the news they’d brought. But whatever it was seemed to necessitate a computer, and so Elaina had busied herself tidying up while Ben had plopped down on the sofa and powered up his laptop. Now she perched on the sofa arm beside him and waited.

“Okay, here’s the bad news.” Mia took a deep breath. “The man you’re looking for isn’t in the database.”

Elaina bit her lip. It had been a long shot. She’d known that. But she hadn’t realized until this moment how much she’d been expecting to get lucky. She’d let herself entertain the idea that if she could just get hold of a DNA sample, the illustrious Dr. Voss would work magic with it.

She’d been expecting a miracle—just like Mia warned her not to.

Elaina looked at Troy. She knew he read the disappointment in her face, and she felt embarrassed for being so naive.

He shifted his attention to Mia. “You ran the profile through the state
and
national databases?” he asked.

“Yep,” she said. “He’s not in CODIS, which means either he has little or no criminal history, since standards vary from state to state, or if he
has
been swabbed for whatever reason, his sample hasn’t been processed yet. Which is entirely possible, by the way, because everything’s so backlogged. Problem is, that doesn’t help you ID him.”

Elaina huffed out a breath. “Okay, what’s the good news?” And it had better be good. She needed, desperately, for something positive to come of this hellacious day.

“The good news is obvious, isn’t it?” Mia said. “We actually got a profile. From a nine-year-old bullet and a five-year-old pair of running shorts. Both pieces of evidence yielded a sample. An itty-bitty one, but still.”

Elaina watched her, momentarily dazed by her use of “itty-bitty,” which she hadn’t expected from a scientist. But then her tired brain processed the rest of Mia’s statement.

“What running shorts?” she asked.

“From the missing hikers.” Ric turned to Mia. “You got touch DNA.” He folded his arms over his chest and smiled at her. “Goddamn, you did it, didn’t you? I
knew
you could do it!”

Elaina felt a twinge of jealousy. Never in her life had a man looked at her like that—like he truly respected her as a professional.

“Let me get this straight,” Troy said. “You put together a DNA profile from some skin cells left on a pair of shorts?”

“Ric had the missing women’s clothing,” Mia said. “He correctly deduced that the victims hadn’t undressed themselves. And when their attacker pulled off their clothes, he left behind trace amounts of perspiration on the elastic bands. He wasn’t wearing gloves, apparently, and when people commit crimes, their hands often sweat from nervousness. So we look for perspiration, maybe some shed skin cells, in order to recover DNA.”

Across the room, Cinco whistled. “Man,” he said. “You can get a profile from a few cells?”

“
The sample was small and also degraded due to its age.” Mia looked at Elaina. “As was the case with your through-and-through bullet. But I used PCR to amplify both samples and—”

“Back up,” Weaver said. “PCR?”