When the Storm Breaks (7 page)

Washington, D.C.

Sunday morning

O
livia searched up and down Claire’s street, looking for a place to park her car while she packed a few things from her friend’s house.

“Jackass.”

Olivia had to circle the block twice to find a parking spot because some jerk had illegally blocked the tiny driveway reserved for Claire’s Georgetown home. She finally double-parked—blocking in the jerk’s Lexus—because she would only be a few minutes.

She turned on the emergency flashers and locked the doors of her small sedan. As she straightened, she felt like she was being watched. She looked around casually, certain she would find one of the Police Department’s parking enforcement units preparing to swoop in for the kill. Though it was only the beginning of the month, the police had revenue targets to be reached. She knew this from painful experience. Parking tickets in Georgetown were always a sure way to hit the monthly income targets.

She didn’t see any squad cars, or even one of the golf
cart vehicles sometimes deployed in the narrow streets. Deciding it would be safe if she hurried, she ran up the steps and unlocked the front door. After making a quick circuit of the first floor of the house, an instinctive act for a female who lived alone in the city, she watered the lush houseplants scattered in the different rooms.

There were no fish, birds, cats, or dog to take care of. Claire often insisted she didn’t have the time for the antics of either pets or roommates. She made enough in her job that she wasn’t forced to share her living space to make ends meet.

While Olivia moved from room to room, she paid close attention to the locks on the windows and doors. Claire’s elegant furniture and impressive electronics collection seemed intact.

Satisfied that at least one of her friend’s fears could be put to rest, Olivia went upstairs to pack clothes and toiletries. Blessing Claire’s innate neatness, as well as the detailed instructions she had given, Olivia packed everything in under ten minutes. Making a mental note to stop mail service and have Claire ask a neighbor to pick up the flyers that accumulated on the doorknob, Olivia locked the front door and turned to go down the steps to her car.

Pausing to shift the suitcase to her other hand, Olivia again had the feeling that she was being watched. The sensation was unpleasant, and she went down the stairs in a rush.

Given her new awareness of the dangers in the city, Olivia had worked herself into a major case of the willies by the time she got to her car. Glancing uneasily around the tree-shaded street, she opened the trunk and deposited the suitcase in record time. She didn’t breathe easily until
she was behind the wheel with the doors locked and the engine running.

Olivia stopped long enough to twist her hair into a careless knot, allowing air from the vents to move across her damp neck and shoulders. She chided herself for her jumpiness—she was just overreacting to Claire’s recent attack. There was no one on the street, no other sounds but the occasional car driving by.

“Get a grip.” She spoke aloud in the air-conditioned safety of the car. It didn’t make her feel better.

Determined to push the uneasiness away, Olivia made plans to stop by the seafood market tomorrow morning before picking Claire up from the hospital. Some shrimp etouffée would do them both a world of good.

Washington, D. C.

Sunday morning

T
he man sat behind the wheel of his two-door BMW, ignoring the trickles of sweat that slid down his face and neck. He’d been sitting in the car for over an hour with the tinted windows only partially opened. He would come back later, at night, and walk around the area again. He needed to get a feel for the place—neighbors, kids, dogs, lighting, and the flimsy fence around Marie Claire’s house. But for now it was enough to sit and watch and think of his sweet prey almost within his reach.

Marie Claire.

The intimacy of knowing his victim’s name during the planning stages of the game was a sexual thrill. He kept saying her name in his mind and whispering it in the car.

He’d been parked in several spots along Marie Claire’s street all morning, waiting to catch a glimpse of her in one of the windows, or maybe even outside. There had been no movement at all. Judging by the junk papers and ad mailers that had piled up on the front stoop, she probably hadn’t been home in several days.

The news hadn’t mentioned her at all. Maybe she had a boyfriend. Or maybe she’d been injured badly enough to be in the hospital, but he didn’t think so. It would have been all over the TV. Reporters loved a victim with a pretty face.

A small sedan passed his car for the third time in as many minutes, then slowed in front of Marie Claire’s house. Under his intense gaze, the driver double-parked the car and got out, leaving the hazard lights flashing. He forced himself not to move as the petite woman looked up and down the street. He was sure she couldn’t see him, over forty feet away and parked in the shadow of a huge tree. As she trotted up the steps and paused to unlock the front door, he noted her small size and vibrant red hair.

This wasn’t Marie Claire. Maybe it was a roommate.

Over the next ten minutes, all the curtains were closed as the woman moved around both floors of the town home. He wondered what the hell she was doing. Maybe she didn’t live there after all.

Less than fifteen minutes later the woman came out of the house again, this time carrying a small suitcase.

Excitement surged through him as he considered the possibilities. He was betting the little redhead had packed a suitcase for Marie Claire, which meant she was staying somewhere else. But where?

When the woman froze at the top of the steps, he deliberately looked away, sensing that she was somehow aware of his intense interest. He used his peripheral vision to watch her descend the stairs and put the suitcase in the trunk of the double-parked sedan. Then she got behind the wheel and started the engine. The sound carried through his open window on the muggy breeze.

He waited while she put the car in gear and headed
down the street away from him. It was easy to keep her in sight on the straight, meticulously planned blocks of the Georgetown neighborhood. He let another car go by before starting his own engine and pulling out to follow the redhead’s sedan.

Within minutes she turned into the drive at an apartment building on Wisconsin Avenue. She ran in with the suitcase, apparently left it with the concierge, then came back out immediately to move her car out of the drive.

He parked illegally and waited to see what she would do next. Under his watchful eye, the redhead drove around the corner of the block and parked her car on a side street feeding into Wisconsin Avenue. When she locked the sedan and went back to the apartment building, he strained to see through the glass doors of the entry.

He could just make her out as she spoke to someone. Ignoring the No Parking signs, he turned off his engine and sat in his car across the street from the apartment building, hoping she would have one of the units that faced him. A few minutes later, she showed up on a fifth-floor balcony and began watering some plants.

The corners of the man’s mouth twisted up in a smile.

Washington, D.C.

Sunday afternoon

C
aptain Michaels hadn’t been impressed with Sean’s theory that the Mendes murder was tied into several cold cases, but he’d been happy to hand over what was becoming a political hot button—
“Murder in the Hispanic community and police don’t care!”
—to two of his best investigators, at least on an interim basis.

After a few hours of sleep and a shower, Sean and Aidan had worked straight through the weekend. Aidan had already interviewed the Mendes family and found absolutely nothing that made him suspicious. Sean had been through interviews with Mendes’s fellow teachers, nearly all of whom were female. There weren’t any recently fired janitors, boyfriends, ex-lovers, other teachers, bus drivers or anything else out of the ordinary.

Renata Mendes was just what she seemed to be—a woman who walked down the wrong street one night and got herself killed by a stranger.

With a growing certainty that there wasn’t going to be
anything in Mendes’s life that would point to her killer, Sean and Aidan reviewed the Mendes file and forensic information, and traded off pestering the crime lab when the information didn’t come quickly enough. Then Aidan went to work on Claire’s file.

“This thing’s heading for the ‘unsolved’ files,” Sean said, throwing a file on his desk. “Not even a hint of anyone with a personal motive. If Mendes were any cleaner, I’d nominate her for sainthood.”

“Anyone come up with something on the door-to-door of the murder neighborhood?”

“Does zilch count?” Sean asked.

“What about the hot line?”

“The usual number of whackos and earnest citizens who think that because their neighbor lets his dog shit on their lawn, the dude’s also a murderer,” Sean said.

Aidan snickered.

Sean pointed to a thin file labeled Marie Claire Lambert. “You get anywhere on that angle?”

“I talked to her boss and closest coworkers. She didn’t interview any new male clients, and no new man was hired in her office recently. Did you get through to Camelot Dating Services?” Aidan asked.

“Owner is listed as Afton Gallagher of Washington, D.C. No personal number and no response at the business number. I’ll try her Monday morning.” Sean stretched and tried not to yawn. “How’s the victim profile coming? I’d like to have more than a hunch the next time we go to the captain.”

“Well, the three victims had similar physical descriptions. All of them were regulars in some of the ugliest parts of our fine city—though for different reasons in the
case of Renata Mendes. She visited family in Southeast, but lived on the other side of town, near where she was killed. The crime scene is a high-traffic area with all kinds of fingerprints, hair, trash, and shit like that. It will take several days to get forensic analysis detailed enough to allow us to compare the three scenes.”

“CSU isn’t going to be able to pull anything useable from that scene and you know it,” Sean said.

“Yeah, we need another angle. How about Claire’s personal life?”

Sean flipped through Claire’s file, telling himself he was only doing his job by checking on the veracity of their only witness. “No family, immediate or otherwise,” he read, shaking his head. Family was a grounding force in his life; he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be completely alone in the world. “Her parents were both only children. They were killed in a car crash about eight years ago. No siblings. The only other relative was a grandmother who died a couple of years after the parents.”

Aidan winced. “I know. That had to be tough.”

“Yeah.” Sean didn’t like thinking about how tough. “Anyway, Claire is a well-liked and respected account manager for a D.C. software firm. Her colleagues describe her as smart, funny, and a workaholic. They also say she’s a person who’s honest to a fault.” Sean read from his partner’s notes.

“So this honest, smart, and dedicated woman is sure she knows the killer but just can’t remember why or how,” Aidan said. “Any obsessive boyfriends stalking her?”

“Can’t tell. The security guard at Camelot’s office
building remembers seeing Claire leave alone just before midnight. He offered to call her a cab, but she said she was going to walk to the bus stop. Idiot.” Sean wasn’t sure if he was referring to Claire or the guard who had let a woman go alone into a rainy night.

“I bet they’ve both learned a lesson,” Aidan said.

Sean nodded and yawned so hard his jaw popped. He stood up and stretched the kinks out of his neck and back, then turned off his desk light. “I’m beat. I think we’ll have more to go on once we speak to Afton Gallagher and look through her catalogue.”

“Catalogue won’t do much good if we can’t place any of the guys at the scene of the crime.”

“You have a better idea?”

Aidan shook his head. “Any activity on Claire’s ATM or credit cards?”

“Nothing has turned up on the cards or the purse.”

“I don’t have a good feeling about that.”

“Neither do I,” Sean said. He couldn’t describe the unease he felt whenever he thought about Claire’s missing purse. If the killer had taken the bag from the scene, he had her address and keys. “I’m afraid he’ll fixate on the one that got away.”

“Jesus, I hate the whackos,” Aidan said. “Speaking of which, I’m starting on a rough psych profile of our killer. Assuming the three cases are connected, there’s enough in the forensics reports and victim descriptions to put something together. It’s not going to be a solid profile, but at least we can take a stab at it. So to speak,” Aidan said with a tired smile.

“Thanks for volunteering, partner. Nobody does the mind-fuck quite like you.” Sean grabbed dark sunglasses
and patted his pockets in search of keys.

“Flatterer. Heading home?” Aidan asked, burying his nose in the files on his desk.

“I’ll probably grab something for dinner, or maybe go for a run to clear my head. You want anything?”

“No, go ahead. I’m starting on the profile while the information is fresh. I’ll get something to eat later.”

“I’ll see you at Camelot tomorrow, then. Eight o’clock?” Sean asked.

“Not everyone likes to start their day at the crack of dawn. Ms. Gallagher might be a nine-to-five type.” Aidan wasn’t a morning person. He sympathized with those forced to drag their half-awake bodies into the office and be productive on someone else’s timetable.

“Then we’ll wait for her, maybe take a look around the place. Nice try, though.” Sean departed without a backwards glance.

He stopped by his favorite Greek restaurant for take-out gyros, returned to his apartment, and wolfed down the dripping bits of meat and pita in record time. Afterward he still felt restless, unable to get the case out of his mind. He fought it for a few hours, then threw down the TV remote control and went to his car, resigned to the idea that he was going to work that night.

First he would go back to the hospital and talk to Claire’s doctors. Maybe there had been some improvement in her condition. If not, maybe they could suggest some things to jog her memory—therapy, some type of mental exercises, drugs, anything.

It was beginning to look like a woman with amnesia was their best lead on a murderer. That was a good reason to keep in contact with her, see how she was doing, if
she remembered anything at all. If she was awake, they could talk.

Shoving his hands in his pockets and whistling cheerfully, Sean chose not to examine too closely the reasons for his sudden good mood.