A Glimpse of Evil (17 page)

Once inside Candice asked, “What’d you think?”

“Intuitively?”

“Yes.”

“That she’s had one heck of a tragic life and we’ve got to do everything in our power to give her some closure.”

Candice smiled and started the car. “Funny,” she said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

As we cruised away from the neighborhood, I was grateful that Candice was controlling her speed better on these suburban streets, and I allowed myself to simply look out the window at the passing houses. We came to a stop sign and Candice focused her attention on the navigation gizmo built into the dashboard, while also checking the next address from one of the files.

As she was fiddling with that, I happened to glance up at the street sign. “Pecan Valley Drive,” I whispered. Where had I seen that street name before? Or
had
I seen that name before? Sometimes it’s difficult for me to know if my radar is giving me a clue, or if I’m simply remembering something I’ve seen somewhere else.

I scanned the area carefully. The charming street name was a misnomer. There was nothing appealing about this neck of the woods. “Where are we?” I asked abruptly.

“Hmm?” Candice hummed, still poking at her GPS gizmo.

“Seriously, Candice,” I said, laying a hand on her arm. “Where exactly
are
we?”

Candice pulled her eyes away from the dashboard. “About halfway between Fatina’s house and Keisha’s.”

My radar was buzzing at me and my eyes kept roving to the street sign. There was something about it that I was missing. Something important. “Can you go down this street for a minute?”

Candice squinted out the window, then eyed me oddly. “For real?”

“Yeah.”

“Abs,” she said seriously, “this isn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood where one drives a brand-new Porsche around.”

She was right of course. There were lots of vacant and boarded-up homes on the block, and I also noticed that we’d caught the attention of a group of young men about two hundred yards away. “Okay,” I reluctantly agreed. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

Candice moved away from the stop sign and Pecan Valley Drive, and the farther away we got, the more convinced I was that I’d just missed something like a major clue, but for the life of me I couldn’t puzzle out what it was. Still, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something obvious, I took the two folders on Fatina and Keisha and searched the ink for any trace of Pecan Valley Drive, but found no reference to that street.

I had to put it out of my mind just a few minutes later when we pulled up in front of Keisha’s house, which was a small but tidy little ranch with thick stone steps leading up to a wrought iron gate across the front door. There were also bars across the windows. I looked around at the other houses nearby. Most of them had the same detail on the windows and doors. At least there weren’t any boarded-up houses on the street, but I did see plenty of curtains move to the side as people spotted Candice’s shiny new Porsche. “Why do I think this visit is going to be the talk of the neighborhood?” I muttered as we got out.

Candice subtly glanced up and down the street, probably determining if it was safe to leave her car unattended. She clicked the button on her keys and the Porsche made a chirping noise. “Locked and loaded,” she said with a wink to me.

We approached the door and I let Candice take the lead. She pushed the doorbell and this time we definitely heard it echoing from inside. We waited several seconds before Candice tried again, but clearly there was either no one home or no one willing to answer the door.

“What do you think?” she asked me.

I pointed my radar at the house. “I think no one’s here.”

Candice walked down the steps and moved over to the driveway. “Doesn’t hurt to be thorough,” she said over her shoulder. “Stay by the car. I’ll be right back.”

I moved to the Porsche and let my side fall against it with a tired sigh. Immediately it began to make a huge racket as the horn sounded, lights blinked, and an alarm blared. “Gah!” I shrieked, spinning away from the car.

Candice came running back from around the corner. “What happened?” she shouted right before she pressed a button on her key again.

“Your freaking car is possessed!” I yelled. Then I realized the noise from the car had stopped, and I lowered my voice but flushed with embarrassment as several doors opened and people came out to see what all the racket was about. “All I did was lean against it.”

“The alarm’s a little sensitive,” she admitted.

“Gee, Candice,
ya think
?”

My partner moved over to the driver’s side. “Come on,” she coaxed. “He’s not home and you look like you could use some lunch.”

At the prospect of food I let go my indignation and got right in. Buckling my seat belt, I asked, “When you say ‘he’s’ not home, who’re you talking about exactly?”

“Keisha’s brother. He had custody of his baby sister when she went missing. Didn’t you read the file?”

“Yes, I read the file,” I told her. “But some of the details may have gotten lost because I read at least a hundred files last week.”

“Ah.”

“Was that the house Keisha lived in when she was abducted?”

“Yes.”

“And her brother still lives there?”

Candice nodded. “According to public records, he does.”

“I take it we’re going to eat, then swing back by again to see if he’s home?”

“Yep.”

“He won’t be,” I told her, feeling that intuitively. “In fact, I don’t even think he’s in the area right now. Does he have some connection to the military?”

Candice smiled wide. “You sure you don’t remember reading that in the file?”

I held up my hand like I was taking a vow. “Scout’s honor.”

“Okay, I believe you. Antoine LaSalle is in the army. He’s a lieutenant currently stationed in Killeen.”

“Killeen?”

“It’s about forty-five minutes southwest of here.”

“Why didn’t we start there?”

“Way too many security checks to clear. ‘Who are you? Where are you from? Who are you there to see? Why?’ It’s a royal pain in the butt just to deliver a pizza.”

“We’re delivering a pizza?”

“No. But trust me, I once tried to run some surveillance by posing as a pizza-delivery girl at a military base and let’s just say it did not go well.”

“Ah.”

“If he’s not there when we swing back by, then we’ll leave him a note and my card and hope he calls.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll run you home so you can take care of your man, and then I’ll try and find out if Fontana Carter ended up in the St. Louis morgue.”

I remembered with a jolt the intuitive feeling I had that Fatina and Keisha weren’t the only victims of our serial killer. “I think you should also do a search of other missing little girls who fit Fatina and Keisha’s description from this area.”

Candice eyed me. “You think there are more victims?”

“I do.”

“Shit.”

“There could even be a file on the other victim in one of those boxes back at the office and I just haven’t come across it yet,” I told her.

“Well,” she said, “if there is a file on another missing little girl, then you’re not going to be able to see it until IA clears you—which could take a while.”

That got my attention. “You think they’re going to take a long time to clear me?”

Candice shrugged. “IA investigations within local police departments are bad enough; I gotta believe that they’re ten times worse when they’re part of the FBI.”

I gulped. “Great. Just great.”

Candice shifted gears and bumped my arm with hers. “Don’t sweat it, Abs,” she said. “You did what you had to do in the moment, and if there’s anyone who’s to blame, it’s that Rodriguez guy. You should be cleared no problem.”

“But I
like
that Rodriguez guy.”

“Oh. Well, then, we’ll just hope for the best, okay? Now, where did you want to go for lunch?”

“The nearest Coney Island hot dog joint.”

Candice gave me a sympathetic smile. “No such luck round these parts either, partner.”

“So drive me back to Michigan,” I said grumpily. “Where things used to make sense and I could get a decent hot dog with the works and an order of some chili cheese fries.”

“I wouldn’t do that even if I could,” Candice said flatly.

“Why not?”

“Have you ever smelled your breath at the end of one of those lunches? Trust me, the box of Altoids you pop doesn’t even cover it.”

I felt my cheeks heat and I sank down in my seat, totally embarrassed. “So I like onions!” I snapped.

Candice laughed. “Oh, honey,” she said sympathetically. “I know you love them. It’s just that they don’t really love you. Now, how about a nice bowl of soup and salad, hmm?”

We ate the most boring, lifeless lunch ever and I bought a pack of wintergreen gum the first chance I got. We also made our way back to the LaSalle residence, but just like I’d predicted, Antoine wasn’t home, so Candice left him a note and her card and we headed back to Austin.

After retrieving Dutch’s car from Candice’s parking garage, I zipped over to pick him up, noting that I was running just a teensy bit behind. I found my S.O. leaning against the building, looking all manly and gorgeous. I also found that any frustration I’d had with him earlier seemed to melt away. “Hey, cowboy,” I said, pulling to a stop at the curb. “Can I give you a lift?”

Dutch moseyed over to the driver’s side and opened my door. “How about letting me drive?”

I shrugged and gave up the wheel. The moment we pulled into traffic, he started in. “I called your cell a couple of times this afternoon.”

“Sorry. I didn’t hear it ring.” Nervously I took it out of my purse and squinted at the screen. “Ah, I see. You called all right.” For the record, it’s hard to hear a cell phone ring above the roar of a Porsche’s engine.

“Where ya been all afternoon?” Dutch pressed.

“Hanging out with Candice.”

“Where?”

“Here and there.”

“More there than here?”

I sighed tiredly. Dutch had been with me long enough to never trust it when I didn’t answer my phone. It was the first sign that I was up to something. “We had a spa day,” I said quickly. “We got massages and pedicures.”

“Really?” he said in that voice that told me he didn’t for one second believe it.

“Yep.” I was sticking to this story if it killed me.

“What was the name of the spa?”

“Pecan Valley Salon and Spa.” Wow. I’d rattled that off without a moment’s hesitation. Maybe I was getting better at this whole lying thing.

“Pecan Valley?” he repeated. “Where’s that?”

“Not sure. Candice drove and I mostly kept my eyes shut.”

Now, this he actually bought, because he cracked a smile. “I hear she got a new car.”

“Porsche,” I told him. “Canary yellow.”

“Subtle.”

“That’s what I said!”

 

While Dutch had his outpatient procedure, I paced the lobby of the clinic right next to the hospital. I wasn’t worried until the clock read five thirty. Dutch’s doctor had told me when we’d met with him two days earlier that he’d be out no later than five p.m.

By six I’d worked myself into a small tizzy. The receptionist told me that sometimes these things ran a little long and just to be patient, but I kept having the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and when we got to six fifteen, I blew a gasket. All those coping skills I’d learned in my anger management classes went right out the window and I started to pound my fist on the counter like Shirley MacLaine in
Terms of Endearment
.

A nurse bolted out of the back and grabbed my arm, pulling me to a chair and insisting that I calm down.

I insisted she tell me what the f- bomb had happened to Dutch. “He’s had a little trouble with the anesthesia,” she admitted. “But he’s doing much better now and he’s almost ready to go home.”

Through clenched teeth I repeated, “Trouble with the anesthesia?”

The nurse kept her voice low and level. “Besides the section on Mr. Rivers’s neck there were several more moles on his back that Dr. Cassidy wanted to remove. They both decided to go with a variant on a general anesthesia rather than several locals. This particular drug still has a tendency to put patients to sleep, which is what happened with Mr. Rivers, but during the end of the excisions, his breathing became very shallow and his blood pressure dropped significantly.”

My hand moved to cover my mouth. “Oh, God!”

The nurse held up her hand as if she wanted to tell me to remain calm. “It’s not that uncommon a reaction,” she said. “We’ve seen it before and we got it under control very quickly.” I continued to gape at her and she added, “I promise you, he’s fine, just very queasy and a little light-headed.”

“I want to see him.”

“He’ll be right out,” she assured me.

I stood up and with unveiled agitation I said, “I’m not waiting out here a minute longer. You can either take me to him, or I can cause another scene.”

The nurse’s eyes widened. “All right,” she said tersely. “Come with me.”

I followed her through the door and along a corridor to one of the recovery rooms. Dutch was lying on a gurney with his feet propped up on pillows and a cold compress on his head along with another one against the back of his neck.

I moved right to his side and picked up his hand. He looked pale as hell and my heart skipped a beat. “Hey,” I said when he opened his eyes.

“Get me out of here.”

I turned to the nurse. “Bring me his clothes, please.”

“He really should lie still for a little longer, ma’am.”

I turned back to Dutch. He shook his head no.

“We’re leaving right now. Please bring me his clothes.”