Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (21 page)

“I know it isn’t.” Rachel frowned, distracted by a whiff of a foul odor. She’d first noticed it when they arrived, but she’d quickly forgotten about it as she got caught up in work. This was the first time she’d been back in the office. “Do you smell something?”

“Yes, I’ve been smelling it all morning.” Michelle seemed to struggle to pull her mind away from the nastiness on her computer screen to the unpleasantness in the office. “I don’t know what it is. It’s getting stronger.”

Now that Rachel gave it her full attention, she recognized the odor. Where was it coming from? Sniffing like a tracker dog, she moved around the office, trying to pinpoint the source. She couldn’t. “Hold on a minute,” she told Michelle.

She walked out to the waiting room, where a small dog with a thick, fluffy black coat scrambled to his feet, nails clicking on the vinyl tile, as she approached.

“Hey, Loki.” Rachel scratched the dog’s head. He was a Schipperke, a breed she didn’t see often, and he looked like a black fox with his pointed ears and snout. She smiled at the owner, an older woman with dark hair. “Hi, Mrs. Stevens. I’ll be ready to give him his shots in just a minute, but first, would you mind if I borrowed him? There’s an odor in my office that I can’t track down, and I need a dog to show me where it’s coming from.”

Mrs. Stevens laughed. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to help out. Can I come too?”

“Of course.”

They trooped back to the office, Loki’s owner tugging him away from intriguing scents in his path. Inside the room, Rachel and Michelle stood back while Mrs. Stevens unclipped the leash and allowed Loki to snuffle around the space. In less than thirty seconds, he zeroed in on the cabinet underneath the window. Sniffing loudly, whimpering, he scratched at the cabinet door.

“No, no.” Mrs. Stevens grabbed his collar and tugged him away, but he strained forward, trying to get at the source of the tantalizing odor. “Don’t destroy the furniture.”

Rachel leaned down to take a whiff. “I think this is what we’re looking for. Good boy, Loki. I’ll reward you with a rabies shot in a minute.”

Loki whined in protest as Mrs. Stevens dragged him out of the office.

Rachel opened the cabinet and released a sickening stench.

“Oh, my god.” Michelle clamped a hand over her nose and mouth. “What is it?”

Rachel shifted a box of stationery to one side in the cabinet. “It’s something…” She broke off, staring at what she’d uncovered. “Something dead.”

The biggest rat she’d ever seen lay on the cabinet shelf, its throat and belly slit open, its entrails spilling out.

Michelle took a look, gasped and stumbled backward.

Rachel slammed the cabinet door shut. “Mish, listen to me. Don’t panic.”

“It’s him.
He
put that thing in there.”

Rachel grasped Michelle by the shoulders, felt her body trembling. “It’s just a dead rat. Don’t start imagining all sorts of—”

“Are you trying to tell me it died a natural death? Look at it!” Michelle twisted out of Rachel’s grip. “You heard Tom yourself. That man followed me. He’s here.”

Rachel scrubbed her fingertips across her forehead. She was getting a heck of a headache. “I’ll ask Dennis to come over and look for fingerprints on the cabinet, but I doubt he’ll find any.”

“What are you going to do with that thing?”

“Dennis can take it. Meanwhile, I’ll get something to put it in. Dennis will probably give me a lecture about disturbing a crime scene, but I can’t leave it here, decompos—” Rachel caught herself. Why didn’t she just saying
rotting
and maximize Michelle’s reaction? “You can take your computer into the staff lounge while the office airs out.”

In the supply cabinet Rachel found a plastic, airtight container. She deposited the dead animal in it, folding the rat’s body to make it fit. She tried not to think about what the mutilated rodent meant, but she couldn’t silence the buzz in her head, the echo of Michelle’s words.
He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

***

On the telephone Shelley’s boyfriend, Justin Reidel, sounded eager to talk to Tom and told him to come straight over. When Tom knocked twenty minutes later, the apartment door swung open immediately.

“Hey, I’m Justin. Thanks for coming to see me.” The skinny, dark-haired young man stuck out a hand. His palm felt sweaty against Tom’s. “Have you arrested anybody? You’ve got suspects, right? You’ve got some idea who did it, don’t you?”

Tom stepped inside and waited for him to shut the door. “We’re following up on some leads.”

Justin crammed his fists into the pockets of his khaki cargo pants and bounced on his toes. He wore a blue tee shirt with the Hard Rock Cafe’s circular gold logo printed on it. “Oh, man, I still can’t get my head around this.”

His boyish face and slight build made him appear younger than twenty-four, the age Tom knew him to be. And he was rattled. About to jump out of his skin. Tom checked the pupils of his brown eyes for a sign he was high on something, but they appeared normal.

“Can we sit down and talk?” Tom asked.

“Oh. Oh, yeah, man, sorry.”

Justin led Tom to the seating area in the living room. The sparse, shabby furnishings made the images that crowded the walls all the more dramatic. Most were photos of wild birds, eagles and hawks, colorful songbirds and several species of woodpeckers. No photos of Shelley, Tom noted. If Justin had been a possessive boyfriend, he wasn’t displaying any evidence of it.

Instead of sitting on the small couch, Justin took one of the wooden captain’s chairs that flanked the coffee table. Tom sat in the other.

Leaning forward with his head in his hands, Justin muttered, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“When was the last time you saw Shelley?” Did the guy have tears in his eyes? Tom hoped he wouldn’t have to cope with a weepy boyfriend.

“It was that day. The day she—she—”

“Disappeared,” Tom supplied.

Justin nodded. “We grabbed some burgers for dinner, then she went over to the innocence project office, and that was it. Next thing I heard, she was gone.” He paused only a second before adding, “I was working that night, in case you’re wondering. Lots of people saw me. I was taking pictures outside a restaurant in Georgetown, there were some Hollywood people there that night, in town to talk to Congress about something. The environment or refugees, I can’t remember which, it’s usually one or the other with them.”

“So you’re the Washington version of the paparazzi?” Tom asked.

Justin laughed. “It’s not just me, man. But yeah, I pick up some freelance money that way. And I do wedding shoots, kids’ birthday parties, whatever people will pay me for. That stuff pays the rent so I can do the kind of photography I really want to do.” He waved a hand at the extraordinary nature photos on the walls. “Anyway, I already told the Fairfax cop where I was that night, he checked it out.”

“Yeah, I know. Have you remembered anything you didn’t tell the police about at the time? Anybody Shelley was having trouble with, anybody she’d talked about.”

He slumped back in his chair, his legs sprawled, resting his chin in his hand. “The only person who bothered her that I know of was that guy from Mason County, the one whose brother got murdered. He was up here about once a month, putting pressure on her.”

Skeet Hadley again. “Was he here close to the time Shelley disappeared?”

“Oh, yeah. Couple days before.”

“Did she ever say that he threatened her? Was she afraid of him?”

“No, man, he didn’t scare her. It was kinda like, you know, a routine with them. He’d come see her, yell at her for a while, then he’d go back home. She said she felt sorry for the guy, him losing his brother and all, and he’d thank her when she got his brother’s real killer put away. Hey, wait a minute, I’ll show you something.”

He jumped up and went to a long, low cabinet against a wall. Tom followed him. Justin pulled out a drawer containing lateral files and ran his fingers along the tabs.

“Here we go.” Justin plucked the file from the drawer, laid it on the cabinet, and opened it to reveal an eight by ten shot of Skeet Hadley with his mouth wide open, his cheeks florid with anger, a pointing finger two inches from Shelley’s face. “That’s him. Crazy fucking dude. But look at Shel. Cool as ice. Never let him get to her.”

Tom picked up the photo and studied it for a moment. Justin was right. Shelley looked unperturbed, patient, even sympathetic. “Why did you take this? Did she ask you to?”

“No, man, she didn’t even know I was doing it. That was on the street, outside the building she lived in. I parked around the corner and came walking along and saw them before they saw me. I wanted Shelley to get a restraining order on his ass. I gave her that picture to use, but she wasn’t interested. Said he was harmless.”

“Can I keep this?” Tom asked.

“Sure. Let me put it in an envelope for you. Do you think he could be the one who did it? Killed her?”

“I don’t know.” While Justin grabbed a manila envelope from a box on the cabinet, Tom asked, “Did she say who she thought the real killer was? Who committed the crime Vance Lankford was convicted for?”

“No.” Justin took the photo and slid it into the envelope, handed it to Tom. “She wouldn’t have told me sensitive information like that. I’m not sure she even had somebody in mind. To tell you the truth, I thought she might be doing all that work for nothing.”

“Did you know that all her notes relating to the case have disappeared?”

Justin straightened his slumped shoulders. “What? Are you kidding me?”

“No. They’re all gone. Do you know anything about who had access to them?”

“Nobody, man, and I mean
nobody.
I don’t think she even told her boss at the innocence project about everything she was working on. She didn’t make copies of stuff, she didn’t leave papers all over the place, some at home, some at the office, like that. She kept it with her. Carried it around.”

“All of it?” Tom asked.

“All of it. I told her it was risky. I mean, what if somebody stole her car? What if she had an accident and stuff got lost?” He paused, a shadow passing over his eyes. “I never thought about something happening to
her
.” He looked at Tom. “You think whoever killed her took the files?”

“We’re not sure, but it makes sense. What did you think had happened to her notes? Before I told you they’re missing?”

“Well…I guess I never thought about it. I mean, I’ve been worried about Shelley, not some pieces of paper. But I guess if I’d thought about it, I would’ve guessed the police or her boss had them. Got them out of her car. Wait a minute, though.” Justin frowned at an enormous photo of a white pelican, hanging over the file cabinet, as if the bird had provoked a sudden insight. “She left the building that night and never made it to her car. So if she was taking the files back home after the meeting, she couldn’t have put them in the car. She was still carrying the files when—” He broke off.

“When she was abducted.” Tom watched Justin’s expressive face twitch and scrunch as thoughts passed through his mind. “How close were you and Shelley?”

“Huh?” Justin refocused on Tom, but confusion clouded his face at the abrupt change of topic. “Close? Oh. Pretty close, I guess. I mean, we weren’t about to get married or anything. We had fun together, we didn’t let it get heavy, you know?”

“Did she see other guys too?”

Justin shrugged. “If she did, I didn’t hear about it. She wasn’t real social, you know? I mean, she wasn’t shy or anything, but she had too much to do, she didn’t have time to party. She was real busy all the time, with law school and the innocence project.”

“But she spent time with you.”

“When she could, yeah, but I didn’t expect to hang out with her every day or anything. I just about had to get her in a choke hold and drag her with me to a movie now and then.” He broke off, his face crumpling. “I can’t believe I said that. That’s probably what happened. Some guy grabbed her and dragged her—”

Tom waited while Justin pulled in a shaky breath and got himself under control. His emotions seemed real to Tom, the seesawing between normal and grief-stricken, the calm recounting of memories punctuated by the stab of realization that Shelley was dead. Murdered.

“Aside from this guy,” Tom said, holding up the envelope with the photo, “are you sure you can’t remember her being bothered by anything, or anybody, before she went missing? Did you ever see her upset, apprehensive?”

Justin didn’t answer the question quickly this time. Tom saw in the fluid movements of his features that he was trying to decide whether to reveal something.

Tom prodded, “Anything you can tell me might help. I don’t care how insignificant it seems. Let me decide whether it’s important or not.”

“She never actually
said
…”

“But?”

“I got the feeling something was going on, you know? It was just a vibe, though.” He gave Tom a beseeching look, as if afraid he sounded silly.

“It sounds like you knew Shelley pretty well, so if you were getting a negative vibe, there was probably something to it. Did you tell the Fairfax cops about this?”