DEAD BY WEDNESDAY (5 page)

She laughed. “Perhaps you could buy some for the police station?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I want to be known as the spring soap guy.”

“Perhaps not,” she admitted. She drained the pasta and motioned for Raoul to set the table.

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” he said.

“Lucy is low-energy but high-strung,” Carmen explained. “We got her from a shelter. She spends a lot of time hiding under the bed.” She set a big bowl of spaghetti on the table. “Let’s eat.”

“Food’s great,” he said ten minutes later, meaning every word of it.

“Spaghetti is easy,” Carmen said, pulling at the neckline of her sweater.

She was cute when she blushed. Robert smiled at her and then shifted his attention to Raoul. “So band keeps you pretty busy?”

“I guess.”

“Your friends play instruments, too?”

“My best friend, Jacob, plays the drums.”

Robert took another bite and took his time chewing. “Mahoney’s got a good football team. They went to state tournaments last year.”

“Yeah,” Raoul said. For the first time, Robert heard the bitterness. “If you’re an athlete, you’ve got it made.”

“No special treatment for the band?”

That just got him a look. Didn’t mean anything, but Robert filed the information away. “What’s the gang situation like there?”

Raoul shrugged. “I’m sort of busy with my classes. I wouldn’t know.”

“I was just curious. I know they mix it up every once in a while in that neighborhood. I suppose drugs are a problem?”

“Not for me.”

“Have you ever had anyone try to sell you something?” Carmen asked.

Raoul shook his head. “Trombone players don’t get a lot of attention from the drug dealers.” He stood up. “I’ve got a lot of homework.” He carried his plate over to the sink and rinsed it.

“How are your classes going?” Carmen said.

“Fine.” Raoul grabbed his backpack off the kitchen counter and walked out of the kitchen. Seconds later, a door at the back of the apartment slammed.

Carmen sat at the table and put her head in her hands. Robert scooted his chair closer. He reached a hand out and with one finger, gently stroked the back of her hand.

Carmen lifted her face. “He’s lying to me. He’s never done that before. Something is wrong. Very wrong.” There were tears in her eyes.

“Kids lie,” he said. “It doesn’t mean he’s in trouble. Maybe he’s embarrassed about his grades and intends to bring them up.”

She shook her head.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We have cops in all the high schools. I’ll talk to the ones who are at Mahoney High School. I’ll see if they recognize his name. Okay?”

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

Her face was close. Close enough that he could see the tears that still clung to her long lashes. Her skin was a lovely mocha and her lips were pink and inviting. He leaned forward. She stilled.

He bent his head and kissed her. She tasted like spaghetti sauce and red wine, sweet with just a hint of sharpness. And when she pulled back quickly, he had to force himself to let her go, to not demand more.

Her dark eyes were big.

“I hadn’t planned on that,” he said, proving that adult men lied, too. Maybe he hadn’t exactly planned it, but for months he’d been thinking about kissing Carmen.

She didn’t answer. She just looked as shaken as he felt. A few more strands of her silky hair had fallen down and her lips were trembling.

“Look,” he said, “I—”

“I know you were just comforting me,” she said.

He started to protest but realized that she was rationalizing the action. In her own way, she was as skittish as her cat. If she thought that he was romantically interested in her, her first instinct might be to run and hide, too. Carmen Jimenez might be twenty-nine, but he suspected she hadn’t had the experiences of other twenty-nine-year-old women. She’d been too busy raising her brother.

For the first time, he felt better about what had happened at Liz and Sawyer’s wedding. Maybe it hadn’t been
him
that Carmen had objected to? Maybe it had just been her lack of experience and her generally shy demeanor that had sent her scurrying into the ladies’ room.

This was going to require very careful handling.

If it made her happy to think the kiss had been about comfort, so be it. “Did it work?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really, I just needed a minute.”

“No problem. I’ll call you tomorrow once I’ve talked to the cops at Raoul’s school.” He got up, gave her a little wave and opened the door. “Thanks again for dinner. It was great.”

When he got to his car, he didn’t even turn on the heat. He was plenty hot enough. One kiss and he’d been about to implode.

Very careful handling indeed.

Chapter Five

Friday

As Robert walked past Tasha’s desk, she extended a long arm. Her fingernails were bright purple. “I found the name of the cop who is pulling regular duty at Mahoney High School. Horton Davis.”

He took the pink message slip from her. “Thanks,” Robert said. After leaving Carmen’s last night, he’d left a message for Tasha, hoping that she’d work on it first thing in the morning. He pulled his cell phone off his belt.

He got the man’s voice mail and he left a brief message, asking for a return call. He hoped that Raoul wasn’t involved in something bad at school. He sure as hell didn’t want to break that kind of news to Carmen.

Hot, hot Carmen Jimenez. Some women worked hard at being sexy. They wore the right clothes, the right makeup, had the look. He’d dated women like that and had appreciated their efforts and the end result.

But Carmen didn’t seem to work at it at all. She just was.

Didn’t matter if she was wearing a turtleneck and a skirt that almost reached her knees. It was the way she moved. Her natural grace. The effortless way she tossed her long, dark hair when it got in her way.

She smelled sexy.

She laughed sexy.

Damn. He was in trouble. Had known it last night when he’d gotten to his car and had sat in the cold for five minutes, letting his body temperature return to normal. After one kiss.

He fingered the pink message slips on his desk, the ones Tasha had handed him the day before. Mandy and Janine. Hell, maybe he should give one of them a call. Get things back into perspective.

He didn’t pick up his phone.

Instead, he nodded at Sawyer, who was standing across the room, in conversation with Charlene Blaze.

In the morning report, there’d been the usual litany. Two gang shootings. A couple home invasions, one with injuries to the invader. Jewelry store robbery. A bank located in a grocery store had been held up. The feds were taking that one.

Just another day. More files for the desk. Especially now because, like most every detective in the city, he and Sawyer had been told to put their own cases on the back burner if possible and help Wasimole and Blaze on the serial killer case.

Their neighborhood search had turned up nothing yesterday. Nobody had seen anything. It had been cold, frustrating work, all the more so because everybody knew the clock was ticking. Another Wednesday was just around the corner. And with that came the good probability of another dead kid.

It had kept them moving even when they could no longer feel their toes and their faces were chapped from the brisk wind. They’d covered a six-block radius and had talked to countless people.

He saw that Sawyer had finished his conversation with Blaze. “What’s the plan?” Robert asked when his partner approached.

“Friends and family detail,” Sawyer said.

Robert had figured as much. As each of the dead boys had been discovered, Blaze and Wasimole had interviewed family and friends at great length, trying to find some thread that might tie the deceased together. But they hadn’t come up with anything. Lieutenant Fischer had suggested that another team of detectives do the same, thinking that now that a few weeks had gone by for some of the distressed families, their heads might be a little clearer and they would remember something that would be helpful.

It was possible that there was nothing that connected the boys. That the serial killer was picking random victims. That certainly had been the case before. But given that the age range was so tight, the cops weren’t discounting the fact that they’d missed the thread that tied all the victims together and maybe even to the killer.

“I guess we drew the short straw,” Robert said.

“It’s indoor work. At least mostly,” Sawyer said.

Yeah, but it would be brutal, nevertheless. It was never fun talking to people who were torn up about losing their child, their nephew, their best friend. The list went on. They’d answer a few questions and then start down a tangent, recalling a special time or place that had meant something to the young victim.

He and Sawyer would listen and try to sort through the memories to try to find something that made some sense out of what seemed to be a senseless crime.

“Okay, let’s get going,” Robert said. “Where do you want to start?”

“Victim one. Johnnie Whitmore.”

* * *

B
EFORE
ARRIVING
AT
the Whitmores’ home, Robert and Sawyer reviewed the notes they had on Johnnie Whitmore. At age thirteen, he was the youngest of all the victims. Eighth-grader at Thornton Middle School. B student. Had been in Boy Scouts up until last year. Lutheran, but the family weren’t regular churchgoers. On the basketball team but mostly warmed the bench. Played the clarinet. Lactose intolerant. One sister, age seven. Two-parent family. Biological mom, Michelle. Stepfather, Tom.

Their lives had been going pretty well until their son had been found by a night security guard near the entrance of a factory on Boughten Avenue.

The Whitmore family lived in a white house with green shutters. Their sidewalks were clear with snow piled two feet high on each side.

Some of that snow had fallen before Johnnie Whitmore had died. Robert wondered if the young man had shoveled the walk; maybe he’d even had a snowball fight with his younger sister.

On the porch, they could hear piano music. Sawyer cocked his head. “We had that song in our wedding,” he said. “I don’t know the name of it,” he added. “Liz would.”

Yeah, that kind of stuff was important to women. He’d dated a tax attorney the previous year and she’d spent valuable time over several years planning her wedding and documenting it on some online social networking site. Music. Dress. Everything down to the bacon-wrapped asparagus she was having for appetizers. When she’d started looking at him, sizing him up for a tux, he’d run like hell.

That was one family tradition that didn’t need to be carried on.

They knocked. Michelle and Tom were expecting them. Blaze had set up the appointment the night before. Both he and Sawyer showed their badges and settled down on the leather couch in the small living room. The Whitmores sat on the love seat. There was one empty chair, a flat screen on the wall and a big, shiny piano that took up most of the far wall.

“Thank you for seeing us,” Robert said. “I know that you’ve spoken at length to Detectives Blaze and Wasimole but given the circumstances, we wanted to have one more conversation. I know this is difficult for you.”

“We want to do everything we can to catch this animal,” Michelle said. She held her husband’s hand.

For the next three hours, they labored over Johnnie’s life, their lives. Minute details. Where was he born? Who was his doctor? Where did he go to preschool? Do you remember any of his teachers? Have you ever lived anywhere else? Did Johnnie spend time with aunts, uncles or grandparents who lived somewhere else? Where did he get his hair cut? What grocery store do you shop in? Where do you get your car fixed?

“I hope this has been helpful,” Tom Whitmore said when it appeared they were finally finished.

“Yes. Thank you,” Robert said. He stood up and discreetly stretched his back. “Nice piano,” he said. “I saw in one of the reports that you teach lessons out of your home, Michelle.”

She nodded. “I started doing that shortly after Johnnie was born. I wanted a way to be able to be at home with my kids more. Our daughter is very good for her age. Johnnie never took to it as well but at least when he started playing the clarinet, he already knew how to read music. He said that helped.”

“What’s that song you were playing when we arrived?” Sawyer asked.

“Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ I hire out for weddings. That’s how I met Tom. I played at his brother’s wedding. It was great extra money after I was divorced, and there’s something about a wedding that just makes me happy.” She licked her lips. “I need a little happiness right now,” she said.

Of course she did. She’d lost her son to a maniac.

Robert and Sawyer pulled on their coats and left. Once they were back in the car, they sat there for a minute, letting the engine warm up.

“What are you thinking, Robert?” Sawyer asked.

He shrugged. “I’m thinking that I’m going to rip this guy apart when we find him.”

Sawyer nodded.

“On a more practical level,” Robert continued, “based on what I’ve seen in the other files, I didn’t hear anything that rang a bell. But maybe once we talk to a few more people.”

Sawyer pulled away from the curb. “First we get coffee.”

* * *

T
INA
J
OHANSON
,
the mother of Ben Johanson, the second boy killed, was too thin, and she chain-smoked. They met with her at her apartment right after lunch and she still had on the waitressing uniform from the overnight shift she pulled at Dill’s Diner. There was no husband. Had never been a husband, according to the notes Blaze had taken. Ben was an only child. Fifteen. Freshman in high school. He qualified for free lunches.

Halfway through their questions, she pulled out her scrapbooks, slowly flipping pages, walking them through her son’s short life. Robert was surprised to see the album. Most people kept their pictures on their computers and rarely printed them. But she had dutifully printed and labeled each one.

First day of kindergarten. Broken leg in second grade. Science project in fourth grade. Youth camp when he was ten. Playing the tuba in the eighth-grade band concert.

The instrument had been almost as big as the kid.

It made Robert think about the trombone case that had been propped up against Carmen’s counter.

Tina had already flipped the page before Robert held up a finger. “How long had your son played the tuba?” he asked.

“Started in sixth grade,” she said, wiping away a tear. “I wanted him to play the violin but no, he insisted upon the tuba.” She gave them a shaky smile. “And he was really good at it. I picked up a couple extra shifts every week so that he could take lessons from the Gottart Studio.”

Robert added a line to the pages of notes he and Sawyer had already collected.
Band. Tuba. Gottart Studio
.

“I’m not familiar with the Gottart Studio,” Robert said.

“On Peach Street. It’s one of the best,” she said proudly, as if that still brought her some satisfaction that she’d been able to provide that small luxury for her son.

They talked for another hour before finishing up. Then it was back to the cold car. Sawyer rubbed his hands together. “Her son was her life,” he said.

Robert had been thinking the same thing. Now Tina Johanson was truly alone. “It’s Friday,” he said, stating the obvious. If something didn’t break soon, they’d have another mother grieving over her son.

Robert’s cell phone rang. He looked at the number and realized it was one he’d called earlier. “I need to get this,” he said.

“No problem. There’s a deli on the corner calling my name,” Sawyer said. He got out fast, but still cold air came in and Robert turned the heater dial to the max.

“This is Robert Hanson.”

“It’s Horton Davis. I had a message from you, Detective.”

“Yeah. Thanks for calling back. I’m working with a family who has a teenage son at Mahoney High School,” Robert explained. “I wanted to see if you recognized his name. Raoul Jimenez. Dark hair, slight build. He’s a freshman. No sports. Plays in the school band.”

“Not ringing a bell,” the man said. “But then again, there are fifteen hundred kids at this school. I can do some checking.”

“Thanks. I don’t want the kid to know that I’m asking about him,” Robert said.

“No problem. I’ll call you in a couple days,” Horton Davis said.

Robert thanked the man and hung up. Then he took a deep breath and dialed Carmen.

She answered on the third ring. “This is Carmen.”

“Hi. It’s Robert. Robert Hanson. Are you busy?”

She seemed to hesitate. “I have a few minutes,” she said finally.

“I...uh...wanted to thank you for dinner last night,” he said. “It was really good.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. She paused. “Was there something else, Detective?”

Yeah. I’d like to kiss you again.
“Uh...I talked to the officer who has primary duty at Mahoney High School. He didn’t recognize Raoul’s name.”

“Oh.”

“That’s a good thing,” Robert said. “They know the kids who are in trouble or who
are
trouble.”

“Thanks for checking,” she said. She sounded disappointed, and Robert knew it wasn’t because she wanted Raoul to be a known troublemaker. She just wanted some explanation for why he was pulling away.

“I wanted a chance to pay back your hospitality. How about I treat for dinner tonight?”

“Dinner?” she repeated.

Her tone suggested that she was figuring out a way to say no.

“Now, I know you’re familiar with the concept. I can’t promise, however, that the food will be as good as last night.” He kept his tone light, which was a damn miracle of the human body, because he was literally holding his breath. “We did talk about the need to spend time together. Of course, I’d want Raoul to come, too.”

There was absolute silence on the other end. He covered his phone and gulped in some air.

It was his nature to push, to force the solution he wanted, but he backed off to give her some space. He counted to ten.

“I guess dinner would be okay,” she said finally.

Robert smiled. If he always needed an enthusiastic welcome, he wouldn’t have become a cop. “Good. I’ll see you about seven.” That would give him time to swing by his mom’s house first. He hung up before Carmen could think of a reason to change her mind.

He was still staring at his phone when Sawyer opened the door. He reached out and accepted the large coffee and the plastic container. Blueberry pie. And it felt warm.

“Thanks,” he said.

“News?” Sawyer said, looking at Robert’s phone.

“No. It was...personal.”

“I should have figured a woman. It’s so cold that there are parts on my body that I’m not even sure Liz can heat and yet, you’re sitting here, grinning like a fool. Mandy or Janine?” he asked, proving that Tasha didn’t keep secrets well.