Embracing Midnight (7 page)

“Go on.” Not that she wanted to hear any more.

With the help of an aide, the body was lifted and turned. A shallow hole gaped at the base of the victim’s skull. “Of the five victims we know of,” Jackson continued, “all have this same injury—the death blow. Savage, cold, and downright barbaric.”

An understatement.

Jackson commenced to fill her in for the next fifteen minutes. The rest of the girl’s body bore intense bruises and other cuts. By the bruising between her gently spread legs, there was no doubt that she’d been sexually assaulted. Their best hope at this point was for semen or saliva to provide them with a DNA profile of the offender—or offenders. The possibility existed that more than one man was involved.

Though Callie heard Jackson’s words, they registered as little more than a drone in her ears. Too many thoughts were tumbling through her head to pay attention. Less than twelve hours ago the corpse was a living, breathing human being.

Now the unknown girl was dead, no more than an empty shell soon to rot away into little more than a pile of bones. Who she was, what she was, the sins she’d committed didn’t matter anymore. Death had wiped away her identity, her joy and sorrows. Only her pain remained, stark and brutal. Because she’d passed from life in such a tragic way, those who survived would be responsible for seeking justice, speaking for one no longer able.

By the time Jackson finished, Callie was too drained to think. Fighting the clench of nerves, she scrubbed her numb face, disbelieving. “Shit.” The victim’s injuries exactly matched those in autopsy photos she’d viewed of other victims.

Small scars flicked across the victim’s neck, shoulders, breasts, and abdomen. Well healed, these were obviously inflicted before death.

Callie thought about her own scars, and wondered. The impulse died before she gave it further consideration, vanishing like ashes in the wind. Something else took its place, more important than a few old scars on a corpse.

As much as she hated the idea, it was entirely possible she’d just slept with the man who’d carried out the vicious rape and execution. The location of the body was too near the previous three victims to be a coincidence. This one, like the others, wouldn’t be going into the papers. As an ongoing federal investigation, a press blackout would be declared.

Callie turned away from the body. She needed a moment to think, gather her thoughts. Not an easy thing. Her mind was a jumble, personal knowledge warring with duty, doing the right thing versus doing the wrong thing. Without really considering the consequences, she’d put herself between a rock and a hard place. Sleeping with her had given Drake something she hadn’t remotely considered.

An alibi.

Science could only guesstimate when the girl had died. Eye witnesses might place Drake in the bar with the victim, but leaving a bar with a woman and killing her were two different things. His best bet toward a plea of innocence would be to have another person verify his whereabouts.

Preferably someone he was intimate with at the time. The strategy was brilliant. A master stroke.

She leveled an unflinching gaze at the image reflected in the window. Head tilted slightly, her pale face was taut with uncertainty. She didn’t want to look at herself more than she had to, but some inner compulsion drove her to stare down the face the glass presented.

She swallowed a gasp. The woman in the glass looked guilty. If it’s true it’s him, she silently fretted, how do I confront this?

Her heart beat wildly, pulse racing with anxiety. Oh, God, why didn’t she think things through before letting Drake into her apartment? Unfortunately, regret, like hindsight, was always more easily examined in retrospect.

Callie closed her eyes, leaning forward to press her burning forehead into the glass. The cool surface was soothing, like a balm to her soul. She felt as if someone had led her to the top of a cliff and then, without warning, pushed her off. Somehow, she’d managed to catch the edge, but she was still left to dangle helplessly high above the ground.

I fucked up.

Roger’s voice broke into her thoughts, sharp and more than a bit annoyed. “Something wrong, Agent Whitten?”

No answer.

Snapping out of the trance she’d fallen into, Callie considered her options for a few seconds. Drawing in a deep fortifying breath, she made a decision.

Time to confess.

“A
nd you’re sure of the time frame Drake was with you?” Roger Reinke asked.

Callie nodded. “Yes,” she answered crisply. “After leaving the bar, I made contact with Norton to debrief, then proceeded along my normal route.”

Roger scowled. “No side trips anywhere?”

Ignoring his apparent dissatisfaction, Callie shook her head. “None. I’ve been careful to keep the same schedule and habits.”

“And your contact with Drake has been…” He let the question trail off. An hour had passed since the agents pulled together a hasty meeting in the morgue’s conference room, but no one seemed satisfied with her answers.

Callie sighed. The grilling was uncomfortable, but unavoidable. She’d already covered these details, twice. Her superiors had expected progress, were hungry for the break that had thus far eluded them. She understood she had to be precise, give agents all the information they needed to establish Drake’s patterns.

Ignoring the edgy tone in Roger’s voice, she broke eye contact and reached for her cigarettes. Her fifth so far. The idea of quitting had long passed. Charlie Grayson asked to bum a smoke, his third. She quietly passed him one, mentally noting the morning’s freshly opened pack was nearing empty as the afternoon progressed.

Wasting no time, Grayson lit up and took a long drag before returning the lighter. “Thanks. Now a cup of coffee would make my day.”

She briefly nodded. “No problem.”

Reinke cleared his throat in disapproval. “If you don’t mind, please proceed.”

Callie exhaled a lungful of smoke. “My contact with Drake has been exactly as instructed. I’ve been friendly, making small talk, eyeing him up and expressing my interest.” She flicked the ashes into a nearby ashtray. “I suppose he got the message.”

Having let Roger Reinke conduct the majority of the interview, Assistant Director in Charge Samuel Faber looked up from his notes, which he’d jotted on a yellow legal pad.

An ex-military man still sporting a crew cut, Faber was fanatical about bending no rule. He was one rung up in the chain of command, the man calling all the shots. “Is it possible you and Norton were seen together?”

Callie glanced up at Faber. Through the last hour, his laser beam stare hadn’t left her once. Probing, dissecting, visually slicing her to pieces. She wondered if he simply disapproved of her less formal style, or if he was sizing her up and finding her performance inadequate.

Or maybe he knew she was lying. It occurred to her Norton was able to slip into her apartment any time he wanted—easy enough to plant a listening or recording device.

Paranoid.

Reining in her wild theories, Callie concentrated on focusing on the task at hand. She had information. These men needed it. Simple. She shouldn’t be taking it personally. Faber wasn’t being a bastard for putting her feet to the fire. He had a job to do, as did she. “More than possible,” she finally concurred. “Same street corner, same time, every night. I buy a couple of joints and slip him a twenty-dollar bill.”

The marijuana Paul Norton sold was, in fact, nothing more noxious than parsley, better eaten than smoked. Buying from her dealer gave a plausible reason for the two to be seen together. Local law enforcement had the heads-up that both were federal agents. Norton had been hassled by the street cops as part of his cover. Callie had been busted once, taken in, but quickly cut loose and hustled out the back door—a vital move allowing her street credibility to remain intact.

Faber nodded. “Any chance Drake’s made you out to be an agent?”

Callie briefly focused her attention on her cigarette, watching the smoke rise from its tip. “I doubt it. We’ve been too damn careful. My professional judgment is he believes he’s found an easy snatch.”

Mitch Reeve snickered, giving her the eye. “And was it easy?”

Callie glanced across the table. Her eyes narrowed. Asshole. “Was what easy?”

“For him to pick you up?” Innuendo laced Reeve’s broadside. He’d struck a nerve, and not in a pleasant way.

A quicksilver cutting remark jumped to the end of her tongue. Close to letting loose a verbal bitch slap, Callie thought better of it. Men were pigs. Why did they turn into immature jerks the minute sex was mentioned?

Sitting among these men, Callie felt every bit the outsider, an interloper in their all-male club. Every damn one of them had degrees out the ass. She had two, a bachelor’s degree in computer science, as well as an associate’s degree in criminal justice. She’d served her country and earned her qualifications and the right to sit among their rarefied number. Yet something would always be a barrier between them.

They had balls. She didn’t.

She had a twat, and her sex would always be a strike against her in a man’s profession.
As long as you can do the job, it’s not about being male or female
, she reminded herself.
It’s all in the details.

Fighting to maintain her composure, Callie clasped her hands together until her knuckles whitened from the pressure. She hated the games, but she knew how to play them. “Sure. I’m cheap and I’m easy.” She intended the statement to sound blithe. Instead, her tone was tinged with a longing and loneliness betraying the hollow void in her soul.

Reeve’s tongue went into his cheek in a manner leaving no doubt what he was thinking about. “And you did what?”

So hot a moment ago, a chilly perspiration soaked her, dotting her forehead. “I almost had a fucking panic attack,” she snapped. “What would you do if the man you had under surveillance followed you home at three in the morning?”

A cunning glint sidled into the depths of Reeve’s eyes. “I’d invite him in.”

The rest of the men laughed.

Barely hanging on to her composure, Callie tried to ignore them. Impossible. The tension in the room still felt like a noose around her neck. At any moment someone was bound to kick the chair out from under her feet. “That’s exactly what I did,” she shot back coolly. “I felt contact should be maintained as long as possible.”

Charlie Grayson clapped her on the shoulder. “You did the right thing. You are one cool chick.” He pointed to his partner. “Now Mitch here, he’d have screamed like a little girl. God forbid some sexual predator got hold of his precious virgin ass.”

Sitting on the other side of the narrow table, Mitch Reeves tossed his middle finger. “Fuck you, Grayson. You’ve been trying to get in my pants since we partnered. That ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy is totally bogus.”

Grayson flicked his butt toward his partner. “No, it just covers perverts like you.” He pretended to think a moment. “Maybe I should tell them about the stakeout of that gunrunner’s farm….”

A service weapon was drawn, safety flicked off. “If you say one Goddamn word, Charlie, I swear to God, I’ll blow you away.” Reeve’s eyes were crazed, almost fanatically so. “I’ll fucking sit in prison, man.”

Charlie Grayson raised his arms in surrender. “Chill, dude. Chill. I’ll never tell.”

The gun was put away. “I’m warning you, asshole.”

Charlie Grayson flicked a shit-eating grin. “I want your house, your car, and your wife in return for my silence.”

A set of keys flipped across the table. “The tank’s almost empty, so fill it up on the way home, please. And good luck with getting the fat bitch off the couch.”

Grayson considered the keys. “I’m a fag, remember?” He tossed the keys back. “And I’ve seen your wife. No wonder you prefer sheep.”

The two agents collapsed into snickers and giggles. Charlie Grayson wasn’t gay and Mitch Reeve, as far as anyone knew, didn’t screw farm animals. Partnered long enough to practically be Siamese twins, they loved nothing better than to keep the jokes flying.

Callie rolled her eyes and blew out an exasperated breath. If the taxpayers who signed their paychecks saw them in action, Grayson and Reeve would be fired as idiots.

Roger Reinke cleared his throat in a severe manner, leaving no room for argument or further high jinks. A certain amount of joking was necessary to keep the pressure down. However, enough was enough. His frown was deadly, silencing the guilty. “Up the hall we have a dead body, yet another victim of a man we can’t seem to lay our hands on. I am sure that poor girl’s family wouldn’t find your jokes hilarious. Put a cap on it. We have work to do.”

Grayson and Reeve sobered.

Roger nodded approval. “Now, back to Agent Whitten.” He addressed Callie directly. “You said you believed Drake might try to use you as an alibi. How long, exactly, was he with you?”

As if she hadn’t given this answer already. “An hour.” She paused. “Maybe a little more. I can’t really remember.”

A hint of irritation drew down the corners of Faber’s mouth. A ridge of muscle tightened in his jaw. “You can’t remember?” He spoke precisely, watching her in a way that scraped along her exposed nerves. Focused gray eyes never wavered. He watched her like a hawk, ready to swoop in and snatch its prey.

Callie rubbed her eyes with a trembling hand. Her head hurt, her body burned and she didn’t want to tell the whole truth. “With all due respect, sir, I was tired. It was a long night. I fell asleep.”

Samuel Faber sent her a look that nailed her protests into the ground. “Ah. I see.” A smirk played around the corners of his mouth. “Before Drake left, or after?”

That one caught her by the short hairs. Shit. Must he keep circling back to what she and Drake had done? In a roundabout way, she’d already revealed all she cared to. “After, sir.” Her first lie. So far she’d managed to wriggle around admitting she’d slept with Drake. The fire under the frying pan was getting hotter. Her ass was starting to sizzle.

“I see.”

No, you don’t.
The throbbing building behind her eyes threatened to knock her eyeballs out of her skull. She pressed a hand to her forehead. Mistake. Anyone able to read body language could tell she was lying.

Realizing her error, Callie let her hand drop. The pain receded, but the slivers stabbing her psyche did not. Heaven help her, she was about to have a nervous breakdown. At the critical moment something she’d misidentified as desire had turned her into a liar. She neither liked the bitter feeling in the pit of her soul, nor the bile rising in the back of her throat.

Faber leaned back in his chair. Lacing his fingers together, he studied her carefully. “Now, when Drake was in your apartment, what exactly did you do?”

Hearing his question, Callie suddenly lost her breath. The room had fallen deathly silent. A painful sensation began to work its way up her spine. Traveling her shoulders, it snaked through the back of her neck and straight into her skull. She felt the air around her shift, the pressure on her lungs almost robbing her of breath. “I offered him a cup of coffee and we talked.”

“About?”

“About the same thing I told you last time.” A hint of exasperation colored her tone. “He wanted to know if I was single, had a boyfriend, all the things a man tries to find out about a woman he wants to fuck.”

Faber didn’t blink. “And did he?”

She didn’t flinch. “Did he what?”

“Did you, Agent Whitten, have sex with the suspect?” Faber asked.

Callie met Faber’s gaze with her own wary one. He looked at her like he knew she’d committed the unforgivable sin. A prickle of fear needled under her skin as she turned her answer over in her mind, examining it from every angle, dissecting, poking, and probing. Faber, she felt, was going to hammer away at the point until he got the answer he seemed to want. Down to the wire, concealing her actions from a superior to shield a criminal would be a stupid move. There was little time to debate her answer.

She lied.

“No. I did not.” In the back of her mind, she wished another female agent had drawn this one. Her attraction to Drake wasn’t good at all. In a room full of her peers, she’d just perjured herself in the investigation of a federal case. If asked the same question by a grand jury, the consequences of her falsehood would probably inflict more than a guilty conscience.

As it was, her lie was threatening to eat through her guts. She considered excusing herself, asking to use the ladies’ room. No, if she went she’d be sick. Totally wiped out, she hung onto her composure by the thinnest of threads.

One bound to snap at any moment.

Faber folded his arms across his chest. “Good. You know, that would have been a violation of bureau policy.”

Callie drew a deep breath, trying to organize her thoughts. She felt nauseated. “Yes, sir.” Her throat worked painfully. “I am aware of that.”

Roger Reinke leaned forward. “So what’s our next move?”

Faber shifted his gaze to his second in command. “We’ve been working this case how long, Roger?”

“Almost a year, sir. A lot of time, money, and manpower have gone into bringing Drake and his people in. We have five known civilian victims, and we’ve lost two agents.”

Faber frowned. “There’s no doubt in my mind we need to catch Drake. “However it’s clear that our methods to this point haven’t proved successful. We’re going to have to rethink the mousetrap.”