Lethal Confessions (22 page)

Yes!
Amy pumped her fist. Her instincts about that bar had been right.

“Good work, Jenn. That gives us somewhere to start, since Ashley’s husband already told Dale he didn’t have a clue where she was. Did Mrs. Fisher know who else was invited?”

“She gave me four names, but said she thought Ashley would have invited more than that.” Ryan picked up her notes. “Miranda White, Samantha Goodall, Jody Garrett, Lisa Gonzales.”

“Great. Follow up with those four, please.”

Ryan narrowed her eyes as if she might just take offense, but then she nodded.

Amy looked at Scarpelli, then Washington. “Anything else?” Both shook their heads. “Then you two continue to follow up with the rest of the Hammerheads.”

“What about the Cardinals?” Poushinsky interjected. “Let’s not forget the Cardinals were in Lakeland at the time of the Shannon murder, and at home here when both Carrie Noble and Ashley Rist were taken.”

“You’re right,” Amy said, “but I have a hard time getting my head around why a Cardinals player would be running around knocking off the wives of players on other teams. At least now we have two women from the Hammerheads, so we should give that team priority.”

“I agree,” Scarpelli said.

Poushinsky shrugged. “Hey, no problem with me. I’m a team player. No pun intended.”

Amy gave him a reluctant smile. “No, you’ve got a point, Poushinsky. Let’s work on both simultaneously. In fact, you can start on the Cardinals by yourself. I’ll head up to Chester’s and see if the bartenders and servers can tell us anything.”

Poushinsky rolled his eyes at her. “Oh, sure, Robitaille. We get to do all the legwork while you head for the bar.”

That got a laugh from everyone, even Ryan.

“Yeah, it’s good to be lead,” Amy responded sarcastically. That got another round of small chuckles, but this time Ryan didn’t join in. Still, she’d behaved better than Amy would have expected, and for that she was grateful.

The squad returned to the Floor, and Amy plopped into her chair and fleshed out her notes from the meeting.

The uptick in her mood faded quickly, though. Every cell in her cop’s body clanged an alarm that the baseball killer would strike again, and soon. As much as she’d tried to convey a sense of calm to the public at the press conference, her insides were twisted into a knot. She knew that when guys started posing bodies and leaving ritual markings on their victims, a tidal wave of shit was about to crash down. And she’d studied serial killers enough to know that their need to kill only got stronger. This maniac might just keep killing one victim a day until they stopped him, and that prospect both sickened and terrified her.

Added to her growing pile of worries was her sister. M.L. had left another message while Amy was meeting with the other detectives. With everything else on her plate, she didn’t need the added stress of talking to M.L. today. But she couldn’t ignore the call. Not this time. M.L. was probably getting herself good and worked up about the murders, and Amy could hardly blame her. After all, she was having enough trouble keeping her fears about her sister’s safety down to a dull roar.

“Are you all right?” she asked as soon as M.L. answered the phone.

“Yeah,” M.L. said tentatively, drawing the word out.

“No, you’re not,” Amy said.

M.L.’s sigh sounded like it came all the way up from her shoes. “Justin got a call from the league about an hour ago. They suspended him for two games for his part in the brawl.”

So much for worrying that M.L. was stressed out about the murders. “That’s a drag,” Amy said, injecting sympathy into her voice. “I guess that ends up costing you guys some money, doesn’t it?”

“Of course. But that part’s not that big a deal. The worst thing is that Justin is totally bummed, now. He stormed out of the house again as soon as he got the call. When I asked him where he was going and when he’d be back, he gave me the finger. The finger, Amy!”

Amy’s sympathy died a fast death. “Chère, I know I’m wasting my breath, but I’ll never understand why you keep putting up with that child of a man.”

“You’re right, Amy—you’ll never understand,” M.L. sniffed. “Not until you decide to let yourself love somebody. Then maybe you’ll finally know what it’s like.”

Here we go again
. Now it was Amy’s turn to sigh. She couldn’t comprehend putting up with that kind of endless crap from a man and loving him in spite of it. She’d never been in love, though, not even close, so she supposed she couldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles that she wouldn’t be just like M.L. if they changed places. But she couldn’t imagine it. How could people have any self-respect when they let somebody treat them like dirt?

But she’d learned long ago that it was hopeless to preach to M.L., especially about matters of the heart.Anything she’d say right now would sound like a slap-down, so she remained silent. Besides, M.L. could always be counted on to fill any conversational gap.

“Amy?”

“I’m still here, Chère.”

“You were totally awesome at that press conference. Did I tell you that this morning? Well, anyway, you were. You were just so cool and so…
professional.
”

Amy cringed. History had shown that when M.L. praised her, a major request usually followed on the heels of the laudatory words.

“Anyway,” her sister continued with barely a pause for breath, “it gave me a fantastic idea. About something I could do to cheer Justin up and maybe get things back on track for the two of us.”

Oh, God, no
. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what M.L. was up to. She remained silent, waiting for her sister to drop what would no doubt be a spectacularly self-absorbed shoe.

“Since you’re obviously tight with Luke Beckett…” Her sister paused, as if she were about to spring a glorious surprise on Amy. “Well, I thought you could talk him into coming to dinner at our place. Maybe tomorrow night?” Her voice rose with tentative hope. “Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Could you try, Amy? Please?”

“
Cal
—” Amy bit back the string of curses that had welled up inside her as her sister laid out her horrifying request. “M.L., you really expect me to talk a big shot like Luke Beckett into having dinner at the home of some player he’s probably never even heard of?”

M.L. heaved a big sigh. “Amy, that’s just not the right way to think about it. You have to use your feminine charms, for God’s sake. Tell him you’re going to your sister’s for dinner, and you’d be thrilled if he came along. Tell him you’re sure he’d enjoy it, because your brother-in-law is a pro ballplayer and a huge fan and they’d have so much to talk about.”

Amy wanted to pound her head on the desk. Just what she didn’t need—a humiliating social outing with the guy who was already driving her nuts. “You do realize we’re in the middle of a murder investigation here, don’t you?”

“All the more reason for you to take a breather from all that pressure and relax,” her sister responded in a wheedling voice. “And you both have to eat, right? It’ll just be a few hours. Come on, Amy. It would mean a lot to me. You know how much my marriage needs a boost.”

Amy shifted her gaze to the small framed photo sitting on her desk. With their stunning good looks and toothpaste commercial smiles, M.L., Justin, and little Cooper Wilson might have been the perfect all-American family.

Pictures lied.

Still, it wasn’t be a bad idea to check in with M.L. and Cooper, and at the same time try to impress on Justin the need to stay closer to home until the killer was found. “All right,” she said on a sigh. “I’ll ask Beckett, but don’t get your hopes up. This is a total long shot. I barely even know the guy.”

“Oh, right. Amy, I saw the way he looked at you when you were standing at the podium this morning. He had that look—like he wanted to do you right there.” M.L. snorted. “But, hey, you’re so clueless about men you probably didn’t even notice all that chemistry.”

That was vintage M.L. As soon as she’d gotten what she wanted, she could easily slip back into cattiness. Or, when it came to Justin, bitchiness.

“I’m sorry, but you know it’s true,” her sister continued when Amy didn’t rise to the bait. “You’re so married to that damn job.”

“Keep on talking, Sis. I really didn’t want to have to ask Beckett, anyway,” Amy growled.

“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot,” M.L. said quickly, obviously concluding that she should stop biting the hand she wanted to feed her. “You know I get carried away sometimes and don’t mean all the stuff that comes out of my big mouth.”

As much as M.L.’s insensitivity irritated her, Amy loved her little sister far too much to push her away or carry grudges. Life was short, and she only had one sibling left. She would do whatever was necessary to protect M.L. and keep her close.

Still, that didn’t mean the brat got to treat her like dog shit. “If, by some miracle, Beckett says yes, then you’re going to owe me big-time, Marie-Louise Robitaille Wilson. And don’t think I won’t collect.”

Saturday, July 31

7:40 p.m.

“Robitaille, don’t you ever go home?”

Amy almost did a spit-take of her mouthful of cold coffee. Focused on her computer screen, she hadn’t noticed Beckett slip in. The Floor was always near empty on Saturdays, this late in the day. As usual, she was chief straggler.

She’d been hanging around, waiting until later in the evening to go to Chester’s bar because the day shift bartenders and waiters probably wouldn’t be able to be much help. She’d hit Chester’s around nine, then grab some takeout Thai before going home. Fortunately, home was only ten minutes from the bar.

Reluctantly, she looked up at Beckett standing next to her desk. God, he looked good. He’d changed his clothes since she saw him in the morning. Now he wore a linen sports jacket in a rich cream shade, black dress pants, and an open-necked white shirt. He could have just stepped out of an ad in
Vanity Fair
or
GQ
.

The sexual magnetism he radiated practically flattened her, and that really pissed her off. After Gabe, she’d learned to run in the opposite direction whenever a particularly hot guy started sniffing around. And that’s exactly what she’d be doing with Luke Beckett if her damn boss hadn’t opened up the door and invited the big bad wolf to take up residence on the Floor.

“If I was at home, all I’d think about would be the killer, anyway,” she answered, forcing her gaze away.

He propped one muscular arm on her partition, looking ready to settle in for the night. “I get that. But it’s Saturday night. A woman like you should be out having fun. Guys must be beating down your door for you to go out with them.”

She avoided looking up at him, even though every cell in her traitorous body clamored to respond to his charm. “Sure, Beckett. I have to get my door repaired at least once a week.”

That was a deflection and a lie, of course. She hardly dated at all anymore. She wouldn’t date cops under any circumstances, and she worked so much that she hardly had time to meet anybody else. Besides, most guys didn’t seem to be able to handle dating a cop, anyway. At least not her kind of cop—a career obsessed homicide detective. It made for a frustratingly sporadic sex life, but she had no interest in the bar scene or Internet match-ups.

But she wasn’t a nun, either, so she was hardly surprised when her hormones went ballistic around a guy as hot as His Beckettness.

He grinned. “You have a righteous sense of humor for a hardass.”

She flicked her gaze from his shoes to his face and then returned it to the page on the FBI web site. “You look ready for a night on the town yourself. Nice shoes, by the way.”

They were, too. Expensive Italian leather, by the looks of them.

He shrugged. “I’m not going out anywhere tonight unless it’s to have a drink with you.”

She couldn’t help snorting with derision. “I doubt you got dressed up on the extremely remote chance that such a thing might happen.”

“You just like to play hard to get. But no, I didn’t get dressed up for you. I got dressed up for a seven year-old girl.”

Amy blinked, a bit stunned by his answer. Finally, she swiveled her chair to look straight at him. “The one you were going to visit at the hospital?”

Beckett reached over to the adjoining cubicle and rolled a chair into her space. When he sat, his knees almost touched hers. She pressed her feet into the floor and pushed her chair a couple of inches sideways toward the window. Beckett gave an easy smile, but it didn’t fool her. The man was definitely on the prowl.

“Right. I’m trying to help an orphan girl who’s about to have major heart surgery. This afternoon, after I spent some time with Alicia—that’s the girl’s name, Alicia Trent—I talked to the social worker about her case. Alicia’s so smart and so sweet and so damn brave, I can’t stand that she’s going to be all alone, if she even survives the surgery. She’s got nobody in the world.”

Amy winced. She’d misjudged him again, which seemed to be developing into an unfortunate habit. What was it about Beckett that screwed with her intuition?

“That sure sucks,” she said apologetically. “She doesn’t have any relatives who would take care of her?”

“Not one.”

She sighed. “I guess people don’t want to adopt a kid who might die. It’s understandable, I suppose. No one who hasn’t been there can know what it’s like to lose a child.”

She’d witnessed her parents reduced to living shells after Ariane’s murder. Even today, there were times when they were barely able to cope. Ariane’s room remained a shrine to a seventeen year-old daughter. Even the faded Weezer and Stone Temple Pilots posters were still pinned up on the stark, black and white walls.

It wasn’t much less of a life-changing blow to lose a sister. Her twin, for Christ’s sake, at seventeen, and not to accident or to disease but to a scumbag murderer. A big part of Amy had died that day, too. She still thought of Ariane every day, and especially whenever she looked into M.L.’s eyes. Her sisters had shared the same stunning, icy blue eye color, and there were some days—bad days—when M.L.’s eyes just haunted Amy.

Beckett’s strong features looked grim. “I thought money might make the difference. If I offered to pay for all her future medical bills…” His voice trailed off as he shook his head. “But the social worker said money wasn’t the big issue.”