Ruthless Game (A Captivating Suspense Novel) (22 page)

"This is Alex Kincaid," she'd said after the long series of beeps. "I think we have something in common and you had better be careful. Call me as soon as possible." Leaving her home number, she hoped he'd call soon. She wondered if the long series of beeps meant that he hadn't checked his messages in a while.

Greg had called to say that Byron had gotten a rush job that he had to do before he could process the print from Alex's house. "He promises to get to it by tomorrow," Greg told her. "Tomorrow" had become an almost frightening word, each passing day bringing a host of unknowns. But she wasn't ready to turn the print over to James. "And the blood?" She'd asked.

"It's human."

She exhaled. "Type?"

"O positive."

"I'm AB."

"I was afraid of that," Greg said.

"Me, too." She paused. "Loeffler's O?"

"Yep."

"Damn." She'd broken the news to him about the murders and being a survivor as best she could. But talking about it made her shaky, and she could hear the raw fear in her own voice as she choked out the words.

"I can be there in three minutes," he'd offered.

"I can't. I have to go see Judith tonight."

"A shrink?"

"A shrink," she repeated, not liking the way it sounded from her own lips.

"It'll probably help," he said, but she could tell he was skeptical. Cops didn't willingly see shrinks. Shrinks were for rich people with dysfunctional families where Mommy didn't express herself to the children like she should. They weren't for people who lived with death like cops did. In some ways, Alex supposed she fit both descriptions. Her mother had certainly left a lot un-discussed.

"Can you run a priors on a couple names for me?" she'd asked Greg, pushing her mother from her mind.

"Sure."

Alex explained about the sister, Maggie Androus, and Marcus Nader and the initials she'd seen written in Loeffler's calendar. "And has there been any word on those pictures?"

"The ones the kid found?"

"Yeah."

"None that I've heard. I know Lombardi interviewed the kid, but I'm not privy to all that detective shit. I'll see what I can find out."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

There was a long pause and Alex knew Loeffler's blood was weighing on both of their minds. "The blood is Loeffler's," she'd said.

"Yeah."

She exhaled and let her head stop. "You're going to need to turn it in."

"I'm afraid so."

"Do it."

He paused. "I can wait—"

She shook her head. "Do it now. Have Lou send it in. Tell him to say he got it from me with no explanation."

"Why don't we—"

"Goddamn it, Roback. Turn it in now. I've held it back long enough. Now, go." She slammed down the phone and turned to face the white wall that the killer had knocked her against like a bag of flour. There, in the center of the wall, was a tiny splatter of her blood.

Sinking to the floor, she felt deflated. Loeffler's blood was on her pants. She was about to become a murder suspect. And she had no way to stop it.

After talking to Greg, she had spent some time looking back through her notes from Loeffler's calendar: "NT SEC@10 SQ. Call: N, K, DR and PAPD." Was the N for Nader, the K for Kincaid? Then, who was DR? How was he related to this?

She still couldn't figure out why Loeffler was killed. Had he remembered something he shouldn't have? Was it buried at the back of her mind, too, waiting to slip free?

Now she sat in front of Judith's house, still going over the evidence in her mind. The frustration she felt had become almost like physical pain. There was nothing more she could do tonight except find out as much as she could about what had happened to her as a child. She hoped Judith could help with that.

The car locked, she headed up the stone path, glancing at Judith's house towering above her. The brick exterior presented itself heavy and solid like a fortress that would protect her. She hesitated, her core rebelling at the very prospect of the comfort it offered.

The need to tell someone else what was happening, someone who might be able to explain it, both repulsed and frightened her. But if she wanted to salvage her job and rebuild her life, she needed to start somewhere. And at this point, somewhere might as well be here. The news of her past still felt disconnected, like it had happened to someone else.

Parts of what she'd read in the report were blurred and dreamlike, as though she had been under medication when she'd read them. She recognized the old mechanism for shielding herself, and she wondered how long it had been in effect, even without her knowledge. There seemed an easy answer to that—at least since she was in the second grade.

She pushed her hair off her face, thinking it was time to cut it short. Looking down at her jeans, she caught sight of a small dollop of dried tomato sauce. She licked her finger and scratched at it without success. "Damn it," she muttered.

Suddenly feeling like a disheveled seventh grader going to her boyfriend's house for the first time to study, she forced herself to stand still and ring the bell.

Judith answered the door, wearing a pair of khakis and a denim button-down shirt. Alex hadn't realized how short she was. In stockinged feet, she couldn't have been taller than five feet.

Judith's face looked as it always had. Her once dark hair was woven with strands of gray, and time had softened the strong jaw and cheekbones. Her dark eyes, too, seemed softer, as though the years hadn't made her older but more at ease. "Come on in. I think I'm burning dinner."

Alex smiled and entered the house. She had to respect anyone who burned dinner. With a last glance at the stain on her pant leg, she followed.

Judith led her through a comfortable-looking den with a large brown leather couch and matching overstuffed chair. A Native American-style braided rug covered the floor.

Alex eyed the rooms as they passed. Judith appeared to subscribe more to the Alex version of cleanliness than the Brittany one. There were stacks of loose papers on the entry table, and a basket of unfolded clothes waiting to be taken upstairs. Several jackets were strewn here and there, a yellow one tossed on the floor next to a pair of red Doc Marten shoes, much too large to fit Judith. And yet the books on the shelves in the den were neatly lined up by size.

A small oil painting caught Alex's eye. The picture depicted the wraparound porch of an old house. It looked like it belonged by the ocean. Two wicker rocking chairs sat facing outward. The picture seemed to depict loneliness, and Alex felt a shiver run over her skin.

"Do you remember that?"

Alex frowned and shook her head. "Should I?"

She nodded as though she were studying Alex, and probably she was. Alex realized that right now she had to be pretty interesting to someone in Judith's field.

"It was in your house when you were a child," Judith explained. "I'd always admired it, so your mom gave it to me. She'd never really liked it, I guess."

Alex tried to picture it in her house but couldn't. Knowing it had been there made her wonder why her mother hadn't liked it. She had so many unanswered questions for her mother now.

She followed Judith into the kitchen. The atmosphere of the house helped loosen the crick in Alex's neck. And she felt comfortable with Judith.

"Would you like a glass of wine or a beer?"

Alex waved her hand. "Beer sounds great."

Judith pulled out a bottle of Sierra Nevada and handed it to Alex, passing her the bottle opener. She took a swig of her own beer from the bottle and set it back on the counter, turning back to the dinner.

Looking around, Alex searched for something innocuous to talk about. She noticed a chewed pen sitting beside the stove. "Is there a psychological theory about people who chew their pens?"

Judith raised her eyebrow.

Alex pointed. "I chew mine, too. Brittany is always joking that it says something about my personality." She'd never given it much thought before, but suddenly she wondered if the pen chewing was a result of what had happened to her as a child. Ridiculous.

Judith picked up the pen and scrunched her nose in mock disgust. "It's gross, isn't it? I don't know why I do that." She opened the drawer under the counter and dropped it in.

Alex saw that the other pens weren't chewed on. That's what she needed—one pen she was allowed to chew on, sort of like a doggy toy. "Something smells great."

"Roasted chicken," Judith said, taking another swig of beer. "Hope you like garlic."

"Love it."

"The chicken'll take a while so I thought we'd just sit in here while we wait. Unless you'd be more comfortable in the living room?"

Shaking her head, Alex pulled a bar stool up to the tile-covered countertop and sat down, taking a look around the kitchen. Calphalon pans in all sizes hung neatly from a semicircular rack above the stove, and spices sat in a small wooden rack to the right. Alex noticed the spices were alphabetized. The spice rack was painted steel blue and many of the accents in the kitchen were done in the same color.

The floor was light-colored wood except for a small area in front of the sink where an Indian patterned rug lay. The cabinets reached to the ceiling, their glass faces exposing a variety of dishes and stemware. Alex had never made decisions about decorating and couldn't imagine what she would do if she had to start from scratch.

Her mother had left the house to her furnished. While she had moved a lot of her mother's things out and many of her own in, she'd never bothered to change the wallpaper or paint. She pictured her house's salmon exterior. Maybe soon she would have some time to do something about that.

Judith sat up on the counter and gave Alex an appraising glance. "So, how are things going?"

Alex shrugged, looking at her beer. She certainly wasn't going to answer
Great.
She wasn't that good a liar.

"You making any progress on the case?"

Sipping her beer, Alex shook her head. "I'm off the case."

Judith looked startled. "Why?"

"How can I put this?" Alex frowned. "They found the victim's hand in my garbage can."

Judith pursed her lips. "Where did the hand come from?"

Alex smiled at Judith's expression, though she couldn't believe herself for doing it. "Killer cut it off and took it with him."

"Oh, God. Sometimes I can't believe I'm actually in the business of studying these people."

Alex was both surprised and relieved to hear Judith react that way. It made Alex wonder if she would ever get used to the criminals she dealt with. She nodded, thinking of the little girl involved in sex acts on the videotape. She took a drag of the beer, hoping it would somehow wash the sour taste from her mouth.

"I still don't understand why they took you off the case. Did they think you were in danger?"

"Sort of. There are some strange things happening to me."

Judith remained silent, waiting for Alex to continue.

"I've been getting calls from this man—" With a deep breath, she continued, "I don't know who he is, but he knows all sorts of stuff. He's been in my house..." He'd done better than that. He'd attacked her. Alex kept that to herself.

Judith covered her mouth in horror. "Jesus, Alex. How did he get in your house? This sounds scary."

She met Judith's gaze. "It is definitely scary."

"Do the police have any leads on who he is?"

Picking at the corner of the beer's green label, Alex shook her head.

Judith narrowed her gaze. "Why is he targeting you?"

Images she had created of that day in the warehouse flashed through her brain and she shook them off. She wondered if any of them were real. "I think I have a pretty good idea."

"Why?"

"Can I ask you something first?"

Judith nodded and sat back. "Of course you can."

Hesitating, Alex glanced at her beer and then back at Judith. "When did you meet my mother?"

The woman furrowed her brow, her finger raised. "I'd just finished my Ph.D. in Abnormal Psych at Stanford and had joined as the director of the Children's Crisis Center. Your mom was working there already. It was..." She paused. "Summer of 1971. She'd moved into the house on Pine."

"I live there now."

"Oh, you do? Well, she had all three of you kids in one bedroom until she had the money to add on the extra room. I think she started work about two weeks before me, but by the time I got there, she knew the run of the place. I followed her like a puppy until I learned my way around."

"Do you remember her talking about the reason she left Palo Alto?"

"Well, sure. She said that she had a sister here and with going back to work full time and you three kids, it would be better if she were closer to her."

Alex concentrated on the label, using the beer's moisture to ease the corner of it off the brown bottle. Her aunt had passed away a few years before her mother. There was really no one around to answer her questions. No one but perhaps Judith. "That was the only reason she gave?"