Ruthless Game (A Captivating Suspense Novel) (6 page)

Mrs. Quay looked up, her eyes wide again. "I'd prefer to go to my daughter's."

"Of course. We'll get you to your daughter's, then. I'll be right back." Excusing herself, she followed Lombardi's group up the stairs.

Inside, a photographer snapped pictures of the body while the other investigators collected data. One man moved along the carpet on plastic kneepads, a pair of tweezers in one hand and a plastic bag in the other, collecting hair and fiber samples. After he finished, they would vacuum the rest of the area for anything he missed.

Another held a flashlight to the table beside the body. With a grunting noise, he pulled a fluffy brush out of his coat pocket and dipped it into powder, brushing it across the table. Then, like a proud child with a new toy, he blew the excess powder off. In the black dust, Alex saw a fingerprint.

Lombardi knelt beside the victim, snapped on some gloves, and handed a pair to Greg. Lombardi's eyes met Alex's and he dangled a pair of gloves. "You, too, Sugar."

Alex glared. "Sure thing, Pops."

Greg laughed while Lombardi pretended he hadn't heard her.

An adolescent-looking man with bad skin arrived from the medical examiner's office. On his knees, he laid a thick black plastic bag beside the body while another man, much older, brought in the gurney.

Alex put the gloves on and waited for instructions. She stood silent, knowing Lombardi and Greg were waiting for her to react. They were going to move the body. This would be her first contact with a dead body, and she swore she wasn't going to miss a beat. She'd heard stories of the process, things that dripped or fell from the corpse. In one case she'd heard about, the head had fallen off. If Alex wanted the detective division, she needed to maintain her cool. And Lombardi would be goading her wherever possible.

"I'm finished," the photographer announced.

"You ready for it?" Lombardi asked the medical examiner's assistant.

He nodded without speaking.

"Then we can move it," Lombardi declared with unnerving enthusiasm as though this was the most exciting part of finding a corpse. "Watch the blood from that arm—don't get it all over yourself."

Alex smiled broadly at Lombardi despite the wake that bounced in her gut.

"Over here, Kincaid."

She inhaled deeply and approached the body.

"Don't touch his skin. We don't want to lose any prints."

Though she'd heard the advice, she couldn't help but feel an odd sense of awe at the image of fingerprints left on the dead man's skin, a final testament to the agony he had endured. A niggling voice whispered in her ear:
Will yours be among them?
She shook it off. She'd followed regulations and hadn't touched a thing. She thought of her earring and touched both ears quickly. Greg caught her eye and raised an eyebrow but she only smiled in response.

"You take the shoulders, Kincaid. Roback and I'll get the body. You make sure it all ends up in the bag," he called to the guy from the ME's office. "Just onto his back, okay? On three. One. Two. Move."

Alex rotated the man's shoulders. His neck wobbled as the remaining shards of muscle and ligaments struggled to hold the weight of his head. She'd been right. He'd been shot in the back of the neck and the bullet had exploded on the other end, leaving very little of the front of his neck remaining.

At the sight of the exposed veins in his neck, she swallowed the bitter taste of bile that rose in her throat. She would not be sick. A wave of the metallic smell of blood and burnt skin hit her nose and she blinked hard. She would not be sick, she repeated to herself.

Greg was groaning on his end. "Jesus, he stinks."

"What are you—a girl?" Lombardi chided.

"No, but I've got a good nose and this asshole stinks."

Alex remained silent.

The victim's head knocked back against the ground, the thin tissue ripping, and she looked straight at his face for the first time. Gasping, she jumped back.

Lombardi looked puzzled. "What the fuck?"

An image flashed through her head. A man's face—this man. But how did she know him? A cold sweat breaking across her body, she backed up slowly, her heart racing.

"Kincaid, what's wrong?" Greg stepped into her line of vision, but she could still see the man.

Her knees wobbly beneath her, she began to shake. Fighting it off did no good. Small white dots formed before her eyes. Damn this. Damn it all. She shook her head, trying to push the image of his face from her mind. Why did she know this man's face? The image in her mind shuttered and she saw the front of Noah's Bagels. He'd tried to talk to her. He'd used her name. Pointing, she tried to speak.

Greg centered her shoulders to him, forcing her gaze off the man. "What?"

"What the fuck's wrong with her?" Lombardi bellowed.

She looked at Greg but pointed to the man. "Him—"

He gave her a light shake. "What about him?"

"He—" The white dots grew, filling her field of vision. She blinked hard, but it only got worse. The room started to spin as she fought a wave of dizziness.

"He was at Noah's yesterday," she gasped. He'd used her name. What had he tried to say? "He asked me a question." She turned away from Greg, feeling dizzy. "Did you see him?"

Greg looked at the victim and shook his head. "No, what did he say?"

"You knew him?" Lombardi demanded.

She shook her head, the room spinning. "He spoke to me in Noah's yesterday—he used my name."

Greg shook his head. "Your name's on your uniform, Kincaid. What's the big deal?"

She looked around the room, feeling it circle beneath her. She reached out to grab something but all she caught was air. She pictured her uniform and shook her head.

It was a big deal, she thought. Her legs collapsed, and she slammed to the floor with a thud. Then, everything went black.

Chapter 4

Alex strained against the net of tight cobwebs that circled her brain. She was hung over and exhausted and everything hurt. And yet she couldn't remember drinking. It had been a while since she'd had anything to drink. Her insomnia kept her away from alcohol. The nights she drank were always the roughest in terms of sleep. She lifted her hand to her head and felt a plastic bracelet scratch her cheek. She opened her eyes and stared down at it. A hospital I.D. band. She blinked hard, then, remembering the street and the body, she jolted upright.

James pulled away from a chair nearby. "Glad to see you're up."

She ignored her brother, trying to remember the pieces before he told her. A tight knot formed in the bowel of her gut. She'd blacked out. The knot grew until it seemed to fill her belly. She'd blacked out on the job. "Damn," she whispered, wishing it had been a dream. She didn't dream. She hadn't dreamt—or remembered a dream—ever.

"You really had Lombardi scared."

She watched James watch her. Captain of Internal Affairs, assessing other cops was his job. At that moment, she wished he were just a regular brother. Someone to come and make sure she was okay and to invite her to dinner. James was anything but. Every question, no matter how innocent-sounding, was a cross-examination about her guilt, her intent, her ability on the job. She thought about waking up in her car. He didn't know about that. He didn't need to know. Fainting was hardly grounds for an internal investigation.

She often thought it had been a mistake to come and work for the same police department where James was. But this was home. The only one she'd ever known. Her time in L.A. had been fun, but it had never felt permanent or even real. Los Angeles was, truly, la-la land. And six years there had been five too long.

Only being mugged had given her the impetus to leave. She'd been coming home late one night and been attacked just one hundred yards from her front door. He'd wanted money, he told her. But he'd come with a knife, and after she surrendered her handbag, he'd still held her. She remembered his hot breath in her ear, the feeling of him pressed against her. It no longer gave her chills or made her palms sweat. Now it just pissed her off. Thankfully, he hadn't gotten the chance to get any closer.

She'd known that she'd fight him to the death if he tried to rape her. The knife against her neck, she'd waited until a moment when his grip slackened before breaking free from his hold and landing her knee in his groin. He'd dropped his knife but not before slicing the edge of her jaw.

The small scar was physically all that remained of that night. Mentally, it had been the cause of a lot of change. She'd left her job, her friends, L.A. All three had been superficially appealing, but not deep enough to sustain her interest. The threat of death had made that instantly clear.

"You want to tell me what happened," James said, pacing along the side of her bed as though he were in front of a jury box.

She crossed her arms. "Not particularly."

"Why don't you anyway?"

"You here in an official capacity, James? Or did you think you'd put the job aside and see if your sister is okay?"

James halted and turned back. "You want sympathy? How can I give you that when I don't even know what the hell it would be for? What the hell happened? You knew that guy?"

Just then, the door opened and James's twin walked in. Brittany was the opposite of her brother, and in many ways, of Alex, too. Though she and Alex looked alike—lean figures with reddish auburn hair and light eyes, Brittany was calm and somewhat reserved. The observer, some would say. She was a child psychologist and a damn good one. Brittany stood between James and Alex. "Glad to hear you're respecting the fact that she's recovering from trauma," she scolded James. Her tone was strong and firm, the voice of someone who knew she was right and didn't need to prove it.

James stepped to the edge of the room and leaned against the windowsill. "I was just trying to figure out what happened."

Brittany nodded and turned to Alex. "Of course. A cop," she said, motioning to James. To Alex, she said, "How do you feel?"

"Fine."

"Did you feel any symptoms before you blacked out? Light-headedness? Anything like that?"

Alex remembered feeling off balance as she'd walked into the dining room. "A little, I guess."

"I'm sure it was a delayed concussion from the fall your partner told us about," she said. Then, her back to James, she mouthed, "If you need to talk, you can call me."

Alex nodded.

As though sensing he'd missed something, James returned to the bedside, eyeing his twin, who ignored him, before speaking again. "The department wants you to talk to a counselor."

Alex frowned.

"It's a matter of course," Brittany added, taking the edge off James's request. "Anytime something traumatic happens on the job, they send the officer to a counselor. James always makes everything sound so dire."

He did, at that. "Who do I call?" she asked, still talking to Brittany.

"There's Margaret Schroeder," James answered.

Alex groaned. "Mad Dog Schroeder?" The woman was infamous at the station for her mood swings. She'd be gentle as a kitten one minute and a pit bull the next. "No thanks."

"There's Ross Berman or Jane Reed," James continued. "Gillian McArthur. She's new, but I've heard good things."

"What about Judith Richards?" Brittany asked.

Alex remembered the name. "The one who used to work with Mom? I just saw her at the station yesterday morning."

"Yeah, I think she still does some work there," James agreed. "I can ask."

Brittany nodded. "Call her. She'll remember you. You used to talk to her about your nightmares when you were a kid."

"Nightmares? When was this?"

"You were little—" She turned to James, who shrugged. "First and second grade, maybe. Something like that. Anyway, Judy's great. She's the one who helped me get into the graduate program at Cal. She's dealt with some incredible cases. She's done a lot of work with ex-cons—she even had two patients who shot each other. She managed to talk one of the shooters out of killing her. She's also written some fascinating articles on criminal psych." She turned back to James. "Call and see if she's available for Al to talk to."