Sacrificial Muse (A Sabrina Vaughn Novel) (25 page)

SIXTY-THREE

She’d planned on letting
Strickland question Liam without interfering, but that all changed the second she saw him. Sabrina fell into step with Strickland, a print-out of Liam’s well-buried arrest record along with crime scene photos from both murders clenched in her fist.

“If you would just step in here, Mr. Henry, we can get this matter cleared up and you can be on your way.” Strickland stopped in front of a door marked
I3
and opened it onto a small room with nothing more than a table and two chairs. Liam walked into the room and sat without looking at her. She moved to follow, but Strickland shut the door.

“I can’t let you in there, Vaughn, you know that. If he’s our guy, your involvement muddies the waters in all possible directions. They find out you’re dating him
and
that he was sleeping with one of the victims, his lawyers will paint you seven different shades of jealous and crazy. They’ll have the case dropped as soon as they can tear a judge away from his Saturday golf game,” he said, hand pressed flat against the door.

She suddenly felt like someone slapped a handful of hot coals against her neck. “We went out a few times. That doesn’t constitute dating.”

Strickland sighed. “When I asked him where he was last night, he told me he was busy getting stood up for a date. By
you
.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. If he’s our guy, then he killed Sheila and made sure I found her. He would’ve known I wouldn’t be there when he came to pick me up. If I stood him up it’s because he planned it—” Even though she knew it was true, Sabrina stopped talking.

He was right. She wanted nothing more than to be inside that room when Strickland questioned him, but in the end she backed off. Nailing Liam for murder was more important than what she wanted.

“You’re right.” She nodded her head, handing him the file. “Take this.”

Strickland looked dumbfounded for a moment, like he was sure she was playing him but he couldn’t see the angles. “What is it?” he said, looking at the file in her hand.

She smiled. “Something that’s going to make your questions a hell of a lot more interesting.”

Strickland thumbed past the crime scene photos, toward the back where she’d stuck the arrest record and stopped to take a look. “This is great, Vaughn, but we can’t use anything that happened while he was a minor—”

“Look at the last charge. It happened when he was twenty-four. While he was at Berkeley Medical he got caught making designer drugs. The chemical composite of the drug was the same used in a string of on-campus sexual assaults,” she said, aiming her finger at the bottom of the last page.

Strickland read where she’d indicated, his shoulders getting stiffer by the second. Finally he looked up at her, still doubtful. “But Mandy said neither of the victims were raped.”

“Most of these girls weren’t either. They were … cleaned. Some admit to buying and taking a drug called Glory, some claimed they were dosed, but all of them woke up completely nude in their apartments or dorm rooms with no real memory of what happened. Rape kits came back positive for an organic fluid used to bathe them. Rosewater.” She pointed again, this time to a different page. “More than one girl reported remembering the smell of roses, and all had abrasions to their anterior vaginal area.”

“You said
most
weren’t raped?” Strickland said, flipping through the stack.

“One girl—Rebekah Collticot—showed all the markers the other victims did but she also tested positive for spermicide and showed signs of recent sexual activity … and a ruptured hymen.”

Strickland stiffened just a bit, the look on his face telegraphing his disgust. “She was a virgin before he got a hold of her?”

She nodded. “Yes, and just like the rest, she woke up in her dorm room, naked and smelling like roses. She committed suicide six weeks later.”

The disgusted look on his face held and he shifted his gaze toward the closed door behind her. “Were they able to nail him for any of it?”

The question deflated her a bit. “No. None of the victims were willing or able to positively identify Liam. Since the substances used to manufacture the drug were all natural or over-the-counter, his lawyer was able to get the charges pled down to a misdemeanor,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He paid a fine for distributing herbal supplements without a license. No jail time. No probation. Nothing on his record that would keep him from obtaining a medical license. But Liam made the drug, Strickland. He
made
it. He admitted to it as a part of his plea agreement.”

“And our guy is using something similar to incapacitate his victims,” Strickland said slowly, his tone raised slightly. He looked up at her. “All the more reason you have to sit this one out.”

She handed him the file and stepped back. It was hard for her—relinquishing control—but she had to. “I meant it when I said I trusted you, Strickland. I know you’ll get him, I’m just sorry I can’t help.”

He smiled at her. “Keep digging. If you come up with anything else, shoot me a text.” He wiggled his phone at her as he opened the door on the interview room. Sabrina caught a glimpse of Liam, still seated, looking relaxed and comfortable.

He looked at her, then Strickland. “I won’t waste time talking to you.” Liam turned back to her and looked her right in the eye. “I’ll only talk to you, and only in private.”

SIXTY-FOUR

Sabrina felt Strickland go
stiff beside her, and she instinctively stepped in front of him just in time to bar him from launching himself into the room. She pushed him back into the hallway and followed, shutting the door so they could talk.

“Fuck that, Vaughn,” Strickland said, his hands clenching into fists he seemed to be aching to use. “It’s a setup. He knows anything he tells you will be useless. His daddy’s army of lawyers’ll just get it tossed out because of your prior relationship.”

“Probably, but what’s the alternative? We’re flying blind here and if you go back in there, he’ll lawyer up. Once he says the magic word, we’re done.” She ran a hand over her face. “He walks out and we never touch him again.”

Strickland slumped against the wall, a sure sign he knew she was right. “I don’t like it.”

“Me neither,” she said, and she meant it. As much as she wanted to be the one to nail Liam to the wall, she felt like going in there would be playing right into his hands. She held out her hand for the file she’d given him, and Strickland handed it over grudgingly.

“I’m gonna be right here.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “If he gets stupid, give me a shout before you kick his ass,” he said with a tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’d hate to miss the show a second time.”

“Of course,” she said, returning his smile before pulling the door open and stepping into the room.

Sabrina shut the door softly behind her. Liam sat, casually leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, his guilelessly handsome face completely free of worry or doubt.

Looks familiar, don’t it, darlin’?

Somehow she managed to make it to the other side of the table without kicking the chair out from under him and making him squeal like a pig.

She sat across from him and carefully laid the file on top of the table between them. “You wanted to talk to me.” She spread her hands wide. “So talk.”

“He’s pretty protective of you,” he said, glancing at the door she’d shut in Strickland’s face.

She smiled. “It isn’t me he’s trying to protect.”

Liam dropped his gaze, rubbing the tips of his fingers against his eyebrow as if trying to ward off a headache. “I think there’s been some sort of mistake, Sabrina,” he said with a sigh. “I was hoping you’d be more reasonable than your partner.”

“Why? Because you took me to a Giants game and bought me a hot dog? And FYI, the only mistake was
yours
, thinking that I’d actually keep buying your bullshit. Where were you last night?” she said, even though she knew what he was going to say.

“I was getting stood up by you for dinner. Where were you?” He tried but couldn’t keep the petulance from creeping into his voice.

“You know where I was, Liam. I was exactly where you wanted me to be.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

She opened the file folder and thumbed through the pictures until she found one of Sheila, slumped against the dumpster, covered in gore. She slapped it down on the table between them and sat back. He leaned in to get a better look, his eyes narrowed for a moment before they yanked wide. He shoved his chair away from the table and stood. “What? Who is that?” he said, his hand flying to the back of his neck to give it a vicious scrub. “You think—you think I did that?”

“That’s Sheila, and yes, I think you
did that
.” She laid another picture on the table, this one of Bethany Edwards on Mandy’s autopsy table, a gaping hole in the middle of her chest, rose petals clinging to her split ribs. “I think you did this too.”

He paced a tight circle, following the length of the table and back again, his eyes glued to the photo, shaking his head, but there was no mistaking the look on his face. Recognition, like what he was looking at was familiar to him. Like it made some sort of sense. “No. No. I liked Bethany. She was a sweet kid.”

“A sweet kid you got pregnant.”

He stopped pacing and looked at her long enough for her to see it. Guilt. “We went out a few times, but I never had sex with her.”

“We found semen stains on her bedspread. Would you like to provide us with a DNA sample so we can rule you out as the donor?” She offered him a tight smile when the color drained out of his face. “I didn’t think so.”

“Things might’ve gotten out of hand a few times but that doesn’t mean I—”

She peeled another picture from the stack, this one of Jemma Barrows on the rooftop of the observatory. “How about her? Did things
get out of hand
with her too?”

Now Liam sat back down to cradle his head in his shaking hands. “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” he said, his tone telling her he was seconds away from asking for a lawyer. She had to change tactics if she wanted to keep him talking.

She swept the pictures up and whisked them away, tucking them into the folder as if she’d never shown them to him. “Tell me about Glory.”

“What? Glory? Who—”

“Not
who
. What. The designer drug you got caught cooking in med school. The police report says that the kids you were selling it to called it Glory.”

Liam’s eyes went flat. “Those records were sealed.”

“I know. Thankfully my friends in high places trump your daddy the congressman. You designed a drug called Glory. That’s impressive—you must know quite a bit about chemistry to be able to pull that off. What was in it? How did you make it?” She rapid fired questions at him, purposely confusing him, making it more difficult for him to put together a cohesive lie.

“Plant and root extracts—morning glory, kava, jimson, caffeine. All natural. All legal. It was supposed to just give you a trippy buzz, but … I don’t know.” Liam looked down at the table. “Something happened. The compound kept getting stronger and stronger every time we cooked a batch.”

“
Something happened
? Over a dozen girls came forward to file complaints with Berkeley campus police that they’d been sexually molested with no memory of what’d happened after taking your little concoction … tell me about Rebekah Collticot.”

She might as well have lunged across the table and punched him in the face. He jerked back at the name, his neck going stiff to absorb the verbal blow. He was dangerously close to asking for his lawyer. Pushing him was a bad idea but there was no stopping now. “She committed suicide because she couldn’t handle what you did to her. Did you know she was a virgin when you chose her? Is that why you raped her? Because she was
clean
? You might as well tell me. My partner is—”

The door flew open and Strickland stepped through it. He was trying his best to remain calm, but something had happened. She could see it. “Can I see you in the hall for a second,” he said to her. It might’ve sounded like a casual request, but she could tell it was anything but.

“We’re not finished,” she said to Liam as she pushed away from the table and stood, making her way out the door. “What happened?” she said.

Strickland blew out a hard breath that ended on a curse, aiming his eyes down the hall in the direction of her desk. “You got another delivery.”

SIXTY-FIVE

She smelled them before
she saw them and immediately felt ill. Roses. Seven of them in a heavy, cut crystal vase with a red satin ribbon, sitting in the middle of her now barren desk. Propped against the base of the vase was a now-familiar red square of paper.

Sabrina looked around the squad room. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon, well past the noontime delivery schedule. “Who brought these up?” she said to the person closest to her.

Henley’s head popped up from a pile of files on his desk. “Some kid in a uniform. They get younger and younger every year.”

“How long ago?”

“A few minutes after you and Strick hauled Dr. Fancypants down the hall. He asked if we had any coffee, so you might be able to catch him.” Henley shrugged and dropped his head back into the pile of files he’d been buried in.

She mumbled thanks, already on her way toward the break room when the uniform came through the door, a styrofoam cup, steam rising from the rim. “Anderson?”

Anderson turned a set of bleary eyes her way and smiled. “Hey, Inspector.”

“I thought you rotated off the desk,” she said, taking in the stubble on his chin and the dark smudges under his eyes. They
added about ten years to his usual baby-faced appearance.

His grin turned sheepish as he took a testing sip from his cup. “Turns out missing roll call your first day on patrol isn’t a good idea.”

She knew a lecture was expected, but she didn’t have time. “Did you happen to see who dropped off the card and flowers this time?” she said, not really expecting him to say yes.

But Anderson nodded. “Yup. He strolled right up and dropped them on the counter and walked right back out. I brought them up as soon as I could.”

Sabrina felt a flush creep up her neck. “You saw him?”

“Yeah. The usual
don’t look at me
get-up—ball cap and sunglasses. And gloves.”

“Leather driving gloves?” she said, remembering Jerry’s description of the man he’d seen with Sheila.

Anderson nodded. “Dark brown with black stitching.”

“Okay, thanks, Anderson,” she said. “If you can remember anything else or if he comes back, let me know.” She turned to leave, but he spoke again.

“I’d like to help. Riding this desk is driving me bat-shit crazy,” he said, taking another swig of his coffee. “I’ve got another half hour or so on my shift and I’m willing to do just about anything to stave off boredom.”

“If there’s something I need, I’ll let you know.” She left him standing outside the break room, heading back to her desk, where Strickland stood scowling at the flowers on her desk as if he were trying to figure out a way to disarm them.

“Henry lawyered up,” he said without looking at her.

She wasn’t surprised. Truthfully, she couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t done it sooner. She wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.

“Dr. Douchebag still could’ve sent them,” Strickland said. “Lauren Edwards is his attorney. She could’ve warned him the second we left that we were coming to scoop him up for questioning. It would’ve given him plenty of time to call a delivery service. This could just be a ploy to throw us,” Strickland said. It was plausible, but she wasn’t entirely convinced.

Instead of voicing her doubts, she nodded her head, pulling a pair of gloves from the junk pile that was Strickland’s bottom drawer and snapped them on before reaching for the card. She slipped the card from its sleeve and flipped it open, the churning in the pit of her stomach began to swirl double time.

Melpomene

She flashed that card at Strickland, who was already sitting at his computer, ready to Google. A few keystrokes told them everything they needed to know.

“Melpomene is the muse of tragedy,” Strickland said, scrolling through the endless ribbon of information on his computer screen. “She’s the protector of music, drama, and dance.” He looked up at her. “That’s a pretty broad pool to fish from. Basically every fine arts department at every local college.”

His fingers continued tapping on the keys, the noise of it fading away until it was gone. Something Liam had said to her kept tugging at her brain, wrangling her attention.

Something happened. The compound kept getting stronger and stronger every time we cooked a batch …

“We. He said
we
.” She looked over at the flowers on her desk before shooting another look at Strickland. “When I asked him about the drug—what was in it, how it was made—he was vague, like he wasn’t entirely sure. He said the drug changed, got more potent
every time we cooked a batch.
Liam didn’t make that drug on his own. He had a partner.”