Touching Evil (25 page)

He straightened again.  Folded his arms over his chest.  “Believe it or not, at Berkley I’m something of a big deal.”  His wry tone stripped the words of ego. “I actually get called on fairly regularly to consult on high profile investigations nationally.  My goal before I leave is to get you to admit that I might—just might, mind you—know what I’m talking about.”

“I wasn’t second-guessing…”

He threw his head back and laughed with real amusement.  “That’s exactly what you were doing, and the fact that you don’t even realize it is actually sort of adorable.”

Her eyes narrowed.  Adorable had never been a word easily applied to her.  “Fine.  Tell me again.”  She pushed away from her laptop to give him her undivided attention.

It didn’t seem to faze him.  He paused to take a drink from the soda before answering.  “It was pretty easy to reassemble the skeleton.  Most of it was intact.  I’m guessing the beating it took while in the river jarred some of the bones loose.  That river flooded five years ago.  Regardless of when the body was dumped, the bag could have moved quite a way from its original dumpsite, and come into contact with logs and all sort of debris.”

He paused to reach over and push a strand of hair away from her face.  The intimacy of the act had her jerking away, an involuntary reaction.  

His eyes glinting, he continued.  “Preliminary examination indicates that the skeleton found today is female.  The measurements of the pelvis and examination of the skull made that an easy call.  Almost certainly Caucasian.  She was likely between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five at death, because her collarbone is completely fused, but the sagittal suture on the cranium isn’t.  I did the measurements and x-rays necessary to submit the dental findings to an odontologist.  Is there one the DCI uses?”

Lucy nodded.  “Dr. Harvey Lind at the U of I College of Dentistry.”

“He’d be able to verify my estimate of age when I send him the information I put together.  And the submission of the data for matching dental records might make this victim a relatively simple ID.”

“If she was from in-state,” murmured Lucy.  Some of the six victims that had been found in fresh graves atop burial vaults had been kidnapped from outside Iowa.

He reached into his back jeans pocket and withdrew a badly mangled bag of M&M’s.  “I examined the auricular surface of the ilium, the sternal ends of the right ribs three through five and pubic symphysis and did a comparison against a database of standard markers.”  

Ripping open the bag, he poured some into his palm as he spoke.  “Hyoid bone was fractured, indicating a possibility the victim had been strangled.  Can’t rule out the possibility that the damage occurred from the impact of the bag coming in contact with something in the river.  But the spiral fracture of the ulna was definitely perimortem.”  

Lucy eyed him as he popped the candy into his mouth.  Chewed.  She had an ongoing feud with the office vending machine.  Working late as often as she did, she didn’t always get regular meals.  The machine inhaled her money but steadfastly refused to return the items she selected.  It had a particularly suspicious habit of providing stale peanuts whenever she desperately craved chocolate.

It went to figure that Connerly could coax the recalcitrant machine to part with the sweets when she couldn’t.  He seemed to have the touch, with women and machines alike.  Discomfited by the thought, she belatedly tuned into his words again.

“Perimortem?  You found signs of healing before death?”

He nodded.  Swallowed.  “Barely.  You can double check, but I’d estimate that the injury occurred at least two weeks before her death.  Oh, and these remains aren’t the source of the finger bone found in the cave.  Once I reassembled it the skeleton was complete.”  He took a last helping of candy before offering the rest of the bag to her.  Lucy snatched it up with a desperation she was too hungry to be embarrassed by.

“Not bad for a few hours work,” she allowed.  Sharing his chocolate had her feeling equally generous.

“I’d like to get that DCI agent in here—the redhead—to help do a facial reconstruction.  I gotta get permission from the ME, though.  She can be real testy about things like that.”

Lucy smirked.  “Really?  I hear the ME is a saint.  Maybe if you ask real nice she’ll okay it.”

For a man who rarely walked above an amble, he could move remarkably fast.  He took her hand and tugged her from her seat to his arms with dizzying speed.  “I am capable of much more than nice,” he assured her with a wicked smile, his arms wrapping around her waist.   

Lucy could blame it on the chocolate.  Or her lack of sleep.  But against her better judgment she smiled back.  “I remember exactly what you’re capable of.”  He had the ability to strip her of a life’s worth of defenses armed with nothing but a lazy smile and a wicked sense of humor.   He was capable of tempting her, a woman not known for indulgences, to forget duty long enough to be wicked with him.  

And the buffer of the miles between their occupations made indulging in Gavin Connerly safe enough to soothe even Lucy’s hyper-cautious nature.  She went up on tiptoe to catch his bottom lip between her teeth.  Nipped lightly.  “Exactly how many miles is it to your hotel?”  And was gratified when she felt his body shudder.

He drew back a little to survey her.  “I’ve never been inside your place.  Maybe we can pick up some takeout and head to Bondurant.  It’d give us time to talk.”

Something in his tone had her beating an emotional retreat.  Having sex with Gavin was far enough out of character.  The thought of allowing him into her home, into her life had mental walls springing up.  

“Tell you what, Connerly.”  Although her voice was conversational, her hands were anything but.  “We can talk.  Or we can…”  She rose up to whisper a suggestion in his ear and his gaze went a little unfocused.

“We’ll talk later.”  He shepherded her out of the office, barely allowing her time to grab her purse and lock up.  “But we
are
going to talk, Luce.”

“If you still have the strength to talk later,” she murmured sultrily, “then I’m horribly out of practice.”

*  *  *  *

“We got the license number, color, make and model off Moxley’s car from DMV.  There’s a BOLO out on it now.  We’ve also alerted surrounding counties.  Someone will see him.”

They were walking up the drive at Cam’s house.  Sophia was nearly staggering with exhaustion, but Cam’s voice was alert as he discussed strategy with the SAC.  Stars studded the sky, but the moon was slivered, as if its fullness had been carved away with one brutal slice.  She felt the same.  As if each new event of the day had pared away another layer of skin until her nerves lay raw, exposed and vulnerable.  

“Well, the garage gave us a lot of information.  That’s where he embalmed them.  The supplies and equipment for it are stored there.  He also had a walk-in freezer.  We’ll need lab results, but I think he might have kept victims in it while waiting to dispose of them.  Like Dr. Channing guessed, he also had a small boat and trailer there.”  He listened for a moment as he fit his key into the deadbolt and unlocked the door to allow them inside before resetting the security system and securing the door again.  “We’ve got feelers out with all the banks in the area, but we found no trace of bills or bank books.  Pinter’s clerk said he was a cash customer.  Dr. Channing thinks he would have been far more likely to shun banks.”  

He listened for a moment, then slanted Sophia a glance.  “Yeah.  She said organized offenders can descend into disorganization.  She says he’s unraveling as a result of an untreated psychosis, triggered by an emotional event. You should have seen the prescriptions.  Hard to say where Baxter came into contact with Vance.  He doesn’t have a record.”

It was impossible to say which beckoned more insistently—a bath or sleep.  Sophia decided she’d get rid of the wig and contacts first and go from there.

Cam draped his suit coat over the back of the couch, then remembered to take the tie he’d wadded up out of his pocket.  “Yeah, the warrant came through okay on Baxter’s juvie DHS records, but accessing them is slow.  The foster father’s files showed he was placed by Polk County, and we’ve got a query out.  Hopefully we’ll have a response mid-morning.”  He started walking toward his office, still talking.  “Yeah, search on the river begins again tomorrow morning, too.  Briefing’s at eight so…”

 Instead of trailing after him Sophia headed for her bedroom to grab her robe.  From the sounds of things she had less than seven hours to clean up and get some sleep.  Right now both seemed equally pressing.  

But for some reason after taking her customary brief shower and combing her hair, the thought of crawling into bed had become suddenly unappealing.  Details of the day crowded in and her thoughts couldn’t turn in any direction without bumping into one of them.  They weren’t exactly musings guaranteed to summon slumber.

She gathered up her things and took them back to her bedroom.  The light was still on in Cam’s office, but she no longer could hear the sound of his voice.  The phone call with Gonzalez must have finally ended.  She busied herself putting her things away and then turned, her gaze falling on the neatly made bed.

Last night’s scene flickered across her mind.  Cam had offered comfort after her PTSD flashback.  In his arms she’d felt safe enough to finally shut her eyes.

Safe
.  The word had her mentally squirming.  She had a doctorate in psychology.  Trauma-induced reactions were, clinically at least, familiar territory.  But she was self-aware enough to recognize that safety and caution had guided her life choices for most of her years.  The only time she’d ever veered from the familiar—the safe—was when she’d chosen to go into forensics rather than solely clinical psychology. And even then she’d hedged her bets for far too long, trying to balance the two sides of her occupation with a career in academia and a forensic consulting firm.

Teaching had, she could admit now, completely and utterly bored her.  She walked to the dresser and laid her comb down on the surface.  She’d done it to please her parents and husband, all academics.  But the routine of following a predetermined course outline, grading papers and the petty university politics had never truly appealed.  She wondered now how long she would have continued fooling herself that her life completely satisfied if she hadn’t walked in to her husband’s department office to find him enthusiastically banging a young co-ed on his desk.

It had, she thought wryly, been a life altering wake-up call.  And so had her brief fling with Cam Prescott last month, in a totally different sort of way.

In just twelve short days she’d felt more alive with the man than she had throughout her entire marriage.  Even before.  The relationship had been totally out of character for her.  The selection of the man even more so.  Cam wasn’t safe.  He wasn’t risk-free.  And he definitely wasn’t boring.

She turned and walked slowly to the windows, drawing the curtains over the blinds.   It wasn’t especially comfortable to admit that she’d pulled away from him because her feelings for the man were too raw, too unfamiliar.  She hadn’t been equipped for a no-strings relationship.  She, a woman who valued guarantees in life had realized there was no guarantee of a future with Cam Prescott.  No assurance that he would ever reciprocate anything close to the welter of emotion he incited in her.  

Mason Vance had showed her the folly of living her life afraid to take risks.  Thoughts of the man had her skin prickling.  If things had turned out differently she’d have died at Vance’s hands, never having taken a chance on anything other than the somewhat tepid relationship she’d had with her ex-husband.  And that made her rather ashamed of herself.

There was lingering emotional damage from her time spent in captivity.  Sophia was the first to admit it.  But it didn’t impact her ability to do her job on this investigation.  And it didn’t factor into her realization that she’d almost let something infinitely precious slip through her fingers, because she’d been so busy protecting her heart.

The thought shook her.  After she’d escaped from Mason Vance, Cam had told her over and over how brave she’d been.  But he’d never realized that it had been sheer cowardice that had sent her running from
him
.

Sophia was done running.

She walked through the bedroom door on feet that faltered a little when she found his office dark.  Taking a deep breath she continued to his bedroom and peeked inside.  Empty.

Just then she heard the shower in the adjoining bath turn on.  The sound nearly sent her fleeing.  She actually turned toward the bedroom door.  

And then had a mental flash of how she’d left him the first time, fueled by the same cowardly fear.  Her purpose solidified.  She walked to the bath, pulled the door open.  She could see Cam’s form  through the glass shower stall and a tendril of heat unfurled, curling through her system.  She saw the exact moment he noticed her.  He froze in the act of sluicing the water from his face.  Stared for a moment, then opened the door of the stall.

“You okay, Soph?”  He gave her a quick onceover with his gaze as if to answer his own question.  “I’ll be done here in a minute.”

“Yes.”  Untying the robe, she gave a slight shrug and let it slip down her arms to pool on the floor.  “I really am okay.”  She walked to the shower stall and stepped inside, brushing by him to do so.

Her hands immediately went to his chest.  Her fingers flexed.  His came up to cover them.  Swallowing hard, he rasped, “Listen, God knows this isn’t easy for me to say.  But this probably isn’t a good idea right now for you.  I don’t think…”

The concern mingled with desire on his face told her everything she needed to know.  “It’s all right.”  She closed the distance between them and went up on tiptoe to nip lightly at the corner of his mouth.  “I’ve done enough thinking for both of us.”  Sliding her arms around his neck, she pressed her mouth against his and sank into pleasure.

The kiss in the car at Screwball’s had been too unexpected and much too brief.  It had been over before her defenses were sufficiently lowered to enjoy it.  But Sophia was done erecting defenses around this man.  The thought was frightening.  Exhilarating.  Liberating.