Vail 01 - The 7th Victim (38 page)
“Husband needs to be looked at,” Vail said. “We sure he’s overseas?”
“It’s being checked, but they reached him at his hotel in Hong Kong, so I think his alibi is pretty damn strong.”
“Unless it was a contract job,” Robby said. “Hubby wants her out of the picture, hires someone to take her out.”
Vail shook her head. “Contract jobs are impersonal. Bullet to the head and it’s over. None of this bloody mess to the face and breasts.” She turned to Bledsoe. “Maybe forensics will give us something. I say we wait on nailing Hancock to the chair until at least tomorrow. We might get something else to use on him.”
Bledsoe nodded. “I’ll ask the lab to put a rush on trace. Meantime, we wait. Okay?”
Robby curled his mouth into a frown. “Yeah. Fine.”
“Go home, get some rest. I’ll post a uniform, make sure no one goes in or out of the place when we leave. Including Hancock.”
“Especially Hancock,” Robby said.
BLEDSOE WALKED BACK IN, Vail at his side. His brow was furrowed and his hands were shoved into the pockets of his overcoat. He stopped beside Hancock, took a seat on the couch. “I know this is a tough time for you. I’m sorry you had to be the one to discover the body.”
Hancock leaned back on the couch.
“You said the senator had asked you to leave the house. What time was that?”
He squinted as if blinding sunlight was bathing his eyes. “I don’t know,” he whined. “Around seven. Maybe a few minutes after. I wasn’t looking at the clock.”
“And when did you get back?”
Hancock shrugged, looked across the room at the grandfather clock, as if he were calculating the time by working backwards. “Around eight-thirty.”
Manette consulted her notepad. “Nine-one-one was placed around eight-forty-five.”
“Then it was closer to eight-forty-five,” Hancock said, his hands turning palm up. “Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone. I’ve had a really crappy night.”
Vail glanced at the bloody trail in the hallway and thought,
Eleanor Linwood could say the same thing.
Eleanor Linwood could say the same thing.
forty
T
he doctor stood between Karen Vail’s legs, which were spread wide and resting in stirrups on the birthing table. She had been in labor for six hours, the hospital gown matted down to her slick skin with so
for six hours, the hospital gown matted down to her slick skin with so
much perspiration it appeared as if she had just stepped out of the shower.
he doctor stood between Karen Vail’s legs, which were spread wide and resting in stirrups on the birthing table. She had been in labor for six hours, the hospital gown matted down to her slick skin with so
for six hours, the hospital gown matted down to her slick skin with so
much perspiration it appeared as if she had just stepped out of the shower.
Deacon stood by her side, wiping her forehead with a cold, wet cloth, occasionally feeding ice chips into her mouth.
“Ahhh!” Vail bore down, grabbed the edge of the table, and swore under her breath.
“You can do this, honey,” Deacon said by her ear. “I know it hurts. Try to breathe through it, like we practiced.”
“Ahhh!” Vail winced, then gasped and said, breathless, “Fuck the damn breathing.” She brought her right hand up to her large, contracted abdomen, then winced again.
“It won’t be long,” the doctor said calmly. “The head is crowning. In a minute I’m going to have you push. Not until then. Okay?”
All Vail could manage between clenched teeth was a groan.
Deacon wiped her forehead, leaned close to her ear. “Hang on another few minutes, just another few minutes. Our son’s almost here.”
“Okay, Karen, here he comes,” the doctor said. He pushed his rolling stool away with a flick of his foot, then reached out and placed his fingers atop the baby’s crowning head. A nurse came up alongside and pressed a button on the adjacent monitor. “Go ahead and push,” the doctor said. “We’ll have him out in a jiffy.”
Vail bore down, the strain lifting her torso off the bed. “Ahhh! It burns, it burns!”
“He’s just about through. That’s it, that’s it . . . all right!” The doctor guided the baby’s shoulder through, then straightened up, his face a wide grin. “Congratulations.” He handed the baby to the nurse, who wrapped the child in a small towel and placed him on Vail’s chest. “Do you have a name?”
“Jonathan Taylor,” Deacon said, stroking his baby’s soft cheek.
“Jonathan Taylor Tucker, I like it. . . .”
VAIL’S EYES OPENED, locks of hair pasted to her face, thoughts of Jonathan tickling her mind. Her alarm clock glowed 4:35. She looked around, oriented herself, then began crying. Reliving Jonathan’s birth, she agonized over the life she’d had, the good-natured man Deacon once was, the joy of bringing her son into the world. How different things were now. As tears rolled onto her pillow, Vail scolded herself for never taking the time to appreciate what she had, when she had it.
She made her way into the family room and picked up a photo of Jonathan as an infant. She touched his face, then held the frame to her chest, hugging it, as if the warmth and love could somehow move through the still photo and invigorate his spirit.
“Please wake up,” she whispered.
Vail sat in the family room, sipping hot chocolate and waiting for the sun to rise. The
Today Show
droned from the television. She watched the small digital clock in the corner of the screen tick away, figuring she would go to the hospital as soon as visiting hours began.
Today Show
droned from the television. She watched the small digital clock in the corner of the screen tick away, figuring she would go to the hospital as soon as visiting hours began.
Go there and do what? What could she possibly accomplish by sitting at Jonathan’s bedside? To talk to him, in case he could hear her? For someone whose work revolved around analytic logic, the concept of talking to a comatose mind seemed designed to comfort those who needed something to cling to. But she realized she was now one of those people. She had to believe Jonathan could hear her, that he could know she was near . . . because if it was true, then there was hope. And as long as there was hope, she could get through the day.
At seven thirty, she walked into the kitchen to refill her mug. Before she could pour the hot chocolate, her doorbell rang. She squinted at the clock and wondered who it would be this time of morning. She walked to the door and saw a large, dark figure standing on her porch. Robby.
“You’re here early.”
Robby walked in and gave her the once over. “You look like you didn’t sleep last night.”
“Not true. I slept about four hours.”
Robby smirked, then reached out and touched her hair, pushed it off her face and behind her ear. A gentle brush, a tentative, nonthreatening gesture to test the waters. “You doing okay?”
She shrugged. “I’ve had better years.” She wanted him to reach out and take her in his arms, to hold her and tell her it’s all going to be all right. She needed his company, his strength, his support. They stared at each other, her mind willing him to reach out to her. Instead, he stood there, seemingly reading her face like a closed book.
You usually know what I’m thinking. Why can’t you sense my thoughts now?
You usually know what I’m thinking. Why can’t you sense my thoughts now?
As if she had spoken aloud, he reached behind the small of her back and drew her close. She melted into his body, squeezed him tightly. Seconds dissolved into minutes. She didn’t want to move, to lose the feeling. It had been too long since she had felt the extreme desire for a male body, for someone she truly wanted to touch and feel and explore and become totally absorbed in.
He bent his head down and with his index finger, tilted her chin back. His full lips met hers, two pillows coming to rest against one another. He pulled back and she slowly opened her eyes. She didn’t want the moment to end. She looked at him, desire gripping at the sleeves of his sport coat.
“I can’t stay.”
“I know.” She released him and straightened her nightshirt. “Come by later?”
“If you want.”
“I want.”
He was silent a few seconds, then said, “Okay.” He brought his hand out from behind her back. He was clutching a thick envelope. “Oh, almost forgot. I brought you a present,” he said, handing her the package.
She tore it open and pulled out an overstuffed file folder. “What is this?”
“Copy of everything the task force has in its Dead Eyes file. Copies of the photos are not as good as the real pictures, but at least you’ve got something to work on.”
Vail, still standing with Robby in the entryway, quickly thumbed through the file. She smiled, again feeling part of a team. “Tell Bledsoe I said thanks.”
“Will do. We’re going to lean on Hancock this morning. Bledsoe called in some favors, got a couple of techs to work through the night. They found some interesting stuff back at Linwood’s place that might help us turn him.”
“For Linwood or Dead Eyes?”
Robby shrugged. “You tell me.”
Vail put a hand on her hip and walked down the hall. She turned and came back, looked up at Robby. “For Linwood, it’s possible. Affair gone sour. He’s pissed, takes her out. Does a Dead Eyes copycat to throw attention in a totally different direction. As for him being Dead Eyes, I’d have to give it more thought. In some ways he fits the profile, in some ways not. He’s bright and organized, right age range and ethnic background, drives the right type of power car. I don’t know about his art background, family history, or upbringing. Some of that we can get through his Bureau application.
“But one thing that stands out is that he’s injected himself into the investigation by having Linwood place him on the task force. That’s common with organized offenders. It’s a means of control, of checking in on where the investigation is. Can’t get a better finger on the pulse than being named to our team.” She nodded slowly. “Be good to see if he was even in the area and alibied at the times of the murders.”
“Sin’s on it. I’ll see about either getting his personnel file from Gifford or ask him to have a look around inside himself.”
“Good. Why don’t—” The phone’s electronic bleat sent her into the kitchen to answer it; it was Cynthia from CART with the lab’s analysis of Vail’s hard drive.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Cynthia said. “First, I’ve got a guy working on the sender’s name, G. G. Condon. But we both know that’s going to be a dead end. However, because the offender sent the message to you at work, it was stored on the Academy server. That’s the good news. From what we’ve been able to determine, the way this self-destructing email works is that it sends its message with a tracking number embedded in its source code. Unbeknownst to you, he sent another message simultaneously to our mail server, which also got downloaded into your inbox; it looked like an identical copy of message number one, so you probably ignored it. But its source code was different. The effect was like a ticking time bomb; message two contained simple instructions that identified the tracking code on message one, which triggered a self-destruct countdown as soon as you read it. At the predetermined time, message one “dissolved,” to use an inaccurate but descriptive term, into its digital components—ones and zeroes. The message literally vanished.”
“Great.”
“Actually, it is. We were able to recover the message and routing information, including the second message that erased the first.”
“Let’s cut to the chase. What’d we learn from all this digital skulking?”
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