Authors: Kylie Brant
Waking Evil 02 (15 page)
Ramsey hid a smile. The officer might be young, but he was no rookie. She watched the hidden threat register on the middle-aged man behind the counter, saw the moment he finished weighing his options before giving in ill-temperedly.
“All right, then.” He jerked a head at Ramsey. “She can come with me and you stay here and watch my register. These thieves will rob me blind if someone don’t watch ’em.”
She trailed after him to the back of the dimly lit bar, into a rabbit warren of cramped back rooms piled with stock. Wedged into the corner of one of the rooms was a metal desk and file cabinet, apparently the sum total of the man’s attempt at business organization.
He yanked open one of the drawers of the cabinet, muttering something under his breath she was probably better off not hearing. After leafing through files for a few moments, he withdrew one.
“Here.” He jammed it into Ramsey’s hands. “This is all I have on her. Like I say, she wasn’t here long.”
Ramsey flipped through it. Inside was a copy of the woman’s social security card and a job application printed out in neat handwriting. She took a notebook out of her purse and started copying down details. “Was she still living at the address listed here?”
The man was craning his neck, trying to see out into the bar. She wondered if he was worried his handful of customers had mounted an attack on Dade en route to the cash register.
“Far as I know. She never said nuthin’ ’bout movin’.”
She set the folder down on the desk and followed him back out into the bar. “What about friends? Did you ever see her with anyone here? Did she talk about anyone?”
“She wasn’t exactly the friendly type,” the man said sourly. “She could mix drinks, but she didn’t chat with the customers, know what I mean? I had to talk to her a time or two ’bout her attitude. I mean, nice lookin’ gal like that, if she just worked it a little, she coulda brought in more business. Could be she was battin’ for the other team, ya know? Maybe that’s why she didn’t like guy attention.”
Ramsey shot him a look filled with dislike. She didn’t envy Frost her time working for this jerk. She didn’t bother telling the man that it was obvious the woman had attracted someone’s attention.
And she’d ended up dead because of it.
Cassie Frost had rented a one-bedroom apartment over a department store on Main Street. And standing in the woman’s home now, Ramsey felt an overwhelming sense of sympathy.
There were few personal belongings scattered around to stamp the room with her personality. The landlady, Phyllis Trammel, had informed them as she’d let them in that the apartment had come furnished and the tenant had paid promptly the first of each month.
The elderly lady sat on the sagging couch right now, clutching the sketch she’d identified as Frost in one hand. “Kept to herself,” she said now, her voice quavering. “Was never any trouble, but not one to chat either. I know I haven’t seen her car move for near two weeks. Price of gas, it just don’t pay to drive if you can walk.”
Powell and one of the deputies were searching the car parked out front now. Deputy Leroy Ross was searching the kitchen. Ramsey was in the bedroom, and the apartment was small enough to hear the entire exchange between Phyllis and Officer Dade. With her gloved hands searching the dresser drawers, Ramsey pulled out a small bound book.
Flipping through it quickly, she called out, “I’ve got an address book.” At least it had a few addresses in it, complete with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. But she hadn’t noticed a computer in the apartment.
For that matter, there wasn’t a telephone.
She dropped the address book in a clear evidence bag, sealing and labeling it. Then she stepped out into the main room and addressed Trammel. “Did Ms. Frost have a cell phone?”
The older woman looked at her with eyes rheumy with tears. “I believe she did. Yes, because I offered to have a landline hooked up for her—that would be thirty dollars extra a month—and she said no, she had a cell phone and she’d just use that. Never got one for myself. Don’t see the need for all this new technology takin’ over. . . .”
Ramsey had quit listening. “You find a purse, Matthews?” Few women would leave home without one. If she’d taken it with her, it could mean she’d gone willingly with the attacker. Or that she’d been snatched outside of the apartment.
“Not yet.” He walked out of the miniscule bathroom with several evidence bags in his gloved hands. “Got a little recreational pot and a prescription for birth control pills from a local pharmacy.”
Having finished in the bedroom, Ramsey moved into the small kitchen. The deputy was going through all the drawers and cupboards. There was an outside door with a deadbolt and, pushing it open, Ramsey saw it led to a rickety fire escape. She crouched down outside the door and examined the lock, but it didn’t look like it had been tampered with. Pulling the door shut firmly, she waited a moment and tried to open it from the outside. She couldn’t.
She had to rap her fist on it a couple times before Matthews opened it a crack. “Forget your key again, dear?”
“Both her doors were locked, Glenn. No signs of forced entry.”
The agent shrugged and opened the door wider for her. “Maybe she knew the guy and let him in. Maybe he was never here at all, and she met up with him elsewhere.”
“The bar owner said the last time she worked was Friday, June fifth. Didn’t show up for her shift the next day.” And since she’d left at three A.M. and was due back on duty at five the next evening, they now had a window of time in which she must have met up with her killer.
“The body wasn’t discovered until near midnight on the sixth.”
“Yeah.” She cocked a brow at the deputy, who was crouched down to look in the oven. He shook his head.
“Nothin’ yet.”
“Can you help me a minute?” Without waiting for Matthews’s answer, she strode back to the bedroom where she’d left her evidence kit and the crime scene tools she’d retrieved from the trunk of her car. Reaching into one duffel bag, she withdrew a portable alternate light source and donned the goggles.
“You want to pull those sheets back for me?”
When the agent did so, Ramsey began to move the ALS meticulously over every inch of the surface of the fitted sheet. She indicated every hair found for Matthews to pick up with the forensic tweezers, wrap in tissue paper, and place in an evidence bag. Both sheets and the bedspread got the same treatment. But at the end of forty minutes, she turned off the ALS and pushed up her goggles. “The bedding can be bagged.” Whoever raped Cassie Frost hadn’t done it on the bed.
She turned to leave the bedroom and found Officer Dade standing in the doorway. He gave her a sheepish grin. “Sort of interestin’ to watch you work. Where you from, Ms. Clark?”
With a polite smile, she started to brush by him. “Mississippi.” She froze a moment, shocked that the truth had slipped out. She never admitted that. Tried as hard as she could not to remember it at all. “I was with TBI a while back. I’ve lived in Virginia for the last few years.” She forced herself to move again.
“You’re from Mississippi? Well, shoot, I’m from Mississippi, too!” The officer’s delighted voice sounded behind her. “I’m from Biloxi, born and raised. Whereabouts did you live?”
“Cripolo.”
She went to the couch and switched on the ALS, pulled down the goggles, and hoped he’d leave it alone. But the man trailed out into the room to stand next to her.
“Cripolo? That seems like a right nice li’l town. Driven through it a few times on the way to the coast. You ever get back to Mississippi?”
“Not much, no.” Not ever, if she could help it.
Matthews was beginning to dust the surfaces in the apartment for prints. She directed the landlady to the only chair in the room and began to meticulously run the ALS over the couch. It was old and decrepit enough to hoard stains from a couple earlier decades. When she finished, she gave the carpet the same treatment. Next they’d bag any fibers or hairs, then photograph the area.
But she already had the feeling they’d discover Cassie Frost hadn’t been attacked in her apartment at all.
She dreamt of Mississippi that night. Exhaustion had lowered defenses she usually kept well honed, and the images crept in, melding details—some eerily accurate and others oddly misshapen—in a seamless fabric only a dream state can achieve.
Ramsey moved restlessly under the sheet. Somewhere in that stage between dozing and the sucking depths of slumber, she fought a silent battle to wake and avoid the unconscious mental movie about to unfold.
The officer she’d met that day was there, his smile wide and friendly.
You’re from Mississippi? Well, shoot, I’m from Mississippi, too!
But then his face blurred at the edges, took on another form as he mouthed words uttered by people he’d never met.
You’re from Mississippi? Well, shoot, I’m from Mississippi, too!
But then his face blurred at the edges, took on another form as he mouthed words uttered by people he’d never met.
I say we fuck her now. What if she gets away?
Whereabouts did you live? Cripolo? That seems like a right nice li’l town.
The dark forest, its gaping shadows yawning like a huge mouth teethed with trees, was fringed with swamps that were inhabited by gators and cottonmouths. Her body shook as the decision loomed again in a terrifyingly identical replay. A hideous death ahead. A horrific experience behind.
Shit, where would she go? Into the swamps? It’s no fun when they can’t run. We’ll fuck her later. First we hunt.
You ever get back to Mississippi?
Hands trying desperately to cover her nakedness. To fight off the cruel fingers that groped and pinched and penetrated.
Better run, cunt, less’n you want to start suckin’ right now.
The girl in the dream ran.
Yee-haw!
The familiar echo careened through her mind, shot chills up her spine. Brought her upright in bed, quivering like she’d been afflicted with palsy.
It took several attempts for her trembling hands to grasp the hem of the sheet. To wrap it around her frozen body. And supreme concentration to push back the remnants of the haunting scene that still lurked, just waiting to spin out again when sleep disarmed her.
She drew in a deep breath. Followed it with another. And let the simple act press back the images that threatened to swarm.
Calmer now, she rested against the headboard, her heart galloping like a Thoroughbred under the wire. The girl in the dream didn’t exist anymore. She’d made certain of that. Ramsey would never be that vulnerable again. And the memories of when she had been that helpless no longer had the power to weaken her.
She told herself that over and over as she resisted sleep and stared at the shade covering the lone window. Waited for the sky to lighten and send slivers of light around its edges. The only thing left of her past was memories, and those couldn’t hurt her.
But even as the mental reassurances calmed her pulse and steadied her breathing, her gaze remained fixed on the window. And she silently counted away the hours until morning.
Chapter 8
Lounging on the curb in front of the Historical Museum, Dev watched Ramsey pull up fifteen minutes after ten. He was about to open his mouth and say something clever about not expecting her to be the type of woman to keep a man waiting, but her face, when she slammed the car door of the SUV, had the words dying on his tongue.
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