Twisted (12 page)

Mark stared at his hands. He remembered Sheryl’s husband, her parents. Their grief had been enormous, and he’d felt powerless.

“They didn’t even have anything to bury,” he said. “I felt like I needed to give them some kind of encouragement, so I made them a promise. I said the investigation wouldn’t end, that I wouldn’t give up, until we got an arrest.”

It was a foolish promise—he knew that now—but he’d made it. And now ten years later, he still hadn’t delivered. So, yeah, this case was personal. Mark no longer made promises to people, but that long-ago one stuck with him.

“Every November nineteenth I get a call from her husband.” He looked up at her. “You know he still looks for her? Couple times a year he borrows a dog team from the local fire and rescue, goes tromping through parks and wilderness areas searching for her bones.”

Allison gazed down at him and those hazel eyes looked sad. Damn, why was he telling her all this?

He stood up. “Thanks for the drink.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’ve got work to do.”

“Now?” She glanced at her watch. “But it’s—”

“It’s November seventh, Allison. We’re running out of time.”

Allison crossed the bullpen and yanked off her jacket.

“Reynolds is an idiot,” she said, tossing her keys on her desk.

“Nice way to talk about your boss.”

She glanced at Jonah, who was two cubicles away, doing what she should have been doing with her Sunday afternoon—catching up on paperwork.

Jonah leaned back in his chair and frowned at her. “What happened to your face?”

“Ran into a tree.”

He smiled. “And Reynolds is the idiot.”

She ignored him as she sank into her seat. “We now know of three women within an hour’s drive of here who have been attacked on October thirtieth. Not to mention a clear link between those crimes and others out in California. But are we looking for a serial killer? Heck, no, we’ve got the boyfriend.”

Something flickered across Jonah’s face, and Allison narrowed her gaze at him. She sprang to her feet.

“You’re doing it, too, damn it!” She was beside his cube in two strides. “What are you not telling me?”

“It’s not your case, Doyle.”

“It should be.
I’m
the one who found the Jordan Wheatley link. And Rachel Pascal.”

“Who had an accident, for all we know. A skull and a leg bone? You can’t even prove she was murdered.”

“Aha! You’ve checked out her case.”

Jonah looked annoyed. “Of course I’ve checked it out. I’m a detective. That’s what I do.”

“You know I’m onto something. And you’re holding out on me.”
Just like Wolfe did,
she thought, and her anger bubbled up all over again. “What does Reynolds know about Bender? Why is he so stuck on that, when we’ve even got the FBI down here saying we should be looking for a serial killer?”

Jonah sighed with resignation. He glanced around the room, which was practically empty except for a patrol officer on the phone.

“Bender won’t give us an alibi,” Jonah said. “And in this case, that’s a red flag.”

Allison thought about that for a moment. He was right—that was odd. “Because this is recent, you mean.”

“Exactly. If I came up and asked you what you were doing, say, the evening of January ninth last year, you’d have no idea, right? In fact, if you
did
tell me right away where you were that night, I’d probably bump you to the top of my suspect list. But for something that happened a few days ago?”

Allison dragged a chair over from a neighboring cube and sat down. “So, what’s he saying?”

“Practically nothing. It’s one reason Reynolds is so set on him. He’s acting guilty.”

“Okay. Well, what do we
know
about what he was doing the night she disappeared?”

“There you go with the ‘we’ again.” Jonah looked irritated as he reached across his desk and picked up a fat black binder. This would be the actual murder book, complete with all the info Reynolds didn’t want reporters or anyone outside the inner circle to see.

“I intend to get on this case, Jonah. Eventually, there’s going to be a task force.”

He held up a hand. “I’ve heard your theory, all right? And I’ve even listened. You and the fed have some good points, far as I’m concerned. But I’m telling you, Bender looks bad in this. He won’t give us the slightest detail we can corroborate about where he was the night Stephanie died, and it’s not helping his case any.”

Jonah opened the binder and flipped to a report. It looked to be several pages of typed interview notes.

“Here’s what he told us in the original interview, before he got a lawyer—that he was at work from eight a.m. to five-fifty, with the exception of his lunch break. We’ve confirmed that with his employer.”

“The car dealership, right?”

“Yeah, he sells Toyotas. After that, he says he went home and watched TV. End of story. Didn’t leave his apartment until work the next day.”

“That right there is an alibi.”

Jonah gave her a baleful look. “First off, the guy’s lying through his teeth. I took his statement. Second, he was served with a restraining order the night before, and his reaction to
that
was to call up Stephanie, probably to ream her out. We have records of fourteen phone calls placed to her cell phone, from Bender, the day before her
murder. No idea what he said to her, but I doubt it was friendly.”

“The restraining order includes phone contact.”

“Yeah, which goes to show how much respect he had for it. Then the day of her murder, he disappears at noon—three people at his work confirm this—comes back two hours later. Was he making plans? Buying a murder weapon? Buying a sandwich? We don’t know. Five hours later, Stephanie gets home from work, changes, and goes jogging. She pulls over for gas on the way—we’ve got that on tape from the gas station. Parks her car at her favorite park. She passes a woman walking her dog as she sets out on the trail. That woman was the last person to see her alive, that we know about. Eleven hours later, a female jogger strays off the path with her Weimaraner and sees Stephanie’s partially clothed body lying in the woods. And where was Bender while all this was happening? Home watching TV, according to his original statement. He didn’t make a phone call. Didn’t send a text. Didn’t log onto his computer. Didn’t have a friend over. Nothing. Just home alone, watching the tube.”

“What about DNA? She was sexually assaulted.”

“The ME sent swabs to the lab, but you know how that goes. By the time we hear back, this case’ll probably be stone cold. Meantime, only solid suspect we’ve got is Bender.”

Jonah culled through the file and pulled out another paper, this one with several incidents listed on it. The descriptions took up almost a full page. “He’s got a temper. Stephanie’s neighbors in her apartment complex called us out twice because they were fighting, and it sounded
like Bender was hitting her. She herself reported him once for splitting open her lip. After she dumped him, she called twice to report him stalking her before finally getting the restraining order. Two days after he gets served with papers, Stephanie turns up dead.”

Allison stared down at the report.

“Come on, Allison.”

“Okay, you’re right, it looks like Bender. The guy’s a dirtbag. He beats women. But the thing is, he didn’t kill her.”

Unless he killed the other ones, too.

The thought startled her. She pulled the file toward her and studied the interview notes. Bender’s date of birth was listed at the top, beneath his name.

“Twenty-eight years old,” Allison muttered. That didn’t fit Mark’s profile. And he would have been seventeen when the first victim was killed in California. But still . . .

“Where’d he go to high school?” Allison asked.

“North Side High. Starting quarterback.” Jonah leaned back in his chair again and crossed his arms. “Took his team to state his senior year, as a matter of fact.”

“That explains his ego. And probably his penchant for knocking people around.”

“Not every athlete’s a wife beater, Allison.”

“I know that, I’m just—”

“I get it. You’re trying to build a profile.” He gave her a hard look, and she knew he was thinking about her sudden friendship with Mark.

She looked away. Mark was right. These cases were connected. If there was anything Allison had taken from
her interview with Jordan Wheatley, it was that the man who attacked her had a ruthless MO. He was skilled, smart, and shockingly cold in his execution. Mark believed he’d killed five women in California, at least two in Texas, and that he would go right on doing it unless someone tracked him down and put a stop to it. Allison believed it, too. And
her
law enforcement agency was in a position to do something. They had the freshest case, the warmest trail.

And yet they were completely off track.

“Why won’t he provide a solid alibi?” Allison looked at Jonah.

“How the hell do I know? Maybe his lawyer told him to keep his mouth shut.”

“But even during the initial interview. He claims he went home and watched TV, and you say he was lying.”

“I know he was—I just can’t prove it.”

“I bet I can.” She felt the adrenaline rush as her idea took shape.

“You want to
provide
our prime suspect with an alibi.” Jonah smiled ruefully and shook his head.

“I want to eliminate him. It’s the only way to convince Reynolds. Now, listen.” She leaned forward. “Why would he lie about where he was? I mean,
why
, for Christ’s sake? This is a death penalty state.”

She saw him understand where she was going with this.

“Because the truth would make him look guilty,” Jonah said.

“That’s right. And what do we know about Bender? What do we have on record? That he’s abusive. That he’s violent. That he’s followed the victim out on dates and
harassed her. He probably
was
stalking her the night she got killed, Jonah. Even if he wasn’t the one who killed her.”

Jonah pursed his lips, considering the idea.

“Where’s Stephanie’s apartment?” she asked.

“ ’Bout three blocks off campus. It’s that new complex over by the movie theater.”

Allison pictured the redbrick building with the pool and the landscaping. She’d bet her next paycheck it had security cameras.

She stood up and went to get her jacket. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To see where Bender was the night Stephanie disappeared.”

Mark entered Randy’s Pool Hall and saw the typical array of football fans and bored husbands he’d expected on a Sunday night. What he hadn’t expected was Allison. She was seated at the bar with a drink in front of her, deep in conversation with the bartender.

So much for his plan. He’d come in to ask a few subtle questions of the wait staff. Now he ditched the idea and approached Allison. Once again, she was in jeans and a tight-fitting shirt, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. She glanced up.

“Hey.” She looked pleasantly surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a drink.” He ordered a beer and nodded at her almost empty glass. “What is that, bourbon? You want another one?”

She smiled at the bartender. “Another Coke, please.
Make it a double.” She slid the neighboring stool toward him with her foot. “Sit down.”

Mark did, although he didn’t like having his back to the door. He swiveled sideways to face her.

“Catching the game?”

She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t watch football. Actually, I’m waiting for someone.”

Of course she was. Mark glanced at the entrance. He should probably give up his stool, but he didn’t.

“So,” she said, “what’d you do in the cave all day?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her.

“I passed the motel a couple times, saw your car.”

“Work, mostly. Did a couple errands.”

“That explains the jeans.” She leaned back and looked him up and down critically. “I see you found our outlet mall. This mean you plan to stay awhile?”

“That depends.” The bartender delivered his beer, and he took a sip. “Did you have the day off?”

“Not really. Spent the afternoon disproving Joshua Bender’s alibi.”

“
Dis
proving?”

“Turns out he spent the entire night of Stephanie’s disappearance parked in front of her apartment building, waiting for her to come home.”

“He admitted this?”

“Surveillance cam.” She stirred her drink with one of those little red straws. “Anyway, contradicts what he told us, which was that he was home by himself. Also eliminates him as a suspect. Reynolds is rethinking his theory now, thanks to me.” A smile spread across her face. “Score one for the rookie detective.”

Her eyes sparkled, and Mark’s heart gave a kick. She
held his gaze for a moment, and the triumphant smile turned into something warmer, more intimate.

He looked away.

“Think your friend’s here,” he said.