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Mia might have believed the same thing, but her sister had been engaged to a handsome, rich and well-connected man, and she knew Lena wasn’t the straying type. Neither would she have opened her door to any strange man, charming and attractive or otherwise. “Maybe, maybe not.”
They entered a dining area with a small wooden table and four matching chairs. “My theory is that he’s a person who seems innocuous. Someone who comes across as trustworthy, maybe because of his manner or maybe because of his job or position. The victims let him in not because he’s good-looking but because he’s harmless.” Aside from the blood in the kitchen, everything in that apartment was maddeningly neat.
“Position?” Gray was immediately behind her, keeping a close watch. “What are we talking about? A professor?”
“I doubt it. The victims were from different schools. It’s only a theory, but it’s possible Valentine works in a job that permits him access to homes. A plumber or electrician.” Mia saw nothing unusual in the dining room and proceeded to the bedroom.
“D’Augostino,” Gray said, “make a note to ask around and see if the vic had any problems with her apartment. Water leaks, electrical problems, mice, things like that.”
“Will do.”
“We shouldn’t overlook the obvious, either,” she said to Gray.
“Which is?”
“Maybe he delivers flowers.”
The bedroom was decorated sparsely, with a dresser, two nightstands and a queen bed occupying most of the small space. “That’s odd. The bed is bare.” She froze when she saw the arrangement on the dresser: long stems of blue-and-white hydrangeas in a drinking glass.
“The flowers.” Mia held her breath as she approached the arrangement. A white translucent ribbon was secured around the glass in a complicated bow. “Hydrangeas symbolize vanity.” She reached for a small framed picture of a woman with blond hair and blue eyes standing next to a tall, attractive man. “Is this her?” she asked Gray.
“The vic? Yes.”
“She’s very beautiful,” she murmured. “And this must be her boyfriend?”
“We think so.”
“Have you spoken with him yet?”
“We haven’t been able to speak with the boyfriend. They don’t live together.”
Mia set the picture back on the dresser. “This is how it usually looks. Valentine leaves the flowers beside a picture of the victim.” The gesture reminded her of a wake, where funeral wreaths were set beside pictures of the deceased. She gently turned the makeshift vase. “Some of these stems are broken.” Really, it was a sad-looking arrangement, and that wasn’t Valentine’s style. Some of the blooms were missing, giving the flowery globes a shabby, moth-eaten look. “Is it possible these flowers are from the boyfriend? Can we rule that out?”
“There’s this.”
Gray reached forward to remove a small white envelope hidden between the hydrangeas. He opened the flap and pulled out a card decorated with a cupid poised to shoot an arrow from a bow. Mia felt the blood rush to her feet. “What’s this, some kind of joke?”
“He signed the back ‘V.’” Gray flipped the card.
“Damn.” She took the card from him and delicately turned it over in her hand. “Valentine is making himself known.”
* * *
Mia pouted her lower lip when she was deep in thought. She probably didn’t even realize that, but Gray sure noticed it, just as he’d taken notice of everything else about her. Back at the hotel, he’d thought she was a beautiful woman, with her hair pulled back and that sexy slit up her dress. Now, with her hair in waves and her makeup washed off, he realized she was stunning. He told himself that her appearance wasn’t the reason he’d allowed her to come here, but now as she looked at him with those dark, almond-shaped eyes, he wondered if he wasn’t fooling himself.
“So what do we have, Dr. Perez? A copycat or Valentine?”
She did that thing with her lip again as she considered the card in her fingers. Damn, she was cute. “Serial killers evolve. It’s not like they commit the same cookie-cutter crime over and over. They’re human. What I saw at the Charles last week looked like a copycat killing, but this?” She handed the card back to him. “The blood in the kitchen bothers me. Valentine doesn’t kill his victims right away. He cages and tortures them first. Has anyone called the boyfriend?”
“The friend tried earlier,” Gray said. “Then she gave us his contact information—cell, work and home phones. Email. Nothing.”
Mia’s face darkened. “I wonder if that blood in the kitchen is his.”
She turned and walked out of the bedroom, passing Gray and D’Augostino. The two men followed her into the living area, where she was standing by the door. “I suspect Valentine isn’t a very imposing man, physically. All of his victims are diminutive in stature. All of them were women five feet one inch or shorter, and all of them were thin. Drag marks have been found at the dump sites, indicating he’s not physically strong enough to carry even these petite women.”
Lena’s the exception, thought Gray. He’d just read her stats earlier that week and had noted that she was about the same size as Mia: approximately five eight, with a similar athletic build. “Valentine has a type?”
“It may be that the victims fit a certain physical profile for Valentine,” she continued, “but victim selection is usually about opportunity.”
“He looks for women who are small enough for him to overpower,” said D’Augostino.
“That’s my theory, anyway.” Mia rested her hands on her hips. “So Valentine comes to the door under some pretense. He knocks.” She knocked in the air with one hand, talking more to herself than to the officers in the room. “He’s tracked Katherine, singled her out, and he expects her to answer the door, but someone else answers. Let’s say it’s the missing boyfriend.”
Gray watched her intently as she worked through the crime scene. “What’s his pretense for being here? Why didn’t he just abandon it and leave when the boyfriend answered the door?”
“That’s a fair point. Valentine has a fantasy of being in control, but that fantasy has never involved overpowering a man—at least not to our knowledge. If he’d known the boyfriend was home, he probably would have run.” She paused and tapped one index finger against her hip as she thought. “Maybe Katherine answered the door. She let him in. Perhaps he had flowers for her, and he offered to set them down. He attacked. Then he was interrupted.”
“The boyfriend came over.”
“Yes.” Mia gazed at the floor as she imagined the scenario. “Valentine is drugging Katherine. The medical examiner has found injection sites on the victims, none of whom were recreational drug users. We think he injected them with Rohypnol to keep them sedated. Again, this would play into his fantasy of being powerful, to have total control of his victims with minimal effort. He is drugging Katherine, and the boyfriend comes home and sees them.” She scratched her head. “But then the boyfriend would have fought him and probably overpowered him. There’s no sign of struggle here.” She looked up. “Maybe Valentine was in the kitchen.”
She headed toward the kitchen with such purpose that Gray came up behind her to restrain her from walking on the bloody floor, but she stopped on her own just short of the tile. “Valentine is in the kitchen,” she repeated to herself. “But what is he doing?”
Her brow furrowed as she thought. D’Augostino pointed to a wooden block of knives on the counter. “The carving knife is missing,” he said. “Maybe he was getting a weapon?”
Gray thought about this. “His victim is already sedated. Why would he be getting a knife?”
“Maybe when the boyfriend came home, he ran into the kitchen to get a weapon,” D’Augostino offered.
“Maybe,” Mia began, stretching the word slowly. “But if he was in the living area, would he have time to run into the kitchen and locate a sharp knife before the boyfriend began to pummel him?” She paused. “Those hydrangeas had broken stems. They also looked like they’d been stepped on. What if...?”
She stepped toward the kitchen, and Gray immediately grabbed her shoulder. “Hold on. We’re still processing this scene.” The last thing he needed was for her to go and muck up the blood evidence on the floor.
“Fine.” Mia stepped back grudgingly. “But one of you should go look around the sink.”
“What’s in the sink?”
“Maybe nothing, but someone should look.”
Gray and D’Augostino exchanged a glance, and then Gray stepped forward toward the sink, careful to walk on the white parts of the floor. The sink was stainless steel and spattered with blood. He glanced inside. “There are some dirty dishes. What else am I looking for here? Wait a sec.” He reached for a wet blob tucked behind a mug half-filled with coffee. He pulled it out with gloved fingers. “Looks like wilted lettuce.”
“Look carefully,” Mia said, leaning forward. “That’s not lettuce.”
He held it in one palm and pried the blob open gently with the index finger of his other hand. She was right—it wasn’t lettuce. He pressed the object open and it slowly took shape, revealing one sphere, then another. Gray shook his head. “I’ll be damned. It’s from a hydrangea.” He looked up to see Mia smiling with satisfaction. “CSU almost missed it. So what’s this mean?”
“I noticed the hydrangea stems were broken, and some of the blooms had gaps in them. Then there’s the fact that they’re in one of Katherine’s drinking glasses, but Valentine always supplies his own vases. And the broken glass CSU found between the kitchen and the living area—” She gestured with one finger. “That could be from a broken vase.”
“Put it all together, Mia,” said D’Augostino.
“Valentine brought the flowers. Maybe they’re part of his pretense in entering the apartment, or maybe he has them on hand as his calling card. Regardless, my theory is that he was in the kitchen putting water in the vase when the boyfriend walked in. He panicked, threw the vase at him, breaking the glass. Then he reached for a knife.” She gestured with her hands as she spoke. “If it’s Valentine, he killed him in a panic. He didn’t plan it.” She pointed to the blood. “I’ll bet you have two blood types here.”
“The boyfriend’s and Valentine’s,” Gray finished.
“Right. You’ll want to talk to area hospitals in case he’s sought treatment. And look.” Mia pointed to streaks of droplets on the cabinets. “That looks like cast off from the knife. CSU may be able to get an idea of the suspect’s height based on the location of those droplets.”
“And if the boyfriend’s dead,” said Gray, “what did Valentine do with the body?”
“He let him bleed out for a while, based on that puddle. There are drag marks on the tile, right there. But then they stop.” Her forehead tensed. “The bed was empty. It didn’t even have sheets on it.”
Without explanation, she again left and headed toward the bedroom. Gray heard her talking to herself as he followed. “Valentine may have wrapped the body in the sheets and comforter to move it. You know, to make it easier to slide him across the floor.”
Gray stood by the bedroom door. Mia was opening the only window in the bedroom and looking out. “Here’s a fire escape, and there’s a Dumpster below.” She turned around. “Did CSU check the Dumpster?”
Gray nodded gravely. “Sure did. That’s exactly where we found him.”
“You—what?” She spun around, her eyes wide with confusion. “You found him already?”
“One Gregory Stoddard,” said D’Augostino, reading from a small notepad. “Wrapped in a bloody blanket and sheets. He was still wearing the suit and tie he wore to work.” He folded the notebook and placed it in his pocket. “Apparently he’d been pulling a long day.”
“Wait a minute.” The confusion in Mia’s eyes slowly turned to anger. “You let me go through this entire exercise when you already knew what had happened? Why?”
Gray shrugged. “I wanted to see how you work and how you’d respond to a Valentine scene.” After the incident at the hotel, when he’d thought she’d been about to fall apart, he’d had to make sure Mia was up to the task. He gave her a reassuring pat on the back. “You had some good ideas. You passed, Mia. You’re on the team.”
“I don’t believe this.” She yanked her shoulder out of his reach. “You lied to me. You asked me for my professional assistance, and then you lied to me.”
“Now, wait a minute. I never lied to you. I just didn’t tell you everything we’d found.”
Gray suspected it didn’t matter what he said just then. Her cheeks were heated, her eyes hot with rage. She’d clenched her fists, and he wondered how difficult it was for her to fight the urge to strike him. “You’re the one who wanted to work this case, remember?” He tried to keep his voice from rising, but he didn’t like the way she was looking at him. “Now, I think you’re good. I like the way you worked the scene. But this is how I work, and if you don’t like that, then I’ll show you the door. It’s nothing personal, Mia.”
She glared at him, frozen in her anger and no doubt struggling to keep her control. “You withheld information from me. I can’t work with someone like that.”
“Me, neither,” Gray said, “which is why I had to make sure you weren’t deceiving me when you said you were comfortable working a Valentine scene. It’s simple. If you don’t want to work with me—”
“No.” Her voice was calmer, despite her still-flashing eyes. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
He looked her up and down. She had every right to feel enraged, but she’d maintained her self-control. He admired that. “Good,” he said, and meant it.
* * *
When Gray had offered her a ride home, Mia had refused, but she’d accepted one from D’Augostino. Gray had shrugged. What did he care if she was mad at him? As long as she helped him to find the missing girl.
He entered his apartment at almost two in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep. His bed felt uncomfortable, his apartment too warm. He took a cold shower, then sat on his couch wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and read through some of the Valentine files he’d taken home. Sleep wasn’t a priority. Somewhere, some sick freak was torturing a young grad student. Her time was running out, and Gray had to find her.
His brain felt unusually cluttered, and he had difficulty focusing. Maybe it was because he was looking at the Lena Perez file, but thoughts of Mia kept disrupting his work. He did things his way and never felt a twinge of guilt. It was just part of his job.
Yet he couldn’t get that look on her face out of his mind—the one she’d shot him when he’d told her he’d been testing her. She was just another professional consultant, so why should he care what she thought of him? But he’d hated seeing that look in her eyes. The look of disappointment. He gritted his teeth. Maybe he’d try to smooth things over with her, but an apology was out of the question. He’d done nothing wrong.
He pored over the documents for hours, watching the time pass on the clock on his wall. Three in the morning, then four, then five. Gray was never far from a clock. Lives depended on his willingness to work, no matter the hour. He must have fallen asleep at some point, because when the phone rang, he opened his eyes, disoriented and with a stack of papers on the floor beside him.
“Bartlett,” he growled into the phone.
“Lieutenant. It’s Mindy, from CSU. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
Gray glanced at the clock. Eight-thirty. He bolted upright and rubbed his eyes. “No, I was just heading out the door. What’ve you got?”
“We have an ID on that body you found by the Charles last week. The vic’s name is Samantha Watkinson. Sound familiar?”
His mind was a fog. “Not really.”
“She’s a reporter for the Globe. That’s the second Globe reporter who’s been killed in the past year. You remember that Jake Smith turned up dead not too long ago?”
“Any connection?”
“I had Ballistics check the bullets. Same gun, Lieutenant.”
Gray gave a low whistle as the news settled, unsure of what the implications were. Mindy took a breath. “There’s something else. I understand Mia Perez is working with you.”
Word sure traveled quickly. “Yes, she is.”
She hesitated. “She was at the scene last week, right? Were you watching her the entire time?”
He sat up straighter. “What are you asking, Mindy?”
“This sounds crazy. I mean, I’ve worked with Dr. Perez, and she’s always been so professional, but...was she wearing gloves? Did she happen to touch anything at the scene?”
Gray thought back. Of course he’d made Mia put on gloves. He made everyone at the scene wear gloves...right? His gut worked into a knot. “Mindy, just get to the point.”
He heard her take another breath. “I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, but you might want to ask Dr. Perez a few questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, why are her fingerprints all over the gun that was used to shoot Samantha Watkinson and Jake Smith?”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_dcf5d124-876a-5f7a-bab3-76e72872bd8c)
“You had me worried last night,” Mark said as Mia walked down the front steps to her apartment building. “You took off after the ceremony like the place was on fire.”
“Sorry. Everything’s fine.” Her cell-phone reception was spotty again, and she felt as if she was yelling into the phone. “I ran into a contact at the police department and he had some questions about a case, that’s all.”
“Oh, yeah? Are you working again?”
“I don’t know,” she replied as an ache unfurled in the center of her chest. She’d been unable to sleep last night as her heart hammered, thinking about that awful crime scene. Maybe she should count her capacity to compartmentalize her professional work among the many things she’d lost. “I miss Lena so much. It was hard enough to return to the classroom last semester, and now to get involved with police work again...” She realized she was staring down at the sidewalk as she spoke, and she lifted her head to cross the street to the neighborhood café. Be alert. “I don’t remember being this bothered by these things before.”
“That’s understandable,” said Mark.
He was silent then, and she felt oddly ashamed by her confession. She and Mark weren’t those kinds of friends, and she shouldn’t be showing him weakness or confiding in him. He had his own problems to work through. “Sorry. I’ll feel better after breakfast. Thanks for calling.”
“As I said, I was concerned, that’s all.” He cleared his throat. “Got to run. I’m about to meet with an investor.”
