When No One Is Watching

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Mia didn’t see too much of Mark these days, but every time they spoke, it seemed he was meeting with one investor or another, trying to secure funding for Eminence Tower. The architectural renderings for the project had been published in the papers, and they were nothing short of stunning. The tower would include high-end retail and restaurants on the first three levels, business offices in the middle, and posh residences at the very top. From what she’d seen, the aesthetics were sleek and modern but with a nod to classic design, with gray marble floors and sweeping windows to admit natural lighting. On the very top floor, an observation deck would be constructed from which visitors could gaze at the Boston skyline and harbor.

Despite the project’s magnificence, a core group of residents was unhappy with the development, citing it as one more example of gentrification. Mark wouldn’t have cared, except the project was partly funded with taxpayer money, and Lena had mentioned once that Mark received angry phone calls and threatening emails from a taxpayer group almost daily.

“A business meeting? You know it’s Sunday, right?” Mia chided him. “Some people rest on Sundays.”

“You’re working today, too,” he said. “Some people may rest on Sundays. Not us.”

She couldn’t argue with that. She’d been planning to call Gray during breakfast. “You’re right—I’m not one to talk. Have a good meeting.”

“Talk to you later, Mia. Take care.”

She ended the call and slipped the cell phone into her bag. The brutal summer heat had dissipated in an overnight thunderstorm, leaving the city breezy and warm. Mia had dressed in a simple brown linen dress and sandals, and the light fabric twirled pleasantly around her legs as she walked the sun-dappled sidewalk. She slowed her pace to extend the pleasure of being alive and walking down a beautiful city street.

“Nice day.”

He was sitting on the front steps of a brick Victorian row house, wearing jeans and a white oxford shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows to reveal his muscular forearms. He was reading the newspaper. When she met his eyes, he wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look as grouchy as she knew he could be.

“Gray.” It was a statement in itself, and in her tone she twisted her complete surprise with a small measure of annoyance. “What are you doing here?”

He folded the paper and tucked it under one arm before rising from the step and walking to her side, making the trip in easy strides. “I love the South End, don’t you?”

“Yes. That’s why I live here. You didn’t answer my question.”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eleven, but I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. Would you like to join me?”

Mia couldn’t decide whether to be completely irritated or flattered, but where Gray was concerned, she was trending toward irritated. She enjoyed lingering over her Sunday coffee alone or with the newspaper or a book as a companion—the solitude gave her space to think. Yet she couldn’t deny, despite her still-simmering fury over the hazing he’d subjected her to last night, that Gray’s request had sent butterflies flitting in her stomach.

So he’s hot, she thought, taking in his slow smile and freshly shaved cheeks. His dark hair was tousled, giving him a rolled-out-of-bed look. Hot, arrogant and so emotionally unavailable. Great choice, Mia. Everything about him sent up red flags.

“I was just heading out for breakfast,” she said. “You can join me.”

“I’d like that.”

He smiled boyishly, as if it were such a coincidence that they’d run into each other this way. In her neighborhood. A block from her home. “You still didn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Waiting for you.”

She snapped her gaze toward him in surprise, and he said, “What? I thought you demanded honesty from your colleagues?”

“Yes, but...most people aren’t so forthright.”

Now her heart was jutting around, and she clung to the straps of her bag with both hands, as if afraid it might fly off her shoulder. These nerves. She had to figure out how to get a handle on them. “You could’ve just called. You have my number.” She swept her fingers across her forehead to catch a tendril that had blown out of place. “This approach feels sneaky.”

He looked at her with interest. “Forthright and sneaky in the same breath? Maybe I just like surprises.”

An angry huff escaped her lips, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. They walked a little farther in silence, and Mia had just resigned herself to trying to enjoy breakfast to the extent possible when Gray said, “We got an ID on that woman by the Charles. Samantha Watkinson.”

“Oh.” Mia always felt a pang of sadness when unidentified victims were finally named. A name placed them in a family and a social circle. A name meant someone the victim loved had identified her body.

“Did you know her?”

Gray’s tone was casual, but Mia glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “What an odd question. No, I didn’t. Why do you ask?”

He handed her the section of newspaper he’d been reading and pointed to a column byline. “Samantha Watkinson,” she read, and looked at the date. “This is dated from a few weeks ago.”

“I’m a little behind on my recycling.” He scratched his temple self-consciously. “Did you catch the title? ‘Purveyors of Pleasure.’ Looks like she was working on an exposé about the sex trade in the Boston region. Prostitution. Human trafficking. She’s apparently been working undercover, visiting various pickup sites, trying to interview the girls and johns.”

Mia thought back to the shorts and T-shirt the victim had been wearing when she was attacked. “She didn’t look like she was working undercover the night she was killed.”

“She wasn’t. She was killed outside of her apartment, only a few blocks from here.”

A jarring thought, that someone in the surrounding neighborhood had been so violently killed. “So Samantha was probably in a low-risk situation at the time of the attack, killed right outside her own home in a densely populated neighborhood.”

Gray stuffed his hands into his pockets as they walked. “What’s that mean to you?”

“It means the killer took a big risk to get to her. In this neighborhood, he could have been seen and identified or stopped midattack.”

“Someone went to some trouble.”

“Right, and that suggests that this wasn’t a crime of opportunity. The steps that the perpetrator took following the crime—buying the flowers and disposing of the body—also suggest a more organized criminal.”

“Premeditation?”

“Yes. It seems to me that someone sought her out.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on the risk the killer took in killing her. If any victim would have done, he would probably have chosen an easier target. I don’t know how many times Samantha was stabbed, and I only got to spend five minutes at the scene.” She glanced at Gray, but he didn’t register a response. The guy should play poker. “But it looked like she was stabbed many times before she was shot, postmortem.”

“Which means?”

“Overkill. A possible rage-retaliatory motive. It suggests this was personal.”

“Retribution for something that she published? Or knew?”

Mia shrugged. “I’ll leave that to the investigators.”

Gray was silent for several steps as he seemed to digest the analysis. “Thirty-seven,” he said.

“What’s that?”

He looked at her. “You said you didn’t know how many times she’d been stabbed. Thirty-seven.”

Mia attempted to muster a response and failed.

They crossed a one-way street, narrowly missing a collision with a cyclist riding on the sidewalk. Gray cursed under his breath. Still grumpy.

“Look, if you want to find this killer, you should learn as much as you can about Samantha,” Mia said. “And I don’t mean just what she was doing that night. I mean you need to know who she was and how she enjoyed spending her time. You should interview her family and those close to her.”

The rich trumpet peals of Miles Davis billowed from the open window of an apartment. Mia noticed a shift in Gray’s posture as he slumped slightly forward. “You criminal profilers talk a lot about victims.”

“It makes some investigators uncomfortable to think about a dead body as a human being. That’s understandable. They want to distance themselves from the victim’s humanity as a way to keep from feeling horror and sadness at what the victim suffered. But in my experience, you can’t know the criminal without also knowing the victim. Sometimes that means admitting that the victim wasn’t a perfect angel. Sometimes they engage in behavior that makes them more susceptible to an attack. If we know about that behavior, we may be able to obtain a profile of a criminal who would take advantage under those circumstances.”

Gray appeared lost in thought as he chewed on the statement, gazing at the sidewalk before them. “So, hypothetically speaking, if I were trying to find the person who attacked you last summer, I should first get to know everything about you, even if that means having to air some skeletons in your closet?”

Her spine stiffened at something pointed in the tone of his question. “Yes. Hypothetically speaking.”

They stopped in front of the café. Many of the patrons were sitting outside at round wrought-iron tables with red umbrellas, enjoying the cloudless morning. “Should we dine alfresco?” Gray asked.

Opportunities to indulge in summer sunshine were rare enough that even the temptation to eat indoors, where service would surely be faster, could not dissuade Mia. “Why not?”

They selected a table in the corner, closest to the brick edifice of the café. Gray pulled out Mia’s chair, scraping the feet along the concrete sidewalk and then brushing the seat free of crumbs. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me to breakfast.”

She opened her mouth to remind him that he’d invited himself, but then she remembered what he’d said the night before about her need to be the smartest person in the room. Maybe he’d had a point. But telling him that she was delighted he could join her would be a lie, so she settled on a tight smile.

With strong hands, he helped her to adjust her seat until she was comfortably at the table. Then he seated himself directly beside her. He ordered a coffee with an omelet and sourdough toast, and she ordered an oversize cranberry-orange muffin with a cappuccino. “The cranberry muffins are amazing,” she said as the server left the table. “They use cranberries fresh from Cape Cod. You should take a few with you when you leave.”

Gray didn’t respond for a time, and his demeanor darkened. Mia brushed a hand across her throat. Gray’s friendliness had vanished abruptly. Something was off. She twisted the glass beads in her necklace and looked away from him toward a group of sparrows pecking at a piece of discarded bagel. She envied those birds. If she’d had wings, she’d have flown away right then.

Then Gray cleared his throat and punctured the silence. “Mia, have you ever owned a gun?”

* * *

Gray had learned investigation techniques from some of the best cops in the department. When he was a rookie officer, his sergeant had taken him under his wing and given him morsels of advice that had proven as valuable as any formal training Gray had received. “Use the element of surprise” was one of them.

Mia looked more than surprised. She looked stunned, and then she looked furious. Her dark eyes blinked several times before narrowing, and she leaned closer and hissed, “What’s this about, Gray?”

He leaned back in his chair and held up his hands innocently. “It’s just a question. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You startled me on my walk this morning, waiting outside my apartment like some stalker. Then you asked me without any provocation whether I knew the murdered woman, Samantha Watkinson.” She counted out his offenses with her fingers. “Then you suggested I may have skeletons in my closet and asked me if I’ve ever owned a gun.” A mirthless laugh sputtered from her throat. “I guess my question is, do I need a lawyer?”

“You’re not under arrest. You’re not even under investigation. I’m just making conversation.”

“Well, if this is how you socialize, you must not have many friends.” She thrust herself back in her chair.