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Billy’s breath whistled out. “Looks like you’ve got a job ahead of you, boy.”
Rick nodded. “Graham’s squeezing me for answers. So’s my boss.”
“The buck stops at you. It’s what you get for being the best.” But there was understanding in Billy’s tone. “A lot of serial killings go on for years. They shouldn’t expect a solution overnight.”
“It’s been three months.” Three long, stress-filled months of increasingly impatient phone calls, e-mails and ass-kicking lectures from his superiors. Senator Graham had clout, and he was using all of it in the case of his niece’s highly publicized death.
The irony was, Graham hadn’t liked her. Deirdre Morton had had a penchant for the outrageous and a rather pathetic need to grab headlines. Why Vanessa had hung out with her in college was almost as big a mystery to Rick as the identity of her killer.
“You’ll nail him.” Billy gave a decisive nod. “And I’ll say that to Senator Graham myself if he keeps pestering you.”
“It doesn’t fit.” In as much as the space allowed, Rick pushed off to pace. “The guy tried to kill her in a crowd of people in Chinatown.”
“One shot?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of gun?”
“A .32. I know—same caliber as the second victim. I’m betting on a different weapon, though.”
“Second victim was murdered in Arizona, late last month, right? It’s August now. Time frame and all, chances are good your guy flew to Houston after that. Metal detectors, physical searches—you can’t smuggle weapons onto planes these days. Guy burgles the third victim, stabs her with a knife, also not easily transportable, then hightails it on up to San Francisco. He does his burglary thing there and buys another gun. Reasons it worked once, it’ll work again.”
“He’s never gone with a crowd scene before. It’s been one-on-one in the three previous cases. The MO works. Why change it up now?”
“Why hit the first victim over the head in a sleazy alley stairwell? Why leave the second floating in a hotel bathtub, fully clothed? Why slash the third victim’s throat and let her drain out facedown on her office desk?”
That last scenario had been hard even for Rick to stomach. “The victims were alone in every case. Vanessa wasn’t.”
“But she’d have been dead just the same if the shooter’d hit his mark. Maybe results matter more to your murderer than MO.”
“That’s what Palmer thinks.”
“What does Detective Connor think?”
Rick picked up the coffeepot at Billy’s elbow, swirled the murky contents. “We didn’t get into it.”
“Too busy kissing her, huh?”
Although he didn’t answer, Billy’s remark cemented the point that what had happened between them tonight couldn’t be repeated. “I checked out her closet and her armoire.” He blew dust from a bright-green mug. “She claims nothing’s missing. I convinced her to go through them again.”
“That’ll take time.” Billy chuckled. “C’mon Rick. You’re a female, you look like Vanessa, you shop.” He paused before returning his attention to the computer. “Why’d you kiss her?”
He wasn’t going to let this go. “She grabbed my hair, okay?” At the old man’s sideways look, Rick shrugged and poured. “I was thinking about kissing her. Wanted to, was fighting it. I got close, knowing I shouldn’t. She did the rest.”
“Knew I liked her.” Beaming now, Billy sat back. His gaze lingered on the monitor. “Smart eyes, smart woman. You’re gonna have your hands full with this one, Rick.”
“Yeah.” Rick drank, managed not to wince. “I just hope the same can be said for the killer.”
HE SAT ACROSS FROM A CHURCH, alone and shaking. He couldn’t work up the courage to move closer. Maybe he could kneel on the steps outside. God would understand. He’d been through the same thing Himself, hadn’t He?
An eye for an eye, that was the deal.
The rage flared in an instant, so intense it made him tremble. It bubbled in his veins. He would shoot her in the eye if he could. Half blind her before she died. God would guide him as always.
“Thou shalt not kill…” a small voice whispered in his head.
“No!” He put his palms to his ears and pressed them tight. “An eye for an eye,” he repeated. And said it and said it until all he could see were Vanessa Connor’s gold-colored eyes.
Chapter Three
Wheeling and dealing. That’s what it came down to in the end. She could be part of the investigation—officially Federal Agent Rick Maguire’s investigation—so long as she gave him her full cooperation.
Vanessa had been a cop long enough to know how the city wheels turned, how deals were struck. How Terence Palmer’s mind worked.
So she propped her eyes open, drank four cups of coffee, shoved all thoughts of hot kisses and Rick Maguire’s sexy mouth from her head and went through both her closet and her armoire again. Twice. The surprise came near the end of her second search.
“One little black dress missing,” she informed Rick the next day. They’d hooked up in Captain Palmer’s office. The unfortunate captain was at a meeting with the mayor. “It’s an older dress, that’s why I didn’t miss it at first.”
Rick made a note on his handheld PC. “Can you describe it?”
“Black jersey, clingy, with a deep V-neck. It’s a mini.” At his slanted look, a smile blossomed. “They’re fair to wear until you’re thirty-five. I’m twenty-nine.”
He glanced at her legs, clad in stonewashed denim today, but said nothing.
He continued to enter far more information than she’d offered. Patient by nature, she perched a hip on the captain’s desk. She wore a sleeveless white T with a black vest to cover her shoulder holster. Swinging a booted foot, she waited, stopped herself from fantasizing twice and finally nudged his leg. “I don’t know what you’re putting in there, but I haven’t said half that much since I got here.”
“I’m running a comparison.”
“Which suggests that my friends had stuff stolen from their closets, too. Same sort of thing?”
He finished his input and closed the file. “I only have one comp so far. Deirdre Morton itemized her clothes and supplemented the list with photos.”
“You’re joking.”
“She even had a catalog system for socks and underwear.”
“Lingerie.” When his brows came together, she grinned. “Women wear lingerie, Rick. Men and children have underwear. What was missing?”
“A red spandex dress—also a mini—with about fifty zippers on it.”
“Sounds appropriately slutty.” But she had to wonder why the killer had taken that particular item. “What was Deirdre wearing when they found her?”
Rick hit more keys and handed her the PC.
He hadn’t spared her. The photo of Deirdre in death had been taken at the scene. There was blood pooled on the ground and pieces of trash scattered around her head. She lay facedown, her white-blond hair askew and a long purple dress twisted around her body.
Blanking her reaction, Vanessa returned the computer. “She liked long flowy things in college. I think she pictured herself as a sophisticated Parisian model.”
“From sophisticated model to zippered spandex.”
“We all have our moods, but thankfully most of us change with the times. I’m told people walked around San Francisco wearing bathrobes and sandals in the late sixties.”
When he set his eyes on hers, Vanessa felt a faint blush warm her cheeks. God help her, she’d need to do something about that if they were going to work together.
“Have you changed since college, Vanessa?”
She worked on the blush. “More than you can imagine, and that’s all I’m saying right now. It’s after noon. Bobby Valley’s associate said he only shows up at the spa for a few hours a day.”
“A spa on Haight Street.” Rick’s eyes glinted with humor. “Should be an interesting meeting.”
Vanessa preceded him through the noisy bullpen and down the stairs to the street. Willpower kept her eyes off his mouth and her mind on their goal. They had to start somewhere, and one of the people she and the victims all had in common was a man named Robert Valley. He’d been a self-defense instructor when they’d gone to Berkeley. Now, he claimed to own and operate a day spa in Haight-Ashbury.
Settled in Rick’s car, Vanessa flipped through her notes. “Mary’s Massage Parlor is now the Robert Valley Spa and Wellness Center. I can’t see displaying a sign like that on Haight Street.”
Rick glanced over. “What was he like?”
“Buff,” she decided after a moment. “But only at first glance. He was flabby around the middle. I remember thinking that was odd for a self-defense master. And he smelled like fried chicken. It put me off.” At his skeptical look, she moved a shoulder. “I like the smell of clean, okay? It’s a quirk.”
Rick smelled better than clean, she thought. His hair, his skin, his clothes…Resolute, she set her mind back on Bobby Valley.
“What else do I remember about him? He’d be in his early forties now, I guess.”
“Forty-seven.”
“So he was thirty-seven when we went to college? Bit of a pervert, then.”
“Did he hit on you?”
“He hit on all of us every chance he got, but me least of all. I think he knew he grossed me out. Plus I had a boyfriend.”
“David Matthew Dunlop.”
Indignation swelled. “Do I have any private life left?”
“Where Berkeley’s concerned, no. You did three years of college, had one boyfriend for two of those years. Graduation day arrived, you left for Rotterdam where your mother lived, Dunlop moved to San Jose. You never got back together. More the fool David D.”
Vanessa had her teeth bared until his last remark. It mollified her enough that she conceded, “He didn’t like my choice of careers. I was supposed to take a cue from my mother and go into law. She died that summer while we were cruising down the Rhine. When I got home, I enrolled at the police academy. David stayed in San Jose, college became a fond memory—and we’re way off topic, here. David didn’t murder anyone. Bobby Valley’s another story.”
“Did any of your friends go out with Valley?”
“Deirdre and Sylvia Porter did. More than once. Captain Palmer’s searching for Sylvia.”
“So are we.”
Vanessa couldn’t stop the feline smile. “That’ll scare the hell out of her.”
“Didn’t like her, huh?”
“She tried to steal my boyfriend.”
“Sounds bitchy.”
“You could say. Even Deirdre never stooped that low.”
“Was this David guy a jock?”
“You made jock sound like jerk. He was into sports, yes, but we were talking about Bobby.”
When Rick cast her a half-lidded look, Vanessa found herself wanting to reach over and erase the crease that had formed between his eyes.
Very bad idea, her brain warned. Hands off; focus on; no more kissing.
She released a breath, willed the car’s AC to cool her suddenly warm skin. “Okay, so Bobby Valley was a minor perv who dated two of the five girls in our group. Back then, he taught self-defense courses off-campus. Now he owns a spa. A highly questionable one, I’m thinking. He…”
“Were there ever more than five?”
“Excuse me?”
“In your group.”
“Ah, well, lots of girls came and went, but only the five of us were there from start to finish. Which appears to be relevant for reasons I still can’t fathom. As far as I’m aware, we had Bobby and one professor in common.”
“That’s it, just the two men? Your old boyfriend doesn’t factor into this?”
“Dave’s not a murderer, so yes, just the two men. Unless you count our male classmates, which I suppose we’ll have to.”
“We’ve checked out a long list of those classmates, Vanessa. So far there’s nothing to implicate any of them. The investigation’s ongoing by the department.”
“There you go then.” She hesitated. “As for other factors, you might want to add Orrin O’Malley to the list.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?”
“He’s Sandy Lewis’s cousin and currently the deputy mayor of San Francisco.”
“Ah, right. I met him briefly. He’s a dork.”
“That’s today, Rick. In college, Orry was considered a troublemaker. At the very least, he was unconventional.” She gestured at a parking spot. “Bobby’s place is two blocks from here. I’d arm my vehicle if I were you.”
The heat slapped her as she stepped out. Pictures of Bobby Valley and now Orrin O’Malley swam in her head. She’d forgotten about Orry O. Then again, she’d forgotten a lot of things about college, things she’d rather not remember, but would with clarity by the time this investigation ended.
Resisting an urge to tug at her top, Vanessa adjusted her sunglasses and waited for Rick to lock up and join her.
“I’ve always liked Haight-Ashbury,” she confessed, doing a circle on the sidewalk. “It’s got a unique vibe.”
“I remember it.”
She lifted the glasses. “You know San Francisco?”
