Dead Wrong

The woman didn’t like explaining herself. After crimping her lips and thinking about it, she said, “This one sounded like my Rufus out there. Don’t bark often, but when he does, you best jump.”

“A deep, powerful engine.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

Her own lips were going numb. “Did you notice when the truck came back?”

“Didn’t look at the clock.” She chewed it over. “Twenty minutes. Half hour.”

The timing was just right.

“Mrs. Bailey, do you think you’ve heard this particular engine before?”

“Can’t say.”

“Would you recognize it again?”

“Might.”

Trina gave her most winning smile, which considering she couldn’t feel most of her face might look more like a death mask. “You’ve been a great help, Mrs. Bailey. We may need to speak to you again. In the meantime, I appreciate your cooperation.”

With no “You’re welcome,” or even a “Mind you don’t slip on the steps,” the old lady slammed the door shut in Trina’s face. A dead bolt lock thudded home.

If she wasn’t so darn cold, Trina would have laughed. She hurried to the Explorer she was driving, started it and cranked up the heat. Intermittent shivers wracked her. But at least she’d learned something that might be useful, she thought with a small glow of triumph. Useful enough, maybe, that Lieutenant Patton would let her keep working the case.

She couldn’t believe her luck to have been singled out today, and by Lieutenant Patton, of all people. Trina had become a cop because she wanted to be just like Meg Patton and her two sisters, the one Elk Springs police chief, the other an arson investigator. From the time she was eleven or twelve she’d read about their exploits in the newspaper, and since Will went to the high school people had talked, too. Lieutenant Patton had been the county Youth Officer back when Trina was in high school, so she’d talked at assemblies or in Trina’s classes a couple of times a year. Trina thought she was amazing—beautiful and brave and smart. Everything Trina wanted to be.

In her interview for the promotion to detective Trina had almost blurted out something about how much she’d always admired the lieutenant. Thank goodness she’d been able to stop herself. Even if it was true, it would have sounded like the worst brown-nosing.

Now here she was, hardly a month later, partnered with her. Despite her shivers, Trina still marveled. Junior partner, of course. The lieutenant had gone back to the station to find out whether the killer from six years ago had somehow gotten out of prison and also to try to discover whether other jurisdictions had had murders with this same M.O. Lucky Trina had been assigned one patrol officer to help her canvass the houses along Butte Road.

But it had to be done, and she was pretty excited to have actually learned something. Maybe. Unless the deep-throated pickup or SUV had just been dropping some drunk ranch hand back at the Triple B or the Running Y. Except she’d stopped at the Triple B herself and no ranch hands had admitted to being out late last night. She’d find out from Officer Buttram whether the same was true at the Running Y. Those were the only two working ranches past the Bailey’s place.

An hour and a half later, she hadn’t learned a thing. Buttram and she agreed to meet back at the station.

There, he shook his head. His ruddy face glowed. “Bitch of a night.”

“I would have traded my right arm for a thermos of coffee.”

“With a dash of whiskey.” He took off his sheepskin-lined gloves. “Nobody heard nothing.”

“I found somebody who did. A Mrs. Bailey.”

Her sense of triumph dimmed at the sight of his face.

“There’s a nasty one.”

“She calls in complaints?”

“Once a month or so.” He shook his head. “Hates the neighbors, hates teenagers, doesn’t much like cows. You believe her, somebody is always being noisy or trespassing.”

Noisy? “I don’t remember a house near hers.”

“She has damn fine hearing.”

Trina quizzed him about who he’d talked to at the Running Y, then went to Lieutenant Patton’s office.

Through the glass inset, she saw the lieutenant lift her head at the sound of the knock. She waved Trina in.

“You look cold.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her superior scowled. “Quit ma’aming me.”

“Sir…”

“That isn’t any better. You make me feel old.”

“Lieutenant.”

“A slight improvement.” She sighed. “I suppose that was an exercise in futility?”

“Actually, I did get one report of unusual traffic.”

Brows rose. “Really?”

Trina repeated what Mrs. Bailey said. “I understand she’s something of a crank….”

“She?”

“Mrs. Bailey?”

“Not Luella Bailey! She’s a thorn in the side of anyone who has dealings with her. Daniel—my brother-in-law—counts his blessings daily that his place isn’t beside hers. Pete Hardesty of the Running Y gets hell every time a steer finds a fence break.”

Crushed and trying to hide it, Trina asked, “Does that mean she’s not reliable?”

“Hmm.” Meg Patton rubbed her chin as she thought. “Well, she’s not delusional. When she says a steer is eating her dahlias, by God there it is. Kids do drag race out on Butte Road. So…no. She might actually be a good witness. Most folks out there wouldn’t pay any mind to a passing vehicle. Luella, though, lives to find grievances.” Her gaze sharpened. “Tell me again what she said.”

Trina did.

“Twenty minutes to half an hour. That would be about right.”

Trina nodded at the phone. “Did you learn anything?”

“Ricky Mendoza is right where he should be. That lets him out. No sign of Amy’s Kia. I sent someone to check her apartment complex and the lots outside the brewhouses and restaurants that seem like the most obvious choices. Otherwise, I’ve put out calls. Any kind of match through VICAP will take time.” The federal database was a godsend to local law enforcement. Unfortunately, it had limitations; many small jurisdictions didn’t input crimes.

Trina nodded.

“I’ve already talked to Amy Owen’s parents. They still live here, only a few blocks from where I grew up in the old town.”

“She hadn’t married, then?”

“Married and divorced. The ex is next on my list.”

“He’s around?”

The lieutenant consulted her notes. “Doug Jennings. He’s a ski bum, according to the parents. Amy wanted to think about buying a house, starting a family. He wasn’t interested.”

“So the divorce wasn’t ugly?” From what she’d read, Trina was willing to bet this killer and Amy had been strangers, anyway, but you had to consider all possibilities.

“Not according to them. They say he’ll be broken up to hear about her murder. I went by his place and he wasn’t home.” Meg Patton rose. “What say we go talk to him now, then take a look at her apartment.”

“Am I going to stay on the case, then?” Trina asked, rising, too.

The lieutenant looked surprised. “I tagged you, didn’t I?”

This didn’t seem the moment to ask why. “Thank you, ma…um, Lieutenant.”

Exhilaration wiped out her weariness. Her mind buzzed. She’d want to read the file on the six-year-old murder. Look for details that were the same—and ones that were different. Talk to whoever found that body. The cops who worked the murder. If this one was as similar as Lieutenant Patton claimed, this killer had to be close in some way to the previous crime. Copycats had a motive. What was this one’s?

Wow, she thought, feeling giddy. I’m a detective. A real detective.

Not even missing the cup of coffee she hadn’t yet poured, she followed Lieutenant Patton out.

CHAPTER TWO

WILL’S RESOLVE to move home to Elk Springs wavered from time to time. Pretty well daily, in fact. Tonight was a definite plunge in the Mood-O-Meter.

He was staying at his father’s while he looked for a place to live. Their relationship was pleasant but cool, thanks to Will’s long-held belief that his parents in their professional capacities were responsible for the scum who’d killed Gillian being out on the street and therefore free to rape and mutilate. If they’d done their jobs…

But they hadn’t, for reasons he understood intellectually if not emotionally. Now, six years later, he also understood that his anger had mostly been misplaced. But things once said couldn’t be taken back, and much as he regretted the fact, Will knew he couldn’t have back what he’d lost that night.

This week, his father was away at a conference for sheriffs and police chiefs. With him gone, Will was able to relax a little. He got along well with Beth, his dad’s wife, and with her kids.

Stephanie was a senior in high school this year, a really smart girl who had applied to private colleges like Whitman and even Vassar back east. Pretty, with her mother’s dark hair and blue eyes, she was the same serious kid she’d been when her mother married Jack Murray, Sheriff of Butte County.

Redheaded Lauren, fourteen, was in contrast currently grounded because she’d been caught cutting classes. She was a cheerleader and, according to her mother, a social butterfly who was a teenager with a capital T. Will could see what she meant. Lauren was all giggles and glow one minute, sulky the next. He sympathized, since he remembered his own teenage angst when his mom and he moved to Elk Springs so he could finally get to know his father. One minute, he’d believed he could clear Juanita Butte in a single bound, and the next he’d been sure his mother was trying to ruin his life.

So far, both girls seemed pleased to have their stepbrother around.

He’d been okay earlier, watching a TV movie with Steph and explaining to her why the whole trial scene was crap. Lauren had wandered in once, curled her lip, said, “That looks boring,” and gone off to instant message with the friends she was banned from seeing out of school until next Wednesday. “An eternity,” she’d moaned at dinner, after Beth had declined to release her from purgatory.

But after the movie, when Steph disappeared to her room and Beth went to the den to work on orders for her stationery business, Will sat in the empty living room and thought, What am I doing? I must be nuts.

The room, the house, got to him. He’d helped his dad strip these floors and the woodwork and then stain and refinish them. They’d both learned as they went, repairing plaster walls, painting, plumbing, even rewiring. Maybe because he’d been without a father for the first fourteen years of his life, Will had been more eager to spend time with his than most of his buddies were. Now this big old Queen Anne style house made him edgy. Aware of times past, of lost trust and easy affection.

The house was part of his history with Gillian, too. She’d spent weekends and school breaks here with him. They’d had incredible talks right here in the living room, made passionate love upstairs in his bedroom. They’d had that last fight in his bedroom, too, one that had been quiet but intense until she’d walked out on him. He’d run after her and, not caring who heard, stood on the porch and yelled, “Go! I don’t give a shit!”

But he’d given a shit when the cops were on his dad’s doorstep the next morning to inform him that his girlfriend had been found raped and strangled in Deschutes Park. He’d given a shit when they politely and inexorably questioned his whereabouts during the night even as his gut roiled with disbelief and horror and guilt, because he’d let Gilly stalk out without trying to stop her.

From where he sat right now, in a leather club chair, he could see the entry. Empty, but for ghosts. A rangy, carefree version of himself with Dad, scraping thick layers of varnish from the stair banister. He and Gilly, tiptoeing in after going out with some of his high school friends, stifling giggles, pausing to make out just inside the front door, two or three times on the staircase, barely getting the bedroom door shut before shedding their clothes. A slightly older Gillian screaming, “We’re done! Over!” before she flung open the front door to leave. Two officers wearing the familiar Butte County Sheriff’s Department green, saying, “I’m sorry to inform you…”

He groaned and laid his head back, his eyes closed. He didn’t even know why he felt compelled to leave cosmopolitan Portland for this small town that held so many complex memories. He loved Elk Springs, but he hated it, too.

Even for himself, the best explanation he could come up with for accepting the job in the Butte County prosecutor’s office was that he needed answers. Closure. Understanding.

He had an uneasy relationship with both his parents, although Gilly and his accusations had gone un-mentioned on all sides for five years or more. Mad because he’d hurt his mom, his aunt Abby hardly spoke to him, he didn’t know his own half-brother and -sister the way he should, and the stories about his grandfather Patton had begun to seem apocryphal. Had he been anywhere near as bad as they said? Even if he was, did that justify both Meg Patton and Jack Murray being so soft on a troubled young kid that they let him slide out of taking responsibility for one crime after another?

And Gilly… Why hadn’t she just driven back to Salem? Why did she have to go to a bar? Was she getting in her car with the intention of returning here, maybe to say, “I’m sorry,” when a hand closed over her mouth from behind? Had she thought Will might still come after her? Somehow save her?

Still caught in that hazy nexus of past and present, he wondered with a dull ache why he hadn’t gone after her. Her parents grieved to this day. They claimed not to blame him, but they must.

He blamed himself.

The doorbell rang, and he jerked, his eyes opening. Who in hell at this time of night?

Eyes wide with instinctive alarm, Beth emerged from the home office at the back of the house, but Will, who had reached the front hall before her, said, “Let me find out who it is.”

Through the peephole he saw the dark green of sheriff’s department uniforms. His sense of disorientation returned. Gillian?

But when he opened the door, it was his mother he found on the porch, along with another officer. A young woman who appeared vaguely familiar.

“Mom?”

Her face looked drawn, her eyes tired. “Will, I need to talk to you.”

He backed up. Cold air rushed in with them. Or maybe the chill was inside him.

“Hi, Beth.” Mom tried to smile.

“Meg.” Beth pressed a hand to her breast. “Is everything all right? It’s not Jack?”

“No, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. No, everybody in the family is fine.”

But somebody, Will diagnosed, wasn’t fine. Somebody Will knew, or she wouldn’t be here.

The wife of a cop, Beth knew, too. She looked Will’s mother over with an experienced eye. “Can I get you coffee? Better yet, a bite to eat? I’ll bet you haven’t stopped, have you?”

“I’m fine…” Meg stopped. She gave a faint laugh. “Actually, I’m starved. A snack would be great, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Don’t be silly.” Beth shooed them towards the living room. “Coming right up.”

His mother pulled off her gloves, then began to shrug out of her coat. He took it and the other cop’s, too, and hung them on the tree near the front door.

He took a few steps into the living room, then stopped. “What’s up?”

“Detective Giallombardo, this is my son Will. Will, Trina Giallombardo. You may remember her from school.”

“You look familiar,” he admitted.

“I was a couple of years behind you.”

That would explain it. By his junior and senior years, he and his friends hadn’t been interested in lower classmen. Maybe a really hot girl. This Trina hadn’t been that. So he’d probably passed her in the hall without ever really focusing on her face.

“Detective Giallombardo,” he acknowledged, then faced his mother. “Tell me.”

“A girl you dated in high school was found murdered today.”

A sound escaped him. A profanity, maybe. He reached out and gripped the back of the leather chair.

“Who?”

“Amy Owen.”

He’d expected… He didn’t know who he’d expected. But not Amy.

“We only went out three or four times.”

“That’s what Detective Giallombardo thought.”

This woman he didn’t know, who had been two years behind him in school, was suddenly an expert on his life?

“You’re well-informed.”

Her returning gaze was expressionless. “You were the big guy in school. People talked.”

His irritation vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Amy. My God.”

“Sit,” his mother ordered.

“Here’s coffee,” Beth said behind him.

He sank into the chair, soul-sick. On the job, he dealt in murder often, but not the murder of people he knew. Only with Gillian had he experienced firsthand the horror and grief family and friends felt.

Amy Owen, pretty, not smart but sweet.

“I saw her last week,” he said.

“What?” Hand outstretched for a cup of coffee she hadn’t yet picked up from the tray, his mother turned.

“I saw her.” Jeez, he wished he hadn’t. He wished Amy Owen was no more than a hazy memory. “She was at J.R.’s when I went there with Gavin and Travis.” No surprise—the sports bar was a favorite hangout for locals. “She was with Jody Cox. Remember her? And a friend of hers, a newcomer.”

“Another woman?”

He saw what she was getting at. “Yeah, a woman. Karin. Don’t remember the last name. I have her phone number if you want it.”

Will saw a fleeting expression of…something cross Trina Giallombardo’s face. Another time he might have wondered at it. Right now, he was too wrapped up in the image of Amy jumping from the bar stool to wave at him.

“Will! Will! Over here. Wow! Hi!”

He guessed he’d flirted with her a little bit, because she’d been flirting with him, but it was her friend’s phone number he’d quietly asked for before the women announced they were calling it a night.

His mother sat on the couch facing him. “Did she tell you she’s divorced?”

“Yeah. Actually, her ex came in, too. Didn’t look real happy to see her with a bunch of guys.”

“Did he say anything?”

Will shook his head. “That’s just my impression. He came over and she introduced him. He was polite.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“Not that I saw.” His mother was interrogating him, he realized. She’d even flipped her notebook open. The coffee and toasted sandwiches Beth had made sat untouched on the table.

Her gaze was sharp on him. He could see her brain humming. “Did he stay around?”

“Uh…I don’t really know.” He frowned. “Wait. I did see him a little later. Maybe half an hour.” Appalled, he said, “You don’t think…”

“We don’t think anything yet. No, he’s unlikely. This didn’t look like a crime of passion. Someone who’d loved her, however angry he was, would have felt remorse, regret. Treated her body with more respect.”

“Was it a bad one?” Will asked quietly.

His mother looked older than she had since—damn, since he’d aged her with his accusations and wild rage.

“Yeah. Will…”

He wasn’t going to like what was coming. Aware of both women watching him, he braced himself and waited.

“We have a copycat. Will, this looked like Gillian’s murder.”

He lurched to his feet. “What do you mean?”

She rose, too. “I mean it could have been the same killer. The body was left in the same condition.”

An image of Gilly’s body flashed before his eyes. Through gritted teeth, he asked, “Was she raped?”

His mother’s expression was compassionate. “Yes.”

In some part of his mind, he noted that Trina Giallombardo’s dark eyes were only watchful. If she felt pity, suspicion, dislike, sympathy, she didn’t show it.

“Strangled with a jockstrap?”

“Yes.”

He wheeled away to stand with his back to the women. He was panting as if he’d sprinted the last half mile of his daily run. Sweating. Sick. Gilly, oh Gilly. The women’s faces overlay like a double exposure, both blond and fine-boned. Not Gilly, he thought. Not this time. Instead, some sick son of a bitch had raped and tortured pretty, sweet Amy Owen, then left her body as if she were a whore. Garbage.

“Who?” he asked, voice guttural.

His mother sounded grim. “We’ll find out.”

“Was she in the same place?”

“No.” Gillian’s body had been left right in town, among the willow trees in the town park on the bank of the Deschutes River. “Amy was left at the lava cone past the Triple B. A couple of kids found her.”

He turned to face them all of them, Beth in the background. “Why are you here?”

His mother’s expression changed. “What?”

“Is my name going to come up?”

She gaped. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Yeah? Why not? I’d be a logical suspect, wouldn’t I?”

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He was glad to have disconcerted her for once, put her on the defensive.

Detective Giallombardo said, “Your mother didn’t want you to read about it in the morning paper. She thought the news would be better coming from her.”

Shame flooded him, as she’d intended. Will swore and scraped a hand over his face.

“I’m sorry, Mom. God. I’m sorry.”

His mother gave a twisted smile. “It’s okay. Of course you’re upset.”

He saw in her eyes that he’d hurt her. As, he realized, he’d intended. And he didn’t even know why he’d lashed out.

“Mendoza…” He hated the taste of the bastard’s name in his mouth.

“Is still at Salem.” The Oregon State Penitentiary was in Salem, Oregon’s capital.

“A friend of his…”

“That’s a possibility we’ll pursue.”

“But not a very good one.”

She didn’t have to answer. Of course, it was unlikely one of Ricardo Mendoza’s friends would commit a crime this savage, and why? What was the motive?

For the first time, Will was thinking like the attorney and prosecutor he was.

“What’s the point? What’s this scum trying to say?”

“I have no idea,” his mother admitted. “Maybe nothing. Maybe this guy just liked the idea. Thought wiping out her identity, metaphorically, by replacing it with a crude symbol of masculinity was funny.”

“Like he’s saying, ‘In your face’?” Will asked.

She spread her hands. “Maybe he thought a jockstrap sounded like a handy murder weapon. Hard to trace, wouldn’t hold fingerprints well, and, hey, you could carry it around in your pocket without exciting suspicion. You’re on your way to the gym. What’s the big deal?”

“Have you ever before or since read or heard of a woman strangled with a jockstrap?” he asked.

“No,” she conceded.

“Here we are. Small town. Not all that many murders, and ninety-nine percent of those are your garden-variety shoot-the-abusive-husband type. Biker brawls. Not the work of serial killers.”

They’d speculated back then that Gillian’s murder was too “sophisticated” to be a killer’s first. The savagery coupled with the care taken displaying the body, had seemed to be the work of someone who’d done this before. On the other hand, Mendoza had also done unbelievably stupid things: he was seen leaving the bar with Gilly, his skin was beneath her fingernails and his semen was found in her body. Evidence of grandiosity and disorganized thinking, everyone said. He’d felt invincible, never thought he’d be suspected. So what if he’d talked to Gillian in the bar? She’d talked to other men, too. Maybe he hadn’t realized anyone at the bar could name him. It didn’t matter—he’d been convicted on DNA.

“So what are the odds that, just coincidentally, we have a second killer with the same idea?”

She didn’t have to answer.

“Are you going to talk to Mendoza?”

“Maybe. We’ll concentrate on her movements yesterday first.”

“She told me where she worked.” But, damn, he couldn’t remember.

“She was a hairstylist. She had a chair at Mountain High Salon.”

Beth made a sound. They all turned.

“Was she tall and blond? With a mole on her cheek?” She looked from one of them to another. Pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, no! She cut my hair the last time. And Steph’s been going to her. I should have recognized the name! I hate to tell Steph. Oh, that poor girl.”