Читать книгу The Bridge - Carol Ericson - Страница 10

Chapter Four

Elise dropped the phone. The corner hit the counter and bounced once before landing facedown. Her body convulsed, and then she began to sway.

“Elise?” He caught her with one arm, supporting her against his chest. He barely felt the pressure from her tiny frame. Was she having some kind of delayed shock or reaction to the hypothermia?

He started to lead her out of the kitchen, but she dug her heels in the floor.

“The phone.” The rasp in her voice made it sound as if she were choking.

“Sit first. I’ll get the phone in a second.” He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the couch. Her dress had hiked up nearly around her waist, exposing an expanse of smooth thigh and a pair of wrinkled black panties.

He settled her on the couch and dragged a colorful afghan across her lap. “What’s on the phone?”

He charged back into the kitchen. Had her abductor sent her a message, too? Good. The better to track him down.

Her teeth chattered. “I-it’s a p-picture.”

Sean snapped on a rubber glove and touched the screen, bringing it to life. He swore at the image—a young woman, bound, her eyes wide and terrified above her gag.

“Do you know her?”

“Wh-what?”

Sean sat beside Elise and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pressing her close against his body. Gradually, her trembling subsided.

He rubbed her arm. “Do you know the woman in the picture?”

She shook her head, and her hair, still stiff from the salt water, scratched his cheek.

“The number. Do you recognize the telephone number?”

“No.” She took a deep breath that caused a shudder to run through her body. “It came up as unknown. He sent that to me, that vile, horrible...” Her words broke off in a sob.

“Shh.” He wrapped his other arm around her so that he enfolded her in a hug, and still the ripples coursed through her.

She tilted her head back and stared into his face. “She’s in the trunk of a car, isn’t she? Just like me.”

“It looks like it. He’s an idiot. He’s allowed his hubris to get the better of him. We’re going to blow up this picture, trace the phone number. He’s just given us a bunch of evidence we didn’t have before.”

“And the girl? Do you think she’s dead?”

Of course she was dead. “I don’t know, Elise. It doesn’t look good.”

“That could’ve been me. That was me, only he didn’t tie me up. Maybe he perfected his technique after I got away.”

“We have no idea when this picture was taken. I don’t think he went out after you escaped this morning and found another woman.”

This morning. Did all this just happen today? She chewed on her bottom lip. “I want it off my phone.”

“I know you do.” He stuffed the phone in his pocket. “But right now the picture is evidence, and so is your phone. We need to find that girl.”

“Have there been any missing girls reported?”

“Always.” He didn’t plan to tell Elise about all the sad stories that crossed their desks, all the calls from desperate family members. He traced the edges of her phone with the pads of his fingers. Which family members would claim this one?

“Why did he send that to me?” Elise buried her face in her hands. “I’ll never be able to get that image out of my head.”

“He’s a sadist.” And somehow he’d dialed into him. Maybe the killer knew about his past, maybe he didn’t, but now they were tied together. That message on the mirror tied them together.

“Ms. Duran, I’m all done with the locks on the front door.” The locksmith poked his head around the front door. If he’d heard any of their conversation, he gave no sign.

Elise tried the locks and then settled the bill with him, but it was obvious her mind remained on that picture on her phone.

“He’s a serial killer, isn’t he? He’s a serial killer you don’t know about yet. He’s just getting started and he wants to play some sick game with you...and now me.”

It was a game he knew too well. He gestured around the small house. “Are you going to be okay here? I have to get to the station, turn in your phone and purse.”

She glanced over her shoulder toward the hallway. “I have to take a shower.”

“Do you want me to wait here? When you’re done, I can take you to the station with me and you can look through some mug shots.”

“Would you do that?” She was already moving toward the back rooms. “I won’t be long.”

He waved a hand. “Take your time. I’m going to call in and report this picture. Maybe they can get a trace started when I give them your phone number.”

She ducked into her bedroom and then darted across the hall to the bathroom, clutching a bundle of clothes to her chest.

Sean let out a long breath and collapsed onto Elise’s colorful couch. What the hell was going on? Why did the guy who abducted Elise share a similar tattoo with him? Why did he write a message to him on Elise’s mirror? This had to be a coincidence.

Serial killers had toyed with homicide detectives way before his father’s time, and they’d continue to do so long after Sean’s career. When he saw the message, Dan Jacoby hadn’t jumped to any conclusions and Dan definitely knew the story of his past.

He was probably overreacting. That’s what his brothers would tell him, but as the eldest the burden had weighed most heavily on him. Hell, Judd could barely even remember the old man, couldn’t remember the life they’d had before...before everything had been sucked into the bay by a strong, merciless current.

He plowed his fingers through his hair and shifted to the end of the couch. The soft cushions made it tough to sit up straight, so he gave up and slouched against the back of the couch while he made his call.

When he heard the water in the shower shut off, he struggled off the couch and began to pace the small room.

Elise emerged from the bathroom on a cloud of fragrant steam. She’d pulled her blond hair into a ponytail and had replaced her ridiculously small dress with a pair of tight jeans and a beige cable sweater, giving her a blond-on-blond look that made her jaw-droppingly beautiful. He kept his jaw in place.

“Do you still think it’s a good idea to stay here on your own?”

“Probably not. I’m going to have to change my cell phone number when I get that new phone.” She slid a knotted scarf from the back of a chair. “I don’t want any more surprises from this guy.”

She headed to the door leading to the garage, and Sean stopped. “You’re not coming with me?”

“I think it’s easier for me to take my car, so I don’t have to bother you for a ride back here.”

“It’s no bother.” Bother? He didn’t want to let Elise out of his sight.

She slid her new key in and out of the dead bolt. “I decided I’m going to call my friend Courtney to see if I can crash at her place for a few days. If it’s okay with her, I’m going to head over there this afternoon.”

“Good idea. Follow me to the station, and you can park in the lot there.”

He sat in his idling car until Elise’s garage door opened and her little hybrid rolled down the driveway. He kept an eye on his rearview mirror, stopping at every yellow light.

He sure as hell hoped the killer’s fascination with Elise came to an end soon. He could bring it to an end sooner rather than later if he caught this guy. Then he could find out why he was sending him personal messages.

He cruised into the station’s parking garage with Elise close on his tail. The morning shift had already gone out, depleting the ranks of patrol cars waiting in their slots.

Sean swung into an empty space at the end of the row, and Elise parked next to him.

“We’re really in the bowels of the police station here, aren’t we?”

“Shh, don’t tell anyone we have all this parking down here.” He led her to the elevator, and after a short ride, the doors opened onto a corridor bustling with both cops in and out of uniform and civilians.

He nodded at a few people on his way to homicide, trying not to read suspicion in their eyes. He’d have to lose this paranoia if he hoped to catch this guy and help Elise. Because he did want to help Elise.

He pulled out a chair on the other side of his cluttered desk. “Have a seat. I’m taking your phone to the lab, and I’ll try to round up a sketch artist. We might have to call one in. Coffee? Water?”

“I’m fine.” She folded her hands in her lap, her wide eyes taking in the activity of the room.

Yanking a binder from his drawer, he said, “You can pass the time looking at mug shots.”

He left Elise running her finger across the plastic inserts in the binder. He dropped off the phone with instructions to print, blow up and distribute the picture the killer had sent. He put the word out for a sketch artist, and then he stopped by the coffee machine.

By the time he returned to his desk, Elise was halfway through the six-packs of mug shots in the binder he’d left with her.

Flipping a page, she looked up at his approach.

“Any luck?” He dropped into his chair and loosened his tie.

“No.” She tapped the book. “Who are these guys, again?”

“Killers, rapists, batterers.”

She flinched and jerked her hand back from the page. “Why are they out on the streets?”

“They did the crime and then did their time.” His hand tightened around his coffee cup. “I rounded up a sketch artist for you. Do you want to give it a try after you finish looking at those mug shots?”

“Sure, although I don’t know how much help I’m going to be. It was dark, and he wore a disguise—I’m positive about that. I should’ve realized that much facial hair was concealing something.”

Elise seemed determined to blame herself and her naïveté for the attack. He couldn’t sit back and allow her to browbeat herself.

He pushed away his coffee, and it sloshed over the edge. “The majority of men who have beards and moustaches are not criminals or trying to hide anything. That’s not a clue that anyone would’ve picked up on.”

Her face awash in pink, Elise smacked the book of six-packs closed. “None of these guys looks even vaguely familiar to me except one who’s the spitting image of my geometry teacher, and I’m probably just projecting because I hated geometry.”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I doubt your geometry teacher is moonlighting as a criminal in San Francisco from...wherever it is you’re from.”

“Montana. Is it so obvious I’m not from the city?”

It was to him. She lacked that brittle edge so many urbanites had. But far be it from him to stoke the image she had of herself as the country bumpkin in the big, bad city.

He shrugged. “Not at all. I think you mentioned living here for just a year.”

Nodding, she relaxed her shoulders and slumped against the back of the chair.

Sean picked up the receiver of his phone and punched the button for one of the interrogation rooms. Tony Davros, the sketch artist, picked up. “You’re already there. You must be ready for the witness.”

Sean pushed back his chair as he stood up, dropping the receiver back in the cradle. “Let’s see what you can give us on this guy.”

Elise followed him to the interrogation room, her head cranking from side to side as they waded through ringing phones, shouts across the room and people crisscrossing the space with papers or files clutched in their hands.

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s noisier than a kindergarten classroom in here.”

“Probably about the same level of maturity, too.” He pushed open the door to the interrogation room and ushered her inside.

Davros stood up and extended his hand. “I’m Tony Davros, Ms. Duran. Wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.”

Sean raised one eyebrow in Davros’s direction. That’s the most words he’d heard from the artist’s mouth in almost two years. Davros had even pulled out a chair for Elise.

First Jacoby and now the sketch artist. He got it. Elise’s fresh-faced, angelic appearance spurred men on to chivalrous deeds, prompting them to pull out chairs and hand over jackets. Even the typically surly Davros wasn’t immune.

“Me, too.” She shook Davros’s hand and dropped onto the wooden chair. “I’m afraid the man was wearing a disguise—beard, wig, glasses, even a phony accent.”

“That’s not uncommon.” Davros swept his palm across a piece of sketch paper and caressed his pencil. “We’ll start with the shape of his face—what you could see of it.”

The two of them went back and forth for several minutes, the artist coaxing and praising as his pencil moved swiftly across the page in front of him.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Sean sauntered to where Davros sat hunched over his sketch pad, the tip of his tongue lodged in the corner of his mouth as he further defined the nose of the suspect.

Sean squinted at the face. Would someone be able to recognize him without the beard and moustache? Davros’s job entailed drawing another picture without the facial hair and glasses, perhaps with shorter hair.

“That’s close to what I remember.” Elise tossed her ponytail over her shoulder as she leaned over the drawing.

A sharp rap at the door interrupted them, and before Sean could even offer an invitation, it swung open and banged against the wall.

Sergeant Curtis from homicide, his eyes bugging out, thrust his head into the room. “We just got a call from patrol about a dead body, and I think you’re going to want to head out there, Brody.”

Sean’s heart slammed against his rib cage. “And why is that?”

“It’s the girl in the picture.”