Читать книгу Ricochet - Jessica Andersen - Страница 8

Alissa Wyatt pulled her VW into the back parking lot of the Bear Claw Creek Police Department—BCCPD—five minutes after the task force meeting was set to begin.

Damn. She hated being late. She yanked off her BCCPD ball cap, twisted her honey-colored hair into a businesslike bun and shoved her sketches into a nylon portfolio. Then she bolted for the back entrance, trying not to slip on a patch of ice and rock salt.

The fierce Colorado mountain winter was cold and raw, but to Alissa, it felt like coming home. Granted, home was a relative term in her experience, but that was the goal here, to make a home. To find a place for herself.

She shouldered through the heavy door and sped past the desk clerk, heading for the back conference room at a fast walk. Though Chief Parry might overlook her tardiness, the others wouldn’t. Bear Claw Creek’s finest had been slow to welcome the three women who made up the new Forensics Division. Not because of their sex, but because Alissa and her two best friends from way back in the Denver Police Academy had been brought in to replace Fitzroy O’Malley.

The now-retired Fitz was an icon. A one-man crime lab who’d been a fixture in the mountain cop shop since long before most of the veterans had been rooks. And now those rooks-turned-veterans resented the three-woman team that had been brought in to run the newly expanded Bear Claw Creek Crime Lab.

Worried about the impression she might make, Alissa broke into a jog while she shrugged out of her bulky parka.

“You’re late,” a voice said from behind her. The dark, masculine tones grated along her nerve endings, sending up sparks where sparks had no place being.

She froze midstep, set her teeth and turned. Everyone knew Detective Tucker McDermott could move as silently as a wolf when he chose to, but it was still unnerving.

Rumor had it he could hunt as well as a wolf, that he never gave up until he caught his quarry—at which point he moved on to another territory. Another hunt.

Typical, she thought with a twist of irritation that had very little to do with the man in front of her and everything to do with men in general. But fair or not, McDermott bugged her for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was his sheer presence. A hint of wildness clung to him as he stood opposite her in the hallway, making her think of mountain air and a hawk’s cry, even when he was dressed for work.

The professionally starched, cream-colored oxford didn’t mute the iron strength that shone in his six-foot frame, in the taut muscles of his shoulders and chest, and in the wide-palmed hands that held a pair of fat folders. Though he wore trendy slacks and polished leather boots, the city veneer didn’t sink beneath his skin. His dark, wavy hair was too long for convention, his skin too burnished for a desk job, even in the depths of winter. And his eyes were the gleaming brown of Bear Claw Canyon at sunset.

Alissa’s artistic soul took a snapshot, saving the image of wilderness contained within walls, even as her instincts for self-preservation sent her back a step at the look of pure masculine irritation in his eyes.

She forced a smile and cursed the churn in her stomach. “Glad to see I’m not the only one running late.”

“Actually, you are. Most of us have been here since last night.” He lifted the folders. “The chief sent me for rental records.”

Alissa hid the wince and clicked her teeth together to stem the explanation. He didn’t need to know that she’d logged over thirty hours in the past two days, talking with the victims’ families and the witnesses—such as they were—trying to assemble photographs and sketches. Trying to get a sense of the crimes. What bound them together. What set them apart.

Patterns and the lack thereof.

What was the use in explaining? She turned away from him. “We should get inside.”

She noted that he didn’t open the door for her, and cursed herself for noticing. But before she could slip inside the packed-full room, he leaned down, close enough that she could feel his warmth and smell the woodsy scent that clung to him like a second skin.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hold the door for you. I remember that you don’t like it.”

The memory of that one stupid night, the temptation of it whispered along the side of her throat like a caress.

Yeah, she remembered, too. And, damn, she wished she didn’t. That had almost been a colossal mistake. So she shot him a glare and hissed, “There’s nothing to remember.”

But as she stalked into the room and ignored the other cops’ stares, his soft, mocking chuckle followed her. Shamed her.

Inflamed her.

Then she saw the photographs of three teenage girls tacked along one wall of the conference room, and Tucker McDermott, that night, and even her problems with her coworkers faded into the background as she was reminded why she was there. Why they were all there.

Three girls were missing, and their time was running out.

If it hadn’t already.

Chief Parry stood at the front of the room, a fit, stern man in his late fifties, with salt-shot brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He didn’t comment on Alissa’s tardiness, but a roomful of eyes followed her to the single empty seat in the corner between Maya Cooper and Cassie Dumont, her friends and the core of the new Bear Claw Creek Forensics Division—BCCFD.

They sat as a unit, separated from the others.

Alissa tucked her portfolio between her feet while Chief Parry gestured toward the board, where the girls’ faces were blown up larger than life. He touched the photo on the far left, which showed a fey-looking blond wisp of a girl with blue eyes and a gap between her front teeth.

“Three girls in three weeks,” he said, voice somber. “Twenty-two days ago, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Walsh was supposed to meet her friends outside the MovieMogul 10. She never showed.” He moved to the middle picture, which showed a slightly chubby brunette wearing dark-rimmed glasses perched over a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her wide nose. “Four days later, seventeen-year-old Maria Blackhorse failed to meet her date at the Natural History Museum. Her parents didn’t call it in for nearly forty-eight hours.” He moved to the picture on the far right, which showed another blonde, this one model-gorgeous in her expensively posed photograph. “Then, two days ago, eighteen-year-old Holly Barrett disappeared sometime between noon and 4:00 p.m.” He turned and scanned the room. “Three girls in three weeks, people. We haven’t found their bodies, but we haven’t found them alive, either. And I’ll bet my badge that their time is running out.”

Alissa didn’t need Maya’s psychology degree or Cassie’s genius with chemicals and blood spatter to tell her that. She’d spoken to the two witnesses who thought they’d seen Elizabeth get into a light-colored van. She’d been to the victims’ houses, talked to their parents.

And, yeah, she had a feeling they were running out of time, too. The longer a kidnapper kept his victims, the better his chances of discovery. Unfortunately, the criminals knew that as well as the cops did and had brutal ways of protecting themselves.

Chief Parry continued, “I want a quick report from each division, and then Agent Trouper will give us a rundown of what’s going on at his end.” The ten-day-old task force contained specialists and detectives from the relevant BCCPD divisions, including Homicide, Missing Persons and Forensics, plus Garrett Trouper, their FBI liaison. Parry nodded toward the corner where the three women sat. “Wyatt, you can get us started with Forensics.”

Great. Just great.

Alissa set her teeth, lifted the portfolio, climbed to her feet and faced the room. She was thirty-one years old and an eight-year veteran of two different city police forces. She could do this.

But she was aware of McDermott leaning against the wall at the back of the room, alone. Aware of the other officers’ eyes on her, men and women both, all wishing Fitz was there instead of her.

They weren’t going to like what she had to report. I’ve got nothing, she wanted to say, no reliable witnesses, no good sketch, no ideas. Nothing.

Instead, she opened the folder, drew out the pitiful list of the suspect’s possible physical traits and a sad description of the van, and handed it to a surly looking uniform in the front row. “Please pass these out for me.” She addressed the group. “As you can see here, the two witnesses at the MovieMogul 10 were only partially helpful. They saw a man and a light-colored van, but couldn’t be certain of either description…”

She continued to speak, but her attention was drawn to a stir of motion at the back of the room. When she looked up, McDermott was gone.

And a frisson of wariness told her something was up.

THE DESK OFFICER’S SUMMONS had pulled Tucker out of an important meeting, but he couldn’t manage to be annoyed by the interruption. He’d been glad to escape the conference room. It was too hot. Too crowded.

Hell, who was he kidding? Any room with Alissa Wyatt in it was too hot and crowded for him. She was a hot ticket, a bundle of energy with the legs of a Vegas showgirl and the light-blue eyes of an artist. Half the men on the BCCPD were panting after her, and the other half wanted her gone.

Tucker straddled the two camps. He wanted her gone, but he didn’t want it to matter. And it wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been for that night, when he’d met her on a crowded dance floor and heard his favorite words, I’m just in town for a few days.

He wasn’t proud of it, but vacation flings were his stock in trade. He was too much of a nomad for anything more, and at thirty-five was too damn set in his ways to change now. Hell, the one time he’d tried to settle down had been a disaster. He’d hurt a good woman, someone he’d cared about, though he obviously hadn’t cared enough. Since then, he’d stayed carefully away from nesters, from women who wanted more from him than he was able to give.

So he’d danced with the just-in-town-for-a-few-days babe who’d introduced herself as Alissa. He’d reveled in the drape of her long, honey-colored hair as they danced close, then closer still. He’d slid his hands beneath her midriff shirt, riding on the high from closing the Vanzetti case, one too many beers and the gleam of encouragement in her eyes.

They’d kissed on the dance floor, then again in the hall by the phones, moving fast even for him. But the roar of heat had swept away rationality and battered at the small kernel of self-preservation he held close to his soul. They’d stumbled to her rental car wrapped in each other, not sure where they were going but positive they needed to get there quickly, before they proved that spontaneous combustion wasn’t a myth.

Unable to wait for his place or her hotel, he’d pulled her across his lap in the passenger seat. She’d gone willingly, twining around him with arms and tongue until a flaming, pulsing need consumed him—nearly panicked him. It was too much, too soon, but the spark of caution was quickly gone. He fumbled for his wallet, for a condom, and knocked a badge off the center console.

Only it hadn’t been his badge. It had been hers. And it had landed on a real estate printout of a cute house not five miles away from his generic apartment building.

Oh, hell, he remembered thinking when the explanation followed.

She was in town for a few days, all right. But she’d be back soon, and working for the BCCPD. His bosses. He’d excused himself without an explanation and bolted, unnerved by an almost overwhelming desire to stay.

Two weeks later she and her friends had replaced Fitz as part of Chief Parry’s updating of the BCCPD, and she’d been under his skin ever since.

Because the knowledge made him mean, Tucker scowled at the male desk officer, a twenty-something named Pendelton. “This better be good.”

Pendelton gestured at the chest-high counter, which held a plain paper rectangle with “Det. Tucker McDermott” printed in square letters with black ink. “I thought you should see this. It didn’t come in the mail. It just sort of…appeared. One minute it wasn’t there, and the next…” Pendelton snapped his fingers. “There it was on the front desk.” A hint of nerves worked into his voice when he said, “I’m sorry. I went to the can for a minute. Just a minute, I swear. Maybe the dispatchers saw something.” But he didn’t sound hopeful.

Tucker’s gut tightened. “Did you touch it?”

“No. Not on your life.”

It could be a hoax, but instinct told him otherwise. “You got a pair of tweezers and a couple of evidence bags?”

Pendelton trotted off to get the items. For a brief second Tucker thought about calling one of the new evidence techs. Hell, they were just down the hall. He would have if it had been Fitz. But because Fitz had retired—very abruptly—and because Tucker knew the procedure as well as anyone, he took the tweezers himself. Teased the envelope open himself. And read the enclosed note himself.

Dumb cops. Elizabeth is in the canyon, and you’d better hurry. It’s getting cold.

Adrenaline fired through Tucker’s bloodstream. He bolted to the conference room and yanked open the door. The pretty, dark-haired psych expert of the new Forensics Department—he was pretty sure her name was Maya—stood at the front of the room with a string of words listed on the wipe board behind her, things like white male, 20-40 years, and high functioning, followed by a question mark.

Things they didn’t need an abnormal psychology specialist to tell them. They were cops, damn it. They knew the profiles, knew what they should be looking for. They just hadn’t been able to find the bastard yet. They’d needed a break.

Well, maybe they’d just gotten one.

Not caring that he was interrupting, Tucker lifted the note inside its protective evidence bag, blood racing with the thrill of the hunt. “Come on. The first victim is in the canyon.”

Or else the kidnapper wanted them to think she was.

BEAR CLAW CANYON was shallower and narrower than some of the nearby natural wonders, but it had its own dangers, its own treacheries. The crevice was only man height in spots, but the waterway at the bottom meandered and doubled back on itself, breaking off into tributaries and feeder streams without warning.

Because of it, there were thousands of tiny, cracked caverns and overhangs, a hundred places for hikers to lose themselves in the two-thousand-acre Bear Claw State Park.

A hundred places to hide a girl. A body.

Near the snowy spot where they’d parked their official four-wheel-drive vehicles, Alissa curled her hands into fists and fought the urge to run for the canyon, to scream the missing girl’s name. There were procedures to follow, and experience had taught her that protocol beat instinct every time in police work. A gut feel might lead to the perpetrator, but judges and lawyers cared about procedure. Words like intuition could get an important case thrown out, a violent criminal released.

The memory of just such a case soured the back of her throat.

Before the task force headed into the canyon, Chief Parry divided them into pairs. With the way Alissa’s luck had been running, she wasn’t surprised when the chief paired her with McDermott.

The detective didn’t argue. He merely scowled and jerked his head toward their search area, a multibranched point where the waterway widened and slowed. “Come on.” He dropped down into the canyon, which was nine or ten feet deep, where their search was to begin. When Alissa paused at the edge, he frowned. “You want me to catch you?”

She shook her head. “No.” Hell, no. “Just give me a minute. I want to get a feel for the scene.”

Though skeletal analysis and reconstruction was her specialty, her official title in the BCCFD was Crime Scene Analyst. Captain Parry was counting on her to see, and record, the details others missed.

Sometimes the smallest detail could make or break a collar. A conviction.

She stood on an open expanse of rocky ground, half a mile from the main entrance to Bear Claw State Park. They had driven in, but parked well back from the lip of the canyon, which was maybe forty feet across at this point.

She saw no other tire tracks in the week-old snow. No footprints beyond those of the searchers. “He would have needed an ATV to get in here, a snowmobile or a four-wheeler,” she said to herself. “Unless he carried her in.”

If the girl was even in the canyon. The note could just as easily be an ugly prank.

Alissa let her eyes drop lower, to the crumbling canyon edge and the bare, frozen dirt nearby, where the wind had swept the area clean and drifted snow beside the ice-strewn waterway. It was a pretty scene, a coldly brutal one that reminded her of the frigid power of a mountain winter. But it told her very little about the crime or the perpetrator.

Satisfied, she sat at the edge of the canyon and ignored McDermott’s offered hand to drop lightly to the frozen ground below.

“Fitz took pictures,” he said, voice dark with challenge. “Photographs are reliable evidence. Sketches aren’t. Memories aren’t.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She pulled her gloves out of her pockets and shoved her hands into them, though it didn’t lessen the chill. She was tired of the BCCPD’s attitude, annoyed by the closed-mindedness of the other cops. Fitz did it this way. “I’m not Fitz, but I’m damn good at my job. Don’t lecture me.”

“I’m not,” he fired back, eyes dark with temper, and maybe something else. “It’s just…” He blew out a breath. “Hell, I don’t know what it is.”

Except he did. They both did. The memory of that night at the dance club shimmered between them like a living reminder of passion. Of heat.

She slanted him a look and decided to tackle it head-on. “This doesn’t need to be a thing, you know. We danced. No big deal.”

Except that was a lie. It had almost been a very big deal for her.

She’d gone to the club that night with Maya and Cassie. The girls had been split up by their assignments after the academy, and though they’d kept in touch with calls and visits in the six years since, it hadn’t been the same. They’d often talked about working together, so when they heard rumors of Fitz O’Malley’s unexpected retirement, they’d put in a proposal and three transfer requests. A month later it was official. They were the new BCCFD.

They had met in Bear Claw that weekend to look at apartments, and had gone out for a celebratory drink after. One drink had turned into three over a couple of hours, along with food. Not enough to get Alissa blitzed, but enough that when the music started, she was right in the mix, bumping and grinding along with the dancers while Cassie and Maya cheered from their table.

Alissa had noticed the man’s eyes first, dark and intense as he’d stood at the edge of the crowd. He wore casual jeans and an open-necked shirt, covering a tight, honed body that spoke of strength and the outdoors. She saw him shake off an invitation from a shaggy-haired blonde and another from a slick brunette, but his eyes never left hers. When she crooked a finger, he’d met her halfway.

As they had danced, she reminded herself she didn’t do bar pickups. Hell, she hadn’t done much of anything in the past year, since her supposedly serious boyfriend had taken a job out of state. He’d buggered off with barely a goodbye, making him no better than her father, who’d at least pretended he was going to keep in touch.

“It’s not about what did—or didn’t—happen that night,” McDermott said, interrupting old, sour memories that deserved interrupting. “My only concern is finding these girls and catching the bastard who’s taken them. I have nothing against you except that I work alone. I don’t want a partner, so stay behind me and let me do my job.”

He strode off without waiting for an answer, leaving her to fume, as old and new irritations battered her heart.

“Let him do his job,” she muttered, still standing where they’d dropped down into the canyon. “Great. Another cowboy. Maybe he’ll get the guy, but the guy won’t stay gotten, will he? He’ll walk, just like Ferguson did.”

At her last posting, a serial rapist had been preying on college girls, and the Tecumseh Springs PD had formed a task force similar to the one she was in now. They’d gotten the guy—a punk named Johnny Ferguson, who lived with his mother and hated the world—but there had been a glitch in the chain of evidence, a cowboy moment when the lead cop had gone on instinct rather than procedure and blown the case to hell.

Since then, she had valued precision over gut feel, evidence over emotion. It was an odd contradiction—an artist who didn’t venture outside the box—but it worked for her. And that was yet another reason she should stay far away from Tucker McDermott, who had the reputation of being all about instinct, sometimes at the expense of procedure.

Knowing it, she steeled herself to follow him down the canyon, toward the sound of other searchers’voices calling for the missing girl.

Lizzy…Li-zzzy. The cries overlapped in mournful echoes, making the canyon seem alive. Making it seem as though something—or someone—was out there. Waiting. Watching.

Alissa held back a shiver, knowing that it wasn’t even certain the girl was nearby. The note could be nothing more than a hoax.

Or a trap.

The feeling of watching eyes intensified, and Alissa scrambled to catch up. As though sensing the same scrutiny, McDermott glanced back over his shoulder. “Hurry up, partner.”

She ignored his tone and quickened her step—

And she saw it.

She couldn’t have said why the crevice caught her attention, but something about it seemed off. Some might call it instinct, but she preferred to think of it as a highly developed sense of color and shape. Something was wrong with this picture.

She stopped dead and stared at a shadowy, snow-shrouded cleft in the canyon wall. Her mind took a snapshot of the scene. Then she did one better. She pulled out her slick camera and took a few shots, carefully overlapping them so she could reassemble the panorama later on her computer.

“You see something?” McDermott asked, but his voice seemed distant as she walked toward the cleft, her every instinct on alert.

It was a tunnel of sorts, an ice-and-snow overhang undercut by the trickle of a sluggish tributary that had long since frozen over. Totally focused on the scene, on her job, she snapped several pictures, then drew a small flashlight from her pocket. She crouched down and shone the light into the forbidding darkness.

At the furthest reaches of the yellow illumination, she saw a bare, motionless foot and the ragged hem of wrinkled blue jeans.

Excitement slapped through her, mixed with apprehension that the foot wasn’t moving. “I see her!”

Alissa heard Tucker shout something, but she couldn’t wait for him. Her heart thundered in her chest. If Lizzie was alive, every second could be vital. That was the protocol—administer necessary aid first, then protect the crime scene.

Nearly shaking with anticipation, Alissa pulled off her gloves and shucked off her bulky parka so she could fit into the narrow tunnel without disturbing evidence. She jammed the small flashlight in her mouth to leave her hands free and dove in headfirst.

Tucker shouted, “Wyatt, wait!”

“I’m fine,” she called back, her flashlight-muffled words bouncing back from the ice and snow. “I’ve almost got her!”

Blood pumping, she crawled forward, careful to avoid a line of scuffs and boot prints preserved in the blown snow near the edge of the tunnel. Almost there! The girl’s bare ankle looked more gray than flesh toned, except where raw places stood out in bloody slashes. She was curled on her side facing away from the tunnel entrance. She wasn’t moving.

Alissa said a quick prayer, reached out and touched the motionless ankle. She felt the faintest hint of warmth. The flutter of a pulse.

“She’s alive!” she shouted. “Get the MedVac helicopter down! I’m going to pull her out. When you see my feet, give a yank!” She reached forward and felt for the girl’s other foot. There was something tied to it, maybe a length of the rope she’d been bound with.

Alissa yanked on the twine.

A bright white light flashed. An earsplitting crack reverberated through her skull.

And the tunnel collapsed on top of her.