James Conway - In Cold Blonde

He looked back at the fingerprint on the label again, the fragment of an idea stirring in the back of his head.

Syd stepped into the bathroom. “She left plenty of DNA this time,” Syd said.

“And fingerprints,” Ryan said. “Either you interrupted her before she could clean up or she didn’t care anymore.”

“I don’t think she cared anymore. She’d finished what she started.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’d killed the men who raped her. I talked to her parents, Ryan, found out what happened. Eleven years ago, when Alice was a high school senior, she was invited to a party by a boy she had a crush on, Adam Devlin. Only there was no party, just three horny high school boys, Adam, Colin Wood and Blake Hunter. They drugged her then gang raped her. Blake videotaped the whole thing. The next day he emailed nude pictures of Alice having sex to all his friends. She wanted to go to the police but a lawyer representing the three boys showed up and paid Alice’s family a million dollars to walk away.”

“And let me guess, the lawyer’s name was Zachary Stone.”

“Give the smart detective a cigar.”

Ryan digested the story; the refocused picture of the Lady in Red didn’t sit well. She’d just been transformed from serial murderer to victim. And he’d killed her. He sagged a bit as the implications pierced his soul.

Syd saw remorse flood his face. “You had no choice, Ryan. You saw a suspect holding a weapon turning toward you. You had to shoot.” Syd meant every word. If anything, she knew it was her fault Alice was dead. If Syd hadn’t been pissed at Ryan and just answered his phone call, he wouldn’t have charged into the house with his gun drawn.

The sirens had been steadily getting louder. Now they reached a crescendo and suddenly stopped.

“We’ve got company,” Syd said.

Chaos. That was the best way to describe the crime scene an hour later. Since Malibu falls under the L.A. County Sheriff’s jurisdiction, when Lieutenant Hanrahan got the call from Ryan, Hanrahan phoned the Sheriff’s Department and they scrambled two patrol cars to secure the scene.

Officially, the murder of Blake Hunter would be a L.A. County Sheriff’s investigation, but since LAPD had processed the scenes of the Lady in Red’s last two murders, and since an LAPD officer was involved in a shooting, it became a dual investigation. So detectives and crime scene technicians from both departments soon swarmed Blake Hunter’s beach house.

That kind of manpower can confuse any crime scene but it was nothing compared to the gathering media circus.

The press monitors LAPD and Sheriff’s Department frequencies so it wasn’t long before word of a murder in Malibu spread throughout the city. And if that wasn’t newsworthy enough, minutes later it was confirmed that it was a Lady in Red story. She had murdered another victim and then she had been killed in a shootout with an LAPD detective. But not just any detective, it was Detective Ryan Magee, the lottery-winning cop who was about to get a check for tens of millions of dollars.

And though it was midnight, cell phones rang, engines started, helicopter blades whirled; every resource was scrambled to cover the story. Soon the Pacific Coast Highway was clogged with satellite trucks, the sky was filled with news choppers and the shoreline outside Blake Hunter’s beach house was choked with camera-toting boats.

Sheriff’s deputies and police barricades kept the Press at bay, but the reporters, photographers and cameramen knew that Ryan Magee would have to come out at some point and they wanted to be there when he did.

Inside the house, Tony Ramirez and his SID team, aided by the Sherriff’s Department forensic experts, scoured the house. Liz finished her examination of Blake Hunter’s body and crossed to the Lady in Red’s corpse.

Off to the side and safely out of the way, Ryan and Syd stood with Hanrahan. Hanrahan sucked on a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop. Ryan and Syd had declined Hanrahan’s offer.

After Syd summarized Alice’s high school rape and Syd’s abridged version of the Blake/Lady in Red battle, Hanrahan said, “Wait, you’re saying the rape was videotaped.”

Syd nodded. “Blake Hunter taped the whole thing and then he used frames from the tape to send out those disgusting emails.”

“Where’s the tape now?” Hanrahan asked.

Syd planned to discover the DVD in a day or so. She wanted the world to see what happened to Alice Waterman. To understand what drove the Lady in Red to kill those men. And maybe help realize Alice’s hope that her rape and ultimate revenge would inspire and empower other rape victims. But she couldn’t turn the tape over. Not yet.

“I don’t know,” Syd said.

“Blake Hunter’s office is full of tapes and DVDs,” Ryan said. “And he’s got stacks of hard drives. It could be here, but it’ll take us a while to go through them all.”

Tony Ramirez joined them. “Well, unlike all the other crime scenes, this one is teeming with evidence. Some familiar, like the Lady in Red numbering her victims; she used the four of hearts this time. And the severed penis, I get it already, she hated these guys. And he’s got a missing American Express card, which I found in her wallet. But we’ve got a lot of new stuff; I found five .25mm shell casings, one in the kitchen floor and four in the living room. In the past the Lady in Red always picked up her brass. We’ve got blood in the living room, on the floor leading into the master bath and all over the master bath. Bloody fingerprints galore in the master bath; I did a quick check with the Lady in Red’s fingers, they match. There also signs of a struggle in the office; there are fresh bloodstains and tissue fragments on that wall,” he said pointing.

“That would be Blake Hunter’s blood and skin,” Liz said joining them. “Besides the scalpel lacerations and that bullet hole between his eyes, he shows signs of blunt force trauma to his face and forehead, and his Achilles’ tendon has been severed.”

“And let’s not forget his cock,” Hanrahan said.

“I’ve seen bigger.” Liz said.

Hanrahan grunted.

Liz went on. “The Lady in Red has the three gunshot wounds as well as a huge contusion on the top of her skull and abrasions on both wrists.”

“Probably from these,” Ramirez said holding up an evidence bag containing Blake’s fur-lined handcuffs. “I found them on the floor of the office.”

“Yep,” Liz said. “Those would do it.”

“And this is interesting,” Tony Ramirez said, holding up Blake’s camera. He turned it on and showed them the digital screen in back. A stunning picture of the Lady in Red backlit by the sunset appeared. Tony hit a button and scanned through three more poses.

“Wow, classy shots,” Liz said.

“Wait, he was taking pictures of her, too?” Hanrahan said. “So let me get this straight, he takes her picture, knocks her out, handcuffs and shoots her. She bangs his head into the wall, cuts his ankle, slashes his face and shoots him in the head.”

“I’ve had worse dates,” Liz said.

“God, I’d love to know exactly what happened here.” Hanrahan said.

“I don’t think we’ll ever really know for sure,” Ryan said.

Oh yes you will, Syd thought. She intended to find the videotape of Alice and Blake’s fight to the death when she discovered the rape tape. The image of Alice, bound and handcuffed, being forced to watch her own rape was too heartbreaking not to release. And Alice’s brave fight to save herself was downright inspirational.

But once again, not yet.

“You guys finished?” Hanrahan asked Liz and Tony. They both nodded. “All right, good work.”

Liz turned to her two assistants. “Let’s bag them up.” They dropped the first body bag next to Blake and unrolled it.