Erica Spindler - Killer Takes All

She nodded and stood. “Tony coming?”

“Nope. Thought I’d give him a chance to eat dinner. Pasta Man’s like a grizzly if you get in between him and his next meal. What’ve you got?”

She crossed to the door, opened it for him. “See for yourself.”

Her voice lacked inflection. Whether with shock or the effort to keep her emotions at bay, he didn’t know.

He followed her inside. She led him from the front of the double to the back, to the single bathroom.

He saw the creature immediately. He stopped short, no doubt about what he was looking at.

The Cheshire Cat, its bloody head floating above its body.

Pogo’s sketch brought to life.

“How did he get in?” he asked, tone sounding gruff to his own ears.

“Kitchen door. Broke one of the panes of glass, reached inside and unlocked the door. Cut himself, left some blood.”

“You touch anything?”

“Just that.” She indicated the bloody plastic bag and note card on the floor. Beside them were a pair of bright yellow Playtex gloves. The kind he had seen his mother use when washing dishes.

As if she read his mind, she said, “So I didn’t contaminate anything. If you’re worried, they were new.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

She frowned as if with thought. “I was heating the water for a shower. I just reached in…without looking. In the process some evidence might have been washed away.”

He glanced sideways. Saw the khaki capris she had been wearing earlier, the white short-sleeved sweater. A lacy bra in a delicate lavender color.

He looked quickly away, feeling like a Peeping Tom.

“Sorry,” she muttered, crossing to the garments and scooping them up. “I wasn’t thinking. I threw on a robe and…”

Her words trailed off. He shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize. This is your home, I shouldn’t have looked.”

She laughed then, one perfectly timed, infectious laugh. “You’re an investigator. Seems to me, that’s your job.”

It broke the awkwardness of the moment. He chuckled. “You have a point. I’ll remember that.”

He fitted on a pair of gloves, crossed to the note card and picked it up. The message was as simple as it was chilling.

Welcome to the game.

It was signed the White Rabbit.

Spencer looked at her. She met his gaze, hers unflinching. Steady. “I asked too many questions,” she said. “Stepped on somebody’s toes. I’m in the game now.”

He wished he could reassure her otherwise. He couldn’t.

“The Cheshire Cat,” she continued. “A character with long claws and lots of teeth. In the story the queen tries to behead it, but it disappears before she can.” She pressed her lips together a moment, as if using the time to regain emotional control. “This one wasn’t so lucky.”

“The cat fades in and out throughout the story,” Spencer said, thinking of the Cliff’s Notes he had read the night before. “Further evidence of a world in which reality has been distorted.”

“Am I the cat?” she asked. “Is that what this means? That I’m the cat, and he means for me to die this way?”

Spencer frowned. “You’re not going to die, Stacy.”

“You can’t guarantee that.” Her eyebrows drew together. “You can’t tell me I won’t. It’s the nature of the beast.”

The beast.

Man with the will to murder.

He crossed to the tub, examined the creature, then fanned out until, finally, he had taken in the entire apartment. He took his time, making notes as he went. After dumping the clothes in a hamper, Stacy silently shadowed him. Giving him space, letting him come to his own conclusions.

Spencer checked his watch. Tony should be good and full by now. He needed to get the evidence collection team over. The prints techs. If they were lucky, the bastard had left a print to go along with the blood on the broken window.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Make your calls.” She smiled slightly at his expression. “I don’t read minds, unfortunately. It’s the obvious next step in the process.”

He opened his cell, punched in Tony’s number first. While he spoke to his none-too-happy partner, he was aware of Stacy grabbing a jacket and heading out to the front porch.

He finished his calls and followed her outside. She stood at the edge of the porch, near the stairs. She looked cold. He glanced up at the cloudless dark sky, thinking that the temperature had dipped into the fifties. He hunched deeper into his jacket and crossed to stand beside her.

“They’re on their way,” he said.

“Good.”

“Are you okay?” he asked for the second time that night.

She rubbed her arms. “I’m cold.”

For a reason that had nothing to do with temperature, he suspected. He wished he could draw her against his chest, comfort and warm her.

He wouldn’t cross that line.

Even if he could, she wouldn’t let him.

“We have to talk. Quickly. Before the others get here.”

She turned. Met his eyes in question.

“Pogo’s the one,” he said. “We found sketches for the cards Leo received. And for others.”

Her gaze sharpened with interest. Became intent. He sensed her analytical mind kicking in, digesting the facts, categorizing, organizing.

“Tell me about the others,” she said.

“The March Hare. The two playing cards, the Five and Seven of Spades. The Queen of Hearts and Alice. All dead. Their deaths gruesome.”

“And the Cheshire Cat? Was he there?”

He paused, then nodded. “Decapitated, the head floating above its body.”

She pursed her lips. “If the Allen murder is the first in a series, then the people the cards represent will be victims.”

“Yes.”

“Including me.”

“We don’t know that, Stacy. Leo received the first cards, yet he wasn’t the intended victim.”

She agreed, though she didn’t look convinced. The team arrived then. Tony first. The crime-scene van immediately behind. Spencer started toward his partner; she caught his arm, stopping him.

“Why’d you tell me that?”

“You’re in the game now, Stacy. You needed to know.”

Thursday, March 10, 2005

11:30 p.m.

Stacy surveyed her apartment, moving from room to room. The crime-scene techs had just finished. Spencer had followed them out. He hadn’t said goodbye.

She swallowed hard. She had known what to expect, of course. The black powder left by the fingerprint techs, the freshly vacuumed floor-done to pick up any trace evidence-the general sense of chaos.

She hadn’t expected the way it had made her feel. Stripped bare. Violated. She found herself on the other side of the process, once again. And again, it sucked.

Stacy reached the bathroom door. She saw that they had taken her shower curtain, and she curved her arms around her middle. Something about that naked tub hit her hard. She knew what the tub floor looked like. Streaked red, the color deepening with the deoxidization process.

Police collected evidence of a crime.

They didn’t clean up after it.

She crossed to the tub, adjusted the showerhead and turned on the water. It jettisoned out of the head, mixing with the blood, turning it pink.

Washing it away.

She watched it swirl down the drain.

“I’m sorry, Stacy.”

She looked over her shoulder. Spencer hadn’t left. He stood in the doorway, his gaze intent. “For what?”

“The mess. The late hour. That a half dozen strangers just tromped through your house. That some wacko broke in and left you that gruesome gift.”

“None of it is your fault.”

“But I can still be sorry.”