Allison Brennan - Speak No Evil

“Like her sex diary.”

Carina’s phone rang. “Kincaid,” she answered.

“It’s Jim. I’ve typed the glue.”

“And?”

“Commonly used industrial-strength adhesive, available at most major hardware stores.”

“Match anything we found at Thomas’s apartment?”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Will was on the phone when she got off, so Carina cleared paperwork from her desk, her least favorite part of the job, until he hung up.

“Patrick has a printout of all of Thomas’s e-mails, Internet travels, and chat room logs for us,” Will told her. “He skimmed them, didn’t find anything big, but they’re worth a closer look. He has to run some computer program,” he waved his hand in the air, “to decipher exactly how many times Thomas went to the site and get an approximate amount of time he spent there. Since we haven’t arrested the guy yet, and Patrick’s preparing for a trial next week, he doesn’t have the time to thoroughly go through the reports, but he thinks by early next week he’ll have answers.”

“Such is our lives.” Carina frowned. “Will, why do I feel like this isn’t a priority to the department?”

“I don’t understand.”

“We have a dead girl. Eighteen years old. We have a suspect. True, only circumstantial evidence, but damn good circumstantial evidence. But Jim has priorities, Patrick has priorities, and this case isn’t it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like Angie’s death has been relegated to the bottom of the list. That because she was a promiscuous young woman who posed in pornographic positions on her Web page, no one cares what happened to her.”

“That’s not true, Carina. You know that.”

But she was fired up. “Really? I know what? You heard the guys around the bullpen when they saw her MyJournal page. Reading her descriptions of having sex and masturbating. And the pictures! I have four brothers. I know what guys think about nudie shots.

“She’s dead. Just because a woman has sex with a lot of guys doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped and murdered. Suffocated. She was terrified when she died. She was tortured. It’s not fair that no one cares!”

Will pushed Carina back down in her chair and leaned over her. “Listen here, Detective Kincaid. Don’t ever imply that I don’t care about a victim, or that I think anyone deserves to be raped and murdered. You’re walking a thin line here. Angie Vance deserves justice as much as any other victim in the city, and I’ll do everything I can to bring her some. So get off your high horse and let’s do the job right. Get some evidence against Thomas-or anyone else who might want her dead. Hell, we have at least nine other men she kissed and blabbed about on the Internet who could have been embarrassed enough to kill.”

Carina took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aiming that at you, Will. I guess…I don’t know. I’m just frustrated.”

He gave her a curt nod and leaned back against her desk, arms crossed. “We thought we had an easy case, open and shut, and it’s turned out to be anything but.”

Carina felt sheepish. Will cared as much about the victims as she did. She had to remember that he was not only her partner but her best friend. “Did Patrick say he had anything from Angie’s computer?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Oh, yeah. We have our work cut out for us. A lot of legwork, but maybe we’ll get a break.”

Will’s phone rang and he reached across Carina’s desk to answer it.

“Will Hooper.”

“It’s Patrick. Are you at your computer?”

“Two feet away.”

“Log on to Angie’s MyJournal page ASAP. Seems Angie’s friends have paid a tribute to their dead friend, and you’re not going to like it. I’m on hold with MyJournal security because Angie’s journal needs to be taken down. Immediately.”

He walked down the street, around the corner, and down two blocks to the Quik-Stop. He bought a newspaper, a thirty-two-ounce Coke, and a breakfast burrito, using the store’s microwave to heat it.

He sat at a picnic table at the park across the street, eating as he turned to the obituaries.

There it was. Angie’s memorial service: Thursday. Six p.m .

He’d learned a lot from his mistakes with Angie. She was the first, and of course it wasn’t perfect. That’s why the end wasn’t satisfying. He’d kept her too long, for one. The excitement of that first night gave way to fear of being caught, an urgency that he couldn’t fulfill.

Last year he’d made a mistake, and it had taken him a full year to plan and gather the courage to go through with his idea.

He should have killed Randi, but he’d been too nervous to go through with it. Fortunately, he’d scared her into silence, and she’d since moved away.

He’d taken Randi to dinner and a movie. She was perfect. Shy, quiet, timid. All he wanted was to fuck her. They’d been dating for several months and it had been time.

They’d eaten dinner at a nice restaurant, seen a movie, did all the things they usually did on a date. Then he took her to a wooded park up in the San Diego hills with a distant view of the ocean and kissed her. She let him, her mouth soft and warm, tentative. They’d kissed before, but he wanted more. Needed more.

At first she gave him what he sought. Her breasts. Her neck. She let him touch her through her pants, but when he unzipped them she grabbed his wrist. “I’m not ready.”

She was out of breath.

“We both want this. You know it.”

“I thought…but no. I can’t. Just kiss me. I like that.”

So he kissed her and heated up. Kissed her and wanted more. He pinned her down in the dirt with his body-he was bigger than she-and she protested again. This time, he didn’t stop. He unzipped her shorts and she began to squirm and cry.

“Please, stop! I don’t want to do this.”

“I want to.”

And shouldn’t that have been enough? She was here, she liked him, she kissed him, and she wouldn’t let him fuck her? There was something very wrong with that, and he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

He held her down, his body rigid, and she screamed. She screamed so loud he thought every person in town could hear. They would come and take him away.

It stunned him into stopping.

Randi was sobbing and he rolled off her. They were both covered in dirt and leaves.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he warned her. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

“I won’t,” she whispered. “No one.”

He took her home in silence. They never spoke about that night, never spoke again for that matter. She transferred to another school two weeks later.

After she found her dog dead.

Still, he’d been nervous for months. But his fears gradually began to subside. Randi hadn’t told anyone what happened that night. And besides, what had happened? It was all a misunderstanding.

But he’d never let another woman scream.

What he’d learned from Randi he’d applied to Angie. What he’d learned with Angie, he would apply to the next whore.

Jodi.

He had lots of planning to do before Angie’s funeral, and he couldn’t afford to miss class today even though listening to a boring lecture was the last thing he wanted to do. But missing class would be a mistake and he didn’t make mistakes. Not anymore.

He definitely wouldn’t make any mistakes with Jodi.

NICK PULLED HIS LAPTOP COMPUTER from the bottom of his overnight bag. He wasn’t a computer expert by any stretch, but it was the twenty-first century and he’d broken down and bought one a couple years ago.

He glanced at Steve’s closed bedroom door. His brother had come in late the night before while Nick tried to sleep on the couch. He didn’t let on that he was awake, and Steve quietly went into the bedroom and shut the door. It sounded like he was still asleep, which was good. Nick wanted to do this alone.