Janice Johnson - Dead Wrong

That would explain it. By his junior and senior years, he and his friends hadn’t been interested in lower classmen. Maybe a really hot girl. This Trina hadn’t been that. So he’d probably passed her in the hall without ever really focusing on her face.

“Detective Giallombardo,” he acknowledged, then faced his mother. “Tell me.”

“A girl you dated in high school was found murdered today.”

A sound escaped him. A profanity, maybe. He reached out and gripped the back of the leather chair.

“Who?”

“Amy Owen.”

He’d expected… He didn’t know who he’d expected. But not Amy.

“We only went out three or four times.”

“That’s what Detective Giallombardo thought.”

This woman he didn’t know, who had been two years behind him in school, was suddenly an expert on his life?

“You’re well-informed.”

Her returning gaze was expressionless. “You were the big guy in school. People talked.”

His irritation vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Amy. My God.”

“Sit,” his mother ordered.

“Here’s coffee,” Beth said behind him.

He sank into the chair, soul-sick. On the job, he dealt in murder often, but not the murder of people he knew. Only with Gillian had he experienced firsthand the horror and grief family and friends felt.

Amy Owen, pretty, not smart but sweet.

“I saw her last week,” he said.

“What?” Hand outstretched for a cup of coffee she hadn’t yet picked up from the tray, his mother turned.

“I saw her.” Jeez, he wished he hadn’t. He wished Amy Owen was no more than a hazy memory. “She was at J.R.’s when I went there with Gavin and Travis.” No surprise—the sports bar was a favorite hangout for locals. “She was with Jody Cox. Remember her? And a friend of hers, a newcomer.”

“Another woman?”

He saw what she was getting at. “Yeah, a woman. Karin. Don’t remember the last name. I have her phone number if you want it.”

Will saw a fleeting expression of…something cross Trina Giallombardo’s face. Another time he might have wondered at it. Right now, he was too wrapped up in the image of Amy jumping from the bar stool to wave at him.

“Will! Will! Over here. Wow! Hi!”

He guessed he’d flirted with her a little bit, because she’d been flirting with him, but it was her friend’s phone number he’d quietly asked for before the women announced they were calling it a night.

His mother sat on the couch facing him. “Did she tell you she’s divorced?”

“Yeah. Actually, her ex came in, too. Didn’t look real happy to see her with a bunch of guys.”

“Did he say anything?”

Will shook his head. “That’s just my impression. He came over and she introduced him. He was polite.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“Not that I saw.” His mother was interrogating him, he realized. She’d even flipped her notebook open. The coffee and toasted sandwiches Beth had made sat untouched on the table.

Her gaze was sharp on him. He could see her brain humming. “Did he stay around?”

“Uh…I don’t really know.” He frowned. “Wait. I did see him a little later. Maybe half an hour.” Appalled, he said, “You don’t think…”

“We don’t think anything yet. No, he’s unlikely. This didn’t look like a crime of passion. Someone who’d loved her, however angry he was, would have felt remorse, regret. Treated her body with more respect.”

“Was it a bad one?” Will asked quietly.

His mother looked older than she had since—damn, since he’d aged her with his accusations and wild rage.

“Yeah. Will…”

He wasn’t going to like what was coming. Aware of both women watching him, he braced himself and waited.

“We have a copycat. Will, this looked like Gillian’s murder.”

He lurched to his feet. “What do you mean?”

She rose, too. “I mean it could have been the same killer. The body was left in the same condition.”

An image of Gilly’s body flashed before his eyes. Through gritted teeth, he asked, “Was she raped?”

His mother’s expression was compassionate. “Yes.”

In some part of his mind, he noted that Trina Giallombardo’s dark eyes were only watchful. If she felt pity, suspicion, dislike, sympathy, she didn’t show it.

“Strangled with a jockstrap?”

“Yes.”

He wheeled away to stand with his back to the women. He was panting as if he’d sprinted the last half mile of his daily run. Sweating. Sick. Gilly, oh Gilly. The women’s faces overlay like a double exposure, both blond and fine-boned. Not Gilly, he thought. Not this time. Instead, some sick son of a bitch had raped and tortured pretty, sweet Amy Owen, then left her body as if she were a whore. Garbage.

“Who?” he asked, voice guttural.

His mother sounded grim. “We’ll find out.”

“Was she in the same place?”

“No.” Gillian’s body had been left right in town, among the willow trees in the town park on the bank of the Deschutes River. “Amy was left at the lava cone past the Triple B. A couple of kids found her.”

He turned to face them all of them, Beth in the background. “Why are you here?”

His mother’s expression changed. “What?”

“Is my name going to come up?”

She gaped. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Yeah? Why not? I’d be a logical suspect, wouldn’t I?”

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He was glad to have disconcerted her for once, put her on the defensive.

Detective Giallombardo said, “Your mother didn’t want you to read about it in the morning paper. She thought the news would be better coming from her.”

Shame flooded him, as she’d intended. Will swore and scraped a hand over his face.

“I’m sorry, Mom. God. I’m sorry.”

His mother gave a twisted smile. “It’s okay. Of course you’re upset.”

He saw in her eyes that he’d hurt her. As, he realized, he’d intended. And he didn’t even know why he’d lashed out.

“Mendoza…” He hated the taste of the bastard’s name in his mouth.

“Is still at Salem.” The Oregon State Penitentiary was in Salem, Oregon’s capital.

“A friend of his…”

“That’s a possibility we’ll pursue.”

“But not a very good one.”

She didn’t have to answer. Of course, it was unlikely one of Ricardo Mendoza’s friends would commit a crime this savage, and why? What was the motive?

For the first time, Will was thinking like the attorney and prosecutor he was.

“What’s the point? What’s this scum trying to say?”

“I have no idea,” his mother admitted. “Maybe nothing. Maybe this guy just liked the idea. Thought wiping out her identity, metaphorically, by replacing it with a crude symbol of masculinity was funny.”

“Like he’s saying, ‘In your face’?” Will asked.

She spread her hands. “Maybe he thought a jockstrap sounded like a handy murder weapon. Hard to trace, wouldn’t hold fingerprints well, and, hey, you could carry it around in your pocket without exciting suspicion. You’re on your way to the gym. What’s the big deal?”

“Have you ever before or since read or heard of a woman strangled with a jockstrap?” he asked.

“No,” she conceded.

“Here we are. Small town. Not all that many murders, and ninety-nine percent of those are your garden-variety shoot-the-abusive-husband type. Biker brawls. Not the work of serial killers.”

They’d speculated back then that Gillian’s murder was too “sophisticated” to be a killer’s first. The savagery coupled with the care taken displaying the body, had seemed to be the work of someone who’d done this before. On the other hand, Mendoza had also done unbelievably stupid things: he was seen leaving the bar with Gilly, his skin was beneath her fingernails and his semen was found in her body. Evidence of grandiosity and disorganized thinking, everyone said. He’d felt invincible, never thought he’d be suspected. So what if he’d talked to Gillian in the bar? She’d talked to other men, too. Maybe he hadn’t realized anyone at the bar could name him. It didn’t matter—he’d been convicted on DNA.