Cause to Run. Blake Pierce

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Yeah,” she pushed. “I get into my head too much. I could stay there for weeks. You force me out of my shell and make me feel like a woman.”

      She kissed him on the lips.

      Ramirez lowered his head.

      “Thanks for that,” he said. “Really. Thanks. That means a lot. I’m OK. Just give me a minute, OK? Let me finish my drink and think about some things.”

      “Sure,” she said.

      The bar was even more packed than when they’d first arrived. Avery scanned the crowd. Thompson and Jones had left. Finley was playing pool. There were a couple of other officers she recognized from their office, but no one she particularly wanted to meet. Two well-dressed men waved her down and pointed at drinks. She shook her head.

      Images flashed through her mind: Desoto’s hands around her neck, and the woman on the boat with her eerie shadow and star.

      Avery ordered another drink and found a quiet table near a back corner. To anyone watching, she knew she must have looked crazy: a lone woman with a beaten-up face, hands on the table around a drink, and eyes focused squarely at nothing while she inwardly combed through the events of the day to find connections.

      Desoto, dead end.

      Parents, dead end.

      Friends? Avery realized she needed to follow up with them at some point, probably sooner rather than later.

      Why did the killer draw a star? she wondered.

      She thought about the apartment where the murder had taken place, the books, the clothing in a hamper, and the missing rug. He’s big, she thought, and strong, and he’s definitely got a chip on his shoulder. Cameras were disabled, which means he’s also stealthy. Military training? Maybe.

      She checked off another box.

      Definitely personal, she mulled. Go back in Venemeer’s past. Find out who else worked at the shop, or dated her in school. Compile a list. After you have your list, maybe talk with the parents again so they can verify.

      Pieces began to form, pieces to a puzzle she had yet to complete.

      Ramirez stood right in front of her, watching.

      “Hey,” Avery said and covered her face in embarrassment.

      “Look at you.” He smiled back. “What are you doing?”

      A blush painted her cheeks.

      “This is how I work,” she said.

      He sat down next to her.

      “How?” he asked. “Tell me.”

      “I just…go through it in my mind,” she said. “All the facts. All the pieces. Try to mentally look for connections. I create a checklist of leads to pursue so we don’t let anything fall through the cracks. I have to be thorough.”

      “Why?” he asked. “Why are you so good at this?”

      The image of her father came to her, shotgun in hand, the muzzle pointed at her face. “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

      Escape, she thought.

      That was all Avery had wanted for most of her life: to escape from her past. But escape meant she had to have a plan, and plans always had a way of going awry.

      “It was the only way out,” she said.

      “Out? Of what?”

      Avery faced him, and shared a piece of information she hadn’t said aloud in years.

      “I was an orphan. Did you know that?”

      Ramirez sat back in awe.

      “No!” he cried. “I would have never pegged you as an orphan. I’m a really bad cop.”

      “Don’t think that.” She smiled and held his hand.

      “Anyway,” she went on, “I was a foster kid for about six years. I went through a lot of homes, was picked up by a few families. House mothers. That’s what they’re called. They get paid to take in young children with nowhere else to go. Everybody’s happy. The state gets to wipe their hands clean of wayward children. Crappy people get to have slaves.”

      “Avery. I am so sorry.”

      “There was this one house mother – ”

      A newspaper was slapped down on the table.

      Dylan Connelly stood above them.

      “You seen this?” he said. “It’s the late edition. All over the Internet. A copy of the letter was mailed to A7. O’Malley is waiting on us. Wants the entire team in to go over what you’ve discovered so far. It’s from your killer.”

      The cover of the paper read: Murder at Marina, and showed a shot of the victim on the bow of a yacht docked to a pier. Lines from the article stood out: “Saliva swab on the letter matches that of the slain woman,” and “Possible bookstore connection.” Avery was mentioned twice by name: once as an investigator from the A1 brought in to help with the case, and once as a possible love interest of captured serial killer Howard Randall.

      A smaller caption read: Letter from the Murderer! The picture displayed a zoom-in of words scrawled on paper.

      Avery flipped to the page.

      The letter was a full side. The killer’s note was written like a poem:

How can you break the cycle?How can you take advantage of each moment in life?I have found the keyI can unlock the prizeCome all who dareI defy youThe first body is set. More will come

      Avery set it down, her entire body trembling.

      More will come.

      She knew, with sudden certainty, that he was right.

      CHAPTER TEN

      Before Avery and Ramirez even walked into the A1 conference room, they could hear O’Malley screaming into the speakerphone.

      “Completely unacceptable, Will! You were supposed to share everything with us. We’re handling this case now. But instead, you received a huge piece of evidence and decided to keep it for yourself. When were you going to call us?”

      “We just received the letter this afternoon,” Holt blared back from the speaker.

      “How did the papers get it?”

      “They got a copy. We have the original here, but the killer made copies. The way I understand it, he sent them to every newspaper.”

      “No way the papers would know that splotch on the bottom of the letter was a saliva swab. That had to come from your department. So you got the letter, you had forensics check it out, you matched the saliva to the victim, and then you told someone. СКАЧАТЬ