he and Henderson hadn’t hit it off all that well. But then, to be fair, he hadn’t hit it off with too many people. He preferred working alone.
Preferred everything alone, actually. Alone, there was no one else to disappoint you but you, he thought.
The notion brought a cynical half smile to his lips.
“If he hired somebody, what’s the note about?” Tony asked.
The note bothered him. A lot. He felt as if it was pointing to something, but to what, he hadn’t a clue.
Henderson shrugged his wide shoulders haplessly, the unironed shirt moving stiffly with the gesture. Without thinking, he scratched his neck.
“To throw us off?” he guessed.
Tony’s half smile looked a bit sarcastic. “Alex Rico strike you as particularly clever?” Tony asked.
It was a rhetorical question. Still, Henderson considered it. “No, just grief-stricken. And mad. Very mad.”
Tony thought of the victim’s ex, and the rage that he’d viewed in the man’s eyes, just behind the grief. “If Rico’s innocent, we might have some trouble from him when we catch who did this.”
“You meant if,” Henderson pointed out.
“No, I mean when,” Tony repeated.
Although he regarded the rest of his life with a jaded, negative eye, it never occurred to Tony that he wouldn’t catch his quarry. Otherwise, there was no point in going through the motions. He’d taken the job, the badge, to make a difference. You didn’t make a difference by not catching the bad guy.
Henderson nodded, backing away from a confrontation. “Cross that bridge when we come to it.” With that, he switched off his computer and pushed his chair back. The legs scraped along the scarred vinyl floor that had long since needed replacing. The current budget couldn’t handle it. “I’m calling it a night,” he said needlessly. “Maybe something’ll turn up fresh in the morning.”
“Maybe,” Tony murmured under his breath.
He scrubbed his hand over his face and tried to recenter his thinking. The pretty doctor had been right. Everyone had loved the victim. At least, everyone he and Henderson had talked to in the last week.
Pushing back his own chair, he began to rise when the phone on his desk rang.
“Looks like it might not be a night yet,” he said to Henderson as he reached for the receiver.
Déjà vu.
It had never been one of Sasha’s favorite words or sensations. As far as that went, it was way down on the list.
At the very least, it encompassed a teasing sensation that tormented her until she could finally recall what, where and when she’d done “this” before, whatever “this” might be. Most of the time, the answers to the questions that occurred to her never materialized as she struggled to recall an elusive memory that would put things in perspective for her.
This time, she didn’t have to try to recall. The memory that had sent the sensation rippling through her was still sickeningly fresh in her mind.
Angela, lying in a pool of her own blood on the concrete floor beside her car.
Since the discovery, Sasha hadn’t stopped parking in the structure. It was either that or resort to taking a cab or some mode of public transportation. Although the city had probably the best public transportation system in the world, Sasha was possessed of an independent streak that fairly demanded she be in charge of deciding how she came and went. Subways and buses left you depending on others.
Besides, she loved that little ten-year-old Toyota. The vehicle had been her parents’ gift to her when she’d graduated medical school. They could hardly afford to splurge the way they did, even though they’d bought it used. And, since they did buy it for her, not to use it would be tantamount to insulting them.
Entering the level where she’d parked this morning, Sasha realized she was holding her breath as she made her way down a deserted row.
She was too old to be afraid of the dark, she scolded herself.
It wasn’t so much the dark that frightened her, actually, as it was who might be hiding in that dark.
Sasha glanced around to see if Walter Stevens was around somewhere. But if the security guard was on duty, he was making rounds on another level of the structure. There was no sound of anyone walking around here. No sound at all, really.
And then she heard it.
Every nerve ending in her body tightened as she listened.
A moan? A gasp? She couldn’t make it out.
Sasha looked over her shoulder toward the elevator doors. For a second, she thought about running back. And then she became annoyed with herself. There were still cars here. Probably just someone going home for the night. Or coming on for the night shift.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” Sasha called. But even as she asked, she was hurrying over toward where she’d parked her car this morning before making her rounds.
There was a prickly sensation traveling along the back of her neck. It refused to go away, refused to be blocked.
And then she saw it.
Her breath caught in her throat, threatening to suffocate her. A scream escaped her, vibrating amid the trapped air. There was a figure on the ground, sprawled out like a mutilated doll. Like Angela, there was a pool of blood beneath her. Like Angela, there was a bullet hole in the center of her forehead. Her eyes were wide open, unseeing as they stared at the ceiling.
This couldn’t be happening. Not twice. She was having some kind of hysterical hallucination, Sasha silently argued. Any second now, the figure would disappear.
But it didn’t.
Legs no longer made of lead, Sasha broke into a run. But it was too late. The figure on the ground was not moving. The gray-haired woman had surrendered to death the moment the bullet had found her.
And then another sound came. The sound of screaming. Sasha did not immediately realize that it was coming from her.
She was never going to get warm again.
The iciness that surrounded her went clear down to her soul, despite the blanket that someone had draped over her shoulders.
Sasha was sitting in her car, on the driver’s side, her feet planted outside the vehicle on the concrete floor as she faced the activity that was going on just a few feet away.
What were the odds? she wondered. What were the odds of this kind of thing happening twice? Two women, nurses, both shot execution style. And both times her car was parked close enough to the scene of the crime to be touched by the killer.
She shivered and took another long sip from the hot container of coffee the detective had shoved into her hands. It was half-consumed. Only belatedly did it register that he must have drunk out of it before he’d given it to her.
Whether it was meant to warm her hands or her insides, she didn’t know. The no-frills coffee—black no sugar—failed to do either. But the jolt of super-strength caffeine did help her focus. Did help her hear his questions rather than just drift numbly away from the scene in a desperate act of self-preservation.
Her lashes felt moist. Was it the steam from the coffee, or was she crying? Sasha didn’t know. She couldn’t tell. Everything seemed so surreal.
“The hospital has signs up in the staff lounge advising women to go into the parking structure in pairs,” she said hoarsely, more to the container in her hands than to the detective she knew was staring down at her.
“So why didn’t you?” he asked her quietly.
The question surprised her. She had been referring to the dead woman, to the fact that if the grandmother of two had