Last night’s snow had turned into a cold, relentless rain. The windshield wipers on Lindsay’s two-year-old Trailblazer LT swished back and forth at high speed, barely able to keep one step ahead of the heavy downpour. She was at the halfway point between Griff’s home in Knox County and the old hunting lodge in Marion County that had belonged to the Walker family for several generations. She had headed out at nine-thirty this morning, shortly after dropping Griff off at the private airstrip where he kept his personal jet. Actually, it was the company’s jet—Powell Private Security and Investigation Agency—but since Griff was the sole owner, it was a moot point. In good weather, she could easily make the trip in a little over two hours, but with visibility practically nil, she’d be lucky to arrive at her destination in three hours.
Griff had known she didn’t want to see Judd again, yet he’d sent her off on this assignment anyway. She could have questioned him about his decision or even refused, but she’d known Griff long enough to realize he never did anything without a reason.
And that reason would be? she questioned herself.
Maybe it was because Griff knew that if this new Beauty Queen Killer case didn’t snap Judd back to life, from out of that no-man’s-land where he existed, then nothing ever would. Now, with a victim who had actually survived, this was the first real break they’d gotten in tracking down Jennifer Mobley Walker’s killer. If Gale Ann Cain could identify her attacker…
If … if … i f…
What if she couldn’t identify the madman who had chopped off both her feet? What if she never came out of the coma? What if she died? Was it fair to build up Judd’s hopes, to make him believe they actually had a shot at finding out who had killed his wife?
As the windshield wipers’ mesmerizing song hummed in rhythm to the drumming raindrops, and the miles along Highway 28 zipped by, Lindsay’s thoughts wandered backward to a day she would never forget—her first case as a brand new homicide detective for the Chattanooga Police Department. She had been partnered with Lt. Dan Blake, a veteran cop who had been her dad’s partner ten years earlier, before her father had been shot down by an escaping felon. Dan had taken her under his wing, guided her through her rise in the CPD, from rookie to detective, and had become like a second father to her.
They had arrived at the house shortly after midnight and took over from the uniformed officers—Marshall and Landers— who’d been first on the scene.
“The call came in from Ms. Walker’s boss, the owner of Archer/Hert Realty. It seems Mr. Walker became concerned when his wife was late coming home and he couldn’t reach her on her cell phone, so he called her boss. Mr. Archer was also unable to contact Ms. Walker on her cell, so he drove out to the house she’d been showing and found—” Officer Landers swallowed hard. “I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope I never—”
“That bad, huh,” Dan said as he passed by Landers and entered the sprawling seventies ranch house. Lindsay followed, pausing in the foyer when Dan stopped to take a look around. Officer Marshall stood in the foyer talking quietly to a small, gray-haired man who looked as if he’d been crying.
The minute Officer Marshall heard the door open, he turned to face Dan. “Lieutenant, this is Mr. Archer. He’s the one who found Mrs. Walker’s body.” The officer nodded the direction. “In there, in the kitchen.”
“It’s the most god-awful thing I’ve ever seen.” Archer’s voice quivered with emotion. “How could anyone have done something so terrible to Jennifer?”
“Take Mr. Archer outside and let him get some fresh air,” Dan said. “And let me know the minute the CSI boys arrive.” He turned to Lindsay. “Are you ready for this?”
She nodded.
“If you get sick, don’t worry about it,” he told her. “It’s happened to all of us at least once.”
“I’ll be okay.” She felt quite confident that she could handle whatever they found. After all, she had watched several autopsies and hadn’t experienced more than momentary nausea, hadn’t she? And she had viewed pictures of countless corpses in various stages of decomposition and hadn’t even flinched.
Dan slipped on his disposable gloves and headed through the house, inspecting one room at a time. Without a moment’s hesitation, Lindsay mimicked his actions. When Dan stopped abruptly in the kitchen doorway, Lindsay almost skidded into his back. She managed to sidestep him and wound up to his right, which enabled her to glance around him and into the kitchen.
Barely restraining a shocked gasp, Lindsay stared in disbelief at the slender young woman sitting on the floor, her head bowed, as if praying, her mane of long, dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Thin nylon rope crisscrossed her ankles, binding her feet together. Her arms, pulled up above her head, were bound with the same type of rope and were attached to two open cabinet doors.
“Sweet Jesus,” Dan said.
The woman’s hands, severed at the wrists, lay on either side of her hips, only a few inches from her thighs. Two large pools of rich, drying blood permeated the kitchen, emitting a distinct metallic scent and creating ebony-red stains where the victim’s life’s blood had drained from her body.
“The son of a bitch chopped off her hands.” Dan glared at the discarded meat cleaver lying at the dead woman’s feet.
Lindsay didn’t know what to say, had no idea how to respond to her partner’s comments. She wasn’t sure Dan expected her to reply.
As she surveyed the dead woman from head to toe, Lindsay noted one small item that seemed totally out of place in the gory scene. “There’s a flower in her lap.”
“A red rose,” Dan said. “Probably our killer’s calling card.”
Lindsay made a mental check of red rose connotations she’d heard during her lifetime. The one that came to mind first was that a red rose means I love you. Nope, that couldn’t be it, could it? Then the lyrics to an old song hummed through her head. It was called “Red roses for a blue lady” she seemed to remember.
“Let’s just back out of here and wait for our CSI team. If we’re lucky our guy left more than a red rose behind.” Dan closed his eyes, grunted and shook his head in disgust. “Why do some of them have to resort to slicing-and-dicing their victims?”
She was certain that comment had been rhetorical, so she kept quiet and took several steps backward, giving Dan room to turn around. But before Dan could close the kitchen door, a ruckus of some sort broke out from the foyer. The sound of Officer Landers’s voice rang out loud and clear.
“Sir, you can’t go back there,” Landers said.
“The hell I can’t,” the agitated baritone replied.
Feet stomping. Grunts. Curses. A thud.
“Mr. Walker, come back here,” Landers cried. “Stop now!”
Judd Walker, former Chattanooga District Attorney and presently a successful lawyer who was expected to run for office in the next gubernatorial race, came storming toward Dan and Lindsay.
“Where is she?” Judd demanded.
“Mr. Walker …” Dan approached the victim’s husband.
Lindsay eased backward, placing herself in front of the closed kitchen door.
Judd glared at Lindsay. “Get out of my way. I want to see my wife.”
“No, sir, you don’t want to see her.” Dan reached out to grab Judd’s arm, but Judd shook off Dan’s tentative grasp and moved past him.
With Dan behind him and Lindsay in front of him, Judd paused for a split second and glowered at Lindsay. “Don’t try to stop me. I’ve never hit a woman—”
“Then don’t start now.” Dan grabbed Judd from behind.
Judd whirled around and shucked off Dan’s grasp. He drew back his closed fist and punched Dan in the stomach before either Dan or Lindsay realized the man’s intentions. Groaning, Dan doubled over in pain.
Lindsay took a deep, bracing breath, and the minute Judd turned, she sent a swift right hook into his jaw, momentarily stunning him. Staggering slightly, obviously startled by her unexpected attack, Judd quickly focused on his single objective. While Dan managed to recover enough to draw his pistol from his shoulder holster, Judd shoved Lindsay aside, an easy feat for him since she was half his size. At that precise moment, Lindsay decided she needed to master some type of martial art.
Judd Walker thrust open the kitchen door.
“Please stop, Mr. Walker,” Lindsay called to him. “Don’t go in there. Don’t touch anything. You’ll compromise the crime scene.”
Dan tromped past Lindsay, halted just inside the kitchen, and aimed his Magnum at Judd Walker’s back.
“You’re not going to shoot him,” Lindsay said.
Shaking his head, Dan lowered his weapon. “God damn it. I should have been able to stop him, but he caught me off guard. I must be getting too old for this job.”
Lindsay barely heard a word Dan said and hardly noticed Officers Landers and Marshall, who had arrived seconds too late to assist them. She watched as Judd Walker dropped to his knees and pulled his wife into his arms. He didn’t cry, didn’t rant and rave. He held her tenderly, his trembling fingers caressing her pale cheek.
“We’ve got to get him out of there.” Dan motioned to Landers and Marshall.
As Dan and the officers cautiously entered the kitchen, it happened, stopping them dead in their tracks. Judd Walker let out an earsplitting scream, the sound so horrific that Lindsay heard it in her nightmares for years to come.
Swish, swish. Back and forth. The wipers smeared the freezing rain across the windshield of Lindsay’s metallic blue SUV. Damn, that cold rain had turned into a rain/ice mix. Just what she needed. The state and county work crews would keep the main roadways clear, but the Walker hunting lodge was off the beaten path, the last five miles on a gravel road. A four-wheel drive did great in snow, but was no better than any other vehicle on ice.
Did she hope the roads became impassable? Was she looking for any excuse to avoid seeing Judd again? Prob ably. No, not probably. Definitely. The last time she’d had to deal with him, she’d sworn never again. The man was an unfeeling bastard. Yes, he’d lost his wife, his beloved Jennifer. Yes, the former Miss Tennessee had been murdered— her hands whacked off—by a psycho monster. Yes, Judd had deserved sympathy, compassion, and understanding. And she had given him all three, in spades, as had Griff. Hell, everybody who’d ever known him—and countless others who had never met him personally—had felt the man’s pain. But it had been nearly four years since Jenny Walker’s death, and it was way past time for Judd to return to the land of the living.
Of course, he would never be the man he once was. How could he be? No one expected that to happen. But where at one time Lindsay had held out hope that Judd would go through the grieving process and shed his crazed vigilante persona, she now accepted the fact that his grief and rage had sucked all other human emotions out of him. If not for his thirst for revenge, Judd Walker wouldn’t exist.
As soon as Griffin’s plane landed at the small commercial airport in Williamstown, Kentucky, he called Sanders.
“Any word on Gale Ann Cain’s condition?”
“Nothing, other than she’s still alive,” Sanders said.
“Heard anything from Lindsay?”
“No, but we didn’t expect to this soon, did we?”
“Not really.”
“You’re concerned about her having to confront Mr. Walker again.”
Griff didn’t reply immediately, hating to admit that he actually was concerned about Lindsay. “She’ll be all right. She’s tough.”
“Yes, sir.”
Whenever Sanders became formal enough with Griff to say “sir” to him, he immediately understood that his assistant was showing his disapproval. “Judd needs her,” Griff said. “She’s the only one who has a prayer of reaching him on any level.”
Silence.
“It’s not as if she’s a lamb being led to the slaughter.”
“No, sir.”
Griff knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, especially with Sanders. It was definitely time to fold ’em.
“If you hear from her—”
“I’ll contact you, sir.”
Damn it, Lindsay McAllister was tough. She was a former police officer who’d done a short stint as a Chattanooga PD detective. Her old man had been a cop, as had his father before him. She had grown up as a tomboy, or so she had told him, preferring to play baseball with the boys instead of Barbie dolls with the other girls. Small-boned, petite, and slender, Lindsay should have projected an image of dainty femininity. Instead, with her pale, curly blond hair cut short and very little makeup covering her freckled nose and cheeks, she came across as a no-nonsense, no frills woman. If anyone made the mistake of thinking she was fragile, all they had to do was cross her. Since he had first met her, she had acquired topnotch martial arts skills, had become an expert marksman, and hid the emotional side of her nature as well as any man.
He liked Lindsay. Respected her. And in many ways had come to think of her more as a kid sister than an employee.
They had met almost four years ago, shortly after Jennifer Walker’s brutal murder. Lindsay had been partnered with Dan Blake, the lead detective on Jenny’s murder case; and he’d never seen anyone more determined to solve a crime than she had been. At first, he had chalked up her perseverance in finding Jenny’s killer to a rookie detective’s need to prove herself. But as the weeks and months went by, he realized that the case had become personal to Lindsay. Sometime between meeting Judd at the scene of his wife’s murder and becoming acquainted with him as a grieving widower obsessed with revenge, Lindsay had fallen in love with Judd Walker.
Griffin slid behind the wheel of the rental car, a two-year-old Lincoln. He’d never been to Williamstown, Kentucky, so he’d asked for directions to the hospital before he left the airport. He doubted that, in a town this size, even a direction-challenged person could get lost.
Three miles from the small airport, Griff took a left on Elmwood Street, which meant he should be less than five minutes from the hospital where Gale Ann Cain lay in a semi-coma, heavily drugged, and teetering between life and death. The former Miss Universe contestant was only one in a long line of former beauty queens who had been savagely attacked in the past four and a half years. By Griff’s—and the FBI’s—count, Ms. Cain was victim number twenty-nine. But neither he nor the FBI could be sure that all twenty-nine murders had been committed by the same person, and therefore weren’t positive that the murders were all connected. Nor could they be certain that there hadn’t been other victims.
Griff’s gut instincts told him all twenty-nine had a definite connection.
The victims had not been confined to one city, county, or state, making their killer nomadic, a guy who traveled around in search of the perfect target. But these women had not been chosen at random. Not by a long shot. The common denominator in these crimes was the fact that each woman had been a winner in some kind of beauty pageant—local, statewide, national, or international. Not one victim had been older than thirty-five. And each had still been beautiful.
Jennifer Mobley Walker had possessed a flashy kind of beauty: Big brown eyes, lustrous dark hair, full lips, large breasts, and long legs that went on forever. And she had been blessed with a bubbly, enthusiastic personality that drew people to her. To know Jenny was to love Jenny.
No one had been more surprised than Griff when his old friend, Judd Walker, a confirmed bachelor, had fallen head over heels for the former Miss Tennessee and married her less than a year after their first date. Women throughout the state had mourned the loss of such a desirable catch. Rich, handsome, and charming.
That had been then—five years ago.
The three-story hospital came into view as Griff neared the turnoff on to Pickler Avenue. If Gale Ann Cain lived long enough to ID her attacker, they would have a chance of catching this guy and stopping him before he killed again. Griff wasn’t sure that arresting the man and bringing him to justice could save Judd’s soul, but it was sure and certain that nothing else would. During the nearly four years he had worked on this case, he had done his utmost to stay detached, as much as it was possible when a friend was involved. But both he, Sanders, and especially Lindsay had become borderline-obsessed with seeing justice done.
After parking the rental car in the crowded visitors’ lot, Griff slipped on his leather gloves, tightened the silk scarf around his neck, and buttoned up his water-repellent overcoat. The harsh February wind bombarded him, chilling his face, and putting a giddyup in his step.
At the information desk in the lobby area, he acquired instructions on reaching the ICU unit.
As he stepped off the elevator, he unbuttoned his tan overcoat and unwrapped the scarf from his neck. He hated the sounds, smells, and sights in a hospital. Medicinal scents blended with the aroma of cleaning products and the stench of human sickness and death. Passing by patients’ rooms, he tried not to glance inside the open doors, tried to avoid viewing the weak, infirm, ill men and women. His avoidance came not from empathy, but from a lack of it, and Griff hated the phlegmatic elements in his nature that were so alien to his former self. A by-product of surviving at all costs, he surmised.
When he entered the intensive care waiting room, a twelve-by-fourteen-foot, windowless cubbyhole filled with a small group of bleary-eyed, rumpled men and women, he removed his leather gloves and stuffed them into his overcoat pocket. A few of the people in the room appeared to have slept on the two brown vinyl sofas and in the mismatched collection of uncomfortable-looking vinyl chairs. An assortment of small pillows and blankets of various sizes and colors lay scattered about haphazardly on the furniture and the floor.
Griff had no idea if Gale Ann Cain had a husband or siblings or parents besides her sister who might be here. The information Sanders had received had been sketchy, just a brief conversation with their government contact, an acquaintance of longstanding.
Pausing in the open doorway, Griff scanned the area. Several people turned and stared at him; just as many others, engrossed in their own tragedies, ignored him completely.
A woman sitting in the right back corner, deep in conversation with a lady who was sitting in a wheelchair, seemed to have sensed his presence. Her shoulders tensed. She sat up straight. After giving the other woman’s hand a gentle squeeze, she lifted her dark head and glanced over her shoulder.
Damn! He should have known she’d be here. The bane of his existence, the thorn in his side when it came to the Beauty Queen Killer case.
She rose from the chair to her full five-ten height and faced Griff. Frowning, her pale tan eyes narrowed and her nostrils slightly flared, Special Agent Nic Baxter walked toward him, her gaze never wavering.
He stepped out into the hallway and waited for her. If there was going to be a confrontation—and there always was whenever they shared the same space—it was better for the two of them to exchange insults out of earshot of other people. Especially people with loved ones in the ICU.
She followed him into the hall. They faced each other.
“You’re not glad to see me,” Griff said.
“I’m never glad to see you,” she replied.
“I noticed you were doing some hand-holding. Is she the sister of Gale Ann Cain or just a friend?”
“I can’t order you to leave, as much as I’d like to, but I can warn you not to interfere in my investigation.” She shook her finger in his face. “Sooner or later, I’ll find out who keeps tipping you off and when I do—”
“Why can’t you get it through that thick skull of yours that we’re on the same side?” Griff understood that federal agents could be territorial, that they often had to deal with inept local law enforcement and well-meaning civilians, but he was neither.
“And why can’t you get it through your thick skull that tracking and apprehending serial killers is the bureau’s job, not a game for some know-it-all private dick?”
Griff cocked one eyebrow and gave her a blistering glare. “Where’s Special Agent Jackson?”
When the corners of Nic’s mouth lifted ever so slightly in a hint of a smile, he knew he wasn’t going to like her answer. “Curtis retired last month. Didn’t your mole in D.C. tell you?”
Shit!
Special Agent Curtis Jackson had been in charge of the Beauty Queen Killer case from the very beginning, heading up the FBI task force. He had liked and respected Jackson. A guy in his late fifties, with years of experience and a macho attitude that matched Griff’s, Jackson and he had gotten along just fine, even though the guy never shared any info with him and had warned him repeatedly to keep his nose out of federal business. Griff kept a professional profiler on the Powell Agency payroll. But despite having a likely description of their culprit, they were no closer to apprehending this monster than they had been three years ago. He suspected it was the same for the FBI.
Nicole Baxter had come in on the case as a five-year veteran of the bureau, and although she’d graduated at the top of her class at Quantico, she’d had little field experience. From the moment they first met, she and Griff had mixed like oil and water. He didn’t like women who tried to prove that they were better at everything than men were. Maybe Special Agent Baxter wasn’t a die-hard feminist, but she came close enough to filling the bill.
“If Jackson retired, does that mean you’ve taken over the Beauty Queen Killer case?” Griff knew, but he had to ask.
She nodded. “That’s right. I’m heading up the task force now.”
“Is there any way we can bury the hatchet and work together?”
“Only if I can bury it in your back.”
Griff let out a quiet yet dramatic groan. “You’re not going to give an inch, are you, honey?” He tacked on the generic endearment because he knew it would piss her off.
She glowered at him. “I can be reasonable, honey.”
“You can’t prove it by me.” He shouldn’t have mouthed off, but couldn’t help himself. She brought out the worst in him and apparently he did the same for her.
“Keep insulting me and see where that gets you.”
“I guess I should apologize.”
“That would be nice.”
Damn, she actually expected him to grovel. “All right. I apologize.”
She flopped her hand across her heart. “How sincere.”
“It’s all you’re going to get. Take it or leave it.” Griffin Powell didn’t grovel. Not for anyone. Not ever again. He’d rather die first.
“Look, if you’re willing to acknowledge that this is my case, that I’m the one who calls the shots and makes the decisions, I won’t cut your balls off and hand them to you on a silver platter.”
Go to hell, bitch had been on the tip of his tongue. “In order to safeguard my balls, what do I have to do, sign an oath in blood that I’ll stay out of your way?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Believe me, Special Agent Baxter, I would never intentionally tempt you.”
Nic groaned. “Believe me, you have nothing to worry about on that count.”
He held out his hand, offering her a truce. “Let’s agree to disagree. I’ll stop hoping for cooperation from you, and you don’t put up any roadblocks in my path.”
She stared at his hand as if it were a poisonous snake, then reluctantly shook hands with him. A quick, let’s-get-this-over-with exchange.
“If you start interfering, our deal is off. Understand?”
He nodded. He understood all right; he just wasn’t sure how long he could play nice in the sandbox with this particular she-cat.
Seemingly satisfied, Nic nodded toward the ICU waiting area. “The woman in there is Barbara Jean Hughes. She’s Gale Ann Cain’s older sister and the one who found her only moments after she was attacked and left for dead.”
Griff’s gut instincts kicked into play. “Tell me that the sister caught a glimpse of our killer.”
“I might as well tell you since I can’t stop you from talking to Barbara Jean. And you are going to talk to her, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
Frowning, Nic said reluctantly, “When Barbara Jean was entering her sister’s apartment building over on Loretta Street, she saw a man in a trench coat and sunglasses coming down the stairway.”
“Can she describe him in more detail?”
“I think she can,” Nic said. “But she’s scared to death—for herself and her sister.”
“So, even if the sister dies, we’ve still got a possible witness.”
“You’re a cold-hearted bastard, Powell. You know that, don’t you?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“One other thing, Mr. Powell—we, as in you and I, don’t have anything. I gave you the info about Barbara Jean because you’d get it anyway. But that’s it. The sister is the bureau’s eyewitness. And it will be our responsibility to protect her, if that becomes necessary. Do I make myself clear?”
Griff grinned. “Crystal clear, honey.”
Nic groaned.