“The third set of prints run parallel to his, thirty yards between them, and maybe they don’t even see each other,” he poses. “The third set of prints are a soft sole. Maybe an UGG. Or a boot like it. This guy was trailing our vic from the beginning. We traced their prints back to the Lake Road. The vic leaves the road and cuts into the trees. Maybe she thinks she can lose the guy in the woods. And it’s working. The soft-sole print is running out of steam fast, clearly can’t keep up with our vic. These prints stop at the top of the slope, never make it down to the bike path and nowhere near the lake. For a minute, our vic, maybe she thinks she’s okay. But she’s underdressed and struggling with the weather. She’s already lost a boot, no coat, hat, gloves. And now a dip in adrenaline.”
“The guy in the hiking boots gains on her.”
“Easily,” Lars agrees. “He has a longer, stronger stride. He breaks out of the woods, barrels down the slope, and he’s on her.” Lars turned and walked, retracing the tangled trail, and Nicole followed until they were twenty yards out and silhouetted by light from the halogen lamps. “Right here, he grabs our vic. Her toes drag in the snow. A small struggle, because the girl is wiped out, clinging to life, but even in her last breath, she denies him.” He snaps his fingers. “Then he kills her.”
It felt right. If not an exact match to the events leading up to Beatrice Esparza’s murder, then close. But she knew too that evidence could be manipulated by a perspective that was too narrow, by an approach that wasn’t flexible.
“Denies him what?” Nicole asked.
“Sex. Love.” He lifted the evidence bag and shuffled it between his hands until the pill bottle was on top. “I think that’s Rohypnol.”
* * *
Benjamin Kris leaned against the hood of the SUV, the engine long cold and the windows growing some serious frost. He didn’t want to draw attention his way. He didn’t want to answer questions, have his name jotted into some slunk detective’s notebook. How many times had he watched her smile bloom on her face and felt a lightness in his chest? His heart had been like an air bubble, rising through fathoms of water to bob on the surface of a vast sea. She had done that for him, and then ripped it all away. She had known who he was, what he was, and then later decided it wasn’t enough. Or worse, that he was too much. Too much of a fuckup.
He was here to prove himself, having made it to the top. He wanted Nicole to see that he was king of the mountain before he buried her alive.
He lowered the binoculars and gazed at the scene from a distance. He knew how cops worked. Soon their tight circle would grow larger, closer, and he would have to be gone by then. He had people waiting on him, appearances to keep up. An alibi to maintain.
One more look, he told himself, because he found her obsessive. Nicole in action, tall and solid. He hated her calm, her strength, that she had once beaten him and beaten him badly. And Benjamin Kris did not like to lose.
He was tired of dangling from her string. Killing her would eliminate the threat, but he wanted more than that. He wanted to destroy her, and that took more time, more effort, more closeness. It would take striking her where it hurt most. Going for what she had been afraid of all along. Jordan. Losing him would crush Nicole. And Benjamin was looking forward to it.
2
“Two predators, one prey,” Nicole said, thinking aloud as they paced back to MacAulay and the dead girl. “If they didn’t know about each other, if they weren’t working together, then we have separate motives as well.” She gazed at the vic. MacAulay was wrapping tape around her wrists, securing her bagged hands. Her clothes were intact. Fitted jeans, a cami under the cashmere sweater. Nothing disturbed. “Our killer had an agenda.”
Lars nodded. “I think he missed his opportunity.”
“The girl caught on, or maybe they were interrupted and she ran.” From one of the more than a hundred homes that clustered around the lake. “That would explain the absence of her coat.”
“Not the first time roofie made an appearance at a party,” Lars agreed.
“But the prints, they never cross?”
“Never. For close to a hundred yards, they run parallel but are separated by thirty or forty yards.”
“But the soft soles, he’s on the vic from the beginning? Not the hiking boots?”
Lars nodded. “The hiking boot picks up the vic in the woods. He cut in from the lake road sooner. Could be they started out together and split up to corral our vic.”
“The third set of prints, the soft soles, what happens to him?”
“He stopped.” And Lars turned and pointed toward the crest of a slope that overlooked the lake. “He stood there, but it’s hard to tell for how long. Minutes is my guess. Long enough to watch the kill.” He turned back to Nicole. “He shifted his weight on his feet—the prints overlap. At one point, he took a single step forward.”
“Indecision,” she said.
“Maybe in the clutch, he wanted to help the vic.”
“Or the perp.”
Either way, a witness to murder. The thought put an irritating tic in her blood.
She turned and focused on MacAulay’s progress. Slow and methodical. But the man never made a mistake.
In a murder investigation, that was never enough.
“Make sure you cross-reference the snow with anatomy.” A tech would scoop the drift and preserve it in a cooler chest for slowmelt once it was brought back to the lab. If there were epithelials, hairs, fibers under the vic’s nails, there was a possibility some could be recovered in the snow.
“Of course,” MacAulay agreed, unruffled. The man didn’t know urgency. He had one frequency, but it was stable. It was predictable. It was even long-range. So what if his engine never kicked into high gear? MacAulay was reliable.
She turned back to Lars. His hands were at his sides, the evidence bag clutched in one.
“There a name on the prescription bottle?” she asked.
“Beatrice Esparza,” Lars confirmed. “Augmentin, five hundred milligrams, twice daily.”
Doc whistled through his teeth. “That’s a heavy dose. A kid her age and weight, I’d prescribe half that.”
“What for?” Nicole asked.
“Could be she had a bad case of bronchitis. Maybe walking pneumonia. Urinary tract infection, a stubborn skin infection. Those are the most common uses for the drug. But five hundred milligrams?” His frown deepened as he considered it. “No.”
Lars shook the bag, and they listened to the rattle of pills. “That’s not penicillin.”
“Can I take a look?” Doc asked.
Lars opened the baggie and removed the bottle. Gloved, he twisted open the cap and warned the doctor to look and not touch. MacAulay obliged.
“You’re right. That’s not Augmentin.”
“But is it Rohypnol?” Nicole pressed.
“That or cold tabs,” Lars returned. “You know where my money is.” He replaced the bottle and zipped the bag and held it up for Nicole to take a good look, though she didn’t need to. Lars was right. The pills and condom packet led them down an obvious path.
Date-rapers were smooth and deceptive. They were violent offenders who spun lies that looked like gold.