“Ajax died between midnight and two.” My mind was spinning. “There was a cruiser parked at the curb all night. The surveillance team didn’t see anyone enter or leave the house until Cauthern showed up at dawn.”
“The Ajax property backs up to a walking trail behind Sunrise Court and a couple other dead-enders along that stretch. Whoever capped him probably parked on another cul-de-sac, took the path, then crossed the yard to the kitchen door.”
“That could explain the fibers on the hedge. The dirt on the floor.”
Our eyes exchanged the same questions. Who? Why?
“You taking it to Salter?” I asked.
“Soon.”
I raised my brows in question.
“I want to go at this scumbag Yoder one more time.”
“Why is he a scumbag?”
“There’s something smells there.”
“Not exactly an answer.”
“We ask Yoder about Leal and Donovan, the next thing you know, Ajax is dead with a kit in his trunk.” Slidell looked at me a very long moment. “What’s your gut? We looking at the same doer?”
“The girls and Ajax?”
Slidell nodded.
“My gut says yes.”
“Sonofafriggin’ bitch. And we got squat.”
“We know our killer is male.”
Slidell stared into his cup as if the answer were floating in his coffee. I’d never seen him so discouraged. “Think the guy’s a sexual sadist?”
“None of the victims was sexually assaulted.” I’d chewed on this a lot. “I think his arousal comes from control, from the ability to manipulate.”
“Us or his vics?”
I hadn’t looked at it that way. “Both. He’s definitely toying with us.”
Slidell rose. I walked him to the door.
“How’s he do it?” As he stepped outside.
“Do what?”
“Move under the radar and leave us nothing.”
I was in the study checking email when the phone rang again. I glanced at the caller ID. S. Marcus. Not recognizing the name, I let the call roll to voicemail. Seconds later, I heard the voice of my little cat-sitter friend, Mary Louise, on the answering machine. She wanted to visit after school. Had something for me.
Sorry, sweetie. Not today. Adding my guilt over Mary Louise to my guilt over Ajax, I turned back to the computer.
Ryan’s email attachment had opened. Tawny McGee looked at me from the deck of a boat, breeze lifting her collar and tossing her hair.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why did you go to Pomerleau?”
McGee continued to gaze straight ahead with her empty, still eyes. She was tall and full-breasted. But she didn’t flaunt what a lot of women paid big bucks to have. She downplayed it with a modest turtleneck.
I recalled the odd dynamic between the Kezerians. Bernadette’s comments. Jake’s.
Tawny hated being photographed. Hated being seen naked. Never dated or felt comfortable around men or boys.
Bernadette said her daughter had body-image issues. Jake said she was nuts.
I studied the long limbs, the doubleD’s, the expressionless face. Wondered what was going on behind the vacant eyes.
From nowhere, another conversation winged into my consciousness.
Ryan’s report on Lindahl. He’d said the therapist had hinted that something was off.
As I stared at the woman on my screen, an idea slowly shaped up in my brain. An improbable possibility.
Heart hammering, I reached for the phone.
CHAPTER 39
AFTER A GRILLING, then a brief wait, “Pamela Lindahl.”
“My name is Temperance Brennan. We met some years back.”
“You work at the medico-legal lab here in Montreal.”
“Yes.”
“Yet you are calling from North Carolina. The receptionist said you were quite insistent.”
“The matter is urgent.”
“Go on.” With the wariness of a snitch in witness protection.
“It’s about Tawny McGee.”
“I suspected as much.” Sighing. “I will tell you what I told the detective. To discuss a patient without his or her permission would be a serious breach of professional ethics.”
No dancing around. No appealing to her sense of justice or fairness. I put one straight in her gut. “Tawny hooked up with Anique Pomerleau.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes,” I said, “you do. And I don’t have time to play games.”