‘I should hope so. It was less than forty-eight hours ago.’
Patton hadn’t seemed as shaken at the sight of Patricia’s body, though. Mostly because she hadn’t been as thoroughly worked over as the two dealers from the night before. On those two, he’d spent hours cutting and carving. Patricia had been dealt with quickly.
Because I was so angry. Too angry. Seeing Thomas Thorne lying there unconscious had been more difficult than he’d anticipated. He’d wanted to plunge his knife into the man’s body so badly . . . but he had not. Because death was too good for him. He wanted him to live. And mourn.
Just like I am. So he’d been quick about it, slicing the woman’s throat before carving her open and pushing the weathered key ring into the wound. He’d dropped the knife on the floor at Thorne’s side after pressing the man’s fingerprints into the blood.
And then he’d left the room, going to the garage to lie on the tarp they’d laid in the backseat of Thorne’s very luxurious SUV. It had been the hardest thing, walking away from Thorne’s breathing body. But he’d done it, because the payoff would be far more satisfying.
He’d taken the tarp with him when he’d exited to his own vehicle, ensuring that there would be no trace of him in Thorne’s Audi. And then he’d left Patton to return the Audi to Thorne’s garage and to finish setting the scene. He now wondered if Patton had looked the same way after beating Patricia until she was unrecognizable.
‘What the hell?’ Patton’s voice jerked him out of the memory. He looked up from the paper he’d been reading, his eyes flashing with fury. ‘You could have texted this to me. Or called me.’
‘Of course I could have.’ Calmly he continued to dress, watching Patton from the corner of his eye as he shrugged into his shirt and buttoned it.
‘But you made me come all the way down here.’
‘I did.’ He tucked his shirttail into his trousers and began tying his tie.
Patton’s face hardened to stone. ‘You just wanted me to see this.’ He gestured behind him, to where the bodies lay.
He smiled. ‘Just a little reminder of how failure is punished.’
‘But these guys didn’t fail you.’
‘Well, when you consider that they pledged allegiance to my rival, I’d have to disagree.’ He snugged his tie and pulled on his coat. There. He always felt more put together when he wore a suit. He nodded toward the paper in Patton’s hand. ‘Complete those tasks and call me after each one. Then return here. You’ll need to transport these two back to their masters.’
Patton’s eyes widened. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me. I want these bodies dropped at the Circus Freaks’ warehouse at seven sharp.’
‘Why seven?’
Because that was when Sheidalin opened their doors. He wanted shock and awe and media coverage when the police stormed the place. ‘My reasons are not for you to question, Mr Patton. Should I search for another replacement?’
Patton’s gulp was, once again, audible. ‘No. Sir.’
‘Good. Then please get to it. You don’t want to be late.’
Baltimore, Maryland,
Monday 13 June, 10.55 A.M.
Frederick hurried to open the backstage door. ‘Miss Brewster?’
She’d raised her fist to knock, but lowered it. Her eyes widened, startled, although she didn’t physically flinch. ‘Yes. Mr Dawson, I take it?’
‘Yes, thank you for coming to meet me here. Please come this way.’
She followed him into the main hall, blinking to get accustomed to the darkness. Sally Brewster was the woman who’d warned Bernice Brown that someone claiming to be a detective was poking around. She was fifty-two, widowed with two grown children, and was a nurse in the pediatric ward of a local hospital. She volunteered at the animal shelter and played the cello in her neighborhood orchestra. She rode horses in her ‘spare time’, and had gone to Ocean City on vacation the month before, where she’d looked very, very nice in her extremely modest bathing suit. And she really, really needed to make her Facebook page private.
He pulled out a chair for her. ‘Please sit down.’
She looked around the club curiously. ‘I’ve been here before, for a concert. It looks different in the off hours.’
‘All smoke and magic, I assume. Mr Thorne, your friend Bernice’s attorney, is part owner of this club.’
‘I know. That’s why I came – to observe Mr Thorne. I wanted to get a look at the man who’s helping Bernie. This has been a nightmare for her. If he has to drop her case, I don’t know what she’ll do.’
‘I’ll be taking on her case,’ Frederick assured her. ‘At no charge. I understand you called Mrs Brown last Friday and warned her that someone was asking where she was.’
‘Yes. He said his name was Detective Hooper. I don’t talk to people I don’t know on the phone. You hear of scams every day. He might have been hired by Bernie’s husband, who is a complete piece of garbage.’
‘So you told him nothing?’
‘Not a thing. Not really. I gave him an address where he could find Bernie, but it was just a vacant lot at the trailer park. Plus, he was trying too hard. Gave me the creeps. I called the police department he claimed to be with. They’d never heard of him.’
‘You were very smart to be cautious.’
‘Some people say I’m paranoid.’
‘Some people are careless. You were not.’ He’d drilled that kind of caution into his daughters. He approved of Miss Brewster’s vigilance in this regard, even though she needed to block her Facebook page. ‘Do you have the number he called from?’
‘Yes.’ She found it in her cell phone call log. ‘I think it’s fake. I tried calling it back.’
‘From this phone?’
She gave him a small smile. ‘No. From a payphone outside the grocery store. Like I said, he gave me the creeps.’
‘Good.’ He wrote the number down. ‘Is there anything else you can remember about the call? Any background noises?’
She frowned thoughtfully. ‘Birds.’
‘Birds? Like . . . outside in a tree?’
‘No, more like . . . at the beach. Seagulls.’
Frederick’s pulse took a leap. ‘That’s good to know. What else?’
‘He had a little bit of a Southern accent. Not at first. It came out when he started to get annoyed with me. That’s when I hung up on him. Sorry, I wish I could tell you more.’
‘Do you think you’d recognize his voice if you heard it again?’
She looked uncertain. ‘Maybe. I’ve read that voice recognition is even less reliable than eyewitness testimony.’
And she was well read too. ‘That can be true. Sometimes it’s enough to give the police a search warrant, though.’
Her brows rose. ‘I would have thought you’d be against helping the police to get warrants.’
He wasn’t offended. It was a common misconception that defense attorneys lived to thwart the police. ‘Not necessarily. If the warrant is executed legally and there really is due cause for its issuance, then that satisfies the law. That is the expectation that every defendant should be allowed to have.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I see. Do you think Bernie has a chance in court?’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve read her file, I’ve spoken with her, and I’ve consulted with two of the other attorneys in the practice. I’ll do my very best for her.’
She nodded again. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘I knew who you were before I came here,’ she stated baldly. ‘I wanted to check you out, both for my own safety and for Bernie’s. She’s putting her life in your hands.’
Frederick sat back in the chair, wondering where she was going with this. Why she seemed so defensive. ‘Checking me out was prudent. You should know that I checked you out too. You really need to change your Facebook privacy settings.’
She sucked in a surprised breath. ‘Oh. I had no . . .’ Her cheeks bloomed pink. ‘I will. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He started to rise, but she held up her hand.
‘I’m not finished.’ She waited until he’d resettled himself. ‘I checked on you a little more deeply than you checked on me.’ She lifted her brows. ‘You don’t have a Facebook page.’