She smacked him playfully on the arm. “Then the ‘O’ could be a zero or the capital letter ‘O.’ If it’s an ‘O’ what could it stand for?”
“No weapon I know starts with the letter O,” Cruz said.
Frankie felt giggly and silly, punchy from the two long days of worry. “Didn’t Cole mention something about music? Musical instruments – two oboes, two ocarinas, two octavins – ?”
“Now you’re just making things up.” Cruz smiled and steadied himself in the laughter in her eyes. It felt good. He found himself lingering over the coffee long after any discussion had yielded any new ideas about the code.
As he left through the front door, he hesitated, turned back, his hand on the knob. Her safety loomed over both of them, a dark cloud of threat. He reached up to graze her cheek with his fingertips. “Don’t take any chances.”
She nodded and shut the door behind him. He heard the safety locks and chain click in place.
Frankie leaned against the door after Chago Cruz had left. She smiled faintly, then sobered. This was no time to develop a crush on a hunky parole officer, she reminded herself.
She hummed all the way upstairs to her bedroom.
After leaving Frankie and Cole, Cruz decided, even at this ungodly late hour, to call the Bigler County coroner directly. Patch Wilson was not happy to be awakened after his long night in the morgue.
“You finish the Hightower autopsy yet?” Cruz asked after identifying himself.
Patch, grumpy from interrupted sleep, rankled at the parole officer addressing the young victim so casually. “Her name is Valerie, officer. Valerie Hightower.”
Cruz had the grace to remain silent a moment. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Can you tell me anything about Valerie or Dickey Hinchey?” Dickey was Cruz’s responsibility. He needed to be sure the autopsy was straight forward.
“You were his parole officer?”
“Yes,” Cruz said defensively, “and I’d sure like to know how he died.”
“I finished attending to Mr. Hinchey’s body late last night. Sheriff Slater has the results.” Wilson relaxed his formal manner for a moment before continuing. “I’m very sorry about your friend, Officer Cruz. The internal examination confirmed what Dr. Mason Foster suspected. Multiple knife wounds and blunt force trauma – cause of death.”
“Nothing unusual?”
“Not unless you consider violent murder unusual,” Patch answered before disconnecting.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Cruz thought, and woke up the second angry man in one night. Sitting on the edge of his bed, removing his boots, he waited for the sound of the Sheriff’s gravelly voice.
He started in without preamble. “What’d you find in Sac County?”
Slater growled out a loud harrumph. “Lazy, half-assed coroner!”
“I take it you mean the Sac County medical examiner.”
“Shit, yes. No examination of internal organs. Just a slipshod outer exam,” Slater explained. “Clarence is putting pressure on the M.E.’s office. We should get something by tomorrow.”
“I called Dr. Wilson tonight.” Cruz hesitated. “He wasn’t pleased.”
Slater snorted. “Yeah, I imagine. Breakfast at 8:00 at Denny’s. I’ll bring you up to speed. Nothing that can’t wait – ” A pause while he checked the clock. “Five damn hours. Hell, Chago, you’re a pain in the ass.”
He clicked off, his low grumbles broadcasting until the connection was severed.
Angie Hunt had settled down her “boys” for the night. This evening the Methodist Church on Douglass Avenue was feeding and housing the homeless men and women. They always liked M.C. night because the wealthy parishioners fed them generously, often with steak and the kinds of food many of them only smelled walking past a fancy restaurant.
Angie smiled as she locked up the Jesus Saves office, leaving the soft interior lights burning. It’d been a bad few weeks, but she hummed softly as she walked to her car parked on Grape Street, where a row of older homes was a remnant of the once-thriving area when the Pacific Fruit Express transported thousands of pounds of produce around the country.
Angie didn’t hear the killer step from the shadow of an old oak tree. Didn’t hear his muffled attempt to stifle his arousal of anticipation. She staggered under the hard blow to her temple, felt a fierce pain and rough maneuvering as he pushed her into the passenger seat.
She didn’t hear the faint jingle of her car keys as he removed them from her lax fingers. By the time he drove away in her car, she welcomed the empty, sweet relief of unconsciousness.
Most of all, she didn’t register the angry, brooding face behind the wheel of her own car.
Chapter 40
The Professor sat straight-backed on his cell floor in the SHU, legs crossed and hands loosely held on his knees in the Sukhasana yoga position. He concentrated on breathing, slowed down his heart rate, and tried to empty his mind.