“She didn’t, just that she was running late.”
Matt dialed her cell phone. Again, it went to voice mail. He started to worry. “Last night she talked about checking out the address on River Road. I left a message for her nearly two hours ago, told her I had information and to call me before she went out there.” He jumped up. Two hours—she would have called him. Especially after last night. “I have to go.”
“Not alone,” Dean said and pulled his gun from his drawer.
Chapter Sixteen
“He fell for the bait,” Alex told Selena over the phone as she drove from the county jail toward the Sacramento River. “If you hadn’t found the third victim, I don’t think he would have bought it. But it worked, and John Doe isn’t our rapist.”
“I wouldn’t have found the third victim if I hadn’t asked John to pull the ballistics report as well as the autopsy from the prostitute who was shot three years ago. There are other similarities.”
“Why didn’t anyone see the pattern sooner?”
“Because the first death was an overdose, the second was a bullet to the head, and the third was strangulation, and the river destroyed much of the evidence. All prostitutes, but only two confirmed homicides. And,” Selena added bitterly, “they were prostitutes and Russian. Not a priority.”
“They were a priority for John.”
“Until the leads dried up, and he said there weren’t many to begin with. He’s digging deeper, though, reviewing everything he had on his case, and talking to the detective who pulled the gunshot victim. If there is another connection between the girls, he’ll find it. John asked if you could come by and look at the files with him. You might notice something as well.”
“I need to be discreet.”
“Hmm. Well, why not do it at my place? We’re friends, if anyone sees us together it’s not going to be suspicious. I’ll call John and set it up.”
“I’ll be there, just let me know when.” She turned off the freeway toward River Road. She would need to pull in Matt and Dean Hooper as well. She should also get the okay to bring two more people into the investigation. She should have asked before she read Selena into the investigation.
“You need to tell the FBI,” Selena said.
“Tell them exactly what?”
“That the dead Russian in the car didn’t kill the prostitute three years ago.”
“He could have killed her. He just didn’t rape her. And what do I really have other than what Tommy didn’t say? I bluffed about the fourth victim and he didn’t blink. That tells me he knows that the dead kid wasn’t involved. But proving that? Impossible.”
Alex drove across a narrow bridge over the Sacramento River. As she got closer to the address that had scratched at her memory, everything came back.
Tommy Cordell had come out here several times ostensibly to pay for boat storage. Alex had always thought it was a cover for something else, but she’d never had evidence of anything but what he said it was.
“Alex, I don’t like this. Call your FBI contact. You’d better not be heading to the river alone.”
“I already called Hart and asked to meet this afternoon about the job offer. He’s at his office. I called Steve to ask about the case and he told me that Jim’s at the crime lab. I’m just going to drive by, see if I remember anything else, but I think this is the place Tommy picked up cash. It’s like he was on Rykov’s fucking payroll.”
“That’s why you have to be careful. I know you lied to him, but what if he realized that you were playing him?”
“He didn’t. He didn’t tell me anything.” She decided not to tell Selena about the threat. Her friend would just worry more, and it was a hollow threat. Tommy couldn’t do anything to her from prison, and even if he contacted someone about her questions, he wouldn’t know she was heading out to River Road, or even what she was really interested in. He’d absolutely believed that she was helping Selena with a rape case. “It was his reaction when I said the dead Russian shooter had tried to kill Hart with the same gun that was used on the prostitute. That rattled him. Or—maybe just surprised him. Either way, Hart’s shooter didn’t kill the prostitute. Look, I promise, I’ll call you as soon as I’m done here. Thirty minutes, tops. Okay?”
“Don’t forget.”
Alex hung up. She was almost there.