Ryker pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Think the dishes could wait?” he whispered.
“I definitely think they could—” A harsh jangle interrupted her.
“Damn,” he said. “That’s my phone.” He retrieved his jacket from the floor beside the front door.
It was William Crenshaw, a friend and fellow detective. “What’s up, Bill?”
“We got another one.”
“Another what?” Ryker glanced at Nicole. She was rinsing dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. He turned his back to her.
Bill sucked in a deep breath. “Another girl. Dead in her apartment.”
Ryker’s whole body went on alert. Everybody on the force knew about his certainty that St. Tammany Parish had a serial killer. Three young women had been killed in three years, all inside their homes, and all with weapons of convenience.
“When?” he barked.
“The Courtyard Apartments on Main Street in Chef Voleur. Neighbors saw her lying on her patio this morning. Looks like she collapsed while trying to escape.”
“Damn it. Today’s the—” he held the phone away from his ear and glanced at the date “—twenty-second. Okay. I’ll be right there.” Ryker hung up and turned to find Nicole looking at him. The running water was off. How much had she heard? He didn’t want her to know that another woman had been killed.
“You have to go?” she asked.
He nodded. “Got a situation.” He ran a hand across his damp hair.
“Is it bad?”
“It might be.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know how you do what you do. Chasing the bad guys. Putting yourself in danger, day after day.”
He shrugged, suddenly wanting to be out of there, and not just because he had a new murder to investigate.
Nicole was going to keep on asking questions, and eventually, she’d get around to questions he didn’t want to answer. Questions she really didn’t want to know the answers to.
He tucked in his shirt, donned his shoulder holster and fastened it, and shook out his jacket. “I’ll see you later,” he said, glancing around to make sure he hadn’t left anything.
Nicole started toward him, but he grabbed the front doorknob.
“I’ll call you,” he tossed back over his shoulder as he headed out, closing the door behind him. As he vaulted down the stairs, he winced at his words. He’d meant them, but the offhand phrase had become a cliché for one-night stands. All he could do was hope that Nicole had sense enough to know that when he was called, he had to go.
He got in his car and took off, his mind already turning to the crime scene he was speeding toward.
October 22. The killer was right on time.
NICOLE TWISTED THE KITCHEN TOWEL in her hands as she stared at her front door. The best night of her life had suddenly turned sour.
Of course she understood that Ryker was a detective. Emergency phone calls and life-or-death situations were part of his job description. The fact that he’d rushed out so quickly wasn’t the problem.
His hastily thrown out I’ll call you wasn’t the problem, either. Although it did occur to her that he hadn’t asked for her phone number. A small pang of regret stabbed her in the chest. I would be a shame if he didn’t call.
But the bigger problem was, he’d lied to her about the call. Or at least he hadn’t told her the whole truth. She’d heard him say the date. Seen the look on his face as he listened to the caller. It didn’t take a genius, or even a detective, to figure out what that phone call was really about.
Nicole shivered. Ryker thought that the man who’d broken into her home, who’d taken one of her chef knives, who had already killed three women, had struck again.
RYKER SAT ON HIS HAUNCHES and studied the victim’s position. She was sprawled across the concrete floor of the patio, the back of her nightgown and the concrete floor around her drenched in blood. Ryker followed the trail of blood with his eyes, back to the patio door. He’d check with CSI about the blood patterns later, but from what he could tell, she’d been stabbed in the back just about the time she’d reached the patio door. She’d made it outside before she collapsed.
Drip patterns down her sides and the blood around her body told him she hadn’t died right away. She’d bled out right here where she’d fallen.
He took a quick look around the patio. It was the neighbors on the west side who’d called 911. The apartment to the east had a privacy fence. Bill had already questioned the couple that lived there. Apparently, neither one had heard anything.
He bent down, trying to get a good look at the victim’s face. She was older than his previous victims. He wasn’t a good judge of age, but he figured she was in her late thirties at best. A frisson of doubt slithered through him. If this was the work of his serial killer, the man had stepped outside the normal actions expected of serial murderers—again. This victim’s age was an anomaly. Ryker rubbed the spot in the middle of his chest where the frisson of doubt had lodged.
What if this killing wasn’t connected?
Ryker studied the knife wound just inside her left shoulder blade. He lifted his arm and mimicked the motion that would have been necessary to make that wound. The killer had wielded the knife above his head. He wasn’t proficient with a knife as a weapon. A pro would more likely have kept his arm low, and stabbed her in the lower back—the kidneys.
Nope. He was certain his guy had used a weapon of convenience—again. If it was his guy.
Ryker sent a quick glance around the small patio. The weapon. Where was it? Every other time, the killer had left the weapon at the scene. Except for last year, when he’d escaped with Nicole’s knife.
Ryker studied the body again. It was conceivable that the weapon could be under her, but not likely. Not given the bleeding pattern. If she had fallen while running away from the killer who had just stabbed her, the knife couldn’t have ended up beneath her.
He touched the cut nightgown with a gloved finger. He couldn’t tell much about the knife wound because of the blood. But the cut in the gown was only about an inch long. It wasn’t a very big knife. The blade that made that cut in the nightgown had to be less than an inch wide.
An ominous thought occurred to him. The knife that had been stolen from Nicole wasn’t a big knife. He’d looked at her knife case the night of her near attack, but all he could remember was that the empty slot where the missing knife should have been stored wasn’t very long. He remembered looking at her knife case and feeling thankful that the man hadn’t taken one of the ominously long, thick-bladed ones.
Dr. David Miller, the new medical examiner who’d taken over when Hiram Crouch had retired the previous December, stepped through the door. “Ryker. Got another one?”
Ryker rose from his crouch. “Looks like it. How’s business?”
“It’s been slow. I reckon it’s picking up now.”
“I’ll leave her with you. I want to look around inside and check with Bill about what the neighbors said.”
Dave crouched down beside the victim. “Hey, sweetie,” he said. “Let’s see what you can tell me.”
“I need everything you can give me about the knife he used. We haven’t found it yet. I’ve got a feeling he took it with him.”
Dave nodded without looking up.
Ryker headed for the patio door, then turned back. “Dave? How old do you think she is?”
The