“Why do you care?” Jake asked.
“I want to know when you’re moving your sorry butt out of my guest bedroom.”
“You love it when I’m staying at your town house,” Jake said. “I’m a fun guy.”
David cringed as the Miata plunged forward, throwing up a backwash that splashed as high as the windows. “Yeah, real fun.”
“So, David, how long are you in town this time?”
“It depends.”
David’s job took him all over the country. As an investigative crime reporter, he flew to wherever the breaking news was. It wasn’t a career path he’d consciously planned.
Five years ago, when he was a sports reporter at The Denver Post, the closest he got to criminal activity was reporting on scandals with the local high school football team. Those were the good old days. Lots of skiing. Beer drinking. Hanging out with friends like Jake. Then David’s world turned upside down.
His kid sister, Danielle, became the fourth victim of a serial killer who drowned his victims and left their bodies near water with their feet tied together like a mermaid’s tail. He was nicknamed the Fisherman, and he killed twice more after Danielle.
David hadn’t coped well with the tragedy. Even after the Fisherman was apprehended and convicted, David couldn’t assuage the pain of losing his sister. Instead of following the sports news, he wrote impassioned editorials and columns on victims’ rights and the court system. He was obsessed.
When another serial killer struck in Nevada, he took a leave of absence from his job at The Post and went there. His interviews with witnesses, suspects and cops resulted in a series of articles which he sold to a national magazine. They liked his work and paid his way to the next crime scene in Florida. His reporting on serial killers, mass murderers and unsolved crimes turned into a regular feature, and he developed a reputation, even appearing on television news shows as an expert.
His reporting was respected. He was well paid and highly visible. But not satisfied. Racing from one brutal crime scene to the next, he never found the answers that would ease his own uncompromising grief and rage. How could such violence happen? Why? And why to Danielle?
To Jake he said, “Actually, I’m planning to stay in Denver for a while.”
“Yeah? Is this a story I ought to know about?”
“Old news. The Fisherman.”
Jake frowned. “Why rake up the past?”
“Because he’s dying.” The convicted murderer of David’s sister had liver cancer. He was dying in prison where he waited for the process of appeals on his death sentence. “And I need to know the truth. What if it wasn’t him?”
“He confessed,” Jake said. “His DNA was found on the last victim.”
“But not on my sister.”
“You’re wasting your time. The cops are never going to reopen that investigation.”
“I’m not going through the police.” A week ago David had contacted Colorado Crime Consultants, a nonprofit network of private citizens who used their skills to investigate crime. CCC’s experts included entomologists, doctors, lawyers, chemists and psychologists who volunteered their time to find the truth. They’d agreed to look into the Fisherman serial murders.
Jake’s cell phone played the opening notes to “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,” and he answered. As he engaged in a loud, one-sided conversation, the Miata careered wildly along I-70, and David couldn’t help remembering that Jake already had one near-death driving accident.
David snapped, “Watch the road.”
“The road’s not going anywhere.” The Miata swooped toward the exit ramp. “That call was from the city desk. I need to make a stop to take some photos. Do you mind?”
“Hell, yes. I’m starving.”
“Too bad. There is a crime scene at City Park and we happen to be five minutes away.” If anyone else had been driving, they’d have been fifteen minutes away. “It’s a woman. Her body’s near the lake.”
Found near water. Like the victims of the Fisherman. David’s hunger pangs tightened into a hard knot in his gut.
Inside City Park, the Miata squealed to a stop. Jake leaped from the car and grabbed his camera equipment from the trunk.
Stepping out into the fading drizzle, David turned up his collar. A sense of foreboding weighted his stride through the wet grass. Though he’d been to dozens of crime scenes, he’d never gotten accustomed to the horror. In every victim, he saw his sister.
Halogen police lights illuminated the area near the lake, turning dusk into harsh daylight. Yellow crime-scene tape draped over leafy shrubs. The hum of tense conversation mingled with static from police radios.
David slipped around the edge of the police cordon where uniforms and other forensic investigators converged on the body. He caught a glimpse of her delicate white feet, tied with cord at the ankles.
Impotent rage crashed against his forehead with the impact of a jackhammer. This couldn’t be happening again. His muscles clenched. Please, God, not again.
SWIMMING LAPS was a form of therapeutic exercise for Blair Weston. In the accident, she’d shattered her wrist. Her right leg had been broken in four places, including a compound fracture of the right tibia and fibula. For a long time, the only place she’d been able to move without pain was in the pool.
Now, five years later, she was mostly recuperated, but she still swam a hundred laps a day in the seventy-five-foot-long pool in the garden level of her high-rise condo building. The pale-turquoise water—a color that someone once told Blair matched her greenish-blue eyes—felt like a cool liquid caress, gently embracing her body as she stroked back and forth. An excellent morning workout. The exertion got her blood circulating and her heart pumping. Not unlike sex.
What a pleasant idea! Sex! Blair could hardly remember the last time she’d been to bed with a man. Was five years ago long enough to recertify her as a virgin at age thirty-four? Rather a depressing thought.
At the deep end, she rolled under the water and pushed away from the edge, gliding half the length of the pool underwater. Silence surrounded her. Through her goggles, she gazed at the flowing pattern of light and shadow in soothing ripples. When she broke the surface and caught a breath, she heard her name being called.
“Hey, Blair!”
Her first instinct was to dive, to ignore the intrusion. She preferred to keep swimming in lithe contemplation. But she paddled to the shallow end and looked up at the two men who awaited her. One was Adam Briggs, the head of Colorado Crime Consultants. Good! Adam was probably bringing her a project—something more to occupy her mind than contemplation of her status as a re-born virgin.
Before the accident, Dr. Blair Weston had been a medical examiner in the Denver Coroner’s Office. She still wasn’t able to go back to full-time work—didn’t have the stamina to stand for a long time without moving. Also, her head injuries caused uncontrollable dizzy spells. And her wrist, though healed, was still too shaky for detail work. Doing part-time consultation on medical forensics for CCC was all she could handle in spite of an ever-increasing need to bring in more income than she received from insurance disability.
When she glanced toward the other man, she felt a pleasant spark of recognition. She peeled off her goggles and grinned. “David.”
The last time she’d seen David Crawford was over a year ago when they’d bumped into each other in the grocery store. They’d exchanged phone numbers. He’d never called, and she’d assumed there was nothing more to talk about.
He squatted at the edge of the pool. “How’re you doing, Blair?”
“I’m