Chapter 5
Three days later, Nico finally felt like he was making headway with his new crew. Things were running smoothly. Seth and Zoe no longer looked at him like sullen teenagers. West had backed off with the alpha male bullshit. Even Cora had softened a fraction, being patient with him when he misplaced or couldn’t find something in the office. And Frank, being Frank, had welcomed Nico into the fold like a long-lost brother. Nico appreciated that, not realizing until now how much he needed it.
He thought about Lexie often, wishing he had an excuse to contact her while simultaneously worrying about her reaction if he did. The way she’d practically recoiled when he’d asked her out to dinner had been discouraging, to say the least. But then she’d stepped into his arms, all intimate-like, and whispered how glad she was that he was okay, leaving Nico confused as hell. Was she sending him signals? Or was it all just in his head? In any case, now that he was on the island and had spoken to her, things felt even more complicated than before, because now he wanted more. More time, more conversation, more of her. It was as if the proximity had switched his imagination into overdrive and suddenly, she was all he thought about. Her beautiful cobalt eyes. Her lips. That smile. The way those cutoff shorts shaped her perfect ass and—
Interrupting both his nefarious thoughts and his morning run, Nico’s phone rang in his pocket. When he saw Frank’s name on the caller ID, he found himself grinning.
“You’re up early,” he said, slowing to a stroll on the sand. “Calling in sick?”
“I wish,” Frank replied, his tone making Nico stop.
“What’s going on?”
A heavy sigh. “We’ve got a situation, LT. You’d better come in. Now.”
Nico’s feet felt heavier than usual, dragging like lead the closer he got to the yellow-and-black crime scene tape surrounding the run-down apartment block on Chestnut Avenue. The neighborhood was in a frenzy, a majority of the surrounding residents gathering in a group outside, making it impossible for him to go in unnoticed.
As he approached the barricade, a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe called out, “What’s going on?”—her question prompting a multitude of other voices to demand answers from him as well.
Here we go.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I know you’re concerned, but I’m going to ask you to please return to your homes until we can give you an official statement.”
“What happened?” someone else shouted.
“Where’s Isabelle?” asked another.
“I’m sorry,” Nico bellowed over the protesting crowd. “But that’s all I can say to you at this time. Go home. Please. We’ll update you as soon as we can.”
Remembering how much he hated PR, Nico turned and walked the last few paces to the edge of the crime scene, ignoring the persistent shouts of the public as he ducked and lifted the tape over his head. Strange, how a length of flimsy plastic held such power. In and of itself, it was nothing. And yet, by virtue of what it represented, it was everything. People saw those hard black letters against the incongruous yellow, the command to not cross, and they knew—something bad had happened here.
As if to offer a morbid reminder of the fact, Nico caught a white van pulling up in his peripheral. Two men in navy jackets with the word Coroner printed across their backs unloaded a gurney.
Seth had been stationed out front to guard the perimeter, though judging by the haunted gaze coming from his otherwise stone-set features, Nico knew he’d seen what lay inside. He gave him a bleak nod on his way past.
“Lieutenant,” Seth said in reply, eyes staying fixed straight ahead.
Nico approached the front door.
Breathe.
Filling his lungs with air and squaring his shoulders, he stepped over the threshold, careful not to disturb anything as he made his way through to the living room, where he heard the familiar flurry of activity.
The first thing he noticed—as he always did at these things—was the smell. Sickly sweet and difficult to describe, the scent of flesh that once lived and breathed and now sat stagnant, awaiting the various stages of rot, was unlike any other. It was the smell of death.
Nico had never been uncomfortable around dead bodies. It was, after all, a natural fate that awaited everyone, eventually. Not to mention part of his job. But this—this was anything but natural. This was a sacrilege of life, the work of a monster, and he couldn’t help the way his hands bunched into fists of rage and revulsion as he took in the scene before him.
The victim’s name was Isabelle Moss. Blonde. Beautiful. And young—twenty-seven, if her ID was to be believed, with an entire life ahead of her. That was until sometime between sundown and sunup the night before last—according to postmortem estimations—when she’d been tied up, tortured, and murdered. Nico had been briefed with the details on the phone before he raced back to his cabin to shower and dress.
He walked a slow circle around the body, observing the way she’d been so painfully tied to a kitchen chair, the duct tape looping around and around from wrists to elbows ensuring there was no hope of escape. It was cruel. And familiar.
Flashes of another crime scene invaded his mind, a déjà vu of blood and pain and suffering. She had been young too.
Sara . . .
Stop, he ordered himself. This is not the same. It can’t be the same.
He could see where the pressure of the tape had bruised the skin while Isabelle had still been alive, dark purple marring the now pale, dead tissue. Long dried and congealed blood oozed from multiple stab wounds on her chest and stomach, her screams silenced by a thick cloth stuffed into her mouth. He knew without asking the medical examiner that she did not die peacefully.
Punishment.
The word hung in the air. Nico felt it there. He suspected he wasn’t the only one.
He swallowed hard against the bile threatening to rise up his throat. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he bore witness to the savagery that human beings were capable of, he never fully got used to it.
Crime scene techs called in from the mainland were scurrying about, lifting prints and fibers from every possible surface. They were still within the forty-eight-hour post-kill window, so efforts were fast and focused. Nico hoped to god they found something.
A minute after entering the room, he felt the presence of another person come up beside him.
“You okay, kid?” Frank asked.
Nico’s eyes remained glued to the body. “Fine.”
“Not exactly what you had in mind for your first week, I bet.”
Nico shook his head.
“Uh, the chief is over here. He’ll be wanting to see you.”
Nico followed Frank through the apartment to the back door, where West was crouched down inspecting the lock. Zoe was in the kitchen, her ebony hair swept up in a tight bun while she rifled methodically through the trash.
West didn’t bother with pleasantries when he saw them.
“She worked at the diner next to the gas station,” he said, standing. “It’s twenty-four-hour. She never showed up for her shift last night. They reported it this morning, so I sent Seth over for a welfare check. He found her like this.”
“Poor bastard,” Frank mumbled. “Hope this doesn’t mess with his head.”
“Shit,” Nico breathed. “Okay, what do we know?”
“Not much.” West gestured to the door he’d been inspecting. “We believe the killer came in through here. It’s unlocked, but there’s no evidence of tampering. No signs of a struggle anywhere in the apartment. The front door and windows were all still secure this morning, so he must have left the same way he came in. Nothing amiss outside that we can see. All neighbors are accounted for except one—Colin Rowe—who we’re still trying to locate.”
Nico glanced around the room, noting the outdated but tidy kitchen, complete with lime-green bench tops and mismatched appliances. The collection of succulents in painted little pots by the windowsill. The empty cat food bowls in the corner. “Murder weapon?”
“Gone,” West replied.
“And I’m guessing she didn’t have the luxury of security cameras?”
Frank huffed. “Not in this part of town. The rent’s cheap for a reason, LT.”
“Right.” Nico looked around again.
No way. There was no way this had anything to do with Sara’s murder. No way the same man who killed her could possibly be here. To even think it was absurd and yet, watching them untie Isabelle Moss’s corpse, lay her down, and finally cover her with a white sheet made the hairs on the back of his neck rise and prickle.
The flash of the forensics camera lit up the room every few seconds, indistinct conversations drifted past like dandelions on the wind as Nico’s ears tuned out the commotion around him.
Not the same, he told himself again, shoving his anxiety down into the deepest, darkest hole he could find, and praying it stayed there.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but Nico got the feeling the other men were waiting for him to speak. Turning, he found Frank with bunched brows, and West . . . he couldn’t pinpoint what he saw in the chief’s eyes, but it wasn’t the usual macho peacocking Nico had come to expect. It was something much more somber and uncertain. A touch of concern lingered there too.
Nico cleared his throat. “At the risk of asking a stupid question, is homicide a common occurrence around here?”
They exchanged glances, but it was West who spoke.
“Not for a long time,” he said, moving his gaze to the body. “And never something like this.”
“Any idea who might have done it? This is a small town, and you guys are locals. Tell me something.”
Another loaded glance at each other.
“It is a small town,” Frank agreed. “But not that small.”
“None of us knew her personally,” West added. “We’re starting from scratch here, Nico.”
Something in the way his chief spoke, the way his pleading eyes said what he was obviously too proud to voice out loud—I’m in over my head—had Nico gathering himself and clicking into the zone he went where emotions held no place. A cold, calculating place where he could disconnect from the pain, the suffering, and focus on doing what had to be done. For the victim’s sake.
“Alright.” Nico rubbed his jaw. “We’ll start by canvassing the people she knew. Friends, neighbors, coworkers.”
Frank nodded while West listened silently.
“We’ll need a preliminary report from the ME. Frank”—he pointed over his shoulder—“see what you can find out. They’ll want to do an autopsy, but I want as much information as possible before they leave with the body.”
“On it,” Frank said, already moving.
“So, he came in through the back,” Nico continued, walking the scene, preparing a rough narrative of what might have happened. He did a sweep of the kitchen and living room. Nothing jumped out. Entering the bedroom, he noted that everything appeared to be in its rightful place in here too. No obvious disturbances. He stopped at the doorway to the adjoining en suite. The bathtub was full, though the bubbles had all but dissipated. A plush, pink mat sat on the ground beside it. Even through a latex glove, it was damp to the touch.
“I think this is where she was grabbed,” Nico said.
“How do you figure that?” West asked.
“She’s wearing nothing but a robe. And her hair looks frizzy, like it dried naturally without being combed.” Nico gestured to the untouched towel on the hanger. “She was either in the bath or just stepping out when he came in. She never got the chance to get dressed.”
“How did he get the jump on her? This building is old, and that back door isn’t quiet. Surely, she must have heard something.”
Nico looked around, wondering the same thing. He lowered his head to see underneath the old claw-foot tub that also doubled as a shower space. There, about a foot away, sat a small, white, Bluetooth earbud. Nico reached under to retrieve it and held it up for West to see. “I’m betting we’ll find the other one around here somewhere.”
West went to the small, high window by the toilet and carefully perched himself on the porcelain to see outside. “Looks like the building’s trash cans are all lined up out here.” He stepped back down. “Maybe he used one of them to spy inside, found her in the bath listening to music, took the opportunity to come in unnoticed.”
“Solid theory,” Nico agreed.
“Yeah, okay, but how does he manage to grab her, drag her down the hall, soaking wet, to the kitchen, then tie her up without breaking so much as a table lamp in the process?”
“Good question.” Nico paused, thinking. “Maybe she knew her killer? Didn’t realize she was in danger until it was too late? She might have even answered the door.”
“If that’s the angle we’re working, we’d have to assume it was a romantic relationship. Why else would she be happy walking around the house almost naked?”
“Some people are free spirits like that.” Nico sensed a mixture of curiosity and confusion coming off West, so he added, “I didn’t say I was.”
West rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “If I was the killer, I would have kept her here in the bedroom. It’s further away from the neighbors. Less windows. Doesn’t make much sense to move her to the kitchen.”
“Crime of passion, maybe? Not everyone knows they’re gonna kill someone until they do.”
West looked doubtful. “Taping someone to a chair doesn’t strike me as overly passionate or spontaneous.”
“You’re right about that,” Nico said, lips pursing as he considered. Then it hit him. “There’s no chair or bed frame in here, just the upholstered headboard. Nothing to tie her to.”
“So probably not a crime of passion,” West said as Frank strode into the room.
“What’d the ME say?” Nico asked.
“Woman has more holes in her than a cheese grater,” he answered. He looked grim. It was appropriate, but it didn’t suit him. “She bled out in minutes. Looks like she received a good knock to the back of the head too. We won’t know more until after the autopsy.”
Nico sighed. “Okay. Keep looking around. We need a lead.”
“I think I’ve found one.”
All eyes turned to Zoe who had come up behind them, one gloved hand holding a sealed evidence bag.
“Is that a condom?” Frank asked, eyeing the small latex bundle inside.
Zoe nodded. “Used.”
“Well,” West said. “I’m not na?ve enough to hope it belongs to the killer, but it does give us something to work with. Whoever the man is, he might be the last person who saw her alive.”
“Zoe, get the CSI team to run a sample through CODIS right away,” Nico ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s hope Romeo has a criminal history,” he said to no one in particular. If he didn’t, and they couldn’t find a match, all the DNA in the world wouldn’t help them track him down.
“It’ll be hard to sift him out through all the tourists crawling around this time of year,” Frank added. “Smart timing on his part.”
Nico didn’t like that. Nor did he like how his mind reflexively flew to Lexie. This was her home, and the odd stab of protectiveness he felt toward her in light of the current threat made him shift uncomfortably.
Frank dug a notepad out of his back pocket. “Alright, I’ll start interviews, see what shakes loose.”
“Right behind you.” Nico moved toward the door, but West stopped him with a light tap on the arm.
“Hold on. Frank, give us a sec, would you?”
“Sure thing.”
West waited until Frank was no longer in earshot before turning to face Nico. “What’s going on with you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I saw the way you looked at her,” he said, referring to the dead body in the next room. “The sweat that’s been beading your brow since you walked in here.”
Nico narrowed his eyes, impressed, if not a little affronted. “You’re more observant than I realized, Chief.”
The man’s brown eyes filled with something reminiscent of guilt as he glanced away. “I made a call to your old precinct,” he said. “Spoke to the sergeant. He told me what happened to you.”
Leaving affronted in the rearview mirror—and making a mental note to kick Sergeant Hellman’s ass for violating his privacy without warning for a second time—Nico seethed, “You what?”
“Calm down,” West ordered. “He didn’t give me details, just said that you had a case go bad a while back, which is why you requested a transfer somewhere quiet.”
“What of it, sir?” Nico challenged, careful to keep his tone low, lest the whole island be let in on his business. “Cops get transferred all the time. Doesn’t mean I’m not capable of doing my job.”
“You can cool it with the attitude,” West warned. “First of all, I have every right to vet you however I see fit. Second, this”—he opened his arms, gesturing to the crime scene around them—“is not quiet. This kind of shit does not happen here. But now that it has, I sure as shit do not have the time to deal with whatever issues you’ve got going on while trying to solve a murder. Now, I’ll ask you again. Is there something going on with you that I should know about?”
The insinuation that he was somehow a liability had Nico itching to knock the prick’s lights out on principle alone. Instead, he swallowed his pride, lifted his chin, and said, “Thank you for your concern, Chief, but I’m fine.”
“And you’re sure you’re up for this?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
West considered him a few moments longer, his eyes searching for any hint that Nico wasn’t as okay as he was saying, then nodded. “Okay.”
Nico stalked away, pausing at the door. “Have Zoe or Seth track down her phone and internet records. Maybe we’ll get lucky and snag a lead.”
West deflated his chest. “Will do.”