Dead Run

CHAPTER 49

Wednesday, November 21

12:25 p.m.

Carla sat at her desk, struggling to keep her thoughts from showing. She glanced at her watch, noted that Val’s secretary, Becky, would be leaving for lunch any moment. She would walk by Carla’s door, call goodbye then stop and ask if Carla wanted her to pick her up anything. Same as she did every day.

What made today different was what Carla planned to do while the woman was gone.

Apprehension tightened her chest. She couldn’t believe what she was thinking. She wanted to prove her suspicions wrong.

Val wasn’t dirty. He wasn’t involved with these women’s deaths-or with this Horned Flower group Rick had told her about.

Carla lowered her eyes to the file lying open on the desk in front of her. Tara Mancuso’s file. Below it lay Rachel Howard’s. Below that Naomi Pearson’s. Inconsistencies jumped out at her. Little ones she had missed before. Things like dates and times. Things that could be nothing.

Or something big.

She had eavesdropped on Val and Rick’s conversation that morning. Something Val said had jumped out at her, bold as a street whore.

“If Rachel Howard had uncovered a cult on the island, one that was endangering the teenagers in her flock, wouldn’t she have come to the police for help?”

Carla brought a hand to her temple, to the headache that pounded there. She was thinking Rachel Howard had called the police. Shortly before she had gone missing. Carla closed her eyes, trying to recall. She had been walking by Val’s office; he had been on the phone. She had paused to speak to him and he had said the woman’s name as he hung up.

“I’ll look into it, Pastor Howard. Thanks for calling.”

Why hadn’t she recalled that snippet before? she wondered. The day after Tara ’s murder, Liz Ames had come to see Val. Carla had been there; Val had told Liz that he had never spoken to her sister. Why hadn’t alarm bells sounded then?

In the past hours she had made a number of excuses for herself. That the memory had been so fleeting, so inconsequential. That she’d had no reason to suspect her superior of any kind of impropriety. That even now she was uncertain if the memory was accurate-or one conjured by exhaustion and frustration.

She was done making excuses. The truth was, Rick never would have forgotten such a detail, inconsistencies never would have escaped him. He would have involved himself so thoroughly in the investigation that inconsistencies, whether sloppy mistakes or deliberate falsification, never would have happened. Period.

Carla turned her attention to the files on her desk once more. Val had claimed to Rick that morning that Tara had been clasping a piece of paper in her hand, the Hideaway’s number scrawled on it. It hadn’t been paper at all, but a scrap of white fabric, most probably torn from Tara ’s attacker’s shirt. Why had Val lied to Rick? About that and about Pastor Howard’s call?

To influence him into discrediting Liz Ames. To convince him to back off.

Why?

Because Rick had been a damn good cop. Because he had feared Rick would figure out the truth.

Val was dirty.

Carla shook her head. She wasn’t going to believe it, not without proof.

“I’m out of here, Carla,” Becky called from the hallway outside her office. “You want me to pick you up anything?”

Carla looked up, praying she didn’t look as guilty as she felt. “No thanks. I’ll catch a bite later.”

“Be sure to do it before Lieutenant Blood gets back.” Becky made a face. “If you don’t, you won’t get lunch. He was on a tear this morning.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Carla forced a smile. “By the way, when is Val due back?”

“He thought his meeting with the chief would go through lunch. I figure I’ll see him sometime after one.”

Carla thanked her but the words stuck in her throat. The secretary looked at her strangely. “I think I’m coming down with a cold,” Carla explained, clearing her throat.

“I have a bottle of echinacea in my top right desk drawer. Help yourself. It really works.”

“I’ll do that, thanks.” Carla smiled and the other woman walked off. She lowered her gaze to her wrist, counting as the second hand of her watch ticked out one minute, then two, then three.

She stood and crossed to her office door. She stood there a full minute, listening for Becky’s distinctive voice, wanting to be absolutely certain the woman had left the second floor.

Confident that she had, she made her way to Becky’s office, a small cluttered area located to the right of Val’s. In actuality, Becky worked for all the detectives; she answered the phone, directed calls and ran interference between the detectives and everybody-including witnesses, victims’ families and the chief himself.

But Val was her boss; he had hired her, he could fire her. His work always came first.

Val required Becky to keep all the carbon copies from her old message pads for six months. Unless Pastor Howard had reached Val directly, which certainly could have happened, Becky would have taken a message. It was a fifty-fifty shot, but one worth taking.

The secretary kept them in the file cabinet in the corner. Bottom drawer. Carla crossed to the cabinet, squatted in front of it and pulled open the drawer. The empty pads were located in back, a stack of five of them. She chose the least recent one and began thumbing through it.

Nothing. She retrieved the next pad. And hit pay dirt.

A message to call Pastor Rachel Howard from Paradise Christian Church. Wednesday, July 11. Two days before she was discovered missing.

What that meant hit her with the force of a heavyweight’s best punch.

“What are you doing, Carla?”

She jerked her head around. Becky stood in her office doorway, face screwed into a suspicious scowl. Carla forced a laugh. It sounded choked, even to her own ears. “After you left, I got to thinking about something-” She ripped the carbon copy from the pad, stood and carried it to the secretary. “This call from Rachel Howard, did Val get it?”

The woman’s cheeks flooded with color. “Val gets all his messages.”

Carla hurried to smooth her ruffled feathers “That’s what I thought, of course.”

“Besides,” Becky said, tapping the pad, “the original’s gone. That means I put it on Val’s desk.”

“Did he return this call?”

The woman stiffened. “I imagine he did. Lieutenant Lopez is very thorough.”

“Yes, he is.” Carla thought of Rick, of how he would take what she was about to show him, and sadness crept over her. Everyone would be hurt by this thing-the department, Rick, her. “Thanks, Becky.”

She started out of the office. The secretary stopped her. “Your voice, Carla. It seems suddenly better.”

She looked over her shoulder at the other woman. “It is. Thanks for your concern.”