What Lies Behind Read online

  She opened the door, flipped on the light.

  Screams.

  Over and over and over again.

  Screams.

  Chapter 2

  Georgetown

  SIRENS RENT THE night air.

  The wailing jolted Dr. Samantha Owens from sleep. She listened for a moment, heard them growing louder. They were close. Too close. Several of them, caterwauling through the night as they came near. Instead of peaking and fading, blue lights suddenly flashed on the opposite wall of her bedroom, rotating frantically. The sirens ended with a squawk, but the lights continued their alternating strobes. Based on the angle of the flashes, they’d stopped on O Street.

  Her home in Georgetown was generally quiet and calm in the darkness. A few drunk kids every once in a while, hollering as they wound their way back to campus, but rarely something like this.

  Clearly, something terrible had happened.

  Sam was used to sirens. Living in the city meant they were a regular, nightly, daily occurrence. Sirens used to be the precursor to her part in the festivities, so she always registered their noise. Sirens used to mean her phone was going to ring, and she’d have to drop everything and rush to a crime scene. But that was another life, in another city. One she tried very hard to put behind her.

  Her phone wasn’t going to ring, but habits die hard. She glanced at the clock—one in the morning.

  She got up, pulled a brush through her shoulder-length brown hair, slipped a warm cashmere sweater over her thin T-shirt, pulled on black leggings and a pair of leather ankle boots. Grabbed a pashmina and tossed it around her shoulders.

  Autumn was in full swing, and the late-September temperatures had dropped precipitously over the past week, making D.C. shiver. The bedroom, too, was cold, empty of Xander and his internal furnace. He was on assignment, a close-protection detail with one of his old Army buddies, Chalk. Trevor Reeves Worthington III on his driver’s license, but Chalk forever to his Army mates, named for his propensity to write everything down.

  It had only been three weeks since Xander and Chalk had hung out their shingle, made the business official, and they’d already been in high demand. She was glad to see Xander reengage with the world, though she had to admit, it was a bit of a shame. She liked the idea of him up in the woods with Thor at his side, doing his best Thoreau, leading the occasional fishing party, hiking solitary through the woods. The new gig was intense, all-hours, and took him away too much for her liking. Plus, his main job was to throw himself in front of a bullet should the need arise, and she wasn’t at all comfortable with the thought.

  She started down the stairs, whistled for Thor. The German shepherd was waiting for her already, ears pricked. She knelt beside him, buried her face in his fur. He was warm, like his daddy, had been curled in a ball in his sheepskin bed, dreaming doggy dreams. He nuzzled her and licked her on the nose gently, then went to stand by the door, alert and ready.

  “Let’s go out the back, baby.”

  He hurried to her side, and she fastened his lead. She opened the back door, was rewarded with a gust of chilly air, and the voices that carried from the other side of her privacy fence.

  You have stooped to a new level, Owens, trying to eavesdrop on a crime scene.

  But she went to the far fence, skirting the eternity pool, Thor stuck to her leg like glue. Put her head against the wood. If she turned slightly sideways, she could see through the double slats.

  It was so familiar, the shouts and calls. The first responders were there, the police, too. An ambulance was parked on the corner. As she watched, EMTs scrambled toward it with a stretcher. One was kneeling on the gurney itself, straddling a body of indeterminate sex, performing CPR with single-minded intensity.

  The open doors of the ambulance blocked the rest. Moments later, they slammed shut and it left in a hurry, sirens wailing. The fire trucks followed, calm now, big beasts rumbling into the night.

  The police stayed.

  Definitely not a good sign.

  She wondered if her friend Darren Fletcher, the newly minted homicide lieutenant, would show. She didn’t know why she assumed it was a homicide, or an attempted homicide, given that someone had been brought out at a rush. It could be anything. More than likely, at this time of night, it was a simple domestic dispute. Someone was punched, had a bloody nose, a black eye, then things got out of control. She ran through the neighbors she knew on O Street, people she’d waved to when walking Thor, imagining them in various states of fury and undress.

  Maybe a heart attack. Or a stroke. Embolism, aneurysm, overdose.

  God, you are cheery, aren’t you?

  She heard one of the cops say, “Hernandez, while you’re at it, go ahead and call the OCME. We’ll need them.”

  And she knew. Something inside her gave a little buzz. Death comes in all forms, from all directions. Expected or by surprise, it was the greatest common denominator, the great equalizer. She felt an affinity with the grimness, couldn’t help that. But she had a choice, now. A choice to walk away from the carnage, from the horror. To face death on her own terms, especially since she’d agreed to work with the FBI on their more esoteric cases. A deal made all the more tantalizing because they wouldn’t be dragging her out of bed in the middle of the night to parade, yawning, to a crime scene, where she’d face death in all its incarnations, as she had for so many years as a medical examiner.

  She had a more immediate choice, as well. She could open the gate, walk around the block, stand with the crowd of neighbors who’d come to watch the show. Or she could go back inside and return to bed. She’d be able to get several more hours of sleep if she went inside now.

  You’re not the M.E. anymore, Sam. She stepped away from the fence.

  Thor took advantage of the nocturnal walk to do his business, then she followed him into the silent house, feeling strangely hollow. As she closed the door behind her and watched Thor scoot back to bed, something made her pull out her cell phone and send Fletcher a text.

  What’s up on O Street?

  She knew it wasn’t too late for him; he was a night owl, especially now that he was seeing FBI Agent Jordan Blake. He’d be up, one way or another. She sent another, this time to Xander.

  Miss you.

  She poured herself a finger of Ardbeg, thought about it, brought the bottle with her to the couch. Sat down. Took off her boots.

  Waited.

  Didn’t know exactly what she was waiting for.

  She spared a glance at the file folders on the coffee table in front of her. She’d left them scattered carelessly in frustration before climbing the stairs to bed. Crime scene and autopsy photos spilled out of the manila folders, coupled with her notes and Baldwin’s notes and toxicology reports, all jumbled together on the smoky glass. She’d pulled all the autopsy reports from the files and stacked them neatly on the side table; they were her reading material and were proving to be an even bigger frustration than the case itself. This massive, sprawling, unnamed and unacknowledged case.

  There were so many pathologists, coroners, methods, regulations, jurisdictions. No one did a postmortem exactly the same, much less were handling several of the individual cases as if there was a criminal component. She’d begun to feel she was interpreting without a Rosetta stone.

  When John Baldwin had talked her into coming on board the FBI as a consultant to the behavioral analysis unit, BAU II, to work with his infamous group of profilers, he’d promised she could pick her cases. True to his word, he’d brought her to Quantico, gotten her set up with passes and emails and paperwork galore, then set her loose in the BAU file room. They had so much work, and so few people to handle it, any help was welcome.

  And whether she was trying to prove her worth to her new team, or to herself, she’d chosen the big daddy of them all. A stack of files that were
getting dusty, because no one could manage to link them, even though there was a single similarity between each victim—every woman was from the same hometown. New Orleans.

  She’d seen the box, labeled Cold Case. Read the previous profiler’s report. There was nothing tying them together. The women had died by various means. Stabbings and stranglings and gunshots, one a cardiac arrest from a drug overdose, even a bridge jumper. Nothing highly unusual, nothing esoteric, nothing sexually motivated or even creepy. On the surface at least.

  Baldwin had a feeling about the cases, had spent years compiling the ones he thought fit a pattern, and she’d learned to trust his gut when it came to crime. Despite the sometimes innocuous causes of death, the link to New Orleans shouted “connection” to him. But he couldn’t definitively tie all the cases together, nor could anyone on his staff.

  Sam had looked through the files in the storage room, shaking her head. The murders did seem unrelated—they were spread all over the country, with different MOs, different murder weapons, different victimologies of all ages and races and socioeconomic levels. And yet, like Baldwin, she sensed the tenuous thread holding them. All of these women had been murdered by the same person. She could just feel it. There was something here. This was a series. Eight of them at last count, over more than twenty years.

  Baldwin had just added what he thought might be number nine to the stack, a young woman named Olivia Rives, who’d been found shot to death in Minneapolis last month.

  Nine dead. Multiple jurisdictions. No apparent links outside of a hometown and a profiler’s hunch.

  A nightmare.

  She shot the Ardbeg, poured another and gathered up the thick stack of papers on the side table. No sense going back to bed just this moment. She’d read a while more, keep filling her brain with the disparate notes of nine different autopsy reports by nine different doctors and coroners.

  Maybe this time, something would be different.

  Chapter 3

  McLean, Virginia

  ROBIN SOULEYRET’S PHONE rang at 3:23 a.m. Eyes snapping open, she saw the number on the caller ID. Surprised, she palmed the receiver. “You know better than to call in the middle of the night unless someone is dead. So who died?”

  There was silence.

  “Amanda? What is it? Are you okay?”

  Nothing. Then a click.

  That was odd. Robin sat up in the bed, realized she was still naked, glanced at the empty spot beside her. Felt the pillow. It was cold. He’d left. She tamped down the feeling that churned in the pit of her stomach. Annoyance? Relief? Sorrow? She didn’t know, but this was their deal. No strings, and definitely no feelings. They were just filling a need for each other.

  With a sigh, she reached down and grabbed the shirt she’d been wearing off the floor, pulled it on and dialed Amanda’s phone back.

  It went straight to voice mail. Her sister’s lilting voice filled her ears. “This is Mandy. You know what to do.”

  Robin tried to keep the irritation from her tone. Well, most of it, anyway.

  “You woke me up, little sister. Care to call me back, tell me what’s up?”

  Lying back against the pillows, she stared at the ceiling. Wished Riley hadn’t been in such a hurry to split. She wouldn’t have minded making him breakfast. Just this once.

  The room was dark around her, empty, but not lonely, never lonely. She’d chosen this life, known what it would be—all work, and no play. No real lasting relationships, with friends or lovers, no kids, no normality. Just a constant string of challenges, issues to be overcome. She’d realized long ago she was just an ant among other ants in a very strange hill, crawling across the world, bumping into a crumb here and there. Some were even big enough to take back to their queen.

  Which made her think about Amanda again. She tried the phone once more, to no avail.

  A vague uneasiness flooded her system. Maybe Amanda had dialed her number accidentally. Butt-dialed her. Or decided what she wanted to say wasn’t important enough to wake Robin in the middle of the night.

  “Fat chance of that, you little bonehead. Where are you?”

  She’d never get back to sleep at this rate. She got up, made a pot of strong Turkish coffee, measured in some sugar so it would be orta s¸ekerli, just sweet enough to add to the flavor, bring out the chocolate notes without overwhelming the richness. She inhaled the fumes as it began to boil, craving the dark, deep taste.

  Her Turkish friends would be aghast at her drinking coffee in the middle of the night, but as she liked to point out to them, she was an American, not Turkish, and by God she’d drink it whenever she wanted—in the morning, before her dinner, in the middle of the night. So there.

  Cup in hand, she made her way through the cottage to the back porch. The sky was as dark as the coffee, beginning its losing battle with the sun, which was still three hours off. She redialed Amanda’s phone.

  Nothing.

  Took a sip of the coffee, listened to the night things chirping and crawling in the bushes, imagined the birds and mice having an intimate, elegant cocktail party under the bough of the fir tree. Breaking bread with the enemy. Her specialty.

  When she’d finished the coffee, she knew it was time to make the call. She hated to do it, but she had no choice. Mandy was her little sister, headstrong and brave, but prone to getting herself into situations that involved delicate extrications. The girl seemed to live for close calls, and she managed well, considering. She’d only asked for help once, a month ago. Robin had been forced to turn her down, unable to break away from her own messed-up world to help. They hadn’t spoken since, and Robin was missing her impetuous sister.

  She dialed the number.

  Listened to the greeting.

  Punched in an extension.

  Waited a moment, then hung up.

  A heartbeat later, the phone rang.

  She answered, surprised to hear Riley’s voice on the other end. “Robin?”

  “What are you doing on the desk? I figured you’d be at home, sound asleep.” Or in my bed, sound asleep. Or wide-awake, an even better scenario.

  The unspoken words shimmered around her, golden threads of need and desire. She needed to get a handle on these nascent emotions, and quickly. Riley wasn’t thinking about champagne and roses and candlelight every time he bedded her, she knew that. Of course, Riley didn’t see the glorious colors dancing around his words, either.

  “I got called in. There’s been an incident in Georgetown.”

  The golden threads dissipated with a pop and something like fear skittered up her back. She didn’t recognize the sensation right away. She hadn’t been afraid in a very long time.

  “Anything I can do?” she said, careful to stay neutral.

  Riley’s voice cracked a bit. “I’m comin’ over. You sit tight.”

  Riley was from Texas, and no matter what, when he was upset, or tired, or drunk, little bits of an accent floated through his teeth, tripping off his tongue in blues and reds, like the flag.

  The quivery, uncontrolled feeling coursed through her again. It was fear, she thought—deep, abiding, acrid and horrible. It filled her nostrils and played along the edges of her skin. “Riley. Tell me right now. What’s happened?”

  His great gusting sigh scared her even more. Riley was a rock. Nothing rattled him.

  She already knew what he was going to say, felt herself sliding out of the chair, to the cold concrete patio, as if being closer to the earth would help cushion the blow.

  “It’s Amanda, Robin. She’s been killed.”

  The stark word danced around her, sharp needles poking and prodding.

  Killed. Killed. Killed.

  You knew you should have helped her. Why didn’t you swallow your pride and call?

  She’s dead, and it’s your f
ault. Your fault. Your fault.

  “That’s not possible,” she whispered.

  But it was true. She could feel the emptiness in the world. The spot that housed her sister, always tangible and reachable, was gone.

  She dropped the phone, didn’t hear Riley say, “I’ll be there in five minutes. You stay put.”

  Amanda.

  Mandy.

  Gone.

  Black. Black and gray, swirling, choking, drawing her down, the words covering her like a scratchy blanket, drawing tighter, suffocating.

  It is your fault, Robin.

  Chapter 4

  Georgetown

  DARREN FLETCHER PULLED up to the crime scene with the remnants of a hurried to-go cup of coffee in his hand. He parked, drained the cup, grimacing—the coffee had gone cold, and bitter with it—and waited for the caffeine to hit his system so he wouldn’t yawn in front of his team. It didn’t work; he felt a jaw-cracking one coming on. Ducked his head down, let it overtake him. He’d been asleep when the call came.

  The yawn made him feel better. More alert. He dropped the coffee cup into the drink holder and got out of the car.

  Every crime scene was the same. There were the usual crowds of neighbors clustered together along the sidewalk. Yellow crime scene tape was wound around the stop sign at the corner of O and Wisconsin, effectively blocking traffic from driving down the street. He expected the same was true at the other end of the block. Nodded to himself. They were handling things well.

  A patrol officer held the clipboard, standing relaxed against a tree. He straightened when he saw Fletcher.

  “Evening, sir. Got us a mess.”

  “So I hear. Who’s on it?”

  “Detective Hart’s talking to the witnesses right now.” He gestured down the sidewalk, where Fletcher’s old partner and now lead detective stood by a pair of girls, both tearstained and rumpled. “Dude’s girlfriend found them. They’re pretty shook up.”