Thread of Fear Page 3

  “I’m the police chief in a town called Graingerville, about two hours south of here. That’s my contact info. I understand you’re busy, but I’ve known Nathan Devereaux for a lot of years, and he thinks you can help me. I trust his opinion. I don’t want anyone else.”

  A wisp of hair fell over her face as she studied the card. She was obviously torn, so he decided to back off temporarily.

  “Think about it and call me.”

  She looked up at him, and her hazel eyes showed concern. He could tell there was some kind of battle going on in her head.

  “This…homicide you mentioned. You’ve got a witness?”

  He had her.

  But he didn’t want to scare her off by telling her the full truth. “By the looks of things, yes. A woman who survived a previous attack.”

  She paused a minute. Took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll hear you out. But I’m not promising anything.”

  He couldn’t repress a smile. His investigation was completely stalled, and she had no idea how much he needed a break.

  “Thank you.” He nodded politely.

  She checked her watch. “I’ve got forty-five minutes before my next class. Let’s sit down somewhere, and you can tell me about your case.”

  The Java Stop across from campus was packed with students seeking caffeine, free Wi-Fi, and procrastination. Fiona made a habit of stopping there between her two art history classes, which convened three days a week. She figured it was the perfect place to hold a meeting with a man she didn’t know from Adam.

  “How long you been teaching at the community college?” Jack asked as they settled into chairs.

  He had to turn sideways because his legs didn’t fit beneath the diminutive table. He’d shed his brown leather jacket with the shearling collar and now wore merely a gray flannel button-down tucked into jeans. His brown hair was short—almost a military cut—and his scarred work boots looked out of place beside the café’s chic Scandinavian furniture.

  “This is my fourth semester.” Fiona blew on her skinny latte and looked around, noticing the many female gazes lingering on Jack. “I teach survey courses Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and spend the rest of the week in my studio.” At least, that was her goal. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an uninterrupted day to paint.

  Jack wrapped his long fingers around a cup of plain black coffee. He had a farmer’s hands—strong, tan, and callused. She wouldn’t have picked him for a cop. He didn’t wear a wedding band, and she wondered if he’d ever been married.

  His gray-blue eyes watched her watching him over the brim. His look was direct, penetrating. He didn’t miss much, Fiona realized as she gulped her latte. The foam scalded a path down her throat.

  “Doesn’t leave much time for police work, I don’t guess.”

  “I’m trying to focus on my painting now,” she said. “I sold a few pieces recently, and I’ve got a gallery showing coming up soon.”

  He didn’t say anything to this, just lifted his steaming cup and took a sip. Fiona had paid for both drinks because she didn’t want to owe him anything. She’d predicted the gesture would irk him, and it had. There was something old-fashioned about him.

  Jack watched her for a long moment, and she tried not to shift in her seat.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why would a woman with your reputation be looking to change careers?”

  She did mind his asking, but she didn’t want to seem rattled. She wasn’t accustomed to having coffee with attractive men, and her social skills needed honing.

  “I spent six years training to be a painter. Police sketches were just a way to pay the bills.”

  He frowned. “And you’ve got that covered now, that’s what you’re saying? You no longer need the cash?”

  Fiona bristled. He made it sound so shallow, like it was all about money. But then, what else would he think, given what little she’d told him? No one understood her desire to be a painter, least of all the cops she knew. And although he might understand about the emotional toll her job was taking on her, she didn’t want to discuss that with him. He’d see her as weak.

  She squared her shoulders. “I thought we were here to talk about your case.”

  Jack leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. It was a muscular chest, and it went well with his broad shoulders. As an artist, she couldn’t help noticing these things. She’d also noticed he had a prominent jaw and a slight cleft in the center of his chin. Wonderful bone structure. Good lips, too.

  “Victim was discovered Tuesday.”

  Fiona abandoned her wayward thoughts. “Do you have an ID?”

  “All we know so far is that she’s a Hispanic female, probably sixteen or seventeen years old, according to our ME. She was sexually assaulted, strangled, and left in a pasture on the edge of town. No missing persons report that we can turn up. Course sometimes those don’t get filed right away.”

  “Except that she’s a minor,” Fiona stated. “Most parents don’t take long to report their kids missing.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “True. But she could be a runaway or maybe someone up from Mexico. We aren’t certain about her age.”

  “Okay. And you said something about a surviving victim?”

  He looked down into his coffee and nodded. “Another teenager. Mexican heritage. She was taken captive and sexually assaulted over a period of days. She’d been beaten and choked repeatedly before she managed to escape.”

  His eyes remained downcast, which Fiona found unusual for a seasoned police chief. She put him at late thirties, maybe younger. Police work packed on the years. She’d met twenty-three-year-olds at the LAPD who had seen more violence than many rural sheriffs. Maybe murders were a rarity in Jack Bowman’s little community. If only the rest of the world could be so lucky.

  “So you think you’re looking at a serial killer?” she asked. “Someone who targets teenage girls?”

  He lifted his gaze. “Possibly. Right now it’s just a hunch. One I’d damn sure like to disprove.”

  “Did you submit it through ViCAP?”

  “No hits.”

  “None at all?” she asked, surprised. The FBI-run database was massive.

  “Well, one actually.” He furrowed his brow. “But it was twelve years back.”

  “And?”

  “And the man convicted of that crime was sentenced to forty years. He died in Huntsville last spring.”

  “So what’s the feds’ theory?”

  His jaw tightened. “No idea.”

  “But don’t they typically get involved with serial killers?”

  Jack scoffed. “So far I’ve got one dead body, and it’s sitting unclaimed in the morgue. Not a lot of folks clamoring for a big investigation.”

  And yet the chief of police had driven all the way to Austin to hire a forensic artist for his case. Fiona had to admire Jack’s determination to seek justice for this victim, unidentified or not.

  “Surely San Antonio PD must be willing to lend a hand here,” she said. “They’re the closest metropolitan area, right?”

  Jack studied her face, and again she felt the power of those gray-blue eyes. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  She gulped. “I grew up in California.”

  “I live two hours away from the Rio Grande, Ms. Glass.”

  “Fiona.”

  He nodded. “Fiona, then. Law enforcement agencies in this state, particularly in my area, are up to their necks in drug running, gang wars, and illegal immigration. Not to mention your regular stream of meth addicts and pedophiles. So far, all I’ve got is one un-IDed victim. How much help do you think I’m gonna get tracking down some guy who may or may not have been involved in a previous assault?”

  “Not much.”

  Jack nodded. “That’s why I need you. I think the crimes are connected. I think we’re dealing with someone skilled and practiced, although I can’t prove it.”

  “But my sketch won’t give
you proof of anything. It’s just a tool.”

  “I realize that, but maybe it’ll put us on the right track.”

  Fiona sighed, and Jack leaned forward. “Look, I’d really like to get a picture of this guy circulating before he gets a hankering to kill another girl. The only witness I have has been through hell. You’ve got a reputation with kids and rape victims. I know there’re other artists around, but I want you.”

  Fiona took another sip of her latte and found it bitter. She pushed it away.

  Another day that had started bright and sunny had turned bleak before her eyes. Another murder. Another witness. Another chance to torture some woman by mining her memory banks for the most horrifying moments of her life.

  “Will you help me?”

  She looked up at Jack Bowman, at the determined set of his mouth. She’d known it over the phone—he was a difficult man to refuse. The force of his personality was pulling her in.

  But it wasn’t just his personality. Fiona’s gaze dropped to the hand wrapped around his coffee cup, and she wondered again if he had a woman in his life. Not that it mattered, anyway. Fiona didn’t get involved with cops. She’d learned that lesson the hard way and didn’t need a refresher course. She looked away.

  She couldn’t believe she was even considering this. She barely knew this man, and she’d made a commitment to changing her life. She was really going to make a break this time. No more death and violence and evil faces haunting her everywhere she went. If she didn’t stop now, there’d be no end to it.

  “Fiona?”

  “Let me think about it,” she told him. “I’ll call you with my answer.”

  Jack Bowman’s words were still echoing through her mind when she unlocked the door to her loft apartment in downtown Austin. She dropped her briefcase and coat on the wooden bench beside the door and kicked off her sensible flats. Then she locked her deadbolt and fastened the chain.

  Home.

  She was out of her suit jacket in two seconds. She un-tucked her silk camisole from her slacks, crossed the living area, and dumped her mail onto the stone-topped bank of cabinets that separated the kitchen from the rest of the loft. Just walking through her apartment improved her mood. It was her island of tranquillity. Her first weekend here, she had painted the walls celadon green and bought wheat-colored sisal rugs to add warmth to the Saltillo tile floors. The soft colors relaxed her.

  She pulled open the refrigerator and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with a few sips remaining. It had been a long, tedious day, wrapped up with a two-hour faculty meeting and a three-hour stint in the library scrounging up slides for Monday’s lecture. She was ready to unwind and shift into painting mode.

  Fiona emptied the remaining wine into a glass and perched on a bar stool so she could thumb through her mail: the usual flyers and bills, plus a letter from her grandfather, who lived in nearby Wimberley. His letters were easy to spot because of the spare handwriting—always in black ink—and the faint pencil lines he drew with a ruler before addressing his envelopes. A former structural engineer, her grandfather had an extreme Type A personality, but Fiona adored him, which was more than she could say for the rest of her family. Despite their fifty-year age gap, she and Granddad knew each other well. Fiona knew, for example, that the envelope from him would contain a clipping from the San Antonio Express-News detailing some misfortune that had befallen a single woman living alone somewhere. That would be it. No letter, not even a sticky note. Just an article he hoped would make her settle down and marry some nice young man.

  Fiona sighed and tossed the letter aside. The only other item of interest was a plain white business envelope hand-addressed to “Glass.” It bore a return address she didn’t recognize in Binford, Texas. She took a paring knife from her chopping block and sliced open the top.

  A small slip of paper fell out, a sheet from one of those pocket-size spiral pads. Fiona picked it up and read the wobbly block lettering scrawled across it: get ready bitch. ill come? u.

  She dropped the note on the counter. Then she snatched up the envelope again and reread the return address. “Binford.” The postmark said “Binford” also. She didn’t know of any prisons in Binford, but that didn’t mean a prisoner hadn’t written this. She’d received hate mail before back in Los Angeles—different from this letter, though. Those disturbing missives had been mailed from the home of a convicted murderer’s brother, and they had ceased after Fiona moved to Texas. She hadn’t received anything threatening in nearly two years.

  God, could this be happening again? Was she going to spend the next six months looking over her shoulder and dreading every trip to the mailbox? She didn’t have the stomach for it.

  She grabbed the portable phone off the counter and dialed a number she knew by heart.

  “Devereaux.”

  “Nathan, it’s Fiona.”

  “Well, speak of the devil.” His voice sounded cheerful, meaning he wasn’t on duty.

  “I have a question for you. Do you know of any jails or prisons in Binford, Texas?”

  “Binford, huh?” His tone became serious. “That’s in east Texas. No lock-up there, unless you’re thinking of the town jail, which I would guess has about one cell and a cot. Why?”

  She paused, reluctant to tell him but knowing it was pointless to lie to a man who’d been a homicide detective for the past ten years. “I got a letter today.”

  “Threatening?”

  She chewed her lip. “Maybe ‘harassing’ would be a better word.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I’ll show it to you.” She cleared her throat. She hated asking for favors. But he’d asked her for plenty since she’d started freelancing for the Austin Police Department. “If I bring you a list of the APD cases I worked on, can you check to see if an address in Binford pops up?”

  “No problem. I’m on tomorrow, so go ahead and drop it off along with the letter. We’ll check for prints.”

  She let out a relieved breath. “Thanks.”

  “And don’t touch it. Put it in a bag—”

  “I know the drill.”

  “So,” Nathan said, and she knew what was coming. “I hear you told ol’ Jack Bowman to take a hike.”

  “I didn’t tell him to take a hike. I just declined to get involved in his case. I left him a voice mail at his office with the name and number of someone I know up in Dallas.”

  “Jack wants you. He thinks you’re the best in the business, that you’ll use kid gloves with his rape vic.”

  “Gee, I wonder where he got that idea?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, well, I brag on you every chance I get, sweetheart. You’ve helped clear more cases than half the cops we got working here.”

  “I’m really ready for a change, Nathan. I need—”

  “I know what you need, and it’s not more time alone. Call Bowman back. Give him a hand with this one.”

  Her irritation was mounting. It always annoyed her when men second-guessed her decisions, as if she didn’t know her own mind. More than one relationship she’d been in had run into trouble over this very issue.

  “I appreciate the compliment, but please don’t send me any more cases.” Or detectives.

  The phone beeped, and Fiona welcomed the interruption. “Can I talk to you tomorrow at the station? I’ve got another call.”

  “Sure, see you then.”

  She switched to the next call and didn’t even have time to say hello.

  “What are you doing?” her sister demanded.

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah, right now. Right this second.”

  Fiona stared at her untouched glass of wine. It was probably warm by now. And after that, she was fresh out of distractions for the evening. “Not much,” she said glumly.

  “Perfect! You’re coming with me to the Continental Club.”

  Fiona groaned. A crowded, noisy nightclub filled with wannabe rock stars was the dead last place she wanted to be t
onight. And Courtney probably just wanted her there so she’d have someone to talk to before she picked up whatever guy was on her radar screen this week.

  Either that or her car wasn’t working again and she needed a ride.

  “Fi? You there?”

  “Tonight’s no good, Courtney. I’ve got papers to grade. And I was planning to paint—”

  “Fiona! What are ya, eighty? I swear to God, you’re always doing chores or some bullshit craft project or—”

  “Hey!”

  “Come on. I’ll even buy you a drink.”

  Fiona bit her lip. Felt tempted. Thought about the forty-two essays awaiting her on the European Renaissance. If she read one more paper citing Dan Brown as an authoritative source on Italian frescoes, she was going to scream.

  Plus it was Friday night, and she felt lonely. Coffee that afternoon had been the closest thing she’d had to a date in months, and she was beginning to feel like a shut-in.

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  A squeal pierced her eardrum. “I knew you’d come! Wear something fun, okay? Not one of your Laura Bush getups.”

  Fiona gritted her teeth.

  “Oh, and hey, my car’s out of commission, so you can drive.”

  Jack rode the elevator up to Fiona Glass’s swanky loft apartment and wondered what the hell he was doing. He didn’t have time for this shit. He had a desk piled with paperwork, an officer out on maternity leave, and an unsolved homicide waiting for him back in Graingerville. And he’d wasted a full day driving up here to sweet-talk a cranky art teacher.

  The elevator doors dinged open, and Jack glanced around. This floor had six units, and hers was on the left at the end. Nathan had given him her address over a steaming platter of barbecue brisket at the County Line. That was moments before she’d called Nathan’s mobile phone to tell him about some letter she’d received and ask him not to send her any more cases.

  Yet here he was.

  All his life Jack had had a hard time taking no for an answer. His mother had taught him if he wanted something badly, he should show up in person, ask politely, and then ask again. And again. And again, if necessary. It was the Bowman family credo, the one that explained why his sisters had sold more Girl Scout cookies than anyone else in town, and why their drill team fund-raisers always generated enough money for trips to South Padre over spring break. The Bowmans could sell milk to a dairy cow, and Jack refused to accept failure after one attempt. He stopped in front of Unit 4A and mustered a charming smile.