Cassidy and the Princess Page 10

  He would strike again, not only because Marise might represent a danger to him but also because she’d become a challenge.

  And MacKay had made her that challenge.

  “Manny will be over here in a few minutes,” he said. “I’ll wait for him.”

  She started to say something, then stopped and turned away. She apparently read the answer to her unvoiced question in his face.

  He didn’t want to leave her. Not for a moment. But she would be safer here even though the killer apparently knew where she was. Darn it—wasn’t that what he’d wanted?

  He wanted to stay here with her. He also wanted to be at the parking lot. He wanted to know whether that was the car. If it was, he wanted to make sure the officers waiting there asked all the right questions.

  “What about lunch?” he asked, trying to break the silence filling the room. Lunch was safe. Lunch was doing something other than ogling his charge. And he realized that they hadn’t had breakfast after the shooting.

  Sam went into the kitchen. “I’ll fix some soup and sandwiches.”

  They were alone again. That wasn’t what Cassidy had had in mind. Where the devil was Manny? He followed Sam into the kitchen. So did Marise. Sam had poured the contents of a soup can in a pan and was making some sandwiches.

  “Just soup for me,” Marise said.

  Where was Manny?

  He took a sandwich from Sam but declined an offered bowl of soup. He poured himself a glass of milk and offered one to Marise. She took it, but avoided meeting his eyes.

  He was grateful when the doorbell rang.

  He took his Glock 9 mm from the shoulder holster he still wore and went to the door. It was Manny. He reholstered the gun and unlocked the door. “’Bout time,” he grumbled.

  “Bad tempered, are we?” Manny said. “I’ve been down at the station, developing the search pattern. How is she?”

  “Better than I am,” Cassidy said drily. “Indestructible, in fact. I’m going to check out the car we think was used this morning.”

  “He’s bolder than we thought.”

  “That’s why I want you to be very careful.”

  “I always am, partner. Besides, there are three of us and one of him.”

  “We hope.”

  “Serial killers work alone.”

  “Usually.”

  Manny frowned as he considered the possibility.

  “He’s probably alone,” Cassidy said. “But I just don’t want to leave anything to chance. And he might be in uniform.”

  “I don’t buy that.”

  “Just keep your eyes open.” Cassidy grabbed a jacket to cover his shoulder holster, then headed out to the garage, closing the door behind him with enough force to rattle the glass.

  Chapter 8

  Cassidy tried to erase the image of Marise from his mind. He couldn’t do it. He wondered whether he ever would.

  It was excruciating to feel this way and know it could go nowhere. He needed to stay away from her, but this morning proved he couldn’t. He had no business kissing a woman he was protecting. He had no business letting his libido interfere with his job. The fact that he hadn’t been more cautious proved it. His objectivity was gone. That meant his judgment was equally impaired.

  If he had any integrity, he would step away.

  He knew he couldn’t. He had offered her protection, and he didn’t trust anyone the way he trusted himself. Even now.

  He didn’t want to think that he just plain didn’t want anyone else around her twenty-four hours a day. He dismissed that thought. Or tried to. He would make sure they weren’t alone again. It should be easy enough, with two or three other people in the house at all times. He would just have to be more careful.

  Still, the taste of her lingered on his lips…

  He put the police light on top of the car and floored it.

  He arrived at the huge parking lot that served the MARTA station and found the officer who had discovered the car. A sergeant was there, along with another detective.

  Although Cassidy hadn’t seen the license plate, he knew immediately that the car was the one he’d seen earlier. The bullet hole was located just below the fender and difficult to see. He made a note to commend the officer who had discovered it.

  He told the officers what questions to ask people as they retrieved nearby cars, then left. Later tonight, when everyone had been questioned, the car would go to the crime lab for fingerprint dusting and a search for other evidence.

  Cassidy made a trip to the police department, where officers were searching through hospital personnel files, looking for police records. They were also looking for employees who had been hired within the past two years.

  Cassidy had already sent requests through VICAP to police departments throughout the country, asking whether they’d had any similar crimes, particularly a series of young women strangled and left with a rose. So far, the query had produced no hits.

  The best bet, however, was still luring the killer out into the open.

  But had he stirred a hornet’s nest that would result in tragedy? He would never forgive himself if he had.

  The question was, how far would the killer go to get to Marise? What chances would he take? And how did he happen to be out there this morning?

  The questions kept hammering at Cassidy. All the facts seemed to lead to the police department. But maybe the killer had simply looked Cassidy up in the phone book, and parked around the corner, surmising that an athlete would want to run.

  He looked at his watch. A little before five in the afternoon. He hated to return without more good news than he had. He didn’t want to see the disappointment in her face, nor the fear that he had helped put there.

  He stopped at a Chinese restaurant on the way, and bought enough food for five people.

  When he arrived at his house, all was quiet. He looked up at the window of the house three doors down. One of his men should be watching from there. But he saw nothing. Not a shadow or a flutter of curtains. Good.

  Inside, Manny, Dan and Sam were at the small kitchen table with Marise. They were playing cards.

  All four looked up as he entered. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the poker chips.

  “Are you corrupting my guest?” he asked.

  “She’s corrupting us,” Dan complained. “You didn’t tell us you were bringing in a ringer.”

  “I told you I’d played before,” Marise said with a grin that lit her face. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and, dressed in a sweatsuit and with a face devoid of makeup, she looked like someone’s kid sister.

  “She just didn’t tell us how good she was,” Manny added. “She’s already won a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or thereabouts.”

  “There goes your pension,” Cassidy said.

  Manny stood and stretched. “Any news?”

  “That was the car. Our people are interviewing everyone picking up their cars in the parking lot. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Anything happen here?”

  “Your sister called,” Manny said. “We had a long conversation.”

  He wasn’t surprised at either piece of information. Manny was as close to being a member of Cassidy’s family as Cassidy was of Manny’s. Mom had probably called his sister last night with the news that a woman was staying in his house.

  “Don’t tell me—she wants to come over for supper.”

  “Nope, she wants you to go to her house. Along with Miss Merrick.”

  Cassidy held out the bags in his hand. “Not tonight,” he said. “I bought Chinese.”

  Manny stood. “One of these days, I’m going to teach Hoppy how to cook.”

  Cassidy handed him the food and went to call his sister.

  “Mother liked her,” Liz said. “A lot.”

  “She’s a protected witness,” he said patiently. “That’s all.”

  “That’s not what mother says.”

  “You know how she likes to dramatize everything.”

  “I would like to
meet her.”

  “We’re protecting her, not running her social calendar,” he said, trying to keep his irritation from showing.

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  “Right now, it’s dangerous.” His voice softened. Liz had shared a not altogether happy childhood with him. They had tried not to hear the raised voices and bitter arguments. “Someone tried to run her down this morning. I think it’s best to stay in tonight. But if she’s here more than a couple of days, then we can think about supper.”

  A pause. “Maybe you should take her somewhere else. You can always use the cabin,” his sister said.

  Cassidy had considered that. Liz and her husband Doug had a cabin at Lake Lanier where Cassidy worked on the sailboat. But it was in a different jurisdiction, and it was doubtful he could get Captain Haynes’s approval.

  “I’ll remember that,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean to…”

  He regretted his curt remark. They had always been close. It was yet another sign that he was losing objectivity. “I know, Liz. This morning, I thought I had taken all precautions. It was stupid.”

  “She couldn’t be in better hands,” Liz said loyally.

  He wished he felt the same way. “I’ll call you.” He hung up the receiver softly, just as Manny called him in to supper.

  After they’d eaten, Marise insisted on cleaning up. There was something about the way she had been taken into a small, obviously close circle of friends that made her drop her guard, eased the grip of her self-imposed discipline.

  She didn’t want to leave, and that was more terrifying than nearly being run down by a car. She knew MacKay didn’t want to get involved. Even Manny had told her that this afternoon when she’d tried to ask him questions about his partner. She wasn’t going to force herself on him, even though strange things happened to her body every time he entered the room.

  The phone rang just as they finished eating, and he was up and answering it faster than she could blink.

  “MacKay,” he said.

  He listened for several moments, then said, “Keep me posted,” and hung up.

  “They didn’t find anything,” he said, turning to the others. “No one at the parking lot saw a thing. The owner showed up and says he parked there at six this morning. He’s not happy. And he’s going to be a lot less happy when they tear up the car. Our only hope now is to get a strand of hair or something we can trace.”

  “The fact that he knows how to hot-wire a car means he probably has a criminal record,” Dan said.

  “Nope,” Cassidy said. “He used a key in a magnetic case under the car. The owner said his wife always loses keys and insisted on getting one.”

  “How would he know there was a magnetic case?” Marise asked.

  “It’s an earlier model without combination locks. Our man was probably looking for one, kneeling as if he was checking a tire or picking up a briefcase. He would have picked the front of the lot, which was already filled. There wouldn’t be much traffic.”

  Marise felt her heart stop. She’d always thought criminals were not very smart. This one obviously was.

  “Serial killers usually are clever,” MacKay said, watching her face carefully. “That and the randomness of how they select their victims makes them hard to catch. That’s why we needed you so badly.”

  He rose and went to the window. “I’m going out to look around,” he said.

  She wanted to go with him, but she knew that after this morning, he would not even consider it. Instead, she gathered up the empty plates, took them to the sink and looked for soap.

  “Let me do that,” Manny said.

  “No. I want to do it,” she said, knowing that if she didn’t find a use for her hands, she would go crazy.

  A cold shower might have been better. The brisk breeze and cool temperature of fall didn’t help at all.

  Cassidy reminded himself that wasn’t the reason he was here. He’d checked earlier with the detective in the perch overlooking the house. Nothing unusual. No car moving slowly around the neighborhood. Still, Cassidy wanted to check every parked car in the vicinity.

  He knew the police officers who lived in the neighborhood, but not many of the other neighbors. His hours were too long, and when he was off, he was either working on the house or at the lake working on his boat.

  He scanned the pedestrians. There weren’t many. A couple of joggers—both women—and a man walking a dog. He went up to the latter, commented on the sheltie the man was walking, discussed the finer points of various breeds and, satisfied, walked on.

  He did the rounds of several blocks, finding nothing out of the ordinary, and wondered again whether the killer would come back here. But his thoughts always returned to Marise and the feelings she evoked in him.

  He’d never thought he could really care about a woman again. He’d been careful about choosing his own wife. He hadn’t wanted to bring up a child as he and Liz had grown up. He’d waited until he was thirty, and he’d thought he had found the perfect woman. She was outgoing where he was introspective, and she’d brought color to his life. A public relations spokes-person for the school system, she was smart and interested in many of the same things he was. She also seemed to accept his profession.

  But after a friend of his had been killed in the line of duty, she’d changed. She started talking about his looking for another job; she’d even set up interviews without asking him.

  The marriage deteriorated from there. He couldn’t sell insurance or real estate or be a pretend cop in the security department of a large corporation. He lived for the chase, for solving puzzles, even—he thought wryly—for the cliché of protecting the innocent.

  Perhaps if he had been less a loner, they could have bridged the differences. But as a child he’d learned to turn off the loud voices and arguments by retreating into himself, and that was what he did in his marriage.

  And he’d become convinced that the best way to avoid misery was to avoid marriage, and the best way to avoid marriage was to avoid involvement.

  Cassidy continued to prowl the neighborhood, telling himself he was just doing his job, though he was really waiting until Marise likely would be in bed. He simply didn’t trust himself with her, even with a house full of detectives.

  He finally went to the neighborhood home of a friend—a captain in Burglary—where one of Cassidy’s task force was upstairs.

  Sylvie Spencer opened the door. “John’s upstairs with your watcher, Todd Persons,” she said.

  “Tyler around?” Cassidy asked. Tyler was their son, a curious twelve-year-old.

  “Tyler’s staying with a friend. We thought it would be best. He wants to be a cop, and no telling what detecting he’d try to do.”

  “I hope you don’t mind someone being here,” Cassidy said.

  She shook her head. “Of course not. How can I complain about a little inconvenience when another woman is setting herself up as a target? I think she’s very brave to do what she’s doing. Most women would have left town. I thought about going over to tell her so, but thought I should check with you first.”

  “I think she would like that. Why not in the morning? I have a meeting then at headquarters.”

  “I’ll take some food with me.”

  “I’ll tell the guys.” He nodded. “Mind if I go on up?”

  “Of course not. Join the party. Can I get you a beer?”

  “Thanks, but I have to keep my wits about me. What few I have left.”

  A twinkle came into her eyes. “Don’t tell me she’s broken through that armor you’ve been carrying around. I do have to meet her.”

  “She’s just a witness, Sylvie.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Cassidy went up the stairs to the attic. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The only light came from the soft glow of a lamp down the street. Todd, the detective assigned to watch his house, was sitting to the left of the window, a location designed to keep him hidden from the road.

>   John, who owned the house, was sitting beside him. A dark shadow. “I’m keeping him company,” he said. “And no, I’m not distracting him.”

  Cassidy had questioned the detective there earlier in the day when he and Marise had almost been run down. He’d seen a dark car go by but nothing else. He hadn’t actually seen the assault.

  “No one else skulking around?”

  “Nope,” Todd said. “A plumbing truck drove by. Everything else looked familiar.”

  “Get the name on the truck?”

  “Couldn’t see from here, but I took a photo of it. It’s gone to the lab. It didn’t slow or hesitate. There’s been nothing else.”

  “I’ll look at it, but I doubt it’s our guy. Not after this morning. He’ll expect extra security.”

  “We want him to try for her, though. Right?” John asked.

  Cassidy was no longer sure that he did, but he’d started it, possibly putting Marise in more danger. He feared now that she might become an obsession of the killer. Then she wouldn’t be safe no matter where she went. He wished the feds would move faster on their profile.

  “Right,” he said finally, “but I think he’ll be quiet for a couple of days, hope we’ll relax our surveillance. Like I did this morning,” he added bitterly. “Bad judgment on my part.”

  “Did you find anything in the car?” Todd asked.

  “Not yet. We’re checking but I’m not holding my breath. He seems to anticipate everything. But I’m just hoping he’ll make a mistake. He took a chance this morning—maybe he’ll take more.”

  “You think he knows about this place?” Todd asked.

  “Nothing would surprise me about this guy,” Cassidy said. “We’ve queried to see whether there have been any similar murders throughout the country. And we’re checking the new hires at both the hospital and our department.”

  “You really think it could be one of us.”

  “Not one of us,” Cassidy said. “But it could be a radio operator, a med tech, a clerk. Hell, it could be anyone. Except,” he added with a wry smile, “one of us.”