The Rookie Club: Dead Center Part 4

The air in the room stopped. Somewhere someone shouted, but Marchek didn't blink, didn't look away. He leaned forward, hands hovering just over the table. Somehow, he managed to hold them there without making contact with the surface. His eyes widened and there was the flash of green. He stood then and pushed the chair back with his legs and rose. "I'm leaving now. Unless you can charge me with something."

Gone was the awkward child.

She rose as well, put her hands in her pockets. Kept her voice calm. "I'm going to let you go today, Michael. But watch these last steps. I'll be on your every move. And when I catch you again, you're going to jail for life."

He stared.

"You know it, don't you? You'll rot there."

He smiled, shook his head, like a parent listening to the nonsense of a child. "You should be careful, too, Inspector." His smile disappeared, but his voice remained even, almost friendly. "Whoever attacked that woman is still out there."

She grinned back. Faking it to show him he wasn't getting to her. She held the smile taut until tremors rose in her cheeks. "Watch yourself, Michael. You'll be back here before you know."

"See you soon, Inspector."

With that, Marchek turned and walked from the interview room.

She turned to Washington.

He shook his head. "The hair doesn't match Osbourne."

She had nothing to keep him on. The CSU hadn't found anything in his place and the blond hair didn't match.

She sank back into the chair and dropped her head in her hands.

Washington touched her shoulder. "You tried."

She didn't answer. She had to do better than try. She put Emily in Marchek's way. Now she had to clean up the mess.

"Call if anything comes up," Washington said. "I'm heading home."

She nodded to him. When the door clicked shut, she crossed her arms, replaying what Marchek had said. He'd be the kind of artist who thought of his work as art. What did that mean? What did an artist do?

She thought back to the first police officer who had been a.s.saulted. Shawna Delman. Delman was the single caretaker for a younger brother. Only two months on the job, she'd been brutally raped. A month later, she overdosed on heroin.

A signature. The image kept flipping in Jamie's brain. Michael Marchek. A logo to claim his victims. She sifted through the memories for a signature.

Back at her desk, she lifted the file of pictures and took it back to the interview room. Slowly, she spread them out, studied them one by one.

There, twenty pictures in, she found a photograph of the small, rough cut on Emily's inner right thigh.

Jamie stared at it, squinting. It was almost like a crude W.

Her heart pounding, Jamie rotated the picture one hundred eighty degrees. She gasped.

If Emily Osbourne looked down at it, the cut would look like a child's M.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Chapter 7.

Cigarette in hand, Jamie ended the call with her surveillance team and blew the long line of cigarette smoke out the open bedroom window. Three o'clock in the morning and she had nothing. Patrol followed Marchek from the station and he'd gone straight home. Lights were out within thirty minutes. Nothing since then. There was no sneaking off to some secret hiding place, no sliding into a car registered in someone else's name so he could ditch his rape kit. Nothing. He'd gone to bed. Of course he had. It was three o'clock in the d.a.m.n morning. They should all be in bed.

Surveillance had confirmed his presence twice in the last hour through a window. Captain Jules had conceded to twenty-four hours of surveillance on Marchek. Almost fifteen percent used up on Marchek sleeping. She should have known Marchek wasn't dumb enough to get caught like this. She pictured his thin frame bent over one of his model airplanes. Saw the same thin, hairy figure lying in bed, surrounded by the smell of bleach, dreaming of his next attack. She shuddered, forced him away.

Without more, there was nothing to go on. It was impossible to link him to the cut on Emily Osbourne's thigh without more evidence or a confession. Since she wasn't getting the latter, she had to focus on the former.

She sighed, stared at the thrashed bedcovers. A messy bed always reminded her of her ex-husband. Tim never slept straight. Facedown, he wiggled deep into the bed until his feet hung over the end, head buried somewhere in the middle, legs usually sprawled in opposite directions. He slept well, hard, the way children did. Unlike Jamie, who slept up at the top, on her back, hands to her sides like a soldier at ease. Her head raised on two pillows, she molded the sheet across her legs, smoothed it on either side. Stared at the ceiling for long stretches most nights.

For a lot of police officers, how they slept, if they could, was well-guarded secret. Like the little superst.i.tions of baseball players before a game. The process of getting there was often a ritual, or they went without. Because sleep was easy for him, Tim hadn't understood that. He kicked and shifted in the bed, never disrupting his own sleep, only hers.

In the swell of the wrinkled bed sheets, Jamie pictured Devlin and Tim. Curled up under the covers, two sets of feet hanging over the end. Jamie dragged on the cigarette, stared at the bed like the enemy.

She dropped the cigarette into a gla.s.s of tepid water on the bedside. The flame snuffed out with a hiss. Beside the gla.s.s was a bottle of Febreze room deodorizer, which she waved through the air. The bottle was new, one she'd bought to replace the one she'd killed a few days back. It was only spraying it for the first time that she realized it was the scent she used before she saw victims at General Hospital. She wondered if there was any significance to the lavender or if her job had so blurred into her life that there was no separating them. Home, work, the car, the hospital all one continuum of victims and rapists.

She left the window open, hoping to dissipate the smell and padded into the bathroom. She wanted a drink but refused to let herself focus on the alcohol. Don't think, just sleep. In the bathroom, Jamie walked through her nightly routine to ward off the smell of cigarettes. She showered again, brushed her teeth three times, painted them with the Crest whitening paste, and put her molds in. Some nights she thought she should just quit smoking. Definitely not tonight.

In the mirror a set of tired eyes looked back. Eyes Tim had once told her were like mood indicators. Blue when she was calm and peaceful, sea green when she was feisty or angry. Now they always looked a flat steely gray-green to her. She wondered what mood that was. Depressed?

Back in the bedroom, she remade the bed with military precision, changed into generic gray sweats that had once fit but were now two sizes too big, added a long-sleeved T-shirt from her police academy days. Near her left breastbone a hole cut between the yellow N and C of Francisco. Through it, she could feel the tail end of the snaking scar from an old knife wound. A routine traffic stop gone bad.

As she sank onto the edge of the bed, restless exhaustion overcame her. The sheet corner, carefully folded back, was waiting but the desire to sleep had waned. Eighteen months Tim had been gone. Eighteen months and she still missed his fidgeting in bed, the way his hand sought out her thigh in the dark. The way he met her with a cup of coffee after a bad night at work, the way he always seemed to know which nights had been especially rough. Her life remained suspended in the months after he left. After she'd thrown him out. After she'd bought this house, moved in but never really lived here.

Outside, the bedroom light cast shadows across the overgrown yard. Occasionally, they seemed to move like people but Jamie had long since gotten used to the strange ghostly figures. Inside was no better. The house's windows were still bare of blinds or curtains. But for the old striped couch she and Tim had picked out at Ikea early in their marriage and a TV without cable, the living room stood empty. The kitchen housed a small worn oak table that Jamie had picked up at a garage sale. On one end was an older model Gateway desktop and at the other, a stack of unopened mail. The only thing on the three-person breakfast bar was a single, tattered place mat where she ate. Mismatched dishes and gla.s.ses and some silverware occupied some small percentage of the kitchen's cabinets and drawers along with a few pots and pans.

Most of her clothes were unpacked into the bedroom closet and a single dresser, but full boxes of things from her life with Tim littered each room. Boxes that had done nothing over eighteen months but house moths and gather dust. Filled with things she couldn't remember now, didn't want to.

Jamie plumped the pillows, tucked her feet under the covers, and lay down. Stared at the ceiling.

From the floor, Barney whined.

Without moving, she patted the bed and he jumped up and after spinning twice, settled down beside her. The dog tucked his head on her shoulder and she scratched it. He whined, sniffed her ear. At least she had Barney. Dumped at the site of her first serial rapist case, Barney had a broken leg and the worst case of fleas the vet had ever seen. One part German shepherd, some border collie, ninety-eight parts mutt. He was the size of a large hound with the same basic shape. With pointed ears, he was a muddy brown except for a few spots of caramel behind his ears and on his belly.

At that first scene, Jamie had arrived still drunk from the night before and hurting like h.e.l.l. The separation was only a few months old. She'd filed for divorce and bought the house, moved her belongings, but there was no next step. She'd done what she could to create a new life but the momentum had stalled out. Her response was to drink more, smoke more, work more. When the dog showed up, sniffing around that scene, walking on three legs, she saw herself in him. A mutt. Dirty, broken. Pathetic. A couple of patrol officers made fun of him. Jamie bit off their heads and brought him home.

For eight days, she bathed the dog three times a day with a special prescription dog shampoo. Only on the last day did she settle on calling him Barney because of his incessant whining at every bath time. The sound changed pitch in short spurts, reminding her of the Barney Miller theme song. So Barney it was.

It required four months of changing the bandages on his right front leg daily-and wrapping it in plastic before every bath-before the leg healed and he still had a tendency to walk a little funny when it rained. Three thousand in vet bills. It was worth it. She couldn't imagine life without Barney. Sometimes she'd wake with his head resting on her arm, the sound of his breath like the rumbling of a far-off train. Sort of like Tim, but nicer, better smelling and certainly more loyal.

Barney's breath shifted into sleep. Jamie, too, felt herself relax into the sheets. Her eyes fluttered closed. Maybe she would sleep tonight. She exhaled into the mattress, drifted.

The doorbell rang.

She jolted from half-sleep.

Barney lifted his head.

"Forget it," she said.

The bell chimed again, and he let out a whine.

Another bell.

"d.a.m.n it." Jamie yanked off the covers and got out of the bed. Grabbed her gun from its holster hanging on the back of the door. Stomped down the stairs. "What?" she shouted through the door.

"Jamie? Is that you?"

Tim. She halted. Held her breath.

The sound of his flat palm slapping the door. "Jamie? It's me. Please."

What was he doing here? She shook her head. She didn't care. Not her problem. "Go away," she hollered. She pictured him. Warned herself to keep her distance, go back to bed.

"Jamie." More slapping on the door. Then, pounding.

His desperation seeped around the wood. She stepped away from the smell of it. Too late. Imagined his green eyes from kinder moments. Wondered how he was. She didn't care. She shouldn't care but she did. Still, she crept to the door to look. She saw his eyes and her stomach sank. She pressed her head to the door, willing her silence to send him away.

The first time she'd met Tim had been at a Bay Area police event. He was doing contracting computer work for the department and was making small talk with a group of officers, drinking Budweiser from the can. She'd been standing alone, as she almost always did at those functions, until someone came and ushered her back into the mainstream. She watched as he ran his finger under his collar, then adjusted the waist of his pants, all the while looking like he'd never worn a suit before. She'd felt the same in a skirt suit and hose. When he'd looked over, she'd been smiling. He'd made his way over to her and asked straight out, "Are you laughing at me?"

She hadn't realized until he was beside her how attractive he was. Greenish gray eyes half cloaked under a mane of thick, dark hair. He was trim, average height-maybe five ten.

Now, standing on the front porch, a bluish black ring under one eye, he looked like he'd been in a bar fight.

Why had she looked?

"Jamie, please let me in." No slapping or pounding now. Just begging.

She started to turn away from the door and stopped. Chest tight. "You're an idiot." He screwed around. With your friend. But even as she said it, her fingers gripped the k.n.o.b and turned.

She opened the door and stared at Tim's left eye, swollen and black. It looked worse close up. "What happened?"

He stepped into the light and she caught sight of dark blood on his white shirt. She guessed by the quant.i.ty that the blood was from a broken nose, but his looked intact. "What the h.e.l.l happened?"

His gaze flat, he stepped into the house.

"Are you hurt?"

He didn't answer.

"Was it a fight?"

He closed his eyes. His head lolled back.

She grabbed his shoulder, shook him. "What the h.e.l.l happened?"

"I went to see her, to talk things over."

Jamie let go. "Who?"

He opened his eyes. "I saw her car at the station so I went up."

"Who?" she said again.

Tim stared at the floor, arms hung limply at his sides. "I would never have hurt her, Jamie. Never."

Jamie's stomach clenched. She tightened her grip on the gun. "Tim."

He shook his head. "She wasn't moving. I just leaned down to touch her." He glanced around the room and Jamie followed his gaze as it took in the boxes, the sad, empty house. He said nothing.

Her heart hammered in her chest.

"Then, someone hit me in the head."

"She hit you?"

He didn't answer.

"Tim, answer me. Are you hurt?"

He touched his head absently. "Someone hit me in the head. I fell forward and hit my eye." He shook his head. "I don't even know on what."

She fingered the spot on his scalp. She felt blood but not enough to explain his shirt. "Whose blood is this?" She heard the panic in her tone.

He met her gaze. "It's hers."

She clenched his wrist. Blood covered her hand. She cringed at the thick coolness of it. "Whose, Tim?"

He shook his head. "I didn't do it."

Oh G.o.d. She stepped backwards.

He followed.

She put a hand out. "Stay there, Tim."

His gaze snapped to hers. He walked toward her. "I know what it looks like, Jamie. I know how bad it looks. That's why I came here. To you. I didn't do it. You have to believe me." He reached out for her, but she froze in place. "I just went to see her, but I didn't hurt her," he said. "She was already dead."

Already dead. Jamie stared at his face and hands, the blood on his shirt. What did he do?

"You have to help me, Jamie. You have to. I didn't kill her. I swear I didn't." He wiped the back of his hand across his face. He left a smear of brownish red blood on his cheek.

Heart racing, Jamie spoke slowly. "Who is dead, Tim? Tell me who is dead."