Before the Dawn(83)

Dawn's eyes widened. "Jason was right-handed. Tucker is right-handed."

"I have to do a more thorough exam. This was just a superficial survey while I was waiting on...on Jinx." She stumbled a bit over those words. "But the wound in his neck is deepest on the right-hand side, and it becomes shallower as it slices to the left. That's the typical strike pattern of a left-handed attacker. It was a frontal attack, judging by the blood spatter at the scene, and in a front attack from a right-handed perp, the deepest wound on the neck should have originated on the left-hand side." She lifted her hands toward her own throat, indicating the pattern of the attack. "The killer would have been covered in blood..."

* * *

"YES," TUCKER SAID CAREFULLY. "I found Red. I had his blood on me-I was trying to save the guy's life! I wasn't the one who attacked him. The killer beat me to his location. I wish that I had arrived sooner. I could have stopped the perp. I could have saved Red."

Silence. Still too much suspicion in the eyes of Hatch and Anthony. As for Samantha, he couldn't read her expression at all.

"Were you intimately involved with Jinx?" Anthony asked.

"No. I never even met the woman. I've been in DC, working cases." He gestured toward Samantha. "She can tell you I haven't had any time off recently to run down here." 

"So it's been a long time since you came down here to spy on Dawn Alexander." Anthony looked oddly satisfied, as if the guy had just caught Tucker in a lie.

He'd caught nothing. "You can check my travel records-actually, I think you already have. The last time I was down here...it was right after we finished up the Sorority Slasher case. I made sure Dawn was doing well, and I left the city. End of story."

"But it's not the end," Anthony said. "You're here now...and the bodies are piling up."

* * *

"SUSPICION IS HITTING Tucker hard," Bowen said as he paced outside the coroner's office. Macey didn't pace. She just stood still, her unusual eyes following him. "Someone is setting him up, I'm sure of it. For Heather to say an FBI agent named Tuck was her lover..." He gave a low whistle. "This killer has been steps ahead of us all along. He wants Tucker to look guilty-"

"He's discrediting him." Macey pursed her lips as she seemed to consider all of the options. "There won't be enough evidence to prove Tucker's guilt. He's been in DC with us all for the last few months...he hasn't been down here checking on the body he had in a warehouse."

Bowen stopped pacing.

"We originally thought Dawn was the killer's end goal," she mused. "Maybe it's more about Tucker. Hurting him. Destroying what he values."

He loved that woman's mind. So deep and twisting. "Tucker values his job."

"And if suspicion is thrown on him...the first step will be his removal from the case and our team."

He nodded. "He's being questioned by the PD now. They were saying we were trying to cover for one of our own. Detective Deveraux demanded to be in the interrogation. After the way Tucker went after his partner, the guy was obviously wanting some payback."

"I don't think he's the only one." Her gaze cut to the closed lab doors. "Tucker doesn't have close ties to many folks. The only person that I think he truly cares about? She's in there."

He'd gotten that the first time he'd seen Dawn's picture.

"The killer knows that, too. Hurting Dawn is just another way of hurting Tucker."

She'd just said exactly what he thought. "The perp is going to try to kill her. Soon."

"Yes. And with all this focus on Tucker..." She shook her head. "Samantha won't have a choice. She'll have to remove him from duty. He won't be the one guarding Dawn any longer."

It would be them. "If anything happens to her..."

Tucker will lose it.

"We have to make sure nothing happens," Macey said. "We have to make certain that woman remains a survivor."

* * *

"EVERY WITNESS IN this case keeps winding up dead." Dawn couldn't rub the chill from her arms. "Red, Rowan..."

Julia had sat down behind her desk. "My father is blaming himself for Red and Rowan. He thinks he should have kept Rowan at his restaurant, and then called the cops."

"None of this is on Jones."


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"You know how he is." Julia's lips tilted at the corners. "He wants to save the world."

"Reminds me of someone else I know."