Natural Law(42)

“Which may mean they had a prior association, or a mutual friend. Someone will remember her. She’s getting bloodthirsty, and that means she’s getting careless. Or she’s playing more than one at a time.”

“She’s also getting bolder.” Consuela squatted next to him. “She wanted to see the parent arrive on the scene this time. Body was still warm when we got here.”

“You seal off the block?”

“Instantly, but you know she’s too smart for that. We’re doing a door to door, but my guess and my gut tell me she slipped right between arrivals. Laughing her ass off, probably.” She made a disgusted face.

“No, not laughing.” Mac studied the body, his eyes marking every detail, evaluating its significance or lack of import to the crime. “This one snapped quickly. I think she’s been carrying around her psychosis for quite a while. But something happened a couple months ago that manifested it. Suddenly, it was all clear to her. She could ease the ache with the kill. And now she’s like a junkie needing the fix, it’s rushing up so hard and fast in her. She’s got a lifetime of pain to get rid of. Killing them wasn’t enough. Seeing the parent find him tonight, she thought that might help, but it won’t. She was in the house when he was discovered, I’d bet on it. Probably left out a back door while they were still standing over him in shock. She’s going to keep varying her MO until she figures out what works for her, and nothing’s going to work. She’s starting not to care about being smart. Getting rid of the pain is what matters.

“Turner’s on The Zone member list.” Connie noted. “She’s sticking to that, at least.” 147



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Suarez shook his head, looked like he would have spit if they hadn’t been where they were. “She’s got a pool to choose from. Seems like there’s a rash of guys lining up to have a woman beat on them these days. Got dealers in school yards handing out coke patches to six-year-olds, and we’re having to waste time with this freak who was begging to get iced.”

Mac used his pen to lift the chin of Edward Turner, looked into the lifeless gray eyes. “Suarez, that was your daughter that came through the station the other day, wasn’t it? The Britney Spears wannabe in hip huggers and crop top?”

“Yeah. She’s into that stuff now. You know how teenagers are. Smart about some things, but hormones get in the way of good sense.” Mac nodded. “Even so, I guess if someone jumped her on the way home, raped her and left her dead in a ditch, we’d probably bend over her and say the same thing. I mean, with that outfit, she’s got to be asking for it, a twelve-year-old dressed up in an outfit a hooker’d blush to wear?”

“Crime scene,” Consuela snapped as Suarez surged forward a step, into her slapped palm. “Crime scene,” she repeated. “Don’t do this, guys.”

“Look around the room, Suarez,” Mac said, his voice deadly and low. “What is it that says freak to you? The picture of his family on the dresser? The TV Guide with his favorite sports shows circled? The suit he’d laid out in the bathroom to wear to work tomorrow?

“Did you notice the display cabinet in the front hallway? This guy was the United Way fundraiser chair at his office, raised fucking fifty thousand this year. In the laundry room there’s a dry-cleaned and wrapped set of suits he was planning to have the men’s shelter pick up to help some down-on-their-luck guys get jobs.” Mac’s voice was raised now, and he was vaguely aware of the uniforms just outside the door, frozen in shock at the outburst, but there was something boiling inside him, a fire he had to unleash or it would consume him.

“But you know what? That doesn’t matter. Even if he’d been a selfish yuppie prick who’d made less of a mark on the world than a twelve-year-old not old enough to make her mark on anything yet except her daddy’s heart, he’d deserve our help. Less than twelve hours ago, someone stood in this room and played God. I don’t need a repeat performance from an asshole like you. Get out of my crime scene and go find another one that you feel deserves your special touch more.”

“C’mon, Suarez.” Consuela tugged on his arm, giving Mac a quelling look. “Let’s take it outside. Walk it off.”

It took a full moment for him to recall himself, take a deep breath, realize with grim amusement that the cops on the scene were tiptoeing around outside the door, unsettled by the outburst from their usually stoic Oak.

Tensions were high. This many murders in such a short time frame meant a lot of pressure on the squad to solve it, and Mac could feel it, see it in the face of every uniform present. He felt it crawling in his own gut as he stared down at another dead 148



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kid. He’d spent the past two days at The Zone without Violet, risking the wrath of his pixie, but she was on a twelve-hour shift for the next several days and he wasn’t going to wear her out. He’d turned down several offers to play, evaluating those who offered and knowing they weren’t whom he sought, knowing he was out of the age range anyway. Three FemDoms had brought in twenty-somethings, and he’d had them tailed, but he suspected Violet was right, that whoever their killer was kept them away from The Zone, so the connection was never made. So he watched the FemDoms that trawled, or sat in the shadows watching, and came up with nothing.

“The neighbor remembers a gray Grand Am in the driveway.” Consuela had returned. “Lost plate tag. My guess is we’ll get a stolen vehicle report later from one of the downtown neighborhoods, find it stripped and the inside trashed, just like the last two times. I’ve also got some info on the gym connection, a list for you down at the station, if you think you can pull that railroad tie out of your ass long enough to listen to another cop.”

“Don’t start, Connie. He was out of line.”

“Suarez’ll do his best on this case, like he does all of them. We’re all frustrated, Mac.

He was just blowing it off. He didn’t want this kid to die. I don’t understand this lifestyle choice anymore than he does. Most people don’t. It doesn’t mean we won’t do our jobs.”

“I know.” Mac ran a hand over his face, the back of his neck. “I’ll say I’m sorry.

Even buy his daughter the latest Britney CD.”

“Well, let’s not go crazy.” Consuela allowed him a small smile, her sharp eyes studying him. “You may need a vacation after this one yourself. That wasn’t like you, you know. You’re looking a little ragged around the edges.”

“He’s looking worse.” He nodded at Edward Turner. “Are the parents still here?”

“The father. Mother died when Turner was in his teens. The dad is with the victim’s sister, in the next door neighbor’s kitchen.”

Ten or fifteen minutes of wading through the initial flurry of questions and confused anger of the father, patiently probing through that for anything that might have unconsciously been knowledge of his son’s killer, resulted in very little. Just like the two victims before him, Turner had kept this an aspect of his life his family never suspected existed.

“Why…what kind of person…she didn’t just kill him, she humiliated him.” Mr.

Turner was a spare man, tall and lean. Mac suspected his leanness came not from an ascetic appetite, but as a permanent physical brand left from the death of his wife. He’d seen enough death and the way it affected those left behind to know some always carried it visibly, either through irreparable stress lines around their eyes, a nervous twitch, or a gauntness like this man had. His son had been a strapping kid with wide shoulders, and he didn’t think Edward had gotten that from his mother.

Mac nodded. “Mr. Turner, I need you to think carefully about any friends your son has, and give that contact information to the officer I’ll leave you with when you and I 149



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are done talking. That includes any names he might have just mentioned in passing, his regular hangouts, that type of thing. Any very close friends of his will be important, any confidantes to whom he might have told something about more private details of his sexual life.”

“You think…someone he knew did this? That wasn’t Edward in there. He wasn’t…like that.”

This was the hard part, and Mac kept his eyes steady, his voice calm. “If it fits with the pattern of the two prior murders we’re investigating, he would have been having a relationship with this woman. It’s not likely he would have brought her to meet you, even mentioned her. Your son was a sexual submissive, a very discreet one.” Mr. Turner flushed red. “That’s a lie.”

“I have no reason to lie to you, sir. He had an active membership at several fetish clubs in Tampa, high-priced, very discreet. He was very careful not to mix this part of his life with the rest of it, to protect his family and career, I’m sure, but I’m thinking there might have been someone to whom he told—” Mac had lost him, he could tell from the panicked movement of Mr. Turner’s eyes, as a vicious flood of possibilities scattered like bowling pins what little composure the man had been able to collect.