“Good.” Higgins turned his grim expression on Paul. “We want to know everyone pictured here. Do I dare to hope you know all of them as well as you know these five?”
“I probably know less about most of them.”
Higgins groaned. “Great. Give us what you’ve got. We’ll run it down, put the pictures through our face recognition program. It’ll take awhile.”
“Look, I don’t run background checks or take prints from the homeless people who come in to get a meal.”
“Well maybe you ought to start.” Higgins turned away. “Now what have we got from forensics?”
Paul was real tempted to keep arguing with Higgins. But he kept his mouth shut by sheer force.
“No DNA evidence.” Dr. Schaefer shoved a stack of file folders onto the desk near the front of the room. “Everything I’ve got is here and I made a copy for each of you. The short version is, there was no DNA on the victim’s body. Not surprising, considering the fountain.
“I’ve got the specifics of the wounds and cause of death in a file for each of you, so you can run the details through NCIC for a similar MO. As far as searching the apartments, where it appears the girls were taken, there are so many stray hairs in both LaToya’s and Juanita’s homes, we can’t begin to identify them all. Apparently these ladies had wide circles of friends, and we’ve found a dozen or more people for both of them who admit to being in their house. Sorting through all of that would take months and not put us one bit closer to the killers.”
“And we don’t have months.” Paul glanced at his watch.
“Detective Collins and I have theorized the frogs. We informed you of that, right?” Higgins nodded. “I’ve got ten teams who are staking out every park, fountain, and mud hole within a mile of the mission. We can’t know if Pravus will stay close when he dumps the body, but Dyson thinks it’s a probability.”
“You think he brought Juanita alive to that fountain, don’t you, Dr. Schaefer?” Paul asked the ME.
“Yes. She hadn’t been dead long when she went in the water. It’s my considered opinion that he killed her there.”
“So he’s not ‘dumping a body.’“ Paul couldn’t be cool while Higgins callously discussed the mission and LaToya. “He’s bringing
“I know.” Higgins’s hazel eyes flashed with irritation. “Everyone who’s standing guard knows.”
“Just make sure they do.” Paul had led a lot of cases. He knew how to run an investigation every bit as well as Higgins. “If you get sloppy, then LaToya dies, Higgins.”
“I don’t get sloppy.” Higgins bristled and squared off against Paul.
“I think you do. I think talking about a body being dumped is you being sloppy enough to get someone killed.”
Everyone in the room froze. Even Paul was shocked at the command in his voice. He remembered this. The ability to take charge. The sweet taste of power.
“Get it straight, all of you.” His eyes swept the room. “We go out tonight with a plan to save this young woman. If any of you can’t remember your job, I’ll be glad to replace you with someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Higgins’s brows arched nearly to his stupid, stylish black hair.
Paul knew when he said it he had no clout to get anyone replaced. But then maybe he did. He could go to the press. He knew how to get his hands on a TV camera and a microphone. It was a skill he’d developed to an art form back in the day.
“Are we done here?” Keren asked.
Was she on his side? Or was she still taking orders from Higgins? Paul trusted her as a cop, but suddenly he didn’t trust her at all as a woman. A woman who had kissed him pretty enthusiastically a few times. Would Keren flirt with him or kiss him to stay close to the mission?
When Paul was a cop, he’d never done that, but the opportunity had never come up. He’d been ruthless when it came to solving a case. Would he have stooped low enough to feign an attraction to a woman if it would have added to his solve rate? He knew he would, even as a married man.
“Stay here and tell me what you know about the rest of these people, Morris.” Higgins jerked his head toward the door. “The rest of you can get to work.”
It didn’t take long. Higgins seemed to respect Paul more when he acted like an arrogant jerk. So they worked well together, getting what Paul knew about the men on the bulletin board.
“We’ll let you know if we have trouble finding those men.” Higgins nodded to the door, clearly telling Paul to get out.
Paul was glad to oblige.
Keren was poring over the police files of the suspects they couldn’t eliminate, looking for a face that matched one of those five men in the car Murray was driving. It had to be one of those men. Or did it? Had someone else come in, maybe from the back? Wondering about it was driving her crazy, so she went with what she knew and tried to mentally add years and facial hair and maybe a disguise to the pictures, maybe even plastic surgery.
Paul came in and started sorting through files without talking to her or O’Shea, who was working beside her. She thought Paul believed her about why she was at the mission, but she didn’t ask, settling for the quiet rather than start something. They’d deal with it later.
Dyson came and asked Paul a few questions about how the Lighthouse Mission operated. “Where does its funding come from? Who does the books? Who has keys?”
“We may have culled too deep on these files,” O’Shea muttered. “I’m going to look at a few we eliminated.” He left, probably to return very soon with a lot more work.
Once they were alone, Paul said, “You’re sure it’s one of those five?”
“I’m sure that Pravus was in the mission after the services. The timing is right. Someone could have come in from the back maybe, or—or—”
“Maybe came down from upstairs, the sleeping quarters.”
“Of the five, Louie is the one with a murder rap. He murdered his wife?”
“Yes, Louis Pike went down for voluntary manslaughter. His other crimes were just thug stuff. Bar fights. A couple of B and Es. He’d done time in juvie. Been in foster care most of his life. He was drug involved. He did five years, and his parole includes community service, which is how I got him.”
“Does he seem capable of this?”
Paul shook his head. “He’s young. He’d have been in his late teens when I was on the force. He’s a known quantity. Not with a missing past like most of the men at the mission. I don’t see how I could have done him damage and now not remember him.”
Paul looked up. “He’s always been Louie Pike, if you know what I mean. He’s accounted for. No name change, no gaps in his history. His face looks the same now as it did in his teens. I’d recognize him if I’d run across him before. Plenty of paper on Louis Pike. So if I hurt him or arrested him, he’d be in here, listed by name.”
“And he’s not.”
Paul shook his head.
“It almost seems more likely it’s someone like McGwire,” Keren said. “All that silence. The way he dresses and looks, that full beard. Even the way he keeps his head down, it’d be a good disguise.”
Paul stared into the distance. Keren was sure he was thinking of the interactions he’d had with all these men. “If he’s faking then he’s never missed a note. He’s a great actor.”
“Listen, while we’ve got a second…” Keren didn’t want to mess up this moment when they were trying to solve this crime and save a life, but she had to say something. “I didn’t come down there on Higgins’s order.”
Paul turned his eyes on her. Cop eyes. Detached, analytical. Rude. “It’s the job, I get that.”
“Higgins suggested it, but I’d already decided I wanted to hear you preach.”
“So showing up had nothing to do with solving this crime.”
Keren narrowed her eyes at him. “Every breath I take involves solving this crime, Paul. And it had occurred to me that I might be able to sense Pravus if he was down there. But I would have come anyway.”
The coldness wavered. Keren thought she caught just a glimpse of hurt.
Before he could mask his feelings, she added, “You saw what happened with Roger.”
