“What about James Cahill?” Rivers asked.
“What? Are you nuts? No! Geez, I don’t know how to say it any clearer!”
But Rivers recognized the bed in the picture, where a nude Willow was staring provocatively into the camera’s eye, as belonging to Cahill. He’d seen it when going through Cahill’s house.
“Oh, Lordy,” Zena sighed. She fought a new spate of tears.
“What?” Mendoza asked.
“I wasn’t lying when I said she didn’t have a boyfriend, but she did have this major crush on James. She was half in love with him.” Zena started shredding the tissue again. “Well, maybe more like totally in love with him. But it was a complete fantasy.”
“How so?” Mendoza prodded.
Zena rolled her expressive eyes. “He, like, doesn’t even know she exists. Or . . . existed. It was like she was invisible to him.”
“But you know she had a crush on him?”
Nodding, Zena blinked back tears. “Oh, yeah.”
“So why would she be in his bed?” Rivers asked. “With a gun?”
Zena looked absolutely miserable and dabbed at her eyes with the shredded Kleenex. “I don’t know,” she said, “but as I said, she’s a little weird.”
“Does she have any friends or family in the area?”
“I don’t know.” She thought for a second, her forehead wrinkling. “Wait. She never talked much about her folks, but she has a sister.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No. Just that she lived in Tacoma, I think . . . or maybe it was Everett, somewhere on the other side of the mountains. She never called her by anything other than ‘Sister.’ Not ‘my sister,’ just ‘Sister.’ I joked once that I thought maybe her sister was a nun, but she didn’t seem to think it was very funny.” She rubbed her slightly protruding belly and started to cry softly again. “This is so awful.”
“Maybe Fern,” Mendoza supplied. “Could that be her sister’s name? Fern Smithe?”
Zena thought. “Maybe . . . yeah. I heard her say that name once in passing—that it was Fern’s birthday or something.”
They asked a few more questions, but got nothing more. The ME arrived, and a couple of minutes later, the crime-scene team in their van pulled into the lot, waved through a growing crowd of onlookers by one of the deputies.
Rivers eyed the crowd, wondering if the murderer could be hiding in plain sight in its midst.
It wouldn’t be the first time a killer had come back to get his rocks off by watching all the hoopla he’d created. In the short while since Rivers and Mendoza had arrived at the apartment, the bevy of the curious on the far side of the barricade had grown. Onlookers had stopped, some in their idling vehicles, others braving the cold night in ski jackets or wool coats, boots and caps, their breath fogging as they chatted with each other. The press, in the form of Seamus O’Day from the Clarion, was in attendance, but so far no news vans. That was bound to change quickly. Once the word got out not only about Willow Valente, but also that Charity Spritz had been murdered, more would arrive.
But as he climbed from the back of the cruiser and stretched his back, he eyed the throng of lookie-loos on the other side of the yellow tape, but no one caught his eye; no one seemed the least bit suspicious or out of place.
Yet he sensed that he was getting closer, that soon the killer would show his hand. Sending the pictures was a sign and a stupid one.
He was going to nail the bastard and soon; he could feel it as surely as the cold breath of the night that made him turn up his collar.
What had Andie Jeffries said?
If anything happens to me, it’s James. His fault.
Rivers was just tossing that around in his mind when—speak of the devil—James Cahill’s Jeep roared into the lot. He was at the wheel, but he wasn’t alone.
Rebecca Travers was right at his side.
How damned convenient.
* * *
“She lives here?” Rebecca asked as James parked his SUV in the lot of a two-storied building.
“I guess so.” James wasn’t certain, but he’d gotten the address from his employee records at the hotel when he’d dropped off the phone and left Ralph with the staff.
Judging by the activity in the parking area—an array of police cars, vans, and an ambulance—this had to be the right spot.
A small crowd of onlookers was being held at bay by a couple of deputies, and Bobby Knowlton stood outside his truck while smoking a cigarette, the blue-and-red flashing lights of a couple of police vehicles playing weirdly on the snowy pavement and reflecting in the large windows where baked goods had once been displayed.
As James climbed out of his Explorer, he noticed the cops, Rivers and Mendoza, walking away from a cruiser and heading in his direction. His jaw tensed, and his stomach clenched into a tight knot.
“James Cahill,” Rivers called out, as they approached. “We need to talk.”
Great. “Okay.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Rebecca round the front of his SUV so that she stood next to him. “Just let me ask one question. I got a call from Bobby.” James hitched his chin toward the foreman. “He said that Willow Valente committed suicide. Is that right?”
“She’s deceased,” Rivers said, “but we haven’t figured out the cause of death yet.” Mendoza glanced from James to Rebecca and back again.
“Was she in an accident?”
“We can’t say at this time,” Rivers said. “But we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“You mean ‘more’ questions. I’ve already given a statement.” James’s voice had an unwanted edge to it, and he gazed up to the second floor of the big building as more passers-by pulled over, engines of cars, trucks, and vans rumbling through the night.
“Not about this,” Rivers said.
“This? Listen, I don’t know anything
