Speak No Evil

Mrs. Vance searched their expression. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Mothers always know.

Carina took her hand as Mrs. Vance sat heavily into the only chair. Will said in a quiet voice, “A body was found on the beach this morning that matches Angie’s description.”

Mrs. Vance stared at them, shaking her head. She’d asked, but she didn’t want to hear. Carina didn’t blame her. No one wanted to hear when someone they loved and nurtured was dead. “No, I would know. It’s not Angie. You don’t know it’s her, right?”

Carina didn’t tell her the DMV prints matched. It seemed too cold. Instead she said, “When you feel up to it, we’d like you to come down to confirm her identity.”

“Right now. Right now. It’s not her.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, said, “What happened to the girl you found?”

There was never an easy way to tell a parent their child was dead.

“She was murdered, Mrs. Vance,” Carina said softly.

“Someone killed her? On purpose? Who?”

“We’re doing everything we can to find out,” Will said.

The waitress with the waffles-her tag said Denise-pushed herself into the small room and Mrs. Vance turned to her, sobbing. “They think my Angie is dead.”

The two women embraced and Carina steeled her emotions, willing herself not to remember the agony and pain of losing a loved one to violence. When the two women separated, she asked, “Mrs. Vance, does Angie have a close friend we can speak with? Maybe a boyfriend? Someone who might know where she went Friday night?”

“That’s what happened,” Mrs. Vance said with a certainty that wasn’t as evident in her shaking hands as it was in her voice. “She was with Abby and Jodi. They have an apartment near campus, she’s always staying there.” She scrawled the names and an address and phone number on the back of a guest ticket. “Maybe Kayla, but they’re not as close as Angie and Abby.”

“What about her father?”

Mrs. Vance shook her head. “Carl left years ago, when Angie was not much more than a baby. He-We don’t keep in touch anymore. He remarried and moved out of state. Doesn’t even remember to send Angie birthday c- cards.” Her words ended in a sob, which she swallowed back, putting a stoic expression on her face. Holding it together.

“She’ll be back today, after class.” Denial.

“Do you know her boyfriends?”

“Angie wasn’t steady with anyone.”

“She never talked about boyfriends with you?”

“Yes, but not in detail. She doesn’t have a regular fellow. She’s too young for that, and that’s fine with me. I always tell her-” she stopped suddenly, looking lost.

“Mrs. Vance?”

She shook her head, gave them a half-smile. “I was just thinking. Everything is going to be okay. You’re wrong. The poor girl…she’s not Angie.”

“Mrs. Vance, do you know Steve Thomas?”

“The name sounds familiar,” she said. “I think she talked about him around Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. I think they went on a couple dates, but it wasn’t serious. Why?”

Will evaded the question by asking about any other casual boyfriends. Mrs. Vance couldn’t think of any boys Angie had been seeing recently.

Carina didn’t have any more questions, not right now. She knew she’d have to face Mrs. Vance again, at the funeral, possibly at the house collecting evidence, asking more questions. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to any of it.

She would much rather interview suspects and witnesses than talk to the victim’s family.

Will handed Debbie Vance a card with the coroner’s name and address. “If you can come by sometime today to identify the body, we would appreciate it. Just call this number and tell them you’re coming. They’ll have everything ready. You don’t even need to be in the same room, they’ll show you on a screen.”

Her lip quivered but she nodded. “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.”

When Will and Carina were outside, Carina took several deep breaths before getting into their car.

“Cara, are you okay?”

“Just give me a second.”

It was the quiet anguish that got to her. The pain in the eyes. The firm denial even with the internal knowledge that the police wouldn’t come ask her to view a body if they weren’t nearly one hundred percent positive of the identity already. Because there was always hope.

She squeezed her eyes closed and tilted her face to the sun. One. Two. Three.

Better. She tamped down on her own pain and frustration, and turned to Will. “I want to talk to Steve Thomas.”

Steve Thomas’s oceanfront apartment was within biking distance to the university, as evidenced by the wide and well-used bike paths along the highway. There were eight units, four on top, four on bottom. A dozen similar apartment buildings took up this stretch of the highway, half a block from the beach. When she’d been in college, one of her boyfriends had had a place out here, about a mile away, similar to Thomas’s apartment. Ocean access justified the outrageous rent.

On the south side of the building, college-aged men and women walked on the path connecting the street to the beach. It was a Monday in February, but if you didn’t have classes the San Diego beaches were incomparable virtually year-round. Surfers would be out en masse-the temperature promised to be eighty-two today, and while the water was cold, wet suits made it tolerable. Invigorating.

Sometimes Carina missed the carefree life she’d enjoyed in college, when she could drop everything and pick up her surfboard. When was the last time she’d hit the waves? Five, six years ago? She and her brother Connor had gone out before a big storm, nearly wiped out. Even though they were adults, her dad had been furious. They’d had a blast, though. It had been worth Dad’s stern lecture.

She was so out of practice now that she didn’t dare go out under the same conditions. Even today’s tame waves would be a challenge.

Their radio beeped. “Hooper here,” Will answered.

“Sergeant Fields. I have something on the Thomas guy.”

“Shoot.”

“He’s clean, except for a restraining order.”

Carina raised an eyebrow at Will.

“Anything else?”

“Oh, yeah,” Fields responded. “Angela Vance, the girl he reported missing, put it on him three weeks ago.”

THREE

CARINA AND WILL approached Thomas’s apartment with caution, but he wasn’t home. They called in a patrol to check the area every hour and notify them when he returned.

She said to Will as they drove to the university to locate Angie’s friends, “We’ll play nice until we can build a case.”

“Think he’s the one?” Will asked.

“Don’t know, but she was obviously scared of him. And what’s a thirty-nine-year-old man doing following eighteen-year-old girls?”

“Don’t look at me!” Will exclaimed. “I like my women past the chewing-gum stage.”

Carina smiled. “I wasn’t making a moral judgment on your sex life, Hooper. It’s just creepy, you know?” A