happen? Is she okay?”
“Did you see her this weekend?”
Burns’s jaw tightened, as if he didn’t like that Will hadn’t answered his questions. “She worked Friday night and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Do you have her schedule handy?”
The manager reached over to a swinging file system on the corner of the desk and pulled a folder from near the back. “Here.”
Will looked through it while Carina asked, “Do you know if Angie was dating someone? Who her close friends were? If anyone has been giving her problems here at work?”
“She’s been seeing this guy Doug Masterson. I told her to watch out for him after I had to kick him out for trying to sell drugs on the premises. I told her he wasn’t welcome, and if I found out she let him come in when I was off, I’d fire her. I didn’t want to, but this is a clean place. I want to keep it that way.” He paused and asked in a voice tinged with worry, “What happened? You wouldn’t be here unless something happened to Angie.”
Carina answered. “Angie’s body was found on the beach early this morning.”
“Her body? You mean she’s dead?”
Burns seemed genuinely surprised and hurt by the news. But, as Carina thought while interviewing Steve Thomas, killers were skilled in deception.
“Angie worked Friday night.” Will said. “Were you here?”
He nodded. “I close on the weekends. It’s busy and I don’t like the girls handling the cash at night. I know, that sounds sexist, and I’ve had more than one girl give me a hard time about it, but I’d rather do the bank drops, you know what I mean?”
“The streets are dangerous,” Will agreed, glancing down at the schedule. “It says Angie worked from four to ten.”
“Yeah, but she was hanging out with some friends until much later.”
“Until when?”
“I’m not sure, but at least midnight. That’s when her ex-boyfriend came in and I had to escort him out.” He shook his head. “Angie really knows how to pick them. Dammit, I should have talked to her, done something to, hell, I don’t know.”
A knock on the door interrupted Carina’s next question.
Burns leaned over and slid open the door. “What’s up?”
A tall, clean-cut teen, probably a college student like most of the employees at the Shack, looked at Carina and Will curiously. “Uh, Kyle, the Pepsi guy’s here. He wants you to sign off on the new order.”
“Tell him I’ll be out in five minutes. Go ahead and put the stock away, I trust you’ll make sure everything’s there.”
The kid nodded, hesitating as if he were going to ask something, then slid the door closed.
“Anything else?” Burns asked.
“You said you escorted Angie’s ex-boyfriend out. Do you know his name?”
“Steve Thomas. A couple weeks ago he came in when Angie was on duty and they got into a huge fight, both of them yelling. The next day, Angie tells me she filed a restraining order against him.”
“Do you remember what the argument was about?”
“I’m not sure, but the rumors going around were that Steve still had the hots for Angie and lectured her about Masterson. Angie doesn’t like being told what to do and who to date, but Steve was right on the money about that low-life Masterson.” He sighed and suddenly looked older than what Carina had pegged as twenty-five. “I liked Angie, but the men she dated were all too old for her. Steve has to be nearly forty. Masterson is over thirty. There were at least four or five other guys Angie brought in since she started working here last summer, all of them over thirty.” He shook his head, frowning.
“On Friday,” Carina asked, “what time did Angie leave?”
“I’m not sure. Probably shortly after I escorted Steve out, which was just after midnight. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t give me a bad time.”
“What did he say?”
Burns paused, thinking. “I think he said, ‘Tell Angie to be careful.’ ”
Outside, Carina and Will called into dispatch to update the patrol watching Steve’s apartment. Carina turned to Will. “Steve Thomas flat-out lied to us. He said ten, Burns says midnight.”
“And just put himself at the top of the suspect list.”
Maybe he was being paranoid, but he went home during lunch to double check that there was nothing of Angie’s left in his room.
There was a smell, something that hadn’t been there before. He went to the bathroom, pulled a can of Lysol disinfectant from under the sink, and sprayed it in the bathroom, bedroom, and then everywhere else. Just in case.
He’d made his bed with fresh linens before he left. Now he sat down and looked around. Everything was neat, organized, as it should be.
He reached into his nightstand drawer and pulled out a metal box, about the size of a shoe box, and ran his fingers over the combination lock until it sprang open.
Inside were pictures, a couple small jars, a knife, a few other items that held special importance for him.
And a faded birthday card from his father, still in the envelope postmarked Corcoran Prison.
He didn’t look at the card, which was underneath everything else. Instead, he picked up the newest addition to the box, Angie’s navel ring.
The first time he’d seen the navel ring he’d been at the Sand Shack and she’d walked in, off-duty, wearing a bikini top and short-shorts. He stared, he couldn’t help it. It was like a light was shining on her, a bright light, and everything became clear.
He knew Angie. She and his online fantasy were one and the same.
He didn’t need to confirm it, but he did. Right there. He couldn’t wait until he went home. He logged onto a computer-the Shack had several hookups-and went to MyJournal.com. Click, click, click.
There.
The navel ring, one of the “A for Anonymous” pictures, right there next to the journal entry where she described what it was like to give a guy a blow job.
Half the college girls had navel rings, but Angie’s was unique. A gold hoop with three hanging charms-a seashell, a leaf, and a rose.
The same as the picture.
But if that wasn’t enough to convince him that he
Angie was the slut.
He went home, read Angie’s online diary again. His fantasies, which had been only that, untouchable, were now in clear focus.
She was meant to be his. It was as if some god had thrown all the pieces to the puzzle in his lap and he’d finally put it together.
Angie was a whore, a slut. Cut from the same cloth as the whore who’d lied about his father. On the surface, Angie was nice, sweet, polite. Almost demure. But in private she revealed her true self, talking about her sexual relations with nearly a dozen men over the last six months.
Fucking hypocrite whore.
And she walked right into his trap. It was obviously meant to be, everything. His plan worked, from setup to execution.
She had walked right up to him, smiled. “I came as soon as I could.”
He’d driven to his place. She hadn’t even thought to question it. The lie he’d told her was so believable she didn’t doubt his sincerity for a minute.
It wasn’t until they were inside that he saw a brief look of panic. He gave her a Coke.
Twenty minutes later she was unconscious. When she woke up, she was tied to his bed, her mouth glued shut, naked. His penis grew hard from the vision of Angie so vulnerable, shivering and trying to scream.
