Losing Leah Holloway (A Claire Fletcher and Detective Parks Mystery Book 2) Page 2

  Claire shrugged. “Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, I want to be present when I’m with him, but I can’t do certain things without thinking about—” Without thinking about how damaged I am. She sighed again, shoulders slumped. “I may never be able to have a sexual relationship with a man. A normal one.”

  Brianna put one hand on her own hip and, with the other, poked Claire’s shoulder with her index finger. Her blue eyes darkened. “What happened to you is in the past, Claire. It’s over. The person who hurt you is gone, but you are not. Don’t let him take this from you. Not one more thing.”

  Claire opened her mouth to speak, but the sound of car horns blaring and the squeal of tires froze her. She turned and looked up at the I-5 overpass. Wilson barked.

  They couldn’t see anything from where they stood, not even the roofs of passing cars, but the clap of an impact followed by the sounds of metal screaming and glass shattering seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet.

  “Oh my God,” Brianna murmured. “Is that an—”

  The concrete guardrail of the overpass shattered; huge chunks of it launched out into view along with the black undercarriage of a vehicle that revealed itself to be a red SUV as it sailed over their heads toward the river.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You want to get a what?” Connor asked. He leaned back in his desk chair and laced his hands behind his head, studying his colleague.

  “A forensic odontologist,” Stryker repeated. He waved several pieces of paper in the air. “It’s a forensic dentist who studies bite marks.” He thrust the pages at Connor. “There’s one in Southern California who’s available to help us out with the Strangler case.”

  Connor took them and glanced at what appeared to be a curriculum vitae for Stryker’s forensic odontologist of choice, then put the CV on his desk and looked again at his friend, who was worrying the knot of his tie, loosening and tightening it. “The coroner’s word isn’t good enough for you? He says the bite marks on all four victims were from the same person, right? So why do you need an otologist?”

  “A forensic odontologist. Well, I’m saying if the case goes to trial. I mean, this is serious shit. It’s not every day I get assigned to lead a serial killer task force.”

  Connor laughed. “Yeah, no shit.”

  Stryker loosened his tie again. Connor stood and gave Stryker a pat on the shoulder. “Stop fucking with your tie. You look fine. Let’s do this briefing before you strangle yourself.”

  Stryker rolled his eyes but pulled his hands away from his throat. He put them at his sides, but Connor saw him clenching and unclenching them into fists as they walked side by side through Sacramento’s Office of Investigations, headed to a conference room where Stryker was about to give his first briefing as a task force commander.

  Connor had known Stryker for over ten years. He was a good friend, a good man, and a damn good detective. Connor had no doubt he’d be an excellent task force leader but convincing Stryker of that was another matter. “All I’m saying,” Connor said, “is I don’t think you need to start throwing experts at this case until you’ve got a suspect. Getting a forensic odontologist is not going to solve this case. Good old-fashioned police work is what you need. Run down the leads, work the evidence, talk to the witnesses. That’s what you’re good at. Well, that and your knitting.”

  Stryker was so tense he didn’t even respond to Connor’s lame attempt at humor. Normally, Stryker had more bravado than a Vegas act. Come to think of it, he hadn’t said fuck you to Connor once all day.

  What was the world coming to?

  As if on cue, Stryker stopped in the hall and turned to Connor, his brown eyes dark pools of worry. “Oh shit. I called in an FBI profiler. He’ll be here tomorrow. Do you think I should call him off?”

  “Stryke,” Connor said. “You need an FBI profiler right now. You don’t need a forensic dentist. Now let’s go. Everyone’s waiting.”

  Captain Danny Boggs had poked his head out of the conference room and was beckoning the two of them. “You girls gonna make out in the hallway all goddamn day or can we start this briefing?”

  His stern look lasted until Stryker crossed the threshold. He grasped the younger detective’s shoulder and squeezed, giving him a gentle shove into the room. He winked at Connor and pulled the door closed behind them.

  The room was packed with bodies. Plainclothes detectives, uniformed officers, public-relations people, FBI liaisons, and a few investigators from the Sacramento sheriff’s office. Someone had opened the windows but it didn’t help. The air in the room was hot and close. Connor could smell a strange mixture of sweat, cologne, and perfume.

  Stryker pushed his way to the front of the room. Connor stood by the door, fully intending to be the first one out until three more officers squeezed into the room, pushing him farther inside.

  At the front of the room, Stryker held up the day’s issue of the Sacramento Bee. In huge black letters, the headline screamed, “Soccer Mom Strangler Strikes Again.” Below that were grainy photos of the first three victims. At press time, they hadn’t yet gotten a photo of Ellen Fair, the fourth victim, but Connor would bet his house that if he checked the Bee’s website right then, they would have found one, lifted from one of the woman’s social media accounts, no doubt, once they confirmed that they had the right Ellen Fair.

  “This is today’s paper,” Stryker said, his voice hard, all business now. His nervousness vanished. He looked like the bulky, chrome-headed nightclub bouncer he usually resembled. “‘Soccer Mom Strangler’ wasn’t my first choice, but I didn’t get a say in the matter. The press is whipping the city into a frenzy right now—with good reason. As most of you know, a forty-one-year-old woman named Ellen Fair was found strangled to death in her minivan in Pocket last night. She’s the fourth victim in almost six months. Based on the evidence—four victims, all women between the ages of thirty-two and forty-three, all mothers of young children and all owners of minivans, killed in exactly the same way—we believe that we have a real live serial killer, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Right now I need all hands on deck running down every lead we’ve got so we can catch this guy before he kills again.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The vehicle bobbed in front of Claire and Brianna. It was a large SUV, red with tinted windows along the back. They stared at it for what seemed like an eternity. The world had gone silent for Claire. She looked at Brianna, who was saying something, and then at Wilson, who stood at the river’s edge, barking, though she couldn’t hear him. Her limbs felt thick and heavy. Even her head seemed to swivel on her neck in slow motion as she turned back to look at the SUV just as it began to sink, its front end bobbing down into the water and not coming back up. Beyond it, the Jibboom Street Bridge loomed, one of its massive concrete pillars directly in the path of the vehicle, which was being carried by the current.

  Then the world rushed back at her like a cold slap to the face. Claire threw her rod to the ground and ran. Her boots splashed in the water, sending a cold spray up her bare legs. She darted past Wilson, who kept barking loudly, and dove into the water. Her arms and legs were pumping before she even had a chance to register the cold. Her boots pulled like lead weights against her legs. Should she have torn them off? Too late now. Even fighting them, it took her only seconds to come up on the rear of the vehicle, which remained above the water. She peered inside but couldn’t make anything out. She paddled up to the next set of windows—the back seat, passenger side.

  The girl who stared back at her couldn’t have been older than six. Her pale, round face was framed by blonde hair cropped in a pixie cut. Her brown eyes were wide with fear. Claire and the girl stared at each other for a frozen moment. As it had on the riverbank, time seemed to stop. Then the girl reached a hand up and pressed it against the window. Her mouth formed the word help.

  Claire’s ice-cold fingers tried the door handle—to no avail. The girl pounded on the window, two hands this time. “Locked,” she said. She gestured
down, where Claire could see her struggling with the door handle on the inside.

  “The windows,” Claire yelled.

  The girl appeared to be working on the buttons that would unlock the door or lower the window, but nothing happened.

  Claire couldn’t see if there was anyone else in the vehicle. The sun’s glare made it impossible to see behind Peyton. She pulled herself to the front passenger-side door. That door wouldn’t open either. Inside the car, the seat was empty. In the driver’s seat slumped a heavyset blonde woman. Her arms lay slack at her sides. Her head rested against the steering wheel. Claire banged against the window, shouting, but the woman didn’t respond. Water had already begun to fill the front of the vehicle as the SUV continued to lower into the river, covering the passenger-side seat and the driver’s lap.

  The girl climbed into the passenger’s seat and tried the door handle, the locks, the window.

  Nothing happened.

  The girl’s pale face reddened. Tears streaked her cheeks. She looked right at Claire. “Locked,” she said again, the word silent from inside the sealed car.

  “Childproof,” Claire said. “There’s an unlock button on the driver’s-side door.”

  That had to be it. Unless some mechanism had been damaged when the SUV crashed through the guardrail and off the side of the overpass. Claire had been bested by the damn thing herself after her return from captivity. She and her mother had been arguing as her mother drove her home from a therapy session. Claire had gotten so angry that she tried to get out of the car the moment her mother stopped. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even roll the window down.

  The girl inside the SUV looked over at the unconscious driver, then turned to try to rouse her. Claire moved again toward the back of the car. From her periphery, she saw that the Jibboom Street Bridge had come up much more quickly than she anticipated. As she scrambled to the driver’s side, the passenger’s side of the vehicle slammed into one of its pillars, stopping there. The current kept it wrapped around the pillar.

  Claire was moving toward the driver’s window when the bright pastel colors of a baby toy inside caught her eye. It dangled from the upright handle of an infant car seat. The hood was pulled over part of the rear-facing seat. Claire couldn’t tell if there was an infant in the seat or not, but she could see three other children in the vehicle. A boy sat behind the driver. Stunned, he stared blankly ahead. He looked only slightly younger than the girl. In the seats behind him were two identical girls. One was unconscious, head lolling against the window, mouth open, eyes at half-mast. The other sobbed, her face red and twisted in pain or fear, or both.

  “Oh my God,” Claire gasped. She froze, hanging on to the ineffectual door handle, staring at the children.

  If there was indeed an infant in the vehicle, then that was five children. There were five children in the vehicle.

  She felt herself separate—her consciousness breaking away from her body, which wasn’t able to hold her panic. It hadn’t happened to her in nearly a decade. Not since her abductor held her prisoner in a desolate shack in the woods, torturing her in ways that no human being should have to endure. She’d gotten past that. She’d gotten through the rest of her captivity, her escape and recovery whole, taking things as they came—even panic.

  But now she floated above the river, watching the SUV sink into the water as her panicked body pressed its face against the unyielding window, trying to figure out how she was going to get five children out of the vehicle and to safety.

  “No,” she said, not sure if it was the Claire in the sky or the Claire in the water who spoke.

  “No,” she repeated. She wouldn’t do this. She would not separate from herself. Her abductor was gone and Claire was free. She needed to be present for every second of this. She knew what she was capable of. She could do this.

  “No!” The voice this time was her body’s—joined now with her consciousness. She snapped back, and the jolt sent her scrambling to the driver’s-side window. The woman was coming to, responding finally to the girl’s pushes, pokes, and screams. The water was almost to the woman’s throat. The impact of the vehicle on the pillar worried Claire—she didn’t know how badly the children were injured—but the pillar was now giving them precious seconds, keeping the SUV from sinking too quickly.

  Dazed, the woman’s head rose. She looked around slowly, not seeming to see Claire or the girl on the other side of her. By her second pan of her surroundings, the reality of the situation seemed to hit her, her brown eyes growing sharp and scared. She looked at the girl and, in one movement, pushed her away, sending her into the rising water. Claire’s stomach plummeted. She watched the girl’s head disappear under the water, but the girl quickly emerged, gasping. Thankfully, she moved once more to the back seat. The driver turned back and looked at Claire.

  Claire motioned to the panel on the inside of the door. “Unlock it,” she shouted.

  The woman stared. Her eyes were clear and alert. She was lucid. Claire could tell by the terror in her face. Claire recognized the emotion. She hadn’t encountered it in many years, but she knew it well. She also knew fear, panic, desperation, and anxiety. But this was something entirely different.

  The woman had been terrorized.

  And she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Claire pointed to the locks again. “The kids,” she shouted. “We need to get the kids out. Unlock the doors and windows. Now! We don’t have much time. Unlock the doors!”

  The woman met her eyes, desperation in every terrified line of her face. “No,” she said.

  As the water rose to the woman’s chin, she kept her eyes on Claire’s. Then she slid down in the seat, submerging her head in the water.

  Claire slapped a palm against the window. “No!” she screamed.

  But the woman opened her mouth wide and drew in great lungfuls of water. Her eyes bulged as her body responded to her drowning. She fought it then, her arms and legs flailing, body convulsing, face contorted in pain.

  “Son of a bitch,” Claire shrieked.

  She turned away. She couldn’t watch. Her consciousness tried to separate from her body again as visions of the last time she’d watched a woman die flooded her brain.

  “No,” she said, although she couldn’t be sure what she was saying no to anymore—the separating, the old images, or the fact that the desperate woman before her had just chosen to take her own life with five children locked in her vehicle.

  The SUV was sinking deeper into the water. Claire had to do something. There was no way the girl would be able to get past the woman’s convulsing body to take the child-resistant locks off. As the top of the vehicle came into view, Claire noticed the sunroof. She fought to get herself and her insanely heavy boots onto the roof and peered down into the sunroof, balancing precariously on all fours. She could see the top of the girl’s head facing the front of the SUV. Claire observed her lifting her small hands over her head, working at something out of Claire’s view. The sunroof buttons, no doubt. Of course, they didn’t work.

  The water was inching up over the bottom of the infant seat now. Claire could hear the screams of the other children, muffled though they were. With both palms, she smacked the sunroof’s glass. The girl looked up at her. “Get away from the window!” Claire yelled.

  The girl understood. She expertly unhooked the car seat from its base and moved off to the side with it. First, Claire tried standing like a surfer, arms extended to keep her balance as she stomped on the glass with the heel of her boot. After her third attempt, she nearly tumbled into the water. She lay on her back, scooted herself into position, then with arms wide to grip the cargo racks on either side, raised her leaden boots high and slammed her heels down as hard as she could onto the window.

  “Come on,” she screamed. Tears stung her eyes, frustration tensing every muscle in her body. “Goddammit!”

  For a split second, the question flashed in her mind: What if I can’t get them out? But she shook it away.
She was not going to watch five children die before her eyes.

  She kicked the window again and again. Her arms and shoulders ached. The muscles in her legs burned. Her feet were numb. The Leatherman tool dug mercilessly into her hip.

  The Leatherman tool.

  She flopped onto her stomach like a landed fish, fumbling to pull it from her shorts pocket with numb fingers. It was small enough. She needed pinpoint force against the pane of glass. She flipped the Leatherman so the point of the Phillips-head screwdriver was out. Rising to her knees, she used both hands to bring the point down onto the window. After several tries, a small crack could be heard above the muffled screaming of the children, the movement of the river, and Claire’s own labored breath. Then fine spider-vein cracks traveled from the center of the glass outward. She brought the Leatherman down a few more times, and more cracks webbed the glass. Pocketing the tool, she gripped the roof rack again and brought her heels down once more. This time the glass gave way, falling into the interior of the car in one malleable sheet of cracked glass.

  Already ahead of her, the girl inside had begun unbuckling the other children, and they gathered in a knot beneath the open sunroof. Claire lifted the boy out first and set him down on the roof, what little of it remained above water. He too was blond, and tears streamed from his dark eyes. “I want my mommy,” he whimpered as Claire instructed him to hold on to one of the cargo racks.

  The girl handed her the car seat next. Inside it was an infant—a boy judging by his blue dinosaur-covered shorts. He stared at her silently, his little hands in his mouth. He gnawed with his gums, saliva dripping down his chin. She placed him next to the boy and put the boy’s other hand on the infant-seat handle. “I need you to hold on to this while I get the girls out. Can you do that?” The boy nodded.

  Claire pulled each one of the girls out—the girl who had helped her was last. Claire held on to her once she was free of the sunroof. She smiled down at the girl, trying to look as reassuring as she could. “What’s your name?”