Cause to Run

He sat down next to her.

“How?” he asked. “Tell me.”

“I just…go through it in my mind,” she said. “All the facts. All the pieces. Try to mentally look for connections. I create a checklist of leads to pursue so we don’t let anything fall through the cracks. I have to be thorough.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why are you so good at this?”

The image of her father came to her, shotgun in hand, the muzzle pointed at her face. “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”

Escape, she thought.

That was all Avery had wanted for most of her life: to escape from her past. But escape meant she had to have a plan, and plans always had a way of going awry.

“It was the only way out,” she said.

“Out? Of what?”

Avery faced him, and shared a piece of information she hadn’t said aloud in years.

“I was an orphan. Did you know that?”

Ramirez sat back in awe.

“No!” he cried. “I would have never pegged you as an orphan. I’m a really bad cop.”

“Don’t think that.” She smiled and held his hand.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I was a foster kid for about six years. I went through a lot of homes, was picked up by a few families. House mothers. That’s what they’re called. They get paid to take in young children with nowhere else to go. Everybody’s happy. The state gets to wipe their hands clean of wayward children. Crappy people get to have slaves.”

“Avery. I am so sorry.”

“There was this one house mother – ”

A newspaper was slapped down on the table.

Dylan Connelly stood above them.

“You seen this?” he said. “It’s the late edition. All over the Internet. A copy of the letter was mailed to A7. O’Malley is waiting on us. Wants the entire team in to go over what you’ve discovered so far. It’s from your killer.”

The cover of the paper read: Murder at Marina, and showed a shot of the victim on the bow of a yacht docked to a pier. Lines from the article stood out: “Saliva swab on the letter matches that of the slain woman,” and “Possible bookstore connection.” Avery was mentioned twice by name: once as an investigator from the A1 brought in to help with the case, and once as a possible love interest of captured serial killer Howard Randall.

A smaller caption read: Letter from the Murderer! The picture displayed a zoom-in of words scrawled on paper.

Avery flipped to the page.

The letter was a full side. The killer’s note was written like a poem:

How can you break the cycle?

How can you take advantage of each moment in life?

I have found the key

I can unlock the prize

Come all who dare

I defy you

The first body is set. More will come

Avery set it down, her entire body trembling.

More will come.

She knew, with sudden certainty, that he was right.

CHAPTER TEN

Before Avery and Ramirez even walked into the A1 conference room, they could hear O’Malley screaming into the speakerphone.

“Completely unacceptable, Will! You were supposed to share everything with us. We’re handling this case now. But instead, you received a huge piece of evidence and decided to keep it for yourself. When were you going to call us?”

“We just received the letter this afternoon,” Holt blared back from the speaker.

“How did the papers get it?”

“They got a copy. We have the original here, but the killer made copies. The way I understand it, he sent them to every newspaper.”

“No way the papers would know that splotch on the bottom of the letter was a saliva swab. That had to come from your department. So you got the letter, you had forensics check it out, you matched the saliva to the victim, and then you told someone. That’s the only way this could have happened, Will. The first call you should have made was to Detective Black. Do you know where I am right now? I’m in the office. You know where I should be? I should be in bed with my wife. But instead, I’m here. That’s because you didn’t do your job, and now we have a publicity nightmare on our hands and the mayor is pissed.”

“Calm down, Mike, calm down.”

“I won’t calm down until you tell me the truth!”

“The truth is, we had no idea that letter was connected to the victim we found this morning. It came in the regular mail, it was opened by one of our staff, and someone had the foresight to send it to forensics. It just so happened that there was a match.”

“Who called the papers?”

“They must have called us.”

“The leak definitely came from your department.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“You’d better handle it, and next time, we expect a call.”

He hung up.