19 Souls Read online

  They’re going to figure it out this time. You’ve left a mess, girl. All kinds of trace evidence in there.

  “Shut up. I cleaned up good before leaving. Always do. Oxy bleach and a good wet nap makes short work of a room. No prints will be in there.”

  She turned the corner and circled around back to the main drag. Now she had two separate people to follow. If Bean brought Danny back to Vegas so that cop could put him in a safe house, Sophie would find him. Not exactly plan A.

  I told you that lie was too weak for a paid investigator.

  “The man was cheap and easy. His dead eyes said so. I always knew the motive was the weak part of the PI plan. No matter what I said, there was a chance he’d figure it out before delivering my Danny. But it worked out, didn’t it?”

  Not a sound from inside her head.

  “Don’t like it when I’m right, do you? Bitch.”

  She pushed on her temple. At all the nagging and hate.

  I am what you are. Who you are. You can pretend all you want. But …

  Loser.

  Fat.

  Ugly.

  Stupid …

  Hate. Hate. Hate.

  She rounded the corner with the pup in tow and found the car down the street. No one behind her, no one around the car. She looked down at the dog. “Plan B is really not that bad.” He wagged his curled tail at her. His little eyes were so cheerful and he seemed excited to be on the adventure.

  She lifted him back into the car.

  You’re not going to bring that mangy animal with us, are you?

  “No mange on this guy. Smells like flowers, means he’s been groomed. So shut the fuck up.”

  Sophie drove off without a look back. All she had to do was figure out what they’d done with Danny. After driving a few blocks north, she pulled into a random parking lot behind a closed tire center. She searched her pack for Cynthia’s cell phone. The dog jumped to the passenger seat and licked her hand as she fumbled. She’d have to stop and get him something to eat on the way home.

  Tomorrow she’d find the dang safe house. Wouldn’t be a problem at all, but there were so many players to follow. Following was her strong suit, not finding. That’s why she’d needed Bean. Now she would follow him or that detective or …

  “Silver Hills. How can I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m looking for my aunt Lynette. Lynette Hodge. Is she available to chat?”

  “I’ll connect the room.” It was likely both Cynthia’s phone and the nursing home’s phones were being monitored. But that was okay. For now.

  The line clicked and then rang in the old lady’s room. And rang. Seven. Eight. She hung up the cell phone and then turned off the power in case the police could trace the location. The TV shows said they could. Her research was a little wishy-washy. No matter. Better safe than sorry. Time to get rid of the thing. She tossed it as hard as she could toward a dumpster. It bounced off the side and broke.

  Fingerprints!

  Sophie squeezed the steering wheel. “I know. Damn it,” she growled at herself in the rearview mirror, then got out and stomped over to the bin.

  The stink reminded her of a hot South Dallas Friday night. Walking the streets, picking pockets and hooking. She felt no shame in the memory, just a satisfaction. That shit had been the foundation of everything she’d built for herself, and for Danny, the beginning of the journey, the first brick in her financial house.

  She found the three biggest pieces of the shattered glass and plastic. She dumped a glob of hand sanitizer on the tail of her shirt and used that to rub the phone parts down as best she could, taking extra time around the mouth and ear sections to kill off or remove any DNA. The she tossed them off into different directions.

  “All clean.”

  What would you do without me?

  “Celebrate.” She got back behind the wheel of the rental and drove southeast. The pup eased into her lap. Thing couldn’t weigh six pounds and she found herself giving in to the urge to rub his head.

  “We’d have a big old party to dance the night away in honor of her demise. Wouldn’t we?” she said in baby talk to the pup.

  Don’t let it touch you like that. It’s probably got fleas.

  Sophie sighed. Carl turned his little head as if to empathize.

  The sun was setting in the rearview. She lit her first cig of the day. The surge of nicotine would clear her mind. Yes. The PI had complicated things. But he was still useful.

  Until he is … expendable.

  She blew out a puff of smoke, followed its path to the cracked passenger side window. The reflection of her face was clouded in the smoke, making her look young.

  “Everyone’s expendable.”

  18

  Detective Miller led Jim and Dan past the front desk at the Boulder Area Command Center where a young officer awkwardly avoided eye contact with Dan.

  Hard to deal with people in pain when you first start this type of work. Kid must be straight out of the academy. Didn’t take long to realize that most civilians who come through the door of a stationhouse were suffering or in big trouble. The vics may have suffered everything from loss of a loved one to loss of property. Hurt and violation existed somewhere along a sliding scale that ranged from irritation to devastation. It all showed in the eyes.

  The conference room came to an immediate hush as the door swept open and Miller led the young man in. A blown up copy of Cynthia’s driver’s license was pinned on the wall. A fact sheet with her vital info was tacked below it. Fortunately, no crime scene photos were pasted up. Yet.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Miller pulled out a chair facing the mirrored wall and set down a bottle of water. Dan took it. As usual, Jim opted to stand with his back against the wall, but this time he chose a spot close to Dan.

  “I have coffee if you want it. The Command Center has the best in Vegas.” Miller slid his fingers around his waistband to straighten his tucked shirt. Jim had seen him do it a thousand times. As if he needed to pull his pants up, but he didn’t. The man was feeling for his gun belt, the one he no longer wore since being promoted to detective. Jim figured no matter how long the detective had been out of a patrolman’s uniform, he wasn’t used to missing the weight of a gear belt.

  “Not now.” Dan managed a sip from the bottle.

  “The medical examiner is with your sister. We should have a better idea of time of death when he’s finished. But the crime scene tells a pretty clear story.” Miller looked back to Jim.

  Jim would give his left nut to shield Dan from this conversation.

  Miller put his hand on the back of Dan’s chair. “Looks like she was planning to go to a convention. It came up pretty last minute, according to her boss. He saw her Wednesday.”

  “She travels to train people at other companies all the time. Accounting software stuff.” Dan picked at a bit of the water bottle label, peeling it away from the glue line that held the cellophane wrapper around the plastic. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone in the room.

  “That’s what he said. From her phone records, we can see she called a cab company. Then an hour or so later, Mr. Bean was called. Last we have on her is that. No credit card usage. Nothing.”

  Miller paused. “Cab company sent out a driver named Lulu Strong. Said she was closest to the address. Lulu only worked for them for about four weeks.” Miller pulled a page from a dark green folder. The contents were already a good inch think. The paper was a fuzzy copy of a Nevada driver’s license. “You recognize her?”

  Jim sure did. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, she was wearing a headband, and she had a bad makeup job going, but that was Sophie.

  “Sophie Ryan Evers.” Dan’s hands trembled as he pulled more of the label away.

  Miller twisted back to address Jim. “This the girl who told you she was Cynthia Hodge?�
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  “It is.” Jim’s skin itched with the need for another shower. Images of the night in his Texas hotel room played in his head like a bad music video. One of those catchy songs he didn’t like and couldn’t shake from his mind. Thankfully, the memories were vague. He wished them gone. But, wishes got only empty pockets and headaches. Nothing more.

  “How do you know her?”

  Dan huffed out a tired laugh. “She moved in next door when I was about fourteen. Lived with a foster family. Not a good one. Her real dad had killed himself. Her mother left her in a department store when she was a toddler.” He pushed away from the table and leaned back in his chair. Crossed his arms. “I felt bad for her. So I hung out with her some.”

  “How old was she?” Miller took notes on a fancy electronic tablet. No more paper for the Vegas police.

  “About nine or ten. I don’t remember exactly. Her foster mom was a bitch. The dad was a drunk. I think he was abusing her, but she never would talk about it. Got real mad if I even tried to ask about home, you know? It didn’t take long for her to get real attached to me. I knew it. But like I said, I thought the kid needed a friend. My mom would let her come to dinner and stuff, you know?”

  “Sounds like a nice thing to do.”

  “It was. Until I hit high school and wanted to date and shit.” Dan got up from the table and paced to the far corner. “Sophie didn’t like that at all. She got mad if she found out I was talking to a girl. I tried to explain that she was too young. That she and I were just friends.”

  “Did she get violent?”

  “With me?” Dan shook his head.

  “With the girls you were talking to?”

  “She threatened me and them, but I never believed she’d act on it. I mean, she was like twelve years old. Even with all that, I would still hang out with her some. But she’d gotten mean by the time she was sixteen or seventeen.”

  “Mean?”

  “You know, liked to hassle cashiers in the super-mart or rush the old lady in front of her at Mickey D’s. Sophie was always bitching about the kids at her middle school, and she cursed way too much. Once, she told me she wanted to chop the popular girls’ hair off or cut up their faces so they wouldn’t be so pretty and powerful anymore.” He shook his head and then pointed a finger at Miller. “And she really hated the boys in her class. I think she got suspended once for beating up one kid. Hit him in the head with a rock in the parking lot.”

  Dan picked up the bottle as if to drink, then set it back down. “She’d gotten to be a real manipulator too. The chick could talk my mom out of cash. She easily got out of trouble with the teachers. I think she even talked her way out of getting arrested for borrowing a car once. And her grades were excellent.”

  Dan moved again. Just a few paces, as if to get away from the things he was saying. Not enough space in the conference room to walk away from those memories.

  “She liked classical music when the rest of us were into country. Could have been opera too. It sounded so dark and depressing to me. She dressed like the girls down at the private school. In dark blue

  uniform-looking stuff. None of it looked good on her. It was as if she was trying to hide herself.”

  “You two ever in the same school at the same time?”

  “No. I was off in college by the time she hit high school. Thank god.” He took his hat off and laid it carefully crown-side down on the table. Rubbed his head. “Next time she found me was a couple years later at a rodeo. I had dropped out of college cuz I was making serious cash on the rodeo circuit. Saddle bronc. That’s when I was seeing Beth.”

  “You made enough to quit school?” Miller offered him a cigarette.

  Dan declined the smoke. “That’s what I thought at the time.” Went back to his stream of consciousness as if he’d forget if he stopped. “Sophie came out of nowhere. Damn, she looked great. Dressed to kill in tight jeans and boots, all grown up. Cowboy’s dream. Even sounded normal for a short time. Talking about how well she was doing, and all. I was happy for her. Till she asked about my girlfriends.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I said I was seeing someone. Sophie went from zero to bitch in two point five seconds. Screaming and crying, accused me of cheating on her. Said she had been saving herself for me. I yelled back. Said some mean things I shouldn’t have but I was drinking a lot back then. She put a chokehold on me that night. It was crazy.”

  “You’re a lot bigger than she is.”

  “I know. Bitch wrestled me to the ground with some kind of twisting move that damned near broke my wrist.” A bead of sweat rolled down Dan’s cheek. His hands were shaking again. Miller didn’t interrupt him.

  “Then she just froze in place for a minute. Staring into my eyes. I swear I could feel her anger. After a few seconds, she let me go. Started to cry. I was put on my ass in a parking lot by a little woman. I should have been embarrassed. All I could think of was that I’d never seen her cry. Even when stuff was bad when she was a kid—and I mean really bad—at the old house, she just got quiet. Mad. Never sad. She got up, started talking to herself. But it was one-sided like she was talking to someone else. Freaky. And then she walked away.”

  Miller stopped writing and looked up at him. “What happened to Beth?”

  “The next day she didn’t show up to see my rides. She didn’t return my calls. I had to go to Austin for a few rodeos, was gone a couple weeks. When I came back, no one knew where she was. She’d disappeared.”

  “Did you suspect Sophie?”

  “I thought Sophie had gone and found Beth and scared her off me. I didn’t think anything too bad right off the bat. But after Amanda Pen, well, I tried to tell the cops then that Sophie had to have been involved.”

  “Amanda Pen?”

  “Yeah. Months after the Beth thing. I was, well … I was with Amanda in the bed of my truck.”

  Miller nodded his understanding.

  “I look up and there Sophie was, standing beside the truck. Watching me and Amanda with that same freaked out look in her eyes. Scared the shit out of Amanda, and me. I jumped up and tried to talk but she only said one thing and then walked away.”

  “She threaten you two?”

  “No. She asked why. I didn’t answer. Had no clue how to. Wasn’t sure what the why was for, exactly. Why was I living my life? Why was I getting some tail from a chick in the parking lot? I figured silence was the better part of valor at the moment. I didn’t want to say anything to piss her off again. She walked away muttering about loyalty.”

  Dan slammed himself back into his chair and took a long drink. “Amanda scurried out of there. She was just a buckle bunny. No one I was dating or anything.”

  Miller half smiled. “I assume that’s a cowboy groupie. Around here”—he nodded toward the door—“we call them badge bunnies.”

  “Yes, sir.” A smirk crossed his lips. “Cowboys and cops.” He shrugged. “Anyway, three days later, Amanda was found outside a different bar with her throat slit. The cops came to me. I told them about Sophie and about Beth. She was still missing, as far as I knew. They questioned me. Not as nice as all this either.” He motioned to the room. “But I had a group of guys I’d spent that night with on the road to Austin. No way I could have done it.”

  “It was about two weeks later that Beth’s body turned up in the woods. Throat cut, just like Amanda. And the cops came back. But again, they couldn’t pin it on her. They said they found Sophie in Dallas and she was at work during the time of both murders. Not that I think they tried that hard to prove that fact. They didn’t believe she could do that.”

  Miller closed his book. “Hard to picture an attractive female cutting someone’s throat. Investigators are no exception. Today, I believe she’s our guy.”

  Jim decided it was time his opinion was heard. Asked for or not. “I think this bitch is a lunatic. I have no doubt she’d take a knife t
o every one of us in this room.” Why she hadn’t knifed him in his hotel room was another question. Likely, because he hadn’t found Dan yet.

  All he could think at the moment was that he was responsible for leading that wolf right to the sheep. The sheep who’d done a fine job of blending in and hiding away until Jim Bean came to town. Jim had no option but to help this kid.

  “We have your mother in a safe house with medical care and two uniforms on guard. I’ll take you there.”

  Dan stood. “Can I see Cynthia?”

  “Not yet.” Miller looked him in the eye. “And when the medical examiner releases her, you shouldn’t. Have her sent to the funeral home. See her after that.”

  Dan’s eyes closed. His frame seemed to shrink a full two inches.

  Miller put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  Not much to say that would mean a hill of cat’s asses to the guy at this point.

  “Shit like this shouldn’t happen.”

  Dan gave the slightest nod to Miller’s statement.

  “I’d like to go with him.” Jim spoke up knowing eventually Dan would hear or read about the drain cleaner and the shape of his sister’s remains. But he’d keep Dan from driving straight to the ME’s office to see Cynthia.

  “Not necessary. We’ve got it covered. It is a police matter now, Bean.”

  “I brought this on him.”

  “And we’ll take it from here.”

  Jim didn’t want to make a scene when the kid was suffering, but he could help stop Sophie. “I need this, Miller.”

  “I can’t let a civi in on a homicide investigation. You know better than that.”

  Dan chimed in. “I’d just as soon have him around.”

  “It’s against policy.” Miller gathered his folder and headed for the door.

  “Do I have a right to hire my own security?”

  Miller’s sigh was probably picked up on the recording. He put his back to the door and gave Bean a fuck you look. “Yes.”