After She's Gone (West Coast 3)

“Got it.” The beat cop motioned to the corpse. “Who would go to all this trouble?”

“That’s what we have to find out.” Hayes crouched near the body and waited until the crime scene photographer had taken pictures of the dead woman from different angles.

As the digital camera flashed, Hayes saw more distinctly the dark red stain on her T-shirt, a thick bloom that soaked the cotton then ran off her rib cage to pool on the pavement beneath her. Had she known her attacker? Was it a stranger? What the hell was with the mask?

Life-sized, the altered photograph had been laminated and cut precisely around Allie Kramer’s hairline and held in place with what looked like a thin elastic band. Pieces of the victim’s hair had been arranged around the mask, to make it appear more lifelike. Some thought had gone into the process, but not a lot of effort. The picture could have been downloaded from the Internet, then maybe an app used to distort the image before the resulting art was enlarged to the size of a human head, printed, laminated, and cut. The elastic holding the mask in place could have been purchased at any fabric, craft, or other store, if it hadn’t been retrieved from Grandma’s sewing kit that had been stuffed in the attic.

Yeah, the artwork was crude, almost something that could have been created by a kid in grade school. Hayes had better pieces displayed on his refrigerator by his own daughter, Maren, when she was in the third grade.

Strange as hell.

But he’d seen worse.

Hayes pulled on a pair of gloves, then lifting the vic’s head carefully and not moving the position

of the body, removed the mask by unwinding bits of hair clinging to the elastic band holding the mask in place and pulling it away from her face.

Carefully, he turned the mask over.

A single word had been scribbled across it in erratic, blood red letters: Sister.

“Gawd A’mighty!” the beat cop whispered. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t know,” Hayes admitted, but his mind was racing. Was Holly someone’s sister? He’d check that. But his gut told him the word Sister had to do with the mask itself, that of Allie Kramer. It was common knowledge the rising star had a less-famous sister, another daughter of Jenna Hughes, and Hayes already had notes about her as she was the last person known to have seen her sister before Allie Kramer’s disappearing act. He only hoped Cassie Kramer could shed some light on the whole blasted affair.

Leaving the mask with a crime-scene tech, Jonas straightened and walked toward Mitch Stevens. The man visibly shrunk into his own skin at the sight of him. It wasn’t uncommon. Jonas Hayes was a six-foot-four African-American who had once been a running back for UNLV. Though heavier than in his football days, he was fit and, he knew, more than a little intimidating, which he sometimes used to his advantage.

“I’m Detective Hayes,” he said to the shorter man who managed a weak, fleeting smile. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“Nothin’,” Stevens said. “I mean I was just mindin’ my own business, takin’ a whiz, y’know, and I like was zippin’ up and there she was. Fuck!” His eyes strayed reluctantly toward the corpse again.

“You with anyone?”

“No. Shit. Just me.” He was trembling. “I told the other cop, I was just . . . you know . . . relievin’ myself. Jesus!” He shrugged and reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lit up again. “I mean, it’s weird as hell, man,” he said as he sucked on the Camel as if nicotine would be his salvation. He exhaled in a cloud and added, “Weird as fuckin’ hell.”

Somehow, some way, Cassie finally fell asleep in the wee morning hours and didn’t wake up until after seven. She’d been frustrated by not being able to reach anyone on the phone again and wondered if she’d been blackballed by everyone who worked on Dead Heat, or knew Allie. It had gotten so bad she’d almost called Brandon McNary and told him she had reconsidered and they could work together on trying to locate her sister, but she’d resisted.

So far.

Surfing the Internet hadn’t helped much either. From hours on the computer, she’d learned little more about red cross earrings, or nurses’ uniforms from fifty years prior. She’d also searched Santa Fe, New Mexico, but she had no idea what she was looking for there. She’d even Googled her sister and hoped she’d find some crumb, a little speck of knowledge about Allie that she hadn’t known before.

Her searches weren’t entirely altruistic, of course. Though she desperately wanted to locate her sister, to find out what had happened to Allie, there was another side to it. The more she delved, the more she realized what a great screenplay she could write, and she’d scribbled notes to that effect.

But of course the screenplay was secondary, she told herself. Allie’s whereabouts and well-being came first.

Last night after getting home late, she’d stayed up until her eyes had blurred. She’d felt as if she’d been running in circles when she’d finally dropped off, most likely because the night before had been such a madhouse with its outré nightmares, glowering black cat, and uneasy feeling that someone had been inside her home.

This morning, aside from running later than she’d hoped, she felt a little better, a bit more ready to take on the world, and, she reminded herself, start over. She showered, twisted her hair onto her head, dabbed on lipstick and mascara, and grabbed her roller bag in case she needed a quick change. She would come back for the rest of her stuff, which was half packed into three more suitcases, after her appointment at Salon Laura. Though she was set to have her hair trimmed by another stylist, she hoped she’d be able to track down Laura Merrick. She had a gut feeling Laura could help her, no matter what the stylist had said.

She stepped outside to the brilliance of another sunny LA day, then nearly stumbled as she caught sight of Trent-Damned-Kittle leaning his jean-clad hips against the passenger side of her car. She blinked, slack-jawed, but there he was in faded jeans, a black T-shirt, cowboy boots, and aviator sunglasses. Two days’ growth of beard shadowed his jaw. The twist of his blade-thin lips was the only sign that he’d seen her. Worse yet, the black cat that had scared the liver out of her two nights before had the audacity to sun himself on the Honda’s roof. At the sight of her, the cat scrambled down to the hood, then leaped away to slink quickly into the shrubbery.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cassie asked tightly, walking straight up to him, dragging the roller bag behind her, its wheels scraping on the uneven asphalt.

“Waitin’.”

“For?”

“You.”