“Anne’s?” Blakemoor echoed. “And she asked for us?”
Lois Ackerly nodded. “From what Phil said, it sounds like it’s cut up the same way Cottrell and Davis were.”
Mark Blakemoor swore silently. If it were true — and he hoped it wasn’t — he was pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant: they didn’t simply have a serial killer loose; they had a serial killer who was going to start playing grisly games.
But playing with whom?
The police, or his next victim?
There was another possibility, of course: it could be someone’s idea of a sick joke. After all, Anne’s name had been on the radio all day long, with every newscaster in town talking about the oddity of a reporter discovering a body. If someone didn’t like Anne, what better way to throw a scare into her than to kill her cat the same way her neighbor had been killed? What else could she think but that she was being warned that she might be the next victim? Christ, she must be falling apart! A wave of fury at whoever had done this to Anne rose within him, and for the briefest of moments Mark wondered if he should take himself off this whole case. But he knew he wouldn’t — if anything, he would work even harder to find this particular creep.
It wasn’t until they were in the car, headed for Capitol Hill, that Ackerly glanced over at him, her lips curving in an ironic smile. “Well, at least you don’t have to go home.”
Blakemoor felt himself reddening. “I don’t mind going home,” he muttered gruffly.
“Which is why you always manage to start a conversation at just a minute or two before five, right?” Lois Ackerly observed, then relented. “Hey, it’s okay. Loneliness is a bummer. If I didn’t have Jake—”
“Look, can we talk about something else?” Blakemoor broke in.
But they finished the drive in silence. They had pulled up in front of the Jefferses’ house when Lois spoke again. “If you want, I can take this one alone,” she offered.
Shit! Blakemoor thought. Is it that obvious? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said out loud, getting out of the car and slamming the door harder than necessary. Taking the steep flight of steps up to the porch two at a time, he was about to ring the bell when the door opened and Anne Jeffers let him in, her ashen face making clear just how frightened she was.
“I suppose you think I’ve really gone around the bend this time,” she said with a not very successful attempt to make the words sound bantering.
“I don’t even know what happened yet,” Mark replied, hoping nothing in his own voice betrayed his urge to put his arms around her. “What happened?” he asked as Lois Ackerly stepped into the foyer. In the living room he could see a teenage girl who he assumed was Anne’s daughter huddled on the sofa, crying, while a black girl of about the same age tried to comfort her.
“In back,” Anne said quietly, leading the two detectives through the dining room and kitchen, then outside into the backyard. As they crossed the lawn, Mark Blakemoor caught himself glancing over at the house next door and wondering if it were really possible that there was a connection between the brutal murder that had occurred there the previous night and the cat that now lay dead behind Anne Jeffers’s house.
Both Glen and Kevin were sitting on the wooden decking that supported the garbage cans. As Anne and the two detectives approached, the little boy jumped to his feet.
“She’s right there!” he exclaimed, pointing to the portion of the cat that protruded from beneath the deck. “Boots found her, just like he found Mrs. Cot—”
“That’s enough.” Anne pulled her son to her and put her arms protectively around his shoulders.
“Has anyone touched it?” Mark asked, squatting down to take a closer look at the cat’s corpse.
Kevin shook his head. “I didn’t,” he reported. “And I wouldn’t let Heather or Rayette, either. I told them—”
“Maybe you should go back into the house, honey,” Anne suggested.
“Aw, Mom!” Kevin groaned. “Come on! It was me that found her!”
“Go on,” Anne told him. “If Detective Blakemoor has any questions, we’ll come and find you. And be nice to your sister,” she warned as Kevin reluctantly started back toward the house.
Easing the dead cat clear of the deck, Blakemoor studied the carnage that had been its chest. The rib cage had been cut open and the lungs pulled out, just as had those of both Shawnelle Davis and Joyce Cottrell. But somehow the mutilation of the cat looked different.
Neater.
The word had come unbidden into his mind, but as he repeated it silently to himself, Blakemoor realized it was the only description that was truly appropriate. Whereas both Davis and Cottrell seemed to have been ripped apart in rage, the animal — at least where the cut up its chest and the opening of its rib cage had been performed — looked almost as if it had been dissected.
“Any idea what might have happened to it?” he asked Glen Jeffers, who was standing now, staring numbly down at the body of his daughter’s pet. Blakemoor watched him carefully, but saw nothing in his expression except shock at the mutilation.
Glen shook his head. “I didn’t even know she wasn’t in the house,” he said, his voice dull, his eyes fixed on the bloody corpse. “Christ, I feel like maybe this is my fault.”
“Your fault?” Lois Ackerly asked.
For a moment Glen made no reply to the detective’s question. Ever since Kevin had yelled out to Heather and Rayette and he’d gone to see what the fuss was about, he’d been trying to remember the last time he’d seen the cat. She’d been there this morning, after he’d gotten back from the park and the kids had left for school. But after that?
He didn’t know. But he’d been in and out of the house a lot that morning, and Kumquat could have slipped out any time the door was open. He hadn’t bothered to check on her whereabouts when he’d stretched out to take a nap. Nor had he looked for her when he woke up, after sleeping a lot longer than he’d intended to.
As he remembered the care with which Heather checked each morning to make sure there was no way her pet could escape from the house, his sense of guilt increased. All he’d had to do was keep half an eye out.
Instead he’d slept half the day away. “She probably got out this morning,” he said finally. His gaze shifted to Mark Blakemoor. “It might even have been when you were leaving.”
“You mean you weren’t even watching her?” Anne asked. “For God’s sake, Glen! You know how careful Heather always is! The least—”
“Hey, look!” Glen protested, suddenly angry. “I said this might be partly my fault, okay? But it’s not like I killed her. Jesus!”
“Oh, God, I know,” Anne sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just upset, and—” Leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken, she turned to Blakemoor. “I know I shouldn’t have asked for you, but when the kids told me what happened, it just seemed like too much of a coincidence.”
“It’s okay,” Blakemoor assured her. He turned questioningly to his partner. “Think we’d better take it downtown?” he asked, inclining his head toward the body of the cat. “And what about pictures?”
Lois Ackerly shrugged, no more certain than Blakemoor as to proper procedure. One thing she did know — if someone was going to call for a full forensics team, it wasn’t going to be her. Not for a dead cat. “I don’t think we need them,” she said. “We both know where the cat was, right?” She turned to Anne. “Do you have a plastic trash bag?”
Anne, her eyes fixed on the cat, made no reply, and finally her husband spoke again. “I’ll get one.”
As Glen headed toward the house, Anne glanced up just in time to see Mark Blakemoor watching him, a speculative look in his eyes. “Come on, Mark. You don’t think Glen did this, do you?”