Ruthless Game (A Captivating Suspense Novel) by Danielle Girard Page A
Authors: Danielle Girard
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Better to just keep it to herself. If it got out now, it would look like she had something to hide. Plus, she needed to follow this through. It was personal now, and she'd be taken off the Loeffler investigation. Loeffler wasn't someone she knew. How had she suddenly been thrown into a dead man's life? With that thought echoing through her head, she lay down and tried to sleep.
* * *
Sleep had not been kind. Behind her eyelids, all she had pictured was Loeffler's face. The way it had looked on the mug, the way it had looked when he called her by her first name at Noah's, and the way it had looked in death flashing back and forth. When morning came, it was almost a relief. But even as she drove to Loeffler's house the next morning, she pictured his face on that mug. The woman beside him was dark-haired and round-faced and their expressions held the simple satisfaction that marriage seemed to give to some people.
Lying in bed last night, she'd gone through her affiliations: grade school, middle school and high school in Berkeley. It was hard to remember grade school, but Loeffler wasn't in her high school yearbook. She searched for his wife, too, under her maiden name, Sandy Bree. Alex had gone to Cal, Loeffler to Stanford. She'd walked through her sports, friends, the academy, L.A., the club where she'd worked, friends of friends, classes she'd taken down there. Nowhere could she come up with a William Loeffler. And she was good with names and faces. If she'd seen either Loeffler or his wife before, she would have remembered them.
Maybe the killer had seen her at the house, and had somehow found out she was a cop. Maybe he was just screwing with her. Why stick around to torment her? It seemed too risky. Unless her reaction was part of the game. Had he stumbled upon her sleeping and just followed her? She shook her head. It depended on too many variables, too much coincidence. She didn't buy coincidence. What had he taken from her house? And, more importantly, where was it going to end up?
Today was a second chance to find out what possible connection there was between her and Loeffler. And since she still hadn't heard back from Elsa, this was all she could do. When Alex arrived at Loeffler's house, the yellow crime scene tape and a standard patrol car greeted her. Waving to the officer, she hurried up the stairs and found Lombardi in the den. Another detective, whom she recognized from the station, stood beside him, and she hesitated in the doorway until Lombardi waved her forward.
"Look more like a detective today," he said.
She looked down at her jeans and sweatshirt. "Yeah, no uniform."
"That, and the circles under your eyes are becoming a permanent feature. All you need is a lucky coat and a potbelly and you're set."
Refusing the urge to let her fingers touch the sunken skin beneath her eyes, she forced a smile. "I'll think about it." She thought about the taunting phone calls she'd received. Maybe Lombardi was getting them, too. No, she'd have heard.
"Alex Kincaid, Jimmy Norton. Jimmy, Alex."
She shook hands with a short balding man in an oversized UC Davis sweatshirt. His perfectly round face made his head look like a red beach ball, with a full nose and high, bulging ruddy cheeks to complete the image.
"Jimmy's going to deal with the tapes."
She nodded.
Jimmy's expression was unchanged and she wondered if he didn't know what was on the tapes or if he was just used to dealing with that sort of perversion.
"He'll be handling it at the station, creating photos from the video via a computer and trying to match the faces with names. Once he's done, he may ask you to help with the matching."
"No problem."
"In the meantime, you can continue to work in there. Once you've gotten through all that shit, we need to box anything relevant and get it to the station. Someone else will come through for a second round tomorrow. Think you can handle that today?"
She glanced around the room and forced herself to nod. It
* * *
Sleep had not been kind. Behind her eyelids, all she had pictured was Loeffler's face. The way it had looked on the mug, the way it had looked when he called her by her first name at Noah's, and the way it had looked in death flashing back and forth. When morning came, it was almost a relief. But even as she drove to Loeffler's house the next morning, she pictured his face on that mug. The woman beside him was dark-haired and round-faced and their expressions held the simple satisfaction that marriage seemed to give to some people.
Lying in bed last night, she'd gone through her affiliations: grade school, middle school and high school in Berkeley. It was hard to remember grade school, but Loeffler wasn't in her high school yearbook. She searched for his wife, too, under her maiden name, Sandy Bree. Alex had gone to Cal, Loeffler to Stanford. She'd walked through her sports, friends, the academy, L.A., the club where she'd worked, friends of friends, classes she'd taken down there. Nowhere could she come up with a William Loeffler. And she was good with names and faces. If she'd seen either Loeffler or his wife before, she would have remembered them.
Maybe the killer had seen her at the house, and had somehow found out she was a cop. Maybe he was just screwing with her. Why stick around to torment her? It seemed too risky. Unless her reaction was part of the game. Had he stumbled upon her sleeping and just followed her? She shook her head. It depended on too many variables, too much coincidence. She didn't buy coincidence. What had he taken from her house? And, more importantly, where was it going to end up?
Today was a second chance to find out what possible connection there was between her and Loeffler. And since she still hadn't heard back from Elsa, this was all she could do. When Alex arrived at Loeffler's house, the yellow crime scene tape and a standard patrol car greeted her. Waving to the officer, she hurried up the stairs and found Lombardi in the den. Another detective, whom she recognized from the station, stood beside him, and she hesitated in the doorway until Lombardi waved her forward.
"Look more like a detective today," he said.
She looked down at her jeans and sweatshirt. "Yeah, no uniform."
"That, and the circles under your eyes are becoming a permanent feature. All you need is a lucky coat and a potbelly and you're set."
Refusing the urge to let her fingers touch the sunken skin beneath her eyes, she forced a smile. "I'll think about it." She thought about the taunting phone calls she'd received. Maybe Lombardi was getting them, too. No, she'd have heard.
"Alex Kincaid, Jimmy Norton. Jimmy, Alex."
She shook hands with a short balding man in an oversized UC Davis sweatshirt. His perfectly round face made his head look like a red beach ball, with a full nose and high, bulging ruddy cheeks to complete the image.
"Jimmy's going to deal with the tapes."
She nodded.
Jimmy's expression was unchanged and she wondered if he didn't know what was on the tapes or if he was just used to dealing with that sort of perversion.
"He'll be handling it at the station, creating photos from the video via a computer and trying to match the faces with names. Once he's done, he may ask you to help with the matching."
"No problem."
"In the meantime, you can continue to work in there. Once you've gotten through all that shit, we need to box anything relevant and get it to the station. Someone else will come through for a second round tomorrow. Think you can handle that today?"
She glanced around the room and forced herself to nod. It
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