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After a short silence, Allen said, "The murder scene will give us more to go on, but we gotta find it first."
"We have," said Somerville, whose bass voice was in keeping with his muscular build. He held up his cell phone. "Just got a text. Detectives at Sally Buckland's house found blood in her bed. Lots of it. Soaked into the pillow. Also residue that looks like semen on the sheets. Which is consistent with what the coroner saw on the remains, on and around--"
"Thanks, Detective," Allen said, cutting short the chilling report from his subordinate.
But enough had been said to make Caroline King go pale. Berry pressed her fingertips into her eye sockets. Dodge muttered under his breath, then said, "I gotta smoke," and left through the back door.
As Ski stared at the top of Berry's bowed head, he thought about what Somerville had told them and related it to the photographs taken of Berry in her bedroom and while sunbathing, how beautiful and unaffected she'd looked, how unaware and defenseless. He struggled to maintain a professional detachment, but it was impossible. He wanted to hunt down Oren Starks and hurt him. Bad.
He said, "Detective Allen, when you get the ballistics report on the bullet that killed Ms. Buckland, I'd like to compare it with the one that killed Davis Coldare."
"You'll have it as soon as I do."
Berry said, "Don't forget to tell him about the message."
Ski looked at her, then at Allen. "Message?"
The detective said, "The body was zipped into a garment bag. One of those like my wife stores winter coats in. Rod inside, big hook attached to the top."
Ski nodded.
"On the outside of it, there was a message printed in blood, apparently Ms. Buckland's."
"What'd it say?"
Ski had addressed the question to Detective Allen, but it was Berry who replied in a bleak voice. " 'Sally has you to thank.'"
Shortly after that Sally Buckland's body was removed from the house to be taken to the morgue, and the CSU team went into Berry's bedroom to do their scavenging for evidence. Somerville excused himself to take a telephone call, and, when he returned to the kitchen, he informed them that Sally Buckland's car had been found in a vast multilevel parking lot in Houston's famed medical district.
"The entry ticket was in the console, stamped seven-seventeen yesterday evening."
"Several hours after I talked to her," Ski said.
"Security videos have this man--" Somerville held out his cell phone so Ski could see the freeze-frame photo that had been texted to the detective.
The image was grainy and blurred, but there was no doubt that the man behind the steering wheel was Oren Starks. "That's him."
Somerville then held his phone so Berry could confirm the identity. She rolled her lips inward and nodded.
"This was taken as he entered the parking garage," Somerville continued. "But Starks wasn't picked up on cameras inside any of the buildings in the complex."
"He'd left another car parked nearby," Ski said. "Presumably the maroon Toyota."
Somerville said, "The patrolmen who discovered the car said there are traces of blood on the driver's seat and in the trunk. Looks like Starks killed Ms. Buckland at her house, brought her here in her own car, drove it to the garage, and abandoned it there, where it could have remained for a while without causing suspicion. Patients and family members sometimes stay for days in those treatment centers."
"Starks made the swap inside the garage and drove the other car out," Allen said.
"They don't take photos of cars as they're leaving," his partner added. "More's the pity."
Allen noticed Ski's frown. "What, Deputy Nyland? You don't like that scenario?"
"Yeah, I do. Except, that would mean that Starks had parked a car in the garage in the medical district, walked to Sally Buckland's house, where he killed her and picked up her car. Right?"
"I reckon."
"Okay. From the medical district to her house is a distance of what? Two miles at least?"
Somerville gave a negligent shrug. "Thirty-minute walk."
