Riptide

"Then he knew, of course, that we'd tapped
    the phone."
    "Yes," Adam said. "The bastard knew, all right. In the kitchen,
    Savich."
    "I don't like this," Becca said to Sherlock as she pressed toward
    the front door. "Why can't we go in the house?"
    "Just stay there for the moment, Becca."
    Several minutes passed. No one said anything, but one by one
    the men walked into the farmhouse through the open front door.
    Becca didn't know what to do. Sherlock, who was standing on
    the small front porch, her 9mm SIG drawn, sweeping in a wide arc

around her, scanning the perimeter, said, "I'll go check. Becca, why
    don't you wait out here just a while longer?"
    Becca stared at her. "Why?"
    "Just wait," she said, her voice suddenly sharp. "That's an order."
    Becca heard the men talking, knew all of them but her were in
    the house. Why didn't they want her in there? She ran around to
    the back of the house and slipped in behind one of the men who
    was standing in the middle of the back door. The kitchen was
    painfully bright with two-hundred-watt bulbs hanging naked from
    the ceiling. The kitchen was small, the appliances were harsh white,
    clean, and very old. There was an old wooden table, scarred, a beautiful
    old vase holding dead roses in the center. It had been pushed
    against the wall. Two of the chairs were overturned on the floor.
    The refrigerator was humming loudly, like an old train chugging
    up a hill.
    She slipped around the man in the doorway. He tried to hold
    her back, but she pulled free. Tommy, Savich, and Sherlock were
    standing in a near circle staring down at the pale-green linoleum
    floor. Adam rose slowly.
    And suddenly Becca could see her.

Chapter 17

    The woman had no face. Her head looked like a bowl filled with
    smashed bone, flesh, and teeth. He'd struck her hard, viciously, repeatedly.
    There were two broken teeth on the floor beside the
    woman's head. There was dried blood everywhere, congealed and
    black on her face and on the worn linoleum, streaks of blood, like
    lightning bolts, down the white wall. Her hair was matted to her
    head, blood-soaked dark clumps falling away onto the floor. And
    there was dirt mixed in with the dried bloody hair.
    "She's young," she heard a man say, his voice low, calm, detached,
    but underlying that voice was a thick layer of fury. "Jesus, too
    young. It's Linda Cartwright, isn't it?"
    "Yes," Adam said. "He killed her right here in the kitchen."
    Linda Cartwright lay on her back on the floor wearing a ratty
    old chenille bathrobe that had been washed so many times it was
    nearly white rather than pink, except for the dirt that clung to the
    robe, dirt everywhere, even on her feet, which were bare, her toenails
    painted a bright, happy red. Becca eased closer. It was real, it
    was horrifyingly real, in front of her, and the woman was dead.
    "Oh, God. Oh God, no, no."
    She watched Savich bend down and unpin a note that was fastened
    to the front of Linda Cartwright's bathrobe. She saw for the
    first time that the woman was heavy, just as Savich had read off her
    driver's license. "Don't let Becca come in here," he said to Sherlock,

not looking up as he read the note. "This is too much. Make sure
    she stays outside."
    "I'm already here," Becca said, swallowing again and again
    against the nausea in her stomach, the vomit rising in her throat.
    "What is that note?"
    "Becca--"
    It was Adam and he was turning toward her. She put up her
    hands. "What is that note?" she asked again. "Read it, please."
    Savich paused, then read slowly, his voice firm and clear:

    "Hey, Rebecca, you can call her Gleason. Since she didn't look
    like a dog, I had to smash her up a bit. Now she does. A dead dog.
    She's nice and fat, though, just like Gleason, and that's good. You
    killed her. You and no one else. Give her a good wake. This is all for
    you, Rebecca. I'll see you soon and it'll be you and me, from then to
    eternity.
    Your Boyfriend.

    "He wrote it in black ink, a ballpoint," Savich said, his voice flat,
    emotionless, as he carefully eased the paper into a plastic bag he
    pulled out of his pants pocket and closed the zipper. "It's just a
    plain sheet of paper torn out of a notebook. Nothing at all unique
    about it."
    "Do you think he's out of control?" Sherlock said to no one in
    particular. Her face was pale, the horror clear in her eyes.
    "No," Adam said. "I don't think so. I think he's really enjoying
    himself. I think at last he's discovering who he really is and what