Cold-Blooded Liar, page 35
“What boards are you on?” Kit asked.
“Orion School and New Horizons, but you already knew those.”
“Dr. Reeves also serves on the New Horizons board,” Kit told Connor.
“That’s how you knew to vouch for him?” Connor asked.
Levinson nodded. “Indeed. I also serve on the boards of a shelter for domestic violence survivors and an organization that provides help to homeless people going for job interviews.”
Navarro’s expression had gone politely flat, and that didn’t bode well. “What were the two you pulled out of?”
“Skateboards for All. My son was a skateboarder. I joined for him because he was sad that some of his school friends couldn’t afford decent equipment. The other was a model railroad society, which is purely because I love model railroads. Supporting nonprofits is kind of my jam. Once I’m fully retired, I’ll be rejoining the railroad board.”
“What do you know about the admissions director at Orion?” Kit asked.
“He’s dedicated. Grumpy because he hates paperwork. My opinion is that he’s not involved in anything like this. He could be a good actor, of course. It is a drama school, after all, but I don’t see him being violent.”
Kit thought about the videos they’d seen. “Does he wear ties?”
Levinson frowned. “Why? Oh, is that the murder weapon?”
“We believe so,” Navarro said before either Kit or Connor could reply.
Navarro’s deflection bothered Kit. Navarro normally would have been one hundred percent up front with Levinson, telling him all the details.
Levinson’s frown deepened and she wondered if the psychologist thought the same thing. “He hates ties. I’ve never seen him wear one. Says it constricts his throat and damages his voice. Are we finished, Lieutenant?”
Kit bit back her wince. It had been Reynaldo when they’d first sat down. Yeah, Levinson knew that Navarro was now uncomfortable with him.
She wanted to sigh, but bit that back, too.
“For now, yes. Detectives, you may go. Can you stay for a few minutes, Dr. Levinson?”
Levinson’s expression was impassive. “Of course. Best of luck breaking into the hallowed halls of Orion School, Detectives.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kit murmured respectfully, then followed Connor out.
“That was awkward,” Connor said when they were back at their desks.
“Yeah.” She glanced at Navarro’s office, but the window blinds had been pulled. “Navarro didn’t buy his story.”
“I didn’t think so, either. Did you?”
She shrugged. “He fits the body type of the man we saw in the video.”
“He has a goatee, though, and Driscoll didn’t.”
Kit frowned. “What does that have to do with it?”
“In deepfakes, the person with the replacement face starts out making a video of himself. Or herself. Fifteen, twenty minutes of mugging different expressions. That video is broken down into individual frames—thousands of frames. Those frames are analyzed by the software and matched to the face in the destination video. In our case that would have been the killer murdering our victims.”
“Okay. That’s a really good explanation, by the way, but what does that have to do with Levinson’s goatee?”
“The closer the facial details of the source—the faker—are to those of the face in the destination video, the better the result. Driscoll’s videos were good. If he was pasting his face over Levinson’s, he might have grown a goatee of the same shape.”
“But he didn’t. Driscoll was clean shaven.” She exhaled. “Okay, that makes me feel better. Thank you. How close are you to getting the background checks run?”
“Give me another half hour and I’ll have them done.”
“Same. Then we can sign out a car and pay a visit to the stuck-up folks at Orion School. I’m hoping they might have more insight on this scam artist than your friend did. If I had someone luring students to my door with any regularity, I’d work hard to identify the perpetrator.”
The door to Navarro’s office opened and Levinson emerged. He gave Kit and Connor a small wave, his smile tight as he departed.
Navarro closed his door and didn’t come out.
Kit let her sigh loose. Navarro hadn’t let his emotions dictate his investigation with respect to Levinson. That was how she should be treating Dr. Reeves.
Not Sam. He can’t be Sam anymore, even in your mind.
She looked at Connor to find him studying her carefully. “I know what we can do to try to eliminate your shrink as a suspect,” he said.
Hillcrest, California
Wednesday, April 20, 11:00 a.m.
Sam had finished his second pot of coffee and had compiled a list of five new possible victims when Siggy started growling and barking again. He’d been growling all morning, so Sam had started to dismiss it as background noise.
But this time, the growling was followed by a knock at his door.
The knock startled him, and he nearly knocked his mug over.
No more coffee for me, for real. His jitters had progressed to the shakes.
Reading dozens of missing-person reports wasn’t helping, either. Even if the runaways hadn’t been murdered, it was unlikely that many of them had landed in a safe place. His work at New Horizons made that all too clear.
Going cautiously to Joel’s front door, Sam checked the peephole and straightened abruptly. Kit McKittrick. With a man he didn’t recognize. They looked tense.
Foreboding shivered down his back as he opened the door. “Detective? How can I help you?”
She smiled at him tightly and the sense of foreboding rose to suffocate him.
“Can we come in?” she asked.
Wordlessly he stepped back, closing the door when she and the man were in Joel’s living room.
“Dr. Reeves, this is my partner, Detective Robinson.”
Oh right. Because Constantine had had a heart attack.
Robinson was a big, beefy man who wore an I-don’t-trust-you expression that gave Sam serious pause. It was like they were back to square one.
Sam wondered if he should hide Siggy, because his dog was still growling low in his throat. But that was ridiculous. He hoped.
“How can I help you?” he asked again.
Kit sighed and she sounded exhausted. Looked it, too. “May we sit down?”
He gestured to the sofa. “Go ahead.” He took the recliner but sat upright, his stomach twisted into a knot. He’d observed her for a few weeks now and something was not right. Something other than all the other shit that wasn’t right, anyway.
“I wanted to let you know what we found last night in Driscoll’s backyard,” she said.
She stopped talking, as if waiting for him to comment, but Sam could hear Laura’s voice in his head, warning him. So he kept his mouth shut.
Finally, she went on. “We found a number of hard drives. They contained videos.”
Now Sam could hear Veronica Gadd’s voice in his mind. Oh my God. What was on them? Please say it wasn’t kiddie porn. Please.
“What kind?” he asked, unable to keep the dread from his voice.
“Like this.” Kit handed him her phone on which a video was cued to begin.
Sam glanced at Detective Robinson. His eyes were suspicious and . . . waiting. Sam got the impression that this was a test of some kind.
Call Laura! Make them either arrest you or leave.
But he didn’t. Because part of him still trusted Kit McKittrick.
I’ll probably regret that later, he thought as he hit play, aware that both detectives were watching him like hawks.
This was not going to be good.
It started with a living room he’d never seen before, decorated in soft blues and grays. Broadway musical posters covered the visible walls. The camera was focused on the back of a leather sofa.
Then a man came into the room. Colton Driscoll. And then . . .
“Oh God,” Sam whispered. Because Naomi Beckham had been lying on that sofa. And now she was being murdered. By Colton. With a necktie.
Memories came flooding back, filling his mind with the images that only came out in his worst nightmares. Because he’d already seen something like this before. It had ended in death.
Just as it was ending in death for Naomi, who was fighting Colton, but slowly. Weakly.
Colton smiled when her body had gone limp.
“Dr. Reeves? Dr. Reeves? Sam?”
He looked up to find both detectives staring at him. Kit had leaned forward, her hand outstretched. Like she was about to shake him but had hesitated. Numbly, he wondered how many times she’d called his name.
“Why?” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Why did you make me watch this?”
He’d never be able to unsee this. Never. He knew that from experience.
This was what had happened to all those poor girls. It had happened to Skyler.
It had happened to his Marley.
He dropped the phone on Joel’s carpet and ran to the bathroom, throwing up everything he’d eaten that morning.
When his stomach was empty, he hung over the toilet. Shaking.
And angry.
With Colton for being a sadistic monster who really had killed those girls.
With Kit for tormenting him this way.
With his own mind for holding so tightly to the memories he wished he could forget.
“Sam?” Kit said quietly from the doorway.
Something cold touched his shoulder. A bottle of water.
Furiously, he snatched it from her hand and rinsed his mouth out.
“Satisfied?” he demanded.
“No,” she said sadly. “I’m sorry. I needed to see your reaction. I needed to know.”
Sam twisted his body, landing on his ass, his back against the tub. “So now you do. Please leave.”
She crouched a few feet away and he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. He shoved away the flash of compassion. Because she didn’t deserve it. She still didn’t believe him. Still didn’t trust him.
I should have listened to Laura and kept my mouth shut.
“You’ve been conveniently present for a lot of important revelations on this case,” she said.
“Not because I wanted to be,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” he said bitterly. “Otherwise you never would have done that dog-and-pony show out there. Were you trying to prove something to your new partner or to yourself?” A shadow moved in the hallway. Her partner was there listening. Goddammit. Sam was sick and tired of being a suspect.
He shoved himself to his feet. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you believe. Get out. You can call my lawyer. And you, Robinson, you can stop lurking in the hallway. You want to see my reaction, too? Come and look at it.”
The partner came into view, his expression still grim. But there was a softening around his eyes. He’d been suspicious before, but now? He looked more unsure.
And I don’t fucking care.
Kit rose slowly. “Okay, but first I need you to know that the killer on this recording wasn’t Colton Driscoll.”
“What?” Were they still playing with him? “Of course it was. I just saw him strangle Naomi Beckham. Thank you for that, by the way. It’s not like I don’t have enough shit in my head.”
She shook her head. “Driscoll’s face was faked. Deepfakes, they call them.”
Well, damn. Now he was interested again, despite his better judgment. “I’ve heard of that,” he said warily. “Saw it online. So who was it really?”
“We don’t know. Someone shorter than Driscoll, but still strong enough to carry a teenage girl out of the room over his shoulder. Did anything in the video look familiar to you? Like, did Driscoll say anything in session to make you think he’d been to this place?”
He went to the sink and splashed cold water on his face while he contemplated his answer. Or if he even should answer. He should make them talk to Laura.
But he wanted to help them. Help Kit.
He wanted this nightmare to end. For himself and for the girls.
He dried his face and turned to face her and the hulking detective who stood behind her, watching him.
“No. Unless they were watching Avondale on the TV before the clip started. That was the only thing he said.” He folded the towel and rehung it on the bar, trying to calm his mind and remember if there really was anything else. “He said that he watched her do her homework. Geometry, maybe? Yeah, I think it was geometry because that was the first thing that had me thinking he was abusing a minor. Geometry isn’t usually a college course.”
Detective Robinson flinched and Sam wondered if he’d seen a video of a girl studying geometry before she’d been killed, whichever girl it had been.
“You’re right,” Robinson murmured, his eyes growing haunted. “It’s usually a high school course.”
Robinson’s haunted look made Sam wonder what they’d seen. “Did you watch all of the murders?” Sam asked, feeling compassion that was, once again, unwelcome.
Because if they had, he couldn’t blame them for being upset. He could blame them for making him see it, too, but he knew what it was like to have to watch helplessly.
“Not all,” she said. “But enough. One working theory is that Colton somehow got cameras in the killer’s home and had been watching him. Spying on him.”
“And incorporating what he saw into the lies he told you,” Robinson added.
Spying on him. Another memory surfaced from the static still filling Sam’s mind. “He said his coworkers in the mail room gave him a hard time. I asked him if he’d informed his boss. He said his boss was basically useless because he spent all day spying on the building’s residents.”
“Through the security cameras?” Robinson asked.
“Those are usually in hallways,” Kit said thoughtfully. “Not much interesting happening there.”
Robinson tilted his head. “I wonder if they have cameras in the offices.”
Sam shrugged. “All I know is that he said his boss watched the people in the building. I didn’t ask him if he watched, too. I didn’t think about it. Didn’t think I needed to. I was more worried about his pretty young things at the time.”
And if the words came out with a bitter edge, he wasn’t going to blame himself.
Kit looked away for a moment before returning her gaze to meet Sam’s. “I am sorry. I’ve had a few shocks on this case. It’s been hard to know who to trust.”
He didn’t look away. “Yeah. I kind of know how that feels.”
She winced. “We’ll go now.”
“I’ll lock the door behind you.” He followed them to the living room, where Siggy had curled up in his doggy bed and gone to sleep. So much for being a protection dog.
“At least I have an alibi for the last twenty minutes,” he added acidly as he opened the front door.
Kit pursed her lips, then nodded once. “Stay safe, Dr. Reeves.”
Detective Robinson gave Sam a considering look as he walked through the door ahead of her. “She believed you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t. The video was to convince me.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam snapped, even though Robinson had said didn’t. Like now he did believe Sam. Doesn’t matter. “You’re cops. You see this shit all the time.” I only saw it happen once. “I’m a psychologist.” I only saw it once but it changed me forever. “I hear about the aftereffects. I visualize in my mind what every victim has endured as they tell me their stories, but now I have this real-life footage to add to my nightmares.”
Kit’s throat was working frantically as she looked up at him, and he was taken aback to see tears in her eyes. “We don’t,” she whispered brokenly. “We don’t see this all the time. We come in after it’s happened. We see the bodies. But we had to watch it, Sam. All of it. All of them. So much more than we showed you. I’m sorry I made you watch that. I’m sorry I put things in your head that you can’t unsee. But my duty is to the girls. The ones that are dead and the ones he plans to kill.”
Sam closed his eyes, so damn weary. “I know,” he murmured.
“You’re collateral damage,” Robinson said from Joel’s front porch. “Sucks to be you, man.” But the words didn’t sound crass and unfeeling. Maybe tentatively regretful. “Thanks for the tip on the backyard. It’s going to be a game-changer. Once we figure out where it is that he lives, we’ll be one step closer to IDing him.” He turned and walked down Joel’s steps toward the black sedan parked in Joel’s driveway, leaving Sam standing alone with Kit.
“You okay?” Sam asked gruffly.
She rolled her eyes, drying her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her jacket. “No. But I am sorry.”
“I know,” he said sadly, because now that his anger had faded, he really did know. “Just . . . hurry, okay? I don’t want anyone else to die.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Me either.” Then, straightening her spine, she dug in her pocket and pulled out another one of the treats she’d given him that night in the car, when she’d told him to leave town. To return to Scottsdale.
Sam now wished he’d stayed there.
He also wished he could give this woman comfort. Which makes me a fool.
“For Siggy,” she said, handing him the treat.
“Thank you.”
Then she left and he locked the door behind her. Returning to the kitchen, he put the dog treat on the table, sank into a chair, and dropped his head into his hands, the images of Naomi’s murder replaying in his mind. It all mixed with memories of Marley and he wanted to go back to bed and pretend none of this had ever happened.
No time for self-pity. Get back to work.
He looked at the photos of the runaways he’d thought might have been potential victims, now wondering if Kit had seen them die, too.
