Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(7)

Cool blue eyes. Gray, D.D. thought as the girl glanced over.

“Didn’t know him,” the girl said. “We’d never met.”

“And yet here we are.”

“He’s a bartender,” the girl offered, as if that should mean something to D.D. Then, it did.

“You went out tonight. To the bar where Devon worked. That’s how you met.”

“We didn’t meet,” the girl insisted. “I was there with someone else. The bartender . . . he followed us out.” She stared at D.D. again. “He’s done this before,” she stated matter-of-factly. “August. That girl who went missing, Stacey Summers. The way he grabbed me, tucked his head to hide his face from view as he pulled me down the back streets . . . He matches the man in the abduction video. I would search his property thoroughly.”

Stacey Summers was a Boston College student who’d disappeared in August. Young, beautiful, blond, she had the kind of beaming smile and gorgeous head shots guaranteed to grab nationwide headlines. Which the case had. Unfortunately, three months later, the police possessed only a single grainy video image of her being dragged away from a local bar by a large, shadowy brute. That was it. No witnesses. No suspects. No leads. The case had grown cold, even if the media attention had not.

“Do you know Stacey Summers?” D.D. asked.

The girl shook her head.

“Friend of the family? Fellow college student? Someone who once met her at a bar?”

“No.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“FBI?”

Another shake.

“So your interest in the Stacey Summers case . . .”

“I read the news.”

“Of course.” D.D. tilted her head sideways, contemplated her subject. “You know federal agents,” she stated. “Family friend? Neighbor? But you know someone well enough to dial direct.”

“He’s not a friend.”

“Then who is he?”

A faint smile. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

“What’s your name?” D.D. straightened up. Her left shoulder was starting to bother her now. Not to mention this conversation’s strain on her patience.

“He didn’t know my name,” the girl said. “The bartender, this Devon? He didn’t care who I was. I arrived at the bar alone. According to him, that’s all it took to make me a victim.”

“You were at the bar alone? Drank alone?”

“Only the first drink. That’s generally how it works.”

“How many drinks did you have?”

“Why? Because if I’m drunk, I deserved it?”

“No, because if you’re drunk, you’re not as reliable a witness.”

“I danced with one guy most of the night. Others saw us. Others can corroborate.”

D.D. frowned, still not liking the woman’s answers, nor her use of the word corroborate, a term generally favored by law enforcement, not laypeople. “Dancer’s name?”

“Mr. Haven’t I Seen You Around Here Before?” the girl murmured.

On the other side of the girl, the district detective rolled her eyes. Apparently D.D. wasn’t the first person to be asking these questions, or getting these answers.

“Can he corroborate?” D.D. stressed the legal term.

“Assuming he’s regained consciousness.”

“Honey—”

“You should search the garage. There’s blood in the far left corner. I could smell it when I was digging through the trash, trying to find a weapon.”

“Is that when you discovered the potassium permanganate?”

“He’s the one who threw away the bouquet, probably after using it to lure in some other victim. I’m not his first. I can tell you. He was much too confident, too well prepared. If this is his house, check his room. He’ll have trophies. Predator like him enjoys the private thrill of revisiting past conquests.”

D.D. stared at the woman. In her years in homicide, she’d interviewed victims who were hysterical. She’d dealt with victims who were in shock. When it came to crime, there was no such thing as an emotional norm. And yet she’d never met a victim like this one. The woman’s responses were well beyond the bell curve. Hell, outside the land of sanity.

“Did you know what Devon—”

“The bartender.”

“The bartender had done to these other women? Maybe a friend of yours told you something. Her own scary experience. Or rumors of something that may have happened to a friend of a friend?”

“No.”

“But you suspected something?” D.D. continued, voice hard. “At the very least, you think he was involved with the disappearance of another girl, a case plastered all over the news. So what? You decided to take matters into your own hands, turn yourself into some kind of hero and make your own headlines?”

“I’d never met the bartender before tonight. I left with a different loser. He was the one I was trying to set up.” The girl shrugged, gaze once more locked on the back of the driver’s seat. “The evening’s been filled with surprises. Even for someone like me, these things can happen.”

“Who are you?”