Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(49)

Foster stood, stepped back, eyed Rosales. “Time of death?”

“I’d put it at around one a.m., but she’s been laying here about six, seven hours. Lividity tells the tale. The timing gave the rats a chance to get at her a bit, as you can see. You see the lipstick rings? Same as the first body. Might even be the same shade, but I’m no expert.”

“More damage this time,” Foster said. “More anger played out.”

Rosales gently lifted the woman’s right arm and turned her hand palm up. “We have an ID on her already.”

“You found a bag?” Lonergan asked.

“No. What you see is what we found, but we got prints, and hers are in the system. She’s Mallory Rea, twenty-eight. Arrested twice in 2017 for trespassing and damage to private property. A lab that experimented on animals. She was part of an animal activist group.”

Foster stared down at Rea, the activist, at the wig. It bothered her. Manner of death similar to Birch’s, only more violent, more inhumane. Type of victim similar, both young white women. Both activists—Birch for police reform, Rea for animal rights. Could that be the connection? Was some twisted killer out here murdering women with a social conscience? Even the location of Rea’s body dump was close to where Birch had been found. And something else, something immediately noticeable. The red hair, though Rea wore a wig and Birch’s hair was natural. Foster got a queasy feeling as she noted the pattern forming. “Right. Okay. Let’s get her out of this tarp and back to her people as quickly as we can.”

“Oh, great,” Lonergan grumbled. “The circus has arrived.”

Foster turned to see at least a half dozen news vans parked outside the yellow tape. Reporters—some she recognized, some she didn’t—getting ready with mics and cell phones, cameras and lights. She motioned to Perez and Malcolm. “Move them back out of camera range, please. Keep them there. I don’t want them getting anything they can splash all over the morning news.”

“Good luck with that,” Lonergan sniped. “Two bodies? They’re gonna be all over us like ants at a picnic.”

“An odd thing,” Rosales said, leaning over to expose the woman’s thigh. “A spot of dried blood about the size of a dime. It’s not splatter or contact residue. It looks deliberately placed.” The photographer eased in, snapping away at every angle. Rosales stood and scanned worried eyes around the scene. The tarp held mysteries for all of them. “As always, we’ll know more later.”

“A spot,” Lonergan said, glaring at Foster, “like on Ainsley’s jacket.” He paused to let the implication sit. “And he and Rimmer, who’s got a thing for red hair and whose ex is one of our victims, they’re both free as birds.”

“I’ve got no problem circling back to him,” Foster said. “He may be able to tell us more now.”

Lonergan pulled his eyes away from Foster’s to stare at Rea. “Let’s cover her up. Give her some dignity, huh?”

His sudden show of sensitivity surprised her.

“Don’t look so shocked, Foster.” Lonergan scowled, then turned and walked off, pulling his phone out of his pocket to make a call.

Rosales’s brows lifted. “Shocked me too.”

Foster stood by for quite a while watching the crime scene photographer record the scene. Two victims now. When the techs were through, when they’d done all they could for Mallory Rea, she stepped back and looked around for Lonergan. They needed to get moving. “Quick as you can, huh, Rosales? Thanks.”



The Ainsleys weren’t too happy to find the detectives on their doorstep.

“Oh, so now the harassment starts?” George Ainsley said as he stood in the doorway dressed for the office in an expensive suit, a designer watch the size of an old Kennedy half dollar on his wrist, looking every bit the successful lawyer paid thousands by billable hour.

He matched the neighborhood and the block, where the houses were big and quaint, where there were trees instead of gangways, family homes instead of drug dens.

“We’d like to speak with Keith,” Foster said.

“Better here than . . . you know,” Lonergan added.

George Ainsley smiled. It was a lawyer smile. The kind that oozed confidence, the kind that gave them reputations for being sharks and the devourers of imbeciles. It broadcast disdain without the man having to say a word. The elder Ainsley opened his mouth to tell Lonergan where to go, but Foster warded off what she imagined would have been a blistering retort.

“Just a short conversation,” she said. “You’ll be there. A few minutes and we’re out. There’ve been developments.”

They stood for almost a full minute before George stood back and let them in. “Ten minutes. Starting now.”

Keith Ainsley looked years older than the last time she’d seen him, wearier. His shoulders drooped, his skin looked dull, rough, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He obviously had not been sleeping. Or eating much, Foster assumed, as he stood before her with hollow cheeks, his eyes averted. It’d only been a couple of days since the Riverwalk. But it was a lot being handcuffed, questioned, and suspected of murder, even when you had lawyers for parents.

“Where were you last night, Keith? Around one a.m., specifically,” Foster asked when they were all assembled in the well-turned-out living room. The room smelled of oranges and flowers, and everything was light, bright, and expensive looking—the sofa, end chairs, coffee table, and lamps—all in the traditional style. There was also a shiny baby grand piano near a large wood-burning fireplace, and Foster wondered which of the Ainsleys played it. She stared at Keith, tucked between his parents, on the couch opposite her and Lonergan.