Chapter 5                 

Nicholas

 

I didn't know what I expected, but definitely not a living version of the victims. I had seen six bodies just like hers lie down on the cold slab in the Medical Examiner's office. I had seen doctor Bachman cut open six bodies like the one in front of me. I had looked through the personal belongings of six girls and imagined their lives before they had been cut short by a sick and twisted man.

Jackson had made the right call. A girl like her would push all the right buttons with Dvorak. She was the right person to incite him, and I was the right person to understand him. This case had landed on my desk almost a year earlier, and while I had cleared other cases, this one kept piling corpses and I kept diving deeper into the killer's mind. I shook her hand, I pretended that everything was fine while saying it was nice to meet her, and I silently began to worry that I might not function well without Katherine by my side.

I had to find something that would separate her from the victims. The long blond hair tied up in a ponytail, the tanned skin, the toned body, the bright smile - everything I had seen in the selfies on the victims' cellphones. My eyes caught on her mouth. I ignored the pouty, sensual, kissable lips, focusing instead on the fine trace of white powder on her upper lip. I had noticed that sometimes about Katherine after we raided our favorite doughnut place but I had never felt the urge to wipe the sugar with my thumb. I was getting into a fatherly character far too early with this girl.

"You both worked undercover before, so I trust you to create a compelling cover story. It's a high profile case so it will take at most a couple of days to go through the red tape. Use this time to work on the story."

And just like that, we were dismissed. Katherine lead the girl to our desks.

"Do you want a coffee, Skye?" she asked.

The girl shook her head and her smile brought my gaze back to the sugar on her lip. Before we got called back to Jackson's office I had looked her up. What kind of a name was Skye anyway? And what kind of parents with the surname Walker would name their child Skye? As if she heard my thoughts, Katherine asked her about her name. Katherine is great at putting people at ease when she wanted to. She was even better at rattling suspects and being the most terrifying five feet two badass.

"So… Skye Walker. I've always meant to ask about your name."

She sighed. She probably got that a lot.

"Yes, I know. My parents asked my brother's input. They were aware of the Star Wars thing but they didn't care it might sound weird. They're kind of hippies," she said as a tentative explanation. "They gave up their corporate jobs when my brother was born and they moved into a commune. "

"What's his name?" I asked.

She looked at me with a twinkle in her warm brown eyes the color of old, good whiskey.

"Jack," she said. " Jack Inigo Walker," she added and I could hear the suppressed laughter in her voice.

Katherine snorted and I couldn't help but smile.

"Inigo? Like in Princess Bride?" I asked.

The girl nodded.

"What's your full name then?"

"Joan Skye," she said with a shrug. "I was Joan through high school and college but when I joined the Academy, I decided to embrace Skye to reassure my parents that I'm not becoming a crypto fascist."

I made a note that she had chosen to go by her weird name. Under all that model police officer façade, she was not a conformist. The Walkers themselves sounded like an interesting but tight knit family. Was she going to have trouble acting like my estranged daughter?

"You should let them know you will be out or reach for a few days," I said. "And anyone else who might worry if you disappear."

A shadow passed across her features so fast I wondered if I had really seen it.

"I will, right before we go dark," she said.

Go dark. That was an unusual phrase. It didn't sound like the sort of terms used in the Vice squad. It was probably from the movies. She was so young.

"Let's go talk details," Katherine said. "Interrogation two is free."

Skye bounced out of her chair. By the time I gathered my notes and packed the file she was already half way across the squad room. Where did this girl get the energy? Her ponytail swung left and right like a metronome, and I began to hum a tune to that rhythm. I got it under control by the time the door closed behind us.

"We thought that a good cover story would be that you moved back in with your dad after you graduated from Berkeley."

"I graduated like five years ago. No one will believe I'm 19," she said.

Katherine and I shared one of our looks that save us from talking in front of suspects. Skye picked up on it.

"What?" she asked looking from Katherine to me.

"You can pass for 19, but it's not that important. Let's say you worked back east but you quit your job after your mother died to be with your father," Katherine said and I was grateful. I felt silly enough to realize that I can't judge my partner's age very well, although I actually knew the real number.

"Oh," she said and sadness fell on her beautiful features.

My heart shrunk and instinctively I wanted to put an arm around her shoulders.

"Did it look right? Or I should act all brave to be more helpful with daddy's grief?"

I reeled at the change. She was good! I'm trained to read people and I bought her sadness. If that was the only revelation, I'd feel a lot better about the mission. Unfortunately, something I didn't want to acknowledge jolted inside me when she said daddy.

It was too late to turn back now. I was stuck with the mission I wanted, with the perfect partner as bait for one of the most sadistic murderers I had seen in my twenty-year career.

"You did great," Katherine said. "It will work on Dvorak and his daughter, but make sure you don't do it too often."

Skye reached across the table and ran her fingers through the documents in my folder. I pushed it toward her but she ignored me. She fished out a photo of Anna Dvorak, and twirled it in her long elegant fingers, looking at it, then turning it toward me, looking at it, showing it to me. I put my hand over hers to stop the motion. She dropped the photo but she didn't pull her hand away. The girl's photo was on the table between us. She looked like the five dead girls and like the ball of energy whose hand I was still holding. I let it go and expected her to pretend that nothing happened.

"They all look like her. And she looks like me."

"Yes," Katherine said in the tense silence. "We'll be there. We'll keep you safe."

"If you want out," I said but she interrupted me.

"No. It's ok. We have to get this guy."

She was right, but that didn't make it any easier. In my mind, I was already too close to the killer. On top of that I wasn't going to have Katherine close enough to keep me grounded and I had to take care of a rookie. So what if her file said she had undercover experience? From where I stood, she seemed too young for comfort. Her next words and her whiskey colored eyes brought the pressure on even harder.

"I trust you."