Chapter 1

Bob Duncan ran his hand through his hair and shrugged his shoulders to ease the weight of the Sig Sauer in the shoulder holster under his left arm. He sighed. Another rape in a high rise apartment building. When would women learn to take precautions in a neighborhood that had hosted four rapes in the last three months?

He reviewed the evidence in his head. Purse on the counter in the kitchen, cash and credit cards still in it. Expensive electronics still on the shelves. It wasn't a burglary-turned-rape. Whoever had done this hadn't been looking for money.

He pulled open the doors to the jewelry box on the dressing table against one wall. He was pretty sure what he'd find, but he had to look. Yes, it was still there, a mixture of costume jewelry and some very nice, expensive pieces. One necklace, with a gorgeous oval opal in the center, surrounded by rubies and diamonds, had to be worth a thousand. Something silver gleamed, further back in the drawer. He pulled it open and saw a cigarette lighter, probably sterling silver. He picked it up. It was expensive, and engraved. "LJG" in flowing script. He tried the lighter and it ignited instantly. He examined it, curiously. It was a butane model, and the gas usually escaped when one lay around for a long time. He hadn't seen or smelled any evidence that a smoker lived in this apartment. No ashtrays ... no smoker's candles ... no packs of cigarettes, either full or empty. Nothing in the trash. He knew. He'd searched the trash himself.

On impulse he removed the drawer and peered behind it. There it was. His fingers were almost too big to dig it out, but he managed. Virginia Slims. Female brand. He smelled the pack, which was missing four or five cigarettes. They weren't fresh, but they hadn't been in there for months either.

Secret smoker, he decided. He kept going through the jewelry box. In one drawer there was an old driver's license and some pins, like they gave to high school kids to put on letter jackets. He looked at the license, to find a fresh-faced pretty girl smiling back at him. Lacey Jean Griggs, age sixteen. Lacey Jean Griggs had saved her very first driver's license. He looked at the picture again. The girl in the photograph wasn't smiling any more. Not now. Not at the hospital, after being raped.

He shook it off. He needed to get moving. He'd taken the pictures, identified the visible evidence, and walked through the crime scene. He needed to get out of the way so the crime scene techs could start collecting the evidence. The victim was at the hospital, being processed, and he needed to get to her, to get her story before anyone contaminated her testimony.

He'd been assigned to the Sex Crimes Unit for three years, but it already felt like three decades. The first thing he'd been surprised about, when they moved him from Property Crimes to Sex Crimes, was the number of women who yelled rape, when they meant something else entirely.

His inspection of this scene had told him immediately that it was a legitimate complaint. The place had a feminine, neat appearance, or had, until someone had been thrown around in it, knocking furniture askew, breaking a vase, and even knocking a hole in the sheetrock of one wall. It was clear that something had taken place on the bed, which was rumpled, and had a large wet stain in the middle of it. The UV light had indicated it was body fluids, but he didn't know what kind. He'd learned a long time ago not to assume there was semen in those stains. Body fluids ... yes ... semen ... not necessarily.

It had been called in as a rape, by the paramedics, who had answered a 911 call from a neighbor, who found the victim's door open and heard her moans.

Bob had talked to the neighbor already. Vivian Gage, divorced, the kind of typical nosy neighbor that detectives everywhere thanked God for every time they prayed. Vivian Gage had informed him that Mister Fetterman was away on business, and had identified the victim as "That sweet, dear Lacey" of the same last name. It was Vivian who said she'd complained to the super about how the door at the back of the building didn't close properly, but, of course, he was too miserly to fix the lock.

On his way to his car, he stopped by that door ... just in case. The Fetterman's door had not been forced. She had opened the door, or it had been unlocked. In this part of town, you'd think that wasn't likely. It was more likely she had opened the door, which meant she'd buzzed her attacker in too. She would know who he was.

The door looked OK. He pulled on the handle and it swung inward. He peered at the latch. It looked fine. Working the handle on the inside showed that the latch went in and out properly. The outside handle was, in fact, locked. Why had it opened, then? He bent over and used his pen light to look at the striker plate. A wad of duct tape had been forced in the detent. That would prevent the latch from extending into the detent, which effectively rendered the lock useless.

Somebody had wanted to be able to get in without a key. But that someone had to be inside the building to sabotage the lock. That meant someone in the building had, at one time or another, invited him in.

Of course it could have been any of a hundred delivery persons or maintenance contractors. There had to be a thousand people who'd been in the building who didn't actually live there. Some of them jimmied locks like this, for their personal convenience, so they didn't have to get buzzed in every single time they went in and out, on perfectly legitimate business. The tape was circumstantial, but not necessarily put there by the rapist. He took the duct tape as evidence anyway. Maybe he'd get lucky. Tape retained fingerprints really well, sometimes. As usual, the list of potential suspects was longer than a ten dollar hooker's rap sheet.

The first thing he checked at the hospital was whether a rape kit had been done on the victim, and who had done it. They didn't have a dedicated nurse on staff for this kind of thing, and some nurses felt like it was too intrusive to process the whole kit. A lot of valuable evidence had been lost by combs not used and swabs not taken. He saw it was Cindy who had done the kit. She was good. He'd have to remember to buy her coffee, or maybe flirt with her a little bit. She was married, but she was also cute and friendly.

Bob was not married. He'd gone straight from college, with a proudly won criminal justice degree, straight into the police academy, where he found out his degree was basically worthless. They didn't care what he knew. They taught it to him all over again ... their way. Still, he knew all the precedents for search and seizure, and interviews and interrogations, so the coursework was easy. The physical part had been easy too, thanks to his love of tennis and racquetball.

Then he had been immersed in the real school ... the streets of a major metropolitan city. It was there he had learned there were four basic types of people.

There were your hardcore criminals, who didn't care about anything or anybody but themselves. Statistically, twenty percent of them were responsible for eighty percent of all crime. Those twenty percent were the ones he thought about at the firing range. If you could put a dent in that twenty percent, you made a real difference in the world. But you only caught a few of them, and made it stick. The rest of the hardcore types were who he dealt with on a routine kind of basis. He knew all of them, and they knew him. It was a game they all played. Cops and robbers ... all grown up.

Then there were your basic ordinary, everyday people who succumbed to temptation, or greed, or jealousy, and did something stupid. They weren't really dangerous to society. They were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong attitude. Prisons were full of them, which was why there was no room for the hardcore types.

The third basic type were what Bob thought of as professional victims. They lived their sad lives in such a way that they were always being preyed upon. Wives who wouldn't leave an abusive husband ... homeless people who could have a home and a job, if they had the drive to do that ... hookers, who wouldn't take advantage of opportunities to learn a new trade, and the raft of believers that you could get rich quick, with little or no work involved.

Finally, there were ordinary Joes and Janes, who just wanted to get through the day, without bothering anybody else and without being bothered. They had values and lived by them. They stopped at red lights at two in the morning, when there was no traffic in sight. They worked hard and played when they could, and raised kids and volunteered at the PTA, or the Library, or any of a double dozen other places where they could feel like they were trying to be good citizens.

That last group comprised about ninety-five percent of society. Just about all their woes could be blamed on the other five percent. Majority rules. Yeah ... right.

Bob reviewed what was available. The lab results weren't done yet, of course. It would take a day or two for that. He asked where he could find Lacey Fetterman and was given an exam room number.

Both women in the room jumped when he opened the door, and then remembered to tap. The younger one, fully dressed and sitting in a chair, jumped up perkily and extended her hand.

"I'm Teresa Green," she said importantly. "I'm Lacey's advocate."

Bob sighed inside. He'd hoped he could get to the victim before the rape advocate got there. He ignored Teresa Green, and looked at the woman on the exam table, wrapped in a hospital gown. She looked vaguely familiar. That didn't mean anything. Everybody looked vaguely familiar. You remembered the bad guys. Everybody else—even people you'd met and chatted with—didn't need to take up storage space in your memory.

"Detective Duncan," he said, displaying his badge. "Mrs. Fetterman?" he asked, formally.

"Yes." Her voice was soft and sounded sad. They always sounded soft and sad.

"I know you've been through a lot," he said, going into his routine spiel. "But I need to ask you some questions. I'd like to catch the man who did this to you."

"All right," she said, her voice cultured.

He noticed that. Most rape victims came from the ordinary ranks of ordinary women, who wouldn't stand out in a crowd for any particular reason. But you couldn't go by appearance, of course. Any woman, from a pre-pubescent child to an eighty-nine year old great grandmother, could end up in this situation. Background didn't tell you much.

Body language, though, spoke loudly, regardless of background. This woman, under the visible bruises, scrapes and pallor, with her long black hair askew, would be beautiful again in a week or two. When the bruises and scrapes healed, she'd be a babe. The way she sat showed the kind of strength that suggested she was used to being confident and in control of her destiny. Her feet hung limply, as opposed to swinging or moving constantly, which would indicate that she was nervous or bored. Her hands gripped the edges of the bed, on either side of her, but she wasn't white-knuckled. She wasn't crying, but that didn't mean anything. Shock did strange things to a person and masked true emotions. All her body language told him right now was that she wasn't terrified and was open to his presence.

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