The Deepest Cut Read online

  Fourteen-year-old Emily leaned against a counter, arms folded across her chest, head tilted down, peering at the bag from the corners of her eyes. In contrast to her mother, who was all about action, Em was the more introspective member of the household of two.

  “Mom, is that the shirt he was wearing when he attacked you?” Vining exhaled, relaxing a little. Leave it to Em to cut to the quick of the matter. The bag held a garment: a pale yellow, polo-style knit shirt, size large. On its breast was an embroidered logo of a lamb dangling from a ribbon— the insignia of Brooks Brothers. The shirt alone couldn’t hurt them. It was ordinary. Nothing that would draw most people’s attention. For Vining, however, it was consistent with her memory of the man who had been wearing it when he’d ambushed, stabbed, and almost murdered her. For just over two minutes, he had murdered her. Flatlining, she’d been sent on a journey from which she’d yet fully to return. He was not merely a bad man; he was Vining’s and Emily’s personal bad man. And so they had given him a name: T. B. Mann. The Bad Man.

  The only thing that did make the shirt extraordinary was the thickly caked dried blood that had saturated the front and trailed down the back. Vining was sure it was her blood. Testing would prove that T B. Mann had been wearing that shirt when he’d plunged a knife into her neck after first slicing and disabling her gun hand. The incident had happened in June, the previous year. For nearly a year, she’d been on Injured on Duty leave.

  Her scars were still pink. There was a diagonal slash across the back of her right hand and a long garish scar on her neck that started behind her left ear and disappeared beneath her shirt collar. That was the one that garnered stares, and helped strangers place her as the cop who’d let herself get ambushed. That cruel judgment held truth. She had hesitated during her confrontation with T B. Mann, and consequently he’d been able to stab her and flee, leaving her for dead. Her body had complied for two minutes. She often felt her mind was still trying to claw its way back from the other side.

  Just as spilled blood had created something horrifying out of a mundane shirt, it had also transformed an outwardly mundane human being. There had been nothing remarkable about T B. Mann apart from the coldness in his eyes. She’d detected the coldness even through the dark brown contact lenses that she’d later assumed he’d been wearing to complete his disguise.

  Even as blood poured from her wounds, Vining had sought to get a good look at him, knowing that if she survived, she’d need an accurate description to track him down. She’d also had little choice. After he’d stabbed her, the knife jutting from her neck, he’d tightly held her, like a lover. She’d felt his moist, mint-scented breath on her face as he gazed into her eyes. He was panting, his face flushed, as if they’d been engaged in a sexual act. She could have looked away, but Vining hadn’t, thinking those cold eyes might be the last thing she’d ever see.

  She knew that he wouldn’t take his eyes off her until he was forced to. He had lived for that moment, watching the life drain from her. He’d released her when he’d heard her backup arrive, gently letting her slip to the floor, she thought with great regret at not being around to observe her stepping away from this life. Then he’d successfully executed a well-planned escape and was gone.

  She had many memories of that day— some clear, some hazy. One that was decidedly clear and as unsubtle as a baseball bat was his erection pressing against her belly. Of course he would get off on his triumph of having ensnared her. That was what defined him. That was what made this ice-eyed nobody into somebody. The sick fuck.

  Vining vowed to take that from him and more.

  She answered her daughter with a fib. “It might be the shirt he was wearing. Testing will show whether that’s my blood.”

  Emily had found the shirt among dirty sheets and towels in a basket on top of the washing machine in the garage. It was nine o’clock on a school night, and she had gone to fold the clothes that she had left in the dryer. Deciding to empty the basket, she saw the shirt when loading the washer.

  Vining had cleared the garage, house, and yard, service revolver in hand. Instinct told her this was a low-risk operation. Whoever had left the shirt was long gone. The shirt was a boast. A power play. T B. Mann didn’t want to get caught. That was the stuff of fiction. Killers like him loved their craft and planned to keep at it as long as they could.

  He was playing with her, inciting fear, keeping her off-kilter, like a terrorist. He couldn’t leave her be. Vining was both T B. Mann’s greatest failure and achievement.

  Pinching a small corner of the shirt between her thumb and index finger, she’d carried it into the kitchen and deposited it in a paper grocery bag. It was important evidence— the best piece she’d had in a long time. Even though it repulsed her, she had to handle it with respect. Beyond its evidentiary value, its appearance in her garage was important for another reason. It revealed a flaw. It showed that he was as obsessed with her as she was with him. Flaws in a nemesis were good. They could be fatal.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out the best ways to get to her. Her home. Her daughter. Just a few days ago, he’d made a veiled threat against Emily. He’d left a note for Vining at L.A. County General Hospital, where she’d put a goofball she was convinced was T. B. Mann’s minion, under psychiatric evaluation. The goofball wouldn’t speak. Even though he had a talent for drawing, the Pasadena Police couldn’t get him to write his name, so they nicknamed him Nitro. T. B. Mann had known she’d return to Nitro at the Big G, again taking advantage of his bland appearance to slip in and out without anyone taking notice. The note he’d left her had been written on a panel card in his usual fountain pen. The jerk favored fine inks and papers. The note read:

  She didn’t want to admit how well his strategy had worked. It had taken massive self-control for her to quiet her trembling heart and hands and to remain focused. She couldn’t afford to let her rage get out of control, to let him goad her into making mistakes, to let him lead her into yet another ambush. She had to steel herself and stay the course, making slow and steady progress, tracking him via a trail of dead female cops and pearl necklaces.

  Skein by skein, she wove a tapestry, built a web, one thread leading to another. Some she’d found via solid investigative techniques. Some had been thrown into her lap. She wondered why. Some, she’d broken the law to get, knowingly and with forethought. She’d even lied to her PPD partner, Jim Kissick, and her supervisor, Sergeant Kendra Early violating both her sworn oath and her own ethics. She hadn’t fully plunged into his murky slime pit, but she’d danced along the edge.

  But the world was turning, casting light in his direction, chasing shadows into the corners where he lurked. Every clue she tracked down, every victim of his she located, made the light grow brighter. As she circled him, drawing nearer, pulling the noose tighter, she felt him stirring in the shadows, throwing out his own sticky skeins of spider’s silk. He wanted her to know that he was lurking outside her window, watching her dance alone. He wanted to dance, too, with her, ultimately dragging her headlong into his stinking morass.

  She saw evil as a parasite on good. Without good, evil would not exist. Without her, what would he be?

  She’d had a nice life before he’d burst into it. Once he was dead— his violent death was the only suitable end she’d envisioned for him— she could resume her life. Couldn’t she?

  She wished Kissick were here right now. Wanted his strong, calm presence near her. They were work partners and, recently, much more. She looked at the clock on the microwave oven and wondered what was taking him so long.

  The mother of Emily’s school friend was also coming by, to pick up Emily for the night, giving Em a reprieve from this house of horrors. Giving Vining a reprieve from her daughter’s questions, for which she had few good answers.

  Emily clutched herself tighter. “So T B. Mann was here, right?” She was a younger version of Vining, nearly as tall, and shared her lanky form, dark hair, pale skin, and deep-set, green-gray eyes.


  “I doubt it, sweet pea.” Vining ran her fingers through her straight, nearly black hair, which fell past her shoulders. She dug a rubber band out of the odds-and-ends drawer. Using the glass door of the microwave as a mirror, she fashioned her hair into a ponytail. She gave herself a hard look. She was only thirty-four, but she thought she’d aged considerably over the past year. She rubbed the back of her long neck, which was moist with perspiration.

  The windows were open, the air-conditioning was off, and the night air was cool. She and Em had been enjoying a quiet evening at home before T B. Mann had again upended their lives.

  “I don’t think he would take such a risk, showing up here.” Vining was fibbing again. She thought it was exactly the sort of thing he’d do. If T B. Mann himself hadn’t brought the shirt onto her property, maybe he’d sent Nitro, the silent, mysterious, pale, gangly young creep who had literally streaked into their lives a few weeks ago. Vining had temporarily ensnared him in the Big G’s psych ward, but he had slipped away and disappeared.

  “Why now?”

  Vining raised a shoulder and shook her head.

  “Mom, something’s happening and you’re not telling me.” Emily’s eyes welled with tears. Lately she was quick to become emotional. A surge of hormones was stealing away Vining’s sweet baby girl.

  Vining reached toward her daughter. “Em—”

  “You’ve been acting strange, Mom. I know you’re hiding something. You used to tell me everything.”

  “Yes, and that was a mistake.” After she’d been injured, Vining had confided in her daughter about her hopes and fears, and her theories about T. B. Mann. She’d been weak to latch on to Em, who was not only the person closest to her, but also the purest soul. While she would never do anything to put her daughter in danger, she’d since put Emily on a need-to-know basis.

  “If everything’s okay, why do you want me to stay at Aubrey’s house tonight?” Emily’s gaze burned with indignation. “You always said that T. B. Mann wouldn’t come around here. Now everything’s changed. I have a right to know, Mom.”

  Vining closed her eyes. “Em, please …”

  They heard a car pull up in front, followed by a toot of its horn.

  AFTER VINING HAD LOADED EMILY INTO THE CAR AND EXCHANGED PLEASANTRIES with Aubrey and her mom, she returned to the kitchen.

  The house was silent.

  She took out tongs from a drawer and used them to take the shirt from the bag. She held it in front of her. There was a lot of blood on it, but she’d left much more on the floor of the kitchen in the house at 835 El Alisal Road.

  She had deconstructed the events of her ambush until it was robbed of nearly all its emotional power. One component, the diamond core of rage, had resisted the hammer and chisel. Some things refused to be pounded into oblivion by sheer will.

  The veneer of control she’d clung to while Emily was there dropped away. Throwing down the tongs, she grabbed a knife with a six-inch blade— the same size as the one he’d used to stab her. Her rage gained speed, like a runaway train. She grabbed the shirt and marched from the kitchen, through the TV room, and into the living room. Adrenaline made her legs tremble. She flung open the sliding glass door with a bang, sending it shaking in its frame.

  Her better angel warned her to calm down. Giving in to her rage was not productive. She was being careless with important evidence. Plus, revealing herself to him like this only played into his sick fantasies. The Magic Eight Ball of her conscience warned: If you’re not careful, he’ll win.

  Her dark angel did not heed the warning. This scenario was being played out with greater frequency. Part of her felt she was on the road to ruin. Part of her didn’t care.

  From her hillside home, the twinkling lights of the hindquarters of Los Angeles were splayed out off her right shoulder, stretching like a giant river to the distant ocean. Wind chimes hanging from a rod above the sliding glass door began to ring vigorously in the still air.

  She didn’t turn to see what was disturbing them. She knew she was being sent a message from the friendly ghost of murdered LAPD vice officer Frances “Frankie” Lynde. Vining had more than just solved Frankie’s murder, she’d meted out justice, yet Frankie’s spirit still did not rest. Vining interpreted the pealing wind chimes as a warning. She ignored it.

  Grabbing the shirt, she held it in front of her and struggled to stab the fabric with the knife. She couldn’t do it. She set the shirt on the railing, pulled the fabric tight with one hand, and stabbed it with the other. She pulled up the shirt, pierced by the knife, and held it like a flag, putting it on display for the illuminated city.

  “Do you see me?” she yelled.

  Her mind felt bubbly, like her brains had been replaced with champagne.

  “Do you hear me?”

  Dogs started barking. Lights went on in nearby houses.

  She raged on. “See me now. Hear me now. You’re going down. You are going down!”

  She stabbed the knife with the shirt attached into the wooden railing. The knife wobbled with the force.

  Giving a final, fierce look at the nearby dark hills and the lights of the metropolis in the distance, she went inside.

  The silence was broken by the tinkling of the terrace wind chimes. The air was still, yet the chimes vigorously rang.

  THREE

  JIM KISSICK HELD UP THE BLOODY SHIRT BY THE SHOULDERS. HIS expression was grim as he fingered the hole in it. “This goes all the way through, like someone stabbed it or something.”

  “I did.” Vining realized she’d left the knife on the terrace. “Well, I put a knife through it.”

  He looked at her with those steady hazel eyes and nodded as if it all made perfectly good sense. After a moment, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She saw him let out a breath, measuring his next comment.

  He changed the subject. “You keep your garage door closed, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I watch when it opens and closes to make sure no one comes in. Something I started after the incident.” She and Emily had taken to calling T. B. Mann’s assault an “incident.” Other words were fraught with emotion. “He’s good at getting in and out of places without being seen. Em and I were gone for a couple of hours, running errands. I asked the neighbors if anyone saw anything. No one did. He could have worn a uniform, like from the gas company, or even posed as a cop. He wore a disguise at the El Alisal house to look like Dale David, the realtor who was selling the house. He had on a black wig and I’m convinced he wore brown contact lenses. His Brooks Brothers polo shirt was even the same kind that Dale David often wears.”

  Kissick dropped the gruesome shirt into a brown paper evidence bag he’d brought with him. “Forensics can send it to the county crime lab tomorrow.” Setting the bag on a kitchen counter, he walked to the door that led into the garage and went out, clicking on the light switch.

  Vining pulled a chair from the dinette set, dropped onto it, and held her head in her hands. She was embarrassed by her outburst on the terrace. She prayed none of her neighbors had heard her. What had gotten into her? Was she losing her mind?

  She listened to Kissick’s familiar footsteps in his favorite well-worn loafers as his long legs made quick work of the two-car garage. He opened and closed the door of her ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee.

  When she heard him return, she wiped away tears of anger and frustration. She tried to calm down, but couldn’t grab hold of her emotions. “He was here, Jim. Either him or his buddy, Nitro.”

  He stood near, not saying anything. She liked his quiet strength, the way his eyes spoke volumes while he remained silent. His thick, wavy, sandy brown hair was mussed on one side, revealing a shadow of the boy obscured by the man.

  She had made it on her own for a long time, needing no one, especially a man. Particularly a man. But now this man was in her life. He had been in her work life for several years as her partner. They had been lovers for a brief period
two years ago, and now, very recently, were again. She felt she wanted him wholesale, but could not allow herself to give in. She kept him at arm’s length for his own protection. She had to protect him from her.

  She raised clenched fists. Her rage took flight, like a kite catching the wind. “Jim, he was here, on my property. First, he sent Nitro to torment me, but that wasn’t enough. He had to get closer. He came here, close to Emily. Letting her find that … thing. He saved that shirt, the asshole. Who knows what else he did with it. And that note he wrote about Emily … If he wants to come after me, then come after me. Leave Em out of it. If his goal is to scare me, he’s doing a good job, I’ll give him that.”

  “Let’s put a patrol car on your house.”

  “Yeah, maybe, though I don’t think he’s stupid enough to come back. He wanted to make a point and he made it.”

  “He was stupid enough to put that shirt in your garage.” Kissick squatted down in front of her.

  She looked at his good, strong face, which she had only lately allowed herself to love again. “You know what the worst part is? The lying. I tell lies because of him. I lied to Emily about the shirt. She doesn’t even know about Nitro, finding him in Old Pasadena with his disgusting drawings. And I’ve lied to you …”

  She reached to smooth his errant patch of hair. “It’s like he’s split me into two people: the old Nan, and someone else whose morals are compromised. Someone like him.”

  Her face grew pinched with the confession. Kissick had discovered one of her lies by accident, but there was more he didn’t know and that she didn’t want him to know. Revealing all her secrets would transfer the blackness onto him. She could be fired from the Pasadena Police Department for the things she’d done. Nan didn’t want to put Kissick in the position of having to choose between her and the career that he loved so much. Since they’d resumed their relationship, he’d not mentioned pursuing a promotion to sergeant, something he used to talk about a lot. She was already standing in his way.