Agent Cowboy. Debra Webb
A couple of strands of hair. He reached for it. Pulled it loose from the grill and studied it. Blond. Fairly long.
“Whatcha got there?” Hargrove squatted down next to him. “You think the unit sucked those in from the floor or whatever?”
Trent shook his head. “I don’t think so. These two hairs were snagged on this metal edge where the grill frame fits into the duct.” He pointed to the spot where he’d pulled them loose. “I think they got caught there when someone stuck their head in here.”
“To change the filter maybe?” Hargrove suggested.
Trent shrugged. “Maybe.”
But whoever had changed the filter last hadn’t done a very good job, he didn’t bother to mention.
“You wanna go over to the morgue now?”
“Yeah.” Leaving the grill open, he stood. “I think I’ve seen all I need to here.” His gaze settled on the detective’s. “You got an evidence bag?”
“Sure.” Hargrove pulled a plastic bag from his jacket pocket and bagged the hair. “You want me to put it with the rest of the stuff forensics is going over?”
“Why not?”
DETECTIVE HARGROVE was a team player. Trent was glad for that. He wasn’t grandstanding and didn’t mind outside interference. Trent felt damn lucky. It rarely worked that way. Most cops didn’t like P.I.’s horning in on their cases. But then, he supposed, any sort of help would be a relief considering the way the senator was pulling rank.
The morgue was like all others. Cold, clinical and smelling of chilled flesh. Focusing on the task rather than the environment, Trent considered the bodies one by one. Jarvis and the FBI agent were pretty much what he had expected. The assistant, however, was not.
Trent walked all the way around the extended drawer and considered the victim from both sides. She looked older than twenty-two. A little tall for the description on her license as well. And the shape of the face wasn’t quite right.
“Has anyone identified the body?” Trent asked the detective who hovered a few feet away.
“Not yet. There’s no family other than a distant cousin who lives in Massachusetts. She’s flying in tomorrow to claim the body.”
Trent had a feeling she was going to be startled. “Did you print her or verify her identity with her dental records?”
The detective shrugged. “We haven’t got a response back yet on the request we put out for dental records and she doesn’t have any kind of record so she’s not in the fingerprint database. Printing her seemed pointless.”
When little was known about the victim and there was no family left behind to provide information, a request was sent to local dentists and physicians to see if the victim was one of their patients. But a response took time.
Trent surveyed the body again, his gaze going back to the eyes. “Contacts?” He nodded toward her eyes.
“Not according to the M.E.’s preliminary report. Full autopsies weren’t necessary since the cause and manner of death was obvious but he would have listed contact lenses in the abbreviated autopsy reports.”
Trent studied the color a bit closer. “Then why are her eyes brown when her driver’s license says she has hazel eyes?” His gaze shifted to the detective who didn’t bother to ask how Trent had gotten a look at her license. When he’d been a bounty hunter in Texas he’d had his sources. He’d wasted no time yesterday getting a copy of each victim’s driver’s license so he’d have a clean visual.
A frown had marred across Hargrove’s forehead. “I don’t know.” His gaze collided with Trent’s. “Are you suggesting that she isn’t Kelly Pruitt?”
Trent considered the body again, his gut clenching in anticipation. “Run her prints just in case.” She had similar blond hair to that of the image in Kelly Pruitt’s license photo as well as the hairs he’d collected from the grill over the duct at the office. “You might want to compare her hair with those we found, though it might not be relevant since the hair could be left over from a previous assistant.”
Hargrove swore. “The last assistant Jarvis employed was a brunette. I’ve already questioned her. If this woman isn’t Kelly Pruitt and we didn’t discover that fact until now, there’s going to be hell to pay.” He swore again. “And there was that 9-1-1 hang-up. We thought maybe she tried to call before she collapsed.”
Trent understood completely. He wouldn’t want to be in the detective’s shoes because he had a bad feeling that this body belonged to someone else.
If his instincts were on the mark, Kelly Pruitt was still alive. Out there. Somewhere.
The only question was whether she was hiding from the killer or abetting him.
KELLY’S EYES OPENED and she groaned.
The pages she’d printed out were plastered to her face, she realized with another groan. She raised up from the desk, peeling away the research she’d worked on until dawn. Felix the cat stretched and made a languid sound before leaping from the desktop and scurrying from the room. At least one of them had gotten some real sleep last night.
Her shoulders ached and her head throbbed dully. She should have stopped and gone to bed hours ago. Swiping a hand over her face, she sighed. But then sleeping would have allowed her to dream and she just hadn’t been ready to face those haunting nightmares again. The images from Friday evening poured one over the other into her mind. She banished them instantly and forced her cramped legs to hold up her weight as she pushed out of her chair.
She couldn’t say much for falling asleep at the computer, but at least the night had passed without her having to relive those horrors yet again.
She staggered to the bathroom and turned on the shower. The disk Ray had insisted she take home with her had revealed nothing as of yet. Access required a codeword. Hours of guesswork had not revealed the proper nine-letter word. She’d tried combinations of letters and numbers with no luck there, either. Whatever was on the file she couldn’t access it. Yet. She had no intention of giving up.
Her clothes left in a pile on the floor, she stepped into the shower and let the hot water sluice over her tired muscles. It felt like heaven after a long stretch in hell. Frustration at not being able to access the disk had sent her on another mission. She’d perused Ann’s inbox as a means of distraction. Her friend hadn’t received any new e-mails since last Thursday, which surprised Kelly just a little. The only interesting part of her exploration was the numerous cyber love letters from Romeo.
Kelly shivered when she thought of the man’s sexy style of delivery. He took even the most innocuous of comments to a whole new level. No wonder Ann had been enamored with him. She’d told Kelly she had herself an online romance going. Things had definitely been heating up. Though the two, apparently, had not shared actual personal data. Romeo had not revealed his real name, address or profession and, as far as Kelly knew, Ann hadn’t, either.
Of course, that was the safe way to handle the situation, but what was the point? Though Kelly had to admit that she found his e-mails titillating, how could they compare to the real thing? She washed her hair and lathered her body, her too vivid imagination conjuring the feel of strong arms and a hard male body. Unfortunately that couldn’t be faked in cyberspace.
After a quick rinse and toweling off, Kelly scrubbed the residue from the steam-fogged mirror and stared at her reflection. How in the world was she going to get her life back? Would the police listen if she simply came forward and announced that she was still alive and told them the truth about what really happened?
Or would a move like that simply get her killed?
She thought of the data she’d downloaded and printed from Ray’s files. Since he worked from home and the road quite often, he’d set himself up a way to access his files remotely. He’d