Chapter 10

There were few things Lilly Rush hated more than being stirred out of her slumber. She had learned to put up with it, working homicide and all—the practically springing out of bed straight into some gory crime scene at the first beep of her cell phone. But this type of call was a first.

"Lil," Stillman barked out, without so much as a greeting. "You okay?"

"Boss? Yeah, I'm fine." And sitting up in bed, wide awake in an instant. "What's going on?"

"We've received a threatening phone call from someone who says he's in your house."

Her body's response to these words could only be compared to being dunked in a well of icy cold water. The shivers were plentiful and irrepressible, even after she'd turned on the lights to find everything, in her room at least, undisturbed.

"We're coming over," Stillman ordered. "Stay in your room, lock the door and keep your gun with you. Don't come out till we get there."

Like hell.

She couldn't follow these very simple instructions, even knowing it was probably the safest and most sensible thing to do. There was just no way Lilly Rush was going to stand by and hide while her house was raided by some unknown punk. The nerve…!

Still… brave was the last thing she felt as she walked through every room, both upstairs and down, gun in hand, eyes peeled for any signs of a perpetrator. There were none.

Fifteen minutes later, the house was teeming with police. Lilly lingered by with Stillman while Vera and the others ransacked the house and found nothing.

"No signs of forced entry, nothing taken or disturbed," Vera affirmed. "This guy was never here. Not that we can tell, anyway. Son of a bitch was bluffing."

"Where's Jeffries and Scotty?" Lilly asked, trying to mask her uneasiness. She hated the idea of the one place she felt absolutely safe in—her home—being overrun and violated like this. A whole bunch of strange uniforms going through her things, scaring her cats… it was almost as bad as having someone break in in the first place.

"At headquarters, trying to trace the number. Scotty was the one who took the call."

"Scotty?" That was weird. Why would anyone call Scotty to threaten her? It wasn't like he was going to go overboard protecting her, the way they were getting along."What'd they say exactly?"

"Basically to back off the case or else," answered Stillman. "So it's pretty clear he has something to do with it."

"Voice sound familiar?"

"No, he used a distorter."

"Then how do you know it was a man?"

It was a simple question and shouldn't have prompted such a discomfited glance from both Vera and Stillman.

"It was mostly what he said," Stillman prevaricated hesitantly. "Of course we don't know for sure."

Lilly got the message. It must've been pretty bad for Scotty to set off the alarm like this, she marveled dolefully, running a tense hand through her already disheveled hair. Considering he hadn't given her the time of day lately, nothing short of a death sentence would've got past his monumental grudge. Not that she could really blame him. Odd how his betrayal with Christina and that offending secret he was never supposed to know no longer seemed so important.

If anything positive could be derived from this, it was at least comforting to know someone was feeling endangered by their investigation—that meant they had to be getting somewhere, didn't it? Even when it seemed they weren't. People didn't just go around making idle threats. They stepped forward only when they were so desperate they'd risk anything to avoid getting caught… including getting caught. It was the great criminal paradox.

When people felt vulnerable, they made mistakes—and if any had been made here, no matter how small, they'd be able to pin them down and nail the bastard.

Stillman's next comment was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky.

"We're posting someone at your house, Lil."

"What? Boss, no!" Lilly's heart sank. Some rookie cop snooping through her drawers, watching her TV while she was at work! As if it weren't bad enough they'd just seen her in her bathrobe. "Come on, you said so yourself—he was only bluffing."

"It was a serious threat, Lil. And we're not planning on backing off this case, so you and Scotty need some sort of protection. It won't be long—only till we catch this guy."

"I can take care of it," insisted Lilly frantically, though she knew, by the hard finality of Stillman's voice, he wouldn't be moved. It was the right call, anyway—if it had happened to any of the other guys, she'd be doing exactly the same. But the thought of losing her precious privacy was just too awful to be quietly consented to. "Nothing's gonna happen, boss. You know that."

"They already broke into your house once, Lil," Stillman sternly cut her off. "And your neighbors didn't see squat. Can't afford to lose anyone. Someone's staying here and that's final."

"Boss—that was Scotty," Vera put in from the next room, cell phone in hand. "They've traced the call and want us over there pronto."

Might as well go, Lilly sighed. This night is shot anyway. And I don't feel like sticking around and playing hostess to my new bodyguard. "Just give me a minute while I change," she muttered sourly.

The call had been made from some pay phone across town. No one was there by the time they reached it, evidently—and CSU pulled over a dozen prints off it. Only three of them were in IAFIS, two of them were women, and the man was a 20-year-old who'd spent six months in jail for drug possession. It was fairly obvious none of them was their mysterious caller—but they'd all still have to be visited as soon as it was light.

"What a waste of time," Vera whined, and Scotty couldn't help but agree.

His glance kept straying toward Lilly, haggard and irritable at being dragged out of the house in the middle of the night, but whole and unharmed. Those minutes he'd waited in breathless apprehension for Stillman to call him back had been among the worst of his life, topped off only by the grim notice of Elisa's death. All the warm friendship and respect he'd felt for her at the beginning of their partnership came flooding back, along with the guilt of knowing if anything happened to her, their last words exchanged would have been in senseless anger and intransigence.

Now that she wasn't in direct danger anymore, he didn't really know how to proceed. She had acknowledged him on arrival, but nothing beyond the usual "morning". His pride wouldn't allow him to just bury the hatchet and forget everything that had transpired, especially since he wasn't in the wrong. But he could afford to let it simmer down and call it truce if she would. There were more important issues at hand, anyway.

At nine o'clock sharp Lilly and Vera left to interview the three identified suspects and a disconcertingly willing Dr. Swanson was brought in for the polygraph. It was just as well Lilly wasn't around to be exasperated by him—smug son of a bitch. He answered each and every one of the questions in a flawlessly calm, crisp voice, and had nothing but a leer for them when the results were inconclusive.

"Well, that helps a hell of a whole lot," Scotty grumbled, giving the nearest wastebasket a vicious kick as he turned away, crestfallen.

"Remember it wouldn't stand up in a court of law anyway," Stillman somberly consoled him. "You think he's the mysterious caller?"

Scotty glared at the aforesaid personage through the glass partition. "I don't know. Could've been anyone. Sure didn't sound like something he'd say, though. This jerk's much too full of himself to stoop to that kind of vocabulary."

"I got something," Jeffries announced, poking his head through the door. "Found Lisa Underwood. Called her school and it turns out she's been out of the country these past two years, getting some sort of Master's degree."

Well, ain't that just fine and dandy. "Son of a—" Scotty burst in frustration, his foot going for the wastebasket again.

"No, but she's back now. Just a few days ago. The principal gave me her new address."

Lisa Underwood was all wrong from the start. She had the wrong biotype—willowy, with long strawberry-blonde hair, glasses, and a figure that could never have borne nine months of carrying a pair of twins inside her. She was definitely better cut for a model than the elementary school teacher she was.

"Me, pregnant?" Her astonishment seemed sincere. Looking at her, Lilly couldn't help but believe her. "No, we never had any plans for it. Greg and I weren't that serious, really. We were just together for a while, we knew it wouldn't be forever. I work with children everyday—I know what happens when their parents are together for the wrong reasons. Wouldn't want that for my own."

"Why did you move out in April 2003?"

"We broke up," stated Lisa simply. "I had my Master's to go to and he didn't feel like tagging along. As I said before, we weren't really suited to each other. It was a nice neighborhood, full of families. But that kind of house is too large for just one person. So when we split up I left and I guess he must've followed soon after."

"We suspect the mother of the babies we found may have been one of Swanson's patients," Vera put in. "Did he ever bring any of his patients home, or did you ever catch him at anything suspicious with any of them?"

"No, Greg never took work home with him. Contrary to what it seems, he can be sweet when he wants to be. He was nice to the woman across the street when she lost her baby. He was the one who received her in the ER."

"So we hear," Vera remarked acidly.

Lilly shot him a glare that said: cool it. They'd have to play nice if they wanted to get anything useful out of this woman."Ever hear him mention anything about a pair of conjoined twins?"

"No, never. He knew I didn't like to talk about work. He…" Lisa paused for a second, fiddling with her shoe, as if debating whether to go on or not. "I know I said he was sweet sometimes, but other times he could be a real prick. I got sick of hearing the condescending way he ranted about his patients and his receptionist. It was one of the things that broke us up."

That I believe. In fact, Lilly was surprised they'd lasted long enough to move in together. Lisa didn't seem like the sort of woman who'd take crap from him. She wondered what she'd seen in him in the first place.

"How about your other neighbors, the Bryants? Did you know them?"

"Not much," Lisa admitted. "We kept to ourselves, mostly because we were both too busy to mingle much. And we stayed such a short time. I really don't think Greg ever talked to them or even saw them. And I only talked to them once."

"Who did you talk to?"

"The girl."

Vera pounced on this at once. "What girl?"

Lisa's brilliant blue eyes went round. "I don't even remember her name. A blonde girl, twenty, maybe twenty-two years old."

"When was this?"

"I don't know. March, maybe. Just a few weeks before I left. I'd seen her once before—around Christmas. I presumed she was a college kid home for spring break."

"What did she want?"

"Just some bleach. Apparently they'd run out. I let her borrow some."

Following a hunch, Lilly pressed on. "Did you let her in the house?"

"Yeah—some five minutes, maybe. Why?"

"Anything missing afterwards?"

"Not that I recall."

"Greg ever complain anything was missing around that time?"

Lisa scrunched up her face in concentration. "Well… there was this one thing, but we always thought he'd left it there himself."

"What?"

"Just this old tool he had. A relic of his grandfather's. An old Simpson forceps he kept stowed away in a little case. One day it just disappeared and turned up in his office a few days later. We figured he must've grabbed the case by accident and left it there. It wasn't like him to move it, but I'd been doing some cleaning and taken it out of the closet it was usually stored in."

Trying to conceal her mounting excitement, Lilly asked, "He still have it?"

Lisa shrugged. "I guess so. He was pretty attached to it. Me, I thought it was a little disgusting he kept it around. I mean—the thing had been inside who knew how many women! But he almost had a heart attack when he couldn't find it."