He grimaced, though his gaze was still on the notebook.
"You'd think Grey would have a credit ID somewhere, too, but apparently not."
The ice in her stomach stirred again, and her frown grew.
"But that doesn't make sense."
"Nothing in this case is making a lot of sense." He paused.
"Bingo. It appears your mysterious lover was telling the truth about his name."
He handed her the notebook. She quickly scanned the story, taking in the gruesome facts about the murder of his parents by rogue vampires, and the gutsy escape by him and his younger sister. Her gaze fell on the picture of the two of them. Grey was shielding his sister from the cameras, and the careful neutrality was in his eyes even then. Or maybe it was the blankness of shock. It couldn't have been easy to watch vampires tear your parents apart, then have to fight for yours and your sister's lives. Especially when you were barely ten years old.
She handed the notebook back to Jack. "What's the bar owner's name?"
A smile touched his lips. "Elizabeth Jane Magee—formally known as Elizabeth Jane McConnell."
"His sister." At least that explained Grey's certainty that the owner would not throw them out if security caught them doing the sexual tango on the dance floor.
Jack nodded. "She obviously didn't trust our ability to solve this case and called in her brother."
"Well, in some respects she was right, because we're really no closer now than we were at the beginning." They might have a scent, but a scent wasn't much good if you couldn't find the source.
"No—" A beep cut across the rest of his words. Jack stopped and pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.
"Senior detective Jack Turner speaking."
He listened, his expression getting darker with every passing second. The ice in Eryn's stomach grew tighter. She knew, without even asking, what had happened.
She closed her eyes as he hung up, and wished she could just block her ears. She didn't want to hear what Jack was about to say. She really didn't.
"The killer has struck again," he said softly. "Genny Jones was just found dead in her apartment."
Even with full shields up, the smell of death and blood and sheer evil was so thick in Genny Jones's apartment that Eryn had to fight the urge to spin around and walk out. She was no stranger to death, had seen it many times—and in many forms—in her years at the coroner's office, but these deaths had the power to get to her. Maybe because the killer was taking away the very things that made the victims women—
and that was something any woman would react to.
She followed Jack into the bedroom. The forensic team was still here, so she stopped at the door, keeping her hands in her coveralls even though she wore gloves. Genny Jones's body had not yet been taken away, and like the previous victims, there was enough evidence in the rumpled state of the bed to indicate lovemaking had occurred. Eryn suspected that the samples being taken from the body would confirm this, and that the DNA would match that found on the previous victims.
Her gaze skated from the shocked expression frozen forever on Genny Jones's face, to the bloody remnants of what had once been breasts down to the gaping hole in her stomach. Though she'd seen this all before, it had been via photos. No photo on Earth could ever really convey the sickening reality. Bile rose, and she swallowed heavily.
Grey had suggested that the killer was going after these women because they had what he could not—love, acceptance. Why, then, did the killer mutilate them like this?
It didn't make any sense. This was the act of someone who hated women—or at the very least, hated the things that made them women.
Jack stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face her. His expression was grim. "The scent the same?"
She nodded. "It's stronger than before. He can't have been gone all that long."
"Time of death was ten thirty-five. My people got here at ten forty." Jack's hand rose, as if to thrust his fingers through his hair before remembering that he wore the coveralls and plastic hood. "Damn it, we were watching all the entrances.
None of the men Genny Jones had been seeing entered or left the building."
"Remember what he is. He could have assumed the shape of anyone living in this building. All he'd have to do was brush past him."
"Problem with that is the fact that the only men who entered were accompanied by women. Those men live here with the women that accompanied them. We've checked.
They're all here, and none of them moved from their apartments."
"Then how did the killer get in without being seen? Or out?" She glanced toward the window.
"Not via them," Jack commented, obviously guessing her thoughts. "They're locked. Besides, we have cams in the building opposite."
"And you didn't see the killer?"
"Blinds were drawn in the bedroom."
"What about infrared?"
His expression, if anything, grew grimmer. "It shows them making love. It wasn't until the bedroom team made their regular check-in that anyone realized the man making love to her hadn't been seen walking into the building."
"You obviously got people over here quickly."
"But not quick enough." Jack's cell phone beeped, and he paused to answer it.
A prickle of unease skated across her skin as his expression became slightly incredulous. She crossed her arms, waiting as he told whoever was on the other end of the phone to wait where they were and he'd be right there.
"What?" she said, the minute he hung up.
He shook his head in disbelief. "One of my men has just interviewed a women four apartments down who swears a naked and bloody Genny Jones attacked her—two minutes after Genny Jones apparently died."
Eryn blinked. "Impossible."
Jack's smile was wry. "Normally, I'd think so too, but nothing in this case would surprise me any longer. Let's go talk to her."
He waved her forward, and she turned, leading the way out of the apartment, relieved to be leaving the scent of death and blood and evil. A detective stood at the door four apartments down, and he gave them access without saying a word.
Eryn paused, allowing Jack to head in first. But she'd barely crossed the threshold when the smell hit her.
The killer had been in this apartment.
She bit her lip, holding back the information as Jack questioned the old women. He got the same information his detective probably had—Genny Jones had knocked on the apartment, begging to be let in, stating that there was a man in her apartment trying to kill her. The old women had let her in and was promptly attacked and knocked unconscious. By the time she came to, there was police everywhere. Eryn rubbed her arms and met Jack's gaze. "The killer used this apartment to clean himself up."
"Probably. That doesn't explain how he escaped. Or why Genny Jones walked into this apartment a few minutes after she'd apparently died."
"No." She hesitated. "I think we need to look at the tapes."
Because she had a horrible suspicion about what was going on.
And if she was right, then Grey had lied to her.
Again.
Jack studied her for a moment, then nodded and moved past her, leading the way out of the apartment and across to the truck parked discretely in a shadowed alley.
"Which tapes," he said, sliding a chair across to her while he sat in the other spare one.
"Try the entrance tapes, twenty minutes before the bedroom team report in."
Jack raised an eyebrow, but all he said was, "John?"
One of the men manning the com-screens nodded. After a few seconds, images appeared on some of the screens above them. She watched silently. About ten minutes in, she saw what she was looking for. "Freeze it," she said, and rose, pressing a finger against the screen. "Recognize her?"