A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera) Read online

  Everyone stood in front of the wide flatscreen as it flickered to life.

  “. . . activity at the home of the Doyle family this afternoon,” a field reporter was saying into the camera. His graying brown hair ruffled in the breeze as he stood at the end of the driveway, the expansive house in the background.

  “That didn’t take long,” Nina said as the camera cut to footage that had obviously been shot earlier.

  The reporter was in the front courtyard of a neighbor’s home, speaking to a middle-aged woman. “What did you see today?” he asked before jutting the microphone toward her.

  She needed no further prompting. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the place since it’s been empty,” the woman said. “Today I saw a car and one of those big black SUVs pull up. A bunch of people got out of the vehicles and went inside. I called the police, and they told me it was one of their detectives and some FBI agents.”

  Wade shook his head. “Their next-door neighbor is Gladys Kravitz. The only thing she’s missing is a beehive and a housedress.”

  The reporter edged his response with a bit of drama. “The FBI?”

  She nodded vigorously. “That’s what they told me, so I was watching when they left, and I recognized one of them.”

  “Who?”

  Nina groaned, knowing what was coming.

  “That one they call the Warrior Girl.”

  “Special Agent Nina Guerrera?” the reporter asked.

  “That’s the one.”

  The screen cut back to the live shot with the reporter speaking directly into the camera. “We’ve contacted the Phoenix FBI field office, who confirmed they were working with local police on this case. They would not elaborate as to why a team of profilers would fly across the country to review the case in person.”

  There were so many things wrong with that statement Nina didn’t know where to begin. The reporter looked familiar, and she made a mental note of his name at the bottom of the screen.

  James Snead.

  The same reporter who had covered the first murder back when he was almost three decades younger and a good fifteen pounds lighter. Snead had interviewed neighbors then, too, and one of them had mentioned La Llorona, giving the case its creepy nickname.

  “What we do know is that profilers usually only get involved when there are a series of crimes to investigate,” Snead continued into the camera. “Which begs the question . . . Were the Doyles victims of a serial killer?”

  Kent swore as he clicked off the television. “The story is all over the local news now, but Channel Six had it first.”

  “So much for keeping this on the down-low,” Nina said. “Now the unsub knows we’re onto him.”

  “The PPD put out a news release characterizing the Doyle case as a triple murder before we got here,” Wade said. “So he knew he hadn’t fooled the police into buying the murder-suicide scenario in that case and in New York, but he had no way of knowing we matched this case to that one . . . or to any others.”

  “Until now.” Kent tossed the remote onto the nearest bed. “He has to assume we’ve connected the dots. And he has to be panicking.”

  “We have one advantage still left,” Nina said. “The unsub doesn’t know we are actually investigating two murders in Phoenix, and neither does the media.”

  Breck gave her a side-eye. “Yet.”

  “We need to ask the PPD to sit on that as long as possible,” Wade said. “I don’t want it getting out until we’re ready. The Llorona case was pretty famous locally back in the day from what we’ve heard. Pairing that with this one will complicate things.”

  Nina had no interest in being part of another headline-grabbing investigation. “And once word gets out—and it will—that there are also other cases around the country, the story’s going to go national, maybe international.”

  A few months ago, she’d gained notoriety as the Warrior Girl, which was the English translation of Nina Guerrera, when she confronted a different serial killer.

  “I’m okay with that happening,” Wade said. “But I want to be in control of the timing. We can use it to apply psychological pressure at the right moment.”

  “Well, we have four years to figure this out,” Breck said.

  Kent folded his arms. “Not necessarily. The unsub had a strict time frame, but now that everything is changing and we’re out in the open, he could adapt, make a move earlier to throw us off or regain the sense of control he believes he’s lost,” he said. “Bottom line, right now is when he will be at his most unpredictable . . . and most dangerous.”

  Chapter 10

  “Ooh, that poor family, isn’t it just awful?”

  He turned to his clients. “It certainly is.” He schooled his features to reflect his best approximation of sympathy mingled with concern.

  He had thought the couple would be in the bedroom longer. He’d told them he would wait in the kitchen to give them time alone to discuss things. In reality, he’d seen an alert about a breaking news story on the Doyle murders and couldn’t resist pulling out his iPad to watch the coverage on the six o’clock evening news.

  The husband treaded into the kitchen behind his wife, glanced at the screen, and scowled. “Seriously, what kind of deranged lunatic would kill a whole family?”

  It seemed appropriate for him to express some sort of outrage at this point. “Terrible.” He nodded. “Really makes you wonder.”

  His clients both responded with grave nods, apparently thinking that very thing. They had no idea he could answer that question better than anyone else. Certainly better than the FBI, who had sent the famous Warrior Girl to investigate. She and that profiler, Dr. Something-or-Other, thought they would get inside his head, track him down. “I don’t think so.”

  “Pardon?” the wife said to him.

  He hadn’t realized he’d muttered that last comment. Better distract them. He folded the cover of his iPad closed and stretched his mouth into a smile. “This is a real bargain. Good value for the money.”

  “We need to stick to our budget,” the husband said. “I’m not sure we need all of this.”

  “It does seem like a bit much,” the wife said. “We’re on a fixed income.”

  “But an exceptionally good income.” He glanced at the fruit bowl on the counter. Slightly off-center. He reached out to push it a bit to the left. “And some things are priceless, right?”

  “I don’t know,” the husband hedged. “Won’t it be hard to maintain?”

  “It’s perfect for you.” He moved the fruit bowl a fraction more to the left. “What if your children want to come visit? What if they want to bring the grandkids?”

  “But this is such a nice neighborhood,” the wife began. “We—”

  “Exactly,” he cut in. “Maybe they’d like to visit you in sunny Arizona when they’re sick of shoveling snow. You could offer them world-class golf, gorgeous scenery, and the best spa day they’ve ever had. All in a lovely, secure, and up-to-date home.”

  The wife slid her husband a sidelong glance. “What do you think?”

  Everyone had a weak spot, a leverage point, and he had just found theirs. They couldn’t resist the idea of lording it over their friends and family. They had moved to paradise.

  “What would the monthly payments be?” the husband asked.

  His smile widened. He would get them to sign today. Right now. “We’ll make sure everything fits into your budget.”

  While the couple jabbered on, he contemplated what he had just learned watching the news. That witless reporter had a point. If the FBI was involved, that meant the Doyle case was no longer just a local murder investigation. Could the police have somehow connected that fiasco in New York City to the Phoenix incident?

  “Pardon?” The wife stared at him, a scandalized expression on her face.

  He cursed under his breath. The old bat had better hearing than he would have imagined. He’d have to be more careful.

  “I said ‘luck.’” At her dubious look
, he added, “A deal like this is all about timing and luck.”

  Timing and luck. One he could control, the other he could not. He would find a way to capitalize when fortune favored him. Perhaps this Warrior Girl situation could work out for him. She was practically a celebrity. Would he be able to use that as a distraction? Throw the FBI off its game? He relished the thought of a mental showdown with the best law enforcement had to offer. The question was, what would the famous profilers make of him? He hadn’t started himself down this path. Someone else was to blame for what he had done. But now he would be the one in control. To do that, he would have to change the rules of engagement.

  First thing tomorrow, he would head for Phoenix.

  Chapter 11

  The following morning at the command center, Nina posed the thorniest question to the team. “Are we going to tell Detective Perez about the whole series or just the first Phoenix case?”

  The PPD had been the ones to request FBI involvement after the ViCAP hit on the matching shoe prints. Before leaving the Doyle house yesterday, they had shared their conclusion that Perez’s current case was in fact connected to the one in New York City four years earlier but nothing more.

  “I think we should tell him about all of it,” Wade said without hesitation. “We’ll ask him to inform his chain of command but no one else until we confirm each of the other leap day incidents.”

  She was pleased Wade had been the one to say it. As the most junior agent present, she would have had a fight on her hands to get the locals fully briefed if the rest of the team disagreed. In her former career as a police officer, she had always been annoyed to discover that Feds had been holding out on them.

  Nina glanced up from her bagel as Ginsberg pushed open the conference room door and ushered Perez inside.

  “Nice of you to provide breakfast,” Perez said, glancing down at the cluster of bagels, lox, cream cheese, and jam in the center of the table. “Figures the FBI would have a budget for that.”

  “Agent Ginsberg picked it up on the way in,” Buxton said, frowning. “At his own expense.”

  “Aww, now I feel bad.” Perez’s grin put the lie to his comment.

  Nina pointed at the credenza along the wall. “Can you grab the picante sauce on your way to the table?”

  Breck looked appalled. “On a bagel?”

  Perez picked up the small red bottle. “I see you like to spice things up.” He took the empty seat next to hers. “Me too.”

  She ignored the subtext, deliberately sticking to the literal meaning of her words. “I grew up putting the stuff on everything.”

  Buxton had called for a working breakfast in their temporary center of operations. Nina had managed to score half of the only salted bagel hidden among the cinnamon raisin, blueberry, and honey bran.

  “Let’s get to it,” Buxton said as soon as everyone was settled. He turned to the PPD detective. “We need to brief you on the rest of the situation.”

  “This is strictly confidential,” Kent said, glaring at Perez. “Not to leave law enforcement circles at this point.”

  Perez put down his coffee, widening his eyes in mock wonder. “Is this where I get my FBI secret decoder ring and find out what the message inside the cereal box says?”

  “I’ll save you the trouble.” Nina stage-whispered around the back of her hand, quoting from a favorite movie. “It says, ‘Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.’”

  Buxton ignored the chuckles around the table. “We are investigating the possibility of a serial killer, with two cases in Phoenix.”

  His comment silenced the room.

  “Two in Phoenix?” Perez said, all traces of humor gone. “ViCAP connected the triple murder of a family in New York to the Doyle case here in Phoenix. Both were staged to look like double-murder-suicides. We discussed the matching Nike shoe prints yesterday.” He frowned. “But you didn’t say anything about another Phoenix case.”

  “The other Phoenix incident also occurred on February twenty-ninth,” Nina said.

  “A leap day series,” Perez said slowly. “That’s something I haven’t seen before.”

  Breck flashed a list of cases up on one of the other screens. “We did some checking and discovered a total of eight cases, each committed on leap day. All but the last two were closed as double-murder-suicides.”

  Buxton opened the notebook resting on the table next to his elbow. “We’ve assigned field agents at various offices to work with local police to reopen the cases we believe are related and check to see if there could have been a mistake. Each incident occurred in a different city, except Phoenix, which he hit twice.”

  “Eight cases.” Perez’s eyes widened. “That means—”

  “This unsub’s been operating under the radar for twenty-eight years,” Nina said.

  “It all started in Phoenix,” Wade added. “And now he’s circled back around, which is why we came here. This appears to be both the newest and the oldest incident. There’s a lot of information to gather.”

  “If you guys want to know about something that happened twenty-eight years ago, we might have to rely on written reports,” Perez said. “The detectives who worked it will be retired or dead by now.”

  “This investigation received a great deal of attention at the time.” Buxton slid on his reading glasses and scanned the page. “It happened in Palomino Villa.” He glanced up. “The Vega case.”

  “La Llorona,” Perez said under his breath.

  Nina was intrigued to see that Perez knew the case by its nickname. If he’d been in elementary school when it happened, he would have been at the age when kids liked to scare each other with spooky stories. When the adults around them were talking about La Llorona, it would have made a big impression on children. Phoenix, with its large Latino population, would have been fertile ground for such a tale to take root.

  She pressed Perez for more details. “We saw the news reports, and we understand the locals called it the Llorona case.”

  “They still do,” Perez said, meeting her gaze. “When they talk about it.”

  Something in his tone made Nina think he had more interest in the case than as a childhood memory. “You have personal knowledge about the investigation?”

  He shifted slightly. “I go to the same church as Victor Vega’s family, and I also buy food at the Mercado Vecino. That’s a Latin market run by the Soto family.”

  Nina recalled the names from the news stories. “Victor and Maria Vega were the couple who died.”

  Perez nodded. “I see Maria’s family at the market all the time. Her maiden name was Soto, and her sister runs the place,” he said. “Don’t talk to Victor’s relatives much, though. Unfortunately, the two families don’t speak to each other. For a long time, the community was divided.”

  Buxton closed the notepad, obviously more intrigued by the firsthand information he was getting from a local. “Could you fill us in, Detective?”

  Perez paused a moment, as if deciding where to start. “Word on the street was that Maria Vega, the wife, killed the whole family because she caught Victor cheating on her right after they brought their newborn baby home from the hospital. Victor’s parents accused Maria’s family of hiding what they assumed must have been long-standing mental instability.”

  “Pretty harsh,” Breck said.

  Nina agreed with the sentiment, but she had seen many instances of grieving survivors lashing out in all directions as if their pain needed a target.

  “On the other hand,” Perez continued, “Maria’s family blamed Victor for cheating on his pregnant wife. They felt that his moral failings were due to his parents.”

  “Both sets of parents blamed each other?” Nina said.

  Perez grimaced. “It all came to a head when the two fathers got into a brawl after the funeral service. Both families objected to having Maria and Victor buried together, so they interred them in different cemeteries.”

  Nina thought about the littlest victim. “What about the baby?”<
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  “They argued bitterly over where the baby would be buried,” Perez said. “They finally agreed to have the little girl cremated and split the ashes between both families.”

  “You said they still don’t speak to this day?”

  “And their friends took sides as well,” Perez said.

  This crime had not only divided the community but devastated two families. What would happen when they found out it had all been based on a lie?

  “I don’t know Victor’s family as well,” Perez said. “They had two sons. The oldest was in the military and died in combat overseas a year after Victor’s death. They lost both of their children in such a short amount of time, which is another reason they’re so angry at Maria, and they mostly keep to themselves. The father owned a construction business he planned to pass on to his sons, but he’s since sold it and they’re retired now.”

  “But neither family thought the police got it wrong at the time?” Nina asked.

  “Oh, they both did,” Perez assured them. “Victor’s parents claimed he would never have an affair, that he loved Maria blindly. Maria’s family said she would never harm anyone, much less her own baby, no matter how angry she was. They didn’t accept postpartum depression as a reason either.”

  “But the case was still closed with Maria as the perpetrator,” Wade said.

  Perez nodded. “All the evidence pointed that way. If I remember correctly, the ME didn’t come up with anything to dispute it.”

  “You’re right,” Buxton said, tapping the notebook in front of him. “He didn’t. I wonder if he would change his mind now.”

  “He died a few years back,” Perez said.

  Nina figured that might make it easier. She had seen Medical Examiners become entrenched once they’d made a determination. Some were hesitant to change an initial ruling on cause of death.

  She knew what she wanted to do next. “We’re going to have to contact the detectives who worked the case.”

  “I know the lead detective,” Perez said. “I see him at the police lodge now and then. Got to warn you, he’s a crusty old buzzard, and he’s not a fan of the FBI. Claims you guys bigfooted him on one of his high-profile cases shortly before he retired. Left a bitter taste in his mouth.”