Playing Dead Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Also by Allison Brennan

  Preview

  Copyright

  For the FBI Special Agents in the Sacramento regional office who live up to their motto:

  Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity

  Before anyone woke, he scrubbed down his room twice with the strongest cleansers he could find. Removed anything, seen or unseen, that said, “Jessica White Was Here.” Then he tried to sleep, but his heart was beating too fast. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Jessica rise like a zombie from the grave.

  He went to the kitchen and made himself a hearty breakfast. He was famished. When he was done, he felt so much better.

  It’s over.

  When he returned to his clean room, he saw a note on his bed. Something was wrong.

  It was a plain white card in a blank white unsealed envelope. He slowly removed the card.

  We know what you did last night.

  Something else was in the envelope. He poured it into his hand.

  Dirt. And a single earring.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, many people helped with the details of this book.

  First and foremost, my husband Dan for helping me figure out how to make a conspiracy work.

  A special thanks to morgue supervisor Phelan Evans from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office for not only the tour, but answering all my questions without batting an eye. C. J. Lyons once again saved my butt with her sound medical advice. My friend Trisha McKay who reminded me that the Fox & Goose serves Guinness on tap. And Virna DePaul who answered many of my legal questions.

  Of course, I can’t neglect to mention Dan, my husband, for making many sacrifices, including eating cold or late dinners—and sometimes having to make his own dinner—during the writing of this book.

  I especially want to thank the Sacramento Regional FBI Office, in particular SAC Drew Parenti, SA and Citizen’s Academy leader Steven Dupre, and the fabulous agents who shared their knowledge and experience. This book is much better because of their generosity in giving of their time and expertise. I especially want to thank SSA Mike Rayfield of Squad 8, who makes fugitive apprehension sound like fun. Any errors are mine and mine alone.

  Under the “I couldn’t do it without you” heading: my fabulous editor Charlotte Herscher (thank you for helping me be the best writer I can be); Dana Isaacson (thank you for both your criticism and praise—your fine-tuning is invaluable); Kate Collins, and the rest of the Ballantine team who work so hard behind the scenes—thank you for everything. Of course special thanks to my agent Kim Whalen, who surprisingly has a calming effect on me, and the entire Trident team.

  And I would be remiss if I didn’t finally recognize the loyalty and support of my husband of fifteen years, Dan, who still makes me laugh.

  PROLOGUE

  Thirty Years Ago

  He buried Jessica White’s body in the vast open space on the west end of Stanford University.

  He hadn’t meant to kill her. She’d been intoxicated, but coherent. He pretended to be tipsy, but in truth he’d replaced his beer with a nonalcoholic variety he kept in his room. He needed to be in control.

  They fucked like animals and he couldn’t climax. He’d had this problem before, knew what had to be done to bring relief. She laughingly agreed to “play the game,” as she called it. But tying her to the floor spread-eagled was no game to him.

  She was beautiful. Long, lean body, round tits, perky nipples, dark hair spilling around her.

  So he had closed his eyes, wanting to remember the woman who had loved him, who had taught him everything about sex.

  Bridget had seduced him when he was twelve. Told him what to do, what she liked, made him do things he didn’t want to. But he’d loved her. Loved her breasts. If she’d just let him suck her breasts, he would have been happy.

  She knew he liked it, and only let him touch them when he finished his other duties. She said only young men made her feel good. Only young men like him.

  The week before he graduated from eighth grade he went to her house like he did every Wednesday after school. He waited for her in the backyard. Leaving together would have been unseemly, she always said. After all, she was the principal.

  He waited and waited and then heard laughter from inside. He walked around to her bedroom window and saw her with another boy. He was smaller and younger and had no pubic hair.

  Bridget had told him last time he was getting too old.

  She let the boy—a kid who’d transferred midyear and was a grade younger—touch her breasts. Like she’d done when she first brought him to her house. It was only later, after she hooked him, that she denied him until he satisfied her. Until he hurt her.

  Outside her bedroom window, he hated her.

  He went back late that night. Snuck into her bedroom. He wanted to kill her, but he loved her so much. She needed him.

  She was expecting him.

  “I saw you watching. I’m sorry we can’t see each other anymore. You’re leaving for high school in the fall. But I’ll give you something to remember me by.”

  Then she hurt him and he thought he would die.

  After that, he couldn’t have sex like a normal person. He watched porn movies, he spied on his father and stepmother while they did it—quick and fast. Later, he spied on his hypocritical father when he learned about the young mistress.

  He tried to re-create that urgent copulation with Jessica, but it hadn’t worked. It never would.

  He didn’t even realize he’d strangled Jessica until he climaxed and collapsed on top of her. She wasn’t breathing. He stared in shock at her neck, saw the bruises, the thumb impressions so deep they had to have crushed her larynx.

  He looked at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them as his own. They had been around her neck, his thumbs pushing, but he didn’t remember.

  He wasn’t a murderer. It was an accident, just a terrible accident. Who would believe it? Jessica’s wrists and ankles were red and chafed, probably from straining while she suffocated. No one would believe that she’d allowed him to tie her up. That he’d just gotten carried away. That’s what happened, things got out of hand because she wanted him so bad. She’d asked
him to tie her up. She’d begged him to do it rough, saying she liked it that way. It was all her fault. Sick bitch.

  So he waited a few hours until everyone in the fraternity was drunk or passed out, then brought his car around to his ground-floor window, taking Jessica out that way instead of through the door.

  No one had seen them together. Jessica had made a big production about leaving the party earlier—she didn’t want her ex-boyfriend to know she was going to screw someone in his own fraternity. Then she climbed in through his window and . . . she died.

  He drove to the west end of the campus into the rolling hills toward the Dish, a radiotelescope built a couple years back. When he could drive no further, he walked along a jogging path with a shovel he’d taken from the fraternity basement. He veered off the path about twenty-five yards, shielded by trees and shrubs, until he found soil soft enough to dig.

  He was stronger than he looked, which surprised anyone who decided to pick on him. Digging the grave gave him time to clear his mind, to focus on the task at hand, and to formulate answers to any questions he might be asked regarding Jessica’s disappearance. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming back to his room because her ex was insanely jealous. She lived nearby, in an off-campus sorority. She had walked to the fraternity.

  If she had told anyone about meeting him, he’d lie. He’d lied most of his life. He was good at it. He’d brought all her personal effects and tossed them into the grave, along with the ropes he’d used to bind her. He’d go back and make sure there was nothing of her in his room, not even a hair. He was a neat, orderly person. No one would be surprised if he deep-cleaned his room Sunday morning.

  He had to move her body from his car to the grave. Not yet dawn, the quality of night was changing almost imperceptibly. He didn’t have much time.

  He’d wrapped her body in a wool blanket. As he removed her from the trunk, her body was stiff and difficult to bend. Rigor mortis. It hadn’t even been six hours! He pulled her out, falling backward and dropping her body in the dirt. Jessica rolled out of the blanket, stiff legs bent at an awkward angle from the time spent in his trunk.

  Frustrated and angry at himself for his clumsiness, he pushed her back onto the blanket and carried her like a baby to the grave. He dropped her in and quickly shoveled dirt over her. Seeing her dead again had unnerved him. He wanted to get back home as quickly as possible. He needed to shower.

  Relieved upon finally finishing the unsavory task, he returned to the fraternity his father had insisted he join. He was to continue the proud family legacy. “You’ll major in biology, enroll in the premed program, then you can choose your discipline. Surgery would be the smart decision.” As if he wasn’t smart enough to figure out his father wanted him to follow in his big, fat footsteps.

  He had no desire to go into medicine. He’d tell his father to go to hell. Someday. He should have done it a long time ago.

  No one was awake when he returned just as the sun crept over the horizon. He went to the bathroom, locked the door, and flipped on the light.

  Something was caught in the buttons of his shirt. He pulled at it, inspecting it carefully. Slightly greasy, what on earth . . .

  He bit back a scream. It was her skin! Jessica’s skin had come off in a chunk on his buttons. What other parts of the dead bitch were on him that he couldn’t see?

  He stripped and jumped under scalding hot water in the shower, scrubbing his body over and over until he was red and raw. Images of Jessica rising from the grave, her skin sloughing off in greasy chunks of flesh, haunted him.

  Before anyone woke, he scrubbed down his room twice with the strongest cleansers he could find. Removed anything, seen or unseen, that said, “Jessica White Was Here.” Then he tried to sleep, but his heart was beating too fast. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Jessica rise like a zombie from the grave.

  He went to the kitchen and made himself a hearty breakfast. He was famished. When he was done, he felt so much better.

  It’s over.

  Though he’d killed Jessica only hours ago, the event seemed surreal, as if he’d been an observer of the brutal act, not a participant.

  When he returned to his clean room, he saw a note on his bed. Something was wrong.

  It was a plain white card in a blank white unsealed envelope. He slowly removed the card.

  We know what you did last night.

  Something else was in the envelope. He poured it into his hand.

  Dirt. And a single earring.

  ONE

  Present Day

  Claire was an expert bullshit detector. That’s what made her so good at her job investigating insurance fraud.

  This morning she’d been called to a warehouse fire in West Sacramento, at the Port of Sacramento near the docks where the Deep Water Ship Channel connected the Sacramento River to the San Francisco Bay. The port predominantly handled agricultural products, but container goods from China and beyond were not uncommon. They didn’t have customs or any serious inspections, which were taken care of at the port of entry. As far as docks went, they were relatively clean and quiet, even at seven in the morning. Most of the activity was at the far end where a ship was being loaded with produce Claire couldn’t identify from this distance.

  She breathed deeply, the lingering scent of burned wood, scorched metal, and ash making her grimace. Best to get this out of the way now, before the temperature rose. It was only the second week of May, yet summer had arrived. While the rest of the country enjoyed spring, yesterday Sacramento had peaked at ninety-five. Today would be even hotter.

  Claire was supposed to meet the arson investigator here at eight, but she liked hitting the scene early to do her own walk-through. She’d already done everything she could from the office; the two final pieces for the report were the walk-through and interviewing the claimant.

  Five-shot Starbucks latte in hand—as much to combat the mild hangover from her late night as to wake her up—Claire grabbed her backpack from the backseat of her Jeep, absently brushing dog hair off her jeans. She had to remember to cover the seats with towels when she took Chewy and Yoda on car rides.

  Crime scene tape cut across the front of the warehouse—but since it was a mere shell and incapable of being locked up, she slid under the tape. Arson. She smelled it.

  Warehouses sometimes burned down by accident. A careless employee left a cigarette butt burning, lightning struck, homeless people tried to get warm in the frigid Sacramento winters.

  But accidents were rare.

  The building owner hadn’t even been smart about it, Claire thought as she walked around taking pictures and notes. There was no evidence of burned goods. They could have been stolen before the arson, but Claire suspected the merchandise had never arrived or had been sold before the arson. She’d already pulled the financials of Ben Holman and Holman Medical Supply Company, Inc. Operating on the wrong side of a razor-thin profit margin, Ben Holman was three months late on his personal home mortgage and his creditors all had 90- to 120-day lates on him.

  Convenient timing for an insurance claim that would give him half a mil for supplies and damage.

  Holman would likely claim faulty wiring . . . possible, of course. These dockside warehouses were old and rarely did the owners upgrade the interiors. They were used for the temporary storage of goods that came down the Sacramento River shipping lane. Product came, product left—cogs in the wheels of the economy. But in this instance? No way. It was arson, and Claire just needed to wait for the fire investigator to show up and confirm it.

  Holman Medical Supply Company, Inc., would soon be one less cog to muck it up for legitimate business people.

  Claire deeply breathed in the fresh air as soon as she cleared the building, then leaned against a cement wall to write up questions for warehouse-owner Holman.

  He didn’t know Claire had security tape from the warehouse three doors down that showed him driving up the day before the fire started. He didn’t know she had a copy of the
manifest filed with customs in San Francisco. And he would certainly deny knowing where the missing goods were, though she had a contact who said an unusually large supply of syringes had shown up on the streets yesterday.

  Ben Holman was just one more pathetic human being who proved that no one could be trusted.

  Claire drained the rest of her lukewarm latte, stuffed her notebook and camera back into her pack, and stretched, hoping the investigator wouldn’t be late. She wanted to write up the report and meet her veterinarian at her house at noon. Dr. Jim made house calls, at least for her. She had started toward her Jeep when she heard a deep male voice.

  “Claire.”

  At the familiar voice, she dropped her cup and pack, reaching for the gun she carried in a belt holster in the small of her back, and began to turn when someone from behind grabbed her arm, bending it up and back. She aimed a perfect kick to her attacker’s balls, but he anticipated the move and sidestepped it, spinning her around and pushing her against the cement wall she’d been leaning on, knocking the wind out of her.

  “Claire, stop. I need five minutes. Please.”

  Daddy.

  Raw anger and deep sadness always accompanied any thoughts of her father. But here—now, in person—the anger and sadness were magnified. She heard nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing, except the familiar stranger in front of her. Heard him breathing, felt his heart beating as her arms were trapped between her chest and his, saw the plea in his vivid blue eyes, eyes like her own.

  Once, she had loved him. Trusted him. Worshipped him. She remembered the past with such clarity that it took her breath away.

  He looked so much older now. Of course he did. She’d never visited him in prison. She hadn’t seen him in fifteen years, since the trial, since she’d testified for the prosecution against her own father.

  It had been nearly four months since Tom O’Brien had escaped from prison during the San Quentin Earthquake. Four months and no word except that her father had become some sort of a dark hero, helping authorities capture the other escapees, while slipping away undetected. She’d talked repeatedly with local and federal cops, endured weeks of stakeouts outside her home, sacrificing her privacy. For a while, she even thought he was dead. And when she finally believed he had disappeared for good, he showed up here. Now. Like a ghost.