“Agreed. Your job is to find out who’s threatening Ms. MacPherson,” Monticello said.
Duncan rose to his feet, but whatever he might have added was forestalled by the commotion at the door of her apartment. Turning, she saw her colleague Richard Starkweather stride through the still-open door.
“Piper, thank God you’re all right.” He started toward her.
Duncan quickly stepped in front of her. “Who are you?”
Richard frowned at him. “Who are you?”
“He’s all right,” Abe said. “Richard Starkweather is one of my research assistants.”
Because Duncan was completely blocking her view, Piper edged to his side. Two men now flanked Richard, a uniformed officer and Detective Nelson.
“What are you doing here?” Nelson asked the question that was foremost in Piper’s mind.
“I came to see if Piper was all right. It’s all over the news that the Rose Petal Killer has struck again.” He gestured toward the petal-strewn sheet. “They’re running footage of the crime scene on all three local news stations. It’s even posted on YouTube. When I recognized Piper’s apartment, I had to come over here to make sure she was all right. Surely you can understand that, Officer.”
“Detective,” Nelson corrected.
When the TV blared on, Piper turned to see that Abe was using the remote to find a news channel. The moment he did, they were all viewing a video clip of the scene in her apartment. It was exactly what she’d encountered when she’d returned from her run. There was a shot of the room that took in her kitchen, the open door to the bedroom, all the way to the fireplace. Then the picture on the TV screen narrowed to a close-up of the petal-strewn sheet. She felt a sliver of ice work its way up her spine.
A reporter’s voice was saying, “This was the scene early this morning when attorney Piper MacPherson returned to her apartment. Our source tells us that Ms. MacPherson worked on the appeal that set accused Rose Petal Killer, Patrick Lightman, free. Will she be his next victim?”
Mike Nelson pulled out his phone. “I’ll find out how they got that video clip.”
“Whoever set up this little scene could easily have shot it on his cell phone before he left,” Duncan said. “Then he could have attached it to an email. Starkweather just said it’s accessible on YouTube.”
Abe switched channels and caught another replay of the tape. A reporter gave the same information in a voice-over.
Piper made herself look carefully at it this time. “Someone shot the scene from the open doorway, then stepped inside for the close-up of the sheet. But why would anyone do this?”
There were three full beats of silence before Duncan directed a question to Abe. “Who knows she worked on the brief? So far you’ve kept a tight lid on that.”
“Intentionally,” Abe said. “No one from my office leaked it.”
“Well, somebody found out,” Duncan said. “And whoever did this is angry enough at her to paint a target on her back.”
Great, Piper thought. She could picture it clearly in her mind. How could a day that had started out so normally become a nightmare so quickly?
3
TWO HOURS LATER, DUNCAN STOOD in the alley gazing at the wooden staircase that led to Piper’s small apartment. Finally, he was alone.
Monticello had left first, waiting only until Piper had showered and changed so that he could personally escort her to work. Most members of the press who’d finally tracked down Piper’s apartment had scurried after Abe’s limo.
Mike Nelson had lingered longer. His men had talked to Piper’s landlady, who owned the high-end dress shop beneath Piper’s apartment, but the spare key was hanging from a rack in her office. One of the police department’s tech men had tracked down the email message that had been sent to the TV stations. Both it and the attached video clip had been sent from a stolen smartphone. The owner hadn’t even noticed it was missing.
The uniformed officers had questioned shop owners, but the incident had taken place hours before most of them had unlocked their doors. When Nelson had left, he’d taken everyone and everything with him— crime scene techs, the uniforms, the sheet and the rose petals. Back at the precinct, Nelson and his partner would begin the tedious job of trying to track down where the roses and the sheet and the vellum note paper had been purchased. Tedious work, but it might pay off. They might get a description, even a name.
Duncan had hung around, instead of getting a late start to his golf game, because he did some of his best thinking as he wandered through a deserted crime scene. The quiet, the lack of other people, helped him to see things more clearly. He was frequently called in to consult on cases to do exactly what he was doing now. Lingering, noticing the small details, theorizing. He agreed totally with Piper. It wasn’t Patrick Lightman who’d done this. Adrienne was checking on the man’s alibi, but there were too many things about the scene that didn’t fit into the RPK’s M.O.
So who had done it? And why? Those were the key questions any profiler asked.
First, the perpetrator was smart. He’d had to gather data on the Lightman case and on Piper’s schedule. And to pull it off as a media event in such a short amount of time, he’d had to have contacts at the local new stations.
No matter what angle Duncan viewed it from, he didn’t think it was the work of a copycat who was planning to kill other women in the “style” of the RPK. His gut told him that the “who” was someone who had a personal vendetta against Piper. But whoever was trying to get to her was going to have to go through him.
Duncan wasn’t sure when he’d made that decision. Perhaps it had been when he’d been studying the rose petals strewn across the sheet and Abe Monticello had mentioned her name. For just an instant, he’d seen the image of her he’d carried somewhere in his head all these years. He’d seen her lying beneath those petals.
Or perhaps it had been a decision that had been made for him seven years ago, when he’d stood under that stone arch with her. He was Scottish enough that he couldn’t ignore the power of legends.
When he made the decision, it was irreversible. And it would lead to complications. While she’d been kneeling next to him studying the little picnic scene, he’d wanted his hands on her. And once he started down that path….
When his cell phone rang, he wasn’t surprised to see Reid’s number on the caller ID. That meant that the news about Piper had made its way to Scotland. And when there was trouble, Cam always made the first call to Reid, the oldest brother.
“I’m assuming you’ve got Piper’s back,” Reid said.
“Yes. I assume that our family in Scotland got the news and contacted you.”
Reid laughed. “Sibling jealousy just never completely fades away. If it makes you feel better, no one has contacted me. I’m in France again with the VP and I caught it on the evening news. I thought I’d check with you before I got the call. I knew Piper was living in D.C., but I wasn’t aware that she was working for
