Free When the Storm Breaks by Heather Lowell Page A

starting his own engine and pulling out to follow the redhead’s sedan.
    Within minutes she turned into the drive at an apartment building on Wisconsin Avenue. She ran in with the suitcase, apparently left it with the concierge, then came back out immediately to move her car out of the drive.
    He parked illegally and waited to see what she would do next. Under his watchful eye, the redhead drove around the corner of the block and parked her car on a side street feeding into Wisconsin Avenue. When she locked the sedan and went back to the apartment building, he strained to see through the glass doors of the entry.
    He could just make her out as she spoke to someone. Ignoring the No Parking signs, he turned off his engine and sat in his car across the street from the apartment building, hoping she would have one of the units that faced him. A few minutes later, she showed up on a fifth-floor balcony and began watering some plants.
    The corners of the man’s mouth twisted up in a smile.

Chapter 14
    Washington, D.C.
    Sunday afternoon
    C aptain Michaels hadn’t been impressed with Sean’s theory that the Mendes murder was tied into several cold cases, but he’d been happy to hand over what was becoming a political hot button— “Murder in the Hispanic community and police don’t care!” —to two of his best investigators, at least on an interim basis.
    After a few hours of sleep and a shower, Sean and Aidan had worked straight through the weekend. Aidan had already interviewed the Mendes family and found absolutely nothing that made him suspicious. Sean had been through interviews with Mendes’s fellow teachers, nearly all of whom were female. There weren’t any recently fired janitors, boyfriends, ex-lovers, other teachers, bus drivers or anything else out of the ordinary.
    Renata Mendes was just what she seemed to be—a woman who walked down the wrong street one night and got herself killed by a stranger.
    With a growing certainty that there wasn’t going to beanything in Mendes’s life that would point to her killer, Sean and Aidan reviewed the Mendes file and forensic information, and traded off pestering the crime lab when the information didn’t come quickly enough. Then Aidan went to work on Claire’s file.
    “This thing’s heading for the ‘unsolved’ files,” Sean said, throwing a file on his desk. “Not even a hint of anyone with a personal motive. If Mendes were any cleaner, I’d nominate her for sainthood.”
    “Anyone come up with something on the door-to-door of the murder neighborhood?”
    “Does zilch count?” Sean asked.
    “What about the hot line?”
    “The usual number of whackos and earnest citizens who think that because their neighbor lets his dog shit on their lawn, the dude’s also a murderer,” Sean said.
    Aidan snickered.
    Sean pointed to a thin file labeled Marie Claire Lambert. “You get anywhere on that angle?”
    “I talked to her boss and closest coworkers. She didn’t interview any new male clients, and no new man was hired in her office recently. Did you get through to Camelot Dating Services?” Aidan asked.
    “Owner is listed as Afton Gallagher of Washington, D.C. No personal number and no response at the business number. I’ll try her Monday morning.” Sean stretched and tried not to yawn. “How’s the victim profile coming? I’d like to have more than a hunch the next time we go to the captain.”
    “Well, the three victims had similar physical descriptions. All of them were regulars in some of the ugliest parts of our fine city—though for different reasons in thecase of Renata Mendes. She visited family in Southeast, but lived on the other side of town, near where she was killed. The crime scene is a high-traffic area with all kinds of fingerprints, hair, trash, and shit like that. It will take several days to get forensic analysis detailed enough to allow us to compare the three scenes.”
    “CSU isn’t going to be able to pull anything useable