her breath caught. The word Loser was written in bold black lettering on the back of each card. “A three of spades, a two of diamonds, a five of clubs, a four of hearts, and a king of diamonds.”
The cards struck an unwelcome chord she thought long buried from a case dating back twelve years. As her heart kicked into gear, Riley was careful to keep her expression neutral as she bagged each one and handed them to Sheriff Barrett.
“If she was playing poker,” Sheriff Barrett said, “she would’ve been a loser. She was holding about the worst possible hand.”
“The deck of cards to a serious player is critical,” Riley said.
“You a card player?” Sheriff Barrett sounded amused.
“Stepfather was a big gambler. According to him there were good cards and bad cards.”
Sheriff Barrett shrugged. “They’re all good. Depends on the combination you need.”
The heat of the day faded; the sound of traffic on the main road vanished.
When she’d run away, street life was far tougher than she’d imagined. She quickly ran out of money and within days was so hungry. When a church volunteer had offered her bottled water, she’d taken it gladly. That was the last thing she remembered. She lost seven days.
At the end of those missing days when she’d crawled free of a void, she could barely focus, her system loaded with some narcotic cocktail. But one of her first memories was of finding five playing cards in her back pocket. Same deck as these, different spread. But there were no words scrawled on her cards.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tuesday, September 13, 3:00 p.m.
Riley stood in the field staring at the cards, burrowing into those lost days in her past, trying to remember any detail.
“Riley?”
She glanced up at the sheriff. “Yeah.”
The lines around his eyes deepened. “You see something?”
She tore her gaze from the cards. “I thought I did, but no.”
“You sure?” Sheriff Barrett had been a cop too long not to sense tension or smell an evasion.
“I thought they reminded me of an old case I came across a couple of years ago.” Lies worked best when you kept the details scant and threaded in the truth when possible. “But I was wrong.” She handed the cards back to him.
The sheriff held the plastic bag up to the light and glared at the cards as if searching for what she might have seen. “Where do you think they came from?”
Keeping her voice steady when she spoke, she said, “These are professional-grade cards. They don’t come cheap.”
“And the word Loser ?”
“I don’t know.” The crisp lines of the white-and-black baroque were more likely linked to a high-stakes private game. She studied the delicate pattern.
“You sure?” Sheriff Barrett asked.
She looked toward the victim again, studying the color of her hair, the long, lean limbs, and the tapered hands. “Nothing catches my eye yet.”
“Trooper, you’re studying that face mighty hard,” the sheriff said.
Riley straightened but made no comment.
“We don’t get many murders in this county, but always stings more when they’re young. I never get used to it.”
“Once I have the scene processed,” Martin said, “I’ll let you know if we find anything else.”
“Sounds good,” Sheriff Barrett said.
Riley was puzzled by the body’s position. “The killer took the time to pose her sitting up as if she were resting. She’s also fully dressed. He could have abused the body, but he didn’t. And her face was turned downward, so her eyes didn’t look up at him.”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess,” the sheriff said. “Or they could have been doing drugs or having sex and it went sideways.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He strangles her, which is a very personal way of killing someone, but then he feels bad enough not to dump her body like a bag of trash.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Sheriff Barrett glanced back toward the interstate ramp. “The killer could have disposed of her