Conduit, Page 3

  Lips mashed together and eyes narrowed, Detective Sergeant Shawn Brandt trudged up the side of the ditch. Lionel could almost hear Shawn’s internal sighs. Shawn raised the yellow crime scene tape of the outer perimeter and passed under the barrier. He tugged his latex gloves off his hands, folding them inside out. When he reached Lionel, he shoved the gloves in his jacket pocket. “You gonna join the party?”

  “I thought about standing up here for another few minutes so you can vouch that I was here, and then drive back home to Barbara,” Lionel told his partner. “If I’m lucky, she’s still in bed.”

  Shawn cracked an apathetic smile. “You’re just lucky to have someone in your bed waiting for you.”

  Lionel mused that Shawn earned the right to his bitter comment. Though Shawn’s divorce was finalized last month, the marriage ended over a year ago. Amber had not been as forgiving as Barbara when it came to their job pulling them out of bed on their days off. Amber’s method of coping with the stress included a longstanding affair with their neighbor. Through that act of marital betrayal, Shawn lost his wife, his barbequing buddy, and his house.

  Lionel noticed Shawn had buzzed his light brown hair almost down to his scalp since he left the station last night. “New look for the ladies?” he asked.

  “Hilarious.” Shawn rubbed his hands together, fighting the bitter cold of the early spring morning. “So you going down there?” he asked again.

  “Is it the same as before?”

  “Why else would I drag you out of bed?”

  “This guy is killing way too fast. There’s not much room for acceleration in his killings. It’s like he started at full speed, but serial killers don’t do that.”

  Shawn held up his index finger. “Ah, but remember he has a message for us. Maybe he really wants us to listen.”

  Lionel inferred from Shawn’s tone that he was withholding information. “I take it we’ve confirmed what the message is.”

  Shawn motioned for Lionel to follow him, and Lionel planted careful steps down the side of the ditch toward the crime scene. As a child, he could run up and down ditches without fear. Now in his late forties, even the slightest misstep would cause a short and unfortunate fall, resulting in a twisted ankle or similar calamity.

  Within the boundaries of the outer crime scene perimeter, officers unnecessary to the investigation huddled in a group, deep in discussion. Though it might appear to outsiders that the officers were engaged in important conversation about the crime scene, Lionel imagined they gossiped about their weekend plans, golf swings, significant others, anything but the gruesomeness in front of them. Not that Lionel blamed them. It was easier to focus on a world that existed outside of crime when faced with the horrors of homicide.

  Beyond the yellow tape of the inner perimeter, two crime scene investigators combed a grid search through long-forgotten weeds for additional evidence. The tall weeds glinted gold in the early spring sun, and some even sprouted dandelions, giving them a much nicer appearance than mere garden menaces.

  The investigators waded forward, heads down in search of anything that might help crack the case. Given the lack of evidence at the other crime scenes, Lionel thought their efforts futile, although necessary. After six murders, a break in the case was long overdue.

  Shawn and Lionel made their way to the center of the inner perimeter and toward their final destination. Perry Weinberg knelt over a body, while a crime scene technician snapped photographs of the corpse and immediate area. As Sedgwick County’s Chief Medical Examiner, Perry had performed the autopsies on the first five homicide victims with the same emotionless expression he wore now. Lionel did not think badly of him for it. In the twenty plus years Lionel worked with Perry, he had noted that emotion rarely found its way into Perry’s work. He also rarely visited a crime scene this late in his career, so Lionel surmised the killings affected Perry as much as everyone else.

  “Twelve hours,” Perry said over his shoulder. “I’ll be more sure when we get her opened up on the table.”

  “Twelve hours since time of death,” Lionel said when they reached Perry. An inexact science, when Perry said twelve hours he really meant give or take several hours, but Lionel always took Perry’s estimates at face value. With Perry’s experience, he was good at getting close to time of death on first guess, taking into consideration the condition of the body and environmental elements where the body was found.

  Shawn turned to Lionel. “He’s dumping them quicker than before. I wish we knew if that’s a good sign.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Lionel said. “Maybe I’d like some hope that he dumped her too fast and he made a mistake.” He bent over Perry’s open black bag and stole a pair of latex gloves.

  “We all want him to make a mistake,” Perry said, “but I don’t think we’re getting one today.”

  “Just let my poor, tired soul have some hope.” He pulled on the latex gloves and walked around Perry. “What can you tell us so far?”

  “Can we get some more photos of the knife wounds on her legs?” Perry asked the photographer. He shrugged at Lionel. “No traces of blood around the body. She didn’t die here and he cleaned her up before he moved her.”

  “Just like the others,” Lionel said. Standing at the head of the body, Lionel regarded the unemotional face of the latest victim. She appeared younger than the previous victims, maybe twenty-five at best. “No ID yet?”

  “No clothing, no ID,” Shawn said. “Just like the others,” he added.

  Leaves and dirt framed her olive complexion and matted her once silky black hair. Soulless eyes, hazy with death, stared toward the highway, oblivious to the horrors her naked corpse created. Her contorted, open slit of a mouth looked as if she wanted to tell Lionel something, which was exactly what she did. Besides appearing to be the youngest of all the victims, she was also Asian.

  “He’s changed the ethnicity of the victim this time,” Shawn said, reading Lionel’s thoughts.

  A twinge of excitement ran through Lionel’s body at the sudden change in ethnicity, but he stifled it, knowing it might not lead anywhere. “Unfortunately for us, the victimology is so diverse that it might not matter,” Lionel said. He stared at the body for more clues. “She was dumped early this morning, after it stopped raining.”

  Shawn raised an eyebrow. “That’s what we figure. Her hair isn’t wet or even damp, like it would be if she’d been rained on. I’ve got Timmons checking on the weather to see what time the rain ceased in this part of the city.”

  Lionel crouched next to the body. The viciousness of her death claimed all beauty once displayed on the woman. Bruises lined her throat and traveled over her naked skin, accompanied by angry red knife slashes that covered almost every part of her body like clothing.

  The injuries were so numerous that they overlapped, and at some points where multiple wounds collided, Lionel couldn’t tell which direction the slashes pointed. Perry would tell them later if they were upward or downward strokes, how deep they penetrated her body, and how many there were. He would also be able to discern if the knife used on this victim matched the type used on the others. For a moment, Lionel reflected that the girl suffered this torture for several hours before her body gave up.

  He put up a wall against that thought. Letting emotion in at this very moment could result in overlooking something while studying the victim. Making a mistake, possibly missing an important piece of evidence, could result in a seventh girl dying, just as six women already had. Emotion could come later when he was at home with Barbara, safely hidden in his own world where murder didn’t exist and future victims didn’t rely on him and other homicide detectives in the Wichita Police Department to save them.

  Finished with his initial examination of the torso, Lionel shifted his focus to the victim’s hands. Two fingers on each hand were missing, severed by crude knife cuts between the second and third knuckles. “Tell me this was done postmortem,” Lionel said.

  Perry’s stern lo
ok from behind his glasses reflected the coldness of the victim’s body. Lionel wondered why he bothered to voice his thoughts to Perry. The previous victims were all tortured while they were alive.

  “I wanted you to see the hands before the autopsy,” Perry said. He waved at the crime scene technician, who stopped his photographs. “Get someone over here to bag the hands and recover the fingers.”

  Lionel turned his attention to the ground beside the body. The yellow weeds were absent of any blood, confirming Perry’s statement that the murder occurred in another location. It didn’t take but a moment for Lionel to spot the victim’s four missing fingers tossed next to her hip, nothing more than a brutal reminder of the killer’s penchant for torture. The killer didn’t take souvenirs. Whatever fingers he removed from the body during torture were left with the body. Either he wanted no reminders of what he did or he wanted no evidence lurking around that might point to him.

  Shawn gestured toward the victim’s left thigh. “It’s got to be the last letter of the message.”

  Lionel leaned over to get a better look. The erratic, slanted strokes of the capital “E” were carved into the victim’s skin toward the inside of her left thigh. The victims were all branded with a different letter, sliced into their skin in the exact same location. The running theory was that the letters were a message for the police. Just as Shawn said, the “E” on this victim seemed to complete the killer’s message.

  “I hope that means he’s done,” Lionel said, though he knew better. “Perry, you’ll let us know before you start the autopsy? And make sure to run a rape kit please, even though we know it will probably come back negative like the others.”

  “I always do,” Perry said. “I can give you something different about this one right now if you would like, unless you’d rather wait for the autopsy.”

  Lionel arched a brow. This killer held to a specific routine when killing and the previous victims had revealed nothing new. Something different could give them a much-needed clue.

  Perry pointed to the “E” carved into the victim’s thigh. “That was done postmortem.”

  Though unsure what it could add to their investigation, the small change in the killer’s ritual piqued his interest. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Perry said, as if Lionel called his abilities into question. “Lack of blood in the wound. There’s no way he did that before she died.”

  Analyzing the new information, Lionel frowned at his partner.

  “Except to clean the bodies and move them, he’s never touched them postmortem,” Shawn said.

  Lionel pushed up from the ground, grimacing at his creaking knees. “Maybe something spooked him.”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Perry said, without looking away from the victim. “That’s your job to figure it out. I just tell you what he did and when.”

  “Thanks, Perry,” Lionel said. He and Shawn started away from the crime scene.

  “First the change in ethnicity, and then he branded her postmortem,” Shawn said.

  “I don’t think the ethnicity part means much,” Lionel said. “There’s never been a connection between the victims. Age, appearance, social circles. It’s all changed with every one of them. No reason to think he would stick to the same ethnicity every time.”

  “Serial killers don’t tend to cross ethnic boundaries. There’s a reason why they choose their victims, but this one has no apparent reasons for choosing any of these women.”

  “I don’t think our guy is like other serial killers.”

  “Sure wouldn’t be much fun if we had a textbook case, now would it?”

  The frustration in Shawn’s voice infected Lionel’s thoughts. “Six murders, ten weeks,” Lionel said. “We need some help.”

  “The feds sent over their profile already. Their team is coming in next Monday to assist on the case.”

  “I don’t mean a profile on the killer, and I definitely don’t mean the case is ripped out of our hands. I mean, we need some help. This guy just left us a message on six bodies. We may want this to be the end, but there’s something else going on here. He’s not close to finishing.”

  “We have a profile from the feds and we have a task force. The only help we need is for this guy to make a mistake. Maybe there’s something to the letter being done postmortem. After the body is processed and Perry does the autopsy—”

  “We’re going to have the same answers we always do,” Lionel said. “This guy doesn’t make mistakes. He’s methodical and clean. He uses a common serrated kitchen knife to carve up the victims. He chokes them at some point, but cause of death isn’t asphyxiation. They die from blood loss after extreme torture. No rape or signs of sexual assault. Then he washes the victim to get rid of any trace evidence, and dumps her in a public place for quick discovery.”

  “Thanks for reminding me of how helpless I feel against this guy,” Shawn said.

  Lionel ignored him. “Perry’s going to say the same things he always does. This body isn’t different from the rest, other than the letter being carved postmortem, which could be worthless to us.”

  “Then what kind of help do you want?”

  “I want to call in a private on this one, before the feds take over in nine days.”

  “You’re not thinking—”

  “Emily’s a good kid.”

  “She’s not a cop. I admit, she’s been great on the cases she’s helped other detectives with, but those have been small time. Theft, missing persons.” Shawn stopped walking when they reached Lionel’s car. “This is a serial killer. Do you really want to get her and Cassie involved in this?”

  Lionel didn’t want either one of them anywhere near the investigation, but Emily could assist in a way no other person could. She knew things that any other person looking at a crime scene couldn’t know. She could pick up on things by standing in close proximity to someone or something. In all his years of knowing Emily, he had seen it happen enough to know it was more than coincidence, yet he couldn’t explain it. While he might not understand it, he needed to use it as long as Emily wanted to help.

  “A fresh pair of eyes couldn’t hurt,” he told Shawn, who knew nothing of Emily’s extraordinary detective skills. “Emily’s smart, she’s good at what she does, and I’m calling her.”

  “It might be a mistake to get her involved. She’s never helped out on a case like this.”

  “I just want her and Cassie to take a look at the files. Maybe they’ll see something we haven’t. Besides, Cassie took all those criminology and behavioral classes. As far as I’m concerned, between those classes and her time on the force, Cassie’s just as good as the feds and she doesn’t have her own agenda.”

  “You may be right. Cassie would be in homicide working this case with us if she were still a cop.” Shawn shrugged. “It’s your call, so do what you need to. The feds will be here soon enough, demoting us to answering the tip line. We should try everything we can while we still have a case to work.”

  “Let’s get an ID on this one as soon as possible. Maybe he got sloppy and this girl is connected to another victim or to the killer.”

  “Fingerprints, dental impressions, serial numbers off any implants.” Shawn scribbled in his notepad as he spoke.

  “Also check missing person reports on Asian women in their early twenties,” Lionel added. “He’s never held them for more than 36 hours, so start with new reports and move up to a week.”

  “I’m on it,” Shawn said. He waved goodbye to Lionel and jogged toward his car.

  Lionel looked past Shawn at the Channel 12 news van pulling up alongside the ditch, followed closely by Channel 10. “Damn,” Lionel muttered.

  He grabbed his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and called Bill Evans, the head of the crime scene unit collecting evidence. When Bill answered, Lionel said, “The vultures are swarming. Tell Perry to put a rush on it. Finish the photos of the victim and get that poor girl out of the open.”

 
; He slipped the phone into his pocket and started toward his car. Lionel remembered the other call he needed to make and took the phone back out. Number five was the speed dial for Monroe & Reid Investigators.

  As his call rang through, he wasn’t sure what to expect from Emily, wasn’t even sure he trusted her unusual detective skills, but he didn’t know what else to do. For weeks, they had watched the killer carve out his message on victims that he tortured for hours before their bodies relinquished their hold on life.

  At his car, he rested the phone against his shoulder and flipped open his notepad. He added the last letter to the others he wrote down at five previous crime scenes. The addition of the last letter completed the message. Lionel just needed to figure out what it meant.

  Hear me.

  Chapter Three

  Nestled in the corner of an L-shaped strip mall, Ristorante Italiano had not been updated since opening its doors almost four decades earlier. White paint flaked off two wrought iron benches in front of the restaurant. The outside walls boasted a fading mural of vine-covered picket fences, wine bottles, and random bunches of white and red grapes. According to online reviews, the food quality had also deteriorated under new management.

  In front of a cheap, ceramic planter filled with a dying mix of flowers, Jillian Waters wrapped her arms around her lunch date’s neck. Several inches shorter than Jillian, the man raised his head up for a kiss, and she returned his affection.

  Watching their kiss from his vantage point in the parking lot, David Noakes shook his head in disgust. Her date’s selfish kiss took pleasure away from her, without offering anything in return. The awkward kiss continued, and David frowned. The taste of garlic and bumping noses ensured Jillian would not experience passion in her last kiss before she died.

  Passion belonged in every step of life. David took pride in inserting passion into each moment of his work, and he would make sure Jillian experienced the ultimate passion before she took her final breath. Though intended for Emily Monroe, his passion would pass through and consume Jillian until she embodied it.