Drake’s mouth was dry, and he felt his hands start to tremble slightly.
It was going on twelve hours since his last drink.
“So what?”
Chase narrowed her eyes as if to say, stay with me here, Drake. Pay attention now.
“So, two detectives show up at Thomas’s house to see Clarissa of all people, and the first thing the housekeeper does is call his brother? Even before calling Thomas himself?”
And now Drake saw the entire picture.
It wasn’t her cell phone she had in her hand, but his; Thomas’s.
“It’s almost as if Raul had been instructed what to do in the event detectives came to the estate,” Drake said.
Chase smacked the cell phone again.
“Exactly. But the real question is, why? Are they hiding something from Thomas? Clarissa? Or, better still, did Weston and Raul already know that Thomas was dead?”
Drake raised an eyebrow at this last point, thinking that Chase was overreaching. And yet the nagging sensation that something was off about Raul made him wonder.
“Maybe, but if Weston knew that his brother was dead, then hand the man an Oscar, skip the ceremony and the vote. As for Raul… you know what I’m wondering?” Drake asked, turning his attention to the rows of colorful flowers by the gates of the Smith estate. A bumble bee, thick as an infant bat, buzzed into view and then rested its heavy torso on one of the larger white flowers.
“What’s that?”
“I’m wondering if our housekeeper Raul also does a little gardening every once in a while.”
Chase put the car into drive, and they pulled away from the iron gate.
“Yeah, and whether or not their little garden has butterflies,” she said.
***
They were nearly back at the station when something occurred to Drake.
“Why do you still have Thomas’s cell phone, anyway?”
Chase smirked.
“I told you that I was suspicious about why Clarissa didn’t report her husband as missing. Thought maybe she would try calling and didn’t want to miss it. Now, though…” she let her sentence trail off.
Drake was impressed, not only by her caginess, but by her willingness to stretch the rules.
“You going to put it into evidence now?”
The smirk remained on her face.
“No, not quite yet. I’m going to pass it to our tech guys first, see what they can pull off of it. There are a bunch of calls on Monday night, but they are all from blocked numbers. I’m going to see if they can work out who Thomas was reaching out to before his phone went dead. I doubt anything will come of it, but just in case. Here,” she said, unlocking the phone and turned towards him. “See this? This is his calendar.”
Drake squinted and leaned close to the glowing screen. It showed a monthly view, and most of the days were empty. There was, however, a recurring entry for the first three weeks, all on Tuesday and all denoted by a single letter.
“V? What the hell is V? Is that some new sort of Internet abbreviation? Like LOL?”
Chase looked legitimately surprised.
“LOL? Really? You know what LOL means?”
Drake didn’t smile.
“Yeah, I’ve heard it before.”
Suzan said it a couple dozen times during dinners at Clay’s house.
Sensing a change in mood, Chase let her face go slack.
“No, not that I know of. Typed it into Urban Dictionary, but nothing came up. I mean, some things did come up, but nothing that I can associate with V in this context.”
“Urban Dictionary?”
Chase shook her head.
“Never mind.”
She started to pull the phone back, but Drake spotted something else and held it out of her reach.
“What about this? PSY?”
Chase shrugged.
“Don’t know about that one, either,” she said simply.
Drake felt a tingle of pride.
“I do,” he said, “After… after what happened, I was required to undergo a psych assessment. PSY was the abbreviation they wrote on my file.”
Chase thought about this for a moment.
“Huh,” she said, her gaze drifting. “Thomas was seeing a psychiatrist?” she shrugged. “Not surprising, I guess. Lots of money, NYC, even a man with a track record as clean as he is bound to have some demons. I mean, we know he lied to his wife about going to Texas for business.”
Drake nodded, as Chase pulled into a parking spot outside 62nd division.
“I’m going to get ready for the press conference,” she said. “But I’m going to have to speak to Rhodes first. You want to come along?”
“No thanks,” Drake said with a grimace. Chase looked at him as if contemplating talking him into it, but Drake’s phone started to ring in his pocket and she rolled her eyes.
“You should really put that thing on silent.”
This time, Drake did smile.
“Yeah, but then how would I know it’s ringing?”
Chase chuckled and both of them got out of the car. As his partner headed toward the doors, Drake stayed behind and answered his phone.
“Drake.”
“Hey buddy, it’s Beckett. Is the rocket with you?”
Drake didn’t need Urban Dictionary to know what he meant by that.
“No, she just left.”
“Ah, too bad. Because I have something you guys are going to want to hear, and I would rather listen to her pretty voice than your creepy breathing when I tell you.”
Chapter 18
Drake watched as Chase made her way to the podium outside 62nd precinct. Fourteen years on the force, and he was still amazed at how quickly they could erect the damn wooden platform and podium.
What was even more amazing was the number of reporters and TV cameras that arrived nearly as quickly. It was as if they could smell the unease in the air.
At present, Drake, who was standing off to one side with several uniformed officers, counted at least six cameras, and easily twice that number of men and women with cell phones leaning close to either one of the two speakers that had been erected next to the podium, or to the podium itself.
Chase had changed her outfit again. When they had gone to see Clarissa Smith, she had been wearing a dark top with a navy skirt that extended a few inches below her knee, but now she was sporting a white, loose-fitting blouse with pinstriped pants.
Still, even in this conservative dress, Drake was beginning to see what Beckett meant when he had referred to her as a rocket. But any illicit thoughts were ripped from his mind even before they could form when Sergeant Rhodes, who was standing beside Chase, cleared his throat.
Chase stepped forward.
“Good afternoon everyone,” she said. Her voice was flat and even, her expression neutral. “I’m sure you are all wondering why we have invited you here today. I have—”
“Is it about the alligator shoes? The murder in Clinton Hill?” someone from the audience shouted.
Chase’s expression faltered, but only for a split second. In that moment, Rhodes stepped up to the mic, guiding Chase out of the way.
“Please remain silent until after the detective has finished.”
Rhodes waited for silence, almost as if he were tempting whoever had spoken to interrupt again. To his left, Drake sensed the uniforms tense as if ready to remove the offender with a simple nod from the Sergeant.
The situation put Drake in a state of unease. Back before the incident, it had been him up there addressing the media, and while he detested the act nearly as much as he loathed being the bearer of bad news to family members, he knew that forcefully removing a reporter from a media scrum was not the way to start off an investigation.
Especially not one of this magnitude.
Thankfully, however, the reporters remained quiet and no action was necessary.
Chase cleared her throat, and Rhodes stepped aside, allowing her to continue.
“It
is with a heavy heart that I inform you of the murder of a man that has called New York City his home his entire life. A man who has dedicated much of his time, influence, and wealth to bettering the city itself. A family man, a father, a husband.”
The crowd started murmuring amongst themselves, but a sharp look from Rhodes rendered them silent once again.
“Thomas Alexander Smith was a litigator and a philanthropist and he was brutally murdered two nights ago.”
It was clear from the way that Chase paused that this was the point at which she expected uproar, but it didn’t come.
At least not right away.
Shock fell over the reporters like a thin film atop scuzzy water. Most of these same reporters had likely attended the library unveiling event last week, Drake realized. And the man that they had been praising that day was suddenly gone.
Dead.
But this impromptu moment of silence didn’t last long. Someone eventually broke through the surface.
“Can you tell us how he died?” he shouted.
“Was he the man in Clinton Hill with the alligator shoes?” another yelled.
And with that, the audience erupted into an incomprehensible cacophony of questions.
Chase waited for most of them to die down before holding her hands up.
“With respect to Mr. Smith’s family and the integrity of the ongoing investigation, I will not be taking any questions at this time. We will, however, be keeping you apprised at regular intervals as the investigation proceeds.”
“Is there a reason why a rookie detective is heading such a high-profile case?” A man with a tweed hat suddenly shouted above the rest.
Rhodes stepped up to the mic again.
“Mrs. Adams is a well-respected detective with a long list of credentials from her time in Seattle.”
“In Seattle, she was a narcotics officer, not homicide. Why—”
“As already stated, we will not be answering any questions at this time,” Rhodes said quickly. “We ask any citizens who may have seen Mr. Smith on or around the night of Tuesday or Wednesday the tenth of March to come forward. Working together, I’m confident that we will quickly resolve this case and put this senseless murder behind us.”
Rhodes’s words and the reporters’ questions had worked the reporters into a frenzy, and Drake was suddenly reminded of starving piranhas devouring a piece of meat.
And then, as Rhodes and Chase moved to step off the makeshift stage, another commotion drew his attention. Only this time, it originated within the ranks of the half-dozen police officers to his left.
He turned to the closest man.
“What is it?” he asked under his breath. The man shrugged him off and ignored him. “What’s going on?”
Several other officers turned in his direction, but no one offered an answer.
Drake started after the half that made their way to the station, while the rest remained behind as crowd control. He moved quickly, catching up to a young man with short blond hair; an officer who looked even younger than Chase.
“What’s going on?” he asked in his most demanding tone.
The man lowered his eyes and mouthed something that Drake couldn’t quite make out.
No lip reader was Detective Damien Drake, but the expression on the police officer’s boyish face was enough to relay the remainder of the message in stereo.
There’s been another murder.
Chapter 19
The scene was different—an apartment versus an abandoned warehouse—but the MO was the same: an affluent man murdered, his hands and feet bound behind him, a crude butterfly drawn on his back in blood.
“I see another injection site on his neck,” Chase said, leaning close to the victim. Unlike Thomas Smith, it appeared as if this man had been dead for several days. His body had since been released from the grips of rigor mortis, and his eyes had obtained a milky hue like watered down milk.
Drake observed from several feet, noting that like Thomas, this victim’s shirt had been removed and was folded neatly on the couch beside the body.
“Beckett is on his way,” he remarked. He looked about the room and saw nothing that seemed out of place. The bachelor pad was neatly arranged, the sheets in the bed still made. The decorations were plain almost to the point of looking staged. In fact, if it weren’t for a few photographs in frames nestled on a small table by the front door, Drake might have thought it a poorly conceived movie set.
“There’s swelling here, too,” Chase said. “Not as much as with Thomas, but you can see that his neck is thicker than it should be.”
“Who’s the vic?” Drake asked.
“Neil Benjamin Pritchard, local businessman,” Chase replied without hesitation.
Another rich man murdered, Drake thought, and was about to say as much when someone else entered the room.
Beckett’s face was grim and he nodded to Drake as he approached the body. He lowered his black bag and studied Neil Pritchard for a moment before saying anything. Then he opened his bag, put on his patented purple gloves, then leaned down and traced the dark brown butterfly stain on his back.
“Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid,” he said softly.
Chase raised her head, acknowledging the man’s presence for the first time.
“Say what?”
Beckett looked up.
“EDTA—didn’t Drake tell you?”
She turned her attention to Drake, shrugging. Beckett looked from Chase to Drake and back again.
“Communication, people. Don’t they teach you that in police academy?”
“She was giving a press conference,” Drake offered in his defense.
Beckett frowned.
“EDTA is a preservative that prevents blood from clotting. Still no hit on the DNA, but the blood—which is from a woman, in case you need reminding—is not fresh. EDTA is used for blood collection.”
Chase stood, shaking her head.
“So it’s not our killer’s blood?”
“No idea. All I can tell you is that the blood used to make this macabre art was preserved,” Beckett said.
Chase pointed to the man’s neck.
“There’s swelling here, just like with Thomas.”
Beckett walked over and hunched down. He prodded the man’s neck gently with his fingers briefly, before tilting his head toward Neil’s face.
“Drake? Pass me the probe.”
Drake reached into his bag and pulled out the tool that he had seen Beckett use back at the warehouse. Beckett took it, then started rooting around the man’s mouth. Without the rigor that gripped Thomas, the man’s dead lips flopped around uncomfortably, like a man mumbling in his sleep.
It took several seconds of work before the ME managed to tease something out.
Again, Drake had to look away to steel himself.
It was another caterpillar, only this time the inch and half long insect was stiff as a board.
“Looks like another Monarch,” Beckett said, scooping it up and putting it in a specimen container.
A buzzing sound suddenly filled the apartment, and for a brief moment, Drake thought with revulsion that it was the sound of an insect buzzing. But when Chase pulled off one of her gloves and reached into her pocket, he realized that it was just her cell phone.
He took a deep breath and stared at his partner as she answered. Her face, previously a mask of disgust, was suddenly awash with dread. She said a few words, mostly uh-huhs and then hung up.
Chase didn’t say anything at first, reserving herself to just standing beside Neil Pritchard’s body, her silhouette illuminated by the harsh lights that had been erected before they had arrived. Drake saw her take several breaths, before turning to him and staring directly into his eyes.
“That was records. They just informed me of another murder with the same MO in Montreal a month ago,” she paused, a far-off look in her eyes. “Drake, I think we have a serial killer on our hands,” she said.
Drake shuddered.<
br />
It was the Skeleton King all over again. Only this time, he had grown wings.
PART II - Chrysalis
Chapter 20
The man in black watched as the short, pretty detective got out of her car and looked around briefly. From his vantage point across the street, he could clearly make out her shoulder-length hair framing her face, the prominent frown on her lips. For a second, her seeking eyes seemed to lock on his, and he froze, ready to run if she should make even the slightest movement in his direction.
But after a moment, her gaze continued on.
Like so many others, she had looked right past him, through him, seeing only the shadows he shrouded himself with.
The detective turned and started toward the apartment building, the door of which hung open, flanked by two equally distressed uniformed officers.
It had taken longer—much longer—for the police to find Neil compared to Thomas, probably because the junkie bitch had opened her mouth with the latter. But despite her presence, things had been easier with Thomas. For one, Thomas had died from the initial injection; he had croaked once, then after seizing briefly, he had fallen unconscious.
Thomas had died an hour or two later.
Neil, on the other hand, hadn’t succumbed to the first injection. His eyes had bulged, and at first, the man in black feared that some of the cocktail had formed a bolus that had gone straight to his heart.
A second injection had set things right.
And yet Neil had been easier than Chris. Chris had been a bastard who had fought to the end. Three injections it had taken, and even then, as he lay on the floor of his restaurant with the acrid smell of burning pizza dough in the air, the man in black had thought that he was going to have to strangle him before the light in his eyes finally blinked out.
A second car pulled erratically up to Neil Pritchard’s apartment and parked halfway on the curb behind the female detective’s fancy BMW.
The man watched from the shadows, his hand sneaking subconsciously into the inside pocket of his dark jacket.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 8