Chase nodded.
“Good. And get Dunbar up here, tell him to watch on the monitor as well. Get him to cross reference anything she says about the low-income area that the IP address pinged, and anything about L. Wiley or R.S. Germaine or the books. Got it?”
The man confirmed that he would.
“Drake, get ready to move. If she reveals anything that you think you can act on, I want you to get out there. Don’t hesitate, just go. And Take Stitts with you.”
Drake nodded.
It felt strange and maybe even wrong to give Drake the reigns over Stitts, especially given that this whole mess was partially Drake’s fault, but Stitts had told her to use her gut.
And her gut was telling her that she still needed Drake, which was why she hadn’t told him to fuck off already after his colossal mistake.
Another deep breath, a curt nod, and then she opened the door to the interrogation room.
“My name is Sergeant Chase Adams. Why don’t we start with yours?”
Chapter 48
Drake tapped his foot anxiously as he stared through the two-way mirror, waiting for Chase to get through the legal jargon before questioning the woman.
She was in her mid-twenties, he guessed, with a shock of black hair that was shaved on the sides. Her pale face was punctuated by piercings in her nose, eyebrows, and lips.
Drake doubted if they ended there.
“So what happened, Hanna? Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Chase said. Her voice was strange coming through the speakers above Drake’s head, and there was a slight delay between her lips moving on the other side of the two-way glass and the sound, giving the entire scene a bizarre, ethereal quality.
The woman crossed her arms over her narrow chest.
“I was raped,” she said, lips pressing together. “The bastard who wrote those books raped me.”
Drake could see Chase struggling to keep her emotions in check, and knew that she was frustrated.
“Hanna, from the beginning. Tell me where you met this man.”
Hanna’s scowl deepened.
“Why? So you can tell me that I deserved it? That the fact that my clit is pierced means that I deserved to be raped, hmm?”
Drake was caught off guard by the comment, and evidently so was Chase. He had heard this line of speech before, of course, but usually it was in reference to a shirt being too low cut, or a skirt too short.
A clit piercing was a new one for him.
Chase leaned forward.
“I’m here to help, Hanna. And don’t forget, you asked for me. Did you come here just to berate me over my comments to the press? Is that it? It’s disgusting that you would—”
The woman lowered her eyes and she shook her head.
“No,” she said softly, “I was raped. I was raped by him.”
She’s lying, Drake thought suddenly. Clit piercing or not, the woman hadn’t been raped.
The door to the observation room opened, and Dunbar burst through, open laptop in hand. He offered a curt hello to Stitts and Drake, then set his computer down on the table.
“Did I miss anything?”
“Not yet,” Drake said, still staring at Hanna.
She was nervous, a dead give away that she was lying.
“Tell me, then. Tell me what happened.”
After a deep, shuddering breath, one that to Drake looked orchestrated, rehearsed even, Hanna started to weave a tale that started with a writer’s group, then extended to her asking for help after class. She went on to describe the rape scene in great detail. So much detail, in fact, that at one point Drake found himself cringing.
He looked over to Stitts, who was staring intently at Hanna as he had been moments ago.
Drake wondered if the man was thinking the same thing he was; mainly, that those who undergo a traumatic event, such as rape or violent assault, usually couldn’t recall this level of detail. During these horrible acts, the victims are completely overtaken by one of the three main evolutionary precepts: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. Memory, on the other hand, is a distant faculty, and all of the human machinery is rerouted for one of those three acts.
Too much detail, she’s remembering too much.
Drake looked over at Dunbar next, who appeared oblivious to the graphic account as he punched at his keyboard.
“Writer’s group in New York…,” he mumbled, presumably to himself. “There are dozens of these things. Need more information.”
Drake reached into his pocket, intent on fondling the finger bone.
Only it wasn’t there.
Panic overtook him, and he searched his other jean pocket.
When his hands still came up empty, he patted his chest, the inside of his jacket.
Still nothing.
“Drake? You okay?” Agent Stitts asked, sounding far away.
Where the hell is it? Where is it?
Drake tried to think back to the last time he had seen it.
Was it yesterday? Did I have it when I visited Ken and asked for the money? At Patty’s? Did I bring it out when Ivan had arrived? After he left?
“Then where the fuck is it?” he asked out loud.
A hand came down gently on his shoulder, and he glanced up.
“You alright?” Agent Stitts asked, concern on his face.
Drake swallowed and shook the man’s hand away.
“I just—”
But he was interrupted by Chase’s voice filtering through the intercom.
“Medical will be here in a few minutes to take swabs, Hanna. But before they come, can I just ask you one more thing?”
A dry swallow.
“Yes.”
“Do you know the name of this man who did this to you? Did you get his name?”
Hanna’s eyes shot up, and Drake saw that they were red from crying.
“Colin… his name was Colin Elliot. And I’m just happy that he didn’t kill me like those other poor girls.”
Chapter 49
There were three hard knocks on the door, and then it opened. A portly nurse in a white gown looked in with a severe expression on her face.
“Medical,” she said simply, and Chase rose to her feet.
“Thank you, Hanna,” she said to the woman across the table from her. “And we’re going to catch this guy. I promise.”
Hanna nodded, but said nothing. Her demeanor had completely changed from when Chase had first arrived in the interrogation room.
She remembered what Stitts had said, that in his profile he had stated that the killer was a man who had been emasculated.
And yet none of the other victims had been sexually assaulted.
Chase pushed these feelings aside for the time being. The woman had made a claim, a very vivid and graphic account of a rape, and it wasn’t her job to judge her in this moment.
She would make sure that this man… that Colin Elliot, would be brought in for questioning. And if he did rape her, then…
Chase left the room and headed into the adjacent one.
“Did you get that?” she asked, after entering. She clicked a button and the glass went dark, and the intercom shut off, offering Hanna privacy as she was examined and swabbed.
“Dunbar? Any hit on the name?”
Officer Dunbar didn’t look up, he just continued to type furiously.
“Not yet, working on it.”
She turned to Drake next.
“Something’s not right here,” she said absently. Drake was looking particularly pale, almost as if he were going to be ill. “You alright?”
“Fine,” he grumbled, even though it was clear that he was anything but fine.
Chase instinctively sniffed the air, trying to pick up the scent of alcohol, even though this was one of the first things she had done when Drake had come down to the precinct.
She smelled nothing, and then considered that this was perhaps that reason why he was acting so strangely and looked sick.
After her brief addiction to heroi
n, she knew how bad things could get before they got better.
She swallowed and tried to focus on the task at hand, on Hanna, on her story, on the killer that they so desperately sought.
“What’s not right?” Agent Stitts asked, bringing her out of her head.
Chase turned to the now black two-way mirror.
“The rape… the other girls, all four of them… none of them had signs of sexual assault, did they?”
Detective Yasiv shook his head.
“CSU and the ME’s office tested them thoroughly. Melissa had had sex recently, as recent as a day or two before she went missing, but her mother confirmed that she was seeing someone. An ex-boyfriend, and he was cleared. Incarcerated when both she and Tanya went missing.”
“So why now, then? If this Colin Elliot is our killer, why did he just start raping now?”
“And why did he let her go?” Drake added.
Chase agreed.
“It doesn’t make sense. Drake, in the books, was there any mention of rape?”
Drake shook his head.
“No. None. Only about the killing. And us discovering the bodies, of course.”
“Then why now?” Chase asked again.
“Maybe it’s not—” Drake began, but Dunbar cut him off.
“Got it! Colin Elliot, Elgin Street, Apartment four.”
Detective Yasiv grabbed for his coat.
“Elgin Street?” Chase repeated. “Where’s that?”
Dunbar finally looked up from his computer screen.
“You’re not going to believe this, but it’s right in the heart of the area that the IP address that posted the wereporn books pinged.”
Chase’s eyes bulged and she turned to Drake.
“Go! Go grab this guy and bring him in!”
Drake nodded and reached for his own jacket. Then he looked at Stitts.
“You packing?”
Stitts nodded.
“Good. I’ll drive. Yasiv, you follow behind with a couple of uniforms.”
Chase planted both hands on the table and allowed several deep breaths when it was just her and Dunbar left in the room.
There was something else bugging her, and it wasn’t just Hanna’s story, or the inconsistencies with the killer’s MO.
It had something to do with Agent Stitts’s profile. It wasn’t right; they were missing something, something big, and yet she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Fuck,” she said out loud, and when Dunbar looked over at her, she frowned. “Keep digging, Dunbar. I’ve got a feeling that this isn’t over yet.”
And then, to herself, she thought, it might not even be over when we arrest Colin Elliot.
Chapter 50
Drake raced across the city, thoughts of the missing finger bone suddenly pushed to the back of his mind.
The only thing he was focusing on now was catching their killer, of arresting Colin Elliot before he raped or killed another woman.
“You and Sergeant Adams go back a ways, don’t you?” Agent Stitts asked from the passenger seat. The question took Drake by surprise, as he had just cleared his mind of thoughts not related to the case.
“Huh?” he asked, his eyes still on the road. The snow was coming down heavier now, and he had to squint to make sure he stayed on the road.
“You and Chase. You were partners a while back?”
Drake nodded, but said nothing. Even though the sample size of their interactions had been small, Agent Stitts came off as an introspective person.
“And?”
Drake sighed.
“And what?”
His tone dripped with annoyance, but he didn’t go so far as asking the agent to shut up. After all, he knew how badly Chase wanted to be recruited to the FBI, and if he hadn’t squandered that already with his Ivan Meitzer fuck up, then he wasn’t going to tell this guy off now, ruin her chances.
She deserved better.
“How is she? Stable? Trust-worthy?”
Drake resisted the urge to look over at the man.
Stable?
“Chase is no-nonsense, doesn’t take shit from anyone, as you saw earlier. Damn fine detective, too. And trust-worthy? Definitely.”
Silence fell over the car for a few moments, before Agent Stitts spoke again.
“And there’s no sign of her problem? Of a relapse?”
This time Drake couldn’t resist the urge. He looked at Stitts, his eyebrows knitted in confusion.
“Relapse? What are you talking about?”
Agent Stitts stared back for a moment before answering
“Let me ask you something, Drake. How much do you really know about Chase Adams?”
Drake shrugged, his mind still stuck on the word relapse.
“Well, for instance, did you know that she’s married?”
Drake said he did, although kept to himself just how long it had taken him to acquire this knowledge.
“What about her son? Did you know she has a son?”
Try as he might, Drake couldn’t help but let his surprise show on his face.
It was response enough.
“Didn’t think so.”
Drake had enough of this intrusive questioning and decided to put an end to it.
“We were partners for one case. That’s it.”
His thoughts turned to Clay and then to Suzan, and how his ex-partner had intentionally kept the details of the crimes they investigated from her.
And then there was Jasmine…
“She kept some things to herself, but so what? That doesn’t make her a bad detective. If you only knew the things we’ve seen…”
“Oh, I can imagine. And I don’t think she’s a bad detective—on the contrary, I think she’s a fantastic detective. If I didn’t, then I would have taken over the investigation the moment she brought me in. What I’m trying to figure out, is whether or not she’s a good partner.”
Drake turned back to the road and flicked the wipers to maximum. They were ten, fifteen minutes away from Colin Elliot’s address with the traffic, and it couldn’t come fast enough.
Detective Yasiv had called ahead, and several uniformed officers were already monitoring the place, the roads in and out, but were waiting until they arrived to move in. There might be another woman with him, and the last thing they wanted to do was to force Colin’s hand, make him do something rash.
“You’re a chatty guy, huh?” he said.
“Just doing my due diligence, Drake. I hope you can appreciate that.”
Drake raised an eyebrow.
“Due diligence? She’s heading to the FBI?”
All of a sudden, the Chatty Kathy to his right went silent.
“Hmm?”
Stitts took a deep breath and then answered without pretense.
“We’re considering her for a profiler role, something mid-level. But several red flags have been raised.”
Relapse, Drake thought.
“And not all of them have to do with her past,” Stitts continued, as if reading his thoughts. “Of a greater concern is her judge of character.”
“Judge of character?” Drake repeated harshly. But even before the words were out of his mouth, he regretted saying them. He turned back to the road. “You mean me, don’t you?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Drake saw Agent Stitts nod.
“The FBI is not like the NYPD. In New York, Chase is surrounded by men in blue, case and point the uniforms waiting at Colin Elliot’s house as we speak. In the FBI, it’s usually just the agent and a partner, but as you can see, we occasionally work alone. And not everyone is as inviting as Sergeant Adams, let me tell you.”
Stitts’s words hung in the air like a foul stench, and they clung to it even as Drake passed the first squad car marking the entrance to the compound that contained Colin Elliot’s last known address.
He thought back to how he had tried his best to prevent this very thing from happening, how he had taken all of the blame for the errors made during the inve
stigation of the Butterfly Killer to protect Chase.
And it was all for naught, it seemed.
In the end, he had sullied her reputation, despite his efforts.
“You can’t hold my actions against her,” Drake said softly. “That’s not fair.”
“Of course not. But I’m wondering what it says about her judgment that she insisted on bringing you on board.”
Drake pulled the car up to the side of the road and parked it behind two police cars whose lights were off.
He reached across and popped the glove box. Agent Stitts leaned out of the way as he pulled a pistol out.
“I thought you said you weren’t armed?” Agent Stitts asked, a hint of concern on his tongue.
“I wasn’t,” Drake grumbled. He was about to open the door, when Stitts’s voice drew him back.
“I’ve known people like you, Drake; people who always try to do the right thing, but can never manage to get it right. And I’ll let you in on a secret: things are going to get a lot worse for you and those you love before it gets better.”
Stitts opened the car door and a blast of cold air filled the interior.
“If it ever does,” he finished as he stepped out into the cold.
Chapter 51
After the nurse left Hanna, Chase turned the two-way glass back on and observed the woman.
She was lying about the rape, of that she was certain, but there were too many coincidences not to think that there was a connection between Colin Elliot and their killer.
He was a writer, and while Hanna didn’t know his pen name, she had confirmed that he wrote under one. He also lived in the area that the books, the three wereporn novels that the victims had all read and reviewed, had been published, and he fit the physical profile that Agent Stitts had offered.
The profile that I don’t believe.
As she watched, Hanna pushed a lock of black hair from her face, then smoothed the front of her t-shirt.
She wasn’t raped, but there was fear in her eyes. Chase fell short of thinking that this was some sort of ploy by feminists to further out her for her ill-advised comments, and that this was a different animal entirely.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 68