But they weren’t fast enough, and Alan wasn’t inclined to ignore the guy anyway. He could do a lot of damage if he decided to. If that happened, Josie would have their asses. He nodded from the side of the car as the reporter walked up to them.
“Spence, Alan, you guys been upstairs talkin’ to the private dicks? I saw you come out. Something going on you’d like to share? I know you got a serial runnin’ around, don’t you think foolin’ with the privates is gonna look a tad odd? This isn’t the first time you’ve been up there. You guys can put a positive spin on it if you want. Once this second one’s out, we’re gonna go viral. You don’t get serials every day, not here and like this anyway.”
Martin looked expectantly at the pair of detectives.
Spence started in on him. “Look you, keep the hell out of our faces. Stop following us around. We get something we can share, we’ll tell you.”
Alan leaned over the car from the passenger side.
“What Spence means is, we’ve got nothing new, so you’re wasting your time sticking to us like this. The privates are working the cases too, nothing says they can’t. As she said, when we’ve got something, you’ll get it.”
“Yeah, like the handouts from the press guy? Not good ‘nough. Look, I gotta make my story, and this is part of it, so if you want it to look good for you, give a bit. You know I can do you favours, I have in the past. Or I can make life a bit more hectic, something I’d like to avoid. You don’t give me your take, I have to go with what I see, and what I see here’s you two workin’ with the privates. That can’t be good for your image.”
Spence slammed the driver’s door and turned on him, but before she could get going, Alan came around and blocked her. “First off, we aren’t working with the private detectives. The department frowns on interference in police business. There’s one quote for you. Here’s another. We’re in the middle of an investigation that may lead us to the killer or killers, but in the interest of justice, we cannot discuss the details. That’s about all you can use for now, but we’ll make a deal with you. You get an exclusive from us when the time comes, if you help us nail this guy. And one of the ways you can help is to hold off for a bit. We’ll feed you enough for the paper, but not stuff that’ll compromise us or the search. If you agree to that, I’ll give you today’s little scoop. The understanding is that when we need a favour, we get it.”
“It’s not much of a deal from my end. You seem to get the benefit here. Depends on what you give me.”
“No dice. You agree up front, and I feed you details only you get. When you print a story, it isn’t one that makes a bigger mess for us. You break the agreement, we make sure you never get a thing again, and you know we can do that.”
“So feed me. I’ll go for it, but give me enough to keep it interesting. You break your end and give everybody the dope, I’ll do the same to you, no more nice press.”
Spence looked disgusted, opened the door to the unmarked, and climbed in.
Once she was out of the picture, Alan gave the reporter the fact that both girls had been young, beautiful, and liked the nightlife. This wouldn’t screw up their investigation, and the guy went away satisfied enough, but Alan knew he’d be stuck with him as an antagonistic ally until this was over.
He watched the guy walk down the crescent before he climbed in the passenger side to take flak from his partner. She started in as soon as he closed his door, slammed the unmarked in gear, and took off up Victoria Road.
“Are you nuts? You’re encouraging him! What did you tell him?” Spence was furious.
◆◆◆
Martin forgot about lunch and walked back up the hill on Fitzwilliam. He was more than satisfied with the agreement Alan thought he’d brokered. Now to get to the privates. The approach would be tricky because he didn’t have a weapon with them. They wouldn’t care what he printed, and if he went too far, they’d nail his ass. Harry had been around a long time and knew the game. And he couldn’t get past that brassy bitch receptionist. But maybe that weird chick he was living with wouldn’t be hard to crack. Worth a try.
Martin thought about that and about the times she’d been on the stroll that he’d seen. The tall blonde she went home with might be a good lever, especially if her boyfriend, Harry, didn’t know about her. Then too, he could pressure the blonde, since she worked for the city in the days. He’d followed her a couple of mornings and knew she was the curator at the museum. At night, she was someone else.
Martin started up and drove out of town. He stopped in the south end, got a sandwich and a coffee from Tim’s, and wrote his copy in the cab while he ate. Once that was sent off, he started up again and drove farther out of town.
◆◆◆
Alan picked away at the laptop on his desk. It was his own machine and a lot faster and newer than the force’s older desktops. Spence sat at her desk with a couple of reports in front of her and waited. No one else was in, not even the boss. Josie’s door was closed, the blinds down, and that usually meant she was out. Normally she liked to keep an eye on things.
Alan held up a finger. “Okay, here we go. Apparently, we have a whole unit of our own, the Special Services and Behavioural Sciences Branch. There’s another one in Ontario with the OPP. There’s also one in Quebec, but who cares. I’m submitting a request for help with this case, but I’ll have to send in a lot of our data. This is going to take a while.”
Spence fidgeted a little, drummed her fingers on the desktop, and shook her head impatiently. “Can’t you just ask for one and get him out here?”
Alan shook his head. “We’ve got to do it the way they want or we’ll get nowhere, and I’m going to have to get the okay from Josie anyway. We’ll be into tomorrow before we get very far with this. Just let me finish and I’ll drop a request in her mailbox. Do we have a toxicology report for either of the girls?”
He started rummaging in a drawer for the murder book.
“Why don’t you just check online instead of in that damned book of yours? It’s probably in the lab work you got back and you missed it. Gimme a minute and I’ll look it up. You keep workin’ on that application you’re messin’ with.”
Spence booted up, drummed her fingers, and sighed. When the screen finally came up, she typed in a command and waited again.
“It’s in the last lab report for Mary and there’s nothin’ there. Easy to miss. Bet it’s the same for Kylie. Bodies were too old to get much anyway.”
She typed in another command. “Yeah, here’s Kylie’s too, and there’s nothin’ there either. Just add the reports and get the damn thing off.”
Spence, impatient as always, got up and headed for the door. “I’m goin’ up to the university, see if anyone there has any ideas. Be back in a bit.”
Alan smiled at her back. “If you find anyone useful, call me, or better yet, find a good restaurant and I’ll meet you. I’m starved.”
He continued with the application, finished it about an hour later, shipped it along with an email to Josie’s inbox, and stretched. Spence would be a while, he knew, but she was so impatient and so frustrated with this case, she just might queer her chances before she even got past the office help. “It’ll be interesting to see what she gets before I get a call from her,” he muttered aloud.
The murder book wasn’t up to date yet, and since Alan already had it out, he began printing what they had that wasn’t already there. It wasn’t much. Forensics had a bit more about the inky stuff, a second chemical analysis, and some suggestions about the implement used to put the design on the body. Apparently, some of it was done with a finger, but there were no ridges. This was unusual and suggested some sort of protection like latex gloves. Some was evidently applied with an instrument of some sort that was used for the more intricate parts of the design. No tool had been found at the site.
Then there was the autopsy report, the complete one for Mary. The results were disappointing. King had examined the cuts in detail, but he was unable to be definitive
about the type of knife used other than that it was sharp. There were no hesitation marks. There was also no clear indication of sexual penetration, but the report didn’t rule it out. The bodies were simply too degraded to be certain.
The site, he remembered, was remarkably clean. Both of them were, and Alan thought that was partly the perp and partly the length of time the girls’ bodies had been out there. Mary’s, he could understand. The rain pretty well wiped out anything useful, but Kylie’s was hard to accept. There hadn’t been anything—no fibers, no prints, no hair other than animal, and no trace like footprints. Although the forest floor didn’t help. Still, the guys had searched for days, especially in the undergrowth, and had come up with nothing. Then there were the girls’ clothes. Neither one had a stitch on. So where were they? With the perp? Discarded somewhere they hadn’t found? Burned?
Then there was the mutilation and the precision evident in the patterns, and there were the repetitions in both cases, the prepared sites. Add to that the additional stuff from the church that had to fit in somehow. The autopsy didn’t give them much beyond what had been done to the girls. No trace, no blood other than the victims’, just those damn markings in that strange ink, if that’s what it was. Even the tool, although sharp and wielded with precision, was unclear because so much damage had been done by predators. If there wasn’t sexual activity, what was the purpose? They had to get closer to a motive, Alan thought.
They were both young, attractive, sexually active, and both were either on or close to the stroll when they disappeared. With Kylie that wasn’t as certain, but it was likely. When you added all that up, there should have been some kind of sexual motive.
He got up from the desk and leaned on the windowsill. The overcast had broken up, and the sky had streaks of blue in it. The wind was high up and working at cross purposes. One layer of broken cloud was moving north, the one under it, streamers of cloud really, was moving east. Maybe, he thought, they’d get some sunny days, but you never knew from one hour to the next what the island would throw at you.
Alan stayed at the window looking at the ever-changing sky. Sometimes looking out cleared his head. Sometimes something would come to him.
Spence’s call came about a half hour later.
Alan walked across to the desk and picked up. “I’m on my way in. Didn’t go up there, not to the uni anyway. I went up to College Heights and parked. I’m just too damn frustrated to sit around. I had to get out, do somethin’. You’re right, we need some kind of profile, somethin’ to move with, but it’s gonna take so damned long. The paper’s gonna murder us if we don’t get somewhere soon. Probably end up with a task force, useless bloody waste of time that. People trampin’ all over the place, leaks springin’ up everywhere, politics up the goo gaw. Shit! Be there in five.”
Alan cradled the phone and smiled. She’d run off at the mouth for a while, but it cooled her down. Now they could plan how to get on with the investigation, what there was of it. She was right though; the press would hit them hard, even if Martin didn’t skewer them. They’d have to come up with something pretty fast. He locked away the murder book, grabbed his jacket, and went down to meet Spence.
Alan had just left the building when the Camaro’s throaty exhaust sounded at the corner. He couldn’t see her for the hedge and the trees, but there was no mistaking that car.
She slipped into the lot, did a quick turn, and pushed open the passenger door. Alan got in, and she booted it out the drive and up Milton. The Keg was tucked away on a side street downtown that dead-ended past two unpaved lots. Spence slid the Camaro up to the end of the reserved one, threw the police card on the dash, and they walked over to the restaurant.
The booth they wanted was in the back where the noise level wasn’t so high and they could talk without yelling at each other. It was off-hours anyway, so the place was only about half full.
They ordered, and Spence talked.
She was good at weeding out the less important stuff and creating a concise timeline. Alan recorded this bout of conversation with the little digital recorder in his shirt pocket. Spence didn’t know about the taping and Alan didn’t tell her because when he had in the past, she’d dried up. He’d play the material back when he was at home and take what he wanted from it, adding to his own notes. This time, though, that wouldn’t do much good because all he got was what he already had. Nothing popped out.
They finished the steaks, fries, and salads and began discussing how to proceed while they waited to hear about the profiler.
“What we need to do is go back to the beginning of both cases and review everything, especially the girls’ histories,” Alan said. “We don’t know enough there. Most of it we got from friends and relatives, so we need to interview more peers if we can find any. That won’t work with Mary unless we can get something from Singapore. Maybe see if Harry and Sabina can check with Chinatown, since that was the girl’s first contact. They got a way in and we haven’t. Kylie we can do.” He looked at Spence expectantly.
“I hate to have those guys in the middle of this, but you’re right, we gotta do something. They’ve got the contacts over there and even some here we can’t get to. So let’s do that. I wanna do the interviews myself though, I mean the ones we find. I don’t want some uniforms thrown into the mix. If we get at it today, we can get some of it done before the crap hits the fan. Otherwise, we get Josie and whoever else gets on his high horse. We should see the privates again. Maybe you could do that while I scout out Kylie’s school friends and talk to that little group again, Jen, Billy, and Jimmy, if I can find them. I don’t think any of that bunch still goes to school.”
◆◆◆
Harry looked up as Isabella came through the door.
“You got an appointment with Alan in an hour. I’ve given up on the intercom until you get trained. On one of those rare days when you get in early enough, we’ll have a session. Goin’ out for donuts. You need anything else?”
“No Sweets, a half dozen will do. Cinnamons please. I’ll put on a fresh pot.”
“If you think you can manage. Back in ten.”
Isabella turned on her heel, and Harry heard the front door slam. He went to Sabina’s office and watched her peering at her monitor. She was chewing her thumb.
“Hangnail, or just nervous? We got Alan in an hour. I’m making coffee.”
“Gimme a minute. Just lost a thread somewhere here. I’m getting Jim on it.”
He grabbed her around the waist.
“Jesus, H. Just make the damn coffee.”
Harry was fussing around in the coffee room when Sabina joined him. “That was a bit hairy. Jim found the problem, but we can’t figure out where I lost the thread in the first place. Got a spider on it.”
Harry sat on the edge of the counter. “You want a cup?”
Sabina nodded. “What do you think Alan wants? I’ve sent everything on the girls we’re gonna give him. Is the little witch coming?”
“Isabella didn’t say. Sure hope Alan has a new angle. We need it.”
Sabina nodded again. “I’m seeing Sally for a bit tonight. If it’s about the stroll, I’ll check it out.”
Isabella entered the office and dumped the donuts on the counter and noticed the coffee cups. “You pour me one, or do I have to get it myself like everything else?”
Harry reached for a mug, but Isabella had already grabbed one and poured. “The homicide dick’s gonna be here soon. You wanna look busy, big office like this.” She grabbed a chocolate donut and left.
Neither Sabina nor Harry wanted to talk about the girls. “I don’t know what else we can do without more data,” Sabina said. “We got nothing from the street; nothing from the girls on the stroll; nothing from Bomber. Nothing more to work with. It’s as if this guy doesn’t even own a computer, or he’s too damn smart to use it. I’ve got feelers out for somebody into cults. I’m trying to get locals, other than loonies, I mean. I’m looking at universities with programs that might invol
ve this stuff. I’ve sent emails to experts. Nothing back yet. I gotta pee. If Alan shows up, keep him busy.”
Back in his office, Harry took a sip and jumped when the intercom squawked loudly to announce Alan’s arrival.
“Isabella! Turn that damned thing down! You just ruined my best pants!”
Alan came in grinning. “Better not go out there for a while. She’s throwing stuff.”
“Grab a coffee. It’s fresh and hot, I can attest to that.” Harry shook his pants again and grinned back. “Oh, and while you’re there, help yourself to a donut. Not the cinnamon ones, they’re stale.”
Sabina wandered in with her cup, sat in one of the comfortable chairs, and patted the cushion next to her. She glanced up at Harry, canted her head in that way she had, and smiled. He sidled over and sat where indicated. Alan came back with his cup and two cinnamon donuts balanced on one hand. He gave one to Harry.
He sat on the other side of the coffee table. “Coffee’s good. Ours tastes like sewer water.”
Alan leaned forward and put his cup on the coffee table. “I came over because we’re stuck. We’ve got a lot of data and not a single lead. We said we’d share with you when we could, and you agreed to share with us. So here’s what’s going down now. I’ve submitted a request for a profiler to our criminal investigative analysis office in Ottawa. They’ll contact the closest behavioural analysis unit. I’m just waiting for my boss to file it. But in the process of getting the data they wanted, I realized something I hadn’t thought about. The more we know about the victims, the more we learn about the killer. Sounds simple, right?
“Serial homicide is something we don’t run into very often, so we learn as we go. But this guy’s something special. He gives us nothing, and he’s not going to stop. While we’re waiting for the response from the BAU, we have to learn more about the girls. So here’s what I thought. We’ll do all the additional background on Kylie since she’s local, and we’ll do what we can on Mary. But you guys have contacts in the Chinese community over in the city that we don’t and aren’t likely to get. So you could help us out by using them. It has to be under the counter. As far as my boss goes, I’m not here and didn’t ask. We’ll make all the official inquiries we’re supposed to make, including the Singapore authorities, and get whatever they can give us, but what we need is the private, personal stuff. Maybe you can get some of that.”
NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders Page 22