The chief glanced sharply at her, and her mouth opened in surprise.
“Which she’s providing,” the fed added somewhat belatedly.
Her grim smile revealed her fused teeth.
Her boss relaxed. “Erin’s a good cop. The Hawke conviction was solid…”
A loud unspoken “but” hung in the air.
Dammit.
“I will need a room of my own to work from,” Singh said.
A short burst of laughter escaped her. Space in the nineteen-twenties building was at a premium.
The chief’s glare shut her up. “We’ve arranged something. It isn’t perfect, but…”
Erin’s eyebrows stretched high. Not even she or Harry had their own office, and she didn’t see the chief willing to give up his space or enrage the secretarial staff just because a fed was in town for a day or two. They needed their one and only conference room for briefings and meeting updates.
“Barry cleared out his office and put a desk in there.” The chief ran a finger inside his collar.
Barry? The janitor. “There’s no natural light in that space.” She leaned forward, slightly horrified they were treating a visitor this way. Not that she wanted Darsh to get too comfortable, but…
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Singh said. “As long as the door has a lock.” This time it was the chief’s brows that rose.
“Barry has keys to all the rooms. And Linda, the administrative assistant,” Erin put in helpfully. She was enjoying letting her boss squirm for a change. “Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”
“Meeting in the conference room at nine AM sharp,” her boss yelled after her.
They walked past the locker rooms to the end of the corridor. The linoleum was dirty and curled up in one corner. Arrestees never saw this part of the building. They were kept on the other side of the bullpen, away from where the cops worked cases and did paperwork. The holding cells were downstairs in the basement.
She stopped at the last door on the right. There was a discolored square of wood where Barry had removed the “Custodian” sign.
“Here it is.” She opened the door and turned on the single bulb that dangled from the ceiling. The room was scrubbed clean and smelled strongly of pine disinfectant. The shelves where cleaning supplies usually sat were empty. She pushed farther inside and had to squeeze through the gap when the door refused to open all the way. A black industrial mat covered the floor drain. A battered desk took up most of the space—God knew how they got it in here. A plush office chair that looked suspiciously like hers added a little class to the cramped quarters.
Darsh came in behind her. “At least it’s cozy.” One side of his mouth tipped up and, for the first time, his eyes held a gleam of humor.
The moment she’d seen him walk into that bar flashed through her mind. He’d been with a group of guys all dressed the same; a bit sweaty and rumpled, as if they’d been out playing war games all day. They’d all been fit, attractive men, but she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off this man here, and they both knew how that had ended up. Her heart pounded, and her face flamed with heat, unfamiliar tingles of arousal stirred her blood for the first time in years.
His gaze touched her lips, but his expression was guarded. They were both pretending that sexual attraction wasn’t charging the molecules between them. That path went nowhere, and she refused to follow it.
“I’ll get out of your way and let you get settled in.” She went to brush past him, but he held her by the shoulders, his hands like hot brands even through her jacket.
“Tell me something?” His voice was deep and smooth like whiskey after midnight. “Does your husband know about what happened?”
She jerked out of his hold as if she’d been scalded, and knocked her head on the shelf behind her. Goddammit. She rubbed the sore spot. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not married anymore.”
“You’re divorced?” His hand shot out to stop her again when she would have run.
Being manhandled was not her idea of fun, so she pried off his grip and restrained herself from breaking his fingers. “No.”
She ignored his initial look of confusion and the way his eyes changed from suspicious to interested with the knowledge that her husband was dead, and she was single. She didn’t owe him any explanations. And it didn’t change anything between them.
“You can get supplies from the secretarial staff in the office next to Chief Strassen’s. When you’re ready to listen to the 911 call, come find me.”
“Erin—”
“No,” she cut in sharply. “It’s over. Done. It didn’t mean anything, and there won’t be a repeat performance.”
His jaw hardened, but apart from that, he didn’t move. When he spoke, the anger in his voice was barely restrained. “I wasn’t asking for a repeat performance. I was trying to make sense of what the hell is going on here.”
She raised a brow. His expression gave nothing away, but she knew he was lying. She tapped the gold shield he’d attached to his belt, and he jolted in surprise. Maybe he thought she was going after something lower.
“The only thing going on is a murder investigation.” Then she squeezed through the doorway and fled.
Her problem, she decided, striding back to her desk, was jet-lag combined with lack of sleep, plus a horrific double homicide and the absence of a normal sex life. A splash of cold water on her face and mainlining some caffeine could help with the first two enough to get her through the next few hours. Her lack of a sex life was something she’d just have to deal with, because she wasn’t opening herself up for heartbreak again. She came to an abrupt standstill as she eyed the hard plastic chair under her desk.
Get over it. A day or two at most, and Darsh Singh would be gone. She just needed to forget their past and wring as much information from him as possible so they could put this killer away. That was the only thing that mattered.
Chapter Five
Darsh sat at a small table opposite Erin and Officer Bickham, the same cop who’d let him through the police tape last night. He was glad for the buffer of another person’s presence. The minute he and Erin had been alone together and he’d found out she wasn’t married, his attraction had ratcheted up by a factor of a million, which wasn’t convenient or professional. And if she wasn’t married and hadn’t been divorced, then the guy was dead, and that raised a multitude of questions all on its own. Erin Donovan was a walking-talking conflict of interest.
Donovan was in charge—for now—but the chief was pushing hard for results, as the brass always did. Darsh was curious to see how that shaped her actions over the next twenty-four hours. Would she cut corners or take the easy road? It was simple enough to do both while under pressure.
“Okay. We’re ready, Cathy,” Erin told the officer. The team meeting was in less than thirty minutes, and they both wanted to review the 911 call ASAP.
Any good cop would.
Bickham clicked a button on the laptop. The dispatcher’s voice asked the caller to state the nature of their emergency. Heavy breathing filled the air.
“Help.” A sob. A gulp. More labored breathing. The air in this small cramped interview room became electrified. “There’s s-someone in my house. He’s—” A sharp gasp cut the caller off. The hair on his nape lifted as if a ghost had kissed his skin.
He and Donovan exchanged a glance.
“Is that Cassie Bressinger?” he asked.
Donovan nodded. “Sounds like her, but we can compare voice analysis to the other 911 calls and media interviews she made over the last few months to confirm.” Her hands were clenched into fists on top of the table.
“Where was the call made from?” he asked.
Erin checked the number. “Cassie’s cell.” Which had been found at the house.
“The 911 call came in at five to ten. Officer Ully Mason caught me in the parking lot just as I was heading home at ten PM, and I decided to attend the scene.”
Ully Mason was a bigoted asshole. Did
he and Donovan have a thing going? Darsh pressed the nib of his pen hard into his notepad. None of his business.
“Ully needed to gas up. I decided to drive around from the southern perimeter, which is a longer route and took me about ten minutes.” Her skin paled beneath the strip light. “If I’d driven faster, or broken the door down as soon as I arrived—”
“What time did Mason arrive?” he asked.
“Around half past.”
He raised his brows. That was a long time to get from A to B, although like she said, he had to gas up. “Play it again,” he said.
“Help. There’s s-someone in my house. He’s—” A note in the woman’s voice clawed his heart. Had she known the attacker was going to kill her, or did she think he’d leave her alive like the other victims from last year?
“Turn up the volume.” Donovan cocked her head to listen. “I think I hear something in the background.”
Officer Bickham turned the volume as high as the laptop would go, and Cassandra Bressinger’s voice filled the small interview room with tinny resonance.
His skin prickled. That level of fear couldn’t be faked.
“He’s there with her. He’s forcing her to make the call, isn’t he?” Erin asked suddenly.
She had good instincts.
“Yes. I think so.” The way it cut off before she gave them any relevant information. The absolute terror in her voice and the level of control she must be exerting to just keep from screaming. Cassie had been forced to deliver her message, probably knowing she was about to die.
But he noticed what Erin obviously already had. The sound of Halestorm’s “In Your Room” being just discernible in the background. His hearing range had been adversely affected by the amount of shooting he’d done in the Marine Corps. He’d worn ear protectors ninety-nine percent of the time, but it was hard to run around a war zone wearing earplugs. “Good catch,” he told her.
Her eyes flashed in surprise, and he found himself staring into their depths—they weren’t quite blue and they weren’t quite gray. The color was unique and difficult to define, a bit like their owner. He looked away, dragging his fingers through his short hair. He wanted to impress his bosses, not embarrass the hell out of them by panting after a female detective whose work he’d been sent to assess.
“That song is the one paused on Mandy’s computer,” he said. “So presumably the UNSUB forced Cassie to make the 911 call, and then he went through and stopped the music.”
Why?
Darsh blocked everything out. Put himself in the zone. “We know the one roommate, Tanya, left for a party around eight and the other one, Alicia, wasn’t expected home until ten.” Had the UNSUB studied the girls’ schedule? Had he been watching the house? “During that two-hour time window, the UNSUB gets into the house, goes up the stairs. Attacks Cassie, ties her to the bed…” He shook his head. “I can’t believe he would risk raping Cassie until he knew Mandy wasn’t a threat.”
“He didn’t have time to rape and kill them both in the fifteen minutes it took me to arrive after the 911 call,” Erin said.
She was right.
He checked the length of the song: two minutes forty-seven seconds. “And I have trouble believing he would call the cops until he was finished and ready to leave. So Mandy was probably the first victim, and the music disguised the attack on her, and also masked his preliminary assault on Cassie.” The one where the killer had incapacitated and threatened her enough to force her to make the call. “He made her record the message, presumably using his cell phone.” Darsh would bet his favorite rifle he’d recorded more than just that. “Then he called dispatch with Cassie’s phone and played her message back just prior to exiting the crime scene.”
Erin splayed her fingers on the surface of the table. “So they were already dead when we got the call?”
Darsh held her somber gaze. “I think so. The ME should be able to tell us more.”
Some of the tension eased from her shoulders though her fingers clenched briefly. No matter how fast she’d driven, or whether or not she’d smashed down the door on arrival, she’d never had a chance of saving those young women.
Darsh didn’t like the way he’d started to empathize with Erin on this. He was investigating her competence as an officer, not her emotional wellbeing. He couldn’t allow his feelings to compromise his effectiveness.
“Maybe the ME can tell us which girl died first?” she said.
“Knowing which girl died first might help us pin down the killer’s MO. Doesn’t bring us any closer to motive aside from personal gratification.”
She took a sip of black coffee, and he found himself mirroring her actions. Damn. He put the cup back down. So did she.
“It seems to me…” The rookie officer volunteered an opinion in the awkward silence.
He waited while Cathy Bickham swallowed noisily.
“Well, usually when someone reports a crime they go on the cops’ radar as either a witness or a possible suspect. By making Cassie report the crime herself, he took that out of the equation.”
“Good point,” he said.
“But why call it in at all? A few minutes later Alicia would arrive home from the library and find the bodies,” said Erin. “This seems like a deliberate taunt to law enforcement.”
“Or he was punishing the girls by making them phone it in,” Darsh argued. “We all know what’s supposed to happen when you cry wolf.”
“Everyone in town knew about those calls,” said Erin. “It was reported in the local paper.”
She shrugged out of her suit jacket, revealing a tight and fitted white shirt. The fact his gaze wanted to linger on the faint outline of lacy straps in the middle of a murder investigation pissed him off.
He’d always prided himself on his control. He wasn’t driven by impulse or desire. He was meticulous, dedicated, and hardworking. But more than that, he knew how damaging it could be when people selfishly went after what they wanted regardless of others. It wasn’t who he wanted to be. He forced his brain back to what was important—the job, the case.
“My being a law enforcement officer never slowed Cassie down any.” Erin’s voice dropped lower. “She was smart and strong, a fighter. I think she would have fought him before he overpowered her, which is maybe why he hurt her so badly.”
Sometimes people didn’t fight at all. They shut down and waited for it to be over. It was probably the strongest survival instinct when faced with someone stronger, and more violent. Survival involved many things—fight, flight, endurance, and chance. Many rape victims froze and berated themselves for it. Many acted in ways that made no sense to observers dissecting events afterwards. Often victims couldn’t remember the details of the attack because their brain shut down so they could get through the experience alive. Losing the battle to win the war? Maybe. Whatever it was, defense attorneys loved it.
Erin checked her wristwatch. “Time to head to the team meeting.”
Darsh needed to set up a detailed timeline of the crime but in the meantime, he jotted notes to himself. The rookie scooped up the laptop with the recording.
He pointed to it with his pen. “Cathy, I’d like a copy of that call sent to me, please.” He fished a card from his wallet. “I’m going to submit it to our lab for analysis. In fact, I’d like all the evidence shipped to Quantico ASAP. I’ve been promised it will get maximum priority.”
“How long before we get results?” asked Erin.
“Possibly by the end of the week.” Brennan had promised Darsh he’d put the burners under the lab techs and jump the queue.
“Well, thank God for the FBI. I might start a cheer club.” Erin flashed him a quick smile, momentarily forgetting she didn’t like him very much.
“We aim to please.”
Erin’s pupils flared. And suddenly there was that awareness arcing between them like lightning in a storm.
Bickham cleared her throat, oblivious to the sexual undertones simmering between him and Donovan. �
��That’ll be great, Agent Singh, thanks.”
“Call me Darsh.” He gave the officer his best smile.
“Yes, sir.” Bickham nodded and quickly left.
“Why’s she so nervous?” he asked Erin after the rookie was gone, grateful to have something other than them or the case to discuss.
Erin tapped her pen on the table as she read some notes she’d made in her book. “I think she’s a little in awe of the fact you’re FBI,” she said absently. “She told me once it’s her ultimate dream to become an agent.”
“I can give her some advice about the application process when she’s ready. If she wants.”
Erin smiled and Darsh stared like a fool. He kept forgetting how incredibly pretty she was when she wasn’t spitting mad at him.
“I’m sure she’d appreciate that.” She stood, leaning a hip against the table, crossing her arms, revealing cleavage, badge, and sidearm. His skin got tight. His neck hot. “She also tends to be swayed by pretty faces.”
He stilled. Raised his chin. “You think I have a pretty face?”
“No.” Erin gave him a smirk that told him she knew exactly what he was thinking before she gathered up her notes. “But she does.” With that she left the room with an arrogant swagger to her hips.
He found himself grinning. Then he stopped smiling and climbed slowly to his feet. He was in danger of starting to like her all over again. And you’re investigating whether or not she screwed up badly enough to send an innocent kid to prison, not to mention get two girls killed.
Yeah. And that.
* * *
The crushing weight that had settled on Erin’s chest when she’d first seen the two murdered girls had lifted a little at the knowledge they were probably already dead by the time the 911 call came in. But ten hours later, she came out of the team meeting no closer to finding this killer than when she’d first rolled up to the girls’ front door.
The TV news blared in the background, rerunning the footage of black body bags being loaded into the Medical Examiner’s wagon. Reporters had flocked back to town like vultures circling a kill. The smart money was on her for being the number one carcass of choice.
Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) Page 6