Wren Delacroix Series Box Set

by V. J. Chambers

  “Wait,” said Reilly. “What do you mean, ‘everyone’?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Whatever uniforms get rotated in here to help us, they gossip about you. Hell, they probably gossip about me too. We can’t be sure what they’re saying.”

  He grimaced. “Well, that’s gonna stop.”

  “Sure.” She nodded. “Like, how would you stop it?”

  He sighed. “Back to Hawk.”

  “No.” She started through the hallway.

  He followed her. “You’re right, it’s none of my business, but he was a suspect in a serial murder case two minutes ago.”

  She turned into her office. “But he didn’t do it.”

  “But he practically aided and abetted.”

  “True.” She sat down at her desk.

  “Plus, with the, uh, the history between you two—”

  “What do you know about that?” Now, she was standing up.

  He licked his lips. “You know what? I don’t know why I’m talking to you about this. None of my business.”

  “None,” she agreed.

  “But speaking of Maliah, you think you could get her up to speed on the YouTube video?” He smiled at her.

  * * *

  “Where’s Reilly?” said Maliah Wright. She was in her own office, looking Wren over.

  “Too chicken to talk to you,” said Wren, stepping inside. “He sent me instead. Are you guys fighting?”

  “No,” said Maliah. “And that’s not your business.”

  Wren shrugged.

  “We can’t fight, anyway,” said Maliah. “Because there’s nothing going on. I mean, maybe there was something going on, but once his wife found out, it all cooled off.”

  Wren nodded. “Right. Which is why I saw you at his house that morning before I came to work here.”

  “Well, that was just….” Maliah glared at Wren. “I’m married.”

  “Right, so I hear,” said Wren, looking the other woman over.

  “Oh, get that judgy tone out of your voice,” said Maliah. “He was married too, and you don’t get that judgy tone with him. Why not? Because he’s a man? Is that why?”

  “Because he’s divorced now,” said Wren.

  Maliah sighed. “Well…”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” said Wren. “Reilly got in my face about my sex life this morning, and I guess I’m feeling punchy.”

  “What does Reilly care about your sex life?” said Maliah, a hard edge to her voice.

  “Exactly,” said Wren. She cleared her throat. “Um, this new killer that we’re trying to find, he uploaded a YouTube video.”

  “Oh, right,” said Maliah. “I got the link. I’ve been digging into it a bit already. It’s a new account created to upload the video. It’s not associated with anyone’s identity, unfortunately. It’s not going to be easy, but if you give me a little while longer, I might be able to find out the IP address where the video was uploaded.”

  “Really? So, then you’ll know who uploaded the video?”

  “I’ll know what computer it was uploaded from,” she said.

  “And whoever that computer belongs to will probably be the killer.”

  Maliah smiled. “Quite likely.”

  “Well, perfect. Then I won’t even have to make a profile. Excellent.” Wren grinned at Maliah. “Do your thing.”

  Maliah laughed. “Get the hell out of my office and let me work, then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wren saluted and left. She didn’t go back to her office, she went to Reilly’s. “Why are you avoiding Maliah?”

  Reilly looked up from his computer. “I’m not.”

  “She said that you two hadn’t been seeing each other, not since that time I found her walk-of-shaming it down your stairs. So, if that’s true, then what’s the big deal?”

  Reilly blinked. “Didn’t we just have a conversation about things not being each other’s business?”

  Wren shrugged. “I think you should go talk to her. You guys should make up. I think it really hurt her that you didn’t come talk to her about the YouTube video.”

  Reilly snorted. “Maliah is not the kind of woman to get ‘really hurt.’ She just gets, you know, even.”

  “Mmm.” Wren nodded. “And what with her wicked hacking skills, that could be really bad. I wouldn’t piss her off if I were you.”

  Reilly gave her a withering look. “Go work on your profile, Delacroix.”

  Wren stuck out her tongue at him, but she left his office.

  * * *

  Reilly debated going to Maliah’s office but decided against it. The truth was, it was technically true that he and Maliah hadn’t hooked up since that night before Wren had come to work for the task force, but the other night, Maliah had been at Billy’s, the local bar, and she’d been pretty drunk.

  If Reilly had been drunker, he might have gone with it, but he’d been just sober enough to keep his shit together, and he’d told her that he wasn’t taking her home if she was still with her husband. She’d been the kind of drunk where she wasn’t taking no for an answer, and it had gotten a little bit ugly.

  He hadn’t spoken to her since, because he was embarrassed.

  This was why they didn’t want you having sex with people you worked with. It was a bad idea. And it was against the policy of the police department. There was some form he was supposed to have filled out. There were probably all kinds of legal issues they could get into for this.

  Midmorning, Wren came into his office. “Thinking about a coffee run,” she said.

  “We have coffee in the break room that we can brew ourselves,” said Reilly.

  “Right, we do,” said Wren. “So, you don’t want anything from the Daily Bean?”

  “There’s no reason to leave work and go back out there,” said Reilly. “I can brew a nice cup of coffee. You ever had coffee I’ve brewed?”

  “I’ve had coffee that was in the break room,” said Wren. “And yeah… I’m going to the Daily Bean.”

  He shook his head at her. “You’re challenging my coffee brewing prowess?”

  She shrugged. “Uh, I don’t know it’s a challenge so much as maybe a denouncement.”

  “Oh.” He clutched his chest. He got up out of his desk. “Look, now it’s on. I am going to make you some coffee right now, and you are going to eat your words.”

  Wren laughed. “Oh, big talk, Reilly, but—”

  Someone at the door cleared her throat.

  Reilly and Wren both turned.

  Maliah was there. “I got the IP address.”

  “Great,” said Wren.

  “The what?” said Reilly.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you about this,” said Wren. “She can track the person who uploaded the video. So, you know, my profile? Totally unnecessary.”

  “Not exactly,” said Maliah. “I tracked it, but it’s not great news. The IP address was connected to the Frederick city-wide Wi-Fi. So, it’s not on a private computer or anything. The way IP addresses work, they’re assigned randomly whenever you connect to the Wi-Fi, unless you set up a static IP. Anyway, I can’t get much more specific than that, but I do have an address.”

  “Frederick?” said Wren. “That’s where it was uploaded?”

  “That’s getting a little out of our jurisdiction,” said Reilly.

  “I went to high school in Frederick,” said Wren. “My dad and I lived there for years, but he moved after I graduated.”

  “Your dad,” said Reilly. She never talked about her family. Admittedly, her family was screwed up… Then again, Reilly never talked about his family either. They were screwed up, too, but for different reasons.

  “Yeah,” said Wren. “Anyway, I know the area. We should go to this address, though, right?”

  “Right,” said Reilly. “Yeah, we should check it out, see if there’s anything there.”

  “Great,” said Wren. “So, can we stop for coffee on our way out?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The address in Fre
derick wasn’t in a great a part of town. Wren remembered when larger swaths of Frederick were dicey, but now the city had undergone quite a bit of gentrification. All the older apartment buildings had been turned into trendy, chic places for commuters to rent. This was one of the few dicey places left.

  The building was abandoned. It used to be apartments, but now, all the windows were boarded up and there was a big padlock on the door.

  Wren and Reilly walked around back, where they found that one of the windows had the board pried up, and they followed someone else who was climbing inside.

  They emerged into a room with some ratty couches, lit by camping lanterns.

  “Hey,” said the kid they’d followed. “What the hell? I didn’t do anything. Why are you following me? You going to arrest me?”

  Wren shot Reilly a look. “It’s you,” she said. “You just have that ‘cop’ look about you.”

  “I do not,” said Reilly. He crossed the room to the kid. “We’re not here about you. We’re here because a video from a serial killer was uploaded at this address.”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “Say what? No, man. I ain’t got nothing to do with that.” He held up both his hands.

  “Yesterday morning?” said Reilly. “Were you here? Did you see someone in a hooded sweatshirt?”

  But the kid turned and darted away, off into the building.

  Reilly turned to Wren. “Do I really have a ‘cop’ look?”

  She nodded.

  “Is it the suit?” He lifted his tie and looked it over.

  She laughed. “Come on, let’s look around.”

  It didn’t take long before they found the backdrop for the video, the brick wall that had been sprayed with graffiti. It was unmistakable.

  They stopped and surveyed it.

  “Well, this is the place where he made the video,” said Reilly.

  “What are the odds he’s still around?” said Wren. “Pretty low, right?”

  They had been looking in on various rooms in the place. It seemed that people were squatting here. They’d brought in camp stoves and old mattresses. They’d partitioned off doorways with holey sheets.

  Wren shoved her hands in her pockets. “You think he could be sleeping here?”

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to be coming up with a profile,” said Reilly. “Could he be sleeping here?”

  Wren considered. A homeless serial killer? Maybe, if he was the disorganized kind. But if he was homeless, how was he getting access to plastic gloves and bleach wipes? Did he steal that stuff? “Could be,” she said. “Probably not, but could be.”

  Someone came out of one of the rooms and into the hallway where they were standing. It was a woman with long, sandy colored dreadlocks. “Hey,” she said, and her eyes didn’t quite open all the way. She was probably stoned. “You guys talking about that guy who was here yesterday morning?”

  “You saw him?” said Reilly, heading over to the woman.

  “Sure,” she said. “I got his phone.” She held it up.

  “That’s his phone?” said Wren.

  “He was making a video on it, and then he finished up and just left the phone lying on the ground. I wasn’t going to let it go to waste, so I picked it up. He didn’t put any minutes on it, though, just data, and it’s practically gone now. Too bad, really.”

  “We’re going to need that phone,” said Reilly.

  “What?” said the woman. “No freaking way.” She ducked back into the room she’d come from and yanked the door closed.

  Reilly grabbed the doorknob, but there was a sound of a bolt being dragged into place, locking the door. Reilly tried to the door, but it wouldn’t open. He banged on it.

  “Hey, police, open up!” Reilly shouted.

  Wren folded her arms over her chest. “You think we’d get backup from the local department if we called them in? I mean, the task force doesn’t really extend quite this far, but maybe they’d help out.”

  Reilly banged on the door again. “We’re on our own.”

  The task force was mostly meant to help with rural police departments in the tri-state area. It helped them to pool their resources, or to use resources from other places if one of the departments didn’t have access to something others did.

  Abruptly, the door opened.

  A man was standing there. “What?” he said.

  “There was a woman with dreadlocks,” said Wren. “She went in here.”

  “We need the phone she has,” said Reilly.

  “Yeah, I know who you’re talking about,” said the man. “She ran out one of the windows.”

  “Damn it,” said Reilly.

  * * *

  “So,” Wren was saying as they were driving back, “he ditched the phone on purpose, don’t you think?”

  “Sounds like it,” said Reilly.

  “The woman said that he put data on it, but no minutes. Probably one of those burner phones you can buy at Wal-mart for like forty bucks.”

  “You know a lot about those kinds of phones,” said Reilly.

  “Well, yeah, people on the compound have them,” said Wren. “Anyway, there’s no way we’re going to trace that.”

  “Probably not,” said Reilly. “Guy was smart. He bought a cheap phone, filmed it on there, and then uploaded it to YouTube. Then he ditched the phone and ran.” He paused, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Why do you think he did it in Frederick?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wren. “But maybe that works. Because if he’s close to Lingandale High School, then it’s not that far to Frederick. Not a lot to do in Brunswick, where the school is. Most people would go to Frederick instead. When I was a kid, people would hang out at the mall and stuff, but I guess malls aren’t a thing anymore.”

  “You’re making him sound like a teenager,” said Reilly.

  “Could be,” said Wren. “I mean, his first target is a teenage girl, so he could be a teenager too. I said this, didn’t I? I said anywhere from sixteen to—”

  “Yeah, you haven’t given me a profile at all.”

  Wren sighed. “It’s making even less sense to me. All this planning with the phone, it’s the opposite of the crime scene.”

  “Right,” said Reilly. “So, all we can conclude then is that he’s purposefully making the crime scene look sloppy.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To throw us off?”

  “Well, that’s criminal-genius-level thinking,” said Wren. “That’s not a teenager. Besides, I don’t know if a serial killer that smart would be able to do it, to make the scene look sloppy, because it would be an ego blow to them. They take pride in setting up their scenes a certain way.”

  “Yeah, and this guy takes pride in setting up the scene to look like it wasn’t planned out.”

  She rested her head back against the headrest. “Maybe? I don’t know.”

  “Come on, admit it. I am out-profiling you on this case.” He grinned at her across the car.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You angling to get rid of me, Detective?”

  “What? No way. I was teasing, Wren, come on.”

  “No, I know.” She smiled back, and then she turned to look out the window. “I have to admit that I do feel a little out of my depth here. I didn’t finish at Quantico, you know? I’m not a real profiler or anything.”

  “Stop putting so much pressure on yourself,” said Reilly. “You’re going to figure it out.”

  * * *

  Reilly popped his head into Wren’s office at the end of the day. “Did you figure it out yet?”

  She looked up from her desk. “What?”

  “The profile.”

  She glared at him. “Oh, my God. You think asking me every three seconds is going to help?”

  He shrugged. “I just like giving you shit.” He pointed at her. “Look, you go home and get a good eight hours tonight. No staying up all hours at Billy’s. You need beauty rest to figure out that profile, you know?” Billy’s was the local b
ar. It was actually right across from the coffee shop.

  “Oh, that so? What are you doing tonight? You going to Billy’s?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “I’ll stay in if you stay in.”

  He laughed. “I don’t have a profile to figure out.”

  “No, but you’re the head of the task force, so you need to be worried about solving this case too.”

  “Who said I wasn’t worried?” said Reilly. “I’m worried.”

  “So, stay home, then,” said Wren. “Get your beauty rest.”

  Reilly scoffed.

  His phone rang.

  He reached into his pocket to look at it. It was Janessa. He held up a finger to Wren and answered the phone. “Hey, what’s up? Everything okay with Timmy?”

  “Hi there, Caius,” said Janessa, too brightly.

  “Hi,” he said. Was there really a point in all the pleasantries? They didn’t get along, and they both knew it. They had one thing in common now, that was their son. So, she needed to get down to it. “Timmy?”

  “Is fine,” she said. “Thanks for watching him last night.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “He’s my son. I’m happy to have extra time with him.”

  “When you’re not busy with work,” she said.

  He rolled his eyes. The amount of time he worked had been a source of contention in their marriage. “Is this why you called?”

  “No,” said Janessa. “No, I’m sorry, I… I guess I don’t really quite know how to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what?” Reilly walked down the hall, away from Wren’s office. This was starting to sound like a longer conversation than he had expected.

  “I don’t have to tell you at all, but it’s not as if Timmy will tell you, and I figured you might as well know, and it would be easier if I gave you the news, so I’m just calling to do that.”

  “What news?” said Reilly.

  “Well, it’s, um, it’s good news. I mean, I don’t know what you’ll think about it, but it’s good news for me.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’m, um, I’m getting married.”

  Reilly felt his stomach twist.

  “Caius?”

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”