“Find a purse, phone, anything nearby that could help us ID her?” Hank asked.
Jones shook his head. “I searched around a little but didn’t spot anything. I didn’t want to disturb the scene before forensics came.”
“Good.” I stood up. “Did you talk with anyone from inside yet?”
“I haven’t had a chance, no.”
“Well, let’s go see what we can find out.”
We walked back to the front of the building.
I caught Rick from our forensics department pulling into the parking lot as we opened the front door to go inside. Three men in suits and two women dressed in business attire stood by the front counter staring at us as we walked into the building. The two women had tears in their eyes. The men had looks of worry and grief spread across their faces. Something was off.
“I’m Lieutenant Kane, with the TPD’s homicide division.” I motioned toward my companions. “This is Sergeant Rawlings and Detective Jones. We’ll need to speak to each of you.”
One of the women wiped at her eyes and spoke up. “Is it Diane?”
“Diane?” I asked.
“Diane Robins. She worked here.”
“Ma’am, is there a place we can talk?” I asked.
She nodded and pointed at an office. I looked over at Hank and Jones. It appeared as though we had a possible ID. We separated the group, with Hank taking one of the men for an interview and Jones taking the other woman. I followed the woman I’d spoken with to her office. We sat.
“What is your name, miss?”
“Lisa Cotter.”
I put her in her late forties. She had brown shoulder-length hair. Her red puffy eyes didn’t hide the fact that she was an attractive woman.
“Your position here?”
“Attorney.”
I jotted her name down in my notepad. “What can you tell me about the events that took place this morning?”
She pulled a tissue from a box on her desk and wiped at her nose. She spoke slowly. “One of Mark’s clients came rushing in, yelling to call 9-1-1. He said there was a dead woman on the side of the building. I was standing at the reception desk, letting Wanda know I had someone that would be arriving and to send them back.”
I stopped her. “And who’s Mark and Wanda?”
“Mark Stanley. He’s one of the owners. Wanda is our receptionist. Her last name is Markel. They were both up front when you came in.”
I copied down the names. “Okay, continue.”
She choked at her words as they came out. “I walked out to the side of the building to see what he was talking about. I didn’t believe him.”
“And that’s when you saw the body?”
She began to cry. I gave her a moment to compose herself. “Miss Cotter, did anyone else go outside to look at the body?”
She nodded. “Mark went out after I came back. He came back inside and wouldn’t let anyone else from the office go out there.” She broke into another round of crying. “It was Diane, I know it. It looked just like her.”
“All right, tell me about Diane.”
She used a wadded-up tissue to dab at her eyes. “Diane Robins. She’s an attorney here.”
“And you believe the woman outside is her?”
She nodded. “Diane missed work yesterday. She had clients scheduled all day and never called. She wouldn’t do that.”
I wrote down the woman’s name. “When was the last time you saw Diane?”
“Monday. She went to Atlanta on business. One of her clients got picked up on a drug charge. She was supposed to be back yesterday morning.”
“Did she drive or fly?”
She shook her head. “She wouldn’t drive. Wanda, up front, books all of our flights.”
I made a note to get the itinerary from the receptionist. “What kind of attorney is Diane?”
“Criminal defense.”
The interview lasted another twenty minutes. I got as much information as I could about Diane Robins. She was single, no children, both parents deceased. She had a sister that lived out of state. I made a note to call her. Miss Cotter agreed to identify the body once it was back at the morgue. I walked out of her office to find Hank and Jones. Jones stood at the front counter, talking with the receptionist. Hank stood in the large corner office. I assumed he was speaking with one of the owners. Jones turned from the front counter and walked toward me.
“What did you come up with?” I asked.
“Just spoke with the woman from the front desk, Wanda.” He looked over the notes in his hand. “Wanda Markel. She said a client came rushing in and said there was a dead body outside the building. Guess the woman you spoke with went outside to look—came back in shock. She said it was one of their coworkers. One of the other attorneys then went out to look for himself. Miss Markel made the call to 9-1-1. I got a little information on the coworker, a Diane Robins.”
Detective Jones and I compared notes. We’d gotten the same story from both parties.
Jones continued. “Sergeant Rawlings spoke with one of the attorneys, a James Wallace. Now he’s in with,” he looked at his notes again, “Mark Stanley.”
I nodded. We waited another ten minutes for Hank to conclude his interview with the attorney. I spoke with the receptionist to see if I could get a copy of the woman’s itinerary. She printed me one. I was looking it over when Hank met us in the building’s lobby.
“Guess they all believe the deceased is a coworker—a Diane Robins,” Hank said.
“Same thing we got.”
We went over everything Hank had collected from the two men. Everyone’s chain of events lined up. I let the attorney I’d spoken with know where to go to give a positive identification. We informed the staff that we would be in contact if we needed to follow up. We walked back through the front doors to the parking lot. Two news vans were raising their masts, getting ready to broadcast. The coroner’s van sat at the side of the building. Detective Jones went to speak with the guys from patrol. Hank and I headed toward Rick and Ed, talking at the side of the building.
Rick was holding his forensics kit when we walked up. He shook his head as I made eye contact.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Clean as a whistle. Scrubbed with bleach. No prints anywhere—no belongings.”
“Damn. All right, Rick, thanks.” I focused my attention on Ed, standing next to him. “What can you tell me?”
Ed coughed into his fist. “I put time of death in between three and six hours—same as the last. Ligature marks were consistent with the woman from the other day. She has some cut marks on the palm of her hand. I’d say the beating was the cause of death, but I need to check into something else first.”
“What’s that?” Hank asked.
“Sutures on the right side of her head above her ear. I didn’t see the shaved hair around the area until we moved the body to load her. The way her hair was positioned, combined with the damage, made it hard to see.”
“Sutures?” I asked.
“Yeah. Homemade. Not done by a physician, that’s for sure. Kind of barbaric work.”
“Another lobotomy attempt?”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“How soon until you can get to her?” I asked.
“Well, we have her loaded. We’re going to head back to the office with her now. I don’t have anything pressing at the moment. I’ll start with her right away.”
“Thanks, Ed.”
The media had started to swarm on the outskirts of the parking lot and seemed to multiply with each passing minute. Employees from local businesses and homeowners from the neighborhood gathered on the sidewalks to watch. I dialed the captain to let him know what we had and to ask him what he wanted me to give the press. He wanted to have a meeting back at the station and schedule a press release for three o’clock. Through the sea of reporters, I relayed the message.
Chapter 14
He’d dumped her body where she would be found and identified.
His plan for her, as well as the last, hadn’t been death—he would need to try again. He was halfway through a double bacon cheeseburger when chatter across the CB alerted him that they’d found her body. Between fares, the cab drivers liked to talk about the latest happenings across the city. He had found the frequency of one of the major cab companies in the area and set the station to a preset. From the way drivers were speaking on the radio, it sounded as though quite a scene was unfolding at the attorney’s office. He figured he would pop in, just from a standpoint of curiosity. The thought of watching the police work entertained him. They’d interview people and cross-check everyone’s stories. The forensics guys would search for any scrap of evidence left behind. He could even catch a glimpse of his new adversary, trying to solve the crime. The detectives wouldn’t find anything, and neither would the forensics team. He was careful and far too smart to leave something for a stupid lab geek to find. The cops would go through a lot of trouble for nothing. They wouldn’t find out who did it until he wanted them to.
It took him fifteen minutes to get to the scene. He slowed as he drove down the block in front of the attorney’s office. News vans had parked at the curb, and the office’s parking lot had five squad cars and three unmarked police-issue Dodges. His timing was perfect. He crawled past, doing no more than five miles an hour. Two men were loading a black body bag into the back of the coroner’s van.
He continued past and made the next right. A parking spot at the end of the street came into view. He parked the cab and walked back to the scene. Pain shot up his leg with each step as he tried to hide his limp. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
An opening appeared next to a group of people on the sidewalk. He approached and made eye contact with a man to his right. “What’s going on?”
The guy shrugged. “Guess someone died or something.”
“Lots of police for someone who just happened to die. The news vans, too? Nah, this seems like a bigger deal than a stiff at the office.”
The guy looked over at him, appearing put off by his crass comment. “Okay, Detective.”
He smirked. “Has to be a murder or something.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe.”
He continued walking to the next group of people: three women, all dressed business casual. He put on a smile and stopped next to them. “What happened?” he asked.
The blond he addressed shook her head. “It’s horrible. I heard people talking. They said they found a dead woman on the side of the building. I guess someone found her and called the police.”
He nodded. “Yeah, same thing I heard. Someone back there said it was a blond woman dressed in lingerie? They found another body like that at an office building a few days ago. I caught it on the six o’clock news.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“Yeah. And now this at another office building?” He moved like he was trying to shake away the thought.
A look of concern crossed the woman’s face. A reporter walked up, asking if she could interview the three women. His time to leave had come. He ducked his head and walked away. He took in the rest of the scene as he left. Detectives walked from the front of the building.
He paused when he spotted the larger bald cop in a suit. Lieutenant Kane was working the scene.
He grinned and continued walking down the block. He began limping again as he rounded the corner toward his car. The pain was intense.
Chapter 15
Everyone assembled in one of our meeting rooms. I’d just gotten off the phone with Ed. He was getting ready to start the autopsy but wanted to let me know that Lisa Cotter had positively identified the victim as Diane Robins. The captain informed me that he’d made a call to the local FBI office to see if they could lend us someone to draw up a profile. They agreed to send someone over in the morning. We asked a few of the other department heads to join us for the meeting. Rick from forensics was sitting in, as was Sergeant Timmons from patrol. Hank and Detective Jones leaned against the small table at the corner of the room. Sam James, the station’s PR guy, sat at the back to listen in and determine what information from our briefing would go into the press release. He sat at a laptop, typing it up. I started the meeting.
I went over what we had found out at the scene. The same perp had killed both women. We didn’t reveal to the public that the first victim had a branded hand. The killer was the only one who knew that detail.
Both women were in their thirties, blond, and found wearing green lingerie. I put Detective Jones on finding what stores sold that specific brand of lingerie. I also put him on looking to see if they belonged to any of the same groups or organizations. We needed to put the two together somewhere. If they’d stayed at the same Holiday Inn four years ago in Fresno, I wanted to know about it.
The cab was next. It was still the best lead we had. Sarah McMillian got into a cab at the airport and never arrived at her destination. I had looked into every registered cab company in the city, but that left who-knows-how-many taxis operating without licensing. I asked Sergeant Timmons to station officers from patrol at the airport. The plan was to chat up cab drivers, ask to look at their registration, and see if anything was amiss. He agreed and dispatched two cars.
Hank was going to head over to the airport and talk with Nick Waterman at the security office again. We had Diane Robins’s itinerary and planned to do the same thing we’d done with Sarah McMillian. We would follow her on video through the airport to see if she spoke with anyone or got into a cab. We needed to know if the airport was his hunting ground.
Rick explained to the team that the lack of evidence told us something about our perp. He was careful disposing of the bodies. He’d left nothing at either crime scene to incriminate himself. Our team found no fingerprints or personal belongings, and the bodies were both cleaned. We were dealing with someone intelligent. However, even the most intelligent people made mistakes. He said he would take Pax back out to the scenes and have another look around. Another pass couldn’t hurt.
Together, we agreed that we should disclose to the media that our perp may be driving a taxi. While we didn’t know yet if Diane Robins had taken a cab, we did know that Sarah McMillian did. It wouldn’t go over well with the cab companies in the city. However, there was a chance someone else got a ride from this guy and had a run in with him. We assigned extra people to man the phones. Any calls that had substance would be forwarded to me or Captain Bostok.
The captain thought we should keep the brands to ourselves for the time being. They screamed serial killer. We weren’t in that territory yet.
Sam left the room to make a copy of the press release he’d put together, as well as a handout of details we felt comfortable sharing with the media. He came back a few minutes later as we mulled over our assignments.
Sam looked at his watch. “We’re scheduled over in the press room in about five minutes. Take a few seconds to go over the release.” He handed the press releases out.
I gave it a quick once-over.
“All right, let’s get this done so we can get back to it,” the captain said.
We made our way through the hall to the station’s press room. It was another meeting room that the station used for budget meetings and the occasional dealings with the media. Two long tables with chairs sat in the center of the room, and more chairs lined the back wall if needed. At the front, a podium took center stage. We entered. Reporters from various news outlets and local news channels filled the room. They rustled about, finding seats. Cameramen stood to the sides to record the release.
Captain Bostok took a seat to the side of the podium. Hank and I sat next to him. Detectives Jones and Donner sat on the other side. Sam approached the podium. He gave the microphone a few taps to quiet the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the media, we want to thank you for coming in this morning. I’m Sam James, director of public relations for the Tampa Police Department. The basis of today’s briefing is to bring you cur
rent developments and updates on two homicide cases we are investigating. To begin the brief, I turn the podium over to Captain Bostok of the homicide division and Lieutenant Carl Kane. Captain.”
The captain introduced himself and gave a few highlights of our morning meeting. When he finished, he turned the podium over to me.
“I’m Lieutenant Carl Kane of the Tampa Police Department’s homicide division. To my right, seated, is Sergeant Hank Rawlings. We are the lead investigators on the case. As Captain Bostok just informed you, this briefing is to cover the two homicides that are under investigation. Monday morning, we received a call that a body had been found. Our team arrived on the scene and began the investigation. The press release we had provided to the media led to a call in. That call helped us to identify the woman. She was here from out of town on business. We will not be disclosing her identity at this time as the case is still being investigated. We do have leads that we are following up on in this case.
“Today at 10:18 a.m., the TPD received a call regarding another body found under similar circumstances. We dispatched officers and detectives to the scene. From our initial investigation, we do believe these two cases to be related. The local FBI office has agreed to further help us with the investigation.”
The media room burst into a commotion. Each reporter fired a different question at me at the same time.
I put my hands out to quiet the room. “Please, everyone, we will have a short question-and-answer session at the conclusion of our release. Please hold your questions until then. Let me reiterate: the Tampa Police Department is committed to bringing a resolution to this case in the shortest time possible. We have the department’s full resources and staff at our disposal. That being said, we want to ask for help from the public as well. If you were in the vicinity of the Manchester office building between the hours of midnight and seven a.m. Monday or the vicinity of West Cypress Street between the hours of midnight and nine a.m. this morning and saw anything that seemed suspicious, please call the Tampa Police Department. Again, no matter how insignificant it may seem, we want you to call in and speak with one of our detectives. You can always remain anonymous.”
Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) Page 7