by Rick Murcer
He fingered his notebook and grew more frustrated. He’d written the words MORE TO COME twenty-two times on the left side of the page, snapping two pencils in the process. It was obvious what the killer meant, and he couldn’t shake what Mary Wiggins had said—that the killer had done this before and would no doubt do it again. Shannon wasn’t even sure of the victimology here. Were young ladies the killer’s style? Brunettes? Wide hips? Shy women? What should they be looking for? Shannon wasn’t sure what this beast was after, or who, but he did what he could to cover a few of the basics. Paddie and he had convinced their chief detective to put out extra patrols near the pub that Kathryn and Meav had frequented, and at a few other pubs like it. But in a college town, that was like trying to cover the ocean with a tarp.
Nothing in the rest of his notes resembled a strong lead—bloody hell, he’d settle for a weak one. And no matter how he lied to himself, that was the stone-cold truth. There was one thing he was curious about, however—or one man, he should say. The American, Fredrick Argyle, seemed like an enigmatic fellow. Polite enough, but not very friendly, which was unlike most Americans who visited Galway, and especially those visiting Haley Rose’s place.
He looked at his already shut-down computer and then back at the desk clock—6:18 stared back at him. He began to reach for the on switch and caught himself. Thirteen hours was enough for the day. He was a cop, no doubt, but slavery was kaput.
Shannon stood, closed the file, and turned off the desk light. He’d check out Argyle tomorrow; he was, more than likely, a dead end anyway. In Shannon’s mind, it would be more important to talk to Mary Wiggins in the morning about any forensic update she might have.
Besides, how bad could someone named Fredrick Argyle be?
Chapter-21
Manny held the room phone close. “Alex. I need you and Max to come to my room, ASAP. This can’t wait.”
“I just ordered lunch.”
“Have them ship it up.”
“Damn it. All right, we’ll be there. Damn job anyway.”
Manny turned to Chloe. She blinked away and scanned the floor. ‘That’s it, they’ll all be here in a few minutes and . . . were you trying to get me alone?”
“Pffftt. You wish. I was just thinking about my . . . our . . . best move.”
Manny caught the double meaning and couldn’t stop the grin. “I’m sure this crew will have a few ideas.”
The pounding on the door came the next moment, and he swung it open. Alex, Sophie, Josh, Max, and Jen stood in the hallway. “Talk about good timing.”
“This better be good, partner. You just messed up the best-looking and best-smelling shrimp scampi I’ve ever seen,” whined Sophie. “Man, I love garlic.”
“Yeah, well, you should have seen the size of my T-bone. Heaven,” said Alex as he rumbled through the door.
“Yeah, just what you need,” said Sophie.
“Stop. What we have is better than that.”
“What the hell could be better than shrimp scampi? For lunch no less. Have you been drinking, Williams?”
“I’m sending you to counseling when we get home.” Manny turned to Josh. “How about the identity of the killer, or at least one of them?”
Josh shot Manny a surprised look. “What? You know who the killer is?”
Jen kissed her dad. “That’s my cue to go to my room.” With that, she hurried to the other end of the suite.
Manny motioned to the others as Chloe placed the two files on the table. “Sophie and I looked at Richardson’s file and agreed on something Miami’s CSU hadn’t noticed.”
“What’s that?” asked Alex.
“The way the cuts were made on Richardson’s body indicated different knives and different pressure in and around the cuts. Some went deeper, some were cut with a serrated blade, some weren’t.”
“So?” said Josh.
“So different pressure and two blades means that there were probably two killers. In fact, given the time of death, there would’ve had to be two, unless the killer was trained in the art of filleting humans. Even then, I think it would be nearly impossible for any one person to do that kind of carnage to Richardson in less than ninety minutes.”
Josh stepped closer. “Okay. I shouldn’t be surprised that you figured that out, but couldn’t that have waited until the meeting this afternoon?”
“You’re so hot when you take charge,” said Sophie.
Manny ignored her. “That’s where Chloe comes in.”
Agent Franson opened up the files and positioned a single page on top of each one. “When the courier brought these to my room, I thought they wouldn’t amount to much, and for the most part, I was right. Just routine stuff, until I got to the detective’s signature on the final case report. Look here.” Chloe pointed to the report on the Ohio case.
The collective silence could have been the calm before the gates of hell blew open to release chaos.
“Maybe she didn’t remember this case? Right? It was eight years ago,” said Max.
“You’re right. I gave her that, at first, and then I played a hunch.”
“Did you go into that stupor thing Manny does?” asked Alex.
She shook her head and smiled. “There’s only one Manny Williams.”
“Smartasses,” said Manny. “Look at the other signature on the case from Chicago.”
They leaned in together like it was choreographed for a Broadway musical.
Josh whistled in a low tone. “You’ve got to be shitting me. She was the detective in both cases?”
“That’s what it looks like. And she never mentioned that she knew anything about either one,” said Chloe.
“Okay, boys and girls, that doesn’t mean she’s the killer. It could be some wild coincidence, right?” said Sophie.
Manny shifted his feet, and ran his hand through his hair. “You’re right. I took the liberty of making a call to the Orlando Police Department and finally got in touch with the detective who worked that murder. I asked him if he ever heard of her, and he swore a streak that Sophie’d be proud of. Once he calmed down, he said of course he knew her. Apparently, she and her husband were in Orlando on vacation, and somehow, she was miraculously the first one on the scene of that shooting. She flashed her ID and gave him some story about hearing a shot while she was out walking. He said he thought it was strange, but not unheard of. He blew it off until . . .” Manny reached for his bottled water.
“Come on, Slick, this ain’t the Midnight Suspense Club. Until what?” said Sophie.
“Until he saw her taint the crime scene.”
“How in the hell did she do that?” asked Alex.
“Apparently she found a shell casing next to the victim’s body and picked it up, without latex.”
“Ah. Latex, your favorite,” said Sophie, poking Alex.
Alex rolled his eyes, turning in Manny’s direction. “That might be a big thing. I mean they probably wouldn’t have found any prints the conventional way, but the Brits came up with a process that could have found latent prints left by body acid. They shoot the surface of the casing with an electrical charge after covering it with a dust that looks like photocopy powder and, voila, instant print. They say it’s impossible to clean the print off.”
Manny nodded. “When she touched the cartridge, her body acid destroyed any previous prints, and replaced them with her own, or at least overlapped it so nothing could be pulled.”
“That’s the theory,” said Max.
The room grew quiet a second time.
Josh paced back and forth. Manny watched his cobalt-blue eyes dance as the wheels turned. “So, she did it on purpose?”
“The detective thinks she knew better, but that’s hard to prove. Since she was an ex-cop back then, he let it go.”
“Still pretty circumstantial, though,” responded Josh.
“Well, there is one last thing,” he glanced at Chloe and then around the group.
“Did I mention that one of the people who ki
lled Richardson was left-handed?”
“Shit,” said Alex. “I noticed the bandage on her left hand at the meeting.”
“Me too,” said Manny. “I wonder how Ruby Hayes injured that hand.”
Chapter-22
Destina Flores gave Manny one of those are-you-nuts gawks as she stood a few feet away from the others gathered in her large, corner office, which overlooked the small inlet to the blue Atlantic. “Ruby Hayes? My best employee, my assistant? You think she and her husband are the killers?”
Josh Corner stepped to Manny’s side. “Nothing is one hundred percent until we talk to her, but based on this information, she is most certainly a person of interest, her husband too.”
“We called Detective Swifton from the hotel, and she’s sending a team out to Ruby’s home, but I don’t think they’ll find her . . . them, I should say. We came here hoping she’d not connected the dots, but it looks like that’s not the case either,” sighed Chloe.
Destina frowned. “You’re right. She should have been back an hour ago, and I get no answer from her cell.”
“She’s probably ditched that by now. They’ve got to know that most cell phones can be traced by GPS, so that’s going to be a dead end,” said Manny.
“Now what?” asked Destina.
“Sophie, Max, and Alex are on the way, and we’re going to meet Detective Swifton and her team at the Hayes’s home and see what we can find. You never know, maybe we got lucky and she doesn’t suspect anything, but I’m not counting on that,” said Josh. “And before you ask why we didn’t move sooner, we just figured it out fifteen minutes ago. I think she knew before she ever left the meeting in your conference room that she and her partner had a few hours before we got the files from Ohio and Chicago. We really had no chance.”
The security chief plopped down in her chair, staring at the glass top of her huge desk. Manny moved closer and sat on the edge. “Destina, I need you to think. Did she ever mention a place she’d go to get away from things? A vacation spot, a second home?”
“No. We didn’t really have that kind of relationship. She was a loner, almost from the get-go. Hell, I only met her husband once, on a company-sponsored day cruise . . . that was it. She missed a day or two once in a while, but she was dependable and very organized, great with details and very bright. She made no mistakes. She moved up the Carousel ladder quickly.”
“She had no real friends here?”
Destina shook her head. “In her time working for me, I never saw her go to lunch with anyone that works here, or even sit in one of the other employee’s offices to gossip. Not once.”
“That fits the profile of a comfort serial killer. Loners to the tee, organized, very bright,” said Manny, not liking the sound of his own voice.
Chloe walked to the other side of the desk, and Manny watched her every step. He couldn’t help it. She made his heart beat faster when she got this close, or sometimes with just a look. She had something to say, but he wasn’t sure he was going to hear it. He didn’t know why these impulses of attraction showed up when they did, but he was losing the battle to control them. Maybe it was some form of Irish voodoo.
“That also means they’ve thought through what might happen if they got caught or if an investigation got too close,” said Chloe.
“But they’ve only had a few hours to make a move. How far could they get?” asked Destina.
“Good question. They couldn’t have reached Orlando, or Tampa, or the Keys,” said Josh.
“You told the MPD to put out an APB for both their cars and them, and that was ten minutes ago. That gave them two-and-one-half hours to put any contingency plan in motion. She was a cop in Chicago and Columbus; she understands how this all works. I’m sure they’re not in either of the vehicles registered in their names. They’ve probably changed their hair, their eye color, hell, maybe their skin tone,” said Manny, running his hand through his hair. He shrugged. “Does anyone know how long it takes to do a sex change? They might’ve done that too.”
Josh snorted while Chloe wagged her head and grinned. Destina stared at him and then released a full belly laugh.
“Funny, big boy,” said Chloe.
He blinked at her use of Louise’s nickname for him, again. It sounded so natural out of her mouth, almost comforting. Damn. He needed to stay focused.
“How do we find her, them, whatever?” asked Josh.
“I’m thinking. I mean, what would I do? Better yet, what would the cops think I would do?”
“Fake ID and fly my ass out of the city would be my choices, in that order,” said Destina.
Manny nodded. “Maybe. But I’m not sure they would have time. The APB would force them to be cautious, and their movement would be slow. Reckless doesn’t fit her.”
“Assuming I was smart enough to have another vehicle registered in another name, I’d probably drive my way out of town. I would’ve had a good start,” said Chloe.
“A cruise? We can check to see if any ships are leaving today. Odd for a Friday, though,” said Josh.
Manny walked to the window, head down and his mind in full-blown “what’s going on” mode. Ruby was smart. She knew all they knew, maybe more. The others were right. She had a plethora of ways to leave the area, and all of them could be successful and each of them very predictable. Not to mention leaving too many uncontrollable variables, too many holes. That wasn’t going to happen with these two. Control was everything to them. But what if . . .
Manny spun on his heels and hurried to the door. “Come on. Let’s get out to the Hayes’s house. I’ll explain on the way, but I think I know what they’re going to do.”
Chapter-23
Manny stepped behind the middle unit of the four squad cars and the SWAT team van that had formed an arc blocking the street and the driveway of Ruby Hayes’s house. Josh and Chloe were right behind him. Sophie and Alex were crouched down beside Max and two blues from the MPD. Swifton and Parkroy were one car down.
“Oh, nice of you to join us, fearless leader,” Sophie said. Her oval face was glowing and perspiration ran in tiny rivulets down her temples “Don’t you know that Asians, especially really hot ones with new boob jobs, melt in this kind of heat?”
“Yeah, not to mention husky-built CSIs,” added Alex.
“You got that right. This boy needs more deodorant,” said Sophie, grinning.
“Hey, you’re not on my ‘up close and hug list’ either,” snapped Alex.
“Damn, you’re cranky. Maybe I should give you a hug. But you can’t touch the rack, got it?”
“What?” Alex looked to the sky. “Why me, Lord? Why me?”
“I’m sorry,” answered Manny. “We got here as soon as we could. I think I can make it up to you shortly, though.”
“What does that mean?” asked Sophie, her eyes narrowing. “I know that look; tell us what you figured out.”
“I’ll tell you when we get inside. My guess is that you’ve not seen any movement from the property.”
“You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out,” said Alex.
“That’s true. No one would leave that sweet-looking Camaro unless they were in a hurry,” said Sophie, pulling her gun. “I’m driving that puppy back to the impound lot, got it?”
“Sophie, after the way you handled the vehicles in Lansing last year, that I’ve got to see,” said Josh.
“Good. You’re riding shot gun, and you’ll be begging for your mama,” said Sophie.
“Let’s worry about getting into the house first. Is there anything that would make you think someone’s inside?” asked Manny.
Detective Swifton moved next to them. “I’ll answer that: not a damn thing. The only reason we’ve not gone in is because we were waiting on Agent Corner to give us the go ahead.” Her eyes shone with a defiant obedience that Manny remembered seeing in Jen when she was a toddler entering the terrible twos.
Josh must have seen it too, but he ignored it. Good man. “Okay, let’s send in th
e Metro-Dade SWAT team, your very own Men in Black. But make sure they check the door for wires, and don’t touch that Camaro without checking for explosives.”
“I already told them that, Agent.” Swifton turned and gave a forward motion, and the storming of Ruby Hayes’s home was on.
Three officers rushed to the front door, two circled the back, and two headed for the garage, careful to not touch the Camaro.
A few minutes of loud shouting, and Manny heard the battering ram pound and splinter the front door. More shouting as the team secured the area. He came out of his crouch and headed for the door.
“Where in the hell are you going?” asked Josh.
“They’re not here; it’s safe.”
“Not exactly protocol, but I do believe you’re right. Let’s check out your theory.”
“Hey. You’re not leaving me behind,” said Sophie. Chloe followed suit. Alex and Max brought up the rear.
As the six approached the house, one of the SWAT members came through the door raising his hand for them to stop.
“What’s wrong?” asked Josh.
“The house, the car, and the garage are clear, almost. There’s a body in the garage. Male. Based on the file photos you handed out, it’s probably Simon Hayes. He was shot three times in the chest,” said the SWAT Commander.
Manny turned to Alex and Max. “That’s all yours.”
“About time,” said Alex. He frowned. “Wait, you don’t seem too surprised that Simon Hayes is dead.”
Manny shook his head. “Not surprised, totally. And I think our girl Ruby killed him, especially given the fact that he wasn’t shot in the face or head.”
“Why would she do that? I thought they were partners?”
Manny explained. “It’s not out of the question for her to blame someone, even Simon, for the trouble she’s in. She might think the best way to go, from here out, is alone. Not that unusual with partner killers—in fact, quite normal. Also, I told you, she’s organized and is not about loose ends. He had to be complicating her big picture.”