Ellie came up then, holding her phone, and immediately her gaze sharpened. “Fergusson just called me. What?”
“Oh, you’ll find out.” Jason said to Grasso, “I don’t know if I do want to know the kicker, but go ahead.”
“He signed this one. The Observer.”
Ellie went still. “This one? We have another body?”
“You have to be kidding me. Okay, okay, I’m taking this all in, keep going. He’s really making a name for himself, isn’t he?”
Grasso agreed and his voice was grim. “I’m afraid so.”
* * *
Ellie didn’t need to be a detective to figure out that this one was bad as they walked down the hall. “I was downstairs getting a file. Clue me in, because while none of us are happy, I’m sure Fergusson and Metzger are taking a lot of heat.”
“Yeah, they are.” Jason’s expression said they were about to inherit that heat themselves. She felt the pressure; that wasn’t in question, not just for the victims, but for herself. She couldn’t even live in her own home at the moment. If they thought for a minute she wasn’t thinking about this every waking second and throw in a few nightmares, they were all wrong.
“Don’t even dare say I told you so.”
Why did she even bother?
“I told you so.”
Ellie wasn’t fooled. “What did he write on the victim this time?”
He didn’t want to tell her, that much was obvious. “Ever thought about getting a big dog? Maybe like a Rottweiler or German shepherd? Name him Killer or something like that. Feed him raw meat, walk around with him on a leash.”
“No. I work long hours, so I can’t take proper care of a dog, and I carry a gun. Anyway, I’d be more inclined toward Cuddles or maybe Sweet Pea as a name. Just tell me before we walk in there. What did it say?”
Santiago did have a redeeming quality or two and honesty was one of them. “You’ll be mine. Kind of like a Valentine theme this time.”
“The Observer?”
“That’s what Grasso said. You heard him.”
“What does that mean?” She thought it over. “Okay, so maybe a voyeur of some kind. We have another blind clue. He could still be talking about you.”
He didn’t agree at all. “Not one flower on my doorstep. It’s you. Maybe we could find you a nice desert island to stay on until we catch him. Wear a bikini and text me pictures please.”
“Don’t count on that.” She wouldn’t be human if it wasn’t at least a little disturbing, but no way was she going to hide. “We have a solid description of him and I close my curtains when I get dressed, for the record.”
“Maybe that’s what has him so pissed off. I know I’d be disappointed. Anyway, that description part is true more than ever. A friend of the latest victim saw him clearly, but it is all very circumstantial, even if she could pick him out of a lineup. The other people won’t be helpful. Yes, he fits the profile of the helpful jogger and the last person the latest victim was seen with, but unless we have something more to prove he killed anyone, taking someone on a date and jogging through a park are not crimes. We need physical evidence, and he isn’t leaving it behind, the bastard.”
“It is inconsiderate of him. Maybe when this autopsy comes in, we’ll have more.”
“More than nothing isn’t too much to ask.” Santiago didn’t look happy. “We have more witnesses than any case I’ve ever worked, but we can’t pin him down. Why?”
“You’re the one that keeps telling me he’s going to mess up and give us a prime clue.”
They stopped outside Fergusson’s door, looking at each other. “He will, but he’s taking his own time about it. He’s leaving you gifts and calling on the phone, writing messages on the victims, showing up at the crime scenes; he’s one ballsy guy and it seems to be working for him and not so great for us. This time he stabbed her first, but suffocated her before she died. That’s what it looks like, anyway.”
She intrinsically knew their job was to make sense of something that didn’t make sense, but how, where, and who were more important than why, but sometimes why meant a lot. It made her sick to think about it all, and the day that reaction went away she should just start selling insurance or something.
“The suffocation angle is the key.”
“I’m sure we’re about to get Fergusson’s opinion. I call his style midwestern no-bullshit.” Santiago knocked on the door. “After you.”
Oh sure, into the lion’s den first. Accurate call on the style. Fergusson didn’t pull punches. He was nice enough to tell them to have a seat, but then showed no mercy. “Let’s recap. You have how many eyewitnesses?”
“Quite a few,” Ellie admitted.
“Surveillance installed by the state-of-the-art Milwaukee Police Department on your growingly infamous front porch show nothing, correct? Explain it to me, MacIntosh.”
Santiago spoke for her. “Until the black roses picture, we weren’t positive anything was connected to the murders. No one shows up on that tape that shouldn’t be there. All the regular cars go by, the people in the neighborhood are familiar, and so on. Our surveillance team so far has seen nothing unusual.”
He was right. They’d pulled the images on video immediately.
“Then how does he manage it?”
“He turns them off somehow.” Ellie had a technician explain it to her carefully. “How he has that password is a mystery to me, but computers get hacked all the time. It goes down for just a few strategic minutes, and then it comes back up. They’ve tracked it, but can’t nail down the source yet.”
“Battery backup? Of course.”
“He switches that feature off.” Santiago was emphatic. “We knew he’d anticipate cameras, but didn’t know he was a geek who could rig them and make smoke bombs. He should be in a Bond movie.”
“I don’t have time to watch those flicks,” Fergusson said plainly. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case where he’s in such plain sight. When you know his favorite cheese, please inform me. What type of toilet paper he prefers, I’m sure you’ll have that information before you have a name. You are supposed to be the homicide division’s dream team, but right now you’re a nightmare, get it? One more thing before you go: We have an anonymous tip that your partnership gives a whole new meaning to the word. Just so you know.”
“Like what?” Ellie was afraid maybe her expression reflected the truth, but this invasion of her life on all levels was really getting to her.
“I’ll let you have this conversation with Metzger,” Fergusson just said evenly. “We’re done here. Go solve this case.”
When they left, Ellie shook her head. “A part of me thinks they expect miracles from us.”
“We aren’t miracle workers, but in this case we’ll deliver.”
A good thing he was confident, because she wasn’t sure she shared his faith. “A tip about us? Like what kind?”
“I literally have no idea. I was afraid to ask.”
* * *
Jason knew how to play odds; he’d been doing it his whole life. He thought better when he paced, so he walked back and forth, wearing a path in front of Ellie’s desk. “Let’s change it out. Let’s announce we have a clear suspect in the park slayings. I think Metzger would do that for us because he’s going to have to give a press conference after this last murder. It isn’t original, but there’s a reason it’s still used: because it works. I don’t know about you, but if I’m looking over my shoulder, I want the killer looking over his. My only fear is that he’ll run. It might work, but it also might make him move on to another state and start all over again. But then he’d have to give you up, and somehow I doubt he’s going to do that.”
She didn’t like it put that way. It was clearly in her eyes. “Give me up? Stop that.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Maybe he’s ex-military. At the rate he’s moving, it’s possible. Some of those special forces guys can make themselves invisible. Otherwise, I swear I’d know it if some asshole was f
ollowing us around. I’m like really, really paying attention these days.” He stopped pacing and stared at the wall where they had a timeline written out on a board and the names of the victims, hands in his pockets.
“Special forces. There’s a comforting thought.”
“He knows about our relationship not just being professional. How? You can’t tell me this ‘anonymous tip’ didn’t come from him.”
“We don’t even know what it is.” Ellie wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.
“Maybe you told Lukens, but she’s so close-mouthed it’s like running into a brick wall if you want information. All your sleazy secrets you’ve confessed to her are safe, by the way. I keep asking but she just won’t give the details.”
“There are no sleazy secrets except maybe you.” Ellie no doubt was unhappy, but composed. “And Georgia knows about the case, so no, she wouldn’t mention it to anyone. If Grasso talks to her about it, I don’t mind at all, because on a rare occasion you’re right about something and she wouldn’t say anything to anyone else. I did mention the occasion was rare, right?”
“And you call me a smartass.” He came over to drop into a chair. “Huh, look who’s talking.”
“I’ve spent too much time with you. I wonder if I could sue the department for character damage and emotional suffering for making you my partner.”
“You can take it, so isn’t a case. The surveillance team outside your house said there was no delivery of flowers or anything else. Our asshole stabbed the last victim. Why? He’s evolving?”
“He varies his pattern to challenge us, we both know that.”
“If word gets out that someone is murdering people because he’s fixated on one of MPD’s detectives, then the press is going to have a field day. Want to rethink Siberia or the desert island?”
The last thing she wanted was officers watching her come and go, intruding on her life, he knew that, but then again someone else was already doing that apparently. “I don’t like any of this, but perspective is important. What is really awful is what happened to our victims. I’m a person, and this is obviously affecting my life, but at least I still have it.”
“If they can get a solid view, we can show it to the friend of the last victim, and even though we still would be dealing with circumstantial in a big way, given Grasso’s case and the tulips and the expert opinion the old lady was killed, it’s thin, but if they brought him for questioning, we could take it to the prosecutor. Handwriting analysis—if we had a suspect—might seal the deal.”
It might, but it might not.
“Now who is the optimist?” she said.
Chapter 22
It was the end of his personal list.
Almost.
Two more people on it. One would be easy. One would be the chance he wasn’t positive he should or would take.
Sitting on a fence about how it could be done.
He woke up sweating in the middle of the night thinking about it. What would happen if he did take out Detective Santiago?
Maybe it would be the thrill of a lifetime.
He couldn’t move on it for a while, but the itch was there, making him toss and turn. He knew everything he needed to know about the man. Where he lived, his truck right down to the license plate number, even what kind of beer he drank, because one morning he’d gone through Ellie MacIntosh’s recycling after she’d brought it out to the curb and left for work.
That was before she’d essentially moved out of the condo.
A few times he’d risked it and watched her leave from the police department, but safely across the street out of range of any cameras, just to get a glimpse as she pulled away. Santiago was always right behind her, like a shadow.
That would be his weakness.
* * *
Jason scowled at the windshield. “Shit. Let’s just skip right to triple shit and not mention double shit. I’m too tired for this. How many hours did we spend going over cold case files to see if maybe we are dealing with a repeat offender?”
“A lot.”
They had come up with nothing that helped them really. The closest was an unsolved strangulation and drowning in a fountain on the University of Wisconsin’s campus well over a decade before.
“My mother sent a text to remind me about tonight. I wanted to tell her we don’t have the time.”
Ellie gazed at him from the passenger seat. “We’ll talk about the case on the way. We don’t have any leads we can really pursue in any other way. I think sometimes it just helps to go over it again and again. I know you don’t want this, but give it a chance. You have to eat at some point, why not with them? Man up. We’ll be working all the way there and all the way back. You can take an hour or so to make your mother and father happy.”
“Man up? Can I point out that making me happy wasn’t on their agenda my entire life?”
“Stop whining. I see you got a haircut.”
He muttered, “For Metzger so he’d leave me alone about it.”
She wondered if Georgia would agree it was for Metzger. She doubted it, since he’d ignored that for quite some now. He was also dressed with more care than usual and looked nice in dark denims and a white shirt. It wasn’t like Ellie didn’t understand he was in a situation that made him uncomfortable. “Good timing.”
“We can turn around.”
She could point out he wanted to cancel it, but refrained. At the end of the day it was just his decision. She waited. Lights flashed past; the freeway still busy at this time of evening.
“Might as well get it over with.” He exhaled. “I’m not five anymore. Or ten, or twenty-nine, or all those other birthdays they missed. Why do they care now? Don’t answer that. Let’s talk about the case.”
“You’d rather talk about murders than your family? Besides, you already know your mother didn’t tell your father he even had a child in an effort to keep you from being dragged into the circle of a family connected to organized crime. I am sure she regretted having to make that choice every single day, but I can understand why she did what she did. I doubt she realized that after she walked out, the man you thought was your father would turn into a raging alcoholic. He did adopt you when he married her, so he stood by that.” Ellie had thought about it quite a bit. Her childhood had been happy and what she considered to be typical with loving parents, riding bikes down the street, quarreling with her sister but ending up best friends, summer vacations on Lake Superior …
The grim reality of becoming a police officer had brought it to light that there was no such thing as typical. Good, bad, and in the middle was the best anyone could do.
“One hundred percent I would prefer to discuss the case, and as far as I know, it could be all the same thing as talking about my father. Murder isn’t why he went to prison, but nothing would surprise me.” Santiago said it darkly. “I pulled some files besides our cold case research. I have at least one uncle doing time for manslaughter, and that was a plea bargain because they weren’t sure they could make conspiracy to commit murder stick.”
Ellie chose her words carefully. “So now maybe you see your mother’s concerns. Let’s talk about the campus cold case murder. It was ten years ago. It was in Milwaukee, and from the descriptions of our possible suspect he’d be about late twenties to early thirties or so now.”
“Let’s do talk about that. All we know is she left the party at a frat house with a guy. Everyone was pretty drunk, but a few of her friends remember her leaving. Then they remember her dead. No leads. But we have three threads that include alcohol, strangulation until she was unconscious, and then drowning her. She wasn’t dating anyone according to the interviews at the time, so no boyfriend.”
“We don’t have a description either. They said he was tall. Here we go again.”
Santiago said, “It isn’t much, but maybe something.”
She didn’t agree. It was nothing. “You’re fairly tall. Where were you that night?”
“I can say honestly not a
t a frat party. No Greek houses in my life until this case.”
“One down if I take your word for it. The rest of the men in America are still suspects unless they are short.”
At least that lightened him up a little. “Good to be no longer suspect number one. It all could just mean nothing.”
“I don’t know.” She meant it. “I keep going back to it. I’m wondering if he committed that first murder a good decade ago. Let’s talk to the detectives that handled it.”
“If we survive dinner, that’s a good idea.”
* * *
The menu proved to be some sort of chicken dish with biscuits on top. Very homey and actually delicious. The house itself was modest, probably because his father had an honest job, and being an ex-con didn’t make it easy to find work. Jason had the impression from his mother that the man had done a variety of things like construction, road work, and in the winter helped a friend with a private snowplow business.
Sitting across from him was like looking at an older version of himself. The same slightly Roman nose, the same blond hair, though his father’s was starting to show threads of silver, but mostly it was the eyes. They were that same color of blue that practically every woman Jason had met commented on sooner or later.
“That was delicious,” Ellie said as his mother rose to clear their plates. “Let me help you.”
He really wished he hadn’t recognized the tablecloth once the plates were gone, but he did. It was hand stitched and stirred childhood memories he didn’t even know existed. He’d always wanted to sit near the part with a log cabin with smoke curling out of the chimney and a snowman out front, and maybe it was a calculated move on his mother’s part, but that’s where he’d ended up tonight.
Jason realized then she had left him behind, but taken that tablecloth. Talk about irony.
He was tempted to comment, but didn’t because he had a feeling it would make Ellie uncomfortable.
He was, that was for sure.
“So, Jason.” His father was trying to make conversation, though neither of them had been very successful in that regard so far. “What made you decide to become a police officer?”
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