The Inquisitor

by Gayle Wilson

  “Did you want me to? That wasn’t the impression I got.”

  “What I want is for you to help the police stop him.”

  “Something they haven’t been able to do. Not after seven years and five different locations. With that track record, I don’t have a lot of hope they’re going to.”

  He wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving toward the law enforcement community’s incompetence right now. If he was right, lying in that grass outside was the latest in the cops’ long string of failures.

  There had been too many of those since this had started. Maybe Jenna still had faith in their abilities. He no longer did. And he wasn’t going to pretend.

  “Maybe—”

  He cut off whatever defense of them she intended to make. “I think he’s dumped Carol Cummings out there.”

  It took a moment for her to absorb what he’d said. When she had, she shook her head, the denial obviously not related to the information, but the girl’s death.

  “I need to call Bingham.” He’d pushed past her toward the phone on the nightstand, leaving her to cope with the news.

  Despite the comfort he’d willingly taken from having her body against his, he’d had no consolation to offer. He had felt drained of every human emotion. Empty. Eviscerated.

  The feeling hadn’t eased in the hour or so since he’d made the call. He was just relieved he wasn’t the one who would tell the girl’s family that their daughter was never going to come home again. That she’d never marry. Or give them grandchildren. Or care for them in their old age.

  Carol Cummings would never do any of those things because some psychopath had stolen her life. And there was nothing anyone could do to get it back for her.

  Not even if they caught him. Not even if they executed him.

  All the cops could hope to do now was keep him from butchering someone else. So far they hadn’t been able to accomplish that.

  “They’ll check it out,” Bingham said, obviously a reply to his comment about the killer using the motel lot as a staging ground for dumping the body. “From our initial observation it’s clear he didn’t drive a car out there. They haven’t even found footprints. Not yet.”

  Which would argue that he’d rolled the body down the incline from the highway, Sean thought, his eyes following what would have been the track of its descent. And if he had, someone must have seen him. Or seen something.

  “Any idea how long she’s been there?” He wondered how closely they could pinpoint the time the body had been placed in the field. And whether it would matter.

  “Not yet.” Bingham glanced at him before his gaze returned to the spotlighted scene beneath the shadow of one of the city’s major thoroughfares.

  “If he dumped her from the road, somebody had to have seen something.”

  “Yeah? They didn’t anywhere else. Unless we get luckier than anyone else has…”

  There had been no trace evidence found on any of the victims. Or on the bags into which they’d been stuffed.

  Garbage.

  That was exactly how he treated them. As if they were so much garbage. Something to dispose of in empty fields or abandoned houses or, as in Makaela’s case, on the side of a country road.

  As soon as the forensics team had arrived, they’d split the top portion of the bag to verify that its contents were what they all expected. Now a photographer was taking pictures of the body and its surroundings.

  Despite the portable spotlights, he was using a flash, which allowed Sean to track his movements around the dark shape on the ground. From the multiple flashes, it was obvious he intended to capture every inch of plastic, every blade of grass, as well as the girl’s face and body.

  That was one thing he wouldn’t have to remember about this one, Sean thought. He had seen the autopsy photographs they’d taken of Makaela, although that had been long after her death. Eyelids sliced off, her vacant eyes had reflected a horror he tried not to let himself think about.

  “If you can,” he advised Bingham, “keep those away from her family.”

  “What?”

  “The photographs. They’ll have enough to deal with without seeing the pictures.”

  “I wish to hell I didn’t have to,” Bingham said. “Son of a bitch,” he added, his tone bitter. “Every freaking cop in the metro area is out looking for that girl, and he dumps her in plain sight of a major artery. This ain’t his usual method of disposal, by the way.”

  He wondered how long it would take Bingham to come to the conclusion he had. That the Cummings girl had been put here for him to find.

  “Overconfidence,” he said aloud.

  The bastard had plenty of reason for that. The cops were no closer now than they had been on the day when they’d finally realized the connection between the murders.

  “Maybe,” Bingham said musingly. “Still…”

  In the sudden silence, Jenna turned her head, looking at Sean rather than at the technicians working the body. He held his breath, expecting her to mention the boxes to the detective. He ignored her, and after a moment she seemed to refocus her attention on the activity out on the right-of-way.

  “Makes no sense, actually,” Bingham went on. “Rural county. Lots of places he could have dumped that body. Places where we wouldn’t have found it for weeks. Maybe months. So why drop her in our laps? Especially this late in the game?”

  “We learned from the guy in Wichita that patterns don’t always hold. Maybe he needed to get rid of this one quickly.”

  Bingham laughed. “Because we were so hot on his tail?”

  “Maybe you were and didn’t know it,” Sean said, deliberately refusing to look at the cop.

  He liked Bingham. And he knew that as far as the police would be concerned, he wasn’t playing fair. A feeling that would certainly be the opinion of the public, as well. If they found out.

  “Hot on his tail? Yeah, well, you’re right. If we are, I don’t know it. All I know is that after fourteen murders this guy breaks his pattern to lay a victim out in the middle of a field below one of the busiest intersections in the state. And right in front of your motel room, too. Now, there’s a hell of a coincidence for you, Sergeant Murphy,” the lieutenant added softly. “Even to an ignorant black cop from a backward city like this.”

  “Obviously, he knows I’m here.” Denial would make Bingham more suspicious. “That isn’t a coincidence.”

  “So he hands you a body? Like a gift? How’d you happen to see it, by the way?” Bingham turned, checking out the windows of the motel behind them. “The way the land lies and with that fence,” he said, looking back at the right-of-way. “Parked cars between. I purely don’t know how you could see that bag out there. Not from your room.”

  Sean had known the question would eventually be asked, if not by Bingham, then by someone on the national task force. He had, however, hoped to avoid it tonight. He hadn’t had time before the cops arrived to figure out from what other vantage points, if any, he might have been able to see the body.

  “You want to show me where you were when you spotted it?”

  “Second floor,” Sean said, deciding that the less elaboration he made the less likely he was to be tripped up.

  “Dr. Kincaid with you?”

  “She was still in my room.”

  Bingham’s gaze moved to Jenna, but she didn’t look at him. “So you’re up on the second floor…doing what?”

  “Looking for an ice machine.”

  “You two gonna have a drink? In your motel room?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  Jenna’s voice was cool. Just as it had been the day he’d walked into her office, so furious with the suggestions she’d made in that interview he’d allowed himself to be blinded to any other consideration by his desire to confront her.

  He knew that didn’t mean she would be on his side if this came down to a demand from the cops for cooperation. If she told them about the boxes he’d intercepted—

>   “This is a murder investigation, Dr. Kincaid.” Bingham’s normal drawl had been sharpened, apparently to reflect the seriousness with which he took his responsibility. “That means everything’s my business.”

  “You know exactly what happened to that girl. And you know who did it. The fact that Sean and I might have been having a drink in his room couldn’t possibly have any bearing on either.”

  “I just didn’t realize y’all had gotten so close. Seemed a little strange. Almost as strange as our boy choosing this location to unload his latest victim.”

  “You were right about that,” Sean said.

  “About her being a gift to you? Why do you think that is?”

  “He knows why I’m here.” He’d made his intentions clear in those interviews in Detroit.

  “So he’s kicking sand in your face.”

  “It’s his idea of a taunt.”

  “Pretty sick one if you ask me.”

  “Well, he’s a sick SOB. Everybody knows that by now. Almost everybody.”

  The gibe was stupid. So far Jenna had held the line, supporting what he’d said. Why risk her cooperation?

  “I never said he wasn’t sick,” she said.

  “Just not crazy.”

  “He knows exactly what he’s doing. You of all people should know that.”

  It was enough to make him turn to meet her eyes. Like her voice when she’d chided Bingham for his suggestion, they were cold.

  “All I tried to do was point out that he isn’t insane,” she went on. “Not by any legal definition.”

  “You have an opinion, Dr. Kincaid, about why he’s suddenly changing the methods that have worked for him in the past?”

  Despite Bingham’s question, Sean didn’t break the contact he’d established with Jenna. He held it as the silence stretched.

  “Maybe because you aren’t getting any closer,” she said, finally looking at the lieutenant.

  “What does that mean? As far as the change, I mean.”

  “The police aren’t a challenge anymore. Neither is the FBI. The game is only exciting if the stakes are high. You aren’t raising them, so he is.”

  “He’s trying to make it easier for us to catch him? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting he’s trying to make it more interesting. If that means that he needs to take risks he hasn’t taken before, then apparently…Apparently, he’s now willing to do that.”

  “Let me get this straight. We’re not challenging him, so now he’s decided to concentrate on someone who has.” He nodded in Sean’s direction. “And since that someone is the guy you’re getting cozy with in cheap motel rooms, doesn’t that worry you a little bit? You know, I didn’t really take what you said this afternoon seriously, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe the Inquisitor is interested in you, Dr. Kincaid. And now that he’s freed up his schedule, so to speak—”

  “If you’re trying to scare me, Lieutenant, you’re succeeding.”

  “Then why do I still get the feeling something’s going on here that I don’t know about? Like maybe why you were looking out at the right-of-way from the second floor when there’s an ice machine in that alcove right there.” Bingham turned again, looking back toward the motel.

  Sean didn’t bother to mimic the motion. He knew what was coming. A knowledge that had nothing to do with premonitions and far more to do with what he’d learned about the woman at his side.

  She still trusted the guys with the badges and the cameras and the collection kits. At least more than she trusted him.

  “If you don’t tell him, I will,” Jenna said.

  He couldn’t have cued it better if they’d all had a script. The detective’s reaction was on page as well.

  “You been keeping something from me, Sergeant Murphy? Something that has a bearing on my case? Something that’s got to do with that little girl who’s lying dead out there?”

  Without any comment, Sean reached into his jacket pocket and removed the box he’d taken off the hood of the SUV. He held it out, but Bingham didn’t reach for it.

  “Now, what the hell is that?”

  “Another present. It was left on the hood of my car. It’s from the same source as that one,” Sean said, raising his gaze to the spotlit scene in front of them.

  “Why?”

  “To make me go looking for him. And find her.”

  Bingham thought about it, apparently accepting the explanation as the truth. “You open it?”

  Sean shook his head.

  “There was another box,” Jenna said. “Earlier. Just like that. It was left at my apartment. In the refrigerator.”

  “The refrigerator?”

  Sean knew the instant the implication hit the detective. It was there in his eyes, and then quickly masked by a display of what appeared to be genuine fury.

  “What do you two think you’re doing? Playing Mr. And Mrs. North? You got that one, too?” Bingham demanded, looking from one of them to the other.

  Jenna had begun to shake her head when Sean took the first box out of the other pocket. “My sister’s ring.”

  There was a subtle change in the detective’s eyes, some of the anger fading. “She was wearing it?”

  “Apparently. I never knew what had happened to it.”

  “Shit.” None of them said anything for perhaps ten seconds, and then Bingham added, “Sorry, Dr. Kincaid. And you swear you ain’t opened that one?” He nodded toward the box still tied with ribbon.

  Sean shook his head again.

  Bingham turned to yell over his shoulder at one of the technicians. “Crawley. Bring a bag. Got something for y’all.”

  He looked back at Sean as the man began to trot across the dead grass. “I’m gonna say this once, and I’d better never have to say it again. You mess with my investigation from here on in, and I’ll lock you up. I don’t care who you are or who you know or what the bastard did to your sister. This is my case. I’m in charge, and you need to get that through your head. You understand me, Sergeant Murphy?”

  Sean nodded for the third time. He’d been yelled at plenty of times and by men more experienced at humiliation than Bingham. Besides, the lieutenant was right. Sean should have given him the box from the hood of the car.

  The only reason he hadn’t was because he knew if he did, then the other would come out. The one that had been left in Jenna’s apartment. And they would use that one to take her out of his hands. If they did that, his chances of doing what he had come down here to do were diminished.

  “Take that to the lab,” Bingham said to the tech who’d arrived. “It’s from the murderer.”

  The man held out a plastic bag, allowing Sean to drop the box inside before he sealed it.

  “Might as well take the other one, too,” the detective said. “It’s been opened, but do whatever you can.” He watched as the process was repeated. “And while I’m at it, I think you folks better join me downtown for a little debriefing session. I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to tonight. Besides, a few hours spent giving statements will keep you out of my hair. And theirs,” he said, glancing back at the forensics team. “And if it doesn’t, then I damn sure know what will.”

  Eighteen

  “Quite a layout,” Sean said, his gaze considering the high-ceiling rooms that were visible from the oversized foyer.

  Jenna realized that she should have anticipated how he would view her parents’ house. The street-smart bravado that he wore like a badge of honor had been warning enough.

  At the time she’d mentioned coming here, however, she’d been more concerned with issues of safety and the sense of sanctuary this place had always provided than with worrying about how he’d react to it. Now she knew that the gulf that stretched between her background and his had just gotten wider. And at a time when she didn’t need any more barriers between them.

  “My grandfather built this long before labor costs made building places like this prohibitive.”

  “Yeah
?”

  That single syllable managed to convey his disdain both for her specious argument and the wealth of her ancestors. She wondered again about his background, something he hadn’t shared.

  And he won’t. Not as long as things keep happening to point up the differences between it and yours.

  “If you’re hungry—” she began, only to be cut off.

  “You said there’s a security system.”

  She thought briefly about pleading hunger or exhaustion, both of which were very real after the events of last night and the hours they’d spent down at the police station. But she had a feeling that after Bingham’s scathing lecture on staying out of the way of the investigation, Sean would have little tolerance for anyone else trying to tell him what to do.

  “The windows and doors are wired. If they’re tampered with after the system is set, an alarm goes off,” she explained, gesturing toward the control panel on the foyer wall.

  As soon as they’d entered, she had punched in the code that prevented that from happening. Then she’d automatically rearmed the system. Living out so far from police protection had made security concerns routine for the entire family while she was growing up. Entering the front door today had triggered those familiar responses.

  “Which sounds where?”

  “The security company. Vanguard. At least it used to be. They call first to verify that the alarm wasn’t accidentally triggered. Which happened often enough when we were kids. If they receive no response or a negative, they notify the police.”

  “Which ones?”

  Sean had evidently picked up on the jumble of jurisdictions in the area. She thought a minute, trying to remember what her father had told her about recent efforts to annex this upscale, and as yet unincorporated area, into one of the local municipalities. Something she believed had failed.

  “It should still be Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “How about the upstairs windows? They wired, too?”

  “Actually…” She didn’t know, she realized. She’d always assumed they were, but given the stakes, making that kind of assumption could be both foolish and dangerous. “I don’t know.”

  “Should be easy enough to find out.”