“Hey.” Charlie Foulkes ducked under the crime scene tape, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khakis. “You messing with my crime scene, Special Agent Cambridge?”
“Just trying to ID the vic.” Hannah held up the wallet. “Requisite pictures of the crowd again, Charlie, please. I find it hard to believe our guy doesn’t watch.”
“They usually do, and stop telling me my job.” The beefy redhead pointed to one of his team photographing the crowds. “Already doing it.” He dropped his case, did an admirable job of not looking at Deming, while Deming acted as if Charlie didn’t exist. Jack made a mental note to ask his profiler about that bit of weirdness. There was something going on between her and the case’s forensic pathologist, and he wanted to know what.
“Why is he dead?” Jack said. Hannah was right. With the torn plastic bag over his head, the guy should have been unconscious, not dead.
Charlie squatted down next to the open tomb, peering at the victim. “Petechial hemorrhaging. Cyanosis.”
“Yeah, we noticed,” Ferguson said. “So, he’s blue. What else?”
“Suffocated. Most likely, the duct tape around his neck restricted blood flow sufficiently to make the lack of air in the tomb, combined with the chloroform, a deadly combination. Autopsy will confirm.” Charlie pulled latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them on. “Or not. Look.” He pointed to the victim’s legs. “He was paralyzed.”
Jack studied the tomb. “The lid has to be two hundred pounds. In the best of circumstances, it would have been problematic for this guy to move it.”
“They said they sat on the cover and it moved.” Ferguson turned toward the teens who were giving up their cell phones to the uniformed officers interviewing them.
“No way,” Deming said. “Those kids were trying their hand at grave robbing.” Jack saw her glance at Charlie, and when the head of forensics met her gaze, she looked away quickly.
“Kids these days.” Hannah flipped through the vic’s wallet. “Gary Buntle. He lives”—Hannah pointed to the right—“Hull Street. South of here. He’s a local.”
Deming grimaced. “Our victims are loners. He’ll be like the rest of them. No one will know anything about him.”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “Check the NCIC index.”
Deming typed Buntle’s name into her iPad, accessing the National Crime Information Center’s database. “Not listed. No record. Hannah, how old is he?”
Hannah peered at his license. “Twenty-nine.”
“Maybe a vet,” Ferguson said. “Try the VA database.”
She typed it in. “Yes. He is. I got him right here.” Deming patted her iPad. “See? Not all technology hates me. Three tours in Afghanistan. He was a lifer. Lost use of his legs a year ago when his armored vehicle drove over an IED. Oh, geez.” She winced. “Seven months ago, his wife died in a car accident. He fits the killer’s target demographic.”
“Broken love.” Jack glanced at the crumpled copier paper pinned to the victim’s shirt. It was the fifth stanza. Same font, same paper. This one, however, was covered in blood.
Charlie unpinned the paper from the dead man’s shirt. “‘Seven of my sweet loves thy knife Has bereavèd of their life. Their marble tombs I built with tears, And with cold and shuddering fears.’” He frowned, arching a brow at Jack. “The perp chose to kill with a tomb? Knife seems like it would have been easier. Maybe easy isn’t what he’s after.” Deming bit her lip, nodding.
Ferguson smirked. “Charlie, your voice was made to recite poetry. Maybe you chose the wrong profession.”
“Stop flirting,” Charlie said, absently. The detective barked out a laugh as Deming stared at the body.
“Poor guy,” she said.
“Suffocation isn’t so bad,” Charlie said. “You just sleep. There are worse ways to go.”
For whatever reason, his words upset her. Deming lifted her iPad. “Benton, VA files on Buntle verify the local obituary on his wife. Another grieving victim.”
Jack dialed Vivian at the precinct. “Yeah. Hi, Vivian. Please contact Boston Globe’s obit manager and have them provide obits for all our vics’ spouses, lovers or whatever. I’m coming in.” He hung up.
Hannah was searching the growing crowds on the outskirts of the burying grounds, no doubt wondering if the perp was watching. Jack wondered also, and he hoped Charlie’s forensics team photographed the bastard if he was here.
“Nothing more we can do until Charlie’s team is done.” Jack turned toward the detective. “Ferguson, were you able to interview the victims’ families again?”
“Yeah. Nothing new,” Ferguson said.
“The perp’s escalated,” Deming said. “A kill a month to a kill a day.” Deming glanced at Hannah. “Well, an attempted kill, anyway. Either way, this is bad news. Serial killers have rituals. They can’t just stop them.” She shook her head, clearly upset.
“Cynthia, you okay?” Charlies said. Jack thought his frown revealed great concern. Care, even.
Deming glanced at the team, and then at Charlie, and then shook her head, as if she was irritated Charlie spoke to her at all. Then without another word, she stormed off, ducking under the crime scene tape toward Buntle’s address.
“What?” Ferguson’s gaze trailed after her. “What was that about?” He turned to Charlie for an explanation, but the forensic pathologist shrugged, ignoring him.
Jack waved Ferguson after her. “Help Deming check out the victim’s residence. Maybe he’s living with someone.” Nobody thought that likely, but Jack didn’t want Deming alone.
After the barest hesitation, Ferguson obeyed, though he gave Charlie a thorough side-eye. Jack felt for the detective. Women were complicated. He glanced at Hannah.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing. Let’s go,” he said. They left Charlie and his team, hopeful they’d find something to tie the killer to the crime scene.
On the drive back to the precinct house, they brainstormed possible directions the case might go, and when they stepped into the incident room, they saw Vivian taping obituaries of the vics’ loved ones under their corresponding pictures.
“They weren’t all in the Boston Globe,” Gilroy said. He waved to Hannah, before pointing to the obits. “Some were posted in different papers, different parts of the country, on different days, some different months, but all were within the last year.”
“That’s good,” Hannah said.
Gilroy grimaced. “It’s something.”
“What about the security tapes we gathered in the crime scene areas?” Jack said. “Any leads at all?” When Gilroy shook his head, Jack couldn’t hide his disappointment.
The four of them spent the next hour conferring about possible next moves. A lot of time was spent coming up with arguments to convince Lieutenant Pepperidge to spend money on surveilling Freedom Trail sites. They were all positive the next crime scene would on the trail.
Later, when Deming and Ferguson arrived back at the incident room, Jack read them into what they’d discovered. Ferguson wasn’t impressed. “Random. The deaths of the vic’s significant others couldn’t have been more random if they’d tried. How is this information helpful?” he said.
“Put enough leads together,” Jack said, “and we have a case, a conviction. I don’t need to tell you that this is how it works, Ferguson.” Jack studied the murder board. “What are we missing?” Hannah stood at his shoulder, also staring at the board.
“Evidence.” Ferguson sat at his desk, not hiding his frustration.
“You are missing,” Vivian said. Everyone turned toward the IT specialist, who was looking at Jack.
“My obit,” Jack said. Hannah was the only person that might have submitted one. He had no living family. “Hannah, did you send my obituary to the paper?”
“I was only your partner.” Hannah shifted her weight from one foot to the o
ther, not meeting his gaze. “It wasn’t my place.” Her explanation stumped him. If it wasn’t Hannah’s place, then whose place was it?
Humility doused his anger almost instantly, because Hannah was right. He’d never admitted that he loved her…and that was his fault. It reminded him that he was more alone than Hannah. He’d designed a life where he’d always be alone. Safer that way. For his heart. Damn. His picture could just as easily be on that murder board as hers.
Hannah turned from the group, keeping her face hidden as she sat at her desk, futzing with manila files. “No one knew we were,” she glanced around the room, “dating.”
Jack stepped to her side. “The other victims loved the ones they lost.” He sat on her desk’s edge, noticing that her expression tightened, her cheeks flushed. “Somehow the perp discovered you loved me.” She had loved him. Maybe still did.
“I was careful to hide our relationship,” she said. “We both were. No one knew what we were to each other.” She’d used the past tense. From the angry look in her eye, she’d done it on purpose. “I’m certain of it.”
“Well, I’m not,” Jack said. “How can you be?” He felt bad to press this point, but it was important to the case. Her hand shook as she nudged a lock of hair behind her ear. “When you thought I’d died, you gave yourself away, Hannah. Somehow.”
“Leave her alone, Benton,” Ferguson said. The detective seemed moments from physically coming to Hannah’s defense.
Hannah, for her part, seemed moments from clocking Jack in the nose. “I lost my partner,” she said. “Is there an appropriate amount of grief to show? If so, I don’t know it. I was upset. What do you want me to say? Someone might have noticed.”
He shook his head. “You told someone you loved me.” Hannah sent him a repressive glare. “The perp knows about us, or else our only connection between the vics disappears. Think. Who did you tell?” She turned from him, breathless and trembling. Oh, damn. Jack peered closer, and saw he’d triggered one of Hannah’s panic attacks. He waved everyone toward the door. “Give us the room, please.”
Ferguson didn’t move. He kept his eyes on Hannah until she nodded to him, and then he followed everyone else out of the room, as if Jack had just discharged a starter gun. Gilroy waited at the door, keeping it open for Vivian, who’d lingered to grab her purse. Then they were all gone, into the hall and the door closed behind them.
Hannah pushed her chair back from the desk and put her head between her legs. She was sucking in air, holding her breath, and then slowly releasing it. Jack waited, not wanting to interrupt what was evidently a routine. A few minutes later, when her breathing slowed, she sat up, though her eyes remained closed, her body unmoving, Jack still hadn’t figured out how to force Hannah to tell him the truth.
“Crap,” she mumbled, her expression strained. “I’d hoped they were behind me.”
“Panic attacks?” He weighed the value of keeping quiet, but didn’t have the patience. “How long have they been hitting you?”
“How long have you been dead?” She opened her eyes and as soon as they focused, she turned toward him, glaring. “You rise from the dead, but the attacks remain.”
That was a battle he’d never win. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I always am.” She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then released it slowly. “I will be.” She took another breath and held it.
As he watched her struggle to control her emotions, the question she refused to answer hung over them. “Who knew you loved me?” Her eyes welled with tears as she released her breath with a burst. It sounded like a sob.
“No one. Not even you.”
“Hannah—”
She glared at him. “Jack, if you didn’t figure it out, how could anyone else?”
Ouch. She was right, and he’d been searching for a sign, any sign, that she’d loved him. How could he have missed it? What sort of man couldn’t see when someone loved him? Worse yet, he’d interpreted her behavior to mean she didn’t love him. Some investigator he’d turned out to be.
Hannah gave herself a little shake, wiping tears. “There’s one thing, maybe—” She shook her head again. “But no, it’s not possible. No way could anyone have known it was me.”
Still reeling from the latest revelation, it took Jack a moment to hear her words. “Let me decide.”
“I wrote anonymously to an advice column in the Boston Globe. Late March.”
“Like…Miss Manners?”
“No. I wasn’t asking which fork to use at a dinner party, Jack. I was terrified I was about to lose our baby.”
“So…like Dear Abby.”
Her shoulder’s slumped. “Isn’t that sad? I had no one I could tell my problems to but Natalie, and I was beginning to feel guilty for putting it all on her shoulders, so—” She rubbed her face of tears, blinking new ones away. “It doesn’t matter. Like I said, it was anonymous, no return address. Only Natalie knew we’d lived together, that I’d loved you.” Jack didn’t miss that she’d used past tense again. “Believe me, when you’d died, I wanted to tell people, but how could I declare after you’re horrifically murdered that we were a couple? It would have been weird. I would have been weird, so I said nothing. Then the panic attacks persisted, I became desperate. I left D.C. I couldn’t go to the bureau’s psych department. They’d slap PTSD in my file and it would affect my career.”
“Hannah, you’re textbook PTSD.”
“Whatever. I found a way to make things work. I couldn’t risk my job. I was going to be a single mother soon.” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “One day, one of the many days I lingered in my hospital bed, I was reading the Boston Globe’s advice column and had the idea to write in, totally anonymously. They published free advice, and that’s what I needed.” Confusion colored her frown. “Jack, there’s no way anyone could know I wrote that letter. The things I wrote about…no one knew was happening to me. My problems with the pregnancy. Ellen.”
Jack shook his head. This had to be the connection. “You gave yourself away somehow. What did you write?” Her expression shut down.
“I told you,” she said. “There’s nothing in that letter that would tie it to me.”
“You used my name? Gave details?”
“No. It wasn’t like that. I’m telling you, it was nothing.”
Jack pulled her to her feet, holding her, kissing her forehead. He waited for her to resist, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I can’t drop this. I need to know.” She trembled in his arms.
“I don’t want it to be true.” She pressed her face to his chest. “If you’re right, if my letter is the cause of me being targeted, then someone close to me is trying to kill me. So close, they could see what I was hiding from the rest of the world.” Hannah wiped her tears. “I can’t stop crying. You’re alive, so why am I still crying?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.” Pressing his lips to her temple, he closed his eyes and squeezed her more tightly. He promised himself he’d make it up to her—to both Hannah and Ellen—but he was also realistic. He couldn’t tell her everything would be all right, because no matter how this case shook out, her life had been shredded already.
If she knew the perp, it would be one more betrayal to add to a list that was already crushing her. It killed Jack to know he was the first to betray her, making her vulnerable to this latest punch to the gut. He understood it was why she hesitated to forgive him. He got that. It’s why Hannah hadn’t trusted him enough to reveal that she’d written a letter to the advice column.
“I love you, Hannah.” He felt her stiffen in his arms and forced himself not to protect himself from rejection. That led nowhere. He felt what he felt, no matter how Hannah might feel in response. It was time he started owning up to that. “I’ve loved you almost since the moment I met you, and there wasn’t a day I was away from y
ou that I wasn’t kicking myself for leaving. When my assignment came to an end, I picked up the phone, searching for you. That’s how I discovered you’d moved out of D.C., transferred here. I made more calls, twisted a few arms and used up all my IOUs to come to Boston. Then yesterday I discovered you’d been targeted.” He gave her a squeeze, kissing her temple. “In danger or not, Hannah, I need you to believe I would have been here anyway, hat in hand, trying to win you back. I know you don’t trust me. I know you have reasons not to, but I’m telling you the truth. I love you.”
He kissed her and hoped she wouldn’t pull away. He hoped a lot of things, but the way events were playing out, neither were looking at a happy ending.
Chapter 14
She kissed him back and felt relief mix with pleasure. She’d been waiting for him to kiss her. She hadn’t known that until this moment, but now that it was happening, it felt right. It was glorious. It was a gift to escape reality for this precious moment and enjoy his body against hers, his lips, his tongue caressing hers… Jack could always make her forget the pain and ugliness in the world.
When he broke their kiss, she pulled him back, not wanting the feeling to end, but then caught his glance toward the door even as their lips met again. Any moment, someone could bust in and catch them unaware. He was right. This was not the time for kisses, it was time to think, to reason out her problems. So she stepped out of his arms, heart racing, thoughts muddled.
He’d told her he loved her, and she believed him. Hannah had been waiting years to hear that, but it came after he’d learned of Ellen. Fear of not being enough, that it took having his child to make her enough filled her head. She didn’t want to think like that, but couldn’t help herself. She wanted his words of love to be true, to mean everything would be all right, that Ellen’s father wanted them, loved them. But Jack had hurt her too much already to trust him now. What if he hurt her again? What if he discarded Ellen this time around?
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