by Lisa Regan
Danielle stared at Tess for a moment, as if weighing how much she could be trusted. “Because I’m about to marry Stephen Ross, Larry Ross’s son.”
“Oh,” Tess reacted, a frown deepening on her brow. That’s why she seemed familiar; Tess must’ve seen her on the news.
Danielle’s relationship to the presidential candidate complicated things in a dramatic way. If any of it ever got out, Tess would lose her job on the spot, considering the political implications and her current popularity with the state governor. Lately, he’d called Pearson and complained about every case she’d worked on, especially when she’d bothered Miami’s rich and influential with her uncomfortable questions and direct mannerisms.
What were the chances of the Secret Service figuring out what had happened and starting to look into the case? What were the chances that the best of Tess and Cat’s intentions would blow up in their faces, landing them both in jail?
Pretty solid, Tess thought. More reasons to do this by the book than off the book.
On the other hand, she cringed when she thought of what the media would do if they ever found out about the assault, and how the opposing candidate would use this poor girl’s misfortune to twist things to his advantage.
Screw them… all of them.
Even if her career was at stake, the choice was an easy one, because it wasn’t really that much of a choice.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” she said. “Now, tell me how you feel, so we make sure you’ll be all right. Are you bleeding?” Tess asked quietly.
“N—no, I don’t think so. It hurts, but…”
“Any other cuts, bruises, anything I should see?”
Her chin trembled with the threat of tears. “He… cut me, on my back. He pinned me down and kept cutting, laughing when I screamed.”
Tess closed her eyes for a brief moment. “I’m so sorry, Danielle,” she said, giving the girl’s hand a quick squeeze. “I need to see that.”
She nodded, subdued, blood leaving her face as she turned under the duvet. Slowly, with a quiet moan of pain, she lay on her stomach and with a weak hand gesture invited Tess to take a look.
Tess slowly pulled down the covers, observing carefully all the details she knew Doc Rizza would look for. There were no ligature marks on her ankles, but her legs were bruised badly. There were several superficial cuts and scrapes, probably from her thrashing and fighting the attacker. Tess lifted the old, white T-shirt Cat had given Danielle and exposed her lower back. A rectangular bandage covered a section above her left buttock, and she gently peeled it off. Several cuts, about 3 inches each, had been cleaned and bandaged by Cat, but she could still make out what the unsub had carved into her body.
One number, one letter: 3D. Two characters, nine cuts, their edges always crossing.
Her breath caught, realizing where she’d seen it before. The Word Killer had carved similar symbols on his other victims’ bodies, and the coroner had ruled the carvings had been performed antemortem, while the victims were still alive. It was initially ruled as a form of torture, but later, even that not-so-sharp SA Patto had figured out the carvings had to have a meaning.
As for figuring out what the symbols meant, no such luck yet.
One thought kept whirling in Tess’s mind, a pesky little fact she couldn’t afford to ignore. The Word Killer never left any survivors. Why was Danielle still alive?
“May I take a few photos of your injuries?” Tess asked. “I promise your face won’t show.”
“Uh-huh,” the girl replied, promptly burying her face deeper into the pillow and covering what was still visible of her face with her hand. One of her fingernails was badly torn, and two others were snapped, as if only the tips had broken when she’d scratched her assailant. Tess wondered if she’d be able to take scrapings from underneath her fingernails, like she’d seen Doc Rizza do so many times.
One thing at a time, she reminded herself, taking photos with her phone camera.
“Good,” Tess announced, sliding the phone back into her pocket. “Now, let’s walk through everything you remember.”
The girl turned around and propped herself higher on the pillows. “I don’t know… It happened so quickly.”
“What did he look like?”
“White,” she said, after thinking for a moment. “Under thirty, I think. With mean eyes.”
“Any tattoos, anything distinctive you might have noticed?”
She shook her head and lowered her eyes, disappointed. “He struck me, and I fell. I couldn’t see much.”
“Did he say anything?”
Danielle looked sideways to hide her tears.
“He kept saying that I’ll like it,” she whispered on a long, shattered breath that ended in a sob. “That I’ll want more, and that I’ll never forget him.” Her shoulders heaved with sobs. “I never will, will I?”
Tess took her hand and squeezed it. “No, you never will,” she replied. Danielle looked at her, surprised. “But soon, after we’ve put him away and you know he’s never going to hurt you again, you’ll find some peace.”
Silence fell heavy between them, and Tess let it play, unwilling to say anything else. She’d already said enough. She focused on what details she recalled from the casual examination of the Word Killer file. What did those symbols mean?
“He called me Delilah,” Danielle said. “I kept saying my name was Danielle, thinking he might’ve made a mistake. But he kept calling me Delilah.”
Tess pulled out her phone and typed a quick text to Donovan.
“Please send me the entire Word Killer file and all the attachments, including crime scene photos and any other evidence,” her message said.
“Isn’t that Patto’s case?” the reply came promptly. “Keep this on the DL?”
She replied by sending him a thumbs-up emoticon, then turned to Danielle.
“How did you get away?”
She wiped away her tears with trembling fingers. “After he… finished with me, I tried to run, but he caught me. He hit me really hard, and I blacked out on the floor. When I came to, I heard him talking to himself in the living room and laughing like a crazy man, so I snuck out.”
Tess sprung to her feet. “He was still in your house when you left?”
“Y—yes,” she replied, gathering the duvet around her thin, shaking body as if it could offer her protection. “Why?”
Tess opened the door, ready to rush downstairs, but Cat was slowly climbing the stairs, careful not to spill the cup of steaming soup.
“Cat, we have a serious problem,” Tess announced. “The bastard knows she got away alive.”
Cat put the bowl of soup on the night table, then lifted his shirt, pointing at the .45 Colt 1911 tucked in his belt.
“I’ll be ready for him.”
She patted him on the shoulder, shaking her head a little to loosen the knot in her throat. Her hero, ready to die for a stranger. She turned to the girl, now pale as the white duvet wrapped around her body.
“Danielle, where do you live?”
5
Tess walked to Danielle’s house, wearing a black hoodie she’d borrowed from Cat and a pair of oversized shades she kept in her SUV for stakeouts, on the odd chance the unsub was still at the scene or watching the house. Dressed like that and letting a few of her blonde locks escape the hood, she hoped the unsub, if he was indeed watching, could mistake her for Danielle and take the bait, come finish her off. She’d kept her service Glock holstered on her belt, but tucked her smaller backup weapon, a Sig 365, in her right pocket. As she opened the door, she kept her finger on the trigger, ready to fire. As soon as she entered the small house, she pulled out the gun and proceeded to clear it room by room.
When the last room was cleared, she holstered her weapon with a sigh; she’d hoped, against all reason, that she’d find the unsub there, waiting, eager to finish off the girl who got away after having seen his face. Instead, all she found was a crime scene covered in blood.
She’d read about the Word Killer in Mandy Alvarado’s case file, his first known victim; he liked to surprise his victims inside their homes and attack them violently, his actions speaking to a sadistic lust killer’s profile. The unsub was a man who found enjoyment in the suffering of his victims, in the pain he inflicted without hesitation, unable to obtain sexual gratification in the absence of torture and total control over his victims. The state of Danielle’s house supported those assertions.
There were several small scratches on the back-door lock, as if he had fumbled with the lockpick before getting in. Then the unsub must’ve waited for Danielle in the small hallway that led to the storage closet.
Tess traced Danielle’s movements step by step, based on what she’d shared. She’d poured herself some wine but left the glass on the counter. It was right where she’d said it would be. Then she’d taken off her clothes, getting ready for a shower. The garments were scattered on the floor, mixed with debris from a broken chair, at the center of the living room.
But something else caught Tess’s eye as she entered the living room. The unsub had started writing on the wall with the victim’s blood. Large, streaky letters spelled, “Arrogan,” leaving Tess to wonder about the unsub’s intended word. Was it arrogant? Or arrogance?
Tess pulled out her phone and scrolled through the digitized case file Donovan had sent to her email, looking for information that could help her better understand the clues left behind by the Word Killer.
His first victim, Mandy Alvarado, a twenty-seven-year-old, divorced, single mother of a two-year-old girl, had been found in a pool of her own blood. Thankfully, her daughter was unharmed, other than having witnessed her mother’s murder. The killer had written the word, “Greed” on the victim’s wall, and that finding had confused the investigators. What greed? The victim was a single mother, an accountant earning seventy grand a year. Not much greed to be found anywhere.
A second victim, Earlene Burnett, brought another blood-spelled word, “Lust,” equally confusing for the twenty-nine-year-old freight pilot with an impeccable record.
Christi Conner, the youngest of the unsub’s victims, had died with “Avarice” scribbled on the wall above her head. The affluent socialite had a reputation for generosity, choosing to donate significant amounts of her inheritance to a variety of charities.
The only thing Tess could ascertain from her study was that the unsub had probably wanted to spell “Arrogance” on Danielle’s wall; in all prior cases the words were nouns, not adjectives.
Still, she’d met Danielle, and there wasn’t an arrogant bone in her body. Noun or adjective, it didn’t make sense.
Was it really the Word Killer who’d attacked Danielle? All evidence seemed to point his way, but the carvings, the words written on the walls were public information, easy to copycat. Her gut said it was the Word Killer, but she struggled to reconcile the fact that he let Danielle live.
With practice, serial killers achieved better performances at subduing their victims, at timing their attacks, at tying up all the loose ends, and removing any evidence. They hesitated less when killing, enjoyed it more; never forfeited the kill, because it brought their ultimate release, the drug they craved with their entire being. A mistake of such magnitude didn’t seem likely.
And yet, his latest victim was alive.
Tess followed Danielle’s steps in the hallway toward the bathroom, then stopped short of stepping into a pool of almost-dried blood. The edges of the pool were smudged, matching Danielle’s account of the attack. She’d been thrown to the floor and hit a small table with her head, getting the nasty cut on her neck. Then she lost consciousness, completely immobile, and bled on the granite tile floor.
The unsub must’ve thought she was dead, probably seeing the large amount of blood oozing from the back of her head, not knowing it was a flesh wound instead of a cracked skull.
Except, Danielle was not really dead.
The cold tiles had helped her regain consciousness, per her own account. Somehow, through a superhuman effort, she’d managed to sneak out of the house and scramble toward safety, while the Word Killer was busy with his enigmatic calligraphy.
Why did he stop midword? Tess asked herself, pacing the area slowly, careful not to disturb the scene too much, on the odd chance it would become an official crime scene at some point.
She approached the wall and studied the smudged letters closely. The letters A and O were the thickest, darkest ones, while the last letter he’d written, the N, was almost transparent.
He’d run out of blood.
When he went to get more from the victim, he saw she was gone and freaked out. He must’ve left the scene in a hurry, afraid the cops would show up any minute, unaware the woman would do anything to keep her ordeal a secret.
That meant he’d made more mistakes, ripe for the picking by Tess’s keen senses.
She took photos of the scene, using a ten-dollar bill for scale reference. She took her time, studied every angle, traced every step the killer had taken inside the house. Once she left the premises, she couldn’t have any unanswered questions.
She headed into the dining room, where Danielle said she’d been pinned face down against the table. On the carpet, next to the table leg, was a tiny white stain, starchy in appearance.
“Bingo,” she whispered with a quick, satisfied laugh.
She turned on a small UV flashlight and shaded the area with her hand. The stain lit up under the UV, confirming it was biologic. Semen, by the looks of it. Satisfied, Tess rummaged through the kitchen drawers until she found a box cutter, removed a piece of the carpet and sealed it in an evidence bag.
She’d thoroughly collected everything, aware there was no crime scene unit to do its diligence at the scene, leaving her available for interviewing witnesses and chasing suspects. Now, ready to leave with an armful of evidence pouches, she found herself wondering how she was going to have it processed without a case number.
6
Tess took the elevator down to the morgue, carrying the evidence bags neatly packed inside a large grocery bag. She carefully looked around at every step of the way, making a mental note of those who recognized and greeted her. Later, she might have to file a statement accounting for each step she took that day, if things went sour.
The morgue doors whooshed open, and she walked in, relieved to see no one was visiting with Doc Rizza at the time. The lights were off, except the doctor’s desk lamp and a motion-sensor activated, fluorescent ceiling lamp that turned on with a faint click the moment she stepped in.
Doc Rizza sat on a four-legged stool in front of the sink, rinsing instruments. When he saw her approaching, he dropped them noisily and washed his hands.
“Agent Winnett, what an unexpected surprise,” he greeted her, meeting her halfway with the gait of an old grizzly bear.
“Hello, Doc,” she replied, smiling to hide her nervousness. “Is this a good time, or—”
“It’s always a good time for you,” he said, leading her to his desk.
The morgue showed signs of having been lived in, and not only by the deceased. There were two pillows and a blanket on a couch behind the desk. A nearly empty bottle of scotch and an empty glass were left on a small instrument table he’d pulled over to serve as a coffee table to keep the booze handy. On the cluttered desk, a photo of his late wife was placed so he could look straight at her charming face.
Since Mrs. Rizza had passed, Doc dreaded going home, or so it was rumored. Now Tess could see why.
Seeing where her eyes were focusing, he scrambled to hide the bottle inside a drawer and mumbled an explanation. “I was working late last night, really late. Didn’t make sense to, um, go home.”
“No need to explain, Doc. This is your place; you make the rules.”
“What can I do for you?” he asked, looking intently at the bag she was carrying.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then paced in place a little. “The real question
is, can you do it off the record?”
He frowned, a little confused. “As in…?”
“As in, I was never here, and you never looked at this evidence,” she replied, gesturing at the bag. “Completely off the record.”
Doc Rizza scratched the unruly tuft of hair at the center of his shiny scalp. “In my experience, things only go bad for serial killers when you ask me to do stuff off the record. Tell me what you need.”
Tess pulled the Ziploc bag holding Danielle’s blood-soaked robe. “I need DNA from this. My guess is it will match the DNA we have on file for the Word Killer, but I’d rather be sure. Somewhere, underneath all this blood, I’m sure we can find some semen. If not, we’ll probably find it here instead,” she added, handing him the small evidence bag with a 2-by-2–inch section of carpet.
Doc cleared the evidence processing table and pulled on fresh gloves. “Is that it?”
“Can I see the autopsy reports for the Word Killer’s victims?”
He nodded and muttered, “Uh-huh,” while carefully extracting the robe from the bag. He examined it under UV light, then cut several small pieces from the cloth and put them in a vial. He removed several stained rug fibers and sealed them in another vial. He added chemicals from two bottles, carefully measured with a pipette, put the vials in a centrifuge, and pressed a green button. The centrifuge started whirring, increasing speed until it reached 3,000 rotations per minute.
“Did they call you in on the Word Killer?”
She shook her head.
“Ah, that’s why the off-the-record bit; okay, I get it,” he commented with a wicked grin. “Which one of his victims does this belong to?”
She shook her head again. “Sorry, Doc, it’s better you don’t know.”
Two vertical ridges promptly appeared at the top of his nose while he stared at her with a scrutinizing glance. “Is this yours, my dear?” he whispered.
“Oh, God, no,” Tess replied. “It’s nothing like that.” For a brief moment, she wondered if she looked like she’d nearly bled out recently. She hoped not.