Actually, it was worse than that. Ruben was dead set against the notion that these killings were sexually motivated. He was so sure that the killer’s entire emphasis was on sadism. The concept had never quite sat right with her, however she had had nothing to back up her instinct. Until now.
Melissa’s response popped up. “Intriguing. So UR more Marquis than Don Quixote?”
“Marquis de Sade?” Harbinger typed. “In my eyes a man not very creative and in my mind a tad bit lazy. Don’t we think my fingers could accomplish so much more than IM’ing?”
Nicole shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She was no prude by any means, but this was feeling a bit too much like being a voyeur, even if the profiler’s part in it wasn’t real. Right? This was an act. A ruse. It had to be, right?
Before she could decide, Melissa’s answer appeared. “I will only meet in a public place.”
“Then onward to something a little more private?” Harbinger responded.
“We will see…”
The profiler leaned back. “Yeah, right,” he said, then typed, “Do you know the Decadence Café?”
Melissa’s answer was nearly instantaneous. “Intimately.”
Harbinger raised an eyebrow at Nicole as he typed. “10pm.” The profiler didn’t even wait for a response. He logged off, then pushed the keyboard away from him. “And that is how it is done.”
It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Was he really that skilled at luring, or had he just gotten lucky? Nicole was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she wanted confirmation.
“And how about luring a man?” Nicole questioned.
Harbinger’s eyes scanned over her face. Her skin felt like it was encoded with Braille. How much could the profiler read? Then the inspection was over, as Harbinger laced his fingers together and then cracked them. “Watch and learn.”
The profiler logged into yet another account. Mr9x5. Nicole cocked her head. “That seems a bit…mild,” she noted.
“Those aren’t hours I am referring to,” Harbinger stated as he found a male-male chat room. “They are inches.”
“Inches of —” Nicole stopped herself, unfortunately understanding the part of the body he was measuring. She was certain her cheeks were a ruddy pink. And they did not cool down any as Harbinger launched into his domination of the room. The men were lined up to join him.
Then, in rapid succession, the profiler switched accounts, hopping into chat room after chat room. He set up ménages. He set up foursomes. He even found someone who thought a monkey in a matador’s costume sounded like a good idea.
“I think you’ve made your point,” Nicole conceded.
“I do like to be thorough,” Harbinger answered then angled the keyboard toward her. “So? Your turn?”
Nicole pushed back from the object like it was a rattlesnake, not even caring that her face was probably showing every bit of revulsion she felt. Her head shook back and forth. “No, I’m good.”
* * *
Kent watched the detective sputter for a few more moments, not even listening to her words. They were meaningless. Her expressions, however, were fascinating. To watch her go from panic, to rejection, to her eyes flickering over to the keyboard. Did she even realize that her feet had changed position and were now pointing toward him rather than toward the door? Funny how people did not know what they truly wanted.
The body, though? The body knew. Her eyes were dilated slightly. Her eyelids wide. Her lips slightly parted. She was ready to take in whatever came next. Did she even know that her fingers were twitching slightly? Getting ready to type?
“You know you want to,” Kent coaxed, inching the keyboard toward her.
Nicole blinked once, then stared down at the keys. “I wouldn’t know how.”
“What do they say?” Kent made sure his tone was silky smooth. He did not want to intrude on the conversation going on in the detective’s head. She was doing more to convince herself than he ever could. “Practice makes perfect.”
She leaned forward ever so slightly, but to Kent she might as well have jumped up and down, shouting how eager she was to start. He didn’t say a word as her hands reached out and her fingertips hovered over the keyboard.
“How do I start?” she asked, licking her lips.
Kent was impressed. Most would not dare to follow where he tread. Before her conscious mind could convince her otherwise, Kent clicked the mouse and brought up one of his female personas, MissJustRight.
The detective bit her lower lip, then nodded. He loaded the account and found her just the right chat room. Her fingers pulled back, though, when she realized it was a female-female environment.
“I…I can’t.”
“Oh,” Kent cooed. “You can.”
With a deep breath, Nicole put her fingers back on the keyboard and typed. “Hi.”
Okay, maybe she couldn’t. At least not without some coaching.
“Remember,” Kent whispered. “We are seducing. We create a presence then allow them to come to us. We need to be the dominant.”
Nicole nodded. “Yeah, right. Sorry.”
As the seconds stretched out, Kent could feel her tense. Her fear that she had ruined the moment was palpable. There was no place for fear in a seduction.
“Which one do you think will respond?” Kent asked, trying to keep her mind off the blank screen in the private chat window.
The detective’s gaze scanned over the list of participants. There were over twenty five, yet, to his eyes, there was only one.
“Ready2Party?” she guessed.
That was not the one.
“Too many options,” Kent explained. “She’ll have plenty of girls hitting on her. We need someone a bit more complicated than that.”
Nicole shook her head. “They all seem pretty much the same.”
This detective had so much to learn. So many layers to peel back.
Kent pointed to a name. “Chastity4U.”
He watched as her eyes squinted, reading the name. Kent didn’t have to ask, he knew she was trying to figure out why he had picked that one.
“She calls herself Chastity, yet is in a sex chat room,” Nicole stated, sounding a bit unsure of herself. Off his nod, she continued. “So she is already lying.”
Kent didn’t have to affirm her theory, since Chastity IM’ed Nicole. The detective looked over to him and grinned. He had called it yet again. What could he say? He was on a roll.
As Nicole responded to Chastity, Kent leaned in. Too intent on the screen, the detective did not move away. He breathed in her kiwi shampoo as he watched the pounding of her carotid just beneath the skin. Nicole was an odd mixture of sweet and sweat. Tender and tenacious. Kent hadn’t expected to find that combination in this Mid-Western town.
The bell on the door jingled as another after-work client walked in. Who did these people think they were fooling? No one came to an internet café unless they wanted to hide something. The FBI might as well just put out a blanket search warrant on all café computers. It was well known that over fifty percent of the business conducted here was illegal in nature. The other half? Well, they might as well just hand the transcripts of their sessions over to their spouses along with a guide to quick divorce.
A ding brought Chastity’s response.
Kent leaned in even further—this was about to get interesting.
* * *
Nicole fidgeted in her chair. She read, then reread Chastity’s IM. “So what do you like?”
She had watched Harbinger navigate exactly this question half a dozen times, yet Nicole couldn’t think of a single response. “What should I answer?” Kent was at her shoulder. Somehow his knee was brushing against hers. When had he moved so close? She angled away a bit. “Well?”
“Tell her the truth,” the profiler said.
“I’m straight,” Nicole clarified. She didn’t have any problem with not being straight, it just wasn’t how she was wired.
“Tell her a fantasy, then,” Kent
stated. “Those are actually more truthful than we like to admit.”
Nicole leaned back from the keyboard. “I thought we were creating a false persona. Acting out what they want to hear.”
“Ah,” the profiler said, leaning back as well. “But you won’t be convincing unless your seduction comes from a real place. Somewhere inside, you know exactly what both you and she want.”
It didn’t seem possible, yet Nicole’s fingers did know exactly what she wanted to type. “Role-playing.”
“I’m intrigued,” Chastity wrote back. “Who? Where?”
There were some pretty obvious choices. Going for the Marquis-type seduction or the standard two chicks in a hot tub, but Nicole didn’t want to be obvious.
“Clothes shopping,” Nicole wrote. “Two friends, same booth. I’m straight. You aren’t.”
Chastity seemed to take the bait whole. “I help you with your dress’s belt, smoothing the fabric over your hips.”
“Helping adjust my neckline,” Nicole prompted.
“My hand accidently brushes against your breast.”
“I don’t pull away.”
The profiler put his hand on the keyboard. “Okay, we don’t want to give away too much of the milk before she buys the cow.” Nicole jerked her fingers back, startled at his intrusion. She hadn’t realized just how intent she had been on the screen. Harbinger continued. “Let’s make the date and peace out.”
As Nicole complied, out of the corner of her eye she watched the profiler. Was he a little flustered? Was he really averting his eyes from the screen? Or was he just too busy taking notes?
Wait. That pad and pen looked familiar.
“That’s Ruben’s set!” she said, snatching the items from Harbinger.
The profiler didn’t even try to hide the fact he had stolen them from her partner. “The leather is so supple, and the pen? Glides across the paper.”
“I gave him that for Christmas,” Nicole exclaimed, retracting the pen’s tip and tucking it inside the small leather holder.
“Really?” the profiler stated his eyebrow arching. “Your first Christmas together and you get him a pad and pen set? How practical.”
Feeling the tips of her ears burning, Nicole was even more horrified to find that the profiler had transcribed everything she’d said to Chastity into Ruben’s notepad. Nicole ripped the page out, crumpling it, then shoving it deep in her pocket.
“What?” Harbinger asked. “I was just trying to give him some pointers.”
Before she could retort, the clerk called out from behind the counter, “I’m going to need another twenty if you want another hour.”
That couldn’t be. Nicole looked down at her watch. It had been nearly an hour. Ruben must be going ballistic by now, wondering why she wasn’t in the interrogation with him. She looked down to her phone to find two missed calls and four texts from her partner. How had she missed them?
“That’s it, I’ve got to get back.”
“I’ll drive,” the profiler said as he stood up.
It wasn’t until then that Nicole realized that she did need a ride. Ruben had taken the car, and by now all the patrol cars would be gone. She didn’t have time to argue. The sooner she got back to the station, the better.
Harbinger led them out of the internet café and to a dark brown SUV. He unlocked the door with a click of the remote. Nicole climbed in, getting seated and snapping her seat belt closed. To her surprise, the profiler turned on the ignition and pulled out into traffic without any hesitation. She half expected him to stall or tell her they had a stop to make.
Certainly he wasn’t giving her a ride out of the goodness of his heart. She’d only known him for a few hours, but that just didn’t seem to be how he operated. But they were making a beeline for the precinct, so she couldn’t complain. Well, maybe she could complain. The interior of the car smell like…cigar. Didn’t the rental car company clean it out between drivers? Harbinger didn’t strike her as the type to smoke, especially not cigars.
Then she noticed the parking permit swinging gently from the rearview mirror. A permit for the morgue’s parking lot.
“This is Dr. McGregor’s SUV!”
“I figured at some point we would need a set of wheels,” the profiler calmly explained.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Nicole knew that panicking wasn’t going to help keep away the wrath that would rain down upon her from the Medical Examiner, but her panic was well warranted.
“We’ve got to return it. Now,” Nicole emphasized.
“All in due time,” Harbinger answered, leaning his elbow against the open window frame.
“No,” Nicole snapped. “You don’t understand.”
But the profiler smiled. “Oh, but I think I do.” Then he winked.
What had she gotten herself into?
CHAPTER 3
Ruben checked the clock. Again. Nicole was never late. His partner had a metronome in her head. If a waiter said the entrée would be out in five minutes, Nicole would not have to look at her watch to advise him if he were a moment overdue. Ruben even questioned why she even wore a watch in the first place.
“Yes, detective,” the lawyer who sat across from him said. “We’ve all got other things we would like to be doing.”
No doubt they did. Ruben returned his focus to the suspect sitting across from him. At first glance, you wouldn’t take him for a serial killer. The anatomy professor looked like, well, an anatomy professor. He had the air of a professional nerd. Black-rimmed glasses and all.
However, if he were so innocent, why was he always so cagey during his interrogations? Ruben had flagged him months ago, after the initial round of interviews. The man never answered a question directly. And his lawyer was no help.
Levinson closed his briefcase. “If we are done, my client would like to go home to his wife, who, I might remind you, has already given him an alibi for last night.”
Ruben had hoped to wait for Nicole before really getting into the meat of the interrogation. Her presence seemed to fluster the professor. However, he couldn’t wait any longer.
Slowly, he opened the folder with the latest crime scene photographs. “Look familiar?”
As always, the professor shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and studied the dissected bodies. His eyes coursed over the organs as his lips moved without sound. Carefully, he lined the pictures up. The head at the top. The chest area next, then the abdomen. Finally, the pelvis and legs.
“I would have used more sharp dissection than blunt. It creates a better distinction between the muscle groups.”
Ruben had to constrict his throat as bile threatened. “She was alive when this was done to her.”
The professor looked up, frowning. “And for that I am sorry, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you know how most people react when they see something like this?” Ruben asked, then answered his own question. “They are horrified. Revolted.”
Munz went to answer, but his lawyer laid a hand on his arm and spoke instead. “Unless the legal code has changed since we’ve been in here, being an outlier is not a crime.”
Ruben knew he was losing this round. Soon, very soon, Munz’s lawyer was going to insist that they either charge his client or let him go. Ruben could, of course, reveal that fact that they had surveillance on Munz which could break his wife’s alibi. But Ruben wanted to hold that back. Let Munz and his lawyer believe that they had nothing on the professor. All the better when they finally caught Munz in the act.
“So, as I said, I think this interview is—”
The lawyer’s words were cut off as Nicole rushing in. She mouthed “sorry” as she closed the door. Ruben noted that Munz sat straighter in his chair, his shoulders back like an English schoolboy.
“Detective Usher,” the lawyer said with a nod. If Ruben wasn’t mistaken, the guy actually thought he had a chance with Nicole. Like she’d ever go out with a defense attorney.
“Mr. Levinson,” Nicole answered as she sat down.
“Fashionably late?” the lawyer asked. “Or did you find some exculpatory evidence for my client?”
When she didn’t answer, Ruben looked to her. Nicole wouldn’t meet his eyes, but she did push his notepad and pen toward him. Weird. He didn’t think he’d given them to her.
Levinson’s eyes darted between them. “Something I should be aware of?”
“No,” Ruben stated. “But I would like to know your client’s exact movements last night.”
The lawyer sighed. “You do tape these interviews, correct? And since you already have him explaining that he was home all night with his wife about three times, I think you can just make a loop of it and we’ll never have to come in again.”
“How about one more time,” Ruben suggested. If he could just trip Munz up, he wouldn’t have to reveal the surveillance.
“As much as I would love”—Levinson emphasized the “love” as he nodded to Nicole—“to continue this conversation, my client pays me by the hour, and it would simply be highway robbery to go over it all again.” There wasn’t much Ruben could do as the lawyer rose, urging his client up. “So I think we are going to call it a night.”
* * *
Nicole watched as the two pushed their chairs back, getting ready to leave. She should have been here. But, really, would it have made much of a difference? Ruben was so certain that the killer was Munz, but after Harbinger’s demonstration, she wasn’t so sure. Her partner had no theory on how Munz would have met and seduced all of the victims. And the professor had always seemed so…obvious.
Yes, in common crimes it usually was the most obvious suspect. A wife turns up dead, you look to the husband. A child? You look to the parents.
But this crime was anything but common. So an anatomy professor being The Anatomy Professor seemed so out of character for the killer who went to such great length to cover his tracks.
The more time they spent on Munz, the less time they spent on finding the real killer. They needed to rule him in or out, like right now.
“Just tell us, professor,” Nicole said before she realized she was going to speak. “Tell us the truth so we can move on.”
Down & Dirty: A McCray Crime Collection Page 23