Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1)
Page 25
I was going to let her have it with both barrels, but she hung up on me. I can’t believe she just said that. What the heck is this all about? She never yells. That’s my domain.
What a week. It’s Friday afternoon. I was in a hospital room last Sunday with Patricia. I made it home for fifteen minutes. I was at the scene of a murder half an hour later. Victim number four. Stefani Allen. Forty. Single. An attorney, specializing in intellectual property rights, specifically scientific patents. A very posh condo with a lake view.
Over the next several days our team interviewed all 634 people who live in the 412 condos in Stefani’s building. Plus another 250 maids, security guards, salespersons, maintenance workers, delivery truck drivers, and anyone else who had consistent contact with her building. The city would shut down without our large illegal immigrant population, so getting to everyone who has access to the Marina Palace is impossible.
No one can remember seeing anything out of the ordinary. Stefani did use her ATM card the night the coroner says she was killed, and from that we have been able to trace her steps on at least a three-stop bar crawl. Problem is that no one remembers her leaving the third bar. So she might have hit one more spot where she met the Cutter Shark or maybe she left from there with him. We’ve checked security cameras in the Lakeside Room, bar number three, but they’re limited to the back hall leading to the public restrooms. We’ve been working with the bar management to identify and visit everyone that showed up on the camera who can be identified, as well as everyone who used a credit card. We’ve also canvassed every bar in a three-mile radius with her picture in hand. No luck so far.
The press is having a field day, of course. The ChiTownVlogger is now officially a rock star. In our task force meetings we continue to review previous cases looking for additional hunting grounds for our predator. Bars are in a solid second place behind AA meetings. Health clubs are running third. Everywhere else the Cutter picked up his victims is clustered together, giving too many options to realistically narrow the search down.
I went to lunch with Vanessa earlier today. We had a nice time. But there’s a reason we’ve promised to get together and have never done so until now. Both of us are swamped in our personal and professional lives—and we really don’t have that girlfriend chemistry thing going on, no matter how many times she calls me girlfriend. We talked the whole ninety minutes, but it was hard work.
She made reservations at Oceanique—very chic and expensive. I felt out of place in my off-the-rack ensemble and comfortable Eccos. She insisted on picking up the bill because it was almost a hundred bucks for lunch. Good thing. Out of my price range. I’m not a big fish lover, but the sea bass with some kind of chutney relish was out of this world. I could get used to fine dining.
I’ve experienced it more in the past month than in the previous year. I wasn’t going to, but I did end up going out with Reynolds again. Twice. Once for an early power breakfast in the lobby restaurant of the Hotel Intercontinental on Michigan, which is pretty close to the State Building where we had a meeting. The second was for dinner at Sushi Para II in Lincoln Park. Very nice. Very expensive. Again. I need a raise if I’m going to continue hanging out with these kind of people.
But curious for me, I look forward to going out with Austin again. What’s happening to me?
• • •
“I’ve got to cancel dinner tonight.”
It’s 4:30 and my eyes are bleary from looking through notebooks yet again. I’m working the back tabs. I have an idea. Strike that. I had an idea. My mind was roiling and I’m not even sure what I was looking for in the first place.
“Hunkering down with Willingham and the Ice Queen?” I ask Austin.
“Funny how I know just who you’re talking about,” he says with a laugh. “Actually I’ve been hunkered down with those two for a couple hours over here. Willingham doesn’t trust the office setup at the State Building. But something’s come up from one of the other cases. I’m catching the 7:00 United flight to Denver and a car is picking me up for O’Hare in twenty minutes.”
“Good luck with rush hour.”
“I think Willingham put in a call. If I’m late, the plane will still be waiting for me with a quick ‘maintenance issue.’”
“He can do that?”
“If you ran an airline in the US, would you do a favor for the second in command at the FBI?”
“Good point. Do you keep a toothbrush packed?”
“Yes, I do. Plus clean underwear and fresh dress shirts and ties. I’ll wear the same suit for as many days as I’m gone.”
“Let me guess on the shirts. White button-down Oxford with your initials. Both of them.”
“Lucky guess—or you’re a mind reader.”
“So what’s up in Denver?”
“I sense you’re detecting right now and you need to know that I’ve been trained to withstand torture, including time on the Chinese waterboard, so you’re not getting any information out of me.”
“Really? The FBI teaches you to withstand torture?”
“Not the FBI. I may have forgotten to mention that I was in Army Special Ops before I joined the Firm.”
“I’m used to you and your colleagues leaving vital information out, so this little bit of personal data shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“Sorry,” he says with a laugh that indicates he’s really not sorry. “I’ve lived on a ‘need to know’ basis too long and it’s permeated my entire life. If it makes you any happier, my mom isn’t very happy with me either.”
“So you have a mom? I thought to be in the FBI you had to be hatched.”
“Believe me, if they get any better at this test tube cloning thing, all future agents will be.”
“So you really can’t tell me what’s going on in Denver?”
“Actually, I’m going to brief the whole task force when I get back. I’m not stopping in Denver. There’s a private jet waiting for me at a small private airport on the other side of the city and I’m going to connect to Durango.”
“Isn’t that where all the UFO sightings take place?”
“Yep. And there are a few things that suggest it might be the home base of our killer.”
We hang up. And it hits me. Durango.
My mind—and stomach—immediately start churning. Single. Professional. Smart. Unconnected.
No, that’s just too bizarre. That could not be. I would never live it down. If it were to be him, he singled me out. No way.
• • •
Klarissa is either still mad or on-air with one of her special reports that she does most nights, because she won’t pick up. It’s Friday so she might even be working as guest anchor. I don’t want to make up, but I’ve liked being friends. So I’m going to eat humble pie and apologize for my temper. She better apologize, too. I should go over and see Mom, make a preemptive strike before Klarissa can get to her first. But I’m thinking I really need to make another quick stop on the way over to see her.
Much as I hate it, I have to find out if the only person I know from Durango has an alibi for the night Stefani Allen was murdered.
If he’ll talk to me.
God, I want to find this killer so bad. Please don’t let it be Dell.
57
“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” ZAWORSKI says to me.
“Boss, I was just giving you a heads-up. It’s probably nothing. If it’s something, I can handle it myself or call the team then. I don’t want to mess up everybody’s Friday night plans on a hunch.”
“Let’s be clear,” he says. “This is a direct order. Stand down. Pick a location within a mile of the destination. Support personnel will be thirty minutes behind you. You can then make contact with appropriate backup.”
“Can I at least drive by and see if his car is in his parking spot?”
“Negative.”
Oh boy. I called Don first to get his thoughts. He said what I was afraid he was going to say: “You have to call the boss on this one.”
“What you got?”
Reynolds said I couldn’t get any information from him but I know he’s on his way to Durango—so I let the boss know that, and the connection to my one-time sorta boyfriend.
He whistles and says, “If he’s our guy, you were probably singled out shortly after he arrived. Where did you meet him?”
“Church.”
“Oh man, oh man, oh man. And he fits the profile?”
“Captain, I’m praying he is not the killer, but yes, Dell is a high-end drifter who moves about every year. He has no family or social bonds that I’m aware of. He’s intelligent. He’s neat. He’s organized. He blends in. He is no one you would ever suspect of any kind of crime. Reynolds is on his way to Durango, and that’s where Dell keeps a home. But I’m not saying he’s the Cutter.”
In this next hour, I can foresee two embarrassing scenarios playing out. One is that Dell is the Cutter Shark. How bad would that be for me? Ace detective dates the man she was supposed to be hunting. I can see the headlines: She Never Suspected a Thing. I just can’t believe Dell is connected to this, but it is eerie how well he fits the profile of a serial killer—all the way to the fact that he is someone you would never suspect. And what about that harsh phone message he left? He sounded threatening and ominous that day.
But there’s yet another possible embarrassing scenario. Just like the takedown of Jonathan at the Saint Bart’s AA meeting, what if Dell is innocent? I’m going to look like the boy who cried wolf all over again. I was going to just drop by and say hi and get a feel for things. Maybe find out where he was the night Stefani died. Then I realized I better not go without anyone else knowing, so I called Don and then Zaworski.
I might as well have walked into a crowded theater and shouted, “Fire!”
• • •
Dell’s Lexus is parked in the diagonal space reserved for him in the alley behind his brownstone on North Dearborn, about a ten-minute walk from the Magnificent Mile. I don’t know if the Porsche is in the small one-car garage that is a small basement at the bottom of a steep slope in the alley. No windows to peek in. He might be out for dinner. An officer then drives me around to his street and drops me off at the corner. I walk up the five stairs to his impressive front door, side-by-side oak doors with an ornate wrought-iron grill for security. A very nice place in a very nice neighborhood. The only furniture Dell owns is in Durango—at least that’s what he’s told me—so he rents stuff from a decorator every time he moves to a new city. I shudder again at the thought that he could be our killer.
I’ve got a wire on; Zaworski sent a techie over to outfit me. I politely demurred, but rank has its privileges, and apparently his rank is bent on telling me what to do.
I pause on the landing before ringing Dell’s doorbell. I get a wave of nausea. He wouldn’t have done something to himself over my breaking up with him, would he? Surely my imagination is just running a little wild. Isn’t it?
Don, the techie, Blackshear, and Martinez have parked a sedan a couple houses away. If Dell so much as sneezes wrong, there are going to be three serious men breaking his door down, and a techie is going to be calling the Navy, Air Force, and Marines for support.
I can take care of myself, though. I have the Beretta in a holster on the small of my back and also have a knife sheathed on the side of my ankle. I know Dell is probably not the Cutter Shark, but a rough paraphrase crosses my mind: live by the knife; die by the knife.
Zaworski, I think sensing my unease that Dell probably isn’t a real suspect, has decided not to call the FBI. He hasn’t said anything out loud, but I think everyone in this little fishing expedition knows what the rules are. None of us are eager for an AA false call re-do. So if we take down a bad guy, the techie will send out an all-points alert, and we’ll just say we didn’t have time to include anyone else before we got there. But if Dell is the nice, God-fearing, churchgoing, Amish-loving—though isolated—man that I think he is, no one says anything to anybody at any time. This will never have happened.
I ring the doorbell. I don’t hear footsteps. My heart starts to race a little. I try to breathe deeply to get everything under control. If he’s here, whether he’s guilty or innocent, I need to look natural. I wait fifteen seconds—I know because I count them off with Mississippi’s in the middle—and ring it again. There are about ten newspapers on the stoop, some of them already turning yellow. Some sales flyers are crammed inside the wrought-iron door. Nothing. Ten seconds go by this time, and I creak open the surprisingly unlocked iron outer door and knock hard. The wooden doors haven’t been shut all the way and groan open. My heart is pounding.
“What’s happening?” Don asks into my ear piece.
“Door was open. I’m going in.”
“Don’t do it,” Don hisses. “Anything you find in there would be tainted evidence for a jury trial.”
I ring the doorbell a couple more times, staring at the clearly abandoned room, and then retreat to the car. Martinez is on the phone with Zaworski.
“Yeah, at least one car’s here, but we don’t think it’s been moved for a while,” he’s saying. “He has a second, but we don’t know if it’s in the garage or not. Newspapers are piling up on the front porch. Conner just looked through the crack in the door and the front hallway is filled with letters and junk mail.”
He listens.
“No. She didn’t do anything to open the door. She just knocked and it opened a little bit. No one’s gone inside, Boss.”
Another pause while Zaworski gives him orders.
“We’ll sit tight, Captain.”
He tells us Zaworski is getting a search warrant from a judge—and is going to call the FBI. If Dell is the Cutter Shark—or is guilty of any other crimes—we aren’t going to do anything to jeopardize a righteous conviction.
• • •
“I’m sorry, Mom. Honest, I was looking forward to coming over and being together, just you and me. It’s this da—this darn case.”
“Are you okay?”
“I am. I’m even getting along with Klarissa these days.”
“That’s not what she told me an hour ago.” She got there first.
I groan inwardly, wishing I’d been able to get to her first, as planned. “We had one little fight. It was nothing. I tried calling her back to apologize.”
“Have you talked to Dell lately? I still worry about him.”
“Believe it or not, Mom, I tried getting a hold of him tonight. He wasn’t there. Look, I’m pulling into my parking lot. I’ve got to get some things out of the car, so I’m going to sign off. But I’m coming by tomorrow for lunch. Just the two of us. We’ll talk. I swear.”
“Well, if you’re not here by noon, I’m going to come find you wherever you are. I still have contacts on the force, you know.”
We laugh.
“Love you, Mom.”
“I love you, baby girl. And Kristen . . . be careful.”
“You got it.”
“Listen to me. I mean it. Be careful. I couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to you.”
I hang up before she can start crying and pull into a good spot near the stairs to my walk-up. I turn off the engine. I just sit and look at a brilliant full moon. I sigh and shake my head. I rub my temples. I can’t believe it. Dell is gone. The warrant signed by a judge, we invaded his rental house. The rental furniture’s still in his apartment along with the two cars. They were both rented as well. Officers started making calls and it looks like everything, including the house, is paid for through the end of August. Otherwise, every stitch of clothing, every book, every knickknack, his toiletries, cleaning supplies, linens, plates—anything that was a personal item—has been cleared out. The place is dusty now, but when he left, probably close to the time he left me the angry message last Saturday, he or someone cleaned the place thoroughly. Top to botto
m. Everything. When the full tech crew got there, they weren’t sure they were going to find any evidence of a human presence.
“This guy even vacuumed the traps in all the sinks,” Jerome tells me. “That’s a sure sign of someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder—or more likely, something to hide. I’m not a detective but I suspect the latter.”
“Thanks for the tip, Jerome.”
He and Bruce, who I’ve now been with at four murder scenes, were called in to maintain consistency on examining any evidence that might be tied to the Cutter Shark case. They are apparently on the same bowling team because they had matching shirts with their respective names stitched on the chest and both were still wearing bowling shoes. They must be good bowlers, I decide, because those weren’t rentals.
We knocked on every door up and down the street. We’ve discovered two things. First, Dell didn’t know his neighbors. Second, his neighbors didn’t know him. No one can definitively say whether they even saw him in the previous month, but some are quite certain they have never seen him. One guy distinctly remembers the Porsche—but not the driver. Now that’s a commentary on society.
I supplied his work number and through some calls back at the office, we got the number of the person who issued a freelance contract to Dell and who is his project liaison at Goff & Duncan, the manufacturing company he is consulting for. Blackshear finally located the guy at an engagement party for his niece; he wasn’t happy that two uniformed officers showed up and insisted that our investigation was a higher priority than a family celebration. They impressed on him the importance of being a good citizen and he got busy helping Blackshear understand Dell’s business arrangement.
Blackshear gave us a synopsis later. On Monday or Tuesday—the guy has to double-check when he’s back at the office tomorrow morning—Dell exercised the “out” clause in his contract. He handed the liaison a final invoice with instructions to send his last expense and fee payments to a drop box with a bank in Durango. He cleared out his temporary office and was off the premises almost immediately. The guy thinks he was in a hurry. Dell’s work was exceptional from start to finish and the guy hated to see him go. He said the company CEO had recently let Dell know that they were prepared to offer him a full-time position. He thought Dell was interested. So he remembered thinking Dell’s sudden departure caught him by surprise.