Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1)

by M. K. Gilroy

  “I know, I know . . . you’re already out the door and you’d agree with anything I say to be on your way. But it would mean an awful lot to me if you’d let me be there for you. When you’re ready.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, you are being honest, and that’s good enough,” she says. She pauses and continues, “I’ll tell you something else funny before you run. I definitely did not like you the first time I laid eyes on you . . . and before you pretend it was otherwise, I know you absolutely despised me, too.”

  “Was it that obvious, Bethany?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says with a laugh.

  “Patricia,” I say hesitantly, “I know there’s a lot more we could say to each other, but I’ve got to get out of here.”

  She smiles and retorts, “And you don’t want the others to know you’re sneaking out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So get out of here and go save the city from the Cutter Shark before I wake everybody up.” Patricia gives me another hug and I accept it this time. Okay—a little comfort is okay. But only for a second before I’m on my way. I think I’ll be fine from the attack in no time. But all this sharing wears me out. I just breathe in and out with my game face on as I stride purposely into the parking lot.

  • • •

  Everything I said to Patricia was true. I just didn’t tell her everything. And of course, Mom and Kaylen didn’t tell her everything because they don’t know everything I do. Lying by omission. I still have to ask Jimmy about that. What does God think about such things? I keep the last letter Dad wrote me locked in my safebox.

  Not everything can come out . . . Some things are better left locked up.

  65

  I DROP MY change from four crumpled dollar bills into the tip box at the drive-through window. I greedily snatch my steaming grande Americano with an extra espresso shot and one Splenda that Randy hands back to me. I am sitting in the back of a police cruiser. My two babysitters have been sipping coffee all night and aren’t interested in any more caffeine. I have enough aches and pains that I’m content to skip my ritual of going inside because I don’t want to have to get in and out of the cruiser an extra time. Their shift ends in an hour and I’m guessing they’ll be asleep within five minutes of getting home and putting head to pillow.

  Randy is driving and Carter is riding shotgun. I’m separated from them by a metal mesh protective screen with a window that is opened. It’s no fancy limo, but it’s a ride. Randy wheels out of the drive-through lane as I take my first sip. My friend with the tongue stud and green apron has forgotten to put a Splenda in my drink. I need a little sweetener in my coffee.

  “Hit the brakes,” I order. “Pull into that parking spot by the front door and let me out.”

  “Everything okay?”

  Carter asks. “Definitely not.”

  They look very concerned. I fumble to open the door, but realize there are no handles in the back of a cruiser.

  “Can someone get the door open?” I demand.

  “Sure,” Randy says glancing nervously at Carter.

  He kills the engine, gets out, and opens my car door for me, quickly stepping aside. I head through the entrance with two very worried bodyguards on my tail. Their heads are on swivels as they look left and right for possible threats against my person. It’s not me they need to be worried about.

  Can I not speak clearly? Do I stutter? Mumble? Why is ordering a simple coffee drink such an ordeal for me? And since no one else has mentioned they have problems, I guess it is me. I step to the front of the line right in front of a guy who is about to order. He turns to let me have it for cutting. He sees my expression, and then my bodyguards, and immediately backs down. Smart man. I explain to a cheerful young blonde that I didn’t get the drink I ordered. The girl at the counter assures me that it is no problem if I changed my mind. They want me to be happy. That’s not what I want to hear. I tell her that I will only be happy if she or someone else from the establishment admits that they are the ones that made the mistake.

  “Uh, sure,” she says. “My mistake.”

  Since she’s not the one who took my order, her mea culpa doesn’t feel very satisfying. I look over at Carter and Randy while tapping my fingers on the high, amoeba-shaped counter where my replacement drink will be delivered.

  They think I’m crazy. They might be right.

  • • •

  On the freeway I hear the sound of a submarine’s sonar system. I look at my cell and see that a text from Reynolds just came in.

  I was going to tell you. You have every right to be mad. Let me explain. Let’s talk. Please?

  I hit delete and lay my head back against the seat. I close my eyes and take inventory. I’m feeling better physically, all things considered, but am wondering if going to this meeting really is a very bad idea.

  Randy and Carter weren’t quite sure what to do when I came out into the parking lot earlier this morning. They had explicit orders to watch over me and anyone else at my apartment. No one added a note that they were to drive me down to precinct on their assignment report. And after yesterday, they weren’t as apt to just jump when I barked. I would’ve just hopped in my own car, but it was parked in the garage at the State Building. Thankfully, they called Dispatch and another car was sent over to take their place on guard duty so they were freed to drive me to CPD.

  • • •

  I’m in my cubicle before eight. I attack everything relating to the Cutter Shark case on my desk with a passion. I bury my head in the mountain of paperwork—notebooks, documents, photographs, profiles, and more. I worry about the trees in the rain forests for just a second.

  A half hour before our meeting is to start, I find something in a back tab of one of the notebooks. San Antonio. I tab the spot with a bright pink adhesive strip and jot a note on a blank sheet of paper and start skimming through Jacksonville, Denver, San Diego, and the others as fast as my fingers and eyes will work. I furiously scribble more notes for the next hour and when I look up I realize I am already thirty minutes late. I’ve pieced together some random observations and have discovered a non-isolated event stream. I grab my notepad and hustle to the conference room.

  • • •

  I open the door and it hits the doorstop with a bang. Always the graceful entrance. Everyone looks up at me.

  “You didn’t have to come in,” Director Willingham says. “We would have understood. I don’t think you’re being as cautious as your doctor would like.”

  “No problem, sir,” I answer. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” As I make my way around to the only open seat, between Blackshear and Don, I remember that Vanessa is snoring at my house and wonder who is watching Devon and Veronika and getting them ready for church.

  Don reads my mind and whispers, “They’re with the neighbors.”

  Van Guten looks at me with disdain and gives Don a dirty look. I guess students are not supposed to speak without the teacher’s permission.

  • • •

  “Any more ideas on finding Dell Woods?” Reynolds asks. “Besides keeping our eyes on Kristen.”

  Keep your eyes to yourself.

  He had already reported at length on his trip to Durango. About the time Zaworski was getting a search warrant for us to crash into Dell’s rented brownstone here, an FBI analyst created a graphic model and plotted southwest Colorado as the likely geographic home base for our murderer. The FBI then rented one of the US Army’s supercomputers for a day—at a cost of more than $875,000 per hour, we were informed—and cross-tabulated calls and financial transactions between that area of the country and the target cities during corresponding dates.

  To the FBI analyst’s amazement, the computer was able to narrow the search down to a list of fewer than seven potential residents. They gathered a small army of financial and logistical analysts in Washington, DC, to work a graveyard shift in order to understand everything about the movements and patterns of members of those households. Dell�
�s home and travels and a few select accounts came out as the winner. We don’t know where Dell is—couldn’t keep him on the phone long enough—but that’s just a matter of time. The plan is to put his face on every news outlet in America starting at 5:00 EDT. Government lawyers are getting federal warrants and vetting the entire process to make sure nothing is done that will let a bad guy off the hook based on inadmissible evidence and that no lawsuits come our way.

  It’s been well over a decade, but the memory of the FBI announcing Richard Jewell as the prime suspect in the ’96 bombing outside the Atlanta Olympics venue, and how the press subsequently crucified him, is still a textbook case of what not to do. Putting an innocent man’s face on a couple hundred million TV screens is no small decision. In Jewell’s case, it probably killed him.

  What will it do to Dell?

  I look around at the feds and see a lot of competence. I don’t see anyone in this group as mistake-prone. But it wouldn’t be the first time. I still can’t believe the Cutter Shark is Dell, no matter how many thousands of dollars have been spent to prove it. But I’m seriously conflicted. Willingham went through a purgatory of sorts, due to others’ mistakes. There’s no way he could get something like this wrong, is there?

  Willingham looks around the room one more time. He’s very relaxed. He even laughed when he told the group he watched the ChiTownVlogger’s latest report that included the cost of designing the FBI’s ad hoc headquarters. He didn’t say if the number was right. Everybody’s ready to leave. I start to lift my hand, put it down, and then just blurt out a strangled “Sir.”

  “Yes, Conner?”

  There is a nearly audible sigh in the room. Task force members who were halfway out of their chairs settle back in.

  “I’m still not convinced Dell Woods is the killer.” I raise my hand before Van Guten or anyone else can explain to me the error of my thinking. “But whether or not he is—and especially if he isn’t—I believe I found another hunting ground for the killer.”

  “Oh? Let’s hear it.”

  “We already reran all data points through Operation Vigilence,” Van Guten interrupts. “Nothing was found.”

  “That’s because of how you coded the data,” I say. “But I’ve found eighteen victims—almost as many as he found at AA meetings—in one place. Virgil could have told you this, but you never asked him.”

  Okay. Everyone is looking at me and holding their breath. I can’t believe it. I’m doing the pregnant pause. Van Guten is going to chew her lip off.

  “Let’s hear it,” Zaworski demands, breaking my pleasant reverie.

  “Church,” I say. “He goes to church to find victims. Eighteen of our victims, including Sandra and GiGi in Chicago, have been regular church attendees.”

  “Is it possible, Dr. Van Guten?” Willingham asks.

  “I’ll have to look at the report protocols before I answer that,” she says.

  “Then get looking. I personally think we have our man, but if we don’t, we need to make up for lost time on the church angle. How in the heck does something like this happen?” Willingham demands, looking at a blushing Van Guten.

  “Church affiliation was given to Virgil as background data,” I answer. “But somehow no one thought to add that line to any of the crosstabulations.”

  “I think Detective Conner has stumbled onto something,” says Van Guten. “After all, that’s where Woods located her.”

  Stumbled onto? Give me a little credit, Ice Queen. But oh man, I wasn’t wanting to put more focus on Dell as the bad guy, and I just did exactly that. I’m still not sold . . .

  “Great work, Conner,” Zaworski says, slapping the table. “We’re getting close, people. Now let’s finish the job.”

  66

  “CONNER, YOU ARE the man,” Martinez says again, his mouth stuffed with a jumbo hot dog with more trimmings than the bun can hold. He has mustard dripping down his chin, along with half a cucumber slice that just won’t fit in the door.

  I’m glad someone thinks I’m “the man.”

  He, Blackshear, Konkade, Don, Big Tony, and I are at a hole-in-the-wall a mile from HQ called the Devil Dog. Reynolds asked me to go to lunch with him. I politely declined. He kept trying to make eye contact while asking. I finally did. That helped him understand I wasn’t going out with him. At least he’s more perceptive than Dell.

  What do I think of Reynolds? I’m not too hung up on looks, but he is attractive and he caught my eye the first time I saw him. I do like a confident and fun personality, and he has that in spades. He can be appropriately self-deprecating with his humor but you can easily tell that underneath he’s comfortable with himself. He’s very confident. I like guys who like their work—I am my daddy’s girl after all—and that was another checkmark in his favor. I don’t like needy. And Reynolds, despite trying to give me a hangdog look for sympathy the last two times I’ve seen him, really isn’t. I know some women want tears and sensitivity from a man. Not me. Doesn’t mean I want a Neanderthal. I do want caring and considerate. At least someday I do. I just don’t want wimpy. I’m sorry if that means I lose my official Gen-X membership card.

  “Nice job, Kristen,” Big Tony adds. “Your dad would have been proud.”

  “It’s hard to admit,” Don says, “but even her partner is proud.”

  Okay, this is getting as thick as the mustard on Martinez’s hot dog.

  “Buen trabajo!” Martinez adds. “Muy bien.”

  “No applause, just throw money,” I say, embarrassed at the attention.

  “You got it,” Blackshear says. “Your lunch is on me.”

  “Mine too?” Konkade asks quickly.

  “Yep.” Blackshear answers. “Just as soon as you figure out something before Virgil does.”

  Everyone laughs.

  “We haven’t caught anyone yet,” I say. “And sorry, I still don’t think it’s Dell.”

  The table falls quiet.

  “Esto tipo es un loco diablo—and whoever he is, we’re gonna catch him,” Martinez says with his flair for words—even when we don’t understand all of them.

  “I’m taking a long vacation after this is done,” Don says. “I don’t think my kids know who I am anymore.”

  “Good point,” Konkade says. “We all have some well-earned time off coming up.”

  “Ah, who needs vacation?” I ask. “I was going to go the first week of April. But I’d have missed hanging out with you guys. And without me, you guys wouldn’t have gotten anywhere on this case.”

  “La próxima vez que estés sola, ya sabes a quién llamar!” Martinez says to me with a big wink and his hand over his heart like he’s picking up on me.

  Big Tony gives him a dirty look and Martinez holds up his hands in surrender.

  “I’m just kidding,” he says laughing. “I keeeed. I keeeed.”

  Everyone at the table joins him. Except for me and Scalia. I don’t have the energy to bust on Martinez right now. Doesn’t mean I won’t feel good enough to do so tomorrow.

  “Kristen’s right on one thing,” Scalia says. “Before we start celebrating, we got to catch a serial killer.”

  “Woods can run, but he cannot hide,” says Don, invoking one of the most tired and trite clichés in law enforcement.

  Even as he says it, something strikes me wrong. It can’t be Dell.

  Dear God, help me figure out what you’re trying to tell me.

  • • •

  I enter my apartment and immediately know something’s wrong. It’s absolutely spic and span with everything in its place. I’m sure Mom saw to that. I always keep a clean place, but that doesn’t mean it’s always tidy. But the order and stillness isn’t what’s got my antennae up. I haven’t been as careful as I should in recent days and even though I still have police protection less than a hundred feet from my front door, I carefully and quietly de-holster my Beretta. I ease off the safety and bring it up to chest level with both hands.

  I poke my head in and out of my kitchen a
nd eating area. Nothing there. I walk in slowly and look under the table and in the broom closet anyway. I step back into my front hall. I creep up to the coat closet. I pull it open quickly and step back with drawn gun. Nothing. I repeat the process in my living room, my common bathroom, and my guest room. Still nothing.

  My bedroom door is shut. I always leave it open. Maybe that’s all that’s bothering me. Of course, I wasn’t the last one in the apartment. Maybe Mom or Kaylen pulled it shut before they left.

  I now ponder my options. Continue searching my apartment so I can confirm nothing is wrong or go outside, ask two officers to come inside to help me finish checking everything out and when we don’t find anything, let out a little embarrassed laugh, and explain to them that I’m just a little jittery since getting punched in the kidney and finding out my kind-of ex-boyfriend is a serial killer?

  I turn the knob soundlessly and then push open the door hard enough that it slams into the wall stop. No one is hiding behind it. I keep my head on a swivel and check under the bed, in my small walk-in closet, in my tiny master bathroom, and even in the wardrobe that is probably just big enough to hold a person. Nothing. I look at my nightstand. The framed picture of me standing with Dad on the day I graduated from police academy, my uniform so neat and pressed, him in his dress blues and cap with braids on the bill, is missing. Weird.

  Klarissa has said several times that she wants to come by and pick up some of my pictures and photo albums so she can have them scanned and saved electronically. Would she have just picked up that one picture and frame? I walk back into the living room. All my childhood photo albums are still lined up on the bottom row of my bookcase.

  I walk back in my bedroom. I feel a chill and shudder. It has nothing to do with the weather. It’s a gorgeous June afternoon, with temperatures in the low eighties. But something has caught my attention. My window is open a couple inches.

  • • •

  “Sure enough, someone came up that outside wall with a ladder and through your window,” Konkade says.