The shower door creaked open behind him.
He turned to see Sally stepping into the shower. His mouth opened but she put her fingers to his lips. “Turn around and just … breathe. Close your eyes and relax.”
He did as ordered. Sally soaped his back with her right hand and lightly rubbed his shoulder muscles with her left. “You need to stop thinking about the case, even for just five minutes. Just let it go.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Mac answered, his eyes closed. He leaned forward, his arms and head resting against the tile of the shower wall. “It’s easier said than done.”
“Well, maybe what you need then is a distraction,” Sally said quietly as her right hand wrapped around to his front and she soaped his stomach. He could feel the softness of her breasts as she leaned into him from behind. Slowly she moved her hand lower.
“Ahh, well now, that is … distracting.”
• • •
11:03 P.M. was what his watch read as MPD Detective Lincoln Coolidge slowly made his way into the Homicide Division. He made it to his little cubicle and plopped himself down into his desk chair and went about slipping off his dress shoes. The overtime the Rubens case was providing was an extremely welcome addition to the bank account. There were four mouths at home to feed but the nonstop week was wearing him down. He opened his lower right desk drawer. Inside, he kept a pair of Birkenstock sandals, which he pulled out and slipped onto his round fat feet. The other item inside the drawer was a bottle of bourbon, which he opened and poured some of the contents into his Washington Wizards coffee cup.
“Ahh,” he murmured as he kicked his feet up onto the desktop and sipped from his coffee cup.
Then there was a ruckus and a smile washed over Coolidge’s face. A minute later two familiar faces were standing in the entrance to his cubicle: Stretch and Hart, both new detectives to homicide. Stretch was six-six and Hart wasn’t really named Hart. His name was actually Kenny Smith but they called him Hart after the actor Kevin Hart. The personality, not to mention the shorter stature, made the name fit.
“Linc, ya got that regulatory-violative bourbon bottle around?” Hart asked.
Coolidge nodded to the lower drawer. Hart opened the drawer and proceeded to pour a small amount into his coffee and into the top of the Diet Coke bottle his much taller partner was holding.
“Any progress today?” Stretch asked. Both of them had helped Linc earlier in the week but had been pulled away in the morning to investigate a case of their own.
“Not much. A lot of running around, talking to people who knew the first and second victim, using some video, pictures, sketches and descriptions McRyan and Wire have come up with,” Linc replied. “Unfortunately there was no recognition. We struck out.”
“The day wasn’t a total waste. Did I hear it right that they might have had eyes on the artist earlier today?” Hart asked.
“It’s Rubens, Hart,” Stretch corrected. “This asshole is called Rubens.”
“For some reason, I can’t remember that fuckin’ name,” Hart waved dismissively. “All I know is he’s killing big women who look like the bitches some painter painted, so he’s the artist.”
“You did hear right,” Linc noted, pouring just a little more bourbon into his coffee mug. “McRyan and Wire had eyes on him and nearly caught the bastard.” He related the events of the morning.
“Too bad,” Stretch muttered.
“No kidding,” Linc answered as he sat up, crossed his right leg over his left and started massaging his right foot. “Man, my feet are really barking at me with all this street time. So what case has the two of you so occupied at such a late hour on a Saturday night in our fair Capitol?”
“Nothing quite as exciting,” Hart answered. “We have a woman who was murdered in her small backyard. She was hit from behind, her purse was taken and her money and credit cards are gone.”
“Looks like a mugging gone very, very bad,” Stretch added.
“Any witnesses?”
“Nada.”
“Naturally. So what’s the victim’s story?” Coolidge asked.
“The vic is a lady named Gwendolyn Waxe,” Hart answered. “Worked as a librarian. It appears that she stopped at a local corner store for groceries on her way home. She got home, pulled her car into her small one-car garage, got out and grabbed the grocery bags and when she came out of the back door of the garage to walk to the house—”
“Whammo!” Stretch reported, striking down with his right hand. “She was smashed in the back of the head with a hammer.”
“A hammer? That’ll do the trick,” Linc stated, taking another sip from his coffee cup.
“It did. Killer did it all to get away with a couple of hundred bucks at most,” Hart noted glumly. “We have the credit cards on watch but nothing has popped.”
“I can’t for the life of me figure the motive to kill someone like this for a couple of bucks,” Stretch moaned. “It was completely senseless.”
“It’s DC—people have killed for less,” Coolidge stated, having seen plenty of inexplicable crimes in his many years on the job. “Unless it’s random, there has to be some reason someone would want her dead.”
“Not that we found,” Stretch answered, running his hand through his thinning brown hair. “We spoke to her neighbors, people she works with and friends and they couldn’t think of anyone who would want to harm her in any way. She was a quiet and private lady, loved books and going to museums. She had a cat and a nice house.”
“There must be something else, then,” Coolidge replied. “Again, unless it was just random. It could just be random, I suppose. Like I said, it’s DC.”
“That’s what we’re thinking, Linc,” Hart replied. “But—”
“It doesn’t just feel random.” Stretch finished. “Something is off. I almost get the feeling like it was intended to look random.”
“To cover something else?” Coolidge asked and he started to sense that Stretch was leading to something.
Stretch nodded and handed the case file to Coolidge. “Take a look. Tell me what you see.”
Coolidge took a drink from his coffee cup and set it on the desk, then opened the homicide file and started thumbing through the pictures, stopping on the victim. First it was her DMV photo and then the photos from the crime scene. “She was a larger woman,” Coolidge muttered. “She looks almost…”
“Rubenesque, doesn’t she?” Hart noted.
Coolidge snorted, sat back and eyed his two detectives. “You two aren’t here just for a drink, are you?”
“No,” the young detectives replied in unison.
“McRyan’s press conference has been running all day,” Coolidge stated, now seeing it. “And then Mac and Wire almost catch the guy this morning.”
“Right,” Hart answered. “Because the woman McRyan and Wire are interviewing thinks she maybe met the asshole.”
“And it looks like in fact she did,” Linc reported.
“And lo and behold he’s standing outside that house. Why?” Hart asks.
“We were thinking this Rubens character could be cleaning up after McRyan asked these women to be honest with themselves and come forward. Did they meet someone? Did someone come along and then disappear? The woman up in Columbia Heights called to say that might have happened to her. What if there were others?”
“Like Gwen here?” Coolidge asked, nodding in agreement.
“It’s a weak tie, but she fits the profile and the way she was killed.” Hart shook his head.
“The hammer?” Linc asked, knowing the answer.
“It’s too much,” Hart finished. “And then there was one other thing we found in the Notes app on her phone.”
“Which is what?” Linc asked.
“The Rubens Hotline phone number,” Hart replied.
Coolidge whistled. “No shit.”
“So Linc, what do you think?” Stretch asked.
Coolidge smiled. “I think you two are going to make
fine detectives.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Beatniks.”
The plan for the day was set early at the FBI field office in a meeting with Wire, Galloway, Delmonico and April Greene, now becoming more of a presence. There had been no new developments overnight on the Walter Olson lead.
“He disappeared,” Delmonico reported, going to the map of DC posted on one of the whiteboards. “There is a traffic camera posted a block north on 14th Street, which runs north and south on the east side of the Metro Station. Unfortunately, the camera is not close, a good block away,” she noted, running her finger south to north and circling the location of the camera. “We pulled the video for the time around when the train would have arrived at the Columbia Heights Station and we did see this one guy.” She pointed on the screen in the distance. “He looks to be carrying something under his arms, he’s about the right size, is moving quickly and he crosses 14th Street heading east.” She played the video clip back twice. It was hard to make out but the man jogged across the street. Less than a minute later, patrol cars arrived on the scene.
“That’s it?” Mac asked.
Delmonico nodded as they all watched the replay again. “If that’s him, we missed him by less than a minute, maybe thirty seconds.”
“How about the other direction, to the west?” Mac asked. The man he’d just seen was probably Rubens, but had they looked everywhere?
“There is the local shopping mall and then a school that way,” Galloway added, although not in a hopeful tone. “Surveillance camera coverage is spotty at best. We’ve been collecting it and still are but we haven’t seen anyone fitting our description, at least yet. I’m not optimistic.”
“So it looks like he went east on Irving then,” Wire speculated.
“That would have been the smart move,” Delmonico replied. “It’s residential. Houses and apartments for several blocks so given what I see on the tape, we think east was the direction he went.”
“I assume we’ve been conducting a canvas?” Mac asked.
Galloway nodded. “We still are but nobody recalls seeing anyone matching our description. It was mid-morning on a Friday, not a lot of foot traffic in that neighborhood and not a lot of people home.”
“Are we checking with buses and taxi companies?”
Delmonico nodded. “Yes, but unfortunately nothing has popped. We checked every taxi with pick-ups within a six block radius and there was nothing. Same with buses, which do have cameras, but again—”
“Nothing,” Mac finished bitterly.
“The guy is Houdini,” Greene added. “He just doesn’t panic.”
“Would most serials panic?”
“Many are impulsive so the answer would be yes. However, Rubens is not impulsive. He is strategic,” Greene noted.
“Because it’s all a game to him,” Mac answered, shaking his head in disgust. “Fucking genius whacko is what he is.”
“He’s not a genius,” Wire answered. “He’s not. We’re gaining on him. We just need to catch him in time.”
“So how do you do that?” Greene asked.
“The answer is at Audrey Ruston’s,” Mac replied. “It’s my turn to see if I can figure it out.”
Galloway had run special agents through Ruston’s home nonstop since she was murdered, seeing if they could discern any pattern, any sign, any hint of what the clue would be. Two cryptanalysts from the FBI, as well as two codebreakers from the CIA, had given it a go with no success. Mac thought it worth a try, although he didn’t think it was a code in that kind of sense. It was always the odd collection of items that wouldn’t be a code but would have to simply be seen and understood in the proper context.
“Dara, if I need anything to be looked into, you’re on it.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’m locking myself in unless anything comes up worth breaking off for,” Mac stated.
“Before you go, I might have something,” Coolidge announced as he walked into the room, Hart and Stretch with him. “While you were chasing Rubens over in Columbia Heights yesterday, my two guys found a murder victim who fits the Rubens profile.” Linc ran down the background of Gwendolyn Waxe. “The kicker, Mac? She had the hotline number in her phone, typed in the Notes app.”
“Seriously?” Mac asked, intrigued, taking a look at the phone. “My gosh, she typed it into her phone at 10:14 P.M.”
“And you know what the particularly curious thing is about that, Mac?” Linc replied. “Is that the medical examiner just pegged time of death between 10:00 P.M. and midnight. So she puts this in the phone and perhaps minutes later, she’s dead. I don’t believe that to be coincidental, especially after your little chase escapade yesterday. Your boy is hunting the women who didn’t make the cut to make sure they don’t expose him.”
“So what are you thinking?” Mac asked.
“I want to take another look at the case of Ms. Waxe here through the lens of our case. I want to go back two to three months and see if there are other facts that fit our profile such as a new guy.”
Mac followed with a knowing smile. “And the new guy being a guy who suddenly stopped showing interest for some reason?”
“Exactly, my boy,” Linc answered with a nod. “Exactly.”
• • •
Mac pulled up in front of the duplex for Audrey Ruston. A patrol unit was parked in front and Mac dropped off coffee and a box of rolls for the two officers.
“Thanks,” one patrol officer stated, digging into the rolls.
“And here I thought this detail would suck,” the other officer answered, taking a sip of the warm coffee.
“Mary McRyan didn’t raise no fool, boys. Enjoy,” Mac stated.
The patrol officers were stationed out front to both keep people away and to be there if he needed anything. Mac hoped he would need something.
Mac had stopped back at Ruston’s twice since the murder. They were brief stops, just enough to walk the second floor of the duplex and get a feel for it. He expected he would be back doing this very thing and a little familiarity was good, he thought.
Lisa White’s townhouse was a ridiculous collection of books, paintings, pictures, plants and art pieces that made it impossible to find the clue to Audrey Ruston’s name. The clue was ultimately Audrey Hepburn and the two movie posters for Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The two movie prints with Audrey Hepburn, whose real last name was Ruston, was impossible, and intentionally so.
“He had to make the first one impossible,” Mac said to Wire last night. “You can’t make the first one remotely possible or easy. He can’t run the risk of the game ending before it starts.”
“There’s no case, no chase, nothing if he does that,” Wire had answered in agreement. “But if he likes the game so much, he has to give you a chance, doesn’t he?”
“I think so, at least a small one. I just have to see it.”
On that basis, Mac thought the clue to the identity of victim number three would be, relatively speaking, potentially more findable. However, while Audrey’s house was not overflowing with the clutter of Lisa White’s, it wasn’t without its objects of possibility.
Audrey, like Lisa White, loved her books. She was proud of her collection and took great care in its display throughout the apartment. They weren’t stacked in corners and on tables. No, instead her hundreds of books were properly stored on the built-in bookshelves, orderly and tastefully placed.
She loved her artistry, with numerous paintings throughout the second level.
Mirrors were also prominent throughout. They were of different shapes and sizes, but she definitely liked mirrors and Mac understood the design thought behind it. “It makes the place seem a little bigger,” he mused out loud.
Ruston was also a serious photographer. Her work was prominently displayed throughout the house, including in the living room where her body had been staged.
And then there were the knickknacks and baubles. He wondered if she ever left a small n
ovelty shop without buying something.
“Easier, my ass,” Mac mumbled as he set his backpack down onto the floor. He took out his laptop, set it on the floor along with his bag lunch and thermos of coffee. Then he took out the case file and selected the crime scene photos and started setting them onto the floor where the body had been located, settling in for the day.
• • •
Coolidge’s first stop was the crime scene. “Take me through it again,” he said to Stretch and Hart.
As ordered, Stretch and Hart walked Coolidge through the murder. “She pulls into the garage, parks and grabs her groceries,” Hart explained, standing next to the car in the garage. Then he went to the back door and walked through. “She comes out this door, probably closes it and then takes maybe a step or two on the sidewalk and then—”
“He jumps from over behind the side of the garage and … boom,” Stretch hypothesized, “he came from the side of the garage over there, stepped behind her and hit her in the head not once, not twice, but three times.”
“Brutal,” Lincoln answered. “So is he sitting here in wait?”
“I suspect so,” Stretch replied.
“How does he know she’s coming home?”
“Because he was following her, Linc,” Hart replied.
“Exactly,” Linc agreed. “That’s another reason I think this could be Rubens. The only way he can be there is he knows she’s coming home.”
Stretch opened his notebook and flipped through some pages. “She worked until 9:30 P.M. the night she was murdered. That was her regular shift at the library.”
“And he would know that,” Hart added. “Because if it is this artist guy, he’s followed her, knows her schedule…the whole nine yards.”
Coolidge and Hart let themselves into Gwen’s house while Stretch stayed in the car making phone calls to Gwen’s coworkers. Coolidge took the home office and rummaged through all the papers and drawers. There was a paper calendar on the desk but there were few notations in it. Her desk was orderly, with some stray papers loosely organized. The drawers were equally tidy, the files well labeled and filled with the usual bills, receipts, insurance policies, investment information, tax returns and a will. It was all standard, common and told Coolidge little.
Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book) Page 19