“How long have you had this here?” she said.
“I started to piece it together bit by bit a few months after Gabby died.”
“This is, like—amazing,” she said. “I bet you have more information here than anyone else on this case.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “I haven’t been able to get my hands on most of the evidence, not even to copy it, but I did the best I could with what I had access to.”
“I’ll say,” she said. “Nick know about this?”
I shook my head.
“No one does,” I said.
Maddie zeroed in on a white piece of lined paper I’d tacked to the wall with the killer’s criminal profile on it.
“May I?” she said.
“Go right ahead. It isn’t the same one the cops have though—I came up with it on my own.
She lifted the page from the board and read it out loud.
SINNERMAN PROFILE
MALE, AGE 35-45
METHODICAL AND ORGANIZED
SOCIOPATH
KILLS FOR POWER, POSSESSION???
ABUSED OR POSSIBLY NEGLECTED OR ABANDONED BY A PARENT
INTELLIGENT, HIGH IQ
CHOOSES WOMEN OF SAME APPROXMIATE AGE, WEIGHT, HAIR COLOR
Maddie stopped about a quarter of the way through the list and said, “You forgot to add sick lunatic whacko, but other than that, you seem to have a good grip on this guy.”
“If it’s all accurate.”
“Oh come on, we both know you have a gift for this kind of thing. I’d be willing to bet you’re about ninety-five percent on target with all this.”
“The reason I wanted you to see this is because this time I want to be kept in the loop. With his last series of killings I couldn’t deal with it, and you and everyone else kept mum.”
“We were just trying to help you get through your loss,” she said, “and giving you all the details back then wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. We all knew that.”
“And I agree, but this isn’t some kind of blood pact you made with each other where you’re obligated to a vow of silence—things are different now. I know you have access to a lot of information, and I want you to share it with me.”
I stared her right in the eye and tried to gauge her reaction. She cocked her head to one side like she had taken it all in and then said, “Fine by me.”
“I bet the chief is going to tell you things too since the two of you are together now. You are still an item, right?”
“Item is taking it a bit far,” she said. “You know how I roll. I just go with it, but I never define it.”
Maddie didn’t like to get too committed to her men. It made her feel like she did when she was in high school and her mother strapped her down at home with all her siblings and she missed out on all the things most teens experience at that time of their life. Her preferred method of dating only worked if it was done on her own terms, which was why it surprised me that she agreed to date the chief in the first place.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll tell you as much as I can. But I want you to do something for me in return.”
“Anything.”
“Be careful,” she said.
“Always.”
“I mean it, Sloane. I worry about you,” she said.
Maddie’s cell phone rang.
“How’s it going, babe?” she said into the receiver.
“You’re calling him babe now?” I whispered loud enough for only her to hear. “When did that happen?”
She grinned and shushed me with her finger, but within a few seconds, the look of glee on her face turned to genuine concern, and she ended the call without another word.
“What is it?”
“Sinnerman’s killed again,” she said.
I grabbed my keys from the top of my desk. “I’ll drive.”
CHAPTER 16
The body had been disposed of in the center of the track at the city park. I was thankful when I looked around and noted that Nick and Coop weren’t there yet. A mass of spectators had gathered behind the thin plastic roped-off section of police tape.
Maddie stepped inside the perimeter and flashed her credentials to a male officer I didn’t recognize.
“And who’s this?” he said and thumbed in my direction.
“She’s with me,” Maddie said.
He shifted his attention from her to me.
“Where’s your ID lady?” he said.
“Look,” Maddie interjected, “we just came from lunch, and it’s not like I had the time to swing by my office so she could grab it. It seemed more important to me at the time that we get here as soon as possible, so why don’t you lay off and let us do our job.”
He didn’t seem to know what to say to that and let us pass. It didn’t buy me a lot of time, but it bought me a little, and I was determined to make every second count. I glanced back at Taye Diggs who shook his head but didn’t try to stop me.
Maddie approached a young male who was hunched over the dead woman’s body collecting various tidbits of evidence.
“What do you got for me?” she said.
“From what I can tell, the victim appears to have been killed less than twenty-four hours ago, and it looks like her wounds are an identical match to the woman that was killed the other day. Everything matches up except the number of lacerations to her thigh.”
I leaned in and counted them. There were five this time.
“Do we have a name?” Maddie said.
“She had an ID card from a university not far from here in her back pocket. Her name is Sasha Winters.”
“She looks a little old to be a university student.”
A car drove up and parked and out stepped public enemy number one and two.
“Uh-oh,” Maddie said. “Get ready for an ass-chewing sandwich.”
I retrieved my cell phone from my pocket with haste and snapped some photos of the victim and the crime scene and then slid it back into my pocket.
“Why is it that wherever I go, you seem to follow?” Coop said.
“I was with Maddie when she got the call.”
“And that makes it alright?” he said.
“It makes it the truth.”
“Here’s some truth for you—I want you out of here. Now.”
I looked over at Nick whose crossed arms told me all I needed to know about where he stood in all of it, and then I turned toward Maddie.
“I’ll catch a ride back to my lab with one of my guys,” she said. “You go on.”
“Call me later?” I said.
She smiled and nodded.
Coop frowned and Maddie gave him a hard stare and then looked back and me and said, “You bet I will.”
CHAPTER 17
The next morning I reappeared at the crime scene, but the difference was the body wasn’t there and everything had been cleaned up and life at the park was back to usual. It was hard to tell anything happened there at all. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or why anything of any significance would have been left behind, but I wanted to explore the area anyway. It was of particular interest to me that the killer dropped his bodies off in the same place he picked them up. He was bold, and had one mad pair of cojones. That much I knew.
Maddie called me the night before with some privileged information she’d been given about the victim. The girl had gone to the park the night before to study, like she often did during the week. Her mother told the police that there was a specific bench she liked to sit on so they dusted it for prints, but I knew Sinnerman’s wouldn’t be among them. I sat on the bench and scanned the area and wondered if he watched her and for how long. I envisioned him hunkered down somewhere while he watched and waited, and I searched around to see if I could find the most likely spot. Some nine or so yards away, the leaves on a lofty oak tree sprawled out in all directions across a pale blue sky. It was the only one of its kind in the immediate area and the perfect place to disguise oneself.
; I approached the tree and crouched down and scanned the ground that surrounded me. There were no footprints, but there was a patch of dirt that appeared to have been smoothed over by something, like it didn’t belong with the sediment around it. In my stooped position, I had a clear view of the bench. I stayed there for a few minutes and absorbed the scene and then withdrew my phone from my pocket and took a picture of it. I didn’t know why; it just seemed like it was the right thing to do. I tilted the lens downward and zoomed in and snapped a photo of the disheveled patch of the dirt. The more I looked at it, the more I noticed something odd. The dirt around it was undisturbed and looked like it had been for quite some time.
I brushed the rough patch of dirt back and forth with my hand. It was loose, and in no time, I’d dug a good three inches at least. I extracted the mound of dirt into my hand and stared down into the miniature hole I’d formed. I felt like a kid in grade school who had nothing better to do to pass the time at recess. I tilted my hand to the side and watched the dirt tumble back into the hole and with it, a little piece of debris about the size of a nickel dropped into the hole as well. It was dirty and crumpled and had been folded at least five times to get it to its current size. I scooped it out of the hole and opened it.
I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE BETTER THAN THEM.
THAT IS WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU.
YOU DON’T THINK LIKE A COP.
YOURS ALWAYS, SINNERMAN
P.S. YOU’RE GETTING WARMER.
Did he mean them—the guys on the case, or them—the women. Or both?
“Excuse me,” a voice said, “are you a cop?”
I stood up and came face to face with a woman dressed in a pair of fluorescent yellow shorts and a tank top that was cut so low I caught more than a glimpse of what a little breast enhancement can do for a person. On her eyes she donned a pair of hot pink sunglasses which hid a fraction of her face from me.
“Something like that,” I said.
“I feel just awful about what happened to that poor young woman yesterday,” she said.
And yet, here she was parading herself around like a nosy tourist.
Taye Diggs approached from the right. I tried to indicate that I didn’t need him, but he charged forward anyway. I made a fist with my right hand and concealed the note I’d found within my palm. This one was mine.
I looked at the woman.
“Is there something I can do for you?” I said.
“Actually, there is,” she said. “After I got home last night, I got to thinking about everything, and I thought I might be able to help.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“I might be able to give you a description.”
I looked at Taye and tried to restrain the urge I felt to give him a high five. We both stared back at her, speechless.
“Were you at the park last night?” I said.
She nodded.
“Around what time?”
“Oh, I got here about a quarter to eight and then went around the track a couple times and then went home. You see, I don’t usually come out to the park. I like to get my workouts in at home, but a couple days ago my treadmill broke. I bought another one, but my husband has been too busy to set it up for me, and I’m too small to lift it.”
I wondered how long she would go on with her personal life story if I didn’t stop her.
“Did you see anyone or anything suspicious while you were here?” I said.
She nodded again.
“I saw a strange man.”
“Where?” I said.
“When I was running.”
“On the track?” I said.
“That’s right. He ran beside me for a minute.”
This was the first time in Sinnerman’s history that there was an actual sighting—if it turned out to be true. Could he have slipped up?
“He talked to you?” I said.
“Not in so many words,” she said. “But he did say hello and mentioned something about the weather we were having that day and how summer was his favorite season of the year. He was going on and on about the arts festival—you know the one where people display their paintings on Main Street?”
“Yeah—that was a couple months ago. Anything else?”
“When he finished, I looked over to respond, and he frowned at me and took off.”
It wasn’t hard for me to see why. She wasn’t his type. From behind, he may not have known it, but once he got close, he wouldn’t have chosen her. I was sure of it.
I reached for the card-sized notepad in my back pocket and a pen.
“What did he look like?” I said.
“That’s what I thought was strange. Here this guy was gushing about how warm it was at the festival and he was wearing a charcoal hoodie with the hood over his head. It didn’t make sense to me. I mean, it must have been 80 degrees at the time of day, and he was jogging no less.”
Her eyes shifted from me to a bird that flew by in front of us. I needed to speed things up.
“How tall would you say he was?” I said.
“Well,” she said, “he was taller than me for sure. Not by much though. He only had about three inches on me.”
“So around 5‘10?”
“That’d be about right.”
“What about hair color, eye color?” I said.
“He wore dark glasses that made him look like a beetle, and I don’t mean the car. And his hair was perfect.”
“How so?” I said.
“Well, he had that hood on so it was hard to tell for sure, but at one point while he was talking to me he lifted it a bit and stuck his hand inside and smoothed it out, like a piece had strayed and it bugged him. From what I could see, it was a brownish color, and he had it parted to one side—I’d say twenty-five percent to the left and the rest to the right.”
“Was it thick, thin, receding?” I said.
“Thick.”
“Long or short?”
“Short.”
“Eyes?” I said.
“He never took the glasses off.”
“Oops, that’s right,” I said. “Bad habit. Do you know where he went after you talked to him?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t pay him any attention after he gave me the brush off. I left.”
Taye Diggs took out his cell phone and dialed.
“I’m going to need you to do something for me,” I said to the woman.
“Alright.”
“Head down to the police station. They’ll take your official statement,” I said. “And I’m sure they’ll want to get a sketch of the guy while it’s still fresh in your mind.”
I took her name, address and phone number down and then sent her on her way. What a day it had been already, and it was just getting started.
CHAPTER 18
When I arrived back to my car, a silver Aston Martin idled behind it, which blocked me from backing out. The window tint was so dark on the driver’s side, I couldn’t have seen in even if I had a flashlight. Taye Diggs opened my car door and took his hand and shoved me inside and drew his gun with the other.
“Get down,” he said, “until I find out who this is.”
I squatted low enough in the seat that I was well below the window but still high enough that I could watch all the action through the side mirror. The window of the Aston Martin came down and unveiled a face I hadn’t seen in months, and I gasped loud enough for everyone on the street to hear.
I opened the door of the car.
“I told you to stay inside,” Taye said through clenched teeth.
I looked toward the other car.
“Giovanni?” I said. “What are you doing here? How did you find—”
“It’s nice to see you again Sloane,” Giovanni said.
Taye looked over at me and then at Giovanni.
“Are you gonna tell me who this dude is or what?” Taye said.
Giovanni stuck out his hand to Taye. “The name is Giovanni Luciana,” he said, “can I speak
with you for a moment?”
Taye looked at me.
“It’s alright,” I said. “We know each other. You can put your gun down.”
The truth was I didn’t know him. Not well, anyway.
Taye made the most of his muscular frame and held his arms at his side the way an ape does while he walked over to Giovanni’s car. Once there they engaged in small talk that wasn’t audible enough for me to hear. From the look on his face, Taye wasn’t happy. He made a phone call and frowned and then looked at Giovanni like he wanted to inflict blunt force trauma to various parts of his body.
“She’s all yours,” Taye said to Giovanni.
What was that supposed to mean?
Giovanni stepped out of the car and walked over to the passenger side door and opened it and gestured inside with his hand.
“Come with me please,” he said to me.
“What—why?”
“You’ll see,” he said.
“It’s fine,” Taye said. “He’ll explain everything, just go with him.”
I was both reluctant and exhilarated, which up until then, I didn’t know could be experienced at the same time. I walked over to the car and got in and looked at Taye who nodded at Giovanni and then turned and went.
What was happening?
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” I said to Giovanni.
“We’re going for a drive,” he said.
“May I ask where?”
“You’ll see.”
Why was it that everything surrounding him was always shrouded in secrecy? I was unnerved, but not enough that I didn’t absorb everything about him—the way he was dressed in an expensive charcoal suit with light grey pinstripes, the Montblanc watch on his wrist; even his mannerisms and the way he flicked his wrist when he shifted gears with his long, bony fingers had an element of fascination to it.
“Why did you hang up on me yesterday?” he said.
“How did you know I’d be here today?”
“You first,” he said.
“Alright. Someone came in after I dialed your number, and I decided I didn’t know why I called in the first place, so I hung up.”
He held his pointer finger up in the air.
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