by Kylie Brant
“Good luck with that. The dented piece of tin I had to drive when I was on the force remains the stuff of legend.”
She was right. Requisitions were notoriously stingy, and requests for vehicles were the slowest to process, with the highest incidence of rejection. But he was blessed with imagination and stubbornness. He’d finagle something.
“You realize he’s already picked his next victim?”
Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to hear it. “A moment ago you said ‘if.’ Now you’re assuming there will be a next victim.”
She stared straight ahead into the thick congestion of the normal midday Philly traffic. “These guys were specifically targeted. Someone’s going after cops, yeah, but not just any detectives. The UNSUB selects these particular guys, he stalks them, he makes his move. And I’m guessing the whole thing is tied up in a messy little pile of revenge for him. So when that need for revenge is satisfied, ostensibly he’d be done.”
“But you don’t think he’s finished yet.” It wasn’t a question. The ball of dread that seemed permanently lodged in his chest intensified.
He felt her eyes on him. Met her gaze.
“I hope I’m wrong. But I have the feeling he’s just getting started.”
The man the media had unimaginatively dubbed Cop Killer had indeed picked out his next victims. He wasn’t fussy about the order in which they died, except for the one he was saving for last. He’d been focused on this for years and had planned out every last detail. But a man had to be flexible. Ready to adapt to the unexpected.
Marisa Chandler was unexpected.
He’d been prepared for cops. Was delighted by the task force. He liked the idea of a whole army of cops running around trying to figure out where he’d hit next. He was smarter than all of them. He was proving that.
Chandler didn’t worry him. Not yet. But it bothered him that no one seemed to know what her role was. None of his contacts had come up with anything.
It was always the unknown that tripped people up. Chandler wasn’t going to be allowed to trip him up.
She’d been a cop; he’d found out that much. Supposedly a good one. Then she’d left. Got herself hurt last winter in Minneapolis, although the details on the Internet had been sketchy. There’d been a few photos of her and a story that had been short on answers.
So he’d get them himself. It’d be easy enough to wait for her to leave work. Follow her home. Maybe get a feel for how big a threat she might be.
The answer to that particular question would determine if he allowed her to live.
Bonnie Christiansen wore the slightly shell-shocked expression Nate had seen on the faces of those who life had suddenly hit too hard. When he introduced Risa and himself, her smile was perfunctory but her eyes held the vacant look of someone who probably wasn’t going to remember details of this time a few years down the road.
What she would recall was the vicious way her husband had been taken from her, altering her life forever.
“We’re sorry to disturb you at this time,” Risa was saying gently. “We don’t want to intrude.”
“Have you . . . Is there news about Patrick?” They were seated in a small family room that seemed dominated by the empty leather recliner in the corner. A slight indentation was permanently worn into the seat. Nate didn’t have to be told that the chair had been her husband’s.
“The autopsy has been completed. You should receive word today about the body being released. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Good. That’s good.” Her words were vague. She reminded him of a small bird, with her short cap of smooth hair and skittish manner. Her hands on her lap fluttered as if she didn’t know what to do with them. Finally she clasped them tightly together. “I’ve been talking to Pastor Warren about the service. And our children have been helping choose pictures. We’ll need pictures. We can’t . . . Patrick isn’t . . .” Her voice choked as she repeated, “We’ll need pictures.”
“That’ll be nice.” Risa reached over and covered the woman’s hands with one of her own. “Surrounding yourself with memories always helps.”
“Thirty-one years together, we had plenty of memories.” Her attempt at a smile trembled at the edges. “Some good, some bad, like most marriages, I guess. But it’s all about the good outweighing the bad. In the end, that’s what matters.”
“Mrs. Christiansen, would you mind looking at a couple photos for me? See if you recognize the people in them?”
At her nod, Nate took the pictures of the other two dead detectives and handed them to her.
“I’ve seen them. Both of them,” she murmured.
He and Risa exchanged a glance. “You have?”
“In the newspaper.” She seemed to release the words on a little sigh as she handed them back. “They were the other detectives that died, weren’t they?”
“That’s right. But I was wondering if you recognized them from a time before that. If maybe they’d been to the house. If you saw Patrick speak to them somewhere?”
She frowned, as if trying to focus, then shook her head. “Not that I recall. Of course if he spoke to them at a police function, I wouldn’t remember. Those things are so huge, so many people . . . Patrick loved crowds, but I’m more of a homebody. After a few years I started making excuses to send him alone.”
“I don’t like to go to them myself,” he offered, and she sent him a grateful look.
“We developed our own interests. Couples do,” she added defensively, as if they’d judge her marriage and find it wanting.
“Maybe that’s the secret to a lasting marriage,” Risa told her, and a bit of tension eased from the woman’s frame. “Mine crashed and burned after three years, so I’m hardly in a position to know.”
Shock jolted through him, and it took effort to keep it from his expression. He hadn’t realized Risa Chandler had been married. There was no reason he should know, probably. But he couldn’t help wondering what kind of man had successfully peeled away the many layers to get to the real woman beneath the smart humor and sharp mind.
And there was no excuse for wondering what it would take to discover that woman for himself.
“It happens.” Bonnie was nodding sympathetically. “And the incidence of divorce is even higher for cops, I hear.”
“Well, that explains it then. We were both on the force. Young and stupid.” She stopped, as if reconsidering. “At least I was young and he was stupid.”
The two women laughed a little and Nate blinked. The vague, shell-shocked woman who had greeted them at the door had undergone something of a transformation in the last few minutes, and he knew he had Risa to thank for putting her at ease. For drawing her out of her grief, at least briefly. Even if it didn’t help her open up a bit more to them, it was worth it just to give the woman a couple minutes reprieve from her sorrow.
“What sort of outside interests did Patrick have?” Risa asked.
“Oh, guy things. He used to be quite an outdoorsman, loved fishing when we first got married. He’d steal away on weekends sometimes to go to the river. A few times he went on a bigger trip.” She screwed up her brow, searching her memory. “He went to Canada once, I recall. But mostly to Lake Erie and Raystown. He’d fished other lakes but those were the ones he liked best.”
“Pennsylvania has a lot of good fishing,” Nate put in.
The woman nodded uncertainly. “I guess. I was never much for the outdoors. He did less and less of it after he took that second job. He didn’t have as much free time, I guess.”
But Nate’s interest was caught. Keeping his tone mild, he asked, “He had a second job?”
One of Bonnie’s hands began to flutter again. “Oh, I know it used to be frowned on by the department, but Patrick said everyone did it. And he only worked the odd night or a few hours on the weekend, filling in for a friend. Security guard at some warehouse, he said.” She looked nervous. “Is this going to get him in trouble with the pension board?”
“No,” Risa assured her. “There’s no reason they need to know about it.”
The woman relaxed again. “That’s about it, I guess. I had my quilting and the church choir. After working all day, I mostly like to stay in and relax. But I know men need their time, too. That’s why I never said a word about his monthly card group. Some women try to keep their husbands on too short a leash, but I always thought as long as you can trust them, you need to give them a little space to run.” She looked at Risa then, her narrow face alight in dismay. “When I said some women, I wasn’t talking about you, dear.”
“I know. Although as it turned out, I’d have needed to forgo the leash and use a choke collar.”
They shared another laugh but Nate’s mind was racing. Hobbies. Edwards and Tomey were focusing on finding intersections in the victims. He made a mental note to tell them to check out the men’s leisure activities. The link they were looking for might lie in the victim’s outside interests.
“Where did he meet his card buddies? Were they neighbors? Old friends?”
Bonnie’s hand went to her throat and she frowned. “No-o. I just assumed they were on the force. Can’t recall if Patrick ever did say or if that was in my mind.”
“Did he ever play cards with his group here?”
She shook her head. “No, they always met in a bar they were fond of. Don’t ask me the name. And since he didn’t come home too late or wasted, I never put up a fuss.”
“But you know the names of the men he played with?” Risa put in.
“Oh, he’d mention a few of them from time to time. Let’s see.” Her eyes slid closed for a moment. “There was a Juan, I remember that name. And Jonas, he mentioned him a few times. Mostly I remember him speaking of a Johnny. If I’m not mistaken, Johnny went fishing with him on one of his lake trips about ten years ago.” She smiled faintly. “The only reason I remember that is because it was the trip Patrick caught that huge trout. We have a picture of him with it somewhere around here. He knew a picture was all he was going to get, because there won’t be any stuffed fish mounted and hanging anywhere in my house.”
Nate smiled easily. “Understandable. Do you happen to have that picture handy? I’m not much of a fisherman, but I’d sure like to see it.”
The mention of pictures had her face losing its animation as memory intruded. She swallowed hard. “I’m not sure. It sat right there on that table”—she pointed at an end table next to the recliner—“for years and years. I don’t recall when it was put away or whether Patrick did it or I did.” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them away rapidly. “At any rate I can look. Tell the kids to be on the watch for it as they go through the photos.”
“I appreciate that.” He caught the slight gesture Risa was making and rose. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Christiansen. I want you to know the department is putting a lot of man hours into finding the person who did this.”
“I heard there was a task force.” She stood, too, and her gaze was searching. “How long, do you think? I mean, I realize you can’t predict, but . . .”
“We’ve got a lot of people on this investigation. I’ll personally let you know as soon as we have a suspect. And keep us abreast of the memorial arrangements. I’m certain a lot of officers are going to want to pay their respects.”
She didn’t seem capable of speech then, but she gave a jerky nod and saw them to the door.
As they walked down the drive, he noted that the tiny lawn was just as immaculately kept as the neat white ranchstyle home had been.
Risa spoke first. “Okay, total coincidence, right?”
“The fact that she mentioned a Johnny?” They reached the car parked at the curb and both paused at the driver’s door. “And there’s a Johnny on the final segment of tape left at the crime scene?”
There was a flare of excitement in those odd-colored amber eyes. “Of course it might cease to be coincidence if that tape was left there for a reason.”
It wasn’t difficult to follow her line of thought because he was thinking the same thing. “You mean if we were meant to find it.”
She nodded, moved to round the car to her door. “Makes me really interested to see if anyone else is pictured in Christiansen’s fish photo.”
Jonas knelt before the statue of the Virgin Mary, kissed the rosary beads, and bowed his head. Weeks like these, when he worked second shift, allowed him to go to daily mass. But he took comfort in the time he had to pray in the solitude of his own home, as well.
He had more to pray for than ever.
The guilt that had eaten at him for over twenty years was a constant weight that lived inside him. A writhing fanged beast, it would lie dormant for days or even weeks at a time. And then spring forth in all its fury, teeth and claws flaying him alive from the inside.
It was the penance he deserved for living in a state of mortal sin.
He wept freely, the rosary clutched so tightly in his hands that it cut into his flesh. He didn’t pray for forgiveness. Jonas knew it was much too late for that. He didn’t pray for guidance. He’d never had the courage to follow through on the instructions he’d received from the confessional all those years ago.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever find that courage.
His eyes squeezed together tightly, and his shoulders shook with emotion.
The Holy Mother looked kindly down at him, her arms spread in a gesture of compassion. A compassion he knew he didn’t deserve.
In the end, all he could do was pray for the strength to follow through on the plan he’d set in motion. It might not make things right. But it’d end things.
Once and for all.
Chapter 9
Risa tacked the department photos of Parker, Tull, and Christiansen above her desk and studied them. She needed to cull all their personal details from the briefing reports and interviews to compile a victim grid on each. Know the victim, know the crime. It was one of Raiker’s most oft repeated mantras.
She powered up her laptop and opened the investigative file she’d started, adding that reminder and another to have Nate direct her to the first two crime scenes. Her grids wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the scenes. She had to place herself at the location of their deaths. See the things they’d last seen. Imagine what they’d felt. What they’d heard.
Knowing the victims meant walking through their last hours and placing herself in their shoes. So that’s just what she’d do.
And if immersing herself in the familiar details of the job helped keep the old doubts and insecurities at bay for hours at a time, then that was a very welcome bonus.
She scanned the documents from the file on her portable scanner to load them on her computer. All of Raiker’s investigators were cross-trained, and he made sure all of them were profiling experts. But the organizational methods they used differed. Her colleague Abbie Phillips preferred setting up a victim board where she pinned up tags of pertinent information and used colored string to delineate intersections between the victims’ lives.
Risa was more comfortable with computers. Cutting and pasting the pertinent information into one grid, using different colors for each victim was her method of choice. Intermittently she backed her work up on a flash drive, which would be left here when she took the laptop home each night. The need for backing up their files had been beaten into her by Gavin Pounds, Raiker’s cyber wizard, after her one and only computer crash two years ago.
The familiar task soothed her and left her mind free to turn over the information she and Nate had discovered today, as well as the details from the briefing she’d just left. As she worked she forgot to wonder what was keeping him. When she’d left, he was deep in conversation with one of the task force detectives.
When the door pushed open, she looked up, blinking distractedly. But instead of Nate, she found Eduardo in the doorway.
“Nate still in the conference room?”
“As far as I know.” She eyed the manila envelope he was holding. “What do y
ou have?”
“IT sent this over while we were in the briefing.”
Adrenaline flared. “The stills from the video left at the last crime scene? Let’s see them.”
Although he came farther into the room, he didn’t make a move to open the envelope. Instead, his eyes searched her face. “How are things coming? McGuire keeping you in the loop on the investigation?”
Inwardly she squirmed at the question. She’d never worked under Eduardo’s command. Had left the force before he’d climbed to his current rank. And while she recognized the obligations of his job, she was uncomfortable juggling the friendship-brass aspects of it. “I’ve got no complaints.”
He smiled wryly. “Wouldn’t voice them if you did, you mean.”
“It’s been going all right, Eddie. McGuire’s a decent guy. Believe me, working for Raiker and hiring out to different law enforcement entities all the time, I’ve come in contact with far worse.”
“Hardly high praise, but I guess I’ll take it.” Nate’s voice sounded behind Morales and Risa’s face heated. No use wondering if he’d overheard their conversation. His carefully impassive expression said it all.
As did the level stare he exchanged with his captain.
Eduardo made no attempt to explain or apologize for checking up on him. And that, Risa thought, was another facet of his position. He merely held up the envelope. “Got these from IT. Haven’t looked at them yet.”
Nate walked into the office and began to shut the door.
“Hold that open for a sec, please?”
Darrell Cooper, the red-haired man who worked the front desk, stopped by the still open door with the wheeled cart he was pushing. “Just cleaning up the conference area. Will you guys use this coffee? Otherwise I’ll take it to the staff room.”
“Yeah, sure, we’ll take it.” Morales gestured for him to wheel it into the room. Then he looked at Nate. “I’m guessing you’re going to be here awhile.”