Sleep Tight

by Anne Frasier

  "Bambi?"

  "I know. You can imagine how that played out with the investigative team. Finding a dead Bambi in the woods."

  "No doubt," she said dryly.

  "Because of the decomposition of the body, we have even fewer leads with this victim than with the previous one."

  "Any similarities other than age?"

  "Here are high school photos of both victims."

  He pulled out eight-by-tens of two smiling girls, both blond. "If the perpetrator is the same in both cases, then I'm guessing he likes 'em young and he likes 'em blond."

  "Had the Scott girl been reported missing?"

  "No. Her parents were divorced, and her mother had custody. As soon as she turned eighteen she left home. The mother said she hadn't seen or heard from her in two months, but didn't think it was strange."

  "Where was she living?"

  "In a house where transients hang out. Nobody there seemed to know much about her. A couple of druggies remembered her, but said she basically stuck to herself and didn't stay there all the time. Said they never saw her with anybody strange, but everybody there seemed a little strange to me."

  "We need to try to determine whether she was abducted from the park where her body was found."

  "We've been trying to piece together a timeline, but keep running into dead ends."

  "I see three possibilities: She visited the park and was killed on the spot-which would signify that her murder was unrelated to the other earlier case. She was abducted somewhere else, killed, and dumped at the park. Again, probably unrelated to the other. Or, she visited the park, was abducted by our Romeo, then killed and returned to the same place."

  "I asked her mother if she liked the outdoors," Elliot said. "The woman didn't know." He pursed his lips in disgust. "That's what I call parental involvement."

  "What about the father?"

  "Hadn't seen Bambi since she was seven."

  He handed her two folders, one labeled april el-lison, the other bambi scott. "When the governor got after us about getting a profiler in here, I really didn't think there was a connection between these two cases. But now, with this new body showing up last night-"

  "Was an autopsy performed?"

  "Yeah, but we won't have any lab results back yet."

  She shuffled through the Ellison paperwork, searching for the medical examiner's report. "Any drugs show up in the lab tests?"

  "She tested positive for morphine and pheno-barbital."

  "Pharmaceuticals."

  "Here's the only videotape we have of the guy." He popped a tape in the VCR and pushed the play button.

  It took a moment for Mary to realize the camera was located in an elevator. The door opened. A man in a ski mask dragged a bundle inside, then punched a number on the control panel before exiting the elevator.

  Senatra shut off the tape. "Some computer whiz at the BCA has been working on enhancements, trying to find something, but so far she hasn't had any luck."

  The phone rang, and Senatra answered it. The conversation was brief. "She'll be there in ten minutes." He hung up. "Detective Wakefield," he explained. "He's ready to meet with you."

  The Minneapolis Police Department was located in the historic City Hall just up Third Avenue. Mary walked the few blocks, taking the Fifth Street entrance where the statue of Hubert H. Humphrey stood. Then it was down a hall of fossil-embedded marble to Homicide Detective John Wakefield's office.

  Wakefield was around fifty, stocky, with hair that was as much gray as black. His suit was wrinkled, his eyes puffy-evidence of a sleepless night.

  "I understand you're Gillian Cantrell's sister. She was assigned to Homicide a couple of months ago." They both sat down, Wakefield behind his desk. "We do that sometimes," he said, adjusting a jacket that looked uncomfortably snug. "Borrow people from the BCA." He had a rural Minnesota accent she hadn't picked up on the previous evening. "Gillian's a bit impulsive, but I think she might be detective material."

  Apparently Wakefield didn't know what a task he'd set for himself, Mary thought. Gillian's gullibility and attraction to strays could prove an insurmountable handicap.

  He checked his watch and got down to business. "Okay, here's the deal. You already have all the information on the first two homicides, so what I'm going to tell you is exclusively about the body found last night near the rose garden."

  He handed her several photos of the murdered woman, some taken at the scene, some at the morgue. The morgue views were all close-ups of the woman's face and the clawed, grafted hand.

  "We've already got a problem. The eyes of the mall victim were removed with almost surgical precision. The latest victim's eyes were gouged or ripped out."

  "Did the media know about the victim's eyes?" Mary asked.

  "Oh, hell yes," Wakefield said with disgust. "The old couple that found her told everybody. But that's not all that's different about the third body. This one was blond like the other two, but she was older. We don't have a positive ID yet, but the coroner puts her at about twenty-two. So we have three murders, all of blond women, but nothing else about them is the same. One left in the woods, one in the mall where she was kidnapped, one in a park. Two had their eyes removed, but removed differently-which immediately warns of a copycat. Two were left facedown, the third we don't know about. Animals can really make a mess out of a crime scene."

  Mary lined up three eight-by-tens of each crime scene, all taken before the bodies had been touched. "The dress April Ellison was wearing. Did it belong to her?" The fabric looked old. Maybe vintage.

  "I don't know. Here, let me have my assistant check on that." He picked up the phone and told his assistant to call April Ellison's parents.

  When he hung up, Mary continued to follow her thought processes. "What about the body that was found last night? She's partially nude, but she's wearing something. Did you attend the autopsy?"

  "Yeah." He rubbed his forehead. "They sent her clothes to the BCA for analysis. It was a dress."

  "A sexy dress, like the one in this photo?" Mary pointed to the shot of the girl in the elevator.

  "It appeared to be a plain, ordinary dress, but it was hard to tell because it was torn up. We'll have photos of everything by this evening. I'll get copies to you. Now," he said, inching forward, "what do you make of the hands?" He pulled out a photo of the clawed hand, minus the taped branches. "Both hands were mutilated, the nails removed and the branches slipped into the quick."

  Mary elaborated on the theory she'd discussed with Gillian. "The woman wasn't what he wanted, so he tried to mold her into something else. When that didn't work, he killed her."

  Disgust, but not surprise, registered on his face. "It's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen."

  "Any suspects?"

  "I had the research department do some cross-referencing, and we came up with over a hundred possibilities." He handed her a stack of papers. Names, mug shots, and offenses that spanned years. Some of the rap sheets took up several pages. She riffled through names, aliases, faces, fingerprints, body art, and distinguishing physical characteristics until she came to Gavin Hitchcock. His life of crime had begun as petty thefts and minor offenses to finally culminate in murder.

  "How long will it take you to come up with a profile?" he asked.

  "About a week."

  "A week?" He gave her a pained look. "I'm not sure we can wait a week."

  "It can't be rushed. It takes a few days to study the information, then put a profile together. After that, I send it to Virginia, where it's gone over by a team of behaviorists."

  "I was hoping you could come up with something quickly so we can narrow down the list of suspects."

  He expected too much. The FBI had spent years building and training profilers, but the Behavioral Science Unit was no longer getting the funding and attention it had received in the past. Time had proved that while profiles could provide a useful adjunct to a case, they were by no means infallible. For a brief period, the FBI had eve
n attempted to phase out the word profiler from the FBI vocabulary, but it was too late. It was already too deeply ingrained in the public mind.

  "I'll do what I can, but in the meantime I would suggest you begin interviewing suspects," Mary said.

  "Already got people on that. Sent half the list to the BCA, the other half to our department. Officers started the interviews this morning. We're also running everything through VICAP, CJIS, and are in contact with Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Iowa, trying to cross-reference information. Since every department is run independently, that can take a helluva long time."

  "I know," she said with sympathy.

  Wakefield dug into his pocket, pulled out a roll of antacid tablets, and began popping them into his mouth. He was sweating profusely, and it wasn't even hot in the room. It occurred to Mary that he looked more than just tired. He looked ill.

  "Can I get you something?" Mary asked. "A drink of water, maybe?"

  "Oh, Christ." He began opening desk drawers. "I've got some around here somewhere." He pulled out a bottle of water. "You know what's really bugging me? I have a daughter. A seventeen-year-old daughter. With blond hair." He suddenly stopped. "Oh, hell. I'm sorry."

  "That's okay."

  He put up his hands. "No, it's not. I want you to focus on this case. My personal situation has nothing to do with it."

  "You'd be surprised how many times this kind of thing happens to me." She didn't have a degree in psychology, but because her job dealt with behavioral science, people often felt the need to confess their anxieties to her.

  "Valerian root." He held up a brown bottle. "It's supposed to calm your nerves. I've been taking it for a month, and I don't think it does shit."

  "Have you tried yoga?" she asked.

  He let out a derisive snort. "You've gotta be kidding."

  "I know agents who swear by it."

  "FBI agents?" he asked in disbelief.

  She nodded.

  "You try it?"

  "Me? No, but I've cut down on caffeine and quit smoking."

  "If I cut down on caffeine, I wouldn't be able to function. Okay, I gotta go. Have another meeting to get to with Chief of Homicide. I'll get a copy of all pertinent information to Agent Senatra by this afternoon, and I'll be calling a meeting with all the departments when we get everything organized."

  Mary gathered up the photos and papers and added them to the ones already in her briefcase. "I'll put together an unofficial profile in order to prioritize the suspects. That should give you enough to work with until I hear back from Headquarters." She stood and extended her hand.

  He took it. "The governor personally asked for you," he said. "Not because you're a hometown girl, but because he knew you were one of the best. Here in Minnesota, we're proud of the work you've done."

  "Thank you."

  He was looking at her as if he had no doubt about her ability to solve the case given enough time. She had a decent track record-he was right about that. But then the FBI didn't advertise unsolved cases.

  Chapter 5

  Before concentrating on the profile, Mary had to talk to Gavin Hitchcock. She'd never been one to allow herself to jump to conclusions, always waiting for the evidence to point the way. Now she needed to know if there was any basis for suspecting him of these new murders-or were her emotions skewing her judgment?

  The automobile repair shop where Hitchcock worked was on University Avenue in an area of St. Paul known as Midway.

  She soon spotted a hand-painted sign that said abes repair. Parking spaces on University Avenue were at a premium, so Mary pulled her rental car into the alley behind the shop. To the left of an open door was a lot with weeds poking between broken-down cars that had been towed and abandoned years ago. Those carcasses were sprinkled with washing machines and mowers, stacks of tires, gas cans, broken beer bottles, and bed frames.

  Mary inched the car to the side of the alley, trying to avoid the broken glass while leaving room for another vehicle to squeeze past if necessary. She got out, locking up with the remote. Up four bowed, rotten steps, she hesitated and checked to feel the reassurance of her gun beneath her jacket, irritated and slightly alarmed by the way her hand shook and her heart hammered.

  This would be the first time she'd come face-to-face with Hitchcock since the murder trial during which she'd recounted finding her friend's dead body. All the while she was on the witness stand, Hitchcock, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, leg shackles, and handcuffs, had stared emotionlessly at her from his seat next to the state-appointed defense attorney.

  Despite that, she was able to speak clearly and effectively, describing her years of close friendship with Fiona, describing exactly how the young girl had looked when she'd tripped over her body that day in the woods. The way the flies had gathered at the corners of her sightless eyes, the way bees buzzed around her mouth and crawled out her nose.

  Mary hadn't called the repair shop first. She wanted her visit to take Hitchcock by surprise so he wouldn't have a mental script prepared.

  Inside the door stood an L-shaped counter. Along one wall was a row of chairs where two people waited, flipping mindlessly through greasy magazines while a fluorescent light hummed and flickered above them.

  "Can I help you?" the man behind the counter asked in a heavily accented voice. His crisply ironed blue shirt said jesus montoya, manager under a motor oil logo. When she told him she needed to speak to Gavin Hitchcock, he opened the office door and stepped out on a wooden landing that overlooked the work bay, yelling to a man under a raised Cadillac. Then he hurried back into the office, where the phone was ringing.

  Mary waited on the landing, one hand gripping the wooden rail. She watched as Hitchcock put down his tools and walked toward her, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.

  "Yeah?"

  He was seventeen when she'd last seen him, which now made him twenty-six or -seven. He'd been thin and wiry, a lanky teenager with stringy brown hair hanging in his empty eyes. Now he was an adult, a man. His hair was still stringy, but much shorter, and his eyes were no longer empty-they were cold and bitter.

  As he stood staring up at her, ineffectually trying to wipe the grease from his hands with a red rag, she thought of how those same hands had bludgeoned a young girl to death.

  Even though her position at the top of the landing put him at a physical disadvantage and should have lent a subconscious intimidation to the scene, he didn't seem to notice.

  "I'm Mary Cantrell," she announced, feeling herself mentally retreating. Her name didn't elicit any response of recognition from him. "Gillian Cantrell's sister."

  "So?" He glanced up and behind her, toward the office. Through the glass, the shop manager was still on the phone.

  "I want to talk to you."

  "I'm busy." His voice was deep and emotionless.

  It had been up to the jury to decide whether or not he would be charged with premeditated murder…

  "Was it your intention to inflict bodily harm upon Fiona Portman?"

  "No."

  "Did you meet with Fiona Portman with the specific purpose of killing her?"

  "No."

  "Can you describe for the jury what happened that afternoon of October twenty-ninth?"

  "I'd been drinking."

  "That wasn't uncommon for you, was it? To spend the day drinking?"

  "Not really."

  "Isn't it true that you'd been kicked out of school for fighting?"

  "Yeah."

  "Isn't it true you'd been in the woods that day?"

  "I want to ask you a few questions," Mary now said.

  "I can't talk."

  "It won't take long."

  "Gillian got me this job," he said. "I don't want to lose it."

  He turned away, heading toward the car on the lift. His job wasn't the issue here-he was only using it to avoid her. And mentioning her sister was a handy dig, a way of getting to Mary at the same time.

  She followed.

  "Are you a
cop?" he asked, picking up a heavy wrench. "I think I remember Gillian saying you were a cop."

  "FBI."

  Behind them someone banged on the office window. She turned to see the manager gesturing wildly, his face contorted.

  "Get out of here," Hitchcock said. "No customers allowed in the bay area." He stared at her another moment. "The hydraulic could slip. The car could come down and crush you."

  "And you don't want that to happen?"

  "I don't care if you get killed, I just don't want to lose my job."

  Right. She checked her watch. "When do you take a break?"

  "I don't."

  "What time do you get off work?"

  "When I'm done."

  Two hours later Mary was sitting in her car, which she'd maneuvered into a better position. From her new vantage point, she could see both the front and back areas of the auto repair shop.

  It was getting dark by the time she spotted Hitchcock leaving the building. She pulled up beside him as he made his way along the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his dirty jeans, walking in the direction of the bus stop.

  She reached across the seat and opened the passenger door. "Get in."

  He stopped and looked at her.

  "Get in the car," she repeated. "I'll give you a ride to wherever you're going."

  He opened the door wider and dropped into the passenger seat. She sped away from the curb before he could change his mind.

  "Aren't you afraid to have me sitting beside you? When I could just reach over like this-?"

  He put his hand to her throat, pressing his fingers against her trachea-just hard enough to make her gasp and pull back, a survival instinct.