Ruben stopped short. His voice had cracked at her name, and he was not about to let Kent have the satisfaction of seeing him out of control.
It had been four long years since Ruben was forced into the background as Harbinger swept into town, hijacking his first major case. Adding insult to injury, and seemingly without effort, Kent lured Nicole away as well. First a promising career, then a promising relationship had been sabotaged by the profiler.
That was the past, Ruben reminded himself. Harbinger had been out of commission, out of their lives, for so long. In the past two years he thought that he’d grown enough as a detective and as Nicole’s lover to not be rattled by the profiler.
Obviously he had been sadly mistaken. Kent, however, didn’t need to hear any of that betrayed by Ruben’s voice. Voice measured and even, he continued, “I won’t allow you to violate that woman again.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, she’s not a woman anymore,” the profiler stated flatly. “She’s a corpse.”
Without thinking of the consequences, Ruben bounced the back of Kent’s skull off the wall. “Because of you!”
How could this creep have been recruited out of high school by the FBI? Reminding himself that the only upper hand he had over Harbinger was some form of emotional control, Ruben kept his anger in check.
Instead of physically lashing out, he indicated the dozen or so cops who descended upon the scene. “We had twenty cops on alert. An alert that you insisted upon. But you could not bother to call in because—”
“Because as good a profiler as Kent is…” Nicole elbowed her way between them, “he’s no psychic.”
Kent shrugged as if Nicole had stated the profiler did not play the piano very well. Seemingly uncaring that just a few feet away the EMTs pronounced Joann dead. A woman who Kent failed to protect.
“Damn it!” Ruben shoved the profiler hard against the wall, but Nicole put a hand over his closed knuckles.
CHAPTER 4
“Ruben, come on,” Nicole coaxed. “We’ve got a canvas to roll out and—”
“This asshole does it for the rush,” her partner growled.
“And that outburst was helpful, exactly how?”
Nicole knew her tone was harsh, but here was not the place to be having a testosterone-fueled standoff.
Dozens of cops, EMTs, CSIs, and firefighters crowded the alley. All trying to pretend this little altercation wasn’t happening. Their showdown needed to end now or it was going to be on the nightly news.
She squeezed her partner’s hand, but Ruben refused to break his stare. The profiler had really gotten to him this time.
“Rube, please,” Nicole said, her tone more conciliatory.
Her partner’s eyes met hers. She understood his frustration. Kent could get under your skin like bamboo shoots. However, they needed to hash out Harbinger’s difficult personality traits another time.
“This isn’t helping.”
Ruben shoved Kent against the wall and in the same motion, released the profiler. Even so, her partner did not back away, not even a step. The two men were no longer in contact, but locked in combat nonetheless.
Her partner stood several inches taller than Kent and had seventy pounds on the leaner profiler. Ruben was the type of guy who not only had a gym membership, but actually used it. Whereas Kent relied upon his genetic heritage to keep fit.
Despite her partner’s clear physical advantage, Kent seemed completely ignorant of Ruben’s towering presence. And there was nothing that annoyed her partner more than being discounted. Nicole made sure to position herself between them as Kent leaned his head back against the wall. As if the profiler might take a nap.
Nicole hesitated as the air stilled. Activity buzzed all around, yet an eerie calm blanketed the area. The CSI camera flashes added strobe. Faster and faster. They too must have sensed the change in the air. A storm approached. A storm that would wash away vital evidence.
Reminded of the real issue, Nicole set her jaw. The boys were just going to have to suck it up.
“Now if you two are done—”
Then Kent did the unthinkable. He yawned.
Nicole wedged herself deeper between them before Ruben’s shock transformed into anger. While she was trying to think of something, anything, to defuse Ruben’s increasingly short temper, her cell phone rang.
Nicole flipped open the phone. “Usher.”
“Status?” Her boss asked.
“I’m sorry, Captain.” Nicole stressed the last word to keep Ruben in check. “Joann Forme, the woman Kent had under surveillance, is dead.”
Nicole heard a loud sigh on the other end. Followed by a long pause. Her captain believed in counting to ten before responding to bad news.
“Are you going to explain that despite a trained FBI officer providing round-the-clock surveillance and twenty officers on call within a mile of this woman, somehow the killer was still able to get to her?”
“I promise you, sir. We will explain tonight’s events.”
“Within the hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
She snapped the phone closed, harder than she intended. “We’re due back by two, so let’s direct our hostilities toward the killer, all right?”
Ruben glanced at Kent, who still stared up at the brooding clouds. Finally her partner gave a stiff nod and strode over to the beat cop who discovered the grisly scene.
Nicole waited long enough to make sure that the cop held Ruben’s attention before she turned back to Kent, but the profiler had vanished.
Immediately she looked at Joann. Luckily he had not gone back to the body. She searched the growing crowd of blue uniforms, but no sign of him.
Besides being the special agent who had apprehended the highest number of serial killers in the last decade, Harbinger’s other specialty was disappearing when things did not go his way.
Desperate, Nicole looked down the alley in the opposite direction and found Kent’s retreating form.
Nicole trotted to catch up. “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?”
Kent ignored her. She grabbed his arm. Why did he always make her run after him? Why did he always make her feel like a little girl trying to get an absent daddy’s attention?
“Damn it, you are not going to leave me to answer to Glick alone.” Kent tried to walk away. This time Nicole jerked him so hard that he had to face her. She was done chasing.
“Not again.”
CHAPTER 5
Kent stared blankly at Nicole even though he knew exactly the shared past she meant. Not only did he know the reference but took her accusation like a kick to the ‘nads.
Anger flared. At the killer, at himself, even at Nicole for dragging him back into a case like this.
Joann’s sticky blood dripped from his hands. The metallic taste lingered on his lips. A woman he had grown to know more intimately than most husbands know their wives had been killed on his watch. How could Nicole expect him to stand here and have a normal conversation? If he opened his emotions even a crack, the dam would break. He would break.
A profiler was not allowed that luxury. As long as the Plain Jane killer was still on the loose, Kent had to contain his anger, his pain. He had to bottle it and use it as fuel to drive him deeper into the killer’s mind.
Closer to the killer’s truth.
Standing here attending to Nicole’s feelings of abandonment was not going to help him catch Plain Jane.
Nicole must have sensed the emotional wall he had erected. Her words were meant to be stern, however, her tone already sounded defeated. “You’ve got to come back to the station with me.”
Kent looked down at his clothes. His pants were soaked through with dirty rainwater, grease, blood, and who knew what else from his failed attempt at resuscitation. His shirt and coat were streaked crimson with Joann’s arterial blood. Even if he did not need to get the hell away from here, he could never show up at the station looking this much the worse for wear.
He lo
oked up into the eyes of the woman who he had once hoped would be the mother of his children. That was years ago, though. Now this woman just sighed, silently agreeing that he was not fit to present to her captain.
“Fine. I’ll explain to Glick, again, that you had no way of knowing for certain if Joann was Plain Jane’s next victim.”
Nicole paused, waiting for confirmation. Kent gave a noncommittal shrug even though her statement was patently false. He had known Joann was the killer’s next prize. Known it in his gut every time she tucked her hair behind her ears. Known it in his groin each time she flashed that lopsided smile. Kent had known Plain Jane could not resist Joann’s perfect blend of humility and inner beauty.
“Even if Joann was the target, you had no way to know if the killer was going to strike tonight.”
Again Nicole waited for confirmation.
Kent thought the clarification was more for herself than for Glick. She wanted reassurance that there was nothing they could have done to save Joann.
Again he shrugged.
Again he lied to Nicole. For Kent had known tonight was the night. He knew Plain Jane could not resist Joann any longer. The urge to kill. The urge to slash her throat and get up to his elbows in her belly was near to overwhelming.
Kent had known because his hands had wished to reach out to her. He had almost betrayed his presence on the street. The need to know her had grown that strong. His and Plain Jane’s desire merged into one. Yet Kent still could not keep Joann from that long, sharp knife.
“Anything else?” she asked, searching his face. Kent forced his muscles to go slack.
Nicole did not need to know his sense of distress. If she did, the detective might balk at his next course of action.
As the silence lingered, the air closed in around them. The barometer fell as rapidly as the temperature. It was only a matter of minutes before a deluge. Nicole inhaled as if to speak, then sadly shook her head, dropping the hold on his arm.
Free, Kent continued walking down the alley.
Away from the body. Away from his failure.
Nicole was not done with him yet. “Still…” Her voice lingered on the air as thunder rumbled overhead. “When you lost her, you should have called for backup.”
As a heavy rain began to fall, Kent turned to Nicole, the scent of Joann’s perfume fresh in his nostrils.
For the first time tonight, he did not lie to the woman he once loved. “I know.”
CHAPTER 6
The killer charged down the stairs, two steps at a time.
Panting more from excitement than from exertion. The five-block sprint was not as much of a rush as coming that close to being caught.
Hurrying over to the sink, the killer snapped off bloody gloves, rinsed them over and over again under hot water, then balled them together and set off down another set of stairs to the furnace.
Opening the door, the killer threw the gloves into the blasting heat, then pulled off a long, blood-smeared overcoat and tossed it in as well. The fire flared brighter, burning hotter for a brief second. Just as Joann’s eyes had done before being extinguished forever.
CHAPTER 7
Kent crouched in the bushes outside the morgue’s loading dock. The building seemed squat and quite unattractive, even for government work. All dull steel and rough concrete. Artistically as dead as the denizens inside. Meat packing plants had more character than this place.
At some point, someone must have realized that this building was a place where friends and family came to claim the bodies of their loved ones.
That “someone” had planted enough foliage to create an arboretum, not realizing that greenery alone could not shake the building’s despair. No matter the flowering shrubs, no happiness could come of this place.
But Kent was not here to criticize.
He was here to claim his own dead.
Perhaps everyone else could wait until Dr. McGregor rolled his ass out of bed at seven, but the profiler could not wait those four hours. He needed to know now.
Unlike metropolitan centers such as LA or New York, with their round-the-clock medical examiners and nearly instantaneous answers, the remainder of the country still had to make do with good-ol’-boy docs.
Doctors who turned off their pagers at midnight. If you planned on dying after the witching hour, you didn’t count on an autopsy until after McGregor had his breakfast.
Clearly the good doctor did not understand that the killer’s timetable depended on his success or defeat this night. If Plain Jane had his trophy, Kent and the police might have another four or five days, maybe a week, to stop the lunatic before he struck again. If the killer left the crime scene empty-handed, Plain Jane would be out again, maybe even tonight.
If that were the case, Kent needed to know. He needed to be on the prowl again. Trolling the city for short, quiet, and unassuming brunettes.
No one else, not even Nicole, seemed ready to act upon his urgency. Glick had made it perfectly clear when Kent came on the case that his role was solely that of an advisor. He had a better chance of bossing the janitors around than he did of ordering anyone in the department to do his bidding.
Glick had tied his hands. If he hadn’t, Kent would have awakened the medical examiner himself. This idiotic following of bureaucratic protocol could get another woman killed.
A growing fury reduced his vision to a pinpoint.
They were to blame. Glick, Torres, Nicole.
Well…
Kent gulped, remembering his own tragic decision. Nicole had been right. When he lost track of Joann in the Rocky Horror crowd, he should have called for backup. However, Kent knew if all those cops descended on Joann to protect her, the killer would have evaporated.
Worse, had Kent shown his hand that boldly, Plain Jane might have been able to make him. How safe would the women of this city be if the killer knew the face of the man who hunted him?
And they were running out of time. If Kent were correct in his calculations, Plain Jane would only make one more kill in this city before pulling up roots, replanting months from now, miles from here.
Plain Jane had already changed MOs three times in three different cities. He was getting bolder, no longer hiding his true aim. The killings would never lessen, only grow.
Sighing, Kent knew those were all the logical reasons he had not called for backup. However, crouched behind a bush in the pouring rain, Kent could admit the real reason he had not called for help. The sole reason, which he could never share with anyone, not even Nicole, was his delusional belief that he, and only he, could keep Joann safe. He had slipped so deeply into the killer’s mind-set that his reality had warped. Tunnel vision could not even describe it.
There were only he and Joann. No others. The rest of the world was but a blur, meaning nothing and contributing nothing. Joann was his and his alone. The backup police force felt so insignificant that they did not even register on Kent’s radar. Joann was his only concern.
And now he sat here in the mud, waiting for her body. Maybe breathing in her Obsession one last time might give him a sense of peace.
Refocusing, Kent stared at the morgue. It was the one and only building he needed to get into tonight, yet it was the single building he could not enter.
A two-year-old restraining order barred him from entering the morgue or even approaching within one hundred feet. Even if that were somehow lifted, the DA would never officially sanction what Kent needed to do, for fear of contaminating the chain of evidence. That, and the minor fact that Kent had no medical training.
For the span of a breath, anger welled again at Nicole. If only she had not stopped him at the crime scene. Just a few more moments in that wretched alley, and he would have known if Plain Jane had claimed his trophy.
As quickly as the anger rose, the hot burn faded. Not that Nicole wasn’t to blame, but Kent could not dwell again on the detective. He needed laser-sharp focus if he had any hope of catching the killer.
Kent could
still feel the firm grip of her fingers on his arm. Damn, she had been pissed. He might even have a few bruises. But the touch that lingered most was the gentle laying of her hand upon his shoulder. Why the hell had she done that? Why had she reached out to him like she used to? He’d been perfectly content glowering at her and her partner-boy toy. Perfectly happy to secretly pine for her unattainable affection.
For months they had worked at arm’s length. Alternating between apathy and begrudging acceptance. Their relationship was right where he liked it.
Now she had to go and cover for him again. Just like the old days. Just like the old nights when he would hold her until she fell asleep, then watch her breathe in and out. He would lie motionless beside her, gaining a sense of quiet and peace, before he left their bed to go stalk another killer.
Damn, but she’d felt good in his arms. The smell of her hair. The taste of the sweat on her skin after she had worked out. His body remembered the sensation even better than his mind. And this was not the echo of some pervert’s lust when he stalked victims. This was his own desire. His own need. And that is what made it so painful. Nearly unbearable.
Kent shook his head, trying to clear Nicole from his thoughts, but simply ended up scattering rainwater from his hair. That’s why he could not allow his mind to touch upon the detective. It always led him down a path he couldn’t follow.
Gritting his teeth, Kent forced himself to stare at the morgue’s loading dock. The body should have been here by now. Did Nicole suspect his plan and have the corpse shipped to the FBI’s body shop in Kansas City instead?
His concern had been premature, as the medical examiner’s van hydroplaned into the parking lot. A spray of dirty water washed over him as the transport skidded to a stop. Kent did not even bother to wipe the grunge off. His renewed pinpoint focus would not let him. Nothing else mattered.
Joann, or what was left of Joann, had arrived.
A young morgue attendant, one who Kent did not recognize from two years ago, rushed out the thick double doors. Protecting a “Slipknot” leather choker, the slim attendant pulled his white coat over his head.
The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection) Page 7