Untraceable

by Laura Griffin

  And when it was over, she looked up at him and smiled, and that was answer enough because for the first time in her life, she knew she was home.

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  UNSPEAKABLE

  Coming soon from Pocket Books

  They left her waiting in a conference room for more than four hours.

  Elaina refused to acknowledge the snub. Instead, she retrieved her briefcase from her car, along with her cell phone. She spread her files out across the table and worked diligently, as if she’d gotten up this morning with every intention of spending her Friday afternoon in some sleepy police station in the middle of nowhere. By 5:30, though, her patience was gone. She was hungry and tired. And sticky, too, as the room had no air-conditioning—only a portable fan that circulated the same warm air, over and over. She was about to get up to search for a vending machine when the door popped open. Officer Maynard again.

  “Miss McCord? The chief‘ll see you now.”

  An audience with His Highness. Elaina collected her manila file folders and shoved them into her briefcase. She stood up.

  “Right this way, ma’am.”

  Detective Maynard led her through the wood-paneled police station and past a sixtyish woman who sat at a metal desk beside one of the offices. She was talking on the phone and writing on a pad, a stack of pink message slips piled at her elbow.

  Maynard opened the door to Breck’s office, and Elaina stepped into the inner sanctum. The chief sat in a padded leather chair behind a faux wood desk. Arrayed around the room were plastic chairs occupied by people she’d seen earlier at the marina, with the exception of a bald man who held a cowboy hat in his hand. The star pinned to his chest told Elaina he was a Texas Ranger.

  “Dr. Frank Cisernos,” a white-haired man said, standing up. “County Medical Examiner.”

  Elaina shook his hand and introduced herself. She darted her gaze around to the other faces. A young Latino officer smiled at her, but no one else got to their feet to trade greetings.

  Maynard took one of the two empty chairs and gestured for Elaina to take the other. She deposited her briefcase in it and remained standing, then laced her fingers together in front of her so no one would see that she was trembling.

  “So.” Breck leaned forward on his elbows. “You’re here to lend us a hand. Scarborough tells me you’re fresh from the Academy.”

  Elaina tried not to wince. “I graduated last fall.” She wondered what else her boss had told him. He made no secret of his dislike for her. But he’d finally given her a shot at criminal profiling, so maybe he was coming around.

  Or maybe he’d just sent her here to fall on her face.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m here to provide a criminal profile. Also, I’m authorized to offer FBI assistance with any labs you need.” She glanced at the Texas Ranger—who also probably had the clout to fast-track lab work—and knew her stock was sinking quickly.

  “A profile, huh?” Breck leaned back in his chair now. “You’re gonna tell us about our unsub?”

  Everyone’s attention settled on Elaina.

  “What I have so far is preliminary,” she said. “I’ll need to see photos from this morning’s crime scene and I’ll need to observe the autopsy. I understand someone from the state crime lab’s coming down to assist?”

  She glanced at Cisernos, who gave a slight nod.

  “And do we know the victim’s name?” she asked.

  “Nothing confirmed,” Breck said. “But for the past half hour, I’ve had just about every parent whose college kid is down here ringing my phone off the hook. They all heard about the body on the news. Now their daughter’s not answering her cell, and they want to know if it’s her or not.

  “So go ahead.” Breck nodded. “Tell us your profile.”

  “You said, ‘nothing confirmed,’” Elaina replied, sidestepping the bear trap. “You mean you have a lead?”

  “All I’ve got for sure is Caucasian female, long dark hair.” Breck eyed Elaina’s long dark hair as he said this. Then he glanced down at the yellow legal pad on his desk. “She was a mess—we can’t even tell her age. But we took a call this afternoon about an abandoned Audi sedan at a boat slip on the north side of town. Car’s been there two days. It’s registered to Valerie Monroe, twenty-seven-year-old from Houston. There’s a purse inside. Driver’s license, med school ID, health insurance card. This girl’s a brunette. Car’s been impounded, but we still gotta process everything.”

  “And my supervisor told me the victim was found in the marshes this morning by some fishermen.” Elaina looked at the ME. “She was naked and had been eviscerated, apparently, like Gina Calvert back in March?”

  “Gina Calvert was found March fifteenth,” Cisernos said. “By my estimation, she’d been there at least two days.”

  “And Gina’s body was also discovered in the wildlife park.” Elaina’s confidence returned as she ran through the facts of the case, which she’d committed to memory months ago. “She’d been injected with ketamine. Her car was found abandoned at a boat slip. Her personal items were left inside.”

  Breck folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, sounds like you’ve done your homework, Miss McCord. So tell us about our perp. Who’re we looking for?”

  Elaina’s instincts screamed for her to stop. The prudent thing would be to wait until she had all her facts together. But her face felt warm, her armpits felt damp, and the air in the room was thick with skepticism.

  She took a deep breath. “I think the offender is a white male, late twenties to early thirties. I think he’s bright, but he has an inflated sense of his own intelligence, and he’s driven by ego. He’s most likely attractive, possibly charming, and comfortable approaching women with some kind of ploy. His sophisticated MO shows that he’s organized and capable of controlling his impulses. I think he lives on the island, is underemployed, and owns or has easy access to a boat. His hobbies include hunting and fishing. He likes guns. I also think he’s probably got some background in law enforcement.”

  She noticed the startled looks, but kept going. “No sign of sexual assault, at least nothing overt.”

  Breck’s brows arched. “Overt?”

  Elaina shifted slightly. “Even without rape, I believe these are sex crimes. The knife work is a form of penetration. And this type of offender sometimes can’t get an erection, so he substitutes something else.”

  Breck traded looks with the ranger, and Elaina plunged on so she wouldn’t have to answer any questions yet.

  “He kidnaps these women, injects them with a chemical to incapacitate them, takes them to remote locations, and then makes a deep abdominal incision with a serrated hunting knife. He leaves almost no trace evidence behind, indicating a good deal of knowledge and planning—”

  “Now, wait a minute there.” Breck held up his hand. “We only got two victims. You make it sound like we’re dealing with a serial killer—”

  “I believe we are.”

  “—when it could be a copycat. Some domestic murder, staged to look like the girl from spring break, just to throw us off.”

  Elaina tipped her head to the side. “And how many of those details were released to the media?”

  Breck darted a glance around the room, and she knew she’d made a tactical mistake.

  But he recovered quickly. “And we don’t know what evidence he might have left in that Audi,” he added. “Could be prints all over—”

  “I’m also referring to Gina Calvert’s car. And the abandoned Mustang found at the boat dock following the Mary Beth Cooper murder.”

  The room fell silent. Breck’s face was pure astonishment.

  “Mary Beth Cooper,” he stated.

  She nodded.

  “From nine years ago?”

  She nodded again.

  Breck leaned forward now, scowling. “A guy confessed to that crime. He’s sit
ting in Huntsville.”

  Elaina nodded again.

  “You mean to tell me you think that’s the wrong guy they got up there? He was convicted in a court of law. Someone wrote a book about it, for chrissakes.”

  “He confessed to a string of murders,” Elaina said. “Investigators have irrefutable DNA evidence he actually committed some of them, too. I’m saying we need to look at Mary Beth’s case again. I think it’s related.” In fact, Elaina believed there was a good chance Mary Beth Cooper was this perpetrator’s first kill. But she’d keep that to herself for now.

  “The Cooper girl died of asphyxiation,” Cisernos said. “I performed the autopsy myself.”

  “And as you mentioned in your report,” she said, “the victim had ketamine in her bloodstream at the time of death. And she’d been stabbed with a serrated knife.”

  The room fell silent again. Elaina searched all the faces for some sign of support. Breck sat with his arms crossed, looking disgusted. Cisernos frowned. The cops in the room looked uncomfortable, with the exception of the young Latino officer, who seemed intrigued. He sat forward on his chair, watching her, as if waiting to hear more.

  “Well, now.” Chief Breck stood up and finally offered her his hand. “We’re glad you could make it up here today, Miss McCord. I think we can handle things from here.”

  Troy Stockton’s boat was flat and narrow, and looked nothing like the other flat, narrow fishing boats living at the Lito Island Marina.

  “It’s black,” Elaina said, gazing down at it from the dock.

  “So?” He undid the bow line and whipped it into a neat coil, which he tossed on the boat’s floor.

  “So, all the other boats are white.” She stepped aboard. Everything shifted, and he caught her arm to steady her.

  “No law against black.” His hand dropped away, and he turned to flip some switches at the helm. Soon the engine grunted.

  “Looks like it can go in pretty shallow water.”

  “Eight inches,” he said with a touch of pride.

  She looked around for a good place to stand. There weren’t many choices, so she rested a hand on the captain’s chair as they eased back out of the slip.

  “Hold on.” He shifted gears, and then they were gliding in the other direction, moving out of the sheltered cove the marina shared with the police dock. Elaina glanced over her shoulder and watched the pier recede. She was going out on a boat with a man she barely knew, without letting her boss or anyone else know what she was doing. Not terribly smart.

  She patted her back pocket, where she’d tucked her cell phone. While Troy had waited out on the patio at her hotel, she’d showered and changed into the jeans and T-shirt she kept stashed in her gym bag. Her Glock was strapped to her ankle, just above her Nike. She had her phone. And if Troy tried anything funny, he was going in the bay.

  Elaina shifted, putting some distance between them. She couldn’t explain why he made her uneasy, but he did. It made no sense, because she spent every day surrounded by macho types—guys trained in firearms, and hand-to-hand combat, and mind games. As a border town, Brownsville attracted more than its fair share of gun-loving lawmen. Since day one, many of the Bureau, DEA, and Homeland Security guys had attempted to intimidate her either physically or by getting in her head, and she’d learned to ignore them.

  But Troy was harder to ignore.

  He stood between the helm and the captain’s chair, and she stood beside him, trying not to cling too tightly and reveal her fear of toppling out of the boat. She glanced over and noticed his muscular forearms and powerful-looking calves. He was some sort of athlete, obviously, but she didn’t have a good guess as to the sport.

  “You get seasick?” Troy asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “You look uncomfortable.” But he wasn’t even looking at her. Those eyes—which were the exact green color of the bay—were trained on the southern horizon. He wore cargo shorts today and Teva sandals. His white T-shirt contrasted with his sun-browned skin, and she decided he must spend a lot of time outdoors. Maybe he was a surfer.

  And why was she thinking about this? She needed to focus on the case, not Troy Stockton. The man had a reputation. It was coming back to her in bits and pieces. She didn’t usually read celebrity mags, but she had a vague recollection of the People she’d flipped through at her dentist’s office. Troy had been photographed with some gorgeous starlet. That girl from Corpus Christi… what the hell was her name?

  “That was some profile you came up with.”

  She cut a glance at Troy and saw the smile playing at the corner of his mouth. She bristled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “White male. Likes hunting and fishing. Owns a boat. Sounds like half the men on this island, including me.” He stared down at her, serious now. “Except for the getting-it-up part.”

  Elaina felt a blush creep up her neck. “Look, Troy—”

  “Here we are.” The boat slowed abruptly as he pulled the throttle up, and she stumbled into him. “She was found just over there,” he said.

  Elaina looked in the direction he was pointing, but saw nothing unusual. Just more grass and water.

  “How do you know?”

  He tapped his control panel, and she noticed the GPS. “I got the coordinates.”

  He got the coordinates. From the police, no doubt, who clearly were sharing information with members of the public, but leaving her completely in the dark.

  “They got a good set of prints from the victim yesterday night.” Troy veered close to the shoreline, and the water was so shallow, Elaina could see grass on the bottom. “They’ll run the thumbs through DMV, hopefully get a positive ID soon.”

  Elaina thought of Valerie Monroe, who’d graduated third in her class at Baylor med school and recently had been accepted as an intern at Texas Children’s Hospital. She wondered what Valerie’s parents were doing at this moment. Most likely they were either en route to Lito Island or camped out at the police station, waiting for news.

  Troy veered left into a narrow inlet.

  “We’re going in?”

  “You want to see it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but…” She watched him deftly steer the boat through the tight opening. The water wasn’t even a foot deep, and she saw ripples in the sand as they skimmed along the surface. “What if we run aground?”

  He smiled. “You get out and push.”

  But they didn’t run aground. He tipped up the engine and slowed down, using just enough speed to maintain control over the steering as they maneuvered this way and that through all the channels. She began to doubt that he really knew where he was going. Maybe he was leading her to some generic patch of marsh.

  She spotted something yellow tangled in the reeds. “Look there.” She pointed at it.

  “Well, shit.” He let the motor stall and then jumped out of the boat and waded over to take a look. “I’ll be damned.”

  “What?”

  The boat drifted into the grass, and bumped against the bottom.

  Troy gazed down at the thin yellow twine, but didn’t touch it. “They must not have seen this,” he muttered. “Or maybe they came in from the south.”

  “Who came in?”

  He looked up. “The crime scene guys. Breck, Maynard, Chavez. They should have collected all this. It’s evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  He trudged back to the boat and shoved it into the center of the narrow channel.

  “Of your unsub.” He climbed aboard and got them moving again. “This marsh, it’s like a maze. I grew up all over this bay, and I get lost half the time. Looks like the killer used twine to mark the route so he could find his way out after dumping the body.”

  Elaina stared at the twine, struck by the idea.

  There went her theory that the killer had to reside on the island. Maybe he wasn’t local after all—he just used this trick to find his way around.

  “And how do we know it came from him?”
she asked. “Maybe Breck left it.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because.” Troy gave her a hard look. “They found it in Gina’s case too. He leaves it every time.”

  Elaina continued to look queasy, so Troy hugged the coast as he headed back in. He felt her behind him as she gripped the chair and stared silently off into the distance.

  She hadn’t liked him poking holes in her profile, but that was too damn bad. Sure, the profile sounded good in theory, but given the demographics around here, it didn’t narrow things down a whole lot. Troy had never cared much for mind hunters. Most of them stayed holed up in their basement at headquarters and rattled off psychobabble while the real cops rolled up their sleeves and worked the cases. If criminal profiling was Elaina’s thing, she was going to have an uphill battle getting anyone around here to buy into it. Profiling and fortune-telling were first cousins, as far as Chief Breck was concerned.

  But she’d figure that out soon enough.

  Troy glanced back at Elaina and saw that she still had that uneasy look. Her nose was pink, too, and she’d forgotten sunscreen. She wasn’t from around here, evidently, but he didn’t know her background. He needed to do some digging and find out just how green a green-horn she really was.

  She squinted at something up ahead, and he followed her gaze.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Dunno,” he said. But as they neared the marina, it became clear something had gone down during their little sightseeing cruise. Cars and news vans filled the LIPD parking lot.

  “Breck’s holding a press conference,” Troy guessed, turning into the cove. They glided past the police station, and Elaina turned to gape at the crowd.

  Troy pulled into his slip without touching the dock. He hopped out and tied the bow line to a cleat, then held out a hand for Elaina.

  She barely glanced at it as she stepped onto the pier without help.

  “I hope your police chief knows what he’s doing,” she said. “If he releases too much detail, he’ll compromise the investigation.”

  “That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. The man hates reporters.”