TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series)

by Casey Hill

  ‘Here we go,’ said Kennedy. ‘The great philosopher begins to analyze every last little piece of information.’

  Chris was notorious for his musings after they had been at a crime scene. He would surmise at length, often guessing at traits about the unsub that would later turn out to be true. Kennedy didn’t give him any credit for it though. He was a traditionalist: hard evidence only.

  ‘We don’t even know that it is a he,’ Reilly pointed out. ‘That could have been a dinner between friends last night, or two sisters. How do we know that it wasn’t an elaborate suicide even?’ This was part of the pattern the three had. They would bounce ideas and theories off each other, spurring the other on to think harder, to really dig deep for a solution.

  ‘That set-up was definitely for a date,’ said Chris. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you there, Chris,’ joked Kennedy with a heavy dose of irony, ‘since a handsome lad like you is off on a date every night of the week.’

  Chris rolled his eyes and concentrated on picking the shriveled tomato out of his salad. He was as health conscious and as fit as Reilly was.

  ‘Well, we just have to dig deeper into the victim’s life. Friends, family, habits. You know the deal.’ She didn’t want to discuss Chris’s love life, any more than she wanted to talk about her own.

  The truth was, she had been feeling a little off throughout lunch. The sight of Kennedy’s burger leaking grease was enough to turn anyone’s stomach. She had been back at work for a week now, after her extended Florida sojourn, but still wasn’t over her jet lag. It was unusual for her, but she thought she would get back to normal after a few morning runs and a couple of early nights.

  Though if she was being honest, Reilly would hazard that thoughts of Todd Forrest had been keeping her awake at nights. Their affair had ended so abruptly, and he hadn’t reacted at all when she told him she would be returning to Dublin.

  Perhaps it was best in the long run. A relationship that straddled two continents was bound to fail. But there had been so much about Todd that had appealed. Not to mention all they had been through together over those few weeks. She’d been drawn into an investigation that was deeply personal to him and his father, her old Quantico mentor Daniel. ‘Put it out of your head,’ she warned herself. She’d made her choice and now here she was back in Dublin and back in the heart of a brand new investigation.

  That was part of it, she guessed, that Todd symbolized sunny, fresh Florida. His tan skin and white teeth instinctively reminded her of her native California. They had both grown up around beaches. He knew what it was to watch a game of baseball. He knew how to make a Chimichanga. He had memories of Thanksgiving, just like her. She had thought herself reconciled to life in the Ireland, but being in the US last month had revived her, in more ways than one. Now, back in grey and drizzly Dublin, everything seemed more tiresome and more complicated.

  Back in the lab at the Garda Forensic Unit, she felt more comfortable. It was easy for her to lose herself in her work anywhere. This was the reason she got up in the morning, and if she ever faltered, she had good reason to pick herself up and keep going.

  It was good to be back working with Chris and Kennedy too. She didn’t have the same fraught relationship with them that she’d had with the American equivalents she’d worked with in the past. Though it had taken a little time in the early days (especially with Kennedy), after over two years working side by side they were respectful of the way she did things, and she in turn was open to their ideas.

  They had proven themselves in the past, not only as investigators, but as colleagues she could rely on. Friends almost, if Reilly was the kind of girl who went in for that kind of thing.

  Later at the lab, she looked up to see Lucy hurrying over to her desk. ‘Welcome back. I can’t believe I missed your first week.’

  Reilly was fond of Lucy Gorman. She was the daughter of senior GFU investigator Jack Gorman, but that didn’t win her an easy ride in the unit. On the contrary, Jack would have wanted his daughter anywhere else but working in forensics. But both he and Lucy had special reason to be here, in this job. Lucy’s sister, Grace, had gone missing ten years before, and the case had never been solved. Never even a reliable lead.

  Until recently.

  ‘Thanks. Did you enjoy your time in Scotland? She was glad the younger tech was back from her holidays; her own leave of absence had been hurried and she hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to Lucy before she’d left for Florida.

  And they had much to talk about.

  Reilly knew what it was like to have loved ones snatched away from you. She knew what it was like to feel that every day you did this job you were avenging something. She also knew how it could take you over, each and every case feeling like it had personal meaning. Reilly didn’t have a very fulfilling personal life, and she didn’t want to see that happen to Lucy as well. She had promised that she would push the task force investigating her sister’s disappearance at every opportunity, but she hadn't had the opportunity to do that while away in Florida.

  Now that she was back, she would redouble her efforts to try and get closure for the Gorman family. Something about Lucy reminded her of herself when she was younger. Back when she was a little softer.

  Lucy shrugged and her face darkened, obviously thinking of the same thing. ‘Good to get away from this place for a bit I suppose.’ Then she forced a smile, obviously eager to move on to happier subjects. ‘You look so tanned though.’

  ‘Not for long, I’m afraid,’ said Reilly. ‘I’ll be pasty again in two weeks, no doubt about it.’

  They were interrupted by the shrill bleat of Reilly’s phone. ‘Reilly? It’s Karen. I’ve got the results on the Armstrong autopsy if you want to come over.’

  Dr Karen Thompson was one of Reilly’s favorite people. It wasn’t just that she was another strong woman in a male dominated work force, but that she was impressive on merit alone. Driven, capable and extremely detailed, Reilly trusted her implicitly. She sometimes wished she knew Karen outside of work; that they could sit and chat over a glass of wine. But that wasn’t how either of them did things.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll be over in about half an hour. Let me check with the lab first and see what if anything we have.’

  As she made her way down the hallway Reilly ran into Gary. At the moment he was doubling up on IT duty while Rory, the GFU’s resident cyber whizz was on holiday.

  His boyish face broke into a grin. ‘Just to let you know that I’ve got your vic’s laptop, so you can expect some dirt in….oh, I don’t know. An hour?’

  ‘Don’t strain yourself, Gary. I wouldn’t want you to miss something important.’

  ‘Have I let you down before? I’m trying to break my personal best.’

  ‘We’ll see what you come up with,’ she said, trying not to smile. ‘I’ll reserve judgement until then.’

  At the morgue, on the other side of the city, the air was brittle with cold. Reilly, Chris and Kennedy all donned masks and nose plugs. Reilly was especially sensitive to the smell of death, even when a corpse was this fresh. There was something about a body being cut open to the air, things that should not see the light being exposed. Everybody, no matter how clean living, had a musky rotten smell to them in death. Dr Thompson was used to it and went without a mask.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor said, ‘your victim was in good health overall. Note the lack of fatty tissue, the good condition of the muscle. She was in perfect health, really. I was very quickly able to rule out death by natural causes.’

  Reilly, Chris and Kennedy nodded. Thompson was good at her job, but she liked to unveil her results slowly. All medical examiners had this slight theatrical tendency, Reilly thought.

  ‘There had been no sexual activity prior to death, though your victim had fitted a diaphragm, indicating that some was perhaps expected.’

  Dr Thompson lifted the sheet up to obscure the victim’s body, leaving only her face visible. A face that was once quite strik
ing, now leached of peachy skin tones, simply thin flesh stretched over a skull.

  ‘There is no sign of struggle. No bruising, no flesh under the fingernails, nothing to indicate the victim was aware of being killed. What is interesting though,’ she said, ‘is your victim bit down quite hard, on the left side of her tongue, before death. I may have attributed this to mere accident while eating, were it not for the powder, the same substance recently encountered by you Reilly.’

  Thompson now pulled the sheet all the way up and turned away to retrieve a sample of the powder.

  ‘As we already found from our previous situation, the powder is once again antimine,’ she confirmed and Reilly nodded, expecting as much. ‘Good to have had this previous encounter as it doesn’t usually show up in your average toxicology test. It is derived of a natural product and comes from the seeds of a fruit called Joker fruit. The fruit itself is not poisonous and indeed, is a delicacy in Asia. But the seeds are extremely poisonous when eaten in large quantities.’

  ‘This is indeed what killed your victim. I have run analysis on the food that was prepared, and it was present in huge quantities in one plate. The meal was duck confit with a salad of Asian greens. It would have been undetectable to the palate.’ Dr Thompson was finished. ‘There you have it,’ she said. ‘That’s all I was able to gather at the moment.’

  ‘Thanks, Dr Thompson,’ said Chris. ‘Brilliant as usual.’

  Reilly noticed that Dr Thompson blushed slightly at the compliment. She was warm-blooded, after all.

  ‘That antimine again stuff narrows things down at least,’ said Kennedy afterwards. ‘We have a list of importers from the last time, so we can start looking closely again at anyone who can get their hands on it.’

  ‘Still be hard work,’ Reilly said. ‘Considering you’re still running into brick walls with it from the last investigation. Plus, we can’t be sure that someone hasn’t smuggled it in either. I want to go over the crime scene again on iSpy, make sure we haven’t missed anything.’

  Kennedy held up his hands. ‘If you’re talking about a late night, count me out. I’ve got my anniversary dinner tonight. I can bring a note from the wife tomorrow,’ he joked. ‘I’m more afraid of her than I am of you.’

  Reilly smiled. ‘You’re free to go. I wouldn’t want Josie coming after me, lovely as she is. Chris and I will take care of it. Unless you have other plans?’

  ‘Nothing but the gym and a spot of reading,’ he said. ‘In other words, I’m free as a bird.’

  Back at the GFU, they ordered some takeaway Thai food and set up in the Visual Equipment Suite. Technically, you weren’t supposed to eat in here. Technically, you weren’t supposed to do quite a lot of things.

  It was one of Reilly’s gripes about the job that her fitness suffered because she so often had to work late and ended up eating takeaways. But it had been a while since she and Chris had done it.

  Eyeing the food, they grinned conspiratorially at each other. ‘We can work it off tomorrow,’ said Chris.

  ‘Yup. Can’t be all work and no play,’

  ‘True,’ said Chris. ‘I certainly feel I’m too much of one, and not enough of the other lately.’

  Personal revelations from him were rare enough. Reilly had worked with him for two years, and still only knew that his parents were dead, he had the same commitment to keeping in shape as she did, and if he was doing anything at the weekends, it was usually going to the gym or spending time with his friend Matt and his family. He was godfather to Matt’s four year old daughter Rachel, and Reilly knew that he enjoyed seeing her and being part of a family. For all their joking with Kennedy about his wife, Reilly got the sense that Chris actually envied that close knit relationship, having someone know you so well. She wondered if she carried around the same aura of loneliness, the same air of having been wounded in the past.

  They switched on the iSPI equipment and ate in companionable silence over the whir of the computers.

  ‘So,’ he said eventually, between bites of chili chicken, ‘how was Florida?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was…nice to be home - sort of. I didn’t realize how much I had missed the US. Sometimes I feel like a fish out of water here.’

  ‘It’s what makes you stand out, though. You’re like a breath of fresh air. Something colorful in a room full of gray.’

  ‘I’ve already had comments about my tan, thank you.’

  She had a way of automatically shutting down anything suggestive like that. She knew it would be so easy to fall into something more and to completely ruin the strong working relationship they had. She knew that other women in the force talked about Chris. He was handsome, mysterious and people wondered what he was like away from the confines of work.

  They’d shared a lot in their working relationship so far, including a revelation about Chris’s health that now seemed under control, and she wasn't sure if this had hindered or improved their relationship since the earlier days, when they’d become uncomfortably close during their first ever investigation.

  Jennifer Armstrong’s living room sprang to life on the screen before them and Reilly’s thoughts returned to the present. Their murder victim had lived the life of someone rarely at home. There was a small table that doubled as a desk, a cross trainer, a book shelf that held a few ornaments, but no books. It was a room that gave away few clues about Jennifer herself, or the person who killed her. Or the reason why she was killed.

  ‘Pretty bare,’ said Chris.

  ‘Reminds me of my own living room,’ Reilly commented truthfully.

  They zeroed in on the kitchen. ‘This is where the meal was prepared,’ said Chris. ‘You can still see the dirty chopping board, the pans, the knife…wait a minute,’ He zoomed in on the knife. ‘Taking into what Karen said earlier about the meal, it sounded quite specialist. And that doesn’t look like the kind of knife a woman like this would keep in her kitchen. It’s of very high quality and it doesn’t match anything else.’

  ‘Maybe she just likes a sharp knife.’

  ‘No,’ said Chris. ‘She barely has anything else in the kitchen. Why this one expensive utensil?’

  ‘So, you’re saying we’re likely looking for someone who brings his own tools?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Chris, and as they continued to discuss and hypothesize, soon Reilly felt like she’d never been away.

  She couldn’t find sleep easily that night though. The events of the day were going around in her head. The detectives would start interviews tomorrow, find out more about this girl. And she would follow up with Gary to see what personal revelations about the victim her team could bring to the table. Despite his boasts, he hadn’t got back to her with any information about Jennifer Armstrong by the end of the day.

  Added to that was the newly re-opened Grace Gorman missing person investigation. Reilly knew that Lucy was hopeful she could get things moving on that. But where did you even start to dive back in to a case that’s been dead this long? A piece of jewelry left in a house was a flimsy piece of evidence when taken alone. There was always the chance that the necklace could have lost somewhere else, or been sold and resold a hundred times in the ensuing years since its owner’s disappearance. Of course, there was the fact that it was found in that terrible place. Somewhere where bad things had clearly happened. But so far, the man who had occupied Martin O’Toole, the long-dead pensioner’s house, had been untraceable.

  And then there was Lucy’s hope – she really believed that her family might get some closure at last. She wanted that for her parents. But she should know how rare that was, in this line of work. Lucy worked in crime scene investigation — she knew better than most that there was rarely a happy ending. Not after this long.

  Reilly had an awful feeling that maybe no one would ever know what had happened to Grace. The answer had to be somewhere, though. It always was. But sometimes that somewhere was a place they could never go, or with witnesses who would never talk.

  Disappointment on top of d
isappointment.

  Well, Reilly would do what she could. She would talk to the task force and check out the files and see what if anything she could bring to the new investigation. It was all anyone could do.

  And it was the kind of thing she did every single day.

  Chapter 3

  This wasn’t my first time, of course. The girl with the green eyes, staring at me onscreen like a personal challenge. “Come and get me,” she seemed to say. As if she wanted to see you try just so she can push you back. So that she can list your failings later to her friends: here’s all the reasons I could never love him.

  I’ve heard those before, the reasons. Too clingy. Too demanding. “You want too much. It’s like you want to climb inside my mind or something.”

  No, it wasn’t the first time. But it was the best yet. The first I’ve felt confident enough to leave for others to find. The others were clumsier. I had to choose those who weren’t so one-minded and cold-hearted. Who might almost be capable of arousing pity, if they weren’t necessary sacrifices.

  I don’t like doing things randomly, pointlessly. All has a climax, an ultimate end goal. But it has to be perfect. It has to be exactly the way I planned it.

  Reilly went into work the following morning feeling better than she had in days, a banana smoothie in hand. She wore a blue roll neck jersey dress, and had her blonde hair up in a high bun. She had got up early enough to run around the park near her flat before work and was feeling energized for the first time in days since her return. The jet lag seemed to be finally abating.

  ‘OK…OK,’ called out Gary as she walked into the lab. ‘You hunted me down.’