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

by Casey Hill

‘You gave me the impression I wouldn’t have to look for you, actually,’ she replied drily. ‘But what have you got?’

  She took a chair by Gary’s workstation and Lucy joined them on the other side.

  ‘Well, ladies, prepare to have your mind blown,’ said Gary and Lucy rolled her eyes.

  Reilly said nothing while the two younger techs bantered. Was it only her that didn’t need to bring a sense of fanfare to her work?

  ‘OK,’ said Gary finally, ‘here’s what I’ve got. Jennifer Armstrong had pretty good security protection on her laptop, probably because she does PR for some big clients. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff I found there. Scandal. But that’s another story. The deal on your victim from her computer is that she works long hours, emails her mother and friends quite a bit, and kept a lot of photos from a past romance. From the looks of things I would say she still holds major torch for this guy and it’s been her one really serious relationship.’

  ‘Possible perp?’ Lucy ventured.

  ‘Wait, there’s more,’ he said. ‘Our girl was a regular on dating sites. Loveforever.com, Firestarter, Matchbook – she had accounts with all of them and she wasn’t afraid to use them. Unfortunately it’ll take longer to look in to any private conversations she had with these guys. But I do have a list of matches she’s had.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s a lot. I’ve never had that many.’

  They both looked at her and she shrugged, blushing. ‘I dabble.’

  Reilly thought it if it wasn’t so pitiable it might almost have been funny to watch Gary deflate.

  ‘Well, you might want to be a little more careful,’ he said. ‘Some of these guys aren’t safe, obviously.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have one over to my apartment, thank you. Like I don’t already have an overdose of parenting in the work place, I don’t need you adding to it.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Reilly. ‘Can we get back to the matter at hand?’

  ‘Well, that’s almost all for now. Jennifer Armstrong dated frequently. She would email her friends and say: “I have a date tonight," but no details beyond that. So it’s hard to figure out who she might have been seeing the night she was killed. I’m going to try to access her conversations, but those places have major security.’

  ‘It’s a start at least,’ said Reilly. ‘But I’m not sure how we’re meant to find these guys. “FunnyBunny213”, “Bigboots24”? It’s a bit beyond me.’

  ‘I’ve got faith, boss,’ said Gary. ‘And I’ve seen Batman and Robin work miracles before,’ he added using his favorite nicknames for Chris and Kennedy. In the meantime, I’ll try to find out more.’ Reilly got up to leave. ‘Oh, one more thing. she liked fancy restaurants. Over the past six months, she’s had reservations at some of the poshest spots in town. I’m talking Amuse Bouche, L’Ecrivain, Hammer and Tongs. She didn’t mind dropping the big bucks for some wild boar or whatever.’

  Reilly wondered if this meant anything taken with the specialist knife that she and Chris had noted at the crime scene. She asked Lucy to follow her to her office afterwards.

  ‘About the other case …’ she began hesitantly, when they were alone. They would surely both know she was referring to the Grace situation. ‘Any word from the task force?’

  ‘Useless.’ Lucy shook her head despondently. ‘They’re at a dead end from what I can tell. As much as I wanted the necklace to break the case wide open, I know myself that there’s a long road ahead.’

  ‘Well, I wondered about going over old ground again; this time with fresh eyes. You’d be surprised at how people sometimes remember key things years later. Little details that they didn’t think were important at the time.’ Reilly had an inkling of something last night lying awake thinking about it, but she didn't want to reveal the notion to Lucy just yet. It was enough to let her know that she hadn’t forgotten about her.

  ‘Do you mean re-interview some of the witnesses?’

  ‘For a start, yes.’

  ‘I’ve got to warn you, Reilly, Dad might be upset. He won’t like it if old wounds get reopened.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. But Reilly knew better than anyone that until you knew what happened, those same wounds never got the chance to heal.

  That morning Kennedy and Chris went to interview Jennifer Armstrong’s last serious relationship, Cormac Lister.

  ‘I don’t think he’s our guy,’ said Chris on the way from the station, ‘but he could give us some useful insight. We don’t know anything about this girl so far.’

  He watched the inner city scenery go by. Living in a more affluent side of Dublin, you might not even believe this other part existed: the housing estates and apartment blocks where terrible things happened every day. Mostly not the kind of things his unit Serious Crimes was involved in: these were crimes motivated by poverty and desperation, and the perpetrators were easy to find.

  What he and Kennedy dealt with often revealed an uglier side of people. The cases they handled were usually people hurting others for no reason at all, or for reasons that were not fathomable to anyone else — often borne of huge egos and delusions of grandeur; people who believed that they had a right to trespass on the lives of others. Many garden variety killers felt remorse, but not these guys.They wanted fame, some of these killers, and the sad thing was they often got it.

  The landscape changed into more genteel suburbs now, leafy and pleasant as they approached Southside Dublin suburbia. ‘Here we are,’ said Chris when they pulled up to a very Victorian brick house with planter boxes of chrysanthemums along the window sills.

  Reilly had sent over the information from Jennifer’s laptop earlier that morning, and the handsome man that had been most prevalent in her collection of photos ushered them in. The house inside was in the kind of mess that could only be created by children, and Cormac Lister had clearly been trying to clean up before they came in.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘My wife works. Seems like I haven’t been able to think straight today or get anything done since the news about Jenny.’ He sat down on the couch with a thump. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, putting his face in his hands. ‘It’s been a huge shock.’

  Chris almost shook the guy’s hand and left that moment. He was completely innocent. He had seen a lot of perps act out grief: believable performances, to be sure, but he could spot them now. Lister was genuinely upset.

  ‘We just need to ask you a few questions,’ Kennedy said, expertly ignoring the guy’s distress.

  ‘Of course,’ the man said, visibly pulling himself together at Kennedy’s tone. ‘I just need to keep an ear out in case one of the kids wake up.’ He indicated a baby monitor.

  Chris knew that in situations dealing with fragile or volatile people he really came into his own. He let people speak in their own time, not getting impatient with them as Kennedy did. ‘You were in a relationship with Jennifer for 4 years, is that correct?’ he began.

  ‘Almost 5. We broke up 18 months ago.’

  Chris looked around at the domestic mess surrounding them and resisted the urge to frown in confusion. How could all this happen in just 18 months? There was a photograph of Lister with a woman and two babies on the mantlepiece.

  He caught him looking and explained. ‘I met my wife about a fortnight after I left Jenny. Things moved pretty fast: we wanted the same things. She was pregnant after a couple of months and we had twins. They’re seven months old and she has a three year old from her first marriage. Hence,’ he gestured at the toys and bottles around the sitting room, ‘this mess.’

  ‘Did you and Ms Armstrong split amicably?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘No, not really. She was very upset. She kept up a long campaign of contacting me afterwards, even after the twins were born. I asked her many times to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. The last time I made it very clear that she was frightening my wife and that I would take measures if she didn’t cease.’ His face hardened then, and Chris suddenly wondered if he had been wrong. Lister looked like
he had every reason to be angry with Jennifer Armstrong.

  ‘What kind of measures?’ he asked.

  ‘Like going to the police. That wouldn’t look right for her, not in her line of work. But she backed off after that. I didn’t hear from her, or anything about her really, until the terrible news yesterday. I had heard she was dating again, and I was happy for her.’

  ‘Where were you on Friday night?’ asked Kennedy. He obviously thought this was a dead end too but wanted to rule it out. Chris knew his partner had no patience for the intricacies of the case.

  Lister shrugged. ‘I was here, cooking dinner for my wife and family. You’re more than welcome to check with her. The truth is, that’s what I can be found doing most nights.’

  ‘Do you have any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt Jennifer?’ asked Chris. Unlike Kennedy he preferred to use the victim’s first name so as to make the questioning feel more personal and less official. Make it more comfortable and it would be easier for subjects to let their guard down.

  ‘No. I can’t think why anyone would do this. Jenny was a lovely girl. She was fun, she had lots of friends. She liked to go out a lot, she lived a very busy life. That was the reason we split really. I wanted a quieter kind of life, but Jenny’s career was all-important. She didn’t have room for anything else, barely room for me. Perhaps a disgruntled client…? But, no. I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt her.’

  ‘OK,’ said Kennedy. ‘One last thing though, can you confirm if Jennifer had any favorite restaurants, places she liked to go to in particular?’

  He smiled. ‘If a restaurant was written up in the Irish Times, or of one of her clients recommended it, then Jenny would be there in a heartbeat. She has been to every good restaurant in this city, and she’s had cooking classes with many of the Michelin star chefs. Not that she cooks herself, really. She just loves food.’

  Sadly for Jennifer Armstrong Chris thought, as they finished up the interview and said their goodbyes to Cormac Lister, it the very thing that killed her.

  ‘What was with the restaurant question?’ asked Kennedy when they were back on the road. ‘That came out of left-field.’

  ‘It makes sense, when you think about it,’ Chris replied. ‘Jennifer was killed because of a gourmet meal. She frequented high class restaurants with different men. We can check their bookings, see if their reservations list features Jennifer or matches any of the guys on her dating sites. It’s a long shot, but at the start of a case like this, everything is, you know that.’

  Kennedy sighed. ‘Things were much simpler in my day. When I was courting Josie we just went down to the pub for a pint and a packet of crisps and that was as fancy as things got. Now, everyone’s going out for miniature bits of steak on a bed of baby food. Last night for our anniversary she takes me to this place where the waiter wrestled my coat off me, sat me down and practically wiped my mouth. I said to her: “If this is fine dining, then the whole world has gone to the dogs.’”

  ‘Looks like it’ll be just me and Reilly checking these places out then,’ Chris joked, not altogether put out by the prospect.

  ‘You’ll get no complaint from me,’ his partner agreed. ‘Now if your woman had been going to burger places, that would be a different story.’

  Chapter 4

  Despite its promising start, the day did not get any more fruitful. Gary was still unable to get the real identities of the men on Jennifer’s dating site profile, but had promised that he would stay late to work on it.

  ‘Julius identified the knife in the kitchen though,’ he told Reilly when she checked in with the lab on her way home.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ Julius, the more senior lab tech on the team replied, ‘it’s not your garden variety kitchen knife. These are made in Italy. They’re for top of the line kitchens, for people who are really serious about cooking. Nothing else in your victim’s kitchen even comes close.’

  Julius didn’t expect his boss to show much enthusiasm. She was notoriously cool and calm. He suspected the only thing that really got Reilly Steel excited was seeing a killer get cuffed. Other than that, she was the consummate professional.

  ‘Ok, thanks guys,’ she said. She didn’t tell Gary not to stay too late. Hadn’t she put in long hours at the start of her career? She was putting them in still. It was part of the job.

  Reilly had stopped by the shops in Ranelagh on the way home and picked up some fresh shrimp. Now she had a paella simmering on the stovetop, and an Adele CD playing low on the stereo. The female vocalist crooned through the speakers, making Reilly feel like she had company.

  There was a storm wailing outside, rain lashing her apartment windows. With the lights turned low and the aromatic smells from dinner wafting through the room, it seemed like the perfect set up for a date.

  She recalled the evenings in Clearwater she spent with Todd and Daniel, drinking wine, eating Daniel’s cooking and forgetting about casework albeit only briefly. It had made her feel a little more like she had the balance in her life right.

  Now, she was about to sit at the table and eat her dinner while poring over files. Such was the reality of her working life in Dublin.

  It wasn’t that she wanted Todd to come here and for them to resume their relationship; that wasn't an option, and in any case she still wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about him. They had spent a brief and tumultuous affair, made even more intense by the personal nature of the case they were working. They had been very physically attracted to each other that was for sure, but she didn’t know if a real emotional connection lay under that, or whether it was the situation they were in that had made things feel so intense. The trouble was, Reilly wasn’t very good at sorting out her feelings about her personal life. That’s why she threw everything she had into work; it was just easier. The only person she really needed was her father. Mike was her only remaining family, and while she’d originally come to Ireland to keep an eye on him, he’d since returned to the States. At least in Dublin, even if they didn’t see much of each other, they’d shared the same night and day. She knew the bond she shared with Mike was stronger than she would ever have with another person, and was borne of their shared grief and anger about her mum and Jess, as well as their loneliness and guilt at being the ones left behind.

  She worked out a plan of attack for the Armstrong case. Because it had been identified in a previous case, the one that had necessitated her leave, but remained unsolved, the detectives already had a list of the places in the city that used anitmine aka Joker fruit, and lists of those who had licenses to use it and import it. It was a logical place to start. It was decided that she and Chris would visit the restaurants that Jennifer had been to, to check out the antimine angle, and their victim she had been there with the same person, or if any of her dates were traceable.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the team was still scouring trace evidence found at the murder scene. There must have been something else useful left behind; it was just a matter of finding it. Movies gave the impression that these things were discovered straight away, but in reality it was a long and arduous process.

  So while the substance and its food-related equivalent wasn’t much of a start, it was something. Reilly was confident that they would get a decent lead soon, but given that it hadn’t been all that long since the previous finding, she was worried that the killer would strike again before they found him. It was that kind of case. There was no violence in Jennifer’s killing; it was clinical, academic. They were dealing with someone who killed for pleasure, not out of passion. They had to get their sights on him before he got brave enough to try again.

  Her paella was ready. Perfectly cooked, the edges slightly crunchy. She contemplated pouring a glass of wine to accompany it and then thought better of it. She had work to do and the jet lag still lingered.

  She sat down at her small table, and took out Grace Gorman’s missing person file. Since the discovery of the necklace, she must have read it
tens of times by now, but she still thought something might jump out at her. There was the distraught mother, the angry father. There was the boyfriend, strangely ambivalent, but then he was just a kid. She thought about what she’d said to Lucy about things jumping out after so many years, and decided that Darren Keating should be re-interviewed: it would help to know what kind of person he had grown into. He may remember things that he was scared to reveal then. If he and Grace had been in any trouble for example, he might not have wanted to say at the time. But now it would be different.

  Then there were the interviews with Lucy herself. Short and gentle, because she was so young. Also because Jack Gorman would have hung, drawn and quartered anyone who upset her.

  Did your sister have nice friends?

  I don’t know. I suppose so. They laughed a lot.

  Did you like her boyfriend?

  I don’t know…not really. He always told me to go away, get out of the way.

  Did you ever see them doing anything naughty?

  I don’t know.

  Did your sister ever tell you that she had a secret? Something she didn’t want your parents to know?

  I don’t think so. Sometimes she got angry with them.

  Why did Grace get angry with them?

  They wouldn’t let her go out at night, down to the shops.

  Do you like your parents? Are they good to you?

  Yes.

  That was it. Nothing of great value there, unless you knew to read between the lines a bit.

  The sisters had been reasonably close in age, but eleven year old Lucy was just young enough to have been a nuisance and perhaps sometimes a confidant. It could be that she knew more than she thought she did. It was hard to get information out of young children, Reilly knew.

  Most adults were very suggestive and it was easy to get them to remember things that they had never seen. If you asked a person: ‘Did you see the man in the blue hoodie?’ they would remember that, even if the man was wearing red.