“He’s gone.” The stress of the last six days intensified. He was gone…but for how long? “Is the Federal government going after him?” Will averted his eyes, just a fraction, but Robin knew he was keeping something from her. “What is it? Will, what aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s not—”
“Don’t tell me it’s not important. If it’s about Theodore Glenn, it’s important! I need to know.”
“He killed Sara Lorenz. Stabbed her to death last night.”
She sat heavily on the couch. “I—I want to feel bad. But she helped him. She spied on me.”
“He also left me a letter. Told me he was going to Mexico.”
“And?”
Will didn’t say anything for a long minute.
“Dammit, Will, I’m not a fragile flower. Tell me!”
“He said he was coming back. I just won’t know when.”
Robin took a deep breath. This had been what she feared, in some ways more than facing Glenn again. Knowing he was free, waiting to pounce on her. Taking his time.
“I’m not going to let him touch you. Robin, we have everyone looking for him. The Feds have people in Mexico. We are on the border—”
“You were supposedly on the border before he crossed it, too,” she snapped, feeling bad for taking it out on Will. “I’m sorry, it’s not you—”
“Don’t apologize. I know how you feel, Robin. I feel the same way.”
She shook her head. “No. No, you don’t. I’ve put my life on hold. I hired a bodyguard. I closed my business. I’ve barely left my loft. I’m trapped. All because of him.” She didn’t even want to say his name anymore. “I think that’s exactly what he wants. He wants me to be jumping at shadows, looking over my shoulder, worried that he could come for me at any minute. I’m not going to live in fear for the rest of my life! Not anymore.”
She stood, walked over to the window and looked down at the crowded street below. “I’ve been living in fear for seven years, even while he was in prison. The dark scares me because I immediately think about Anna. Falling in her blood. I sleep with the lights on like a little girl. I have a gun because I think it can save me, but only I can do that. Only I can take back my life.”
She faced Will. “He’s not going to have power over me anymore. I’m not going to let him.” She stepped toward Will, a weight lifting from her heart. Saying the words out loud, believing them, made Robin feel free for the first time in years. “I’ve made something of my life, and I’m going to enjoy it. I’m not going to let that bastard take it away from me!”
Will grabbed her, pulled her tight against his body, his lips pressed hard on hers. She opened her mouth, tasted him, a free woman at last. Free and in love.
“Robin,” he murmured. “You’ve never let anyone control you.”
He ran both his hands through her hair and she leaned into his caress. “I will do anything, Robin, anything to keep you in my life. You’re vibrant. Beautiful. Smart. I’m complete with you. I would do anything for you. Mostly, though, I need you.”
She touched his face. “Will—” She kissed him. “I’m glad we found each other again. Older and wiser.”
He rested his forehead on hers and she breathed in his warm scent. “I have to go.”
She nodded
“Being involved with a cop isn’t easy. It’s not a regular nine-to-five job.”
“Neither is running a nightclub.”
“I want to share everything with you, Robin, but some of it isn’t pretty.”
“You certainly don’t have to tell me that.”
“No, I don’t.” He paused. “How long are you going to keep Mario around?”
“I told Isabelle—who manages the art gallery—that Mario would handle security for the event.”
“Good.”
“But Sunday is Mario’s last day. I’m not going to have a bodyguard for the rest of my life. I can’t live like that.”
“You’ll have me.”
“That I can live with.”
It was six when Will arrived back at the station. Carina had already written up the report on the Sara Lorenz homicide. “During the canvass,” she said, “neighbors said that Sara was friendly, kept to herself, and told everyone she was an attorney. In fact, she was a paralegal but has been putting herself out as a lawyer. Doug found more money and the Feds are locking it down. Dominguez and Hazelwood met with the bank manager this morning, with a warrant from Stanton, and we now have all the bank records and contents of a safe-deposit box.”
“Busy day for everyone, not just us,” Will said. “What was in the box?”
“You’re not going to like it.” She slid over a folder.
Inside were copies of photographs of Robin. They’d been taken over time, over at least two years. “Sara,” Will said.
Carina nodded. “Sara kept a journal of Robin’s movements for the last twenty-six months, much more intensive in the last year since she started working at the Sin under the name of Gina Clover. There were also letters from Glenn to Sara about how to circumvent the system, how to create corporations within corporations, things like that. We have a good chunk of their correspondence and Doug is going over it now to create a better time line.”
“We know the gist of it.” Will looked through the pictures. Robin at the art gallery. Robin at work. Robin at the gun range. Many of the photos were taken from a distance. Some from odd angles, as if Sara had used a camera phone at waist level. “Sara was probably sending Glenn photographs to help gain his trust.”
“Lot of good that did her.” Carina rubbed her eyes.
“Go home,” Will told her. “It’s been a long couple of days. The Feds are tracking Glenn in Mexico, we can’t even take a shot at him down there.”
“Jim’s killer is still out there.”
“And we can’t do anything about that at six o’clock on Friday night.”
“What about you?”
“I—” He didn’t want to tell Carina he was working on Jim’s case. She would insist on staying, but she was going through an emotional wringer. “Just paperwork.” Not a complete lie. “If anything breaks, I’ll call you.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely.”
Carina left and Will found himself alone in the task-force command center. It had been set up to track Glenn, but right now Will spread out his file on Anna Clark’s murder. Why had Jim called him? What had he wanted to talk about? Jim’s message hadn’t sounded urgent, but Will wouldn’t forgive himself anytime soon for not responding to it immediately.
The door opened and Hans walked in. Closed it behind him. “Got something.”
“And?”
“Gage’s phone records. He made a call last night to Dillon Kincaid. I assume you know him.”
“Yes, I didn’t know you did.”
“I worked with him on a case last year. I saw the 202 area code and called the number. I was surprised when he answered.”
“I wonder why Jim called him.”
“And talked for twenty-six minutes. We started talking, but I think you need to listen in. He’s waiting for our call.”
Hans put the phone on speaker and dialed Dillon’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Dillon, it’s Hans with Will Hooper.”
“How are you doing, Will? How’s Carina holding up?”
“She’s okay. I just sent her home. I didn’t know we’d be talking.”
“You can fill her in later. I feel awful about Jim. He was a good guy, one of the best investigators I’ve ever worked with.”
“We’re going to have a huge hole in the department,” Will agreed. “Why did Jim call you last night?”
“He wanted to run through something that was bugging him. And I’ve been thinking about it all day. Hans filled me in on the differences in the crimes Glenn confessed to and the Clark homicide. What I keep coming back to is Jim’s thought that the cuts were made postmortem.”
“Which means what
? That the killer didn’t want the victim to suffer?”
“Yes. The killer wanted to kill her, but not torture her. There was no pleasure in the act of killing. Killing was a means to an end. And especially since Anna wasn’t the intended victim. If you’re right and everyone involved in the case knew Anna was going to be out of town, then the killer was surprised when Anna showed up.”
“There was one more thing about Anna’s crime scene,” Will said. “Glenn always tortured his victims in their bed, then moved them to the front door before slitting their throat. But there was no evidence that Anna was even in her bed that night.”
“That fits in with your theory that the killer was waiting for Robin,” Dillon agreed. “The killer surprises Anna, subdues her—according to Hans she was petite, so it would have been easy for someone of virtually any size to slit her throat. Then, to make it appear that Glenn killed her, the copycat makes incisions in her body with an identical weapon. Jim said that it appeared that the marks were made twice?”
“Yes,” Will said. “We talked about that yesterday, that the killer traced and deepened the marks. But the coroner at the time didn’t make note of anything odd.”
“Sometimes, we only see what we expect to see,” Dillon said sadly.
“We’re no closer to figuring this out,” Will said. “I need to interview the seven people Jim spoke with between clocking out and going home. I’ll drag them all down to interrogation—”
“Good idea,” Dillon said. “But I think I can do you one better.”
“How so?”
“Jim was hung up on why you were paged. Pagers started going out of fashion even back then. Everyone had cell phones. But I think the person didn’t want to talk to you. The person wanted you to come to the apartment and find the body. You, Will, specifically you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dillon.”
“The killer was angry with you. I told Jim last night that this sounded like a premeditated crime of passion. I suggested that he look into Robin McKenna’s ex-boyfriends, regulars at the club, anyone who may have wanted her dead and planned on using Glenn’s M.O. to do it. But not just anyone could have access to Glenn’s hair samples and, according to Jim, no one in the media knew about the bleach until the trial. That was insider knowledge.”
“Not to mention using the exact type of knife. Those details weren’t revealed until trial either,” Will interjected.
“This murder was a crime of passion, but it was directed at you, Will,” Dillon said. “The individual has an above average IQ. Methodical, organized to the point of being borderline OCD. Narcissistic—not in the same way as Theodore Glenn who believes he’s above everyone, but to the extent that this person categorizes people as worthy and unworthy. That is how Anna’s death was justified, even though she wasn’t the target. Anna was unworthy because she was a stripper—it wasn’t a ‘real’ job in the eyes of the killer. In fact, the killer probably has disdain for working-class professions and individuals. But more important, this individual dislikes women in general. And this is what is key:
“I’d stake my reputation on the fact that the killer is a woman. She identified solely with her father, and would have followed in his footsteps. If she’s a cop, her father was a cop. If she’s a CSI, she has an advanced degree and her father was a doctor or scientist of some kind. She worshipped her father and is an only child, possibly a child the father wanted to be male and couldn’t keep those feelings from her. She internalized that and concluded that women were inferior.”
Will leaned forward but couldn’t speak. Dillon was describing a woman he knew. As Dillon continued, Will’s fear grew.
“Her mother was a weaker figure in her mind, likely a homemaker,” Dillon surmised. “She may have gone back to work at some point and took a working-class job because she had no formal education, something that would embarrass the killer even if it was satisfying to the mother. She will have no close female relationships. Her female colleagues will not like her and she will exclusively socialize with her male colleagues. She is attractive, professional, and a perfectionist. She will have clocked in as much overtime as she can, not for the money but because her job is her identity.
“Will, you personally know this woman. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance you had a sexual relationship with her.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“Diana Cresson,” Will said.
His stomach churned. How could he accuse a woman he’d worked with for more than a decade, a woman he’d slept with, of murder?
But as Dillon explained the profile, Diana came to mind and stayed. Diana was the only woman in Jim’s department Will had dated. She was meticulous—a wonderful trait in a criminalist. She was a dream in court, formal and professional. Her father was a biologist for a prestigious university on the East Coast, where she grew up. Will couldn’t remember her ever talking about her mother.
Could Diana have killed Jim? Shot him in cold blood? A man she’d worked with for years?
“Did you have a relationship with her?” Hans asked.
“Years ago, shortly after my divorce. Hell, I had relationships with a lot of women after my divorce. They were all short-term, but we always parted on friendly terms. Including Diana.” Could he peg her as a killer?
“So your relationship with Diana was before Robin?” Hans asked.
“Yeah. It ended a year or more before I hooked up with Robin.”
“How?” Dillon asked.
“As friends. We both had busy careers. My job always came first. We’ve had drinks after working on a case, in a group, ever since. I didn’t hurt her or dump her for someone else. That’s not my style.”
“Will, you’re not up for trial here, don’t get defensive,” Hans said.
“I’m not defensive, I’m angry! How could I have not seen it?”
“No one did.”
“Why? Why on earth would Diana want to kill Robin?” As Will said it, he realized the truth. “She knew about my relationship with her.”
“You said your partner knew?” Hans asked.
“Frank brought it up all the time, until I lost my temper when he got crude.” Will shook his head. “So Diana found out? But is that a motive for murder? I’ve dated other women since Diana, and they’re all alive.”
“To Diana it is,” Dillon said. “In her mind, you preferred a low-class, unworthy woman over her.”
“Robin is not low-class,” Will said.
“I’m explaining how Diana sees Robin. Robin was a stripper, correct? Diana would put her in the same class as a prostitute. And you, Will, are a detective. A noble profession, someone intensely dedicated to his job. In fact, your job always came first and that was how she justified your breakup. She could come in second to a job. She could not come in second to an inferior woman.”
Hans interrupted. “But if she doesn’t like women, how could any other woman be acceptable to her? Wouldn’t she look at the other women Will dated as inferior?”
“Possibly, but I know Will and I’d guess most of his relationships were discreet and the women had some sort of professional career. Correct?”
“True,” Will acknowledged.
“But closely on the heels of Diana’s failed relationship with Will came his relationship with Robin, and it grated on her. She watched for signs that you were now unworthy of her devotion. If you looked tired, it was because you had been with Robin the night before. She built up a fantasy in her mind that you preferred Robin to not only her, but to your job, and that was unacceptable. A serious relationship would take you away from your destiny of being a cop. You couldn’t be a good cop and be in love—in her mind.
“But there’s something else. Anna Clark wasn’t the first woman Diana killed. If you go back into her past, there will be at least one more. Probably in college.”
“We don’t have enough evidence to arrest her,” Will said. “Stanton will never give me a warrant based on a profile.”
“Was she one
of the people Jim talked to yesterday when he was leaving?” Dillon asked.
“Yes.”
“Call everyone Jim spoke with yesterday and have them come in. Call them into an interview room separately, ask what they talked to Jim about, and then let them leave quickly, walking past the room where everyone is waiting. In and out. Diana goes last. If Carina can put on her game face, have her in the room asking the questions. If Carina can pull it off—make it seem like Diana is not a suspect—it will put Diana at ease, since it was common knowledge that Jim and Carina used to live together. And if Carina can let down her guard a bit, tell Diana how hard she’s taking Jim’s death, it’ll bring on Diana’s guilt. She killed Jim because she thought he was a threat to her—that he knew something that would lead back to her. But she didn’t want to do it. It will bother her because Jim was one of the good guys in her mind, and the more salt you can rub on that wound, the greater chance she’ll confess or slip up. But Diana will not confess to a woman, so I’d suggest after Carina asks the questions, you go in—maybe find an excuse to send Carina off—and push her.”
“Thanks for your help, Dillon,” Hans said.
“Anytime. And again, I’m sorry about Jim.”
Hans disconnected the phone and Will slammed his fist on the desk. “Diana.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Why not? I slept with that woman. I liked her. I wouldn’t have believed she could do something like this.”
“We still don’t have proof. We need the gun.”
“She’s not stupid enough to keep it lying around her house.”
“Has ballistics come back on the bullets?”
“The coroner performed the autopsy this afternoon, the bullets are already at the sheriff’s forensic lab and they’re rushing it. We’ll have the report by tomorrow. They’ll work all weekend if they have to.”
Will paced, bouncing ideas off Hans. “Diana isn’t stupid. She’s not going to use her own gun, even if she has one.”
Killing Fear Page 29