The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4)

by Hill, Casey

  ‘Of course.’ Reilly completely understood chain of custody issues and she wouldn’t dream of directly handling evidence in such a scenario. But tracking down suppliers was completely above board, and she and Daniel could carry out such work easily if his office provided the tools.

  Daniel looked heartened. ‘No problem, son. And anything else you can think of – within protocol, of course – you name it.’

  ‘I will.’ The three glanced at one another, each aware that they were agreeing to a kind of unspoken pact.

  Later, after a hearty meal and a hefty slice of key lime pie, Daniel announced that he was going to bed, leaving Todd and Reilly alone at the table.

  She looked up at the night sky, her eyes tracing familiar constellations. Despite the changes in location, the same shapes were still there. Strange how some things could be so much the same and so different at the same time. She’d enjoyed the food (especially the corn bread), the few glasses of wine she’d consumed were giving her a nice buzz, and the warm evening air and relaxing sound of the waves were making her feel heady.

  It was finally starting to feel like a vacation.

  ‘I’m glad you and your dad get along so well,’ she commented idly. ‘It’s nice to see.’

  Todd laughed, and she couldn’t help but hear a hint of disbelief behind the tone. ‘Reilly, how long have you known my father?’ He stood and stepped down to the edge of the pool. ‘You can’t tell me that in all these years you haven’t figured out his relationship with me.’ He gave another bark of a laugh. ‘And here I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.’ Then he suddenly pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it onto a nearby sun lounger. ‘I want to go for a swim.’

  Before Reilly could respond to the sudden shift in conversation, Todd stripped off his dress pants and, wearing only a dark pair of boxers, dove straight into the water.

  He popped back up to the surface, his face now sporting a daring grin. ‘Well, Steel?’

  All right, Reilly decided, why the hell not. She kicked off her shoes and stood. Then quickly, so she couldn’t second-guess herself, she pulled her sundress over her head and dove in as well.

  The cool water was like silk on her overheated skin. She’d been away from warm weather for far too long. When she broke through the surface, she found Todd staring at her, an appreciative look in his clear blue eyes.

  While her sporty dark blue underwear covered more than most bathing suits, she found herself flushing. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Todd looking at her that way. It had the potential to become very awkward, very fast.

  As much to defuse the moment as anything else, she decided to address his previous rhetorical question. ‘I do, by the way, have you and your father figured out.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Todd seemed mildly amused. He swam toward her. ‘Enlighten me.’

  Reilly waited until he was just a foot away before answering, her voice coming out more at ease than she felt. ‘You two butted heads even before the divorce, so when your mom said that it was his fault, you believed her. When you finally found out the truth – that she was the one who cheated, the one who wanted to leave – you stopped hating your father and started trying to be like him.’

  Reilly had heard the divorce story years before, but was just taking a stab at the analysis. As she said it though, it made sense. ‘Just like your father, you’re too proud to admit you were wrong, so you try to make him proud of you. But because you two are so much alike, you still butt heads and you end up resenting him for you trying to prove yourself.’

  ‘You missed one thing.’ Todd’s smile appeared frozen. He swam over to the edge and lifted himself out. ‘You forgot to add into the mix the perfect little protégé prodigy who aced every test, solved every crime and did it all while charming juries and lawyers alike.’

  Reilly was startled by the hurt in his tone as he said this. Was Todd . . . jealous of her and Daniel’s relationship? Like she’d explained to Mike, it had always been more of a father/child thing than anything romantic, but now she wondered if perhaps it had been too much like that, and at Todd’s expense. ‘I never—’

  ‘I know . . .’ The moonlight glistened on the drops of water running down Todd’s body. ‘It wasn’t your fault, isn’t your fault, I get that. You were needy, maybe an emotional orphan with an absentee father, I don’t know. Looking for a father figure no matter the reason. My dad just happened to forget that he already had a kid who needed guidance.’ He picked up his clothes. ‘I have to get going. Lots to do tomorrow.’ With that, he disappeared into the house, leaving Reilly treading water.

  ‘Yeah, so this isn’t going to be awkward at all,’ she muttered. She ducked back under the water and swam a few laps, her arms cutting through the water with graceful precision.

  So much for breaking bread.

  CHAPTER 14

  Reilly set aside the laptop Daniel had had delivered to the beach house from his office earlier and stood. She stretched her arms over her head, bending backward until her spine popped, and she let out a moan of satisfaction.

  Despite her misgivings about getting involved in the investigation of Holly Young’s murder, she couldn’t deny that it felt good to be back in the saddle again.

  Hell, she wasn’t the vacation type anyway.

  Still, trying to track down anything on the camera information Todd had provided was proving annoyingly fruitless. As far as she could tell, the cameras found at the scene of Holly’s death and the others could’ve been bought anywhere from a local electronics store to online; without a serial number, they were virtually untraceable.

  She let her gaze wander around the living room.

  A certain Quantico mentor had taught her that, for some people, the best way to come at a problem was from the side. If she let her brain focus on something other than the problem at hand, some outside stimulation such as music or painting, or even appreciating the surprisingly stylish furnishing of that same mentor’s home, and his impressive books collection, the rest of her mind would continue to work the problem. It had served her well back in Dublin as she’d actually hit on quite a few answers to problems while cooking.

  As Reilly’s attention moved away from Daniel’s bookshelf, her eyes fell on the picture on a side bureau next to it and she smiled. Todd’s college graduation. Daniel and his ex-wife Stella stood on either side of their son, all animosity set aside as they beamed at the camera. For all of their problems with each other, the one thing Todd’s parents had always agreed on was how much they loved their son. Reilly could almost feel the pride radiating off of them both.

  Pride . . .

  Something that Todd mentioned before suddenly came back to her. According to his computer expert, the killer had been sending footage of the murders to an email address.

  They also knew he’d spent a lot of time painstakingly staging each murder. For maximum dramatic effect, Todd had said.

  Was the video footage for the killer’s sole entertainment, or was he sharing his work? Reilly’s intuition was telling her that such a creative type was unlikely to pass up the opportunity to broadcast his ‘talent’.

  Which made her think about something else; something about the recent boiling-water death that had been niggling at her.

  Reilly returned to the laptop on the couch and started a new internet search.

  This time, she typed in a few key words unique to Holly and her boyfriend’s murder, grimacing as she did so.

  There were some seriously sick people out there, she decided, as the search returned over 1.5 million hits. Reilly skimmed each of the descriptions, her stomach churning as she read through the listings. Some were legitimate news stories, including one or two short references to the recent murder, but others were websites and jokes and . . . wait.

  She stopped, her cursor hovering over a link to a video clip, debating whether or not she wanted to do this.

  No, she didn’t, but someone had to. Reilly clicked on it and waited as the video loaded, a
chill settling deep into her bones. Again, something had been niggling at the back of her brain since she’d heard the horrific details of Holly’s death, and now she thought she understood why.

  Her roommate in her Quantico freshman year, Ellen, had been obsessed with horror movies. Reilly had tried to avoid them as much as possible. With her past, she didn’t need a horror movie to tell her just how twisted the world could be.

  But despite the care she’d taken to switch off as much as possible, there had still been times when she took in the odd showing. A piece from one particular movie – a clip of which she was about to click on now – had happened to be on during one of those times.

  At the time, Reilly remembered being mildly repulsed by the movie, but it had seemed so far-fetched that it hadn’t bothered her as much as some of the others Ellen had watched.

  The internet video had finished loading and started playing. As a chained-up woman struggled and called out for help, Reilly couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the blond actress in the movie and the late Holly Young.

  ‘Damn,’ she whispered, every hair on her body standing on end.

  Images mixed in her head. The photographs from Alice Young’s house interchanging with the face of another, more familiar, little blond girl. The violence of a young woman being torn asunder. The blood pooling on the floor beneath Reilly’s own mother’s body. The actress’s screams emanating from the computer . . .

  Reilly let out a shaky breath and squeezed her eyes shut. As she’d been told to do when the memories came knocking, she repeated the little poem her shrink Dr Kyle had taught her years ago.

  ‘. . . Lay you down and take your rest; Forget in sleep the doubt and pain; And when you wake, to work again . . .’

  The words and rhythm soothed her, helped her collect herself, and she opened her eyes. Her mind cleared and she could focus again. She knew well that her mind’s greatest asset was also its greatest weakness.

  She had an eye for detail, a brain that processed information in a way that most people couldn’t understand. The downside to that was that it was often hard for her to turn her brain off, to move beyond a problem before it was solved.

  When something particularly bad stuck, it was nearly impossible for her to get it out. Dr Kyle had understood that in a way no one else had. After numerous hits and misses with various treatments, finally the solution presented itself. Give the brain something else to ruminate on and it would let go of whatever it had been holding on to. Hence her decision to go into crime scene work, where there was something to think about, something to puzzle over, every waking hour.

  She muted the volume on the laptop and, after taking a deep breath, let the movie clip play through one more time.

  ‘A killer with a taste for the dramatic . . .’ Todd’s assessment of the murder scenes popped into her brain once again. That was an understatement.

  Reilly wasn’t entirely sure how much to tell them, or even how to do it. Part of her wanted to protect anyone from ever having to see what she’d seen. Just the memory of it was enough to make her feel nauseated all over again.

  She’d avoided Daniel for most of the day, heading out for a ten-mile run on the beach when she heard him arrive back from the grocery store, then taking her time in the shower, wishing she could wash away the memory of what she’d seen as easily as she could the sand and sweat.

  She’d told him that after her shower she was going to take a nap, blaming residual jet lag. She wasn’t sure if he’d believed her, but it was either that or try to keep her expression under control and she didn’t think she was that good an actress. She needed to tell him and Todd at the same time. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have to have once, let alone twice.

  Despite her claim, Reilly didn’t nap at all; she couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to. Instead, she spent the hours before Todd was due to arrive examining the video clip for anything that may have been missed. A notebook lay next to her, filled with her scrawling script. Questions. Observations. Details. So far, not much else that could help. This killer was definitely meticulous in his staging.

  Only after she heard a car pulling into the driveway did she emerge from the bedroom, hoping she looked disheveled enough to allay any suspicions that might distract them.

  She set the laptop and notebook on the coffee table and sat on the couch, tucking her feet underneath her. The smell of reheated Cuban food was almost enough to tempt her. Unfortunately, her mind was still too filled with the gruesome images she’d seen to consider eating.

  ‘Anything new?’ The question was out of Daniel’s mouth before Todd shut the front door behind him.

  For once, Todd didn’t take offense at his father’s brusque tone. ‘We finally got a hold of the 911 call reporting the first murders.’ He took the beer Daniel offered him, looking like he needed it. ‘Male, nothing really unique about his voice. Sounds in the background indicate that the call was made near the crime scene, which fits with the scenario the caller described. Problem is . . .’

  ‘Because it was a burner, it looks more like the killer actually placed the call.’ Daniel finished the statement.

  ‘Exactly.’ Todd gulped down half of the beer before continuing with a quick summary of everything they’d learned. It didn’t take long.

  Reilly waited until Todd was finished before she spoke. ‘I found something.’ Her voice was quiet.

  ‘You tracked down suppliers for the cameras? That was fast,’ he said, eyes widening in surprise.

  Reilly shook her head and took a deep breath. She spoke slowly, choosing each word carefully. ‘I wasn’t sure how exactly to tell you this other than to just come out and say it. There’s this slasher horror movie from 1986, called The Hitcher. At one point, a female character is chained between two trucks.’

  The expressions on Todd and Daniel’s faces told her that they immediately understood the significance, and she forced herself to continue. ‘At first I thought maybe the killer got the idea from the movie.’

  ‘At first?’ Todd echoed, nearly choking on the words.

  ‘In the original film, the camera pans away when the trucks . . .’ Reilly swallowed, fighting down the sour taste in the back of her throat. ‘The clip I found online, there’s a cut from the movie to . . .’ She forced the words out, ‘There’s a cut to the filmed murders.’

  She watched as her words registered. The color drained from the faces of both father and son, and she saw her own nausea reflected on their faces. She twisted her fingers together almost to the point of pain and waited for the men to say something, though she had some idea of how they must be feeling.

  Earlier, when she’d played back that short clip from the movie, she’d spotted another in the listing below, the part where viewers who liked this also liked that. It was titled ‘Extended Cut’. Playing this one, the familiar camera pan away that happened in the movie abruptly stopped, to be replaced with something that looked far too real to be fake.

  Reilly had bolted from her seat, tossing the laptop aside. She’d barely made it into the bathroom before her lunch made a reappearance. It was one thing to see the aftermath of a horrific crime, but quite another to watch it in full Technicolor.

  She had remained sitting on the cool tiled floor while screams echoed from her laptop speaker, each one piercing through her head. No matter how talented the actress, there was always a quality that couldn’t be faked, something that couldn’t be held back at that moment when screaming was all that could be done, when it was no longer a conscious choice but an involuntary reaction.

  While the first glimpse had told her what she needed to know, she still had to play it again to really see exactly what was there. And there it was again. Where the original clip had panned away from the victim, the film had been spliced with video of Holly Young’s death intercut with her boyfriend Aaron’s.

  The difference in quality of film alone told her that the original film and the new material had been shot with differ
ent equipment, decades apart.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Daniel said, his voice hoarse, ‘there’s a video online where people can actually watch Holly . . .’ He stood abruptly and Reilly wondered for a moment if he was going to be sick.

  ‘It’s not just her, either.’ She forced herself to keep going. ‘I suspected that if the killer had set up the first scene as some kind of homage to a well-known movie, maybe he’d done the same with the second one.’ She opened her laptop. While horrific in and of itself, this was going to be the easier of the two clips for the Forrests to watch. ‘This was just posted online yesterday. The original movie’s called Deep Red.’

  Reilly didn’t watch the clip as it played through. She didn’t need to. The images she’d seen today would be replaying through her mind enough on their own. She kept her eyes on Todd’s face. She didn’t know enough about the second murder to be one hundred percent certain that the details matched.

  Todd uttered a low curse and her heart clenched. ‘I’m guessing that means I was right? That’s the most recent victim?’

  ‘Down to the fucking heating coil in the tub.’ Todd slumped back in his seat. ‘The son of a bitch isn’t just imitating movies, he’s adding to them.’

  CHAPTER 15

  ‘Fuck,’ Bradley spat.

  ‘Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said.’ Todd leaned back in the office chair the following morning. He rubbed his hand over his face, eyes bloodshot and burning from lack of sleep.

  He’d considered calling Bradley immediately after Reilly had shown them the videos last night, but had ultimately decided that he’d need a clearer head to be able to explain the significance of what she’d found, and how best to pass the information on to the investigative team without stepping on toes.